2023-03-21 2 1 0 Senate 0 1

Tuesday, 21 March 2023

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Sue Lines ) took the chair at 12:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.

 

DOCUMENTS 1 DOCUMENTS Tabling 1 COMMITTEES 1 COMMITTEES Meeting 1 12:01 The PRESIDENT 112096 I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. MOTIONS 1 MOTIONS Climate Change 1 12:01 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I seek leave to move a motion relating to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's AR6 synthesis report: climate change 2023, as circulated. Leave not granted. Senator WATERS 192970 From the contingent notice standing in my name, I move: That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion to the 6th IPCC synthesis report. The Greens are suspending standing orders in both chambers today to discuss an incredibly depressing and landmark report that was released overnight, and which is the last wake-up call for this parliament and, frankly, every other parliament around this whole planet. The findings of this report are no surprise, but they are incredibly challenging. The motion that we have moved today notes the overnight release of the synthesis report relating to the climate emergency, and it notes the statement by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that there can be no new coal, oil or gas projects in Australia—and that in fact Australia and other developed nations must phase out coal by 2030. It calls on the government to heed the calls of the IPCC and the UN Secretary-General, and to stop approving new coal and gas projects. The synthesis report shows that we're already at 1.1 degrees of warning. It also says that projected emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure will see us blow any chance of constraining warming to 1½ degrees. It says that the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it beautifully when he said: 'Humanity is on thin ice—and that ice is melting fast.' The climate time bomb is ticking. Today's IPCC report is a how-to guide to diffuse the climate time bomb; it is a survival guide for humanity. It shows that the 1½-degree limit is achievable, but it will take a quantum leap in climate action. The report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country, by every sector and on every time frame. Still quoting here from the Secretary-General: Specifically: No new coal, the phasing out of coal by 2030 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and 2040 in all other countries. Ending all international public and private funding of coal. Ensuring net-zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world. Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas—consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency. Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves. Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition. Establishing a global phase down of existing oil and gas production, compatible with the 2050 global net-zero target. I don't know how clearer this guy's going to be: no new coal, oil or gas. Yet what have we got here in Australia? We've got 116 projects in the pipeline. They were in the pipeline under the last terrible government and they're still there under this new government. I thought we had an election, and I thought people voted for a change, so you'd kind of expect that there might be a policy change. But right now we've got 116 of these projects in the works, and the government is proposing a mechanism that's going to do sweet nothing to stop any of them. It's an absolute outrage: 116 new coal, oil and gas projects; $11 billion a year in taxpayer money going to subsidise the fossil fuel sector. I mean, seriously, are we in a budget crisis or not? There is $368 billion for nuclear subs for some phoney war, when the real war is against our planet, and it's being driven by greedy fossil fuel companies that are reaping billions for their own personal benefit. Meanwhile, ordinary people are paying the price. We've seen floods. We've seen fires. We know what the devastation looks like, and that's at 1.1 degrees. Seriously, wake up, folks! Please go and read this report. I know we're all busy, but go and read the damned thing. If you're not awake after reading it, then honestly, I don't know how many fossil fuel donations you need to accept in order to continue to have your head in the sand. This parliament has a decision to take. As the world's scientists have said, the decisions we take today will influence the next thousand years. This is serious, folks, and I do not want the might of the fossil fuel companies—their dirty donations and their promises of incredibly overpaid lobbying jobs after you folk leave this place—making the decisions for our nation. We have a chance to actually make a difference here. We have all the world's scientists laying out the road map for us on what to do. You can't say we weren't warned. We've had years and years of these reports. They've now synthesised it for us: no new coal, oil or gas. It's what the Greens will always fight for. You can have a discussion about how quickly we exit, and the UN says let's exit by 2030, but no new coal, oil or gas. Stop giving them public money, stop giving them approvals, stop taking their dirty donations and stop going off to work for them after you leave this place. 12:08 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I rise to make a brief contribution on the suspension of standing orders today. The government will not be supporting the suspension, but I do want to be clear that we think the issue of climate change is real and requires serious action. To start where Senator Waters finished, and to quote her, we have a chance to make a difference. Well, the government supports that, and we agree that we do have a chance to make a difference, and the most pressing opportunity we have to do that is to pass the safeguard legislation that will be coming before the parliament in the next week. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which was released last night, makes the case for urgent action and confirms what we already know. It puts in pretty stark terms that there is a rapidly closing window for transformative climate action, both here and around the world, and it shows that global warming has increased at an unprecedented rate over the past decade, resulting in more frequent and severe droughts and cyclones. Every region in the world is expected to face increasing risks from climate change by the 2030s. It's already at our door, and this report unfortunately just confirms yet again the wasted decade under the Liberal and Nationals governments, when they refused to accept the science, refused to take action when they were in a position to do so, and were more preoccupied with fighting each other, particularly on climate and energy policy, than with doing their job. And that's having real consequences for our nation, our region and our world. Australians already know that they are being impacted by catastrophic climate change—severe flooding, drought, mega fires, low air quality from those fires. Every Australian has felt the ferocious effects of a warming planet, so we all know that climate change is real. Well, most of us in this chamber know that climate change is real. It is here and it's starting to have an impact. It would be great if this fortnight, instead of having suspension motions and things like that, we could actually pass the legislation that is going to give us the opportunity to start doing the work that should have been happening for years but hasn't been happening. I accept that not everybody agrees with the detail of the design, that it is not perfect in everyone's sense, but it is a start to make a difference. If we genuinely want to make a difference, we have to start somewhere. We can't have those who want more action on climate change and those who want no action on climate change determining that nothing happens. I mean, that is the risk that we face here. We on this side have the policy design and we will continue to work with anyone in this chamber who wants to make a difference, who wants to start reducing emissions through the safeguard magnetism and through the regulation that will come down the road, and actually start doing that. That is what needs to be happening. No four- or 10-hour debates on the IPCC report will actually do what passing the legislation that will come before this parliament will start to do if it gets the support of this chamber. The counterfactual is that it doesn't pass, that we don't reform the safeguard mechanism and that we aren't able to reduce emissions in the way that the safeguard mechanism is designed. That is the counterfactual of this chamber not supporting that legislation, that we are struck again with nothing happening. So we on this side do think that we should be progressing the most obvious, the most pressing legislation that is actually before this parliament. That will make a difference, and we can work together to do it. We can't let those opposite, who sit there and say they support net zero by 2050—well, you used to support that anyway and you used to support the safeguard mechanism and you want to see change—sit there and block everything. The 'no-alition'—who block absolutely everything in this chamber. You are setting yourselves up to be the most obstructionist opposition in recent times—absolutely. The way you are not involving yourselves in legislation, what are you getting paid for? You come here and you don't even play yourselves into the discussions because it is the straight-up no. That's what the people who support you are getting out of this. They are getting bodies who sit in this chamber who don't participate, who don't involve themselves and who don't negotiate, and that is what has led to this policy failure, or the effect of— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Scarr, a point of order? Senator Scarr 282997 The minister is reflecting generally upon members of this side of chamber, I believe, in quite a personal disorderly fashion and she should withdraw. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 I'm not sure it quite gets that far but I would ask the minister to reflect on her comments. Senator GALLAGHER ING I will reflect on them but it seems to be pretty standard Senate operating procedure. But that is the opportunity that the Senate is faced with in the next little while. In the next two weeks we can start to make a difference. We can show Australians that we are taking this seriously and that we are working together to mitigate some of the risks of climate change. 12:13 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania It's a delight to be participating in this debate. Of course, the opposition won't be supporting this suspension, not because we don't deem the issue important; it is probably just not the form to have the debate. I mean, Senator Waters herself did concede that most of us haven't had the chance to read it. Some important points are made. Senator DUNIAM 263418 You've read it? Well, good on you. That's excellent. I'm pleased for you. We'll take the time to have a look at it properly and respond properly as well. But look, there are a couple of things in there that are important. I think the motion highlights them well and I'm pleased that it is here for discussion but there are elements to this that aren't considered in the motion. I was just listening to Senator Waters' contribution there and the point was made that the ordinary people of Australia, the voters who send us to this place, are the ones who are going to be paying the price and that is true, not only with the impacts of climate change but more importantly with the impacts of higher power prices, which is what you are advocating for when we talk about this carte blanche banning of coal and gas. The one thing that no-one from that corner of the chamber seems to inject into this debate is concern for those who actually are doing it tough: the businesses, the people that work in them, the households—those people who actually are struggling with increased costs of living, including through higher power prices. It is something that we actually need to deal with, and I would love it if that were in the motion. That might be something the people of Australia would like us to be dealing with. Yes, there are bits of legislation before this chamber. As the minister outlined in her contribution, there's the safeguard mechanism. It was an interesting contribution from the minister, though. It was made clear to everyone in this chamber that the opposition will be opposing the amendments to the safeguard mechanism. As Senator Whish-Wilson pointed out by interjection earlier, it was something that the coalition bought in. It was a structure that was put in place to incentivise investments in emissions reduction through better tech, better R&D and working with big emitters to actually bring down their emissions, rather than taxing them, which is the model we have before us. We proudly say no to a model put forward by a government that is going to drive up the cost of living. It's not right for the minister to say: 'You don't come here to contribute to legislation. You're dealing yourself out of the game.' The reality is that we're happy to work with anyone who comes forward with a good idea. Bad ones should be scrapped. Come forward with something better and we'll work with you on that. You can't just come in here and say, 'It's our way or the highway.' You might start by providing us the modelling—the modelling that everyone in this chamber except for the Australian Labor Party wants the world to see. Every senator in this place, every party, wants the government to table the information we're expected to trust them on, which is the basis for the legislation they claim is going to fix climate change in this country. They've refused on numerous occasions to provide the Senate with that information. I hope they come to their senses because, if they don't, it's going to be them preventing the world from dealing with climate change in this country. As they put it, if this bill doesn't pass we've lost the one opportunity to deal with this issue. Show us the modelling. If it's good modelling and it actually speaks to what the government says the bill will do—the impact it will have on emissions reduction, availability of carbon credits, the cost of living and power prices—show us the modelling. What is there to hide? There hasn't even been the offer of a private briefing. That wouldn't be good enough, in my books, but not even that has been offered to give senators, who will be asked to vote on this legislation, the opportunity to see this and make a decision. I come back to the points in Senator Waters's motion. There is reference to the UN Secretary-General's comments. I did see some interviews taking place this morning. A scientist from the ANU who works in the area of climate change characterised the Secretary-General's take on the report as fairly flourished, with a lot of emotion in it, and he had a slightly more tempered view on that. He also referenced the multiple tools that are available to governments to deal with these things, including investments in technology to reduce emissions, which is something I talked about before. It's something the coalition has a proud track record of. We've been characterised most unfairly and incorrectly by the government and others in this chamber. We're proud of our record and the investments we have made in renewables and our plan to reduce emissions. We're not going to do it by making Australians pay through the nose, keep the heaters off in winter, not be able to turn the lights on and not able to open their businesses. It's the wrong way to do it, and we won't be supporting this suspension. 12:18 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland One Nation will not be supporting this motion to suspend standing orders. The real question is something that lies beneath this suspension order request, and that is: are the Greens patsies and fools, or are they complicit in fraud? They're claiming an escalating climate emergency—a climate breakdown. Here we go again, with no data to back it up. We know that the Greens have never provided any empirical scientific evidence or logical scientific points to back up their assertion of an escalating climate emergency. I challenged Senator Waters to a debate in public in 2010—13 years ago—and she still will not debate me. She jumped to her feet and said, 'I will not debate you.' I've challenged her again, almost daily and weekly since 9 September. Senator Waters 192970 Leave me alone! Senator ROBERTS 266524 Now we hear calls of: 'Leave me alone. I haven't got the data.' No. There is no evidence the Greens have that backs up their claim. Secondly— Senator Cox 296215 Read the report. Senator ROBERTS 266524 I will get to the report in a minute. The second thing is (a)(ii) of the motion, the statement by the United Nations Secretary-General. Did we know that Greta Thunberg, who did not finish high school, was yesterday given an honorary doctorate in theology by the University of Helsinki? It's a religion, this climate stuff, and the great god is the United Nations. Did you elect the United Nations Secretary-General to run our country? No. I didn't. They've never been elected. Let's have a look at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. The first, in 1990, was built on fraud, but even that showed that the medieval warming period was warmer than today's temperatures. That was quickly whipped out of the United Nations next report, in 1995. The scientists gathered under the UN banner said there was no evidence of warming due to human production of carbon dioxide. Yet Ben Santer, one of the scientists, went in and changed that report and presented it in 1995 based on a fraud. In 2001, 2007, 2013 and 2020 there were reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Let's look at chapter 12. In each of those reports there was only one sole chapter claiming warming and attributing it to carbon dioxide from human activity. In 2001 it was chapter 12. In 2007 it was chapter 9. In 2013 it was chapter 10. Not one of those reports' sole chapters claiming warming and attributing it to human carbon dioxide contains any evidence for that claim. It's the same in 2020. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Whish-Wilson, do you have a point of order? Senator Whish-Wilson 195565 I can put up a lot in this chamber, but having Senator Roberts directly yell at me from five feet away is very difficult to take. Could you ask him to address the chair, as he should according to parliamentary rules? The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 He was going through me, but it's a lesson to us all to speak through the chair. Senator ROBERTS 266524 We always see that when someone has no evidence they rely upon slurs, innuendo and misrepresentation. Thank you for not being able to challenge my argument. Let's have a look at the basis of this United Nations report. Maurice Strong was a crook. He died in 2015 after returning from self-imposed exile in China. Maurice Strong started the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a political tool to get his way for his objectives globally. Maurice Strong started the Chicago Climate Exchange. He was a director of the Chicago Climate Exchange. He sought to make billions of dollars of profit from the Chicago Climate Exchange. He was then pursued for the oil-for-food scandal in the United Nations—complicit; another scandal in the United Nations. He was also wanted by American law-enforcement agencies for serious crimes in the United States, including one very big crime in western United States. He fled in exile. He's a crook! That's what the Greens are basing their policies on. That's what the Labor Party is basing its policies on. That's what the Liberals and Nationals, with a few exceptions—I note Senator Rennick—are basing their policies on. These policies that are destroying everyday Australians' lives economically, socially, mentally and morally are based upon a crook, and you've fallen for it. What's more, you're now getting the people of Australia to pay for it. That is inhuman, it's irresponsible and it's dishonest. Are the Greens guilty of fraud or are they simply patsies and fools? I note that China produces 4.5 billion tonnes of coal and gets more of our coal, while we're not allowed to use the 500 million tonnes that we produce in this country. They produce nine times as much and yet they have got no agreement for 2050 net zero. This is fraud, and this is why we will not support this suspension. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator McAllister indicated she wanted the call, and then I'll look to the call after. I can't quite remember who came first. 12:24 Senator McALLISTER 121628 New South Wales The government welcomes the report that was released last night. In commencing my remarks, I'd like to acknowledge the Australian scientists and experts who contributed to this report and to the IPCC process. Australia has a strong track record of producing world-class climate science and research. I thank them for their work. This report will be concerning for many Australians. Scientists have been telling us for decades that without significant emissions reduction we can expect worsening and cascading climate events. The report confirms what we already know, that there is a rapidly closing window for action on climate change. Actually, Australian communities know this. They know this in their hearts because they are already experiencing the reality of climate change. Even when faced with devastating bushfires and with devastating floods, the previous government refused to act. Those on the other side, along with their enablers on the crossbench, spent 10 years arguing among themselves, refusing to do what was needed to lead Australia out of the worst effects of climate change. They presided over a decade of delay, denial and dysfunction, and they delivered nothing. Finally, we have a federal government that is committed to strong and swift reform. We are unapologetically focused on transforming Australia's domestic economy to a low-carbon economy. I will make this point. It is the most important thing that we can do to support the ambitious international action—collaborative, collective action—that is necessary to contain global warming. We can't control the energy choices of other nations, but we can make sure that Australia makes its own contribution to build confidence that, collectively, as a globe we can do this. Of course, that is the point of the report. It sounds the warning bell of the dangers of inaction, but it makes the point that there is still a pathway, a pathway to stay below two degrees and to come as close as we can to 1½ degrees, as we agreed to in our international arrangements. This is, of course, the focus of our international effort, and we are working closely with international partners to advance practical action on climate change and build new clean supply chains. But most importantly, we are acting at home. One of our first acts in government was to legislate an ambitious but achievable emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The Powering Australia plan invests in this transformation—$20 billion to upgrade, expand and modernise our electricity grid to support more renewable power and $1.9 billion to establish the Powering the Regions Fund, which will support new jobs and the decarbonisation of emissions-intensive industries and will help ensure that regional Australians drive Australia's transformation to a renewable energy superpower. The Driving the Nation Fund and the National Electric Vehicle Strategy provide us the opportunity to invest in cleaner, cheaper transport. And while we work, while we make every effort to limit future climate change, there are some changes that we now can't avoid, and we need to support communities to adapt to the impacts that are already baked in and build their resilience. The parliament is currently considering a most important bill, a bill to reform the safeguard mechanism, a mechanism that, until the last election, was the stated policy of those opposite. But after 10 years of denial and delay, that mechanism never actually achieved what it was supposed to do. It didn't contain rising emissions from our biggest emitters. This is the first opportunity we'll have after nearly 10 years of those guys to turn that around. Our proposal will deliver 205 million tonnes of emissions reductions by 2030. It is a workable policy that will reduce the emissions into our atmosphere. The chamber has a choice this fortnight to continue to allow big emitters to continue with no real restrictions on how much they can pollute or to require them to drive down Australia's emissions and put us on track for net zero by 2050. Every bit of emissions reduction makes a difference. That's why we have to seize this opportunity and not squander it, because that is what the Australian people expect of us. 12:29 Senator HANSON-YOUNG I0U South Australia This is an important suspension today because there is no greater issue facing the future of our country—indeed, the future of the rest of the world. I want to address my comments to the children who are watching us in the gallery today: this report paints a warning sign and a very bleak picture about your future. I want to say—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle—to the kids up there watching that we have a responsibility to secure your future, to look after the planet for you and your children and to ensure that we take seriously the warning signs that have been given over and over again by scientists and that we act on them. This report shows clearly that runaway, dangerous climate change is here, and rather than sprinting, as the authors of the report have said, we are simply walking—we are sleepwalking into climate catastrophe. We know what needs to be done. This report outlines clearly what needs to be done. We have to stop expanding fossil fuels and we have to phase out our current use of and the dirty pollution from coal, gas and oil. We need to get out of coal by 2030, this report says very clearly. We can't keep spending taxpayers' money and public subsidies on the fossil fuel industry. For every dollar that we're spending on fossil fuel subsidies, we need even more to be spent on responding to the climate crisis that is here, right now, already. We've seen some debate over the last few days about the enormous amount of money, the $370 billion, that Australians are going to fork out for submarines in this country because of a threat, we are told—a huge global security threat. Well, there's nothing more threatening to our survival as the human species on this planet than climate change. Where are the billions of dollars that are coming from wealthy countries to address the climate crisis? We know that the climate has already changed. We're already dealing with the threats to our livelihoods, our homes, our jobs, our economy. We've seen the floods. We've experienced the heartache of people's homes being destroyed, their businesses being demolished and, sadly, the loss of lives. The fires are still burnt into our recent memory. What the scientists are telling us already is that before we know it we are going to be back there again. It is not negotiable to sit here and take piecemeal action on the climate crisis. We need to make sure that we take these warnings seriously so that we can actually address the crisis that we are confronted with. It has been greed and complacency that has ruled the day, and it's time it stopped. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e68 The question put by Senator Waters was that suspension of standing orders be agreed to.    

The Senate divided. [12:37]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Sterle)

 11 AYES Allman-Payne, P. J. Cox, D. Faruqi, M. Hanson-Young, S. C. McKim, N. J. (Teller) Pocock, B. Rice, J. E. Shoebridge, D. Steele-John, J. A. Waters, L. J. Whish-Wilson, P. S. 27 NOES Ayres, T. Babet, R. Brown, C. L. Cadell, R. (Teller) Canavan, M. J. Ciccone, R. Colbeck, R. M. Davey, P. M. Dodson, P. Gallagher, K. R. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. McGrath, J. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Roberts, M. I. Sheldon, A. V. Smith, M. F. Sterle, G. Urquhart, A. E. Walsh, J. C. Watt, M. P. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 12:40 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e68 I'll wait for senators who won't be participating in the next debate to vacate the chamber. While I'm at it, I welcome back a former senator, Rachel Siewert, from the great state of Western Australia. I take it you're not here to take up an adviser position, and you've just come to say hello. BILLS 7 BILLS Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 7

Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022

Second Reading 7 12:40 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales I was speaking on this yesterday and, for those viewing at home, I started out by absolutely saying that we all support the right for Australians to have a say on this very important issue. We all want to support a referendum, but we want a fair referendum. We want to make sure that the referendum is conducted with full disclosures. We on this side, as I said yesterday, raise three very important points. I got as far as talking about the equal funding for both the 'yes' campaign and the 'no' campaign. We want the equal funding because we want the referendum to be conducted fairly. We want both sides to be able to operate in compliance with all our disclosure and regulatory regimes, by having a formal structure. By having 'yes' and 'no' campaigns that are identified by parliament, recognised by parliament and funded, we will have a formal structure to minimise the risk of foreign interference, to minimise the risk of misinformation and, as I said yesterday, to also minimise the risk of letting the Googles and the Amazons and the Metas of the world actually run this debate. We believe that we need to look at simple and practical steps that put structure around this process to help our regulators and our agencies manage the referendum and to give Australians confidence. That is why, on this side, we have been advocating so forcefully, particularly for the inclusion of a pamphlet outlining both the 'yes' side and the 'no' side of the debate. We know from past referendum data from the Australian Electoral Commission that, when they provide mailed material to voters during elections, at least 40 per cent of recipients use that documentation as a main source of information on casting their vote. We also know that electoral events are increasingly influenced by misinformation, and we've all spoken about misinformation in this place. So, for the government to refuse to recognise 'yes' and 'no' organisations, they are opening the door to more misinformation. I do want to, though, acknowledge that the government has now agreed to our call for pamphlets that outline both the 'yes' and the 'no' campaigns. It does, however, look like the government is putting caveats around those pamphlets and how they will be produced. I would implore the government to just let the pamphlets—acknowledged and recognised by this place—be sent out to all voters and made available in different languages to ensure that people can make their own informed decisions. Having an official 'yes' and 'no' campaign will make things simpler for the Australian people, it will make it simpler for the regulatory environment and it will make it simpler for the conduct of the referendum. We know that there will be a significant number of participants and organisations in this referendum who won't be associated with political parties and who don't regularly participate in electoral events. We want to make sure that by having a single point of coordination for both the 'yes' and the 'no' campaigns to provide education that there's capacity to have an audit process for donations, an audit process to ensure there's no foreign interference and an audit process to ensure the integrity of the referendum. We've also called for equal funding, which I believe the government has said a flat-out no to—and yet the government has set aside $9.5 million for a 'facts of the Voice' campaign. It says this is not a de facto 'yes' campaign, that it's an awareness campaign to include the facts of the Voice. However, we only have their word for that; we have no oversight into how this education or civics campaign will be run or who will be in charge of it. We know that there's already significant activity by our government agencies promoting the 'yes' side. Ironically, the National Indigenous Australians Agency, with its 1,200 staff and 39 offices around Australia, actually has as one of its reasons for being to work with the government to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests are considered in developing policy. That kind of sounds a bit like a voice to me but, obviously, it's a bureaucracy and not the Voice. But they're are also out there, working hard to ensure that people are aware of what the Voice is, what it means to them and what the referendum means. I note that the National Indigenous Australians Agency will also have processes upgraded through the expenditure of this $9.5 million. It will upgrade its website, provide information in 30 languages and develop a more comprehensive information program on the facts of the Voice and the relevant civics information. We do need to be confident that it isn't 'facts for why we need a Voice' but that it outlines what the Voice could mean on both sides of the debate—both for and against. According to a report in the Guardian, the money is also for paid media placements for the Voice information program, to expand reach across the broader community significantly. Again, we need to be confident that it's unbiased information being presented under the banner of a civics education campaign. We need to ensure that we give Australians balanced information so that Australians can make up their own minds. As I said at the outset, I absolutely support and respect the right of Australians to have their say on this issue—absolutely! But when this issue is run, we want to make sure that it's run fairly, that it's run by officials in an unbiased manner and that Australians can have confidence that when they do access information it's legitimate information—not information that's being rolled out by keyboard warriors—and that it's respectful. Importantly, it's got to be respectful information, because we want this debate to be respectful. We want this debate to be conducted openly and transparently. That's why we've put forward our three key asks: to have an official 'yes' and 'no' pamphlet, and I acknowledge the government has now agreed to that request; importantly, to identify official 'yes' and 'no' campaigns so that we can verify them, not have them Twitter verified or Google verified or Meta verified but actually verified by this place; and also to fund it so that it's funded fairly and so that the organisations can ensure they meet our regulatory requirements. I know there is a lot left to go in this debate; there are a lot of speakers on the speakers list for the second reading, and I will listen to all their contributions with interest. There are also a lot of questions that need to be answered and that hopefully will be answered during the campaign committee. So I do reserve my right. I have not yet finalised my position on this very important matter, and I will listen to the committee stage of the debate with interest and reserve my right. 12:51 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania About two weeks ago I spent five days on the ground in Alice Springs. It wasn't my first trip to Alice, and no doubt it won't be my last. I've always been a big believer in listening and talking to communities on the ground. I find it's the best way to find out what is really going on. Alice Springs is full of people trying to do the best that they possibly can under the circumstances to make their lives and their children's lives better. I arrived just after the alcohol restrictions had been reinstated, and I was told by the locals and the police that the rate of violence and crime had already started to fall dramatically. Senators in this place might like to know that most of the Aboriginal organisations in Alice warned the Northern Territory government not to lift the alcohol ban. But, like too many in government, they didn't listen. I met with many Aboriginal people and organisations, again providing great service to their community. I want to give a few examples. Jason, with his partner Steph, runs a boxing academy—a small club hosting between 20 and 50 kids every day at the Alice Springs Youth and Community Centre. They are operating out of a tin shed that is not fit for purpose. The kids there love it though. They are happy, they are strong, and they are fit. Jason and Steph work hard, and they get almost no government assistance. The kids see the same faces every day asking them, 'How're you going?—three simple words. Consistency and structure are what these kids need, what so many of us in this place probably already take for granted. These kids need to know that they are safe and that their homes are safe. Alice Springs is not short of organisations providing services across the board. That may be a good thing, but what I keep hearing from the Aboriginal people in Alice, and abroad, is, 'There's lots of money in Alice, but things aren't getting any better.' Gee, I don't know how many times I've heard that, after chasing for that cashless debit card over the last nine years. Where's all the money going? Where's all the money? In the 2021-22 budget the Australian government allocated $5.7 billion to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy over four years to 2024-25. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm like many other taxpayers, and we have no problem giving taxpayers' money when it's going to programs and when people need that support, but we need to know if it is working and, if it isn't, why we are still funding it. Why? The Minister for Indigenous Australians says the Voice will improve the situation—yeah, okay—because the gap isn't closing fast enough. It's not even close, especially when you consider the billions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent. Another place I visited in Alice was the Central Australian Women's Legal Service. The demand on their services has been increasing dramatically. These amazing women and people in there that work want to do more. They get lots of requests from remote communities, especially across the whole Central Desert. There is a huge amount of need for regular legal education. They want to do more but they don't have the funding. Last May all of the women's legal services across Australia lobbied hard and got $129 million. But according to the Central Australian Women's Legal Service, 'The funding has not reached the intended beneficiaries, but has been distributed broadly to include mainstream service providers.' What's new? In other words, the money didn't go to where it was most needed. It wasn't targeted. What's new? Government money that's not well targeted. I would've thought that you guys in the red would learn from nine years in the blue. Not well targeted—now, don't get me wrong, I am all for funding programs that work. And listening to Aboriginal people and community is crucial, because you do know what, not all communities are the same. How about that. You wouldn't know that unless you'd been visiting them on a regular basis year in, year out. I spent a lot of time in Alice just listening. What I heard over and over is that there is cash, lots of cash, but we have almost no data on what is actually working and isn't working. Could it be that there are too many organisations, shopfronts? We need more accountability and transparency. We need more rigorous oversight on organisations that don't report on their success or the lack of success of programs. Please don't think that I am just having a go at Aboriginal organisations, because I can assure you past government ministers have also had their paws in the honeypot. Part of the royalties from the mining companies on Aboriginal land are invested in the Aboriginals Benefit Account—or ABA. From 2006 to 2008 the federal government took some of this money away from land councils and gave federal ministers more control over where the cash went. In 2006 minister Mal Brough went into the honeypot to fund a festival—I'm not sure how that's helping Indigenous people—in his own electorate, mind you. How about that. How convenient. I'd love to know what the positive outcomes of that were. Then in 2017 the then minister, senator Nigel Scullion, used an ABA grant to pay for an Indigenous employment program headed up by—you wouldn't guess it—the President of the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party. Jobs for mates. The government talks about unprecedented investment to close the gap. Oh dear. All Australians want to know is that their money is going to programs that are effective and are closing the gap. That's all we want to know. I've seen the gap with my very own eyes for way too long. I've seen young Aboriginal girls with babies on their hips and tracking bracelets on the ankles, and I tell you it bloody brings tears to my eyes. That's where we're at. We have girls who aren't even old enough to be mothers. They are children having children themselves with bracelets around their ankles. That's where we are at. I met a young teenager who was described to me as 'Alice Springs's best car thief.' This young boy has been in and out of detention. When he gets out he doesn't go home because his home isn't safe. And he isn't the only one. He sleeps under a bridge and steals food until he ends up back in detention again. That is his safety net. That is very sad. The detention centre is his safety net. That is where he is at. And like I said, he is not the only one. I have to ask: where are the services at the front gate of the detention centre? Why is this a revolving door for this young man and many others? Where's the money going? As I said, this wasn't my first visit to Alice. In 2020 I spent some time in Alice and a lot of time in communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. There were highlights and there were lowlights. The highlight of my trip was the community of Milingimbi in the Top End. This community has its own thriving design business and their own credit union. The most heartbreaking day was another community in the Northern Territory making concrete crosses as part of their Work for the Dole program. This is what we did to a 17-year-old in one of these communities. This was his working for the dole, painting a white cross. And you wonder why they're taking their lives. That is what your programs are paying for and it is shameful. It is shameful. We need solutions and we need programs that work. Those solutions must be done in consultation with local communities and must include programs that have a track record of working and must continue to show that they are working. We must get that. We have to get that out of the taxpayers' money. If they are tracked, we know that they are still working and are making positive change. That is what we want to see. Here is one for you. Here is one that you could do today. The government of the day could put this in today and make a significant difference, even before we go to vote in the referendum. Here it is: the old community development employment project—the CDEP. Every Aboriginal person I have spoken to over the last 10 years has told me the same thing—bring back the CDEP. That worked. It worked. It worked. It worked. I have heard that from the white community. Everybody in those communities know it worked. While a staff member in my office was researching the CDEP, she came across a Curtin University study published in 2007 that looked at all of the government employment programs, what worked and what didn't. Of all the schemes that past governments have tried, the professor who did this study said that the CDEP was the most enduring and most successful jobs program we have ever put in place in this country, ever. But you would know that if you had been running around like I have for the last nine years on the job. I don't care what electorate you're in. When things are hurting in this country, get your boots on and get on the job. The other point made to me is that programs that are not designed with the local Aboriginal communities do not work. The CDEP, also known as the CDP, prioritised giving Aboriginal remote Aboriginal communities the skills and the hardware to build, repair and care for their own communities. This is where we want them. I called up an old army buddy while I was in Alice. He's married to an Indigenous woman and has been working with Indigenous organisations for the last 20 years. In the days of the old CDEP program, my mate got to take on apprentices for four years. But guess what? Now he is only able to offer them six months. They cannot finish their apprenticeships, so how do the Indigenous kids get a trade? Not in their communities—not helpful. He told me about the houses that have been designed with Aboriginal people involved. They were involved. They basically said, 'This is what I want.' He designed it. They said, 'Yes, this is exactly what we need.' So those houses were absolutely suited for Aboriginal people. He also told me that all of those houses, every single one of them, 20 years later are still standing strong because they were built for them. The CDEP's focus was creating jobs on community that increased cultural connection and gave those communities ongoing practical skills—money well spent, I would have thought; a system that works, I would have thought. If a system was not broken, we would have left it there, I would have thought but no, not politicians. The government has changed its focus and decided that it was just about how many people got jobs. This is where we got to. This was the exchange: 'any jobs—it didn't matter—any jobs'. But this was a non-starter for remote communities where there weren't any jobs to begin with. The government just wanted statistics—how unusual—of who got a job and did not really care what sort of jobs they were given, and that is why they don't stay in those jobs. Common sense prevails—hello? What is even worse is that when the government stopped CDEP and CDEP programs, the local councils took away the roles, so those communities can no longer do their own repairs and maintenance. There we go—back to scratch. What a waste of money. We did this year in and year out. It was working and we removed it. That is what we did up here—shameful. It is baffling to me that the fact of whether a program works or doesn't work does not appear to matter what to the Commonwealth, not one bit. The money is often handed over, no questions asked, with little or no accountability—let's be honest. But what people on the ground are telling me is that this has been going on for years, and I have seen it going on for years. What Alice does not need is more money thrown at it with no positive results. We must have positive change. The communities are screaming out for it. Alice Springs and the people of Alice Springs need services that are well targeted at the problems they are experiencing there today. They need programs that have accountability and are trackable. They need programs that are making positive change and they need programs that achieve what they say they will achieve. I can assure you: you will be hearing it all from Tasmania because it is coming, because we have the same problems down there. It's not just in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Regional Controller, Dorelle Anderson, has been tasked with reviewing the appropriateness of all these services. That's a great start, but what are the criteria? What are the parameters? When we rang her office, we were told that no criteria were set as they were still in the consultation phase. How ridiculous! And you wonder why you don't have success up there! When will Australians see where the money is going and what programs are actually working to make positive changes in their lives? The minister says that having a voice will fix these issues. That's all well and good, but we need solutions today and you could actually fix the solutions today. All the families and kids of Central Australia are hurting, and the single biggest message I got from Alice Springs in the last few weeks is that less can be more. Before making any more decisions to throw more money at Central Australia, let's make sure those programs work and that they'll stand the test of time. That's our job. Again, I have to ask: are there too many organisations? We have about 40 of them in Tasmania, and some of them, like land councils, are exempt from FOIs. Seriously! Why are they exempt from FOIs? Aren't they getting the job done? Are you too embarrassed? Is it a smokescreen? It's time we had FOIs; we should be entitled to FOI anything, pretty much, especially when it comes to Indigenous matters. That's so we can make sure we're getting the results that we need. There's a motion coming to this place which has been sitting there since the last sitting. I will be supporting the call for transparency around the funding of all large organisations that get taxpayer money. It's time it happened. The federal Labor government doesn't seem to be interested. That really baffles me: they're going to vote against it, and I find that absolutely disgraceful. I want them to know that one of the biggest problems they have out there after nine years is that there's no transparency. There's money going everywhere to Indigenous places out there and we have no results. But they don't want to know why. It's time they were hauled over the coals—hauled up here and asked questions about where the money is going and what it has achieved. It's a fair question. 13:06 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the people Queensland and Australia, I note that this Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 is about updating the mechanics of referendum voting, and is entirely appropriate and necessary. It has, though, unearthed yet another Labor Party deceit on its Voice proposal. While many senators have chosen to speak about the Voice proposal itself, I will speak primarily about the bill's mechanics. My comments on the Voice proposal for now are that, if passed at a constitutional referendum, it will entrench and deepen the neglect and suppression of Aboriginals in our country. It will do so in favour of the Aboriginal industry, which fathoms the bank accounts of parasitic white and black academics, consultants, lawyers, activists, ignorant and uncaring virtue-signallers, and politicians. That's at the expense of taxpayers and every day Aboriginals and communities across our nation. The flood of amendments from across the Senate reemphasises the need to update the referendum process. The amendments, though, include one that is very disturbing to me: namely, Senator Pocock's addition of schedule 9, on the referendum pamphlet review panel. It flushes out yet another example of the teal Senator Pocock working with the Labor Party to advance Labor's deceit. This amendment is disguised as Senator Pocock's and yet it seems to be, in reality, a Labor Party amendment attempting to enable Labor to take control of the referendum pamphlet's content. Firstly, my understanding is that if this amendment is successful then a Labor minister, Ms Linda Burney, who has already declared support for the 'yes' case, will nominate a Labor controlled review panel that must approve the pamphlet's contents. There's no requirement for a balanced view, and the panel can censor and exclude material. I suspect that the 'no' campaign material will be unfairly censored. The panel will include people who were part of the working groups in favour of the 'yes' campaign: academics and other ministerial appointments. So the panel will be weighted in favour of a 'yes' vote. Secondly, why is this panel not comprised of persons with an independent background? Thirdly, why is the panel not designed to represent all the varied views from across all the parties and Independents in parliament, and, especially, from all across our nation? This is a terrible amendment, designed to appoint a pamphlet review panel whose purpose is to produce a biased pamphlet with taxpayer funding. It's an abuse of taxpayer funds. This seems to be yet another example of teal Senator Pocock working for and serving the Labor Party. While I will support this bill at the moment, and I will support most amendments, if the teal Pocock amendment is successful, I will oppose the bill. I cannot support such a dodgy amendment. I will wait, though, and listen to opposition speakers raising specific concerns regarding funding, tax deductibility, audits of campaigns, and security from international interference. The Labor-Greens-teal campaign for the Voice is becoming a train wreck for Labor. The Voice is a racist proposal that will divide the nation on race. It's based on race. What happened to the fundamental principle of democracy that started with ancient Greece 3,000 years ago—namely, that every person has an equal voice and equal vote? As we have seen with the Labor-Greens-teal-Pocock behaviour in the Senate, guillotining and ramming through damaging bills with horrific future consequences for our nation in just the few months this government has been in power, the abolition and bypassing of democracy is yet another trait of this Albanese government that is a reincarnation of a Soviet style politburo. History shows what happened to that after the people endured decades of needless, inhuman pain and suffering. In Australia we have one flag, we have one community, we are one nation. We must stay as one nation made of people from many backgrounds, all with an equal voice. 13:11 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania I rise to make my contribution to the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022, and I will make the point at the outset that this is a very important piece of legislation. This country, quite reasonably, has very strong regard for its Constitution, its founding document. It took a considerable period of time for that document to be negotiated amongst the states when they came together to form the Commonwealth. There have been about 44 attempts to modify it since Federation, and only eight of those have been successful. Australians, quite rightly, have very, very strong regard for our founding document and the form of governance that it provides to us. I think, in my conversations when talking to people out in the broader community, that document provides us with the best form of democracy and the best form of governance in the world, despite its failings. We are very fortunate to live in a country that has the constitutional foundation that we have and the structure and systems of governance that we have. We may complain about them at times, but if you look around the world, where else would you want to live and under what form of governance would you like to live? I think here is, if not the best, one of the best. So it's in that context that the debate on this piece of legislation is extremely important. The provisions for referendums have been established in legislation going back over a hundred years. Each time there is a referendum there is a machinery bill that sets out the parameters for that referendum process. Quite frankly, this bill should not be controversial. This bill should not be controversial. It should be within our capacity, within our remit, to sit down and agree the terms under which this bill is managed. The opposition doesn't come to this debate to be political about the issue of the referendum; that's a point of discussion for another debate, quite frankly. What we should be able to do is effectively have a situation and a circumstance where, absent the issue of referendum, absent the question, the provisions largely remain the same. It's worth noting that provisions have evolved over time, and for good reason. The issues that the opposition is very reasonably raising in this debate come about because of the evolution of things over time. We very much appreciate the fact that the government has been prepared at this point to, for example, agree to a 'yes' and 'no' pamphlet. That's a very important document. It provides information—clean information—which is important for the Australian community, as a part of this debate, to provide the arguments for the 'yes' and the 'no' case to Australians, not just English-speaking Australians but those speaking a whole range of different languages. That good information will be provided, prepared by participants in this place, as to the 'yes' and 'no' cases. We appreciate the fact that the government has come onboard with that. But if you look at the broader circumstances, where we sit in the world of information right now, the government's refusal to accept an official 'yes' and 'no' case that provides some process of oversight to those 'yes' and 'no' cases—the capacity to track donations through those cases, the capacity for the 'yes' and 'no' cases to assist people with false information, in this world of information overload—is greatly concerning. The opposition doesn't raise this to be obstructionist; we raise this genuinely, because we want a good process. We want the opportunity for people to have their say. We want the opportunity for Australians to listen and hear those messages, to understand which are the effective, appropriate and official messages. I really don't understand why the government isn't prepared to agree to very reasonable requests that we will make in our amendments to this legislation. I think the unwillingness of the government to agree to those reasonable requests gets this whole referendum process off to a very bad start. I said earlier in my presentation that only eight of 44 referendums have been successful. The only times they have been hugely successful—which is what we want with an issue such as this, if we go down the path—has been when both major parties of politics were onboard. The fact that, this early in the process, the government is not prepared to go along with sensible, reasonable amendments that the opposition is proposing for the purpose of good process raises real alarm bells with me, because in my view that will effectively reflect right down through the referendum process. It's almost as though the government is trying to sabotage this process from the outside. I understand that the issue of the Voice is something the government took to the election, and they take their victory at the election as a mandate to progress with that. I have no problem with that. I recall standing in the Great Hall at the beginning of this parliament, when we were undertaking those initial ceremonies for the opening of this parliament, thinking that we really do have to reconcile our place in this country with our First Australians. When I have conversations with people around this country they acknowledge the history of First Australians in this country before European settlement. They don't have a problem with that being recognised in our foundational document—the document that decides how we're governed—but they want to have a say, appropriately, in how that's put together. So, in my view and from my conversations, the only way that that has a chance is if the process that puts the referendum in place, the processes around deciding the question of the referendum, involve an appropriate level of bipartisanship that will lead to that view across the parliament as to the question that's going to be asked, and the perspective on it. The Prime Minister appointed a special panel to advise on the Voice, without any reference to the opposition. When we asked questions about it at estimates the response was, 'They're all good people. Who would you replace?', which is not the answer. It might very well be that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition could sit down, have a conversation and agree on the same people, but the Prime Minister didn't do that. The Prime Minister went to Garma with a proposed question for the referendum, without any reference to the Leader of the Opposition. I acknowledge that he wants to maintain momentum in this debate—I get that—but a consultation with the Leader of the Opposition would have brought a completely different perspective with respect to how the Prime Minister was trying to bring the country together on this question on which, we all need to acknowledge, there is a range of different views. I'm concerned that those processes, including the one that we're debating today, undermine the possibility of success in the referendum. Some people might say, 'Fine, that's good. That's our view. That supports our case,' as it may be, but the opposition is being extremely genuine in this place. We put our views in the additional comments to the Senate report on this legislation. We have been very genuine in our discussions with the government in relation to this legislation and the amendments that we want. We have been very upfront with the reasons we want them. I don't want Google or Facebook or Twitter or any of those other big tech platforms determining or editing what goes on those platforms in relation to this referendum, and I don't think they want to be the arbiters of what is true and not true on those platforms either, but without the recommendations that we've made to the government, we don't have the capacity to do that. Quite frankly, that's a sovereign question. On what basis should we subcontract, should we forgo, should we give away the capacity to determine what's true and what's not true in relation to this debate to those global tech platforms? We've seen examples of foreign interference in other elections—for example, in Canada recently. In the Canadian circumstance it wasn't necessarily about picking a winner or a loser or deciding which side of politics would govern; it was about creating division. That was the rationale for the foreign interference. We don't want to see that in this debate. What we're looking for, what the Prime Minister has said he wants to see and what we would like to see is a process that brings this country together, not divide us. Why would we not have in place processes that would allow us to be the arbiters of what's not true and what is true? Why would we not do that? I genuinely do not understand why the government is resisting well-thought-out, considered, sensible proposals that are based on the realities of today. We talk about foreign interference. We've passed foreign interference laws. We talk about the way the big tech companies operate. We've talked about funding and about foreign interference through funding of campaigns. Why would we not put in place provisions that would allow us to monitor that? That's what we're asking for. I don't think it's outrageous. I don't think it's anything other than a request to put in place good process. There are different views with respect to the Voice. Those arguments can legitimately be had once we get to that point in time. But I can't believe—I really cannot believe—that we are having a disagreement over the mechanics of the process. The Australian people will, in a heartbeat, see through any attempt or perceived attempt to manipulate the process on this referendum. They will see through it in a heartbeat. Their BS detectors are pretty good. They know. I have to say that the support for the Voice that we've seen over recent times is being affected by the way the government is managing this process, and the BS detectors are going off big time. All the government needs to do to mitigate that is to sit down, talk to the opposition and take up our considered, reasonable proposals to ensure that there is a good, proper and effective process in place that ensures there is integrity in the referendum system and the process that we put in place. Australians value, and will protect, our Constitution appropriately. We know how conservative they are. When we're at this stage of the process and we're having arguments about the integrity of the process, I think the government runs a great risk, sadly, of undermining the whole process, because we should not be having this argument right now. We should be agreeing on the appropriate process for our referendum to be run with integrity and controlled by Australia and Australians, without interference from outside, so that when we go to vote, at whatever point in time the Prime Minister decides the question will be put, people know that the process is being conducted with integrity but also, importantly, with support from across the parliament. I think all of those things make a difference, and I urge the government to consider our recommendations. (Time expired) 13:26 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia I, too, rise to contribute to the debate on the incredibly important legislation that we have before us today, the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022. I want to make it very clear from the outset that, sadly, I'm not in a position to support this bill as it currently stands, because of Labor's complete lack of support for fairness and integrity in this bill. Instead, it is quite clear they are seeking to stack the deck in favour of their upcoming referendum question and, potentially, for future referendums. While this bill does contain many non-contentious and much-needed reforms to the machinery mechanisms, there are three issues of grave concern to those on this side of the chamber. There has been some movement by the government—and we wait to see the detail in the amendments—but there are remaining concerns. The bill removes the requirement to provide all households with a pamphlet outlining the 'yes' and 'no' cases for changing the Constitution. I welcome the government's movement on this but, again, remain highly sceptical about what they will put forward. This information has been provided to all Australians in every referendum since 1928. For nearly 100 years, this information has been provided to assist Australians in their deliberations, including on whether they will support a proposed change to the Constitution. I also do agree with the general proposition that the parliament should treat changes to the machinery of referenda without considering what future referendum questions may actually be. The act itself has not been used since 1999, and it clearly has not kept pace with changes to the Electoral Act that have been made progressively since then. Since the introduction of the referendum pamphlet back in 1912, there have been only three occasions when a pamphlet has not been provided. It has been provided, as I said, in every referendum since 1928. The AEC provided a lot of very helpful information to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on this matter. The cost would be about $10 million, and it noted that, for every election, around 40 per cent of Australians rely on the printed material that the commission provides. The reasons for that are very simple. Australians trust and rely on official information from the Australian government, and that has never more important than today, in the days of fake news, social media algorithms and echo chambers, where what we see, read and learn about is fed to us in a highly sophisticated way. It has given rise to what is now called fake news. In this age of disinformation, it's important that the government take the lead and provide clear information to Australians and a strong referendum process. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x Thank you, Senator Reynolds. It is now 1.30 pm. You will be in continuation. We will now move to senators' two-minute statements. STATEMENTS BY SENATORS 14 STATEMENTS BY SENATORS St Patrick's Day 14 13:30 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales As many of you know, last Friday was St Patrick's Day. I had the pleasure of attending a St Paddy's day lunch hosted by the Lansdowne Club. The Lansdowne Club was founded in 1986 by a group of Irish-born businesspeople, and today many of its members hold senior positions in Australia's largest corporations across a wide range of industries. While St Patrick's Day is a tradition that marks the passing of Ireland's foremost saint it is also the most celebrated holiday in the world. Ireland has influenced so many other countries with its history, its celebrations and, of course, its wonderful, gregarious, world-travelling people. Our close relationship with the Irish goes right back to modern Australia's beginnings. Many Irish men and women were among the first European settlers in Australia—many of them below deck when they arrived—and today a staggering 11 per cent, or 2.4 million, of Australians have identified their Irish heritage. Senator Duniam 263418 Including Acting Deputy President O'Neill! Senator HUGHES 273828 I attended the lunch on Friday with Senator O'Neill, who is one of the great attendees of the Lansdowne lunch. Nearly 80,000 people who were born in Ireland also now call Australia home. Last year there were over 14,000 Irish citizens on working holidays here, so they continue to play a part in shaping our Australian way of life. Everyone from prime ministers and premiers to ministers, scientists, investors and jurists have all celebrated their Irish heritage. I want to honour our Irish-Australian community for their longstanding and continuing contribution to this country and its people. I apologise in advance for my Gaelic, and I will do this the best I can: slainte chuig na fir, agus go mairfidh na mna go deo—health to the men, and may the women live forever! The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 140651 I won't repeat my Irish in response! I call Senator Brown. Tasmania: Energy 14 13:32 Senator CAROL BROWN F49 Tasmania I join with Senator Hughes in her comments around St Patrick's Day and the Irish community. Tasmania is the home of renewable energy, and that's worth repeating—renewable energy, energy, energy. Tasmania is the first Australian state, and one of the few places globally, to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity generation. That is something to be proud of, and, indeed, Tasmanians are. Senator Ayres 16913 A pretty dim lightbulb sitting over there! Senato F49 This was the vision of a former Tasmanian Labor government led by the inspirational Premier Eric Reece, also known as 'Electric Eric'. What's more, the Albanese government has a plan to rewire the nation, which will fast-track clean energy jobs and security across the country. The October budget delivered our $20 billion Rewiring the Nation fund. The Rewiring the Nation initiative will deliver a modern electricity grid at the lowest cost, with more jobs and investment and, importantly, lower pollution. Honourable senators interjecting— Senator Carol Brown F49 Acting Deputy President O'Neill, the interjections are getting out of hand! The Rewiring the Nation plan is just another example of the Albanese government getting on with cleaning up the mess left behind by the former coalition government. The first investment from the Rewiring the Nation plan is to fast-track critical Tasmanian projects to unlock cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy, and to put downward pressure on energy prices. How good is that? Climate Change 14 13:34 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria The IPCC report released overnight has to be a game changer for Australia. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres puts it starkly and clearly. He said that we need to 'massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every time frame', that 'warp-speed' action is needed to save humanity from the thin ice it's on and that what happens this decade will be key to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or overshooting it, with catastrophic consequences. Guterres asks countries, including Australia, to commit to no new coal and the phasing-out of coal by 2030 and to block the exploitation of new and existing oil and gas reserves. Australia is critical. We are the biggest exporter of gas in the world and the second-biggest exporter of coal. What we do in this place matters for the future of humanity and healthy life on this planet, and we know what we need to do. That is to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground, for our future, for our security, for our food, and for First Nations justice, totems and protecting country. It is too late for half-measures, for greenwashing and for fig leaves. There's no time left for the 116 new coal and gas projects that this government is planning. That will not safeguard our future. I just joined the chorus of women in the marble hall, singing with them about turning lament to renewal. I just sang to give our voice to the song of life, to give our promise to children on earth and to sing for peace through the power of love so that lament will turn to renewal. It is very clear what needs to be done to turn lament into renewal, and that is no new coal, oil or gas. Please listen to the scientists, listen to the women and take action. Defence Procurement: Submarines 15 13:36 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria This morning there were reports from Trudy McIntosh of Sky News, as reposted by Andrew Clavell, that three Labor MPs raised concerns about the AUKUS agreement, including the member for Corangamite and the member for Higgins, in Labor's caucus this morning. Yesterday in the parliament, the member for Fremantle said: While I support the work of the government, I'm not completely convinced that nuclear propelled submarines are the only or best answer to our strategic needs. This is a deeply concerning development. This morning, as I understand from reports, concerns were raised in Labor's caucus about the cost of the nuclear submarine program and Australia's sovereignty. The question needs to be raised as to whether these concerns are well intentioned. Given the member for Corangamite is a member of Labor's hard left, I am not convinced. The member for Corangamite is part of a government that has broken so many promises—lower interest rates, cheaper mortgages, lower power prices and no changes to super, all broken. Now there is the broken promise about aged care, after the government conceded that it could not have a nurse on site at all times by July in every aged-care home, as it promised. Of course, the member for Corangamite has been a hardline campaigner against new investment in coal and gas and could not care less that plans to build a gas import terminal by Viva Energy's Geelong Refinery—capable of importing half of Victoria's annual gas supply, including from WA—have been derailed by the Albanese government's chaotic energy-cap laws and the Victorian government's refusal to approve this terminal. Now we see the member for Corangamite and some of her colleagues doing their best to cause division over AUKUS. AUKUS is too important to fail. Murray-Darling Basin 15 13:38 Senator GROGAN 296331 South Australia I rise today to speak about the Murray-Darling Basin and some amazing students that I got to spend some time with the week before last. The Murray-Darling Basin is one of Australia's most important river systems. It continues to face critical threats to its health, following nine long years of neglect by the previous government. In my home state of South Australia, the Murray River supplies vital water for agriculture and for domestic use. It sustains ecosystems and unique wildlife and plant life that populate the Murray-Darling. It is a critical part of our country, and we need to ensure that its health is secured into the future. So I was quite delighted to meet with a bunch of PhD students from the Fenner school at the ANU. They are a range of really, really impressive young people who have fixed on concepts and ideas that they believe will improve the Murray-Darling Basin. They have some excellent projects, which they talked me through, including things like climate adaptation in the Coorong; freshwater conservation; water security in small towns in New South Wales; horizon scanning to predict long-term futures; ecological forecasts, and a range of other elements that I don't have time to go into in just two minutes. But I am emboldened by having met with them and heard what they're doing, when we think about what we can and we must do for the Murray-Darling Basin into the future, now that we have a government that cares. (Time expired) Climate Change 15 13:40 Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 Tasmania 'Act now, or it will be too late.' That was the key message from the IPCC AR6 synthesis report out overnight—eight years of work by the world's key climate scientists. And, when they say 'act', they are calling for a massive acceleration of climate action—a fast-tracking of climate ambition, in every country, in every sector and on every time line. They are also calling for no new fossil fuel projects and a net zero target for each nation by 2035. That's what the science tells us we need to do to keep global warming to 1½ degrees. So why, in this country, are we voting on a piece of legislation for the safeguard mechanism that has a climate ambition of two degrees warming—significantly above what the IPCC scientists tell us we need to achieve? It's legislation that is not massively increasing our climate ambitions; it's legislation that will allow for the unfettered development of hundreds of new fossil fuel projects. We have a responsibility to the world to play our part. And this piece of legislation, the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022, will not do that. So why? That's the question that we all need to ask ourselves. The only response we've had from the government so far is: 'It is what is achievable'—whatever that is supposed to mean. Perhaps they mean it's achievable because that's what big business will accept, or that it's achievable in terms of their political ambitions to win power at the next election. But, either way, I'm looking forward to the debate in this place, because it has never been more serious than now to get climate action. (Time expired) Harmony Week, Alice Springs: Housing 16 13:42 Senator LIDDLE 300644 South Australia Celebrating our nation's cultural diversity, inclusiveness, respect and belonging is the purpose of this week's celebration of Harmony Week. It also coincides with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, today, 21 March. Harmony Week is full of activities as diverse as the people who participate in it. Orange is the colourful expression of Harmony Week, as we rightly pursue a nation where every individual thrives and is empowered to fulfil their dreams. In Central Australia, played out over a couple weeks, there's been a case study example of what happens when there is apathy, excuses and the dodging of accountability: a family doing their best, while calling a concrete slab their home for two years. Amplified in this case was everything that needs to change: no more excuses; no more blaming the very people with the least power, the least influence and the most hurdles in front of them to effectively navigate the system that supposedly exists to assist them. I'm thrilled that the family was, after more than three weeks of coming to national media attention, moved into temporary accommodation. It's a large family with nine children and one adult with a very serious medical condition. They had no power, no water and no shelter except a tarpaulin, and, yes, were in plain sight, yet seemingly invisible for years. It was breathtaking to see how they lived and where they lived. The shame of this example in Alice Springs is not of this family; they were doing the best they could, hoping that one day someone would believe, like they did, that their future could, should and would be better. The evaluation of programs and the scrutiny of governance to avoid an avalanche of waste, apathy and poor performance is what's needed to get rid of the organisations and programs that don't work. It's not complex. It's about acting on evidence, acting with courage, and never accepting that it is acceptable or okay, so that everyone in Australia has a chance at harmony. Youth Voice in Parliament 16 13:44 Senator WALSH 252157 Victoria The voices of young people can be underestimated, but they can also be powerful—filled with hope and solutions. And they are the future of our parliament. I'm happy to have been invited to participate in the Youth Voice in Parliament campaign, spearheaded by Raise Our Voice. Raise Our Voice aims to increase the number of young, female and non-binary voices from diverse backgrounds to engage with politics. They invited young people to answer the question, 'What is your vision for Australia in 20 years?' in a short speech. One of the speeches that I received was from Sasha Sri Deenathayalan, who was unfairly treated at her first job. Her working conditions were poor and she touched on the importance of work rights, especially for young people. As a proud lifelong union member myself, her speech resonated deeply with me and here it is. Sasha said: I want parliament to address workforce shortages by providing young people with the skills, safety and security of the workplace. In doing so, putting in place things such as higher pay, incentives, policies that ensure managers do not exploit young people and their labour. In addition to this, I'd like parliament to put in place things to push the climate change agenda. I believe that sustainability will result in new jobs, secure work and a healthier future for all young people everywhere. It is important our voices are heard everywhere, but especially the workplace as this is where it all begins. I'd like to thank Sasha for her contribution to the Raise Our Voice campaign. I hope she continues engaging in politics and raising her voice. I am proud to have helped her do just that today, because governments have a vital role in the future of our young people, and it's our job to make sure that voices like Sasha's are heard. Climate Change 16 13:46 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania Senator McKim. Overnight, the United Nations released what it describes as a lesson on how to defuse the climate time bomb. It makes it very clear that the most urgent action we need to take is to stop new fossil fuel projects, and stop them now. But what has Labor presented to this parliament? The safeguard mechanism: a blueprint written by the psychopaths running fossil fuel corporations for implementation by the psychopaths who do their bidding here in this parliament. It's a culpable act of delay and deception that large numbers of people will pay for with their lives. And, of course, the big polluters are cheering hard for it because they know it's a deliberately crafted protection racket for business as usual. Labor has created a narrative, supported by a craven press gallery in this place—with only a few honourable exceptions—whereby somehow aiming for a safe climate is seen as unreasonable. And the Greens, the only party taking the looming catastrophe seriously, are told that we're being too ambitious, that the Greens are somehow letting the perfect be the enemy of the good—as if there's anything good in the steaming pile of dog vomit bowled up by Labor. And this is when it's the Australian Labor Party lining up to join in on what Greta Thunberg today described as the greatest betrayal in human history. The Labor Party wants the Greens to join them in that great betrayal. The planet is literally cooking. Labor needs to get serious or get out of the way. Climate Change 17 13:48 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory I too rise to talk about the IPCC report released overnight. It is right that we turn our attention towards this survival guide for humanity. The report paints a bleak and sobering picture if we do not act decisively. But it also offers hope. If we are able to muster up the political will to implement the solutions that we already have, then there is a narrow window where we can secure a future for all the people and places we love. In all of the debate in this place, the thing that is not often talked about is that this is about the people and places we love. The report says that the world is likely to hit 1.5 degrees of warming within the next decade. We've just lived through a summer with 1.1 degrees of warming. This is the new normal. This is what we're facing, as communities and as a nation. It is irresponsible to put up policy that isn't up to scratch and doesn't guarantee that emissions will start to go down. It's policy that hopes our biggest emitters will do the right thing. It's policy that puts us next to Kazakhstan as one of only two countries in the world that allow unfettered access to offsets. We can do better. When then prime minister Tony Abbott repealed the carbon tax there was an IPCC report. There's now an IPCC report and a Senate that wants bold climate action. I implore the government to take up that offer and to head in the right direction, not to continue on this path we've been going down. (Time expired) Rural and Regional Health Services 17 13:51 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales I rise to talk about regional health. We all know I live regionally; I keep talking about it. I gave birth to my daughters regionally. My family's health is reliant on an effective regional health service. In my state, the New South Wales government have been investing in health infrastructure. They've delivered more than 180 projects. They have 130 projects currently underway, and a newly elected Nationals government will inject $1.2 billion into critical health infrastructure and hospitals, including in my home town of Deniliquin. But all this infrastructure means nothing unless we can staff it. I commend the current Albanese government for adopting the Nationals policy to waive HECS debts for medical and nursing graduates who commit to working in the regions, and I encourage any students out there to take up the offer and move to the regions. You will stay there, I promise you, because it is such a good place to live. But I deplore this government's decision to change the distribution priority area arrangements, so that now our regional communities are competing against peri-urban areas to try and recruit doctors. This is a move that has been decried by the Rural Doctors Association and makes them 'fearful for rural communities'. Labor are not committed to regional health. At the state level the Labor Party won't commit to matching the regional health funding of the Nationals, and at the federal level they won't commit to addressing our workforce shortages. We need to do better. First Nations Australians 17 13:52 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland Perhaps the most outrageous idea to rise out of racist identity victim politics is that rent should be paid to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by other Australians. It shouldn't. The idea that Australians should pay rent for living in their own country is offensive. It's based on the idea that only Aborigines own Australia. They don't. Australia belongs to all Australians. I was born here, and no self-identifying Indigenous Australian, including those with a minute amount of Indigenous heritage, has more right or connection to this land than I do. We have all contributed to this country, and we all share in its achievements, failures, resources, disasters, virtues, values and shortcomings. The only good thing about the race based rent idea is that the activists who want it reveal their true motivation. It's not about justice or redress; it's just about money—other people's money. It's just about their greed. If this mob succeed in their bid for a race based voice to parliament it's only a matter of time before this idea is on the political agenda. It's only a matter of time before non-Aboriginal Australians are forced to pay yet more tax—a race based rent tax. As usual, the Aboriginal industry will keep all the money and truly disadvantage Aborigines, and remote communities will continue to suffer poverty, unemployment and crime. One Nation calls on all sensible Australians to reject this discrimination. We urge the government to audit the Aboriginal industry and to finally act to fix the real problems in Aboriginal communities. Dental Health 18 13:54 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia Everyone should be able to go to the dentist without worrying about how much it will cost. In today's reality where corporate profits are soaring and so many people are feeling the pinch, more folks than ever are delaying or simply denying themselves a visit to the dentist because they simply cannot afford it. I, along with my Greens colleagues, have heard from people all around the country who have shared stories of relentless tooth pain; experiences of ongoing, chronic headaches as they wait for the removal, or save for the removal, of wisdom teeth; and, indeed, so many older people making do with dentures that are ill-fitting and contributing to gum disease. There are tens of thousands of people in Australia who end up in hospital for treatment of dental conditions that could've been prevented had they been treated earlier. We must move to a publicly funded universal dental scheme that tackles dental disease proactively. That's why I am so pleased, in fact that's why I sit here with the biggest smile on my face, to be able to share that the Greens have established a committee of the Senate to review the provision of and access to dental services in Australia. In the coming months this committee will hear from people all across the country about their experiences of oral healthcare. I would encourage everyone to make a submission so that the parliament can hear from you about the challenges that you've experienced and the impacts of not being able to afford or access a dentist; and hear your ideas about how we can end up in a place where when you go to the dentist and open your wallet, instead of needing to reach for your credit card, you can reach for your Medicare card. Human Trafficking 18 13:56 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Often domestic problems, as we know, require global action to tackle. Australians supporting overseas orphanages is one of those issues. Last week in Bahrain MPs from 178 countries gathered to deliberate, exchange views and take action on key global issues. Last year, I was appointed by the IPU as a rapporteur on orphanage trafficking. And last week in Bahrain I was successful in obtaining IPU support for parliamentary action globally on this despicable form of trafficking and child exploitation. Twenty-nine countries spoke in favour of Australia bringing forward a draft resolution for global action at the next IPU congress to be held in Angola this October. We will also be preparing a guidebook for MPs globally to take action on how to stop their citizens inadvertently supporting this evil trade in children. At the heart of this handbook will be how to implement the three Ps of dealing with trafficking—that is: protection, prosecution and prevention. And now there's a fourth one with global action and that is with international partnerships. I welcome the IPU's appointment of co-rapporteur Dr Ernesto Bustamante, a Peruvian MP. And I sincerely thank him for working with the IPU and myself on tackling this problem. But also a huge shout-out and thanks to the other Australian delegates who have been so supportive: the Speaker; Mr Warren Entsch; Dr Gordon Reid; and, of course, my colleague Senator Payman, who has been such a great help on this issue, and I thank you for that. A final thanks to departmental staff Jane Thomson and Aleshia Westgate, who tirelessly worked to get this great outcome and take it to the next step. Australian citizens have unwittingly created this new form of— (Time expired) International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 18 13:58 Senator PAYMAN 300707 Western Australia Today, 21 March, is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It marks the day in 1960 when police in Sharpeville South Africa opened fire on peaceful anti-apartheid demonstrators. Sixty-nine people were killed and 180 were wounded. Nineteen years later the UN coined the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The international community has built a framework for fighting racism. However, in Australia in 1999 this was rebranded to Harmony Day and Harmony Week, changing the meaning to be one of celebration. We do celebrate harmony and recognise our diversity and bringing together of all Australians, which I think everyone can support, but it is important to recognise that many people still face racial discrimination. In light of that, when marking this week we need to be careful that we don't miss the racism experienced by people. We all have a responsibility to call racism out in all its forms and take action against racial discrimination. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 19 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Energy 19 14:00 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Farrell. Minister, did Mr Albanese promise to cut the energy bills for Australians by saying, 'Our plan will cut family power bills by $275 a year by 2025'? 14:00 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Birmingham for his question. It is a little bit rich, after years and years and years and years of failing to do anything about energy prices and failing to do anything about a plan to deal with issues related to climate change, that the opposition should be asking this question. What was the first thing—or one of the first things—that Prime Minister Albanese did on coming to office? He realised the inaction of the opposition on this issue of electricity prices and he took action, and he took action in a way which— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Birmingham? Senator Birmingham H6X President, I have a point of order on the question of direct relevance by the minister. It was a very narrow question asking the minister specifically to confirm whether or not the Prime Minister made a particular statement about cutting electricity bills by $275 a year. It's a yes or no answer, Minister. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Birmingham. I will direct the senator to the body of your question. Senator FARRELL I0N Thank you, President. And thank you for that clarification by the leader on the question. Look, you can't answer that question in the way in which the opposition would like it answered. You can only answer that question— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham? Senator Birmingham H6X President, a further point of order in relation to relevance: the minister is now claiming that he can't answer a question as to whether or not the now Prime Minister said something or didn't say something. I seek leave, President, to table the speech by the Prime Minister to the NFF 2022 National Conference, in which he said, 'Our plan will cut family power bills by $275 a year'— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham— Senator Birmingham H6X one of the 97 occasions on which he made such a statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you. Senator Birmingham, I will check to see if leave is granted. Is leave granted? Senator FARRELL I0N Customarily, President, an opportunity is given to the other side to look at the document. I'm happy to examine the document closely and advise the leader. The PRESIDEN 112096 Thank you. So, Senator Birmingham, I understand the government will come back to you. I will again remind the minister of your question. Senator FARRELL I0N Thank you, President. The point I was making was a simple one. You cannot answer in a simple way the question that you're seeking an answer to without explaining the lack of action by the previous government on electricity prices. We came to government finding all of these areas where there had been neglect and we've set about, one by one, seeking to fix— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham, first supplementary? 14:04 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Is it still the Albanese Labor government's policy that Australians will see their power bills fall by $275 a year by 2025, as stated by Prime Minister Albanese on no fewer than 97 occasions prior to the election? 14:05 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia It's still the wish and the desire of the Albanese government to ensure that we as a government do everything to put downward pressure on electricity prices for ordinary Australians in terms of their household bills and for companies, who operate now in an environment where there's upward pressure on electricity bills. We're about putting downward pressure on those bills, and that's exactly what we're doing. Why did this government cap gas bills? Why did we cap coal prices? We capped them to put that downward pressure on those bills. And, to your everlasting disgrace, you opposed it. (Time expired) T 112096 Senator Birmingham, second supplementary? 14:05 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Will the minister admit that the Albanese Labor government has abandoned its promise to cut power bills by $275 a year by 2025 and that, in fact, on the 97-plus occasions it promised that prior to the last election it was simply seeking to deceive the Australian people—deliberately so—before they got the chance to vote? Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 I'm not going to call the minister until there's silence. Order on my left and my right. 14:06 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia What a cheek asking a question about deceiving the Australian people. Who replaced you as finance minister? It was Scott Morrison. But did he tell you? He didn't even tell you that he replaced you as finance minister. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham? Senator Birmingham H6X I don't need to tell you the part of direct relevance there. You couldn't be more irrelevant, more hopeless, more unable to answer the question or less willing to talk about $275 than Senator Farrell is. The PRESIDENT 112096 It is the custom in this chamber to allow leaders some leeway, but, seriously, points of order need to be made directly. Minister Farrell, I remind you of Senator Birmingham's question. Please continue. Senator FARRELL I0N Thank you, President. I can assure the opposition, the Australian people and businesses in Australia that this government is serious about putting downward pressure on electricity prices. That's why we've taken the hard decisions. Contrary to a lot of interested groups in this country, we've— (Time expired) Climate Change 20 14:08 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria I'm smiling because it's like those opposite don't own a mirror, when they're talking about lies and deceit. My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Gallagher. Can the minister outline how the government's proposed reforms to the safeguard mechanism will ensure Australia meets its legislated emissions reduction target? 14:08 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Stewart for her question. It's a really important question, particularly on the day when we have the latest IPCC report. Right now the parliament has an opportunity to get Australia's biggest emitters to reduce their emissions. The safeguard mechanism reform is key to meeting our legislated emissions reduction target, which is something this chamber supported late last year—a 43 per cent reduction target. The Liberal-National government wasted a decade with inaction on climate change—we all know that—but this reform will give the market and heavy industry the certainty that they have been seeking and asking for for some time. It will drive change amongst the 215 biggest emitters in the country, who represent 28 per cent of our overall emissions. If it's passed, it will take 205 million tonnes of carbon out of the air by 2030. That's the equivalent of taking two-thirds of the cars off Australian roads. As former Energy Security Board chair and current chair of the Carbon Market Institute, Kerry Schott, has said about these reforms, they will 'drive decarbonisation in Australia's highest polluting industrial facilities'. She explained that 'it is designed to benefit the companies already doing a lot while allowing others to catch up without a prohibitive upfront expense'. The reform has strong and broad based support across the economy and the community. We are in good-faith negotiations with those senators who are engaged—none of those opposite, of course, who've dealt themselves out of any discussion. I support the comments made by Senator Lambie this morning on ABC Radio National, when she said: 'We could have had a starting point, though, in early 2011 and 2012. We missed that opportunity. This is a great opportunity. Let's pounce on it.' At the last election the Australian people clearly voted for change. They wanted to end the climate wars, and we've got the chance to do that. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Stewart, first supplementary? 14:10 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria Could the minister update the Senate on the findings of the latest IPCC AR6 Synthesis report and how this underscores the need for the parliament to support the government's proposed reforms to the safeguard mechanism? 14:10 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory Thank you, Senator Stewart, for the supplementary question. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest Synthesis report makes clear there is a rapidly closing window for action and economic transition. Simply put, action is needed right now. We are starting well behind where we should, after a decade of denial, delay and dysfunction from those opposite. They had 22 failed energy policies and couldn't land one of them, and now there is the safeguard mechanism, which they seemingly oppose. We have not wasted a single day since coming to office. The IPCC Synthesis report highlights the need for action. To keep 1½ degrees within reach, we have to act fast. The safeguard reforms could start to take effect on 1 July, just over a hundred days away. It's action that's needed now that will determine the future of our planet. I would urge senators to support the safeguard mechanism bill when it comes to this chamber later this week. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Stewart, second supplementary. 14:11 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria Can Minster Gallagher update the Senate on what opportunities are presented by the Albanese government's plans and what the potential costs of squandering those opportunities would be? 14:12 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Stewart for the supplementary question. The Albanese government has worked constructively with businesses to formulate a plan that will end the policy uncertainty and enable a predictable emissions reduction pathway to net zero by 2050. The safeguard mechanism reforms are the next step in supporting Australia's biggest emitters to remain competitive in a decarbonising global economy whilst reducing their emissions. These reforms, importantly, are supported by the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who have publicly supported this approach through the reforms to the safeguard mechanism. We cannot squander this opportunity that we can take to get moving, to cover the 215 facilities covered by the mechanism. Many of them have already signed up to net zero by 2050. We don't want to end up where we were years ago under this mob, where we had a total lack of action on climate change. (Time expired) Wages 21 14:13 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia My question is also to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Farrell. Minister, your government's submission to the Fair Work Commission last year recommended that the Fair Work Commission ensure that real wages of Australia's low-paid workers do not go backwards. Will your government's submission this year still include this recommendation? 14:13 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Cash for her question. Senator Cash, you have correctly identified the submission that we put to the Fair Work Commission last year, and, of course, we will prepare an appropriate response to the next national wage case. I think it's important to realise that, under your government, of course, low wages were a design feature of your overall economic strategy. When we went to the election, we said we were going to turn things around and start putting upward pressure on wages so that ordinary working Australians, who work very hard for their living, could get an appropriate recompense for their labour—and that's what we did. Within weeks, I think it might have been, of coming to power last year there was a national wage case. My recollection is that we proposed a 5.1 per cent increase. The commission started out at 5.2 per cent. If the Australian people think about the difference between the two governments and what we have done in terms of putting upward pressure on wages to try to give people a chance to deal with the issue of rising prices then they will see we have delivered for the Australian people. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Cash, a supplementary? 14:15 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia In May last year, Mr Albanese was asked if he supported a pay rise of 5.1 per cent, the rate of inflation at the time. He replied, 'Absolutely,' further adding, 'We think no-one should go backwards.' Inflation is now at 7.4 per cent. Is it still the government's policy that wages shouldn't go backwards? 14:16 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Of course it's our policy. Of course it is our policy that wages not go backwards. We have delivered on this. In the first national wage case that came before the Fair Work Commission after we came to government we put a submission to the Fair Work Commission on that very point. As I said in my previous answer, that was in stark contrast to those opposite's position in government, where a design feature of their economic policy was to keep downward pressure on wages. There is a new national wage case. We are preparing. We have an excellent minister, Minister Burke, in this portfolio area. He is in the process of preparing his submissions and— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Cash, a second supplementary? 14:17 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Given the minister has confirmed that it is the government's policy that no-one should go backwards, I again ask the minister: will your government's submission to the Fair Work Commission recommend the Fair Work Commission ensures the real wages of Australia's low-paid workers do not go backwards, consistent with your policy? 14:17 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Senator Cash, everything that this government does is all about trying to assist particularly low-paid workers but workers generally deal with the economic mess that your government left us to fix. All of these problems, like inflation, developed and became problems under your government. You failed to do anything about it. You failed to support Australian workers getting wage rises. We have the runs on the board, Senator Cash. We have delivered. We delivered in the first few weeks of coming to government— (Time expired) Racism 22 14:18 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales My question is to Minister Watt, representing Minister Giles. Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It's observed throughout the world on the day police in South Africa killed 69 people at a peaceful protest against apartheid in 1960. Only in Australia is 21 March celebrated as Harmony Day, with barely a mention of racism. Harmony Day is a Howard government invention that whitewashes racism and sweeps it under the rug. We know that in Australia too many people feel the fear of racism every single day. On the weekend, Melbourne saw the despicable allowance of hate, with neo-Nazis saluting on the steps of the Victorian parliament. Will the government ditch Harmony Day and Harmony Week and restore the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, with its original purpose of recognising the pervasive nature of racism and combating it? 14:19 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland You are indeed correct that today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. As you say, this recognises both the tragic event that occurred in South Africa all those years ago and 75 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and focuses on the urgent need to combat racism and racial discrimination. The reason I am aware of that is that I am reading directly from the tweet that Minister Giles, the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, has put up today in recognition of this important event. So, to the extent that your question suggests our government does not adequately recognise the importance of this day, I have to reject that. The minister himself has made public the fact that this is an important day for us to remember the importance of eliminating racial discrimination. He's gone on to make the point that the Albanese Labor government has invested $7.5 million into the Australian Human Rights Commission in order to develop a national antiracism strategy to tackle racism and promote racial equality in Australia, and of course he makes the point—which I would hope that everyone in this chamber shares—that, no matter where you were born, the language you speak or the faith you practise, the Albanese government is committed to a multicultural Australia where everyone belongs. I don't think there can be any doubt where the minister himself or this government stands on these issues. I think there can be some doubt about the level of commitment across the political spectrum to eliminating racial discrimination, because I, like you, Senator Faruqi, was highly disturbed to see the neo-Nazi demonstration outside the Victorian parliament and the fact that it included a serving Liberal Party member of the Victorian state parliament. I think there are some serious questions for Victorian Liberal Party and, indeed, Mr Dutton as to where his party lines up on these issues. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Faruqi, first supplementary? 14:21 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, last week was the fourth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre, where 51 Muslims were killed by an Australian white supremacist driven by an extreme right-wing Islamophobic ideology. This morning the fourth Islamophobia in Australia report was launched, and it shows hatred towards Muslims in Australia remains high, with women and children bearing the brunt of this on the front line. What will the government commit to today to obliterate Islamophobia in Australia? 14:22 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland As I said in my answer to the primary question, we have already made a commitment that backs up our position on the need to eliminate racial discrimination. As I've said, we have committed $7.5 million to the Australian Human Rights Commission to develop a national antiracism strategy to tackle racism and to promote racial equality in Australia, and we've commenced work on our election commitment to deliver a multicultural framework review. I notice that your primary question asked when the government intends to eliminate Harmony Day or words to that effect. I guess that might be a question you might also like to put to Mr Bandt, who in March last year hopped on Facebook to say: 'Fantastic to be at Carlton Harmony Day at Carlton Primary School with Ellen Sandell today, celebrating just what makes Melbourne so brilliant.' So maybe we've all got a little bit to think about on this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Once again, the Greens like to tell people what to do but are not so good at doing it themselves. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Faruqi, second supplementary? 14:23 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, the climate crisis is a racial justice issue. Those who contributed least to the crisis—black and brown people in the global south—are experiencing and will experience the worst of it. The IPCC report today makes clear that a liveable future means no new fossil fuels. Will the government finally listen to science and rule out new coal and gas? 14:24 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland I think we're jumping portfolios here, but I do agree that it is people living in the developing world who are most at risk of the effects of climate change. That is self-evident. It is an important reminder why all of us in this chamber should get behind initiatives to do something serious about climate change. I've got an idea: it's called the safeguard mechanism. Perhaps that might be the kind of thing the Greens might back in as a means of trying to reduce emissions and reduce the impacts of climate change, whether they be here or in developing countries. This fortnight this parliament, this chamber, is going to have the opportunity to actually do something about tackling climate change, not just performing, not just doing stunts, not just doing memes for social media but actually doing something concrete to tackle the impact of climate change in developing countries. So, Senator Faruqi, I look forward to your support when it comes to a vote for that, to have an opportunity to actually do something real. (Time expired) National Reconstruction Fund 23 14:25 Senator STERLE e68 Western Australia While the minister is on a roll, my question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Watt. The Albanese government's National Reconstruction Fund promises to be a landmark policy that will transform Australian industry and revitalise our manufacturing sector. How will the NRF benefit Australian agriculture, Minister? 14:25 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Thank you, Senator Sterle, who is known throughout this chamber and throughout this parliament as a strong supporter of Australian agriculture, including as the fabulous chair of the RRAT committee, where he does a terrific job. Senator WATT 245759 It is good to see he is not lacking in confidence in that respect! The Albanese Labor government wants Australia to be a country that makes things again. What a revolutionary idea that is, to be a country that makes things again, after 10 years of our manufacturing industry being run down by a Liberal and National Party government that literally dared our car industry to leave this country. We want a country that supports Australian manufacturing and the development of our sovereign capabilities. We don't ever want to be in the same situation that Australia was in through COVID, where all of a sudden we didn't have the capacity to make ventilators, to make PPE, to make all the other things—the RAT tests—that we were caught short on and that is why we need to be able to stand on our own two feet and have greater sovereign capability, and that is exactly what the Albanese government's National Reconstruction Fund is all about. The National Reconstruction Fund is about transforming the Australian economy. It is a $15 billion investment in securing our future prosperity, adding value to our natural resources and bolstering critical supply chains. The National Reconstruction Fund will provide finance to drive investments in seven priority areas of the Australian economy and, pleasingly, one of those areas is via a $500 million sub fund for value adding in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and fibre. This fund will unlock potential and value add to raw materials in sectors like food processing, textiles, clothing and footwear manufacturing. Importantly, it will also invest in agricultural supply chain products such as fertiliser, which would help drive down input costs for farmers right around the country. I can tell you, over the last few weeks, I have been meeting with a lot of farmers' organisations, telling them about the National Reconstruction Fund and how it can help with fertiliser costs and everything else, and they think this is something we should all get behind. (Time expired) The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Sterle, a first supplementary question? 14:27 Senator STERLE e68 Western Australia The National Reconstruction Fund will invest at least $500 million in value adding in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors. We know that these sectors generate economic activity and jobs in regional Australia, so how will the National Reconstruction Fund support businesses and create manufacturing jobs in regional Australia? Honourable senators interjecting— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Before I call the minister I remind senators that interjections across the chamber are very disorderly. Minister, please continue. 14:28 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Thank you, President, and thank you, Senator Sterle. The National Reconstruction Fund is about creating jobs—secure jobs, well-paid jobs, blue collar jobs, jobs in our regions,—and a number of National Reconstruction Fund priority areas have a strong regional presence in sectors such as resources, agriculture, defence and renewables. In fact, one-third of manufacturing jobs are located outside our capital cities. That is exactly why we should get behind the National Reconstruction Fund and that is exactly why any party that claims to represent regional Australia should be backing in the National Reconstruction Fund as well. But don't take my word for it. Let's just take a look at some of the stakeholders who actually care about regional Australia have to say. The NFF president, Fiona Simpson, when this was announced, said: I am heartened by Mr Albanese's support for the NFF's call for a renaissance of regional manufacturing … Labor's announcement is a step in the right direction … Geelong Manufacturing Council—Senator Henderson, you might be interested in this—said: 'We strongly congratulate the government for a focus and emphasise on regional development in the National Reconstruction Fund consultation.' Get on board. Back our regions. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Sterle, a second supplementary? The PRESIDENT 112096 Order! Senator Henderson. Senator Ayres. 14:29 Senator STERLE e68 Western Australia President, I can't even hear myself. The PRESIDENT 112096 I've just reminded senators that interjections across the chamber are disorderly, and I expect you to cease. Senator Sterle, please continue. Senator STERLE e68 It is clear to me that it is vital that the National Reconstruction Fund bill passes this parliament, to support economic growth and secure jobs in our regions. Minister, is there any risk that these reforms won't be passed by parliament? 14:30 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Senator Sterle, I'm very sorry to inform you that there is some risk that these reforms won't pass the parliament. Unfortunately, not everyone is on board with backing our regions and with the Albanese government's plan to transform Australian manufacturing and back good blue-collar jobs. The opposition had the choice to say yes to Australian manufacturing, but they've chosen to say no. They've chosen to say no to new jobs, no to new investment, no to new opportunities, especially in our regions. Whatever the issue, they just say no. It's like being caught in some never-ending loop of Nancy Reagan saying, 'Just say no.' That's what the opposition do under the leadership of Peter Dutton, and they're doing it again when it comes to the National Reconstruction Fund. We've been clear from the start. This is a fund which will revitalise Australian manufacturing and develop Australia's industrial capability. It was never about investing in coal, gas or native forests, despite the Greens patting themselves on the back for getting a win they didn't actually get. This is about rebuilding manufacturing in Australia, this is about good blue-collar jobs and it's about time the opposition got behind it. (Time expired) Gambling Advertising 24 14:31 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Senator Murray Watt. Is the government aware that Australians are being exposed, on their social media feeds, to illegal advertisements from online casinos? 14:31 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Thank you, Senator Pocock. Obviously, you didn't get the memo that all the questions were supposed to go to Senator Farrell this week! But I'm happy to have an attempt at this. I have heard the media reporting about this issue this morning. I'll attempt to get some more information on this point for you during question time. But I do think that all Australians are concerned about the growing proliferation of gambling advertising on online platforms. There are of course particular concerns when it comes to the risk around those advertisements being accessed by children. As a parent myself I know I'm pretty disturbed about the amount of online advertising that goes on around gambling, which can clearly be accessed by children, if it is not in fact targeting children. Of course, there are additional concerns about the risk of online gambling advertisements to the adult population as well. This is something that needs closer exploration to make sure that our regulatory systems are adequate to the task, and this is something that I know Minister Rowland takes very seriously. She has already commenced work on a range of fronts when it comes to online advertising, particularly in relation to gambling, and that's something that our entire government supports because we do want to make sure that the regulatory settings that we have in place for online advertising are suitable. This is obviously a fast-evolving field. It's one of those areas where, the minute governments intervene and create a regulatory environment, new operators come on board and find loopholes, and it's something that we do always need to review. More generally, when it comes to gambling advertising, I can assure you that the Albanese government recognises the importance of gambling promotions being presented in a responsible manner. We also recognise that there is ongoing community concern about the harms associated with online gambling, including advertising material. I think that it is timely for parliament to consider what more should be done to address this issue, and, Senator Pocock, I look forward to working with you on that. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Pocock, first supplementary? 14:33 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory Thank you, Minister. Will the government commit to taking action to close these loopholes and ensure that the regulator, ACMA, does have the power to enforce them? 14:33 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland (—) (): Thanks again, Senator Pocock. As I say, the Albanese government does recognise there is ongoing community concern about harms associated with online gambling, and that's exactly why we have established an inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm. That inquiry is being conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs. If I'm not mistaken, that's being chaired by Peta Murphy, one of our outstanding members in the House of Representatives, and I've seen some of the media coverage that she has obtained in talking about this important issue. This committee is considering the effectiveness of current gambling advertising restrictions on limiting children's exposure to gambling products and services, including through social media, sponsorship or branding, among a range of other issues. Senator Pocock, you're asking what the government intends to do about it. I guess the first step is to consider the committee's recommendations when it releases its final report. I can assure you they will be properly considered. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Pocock, a second supplementary question? 14:35 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory Once the committee reports back and you make those changes, will you commit to ensuring that ACMA can actually enforce them? At the moment there are a variety of areas where ACMA has no jurisdiction. It seems to me that also needs to be updated. 14:35 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland It would obviously be premature for me or anyone from the government to comment on what we will do in response to that inquiry and its recommendations, but I acknowledge the issues that you've raised about the jurisdiction of ACMA. If that is something that the committee finds is something that needs some changes made, then, of course, we would do that. Senator Pocock, I'm not sure what engagement you've had with the inquiry up to this point, but you, like every member of the public, are entitled to make a submission to that inquiry. I would certainly encourage you to do so, if you haven't already. We do think this is a really important issue. We want to hear from a broad range of the Australian public about how we can best address it. As I say, should the inquiry recommend that we make the type of changes that you're talking about in relation to ACMA, then I'm sure that we would listen very closely to that. Income Tax 25 14:26 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. Minister, yesterday in question time, when asked if your government would scrap stage 3 tax cuts, you declared: 'Our policy on these tax cuts hasn't changed'. Can you clarify for the Senate what exactly your policy is? 14:36 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I'm very happy to. I've been saying this in this place for some time. I think Senator McKim asks me a question virtually every sitting week about stage 3 tax cuts. The fact is stage 3 tax cuts have been legislated by this chamber. They are in place. Stage 3 will commence in July next year. The policy we took to the election was that those tax cuts remain and our position has not changed. That is what I was saying yesterday. That continues to be our position. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone. That's the position we have had for some time. The position that Senator McKim raises with me on this issue is related to the budget pressures that we have and how we will meet those pressures—and they are real. We have inherited a trillion dollars of Liberal debt. The debt had doubled before the pandemic. We've got a lot of pressures coming our way. We had a lot of time bombs or little booby traps built into the budget that we inherited, and we are working through all those. So there is enormous pressure on the budget. That's the context in which I gave that answer yesterday. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator McKenzie, your first supplementary question? 14:38 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria Minister, given you've stated numerous times that your government policy hasn't changed in relation to the stage 3 tax cuts, can you guarantee it won't be subject to change in the future? 14:38 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory Our policy on the tax cuts has not changed. That is the position that we are in. We have made our position clear in relation to taxation changes around multinational tax reform, which were put in place in the October budget, and there is the modest change that we've announced in relation to superannuation. But the issue more broadly around how we manage the budget is real. I want people to understand that we inherited a budget in a complete— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister— Senator GALLAGHER ING I've answered the question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator McKenzie? Senator McKenzie 207825 Thank you, President. My point of order is on relevance. I asked if it wouldn't be subject to change in the future. The minister, in response to my first question, answered whether the policy had changed to the present. My question was about future changes to this particular policy area. The PRESID 112096 The minister has answered the first part of your question, and you've just reminded her of the second part. Senator GALLAGHER ING I did answer the question when I answered Senator McKenzie's supplementary. Our position on tax cuts hasn't changed. But we are in the position of having to repair a budget that was vandalised by those opposite for a decade. They are budget vandals that have left a $50 billion structural deficit despite them rorting and pork-barrelling all around the country. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator McKenzie, a second supplementary? 14:40 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria You know they're on the run when they just go on the attack and refuse to answer the question. My second supplementary: why won't your government demonstrate the same level of transparency it called for in opposition and actually rule out further changes to the stage 3 tax cuts? Honourable senators inte rjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 I'm going to wait for order before I call the minister. Order! 14:40 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory When I reflect on ways to describe the Morrison government, transparency is not one of those issues that springs to mind as one of those first ways that you would describe it. I think there are a lot of words, a lot of adjectives, you would use, but transparency is not one of them. We are 10 months— Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 I'm going to wait for order again. Senator GALLAGHER ING Transparency is not one of those words. We're 10 months into cleaning up— Senator McAllister 121628 What about integrity? Senator GALLAGHER ING No, integrity would not be another one. We could play word bingo, couldn't we! Senator Watt 245759 What about rorts? Senator GALLAGHER ING Rorts, tick! Government senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Order! Order on my right! The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Watt, I have a senator on her feet. Senator McKenzie 207825 A point of order on relevance: you called for a level of transparency in opposition, and I'm asking you why you won't demonstrate that level of transparency when in government. The PRESIDENT 112096 That was part of your question. You also referred to the previous government. I believe that the minister is being relevant. Senator McKenzie 207825 A point of order. The question doesn't refer to the previous government at all. The PRESIDENT 112096 You said 'as we did' which does refer to the previous government. Senator McKenzie 207825 They did. The PRESIDENT 112096 I believe the minister is being relevant. She has 21 seconds to go. Senator GALLAGHER ING The question was about transparency, and we are being transparent. We're being very transparent with the budget mess that we inherited from those budget vandals opposite: a $50 billion structural deficit every year, pork-barrelling all around the country, $1 trillion of Liberal debt and not enough to show for it. That's the transparency, and we are being honest with the Australian people about it. (Time expired) Defence Procurement: Submarines 27 14:42 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Defence. The AUKUS submarine deal appears to be creating division within government ranks. The Labor member for Fremantle is reported to have said: While I support the work of the government, I'm not completely convinced that nuclear-propelled submarines are the only or best answer to our strategic needs. The Labor member for Higgins, after questioning the decision to buy submarines in the Labor Party room, later issued a statement saying: I fully support the government's announced Aukus plan. Fully support, huh! This deal reportedly doesn't deliver a submarine to Australia for 10 years—I tell you, from where I'm standing, that's going to be on a good day. What's more, this government doesn't start building submarines in Australia for two decades. Can the minister explain to Australia how we can trust the government on this purchase when some of its own backbenchers do not? 14:43 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Lambie for her question. I will start my answer by saying we are a democracy in the Labor Party, and people can express a point of view. Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Order on my left! This is a question asked by Senator Lambie, and the disorder coming particularly from my left is making it impossible for me to hear the minister's answer. Senator FARRELL I0N We've got a history of democratic thought in the Labor Party, and people have always been free to express a point of view, but I think the important thing here is—the AUKUS announcement last week was obviously a great triumph for Prime Minister Albanese, but a great triumph for our country. There are lots of details about the AUKUS decision, and I'd encourage everybody to ask questions, even the opposition. I don't think we've had a single question in the last two days about AUKUS. We haven't had a single question. I give you credit, Senator Lambie, for focusing on the issue. Can I say, I've got complete faith— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Hughes! Thank you. Senator FARRELL I0N I know they're embarrassed that they haven't asked a question, and Senator Lambie has had the courage to ask the questions. Can I say this: the Labor Party is 100 per cent behind the Prime— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Lambie, first supplementary? 14:46 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania Australian manufacturing was destroyed by the last government. Senator Watt 245759 That's right! Senator LAMBIE 250026 Wait! During their government, we saw closures of manufacturing plants. They forced car manufacturers out, they slashed research and development, and they locked out apprentices out of work. Will the minister please explain how a deal that doesn't start building submarines for 20 years will help Australian manufacturing today? 14:46 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I agree with you, Senator Lambie. It was a disgrace, the way in which the former government forced Holden and then Toyota out of this country. This government is about building things in Australia again. I take your point that the 10 years of delay under the former government in announcing when these submarines would be built has, of course, pushed back the date of the construction of those submarines. But, can I say this: there are a whole lot of other aspects that you have to build before you get to building the submarines. I'd be happy to host you down in Osborne, South Australia, to see some of the construction— Senator Watt 245759 I prefer the Clare Valley! Senator FARRELL I0N Well, I'd like to go there too. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Lambie, a second supplementary? 14:48 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania I'll ask you to come to the state of Tasmania and I'll tell you why. In my state of Tasmania, we have apprentices learning their trade in TAFEs that are underfunded and under-resourced. This morning, I heard from a young electrical apprentice in Tasmania. He's being taught his trade on 1950s equipment with valves from the Soviet Union. When will this government make sure that our TAFEs have the equipment and resources required to adequately teach our kids to build submarines? 14:48 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I will happily come down to Tasmania, as I just did recently to look at some of your wonderful tourism. Senator Scarr 282997 They're called vineyards! Senator FARRELL I0N No, there's more than vineyards down there! I went to see mushroom production. I went to the wooden boats exhibition. We're about creating jobs in the areas that you've specifically mentioned, Senator Lambie. I'm pleased you're asking questions about manufacturing jobs, because I haven't had a single question from the coalition on this issue. We are all about creating jobs in Australia, particularly— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Lambie? Senator Lambie 250026 I just wanted to know when this government will be making sure that our TAFEs have the equipment and resources required to adequately teach our kids to build submarines. Is there a date or time line on that? That's all I'm looking for. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Lambie. I'll just remind the minister of the question that you asked. Senator FARRELL I0N We're doing this right now, Senator Lambie. We've revitalised the TAFE system in this country. (Time expired) Housing 28 14:50 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. Can the minister explain how the Housing Australia Future Fund will improve housing outcomes for Australians and make them affordable? 14:50 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Polley for the question and also acknowledge her long advocacy for housing and housing support for people who are doing it tough in Tasmania. The Albanese government wants every Australian to have the security of having a roof over their head, and we know that too many Australians are being hit by growing rents and that there are those struggling to buy a home. And, sadly, there are far too many Australians who are facing homelessness. Part of this situation was of course brought about by the decade of inaction and lack of leadership we had from those opposite when they were in power. But we were elected with a plan to clean up the mess that was left behind and deal with some of the country's housing challenges where we can. Fundamental to our plan is increasing the supply of new housing, and the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will be the largest boost to social and affordable housing in a decade. The homes that will be delivered through the fund over the first five years are one part of our ambitious housing agenda, which also includes broadening the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, the Housing Accord, the $1.6 billion per annum National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, the Interim National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, and a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan. We'll also implement the Help to Buy Scheme and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. Again, it is something that will come to this chamber as part of this fortnight, and we are hoping we can have the support of the whole chamber in making sure we are supporting the injection of resources and capacity into the social and affordable housing sector. It's important for women fleeing domestic violence. It's important for single women who are at risk of homelessness. It's important for veterans who are facing homelessness. I think this is a bill that we need to pass through the Senate, hopefully with the support of everybody. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Polley, a first supplementary question? 14:52 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania Thank you, Minister, for that answer. Can the minister provide an update on the support for the Housing Australia Future Fund demonstrated by those working on the front line with people experiencing housing stress? 14:52 S ING Australian Capital Territory enator GALLAGHER (—) (): I thank Senator Polley for the supplementary question. We know that too many people are paying the price for a former government that didn't believe that the Commonwealth had a role in addressing the housing needs of all Australians. However, in the Senate last week housing experts working at the coalface of Australia's housing challenges gave their view of the Housing Australia Future Fund. National Shelter called it 'the most critical housing legislation to be brought forward in the last 10 years'. The City Futures institute said it's a 'timely reassertion of national leadership on housing'. And PowerHousing described it as a 'transformative reform that will enable the housing needs of more Australians to be met'. There was near-unanimous support for the bills by representatives and stakeholders of this sector and acknowledgement that any delay in their passage would greatly impact those Australians who most need the housing it would provide. I urge those senators in this place who are considering their position on this bill to listen to the views of those who work in the sector about what needs to be done. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Polley, a second supplementary question? 14:53 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania We on this side of the chamber understand the urgency of this fund, but can the minister please explain why it is urgent for the Housing Australia Future Fund to be delivered? 14:54 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Polley for the second supplementary question. After no Commonwealth leadership for the last decade, we have taken substantial steps in the last 10 months since forming government to turn the tide. When asked whether the Senate should act more quickly to support our government's package, the Community Housing Industry Association declared that it was 'absolutely urgent'. The Housing Industry Association said, 'We have to put something in place right now,' and the Property Council said, 'The quicker all of these mechanisms are up and running the better.' Every day we hear from stakeholders about the need in the sector and the importance of the passage of these housing reforms to ensure that we are getting resources into the sector. Again, I urge those opposite, who say no to everything—they say no to wage rises; they say no to industrial relations reform; they said no to renewable energy; they said no to help with power bills; they say no to the safeguard mechanism; they say no to the NRF—not to say no to the Housing Australia Future Fund. (Time expired) Aged Care 29 14:55 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Farrell. Did Labor make an election promise to older Australians that every aged-care home would have a registered nurse on site 24-hours a day, seven days a week by 1 July 2023? 14:55 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Ruston for her question. There's a certain irony—that's the word I would use—in the coalition raising the issue of aged care when we saw such tragedy and— Senator Gallagher ING Remember that word 'neglect'? Senator FARRELL I0N that's the word—neglect by the former government in this area. The Albanese government intends to turn things around in the aged-care sector. Unfortunately, we can't wave a wand and solve all of the problems we inherited from the former government, but we're working on it. Of course, the first thing we're doing is putting nurses back into nursing homes. We're putting dignity and respect back in the centre of aged care—something that was not done by the previous government. Residential aged-care homes will be required to have a registered nurse on site and on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week from 1 July 2023 in line with the government's election commitment. It's in this way that neglected older Australians will get the respect that they didn't get, that they failed to get, under the previous government. Of course, the promise I've just referred to there was a recommendation of— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Ruston, first supplementary? 14:57 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Noting that this was a key election commitment—which you just have reaffirmed, Minister—yesterday the Minister for Aged Care conceded that the government-mandated requirements for nursing cannot be delivered. Is this a broken promise? 14:58 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Again I thank Senator Ruston for her question. Again I'm surprised that this is an area in which the opposition are asking questions, given the lack of action and the lack of respect for the aged-care sector in the former government. We committed to implementing a new 24/7 nursing standard in residential aged care in response to the aged-care royal commission. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Ruston? Senator Ruston 243273 On relevance, Madam President. I actually asked the minister about a comment that was made by the minister yesterday. In reflecting on his answer to my primary question, I just wonder whether the minister would like to correct that fact that he appears to have misled the chamber. The PRESIDENT 112096 You've raised a point of order. The minister was being relevant to the first part of your question. I remind him of the second part—thank you, Minister Farrell—which was in relation to comments that the aged-care minister made yesterday. Senator FARRELL I0N I can understand why the opposition is embarrassed that this government is taking action with respect to restoring some dignity— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Birmingham. Senator Birmingham H6X President, in your previous ruling, in response to Senator Ruston's point of order, you indicated the minister had been relevant to the first part of her question but directed him to the second part of her question. Instead, Senator Farrell has got to his feet and simply begun reflecting upon things that are completely irrelevant to the second part of Senator Ruston's question, which went to statements made by the Minister for Aged Care yesterday. I ask you to draw the minister not just to Senator Ruston's question but to comply with your ruling, President. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Birmingham. I'll remind Senator Farrell of the second part of the question, on which I directed him. Senator FARRELL I0N This is a very simple— The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Minister. The time for answering has expired. Senator Ruston, a second supplementary? 15:00 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Minister, hoping that you understand the workforce challenges that are particularly acute in rural, regional and remote Australia, will you guarantee that no more aged-care facilities will close as a result of the actions of your government? 15:01 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Ruston for the question. We're putting dignity and respect back into the centre of the aged-care system in Australia. As I said in response to your first question, we're putting nurses back into nursing homes. We want the neglect of the previous government to end and— Senator Ruston 243273 Again, a point of order on relevance: my question was very specific about a guarantee that the actions of the government— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Polley! Just a moment, Senator Ruston. Order on my right! Senator Ruston 243273 As I said, on relevance, my question was very specific in relation to a guarantee by the government that no nursing homes would close down as a result of the actions of this government. I don't believe the minister has gone anywhere near the question. Th 112096 You also talked about workforce challenges, and the minister is being relevant to the question. Minister Farrell, please continue. Senator FARRELL I0N False and misleading claims that aged-care homes will be forced to close are irresponsible and not based on any fact. They cause unnecessary alarm, and I'm disappointed in you, Senator Ruston. They cause unnecessary panic, stress and alarm. The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Ruston. Senator Ruston 243273 President, I'd just ask you if you might ask the minister if he reflects on the accuracy of his answers. The PRESIDENT 112096 That's not a point of order, Senator Ruston. Please continue, Senator Farrell. Senator FARRELL I0N I am happy to reflect on the accuracy of my answers, and I think they are accurate— (Time expired) Madam President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Farrell, is leave granted to table the speech that Senator Birmingham earlier sought to table? Senator FARRELL I0N Yes—that very fine speech. STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT 31 STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT Matters of Urgency 31 15:03 The PRESIDENT 112096 Senators, I want to make a statement in relation to a review I was asked to undertake yesterday. I was asked to review the Hansard of the debate from yesterday's first urgency motion. Having done so, I wanted to make two points about the mechanisms that support orderly and respectful debate in the Senate. First, I remind all senators that it is not in order to impute improper motives to other senators in relation to their reasons for presenting motions or bills to the Senate or in relation to their reasons for supporting or not supporting motions or bills. Having said that, I do not consider that senators are in breach of this rule if they are making the point that a proposal aligns with a particular political view. As President Ryan noted in a statement to the Senate on 14 November 2019, 'Consequences can be attributed to policy or views without ascribing a particular motivation to those with opposing views or priorities.' Odgers' Australian Senate Practice identifies the rationale for the rules of debate. They are designed to ensure that debate is conducted in the privileged forum of parliament without personally offensive language. We all have a role in upholding that standard. May I also remind colleagues to address their remarks to the chair and not directly to other senators. This practice acknowledges the role of the chair in maintaining order and is also intended to guard against any tendency to lapse into unparliamentary language. While the Senate is rightfully a place for robust debate, these rules provide the foundation for that debate to be conducted in a respectful manner. They are particularly important when we are dealing with complex and sensitive topics. I thank the Senate. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS 31 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS Answers To Questions 31 15:06 Senator 300134 New South Wales CADELL (—) (): I move: That the Senate take note of all answers by the government to coalition questions. It's another day, another question time, and here I am again. I was looking for something original to say in my take note, but same old story over and over again. We ask the questions and we get a history reel of what happened nine years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 30 years ago, but that's not what the people of Australia are after. They're after the vision, the hope, the optimistic view of what will happen in five years, in two years. How will their lives be better in one year? How will they meet their mortgage interest or their energy payments next month? But we don't get that here. We are a long way from getting that here. I noted Minister Farrell was talking about the 'years and years' ago of other policy when avoiding saying the number $275. That's what we are doing. We are avoiding talking about what we can do in this chamber, avoiding what this government will do to make lives better for the people of Australia. That's the scary bit because saying something isn't doing something. Saying we will put nurses into nursing homes isn't getting it done. Saying we will drop $275 on your energy bills isn't doing that. I like that, every time it comes up, we're reminded that we stood in the way or we didn't support the gas cap. This is like when your dog is attacking your cat and the answer of someone else is to shoot the dog and you're accused of not supporting the cat. It is a wrong thing to do. Your energy policy is wrong. To cap this thing is wrong. Not supporting something doesn't mean you're trying to get the outcome. It is a wrong policy and the wrong thing to do. That poor dog. There are people out there suffering 30, 50 or 60 per cent energy rises That's what is going on, and a gas cap is not helping them. They can say what it would have been, what it could have been. I wouldn't be here. I'd be having a lovely week off if I had the lotto numbers last week, but I didn't and I'm here. This is what we get every time from this. We get avoidance of what actually happened. We get avoidance of the policies. We get a history revision. It's almost like Minister Farrell is auditioning for a sequel, pitching to Hollywood AnInconvenient Truth 2: the Avoidance. We can't do that forever. The Australian people need more. We talk about wage growth and how it was a preset policy of the government for wage growth to be low, but it was wage growth. We noted that in December there was the highest real wage drop on record—not in 10 years, not in five years, not in a month. On record, the highest real wage growth was just in December. That is the difference between a government doing things and saying things. This is a government very good at saying things. It is not a government that is very good at doing things. That's where we can come together. There are very good people in this room. There are very good people in the other room. But we are stuck in the hype and hyperbole of the election promises and of beliefs and philosophies, and practical things aren't happening. We have seen that so many times when there are simple, practical steps that can make people's lives better. We could be talking about it, but we're not. We talk about the irony of what happened over the last three years, where we had COVID and there were failures in aged care. We can own that. It had never been put under such pressure as what we had. What we are looking for is a way forward. That is why we all came here. We didn't come here to hurl abuse across the chamber. It's a bit of fun. We have a bit of theatre for an hour, but it's not why we came here. We came here to try to improve the lots of people in our electorates, our regions, our states and our families, people we know and care about. That isn't done by not taking responsibility. So we always ask the questions. We never get the answers. The sad thing is the Australian people don't get the answers either. They don't get the answers to what this government is going to do so that they can pay their mortgages, with interest rates going up nine times since this government was elected. It's not all their fault. I'm not saying it's their fault. We don't have to apportion blame. We have to create hope, and we aren't doing that. We need to do things better. We aren't seeing how we're creating enough energy to put downward forces on energy prices. That is the thing we need to. That is the thing we should be doing. I look forward to this government realising that and doing more. 15:11 Senator GROGAN 296331 South Australia Senator Cadell, I agree with so much of what you said: there are often great people in here, and we really should be working together to get the kind of outcomes that the Australian people deserve. It's very sad that you're leaving the chamber, though. We have laid out a vision. We have laid out a vision for one year, five years and 10 years in many of those areas that were traversed throughout this question time. History is important because we look back on history to try not to do the things that didn't work again and to do more of the things that did work, to learn from that experience. We are faced with accusations that we've killed the housing sector. I have to tell you that you cannot kill the housing sector in 10 short months. It's actually not possible. It's just not possible. The kind of neglect that you have to have to end up where we are now started long before 10 months ago. So, Senator Cadell, I will just remind you that a lot of that history piece is about understanding what's moving forward. What we did see today was a definite theme across the chamber of just saying no. Those opposite said no to every issue that was brought up. They said no to wage increases as we've gone along. In fact, there was a deliberate policy to stagnate them. That was an admitted intent while those opposite were in government. They said no to action on climate change. In this chamber, they're not alone. There are those on our crossbench and in the Greens who have done the same. They have chosen not to take action to move this country forward to deal with one of the biggest global crises we've ever seen. To protect the future for our children and our society, we must make changes. But no is the answer from them. They've specifically said no to the safeguard mechanism. That is just bizarre. It is a structure that in 2015 they were fully behind. They put it in place in such a way that it achieved nothing and, in fact, could be held responsible for increasing emissions by letting people off the hook on their emissions, but it is the same theory that they spouted at that time but then failed to deliver on because they did not structure the mechanism sufficiently. What we've done is taken that, in a bipartisan way, and made it stronger—strengthened it so that it will actually achieve those outcomes, so that it will actually reduce emissions, and so that it will actually get us to our targets and help us save the future, effectively. We've heard a lot in this chamber in the last couple of hours about the IPCC report. And, yes, it is alarming. This is an alarming global crisis, and it is about time we did something about it. But no—that's the word we hear most: no, no, no and a bit more no. Those opposite said no to $230 average savings to household power bills. Those opposite said no to so many different measures over and over again, leaving us in the situation we're in now, where we do not have sufficient action. There is this constant rewriting of history and the sense that, in the nine-plus years that you were in government, you didn't actually contribute to any of the challenges that we are now facing. So, when you say that the questions through question time are not being answered by the Labor government, I can assure you they are. The problem is you don't like the answer, but that does not mean that the answer was not given. I will wrap up by saying that we must work together at some degree to get change to make this country better. There is a point where you have to put aside the rubbish and actually get on board with progressive change. 15:16 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia The motion before you, Deputy President, is to take note of the answers to questions by coalition senators, but what we've seen today is, sadly, a display of not answering questions that are put to those on the other side. Maybe those in the gallery aren't aware, but today is broadcast day. That little light up there means the Senate is being broadcast on radios right across the country and online. People tuning in and listening to question time today had the opportunity to hear some answers to questions that were asked by well-meaning coalition senators, and what we got were nonanswers, avoiding answering questions. There were questions about what the government will do, and the answers just reflected on what the previous government did. There were questions going to the heart of very serious issues across this country, like the cost of living. Promises were made before the election that people would see a reduction in their electricity bills. Throughout the election campaign we heard from the government 90-odd times that Australians would see their electricity bills reduce by $275 if this government were elected. The government have walked away from that; they have broken the promise on that commitment that they made. That's why you're hearing nonanswers on that side, because they don't want to admit the fact that they actually told the Australian people a big, fat lie, because they wouldn't actually be able to deliver on it. And they have done nothing to address the cost of living. One of the best ways they could address the cost of living is to reduce spending, but we have seen no measure whatsoever from this government to cut the expenditure of government. That is the sure-fire way of reducing inflation, the sure-fire way of addressing the cost-of-living issues for Australian households. Instead, all this government is doing is leaving it up to the RBA to increase interest rates, ultimately restricting the availability of cash to fund people's expenses. It's hitting people's mortgages. So it's the mortgagees of this country, not the government, that are making the big decisions. That's a real shame, because there are some very serious issues that the government are contending with. But they're actually walking away, rather than facing up to the issues that are before us. We heard a question today about what the government are going to do in relation to their promise that there would be registered nurse coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week in our aged-care homes. Senator Farrell was asked a very serious question as to whether, in the comments she made yesterday, the Minister for Aged Care was walking back the commitment that was made. Senator Farrell was asked whether or not he stood by that statement. Maybe the minister misspoke. Maybe the minister didn't quite get it right. But, instead of facing up to the scrutiny of that question, the minister avoided it completely. What we've seen on broadcast day for the Senate is a demonstration of how not to answer questions. This government is proving, quite effectively, to be very artful at breaking promises and dodging questions. The Australian people expect more and deserve more from this government. Those opposite are proving, time and again, to be quite adept at dodging questions and breaking promises, and it's having a real impact on Australian people. It's affecting them, because while you're doing that you're not facing up to things and putting in place measures that might actually help people. We've got a cost-of-living crisis in this country. In arrogantly coming in here and not answering the scrutiny of questions in this place, you're actually saying to the Australian people that all you're interested in is power; that you're only interested in being on that side of the chamber, not in taking your job seriously. Take your job seriously, Labor! 15:21 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia I kind of enjoyed Senator Cadell's contribution a little earlier, but I found it a bit confusing. I've had a cat and a dog before and I don't remember those sorts of issues being raised. I'm not sure whether we need to check on the welfare of Senator Cadell's dog or cat! But, anyway, they were interesting metaphors that he used. Senator Cadell also suggested in his contribution that if Senator Farrell were pitching a film to Hollywood it would be called 'The Avoidance'. I would reflect that if that is their view of Senator Farrell's contribution to question time then perhaps their questions will be pitched as a film called The Irony. The Audacity might be another good title, if we're going to be renaming these contributions as films. That last question on aged care—I mean, come on! The royal commission report into aged care, which came down under the previous government, was literally called Neglect. It does not get clearer than that. The failures in aged care under the previous government were blindingly obvious for all of us to see. I won't repeat some of the horrific details which came out of aged-care homes during that time, but I think everyone in this country could agree that the aged-care sector was in absolute crisis. That's why we came to the election with an ambitious plan to fix it. Frankly, it deserved nothing less. We, as Labor people, can't read a report called Neglect without seeking to respond to it with the utmost ambition. To have nurses in nursing homes 24/7 is a high ambition. Do you know what, Mr Acting Deputy President? We're 80 per cent of the way there. Nine per cent of services are close. We are hopeful that we will get all the way there, but it is likely there'll be exemptions for some, because workforce is a serious challenge. It's a challenge which didn't start 10 months ago. It's a challenge that started 10 years ago, under the previous government. We've been in government 10 months; they were in government for almost a decade. So the workforce challenges are serious and they won't be fixed overnight, but what we have done is to support a wage increase for aged-care workers. We not only supported it and backed it in but are paying for it. That's because this sector and the workers within it have not felt valued, and it's very hard to attract workers to a sector where they don't feel valued and where they're not paid appropriately for the work that they do. So that's part of fixing the workforce challenge. I don't make any apologies for having high ambitions in this space. Frankly, if you have anything short of high ambitions in aged care then, honestly! So, there you go, Senator Cadell: audacity or irony—you choose. And it wasn't just on aged care today; then we got to energy prices and climate change. They had 22 failed energy policies over the term of their government. If they were serious about taking action on energy prices, or about supporting investment in renewables and other forms of power which would help to alleviate pressure on electricity and energy prices, they would have pulled the show together and delivered an energy policy that could stick. We've had a decade of inaction and disunity on climate change and energy policy in this country, and we're staring down the barrel of more because they're not coming to the table on safeguards—and it seems that those guys over there aren't coming to the table on safeguards. If we want another decade of failed energy and climate policy then that's what to do. The audacity and irony of it! On wages more broadly: there could not be a clear indication of the difference in values between our government and the opposition than on wages. There is the sheer fact that low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic architecture, but we wanted to see wages increase. This speaks for itself; actually, it speaks volumes about the values of the modern-day Liberal Party and the values of the Labor movement. We came in and backed an increase to the minimum wage, and we supported increases for aged-care workers to get that sector back on track. Being a government of high ambition and strong and consistent values—being a government that gives a damn—is not something I will ever apologise for. The irony and the audacity of the questions today! 15:27 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales It's always the same from those opposite: it's all bluster and bluff. It's all looking backwards and pointing the finger, and not quite realising that they're in government. They're more interested in virtue-signalling than they are in actually delivering any plans to the Australian people and to those Australian families who are doing it so tough at the moment. What we've seen in the New South Wales state campaign today is just another example. The much-lauded electric bus that was developed in Western Sydney and which was going to take the Labor wannabe Premier, his team, the media and staff around Sydney to campaign has broken down. The bus that is supposed to have a 300-kilometre radius travelled 60 kays and then broke down. So if you want to talk about irony, a diesel bus had to come out and pick everybody up! We know about those opposite and their safeguard mechanism. I know that this is take note, and that we're here to take note of answers. Senator Farrell, I say this with much love and affection: there were the ums and the ahs, the bluff and the bluster. The prevarication was really quite something to behold! It was an Academy Award-winning performance in not answering questions. I think that some of your colleagues have taken it on, because I've listened to a couple of the speeches that your colleagues have made in response today—no wonder the galleries have emptied! I have never heard a bigger load of rot, with people saying nothing, addressing nothing and not putting forward an idea to the Australian public. All the Labor Party is capable of doing is putting forward broken promises, and the Australian electorate is starting to wake up to that. But the bus is just a great example of a broken-down opposition in the state of New South Wales as they approach their election this weekend. We had the broken-down electric bus that didn't go anywhere as a reflection of those opposite. It's also a reflection of the plans and policies they put forward before the election, which became the broken promises and the litany of lies that have been told to the electorate since then. We know that we went into this election with the Voldemort number of 275—the number that shall not speak its name if you're a member of the ALP. The Australian people were told 97 times that their power bills would come down by $275. We all know now that that was a furphy. We were told there would be no changes to superannuation—not modest changes, not tinkering around the edges—but no changes to superannuation. We were told that there'd be no changes to franking credits. They weren't going to make the mistake that Minister Bowen made in the 2019 election: 'If you don't like our policies, don't vote for us.' That was very sound advice, which the electorate took up. They learnt from that mistake, so they lied to the Australian people about franking credits. Now we're looking at a situation where you can't pay a dividend once capital raising has occurred. We have farmers absolutely petrified, because these 'modest changes' mean that family farms that have passed from generation to generation and that are part of self-managed super funds are under threat, because of this absolutely economically reckless and ridiculous tax on an unrealised asset. For those watching on the broadcast, that means something that's not sold. It's actually a paper profit. If you own land that you have worked hard on and invested in and saved for your family, and it somehow tips over $3 million on paper—it hasn't been sold and you don't have money in the bank; it's just on paper—you will have to sell it to pay the tax bill. That is the grab from those opposite, who hate retirees and hate farmers. They have their hearts set on destroying self-managed super funds, because they union mates make up the bulk of the big super funds. Of course, the biggest issue facing Australians is cost-of-living pressures. The energy promise was broken. There's no $275 reduction. In fact, from 1 July this year we will see a further 20 per cent increase on gas and electricity bills. We know there will be gas shortages, which will create further pressure. Whenever you do market interventions around price caps, you actually make it worse in the long run. That's what we've seen with this government. They have no plan. What they have is lots of absolutely unfounded and ridiculous rhetoric pointing back to the previous government. The word COVID never passes their lips. According to Senator Polley, we had calm economic waters, because COVID was calm! This is an insult to every Australian family, and your rhetoric isn't making one iota of difference to a family budget. Question agreed to. Racism 35 15:32 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management (Senator Watt) to questions without notice I asked today relating to racism. The government's response to my questions on racism and racial justice was woeful. We are not a post-racist utopia. The climate crisis is a racial justice issue. Those who contribute least to the crisis, black and brown people in the global south, are experiencing and will experience the worst of it, from the floods in Pakistan to the drought in the Horn of Africa and the water lapping at the door of our neighbours in the Pacific islands. They are living through untold suffering. Australia's insatiable appetite to dig up, burn and ship out fossil fuels is turbocharging climate change for the most vulnerable communities across the globe. The relentless pursuit of profit and power by wealthy colonial countries and multinational corporations has put the world on track for a global climate catastrophe. Yet, this injustice is completely neglected and denied in the climate change discourse in this country. Rather than stand up to coal and gas lobbies, Labor capitulates and will allow them to buy their way out of their climate obligations with unfettered, cheap and dodgy offsets. Today, the world's climate scientists gave us a terrifying final warning. The message from the IPCC, from the UN, from scientists and from other experts globally is clear: stop opening up new coal and gas. This is the only way to stop dangerous climate change. The IPCC report makes clear that a liveable future means no new fossil fuels. If we don't, we risk a global catastrophe that we cannot undo. The UN Secretary-General is telling us that our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere all at once. Yesterday, over 50 Australian environmental and climate organisations called on the federal government to listen to evidence from the world's scientists and end new coal and gas developments in Australia. It follows a similar open letter signed by over 100 Australian scientists and experts just a few weeks ago. New research by the Australia Institute tells us that pollution from the 116 new fossil fuel projects in the federal government's major projects list would add 4.8 billion tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere by 2030. Despite all this, Labor's plan for climate action—their safeguard mechanism—safeguards coal and gas profits, not the climate, not the people and not the planet. This is not climate action. This is mere greenwashing. Without ending new coal and gas, this is just smoke and mirrors. The public gave us a clear mandate at last year's election. They want us to take serious, effective action on climate change. In this progressive parliament, with the Greens, Labor has the numbers for a strong climate policy that delivers deep and rapid cuts to greenhouse emissions. We can change course right now. Scientists and future generations are begging us to do this. This is what climate justice, social justice and racial justice demands. Prime Minister Albanese must listen to the science and reject the fossil fuel industry's desperate attempts to keep its business model alive at the expense of people and the planet. Prime Minister Albanese: show some gumption, take some responsibility and end new coal and gas. Question agreed to. NOTICES 35 NOTICES Presentation 35 BUSINESS 37 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 37 15:36 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania by leave—I move: That leave of absence be granted to Senator Bilyk from 21 to 24 March 2023, for personal reasons. Question agreed to. Leave of Absence 37 15:36 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania by leave—I move: That leave of absence be granted to the following senators: (a) Senator Nampijinpa Price for 20 and 21 March 2023, for personal reasons; (b) Senator Hughes for 22 March 2023, on account of parliamentary business; and (c) Senator Ruston for 23 March 2023, on account of parliamentary business. Question agreed to. Rearrangement 37 15:37 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: That general business order of the day No. 35 (Improving Access to Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2023) be considered on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 at the time for private senators' bills. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 37 COMMITTEES Reporting Date 37 15:38 The PRESIDENT 112096 I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. BUSINESS 37 BUSINESS Days and Hours of Meeting 37 15:38 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland by leave—I move: (1) The hours of meeting shall be from 9.30 am to adjournment, and the routine of business shall be: (a) government business only; (b) at 1.30 pm, statements pursuant to standing order 57(4); (c) at 2 pm, questions; (d) motions to take note of answers; (e) at 3.30 pm, notices of motion; (f) postponement and rearrangement of business; (g) motions relating to the membership of committees, if any; (h) messages from the House of Representatives to be reported; (i) adjournment proposed and debated for no more than 30 minutes, with each senator speaking for not more than 5 minutes; and (j) adjournment. (2) If it is the final day for consideration of a motion or motions of disallowance, the routine of business be varied to require that the motion or motions be called on for debate at 3.30 pm, with each senator speaking for not more than 5 minutes each, and the questions necessary to determine the motion or motions put at 4 pm. (3) If a division is called for after 3.30 pm, other than in relation to a disallowance motion considered in accordance with paragraph (2), then the division shall be taken on the next day of sitting, at a time fixed by the Senate. 15:38 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland I move the following amendment to the motion: (1) Omit paragraphs (1) to (3), substitute: (1) The hours of meeting shall be from 9.30 am to adjournment, and the routine of business shall be: (a) government business only; (b) messages from the House of Representatives may be reported at any time; and (c) at 3.30 pm, adjournment without debate. (2) If it is the final day for consideration of a motion or motions of disallowance, the routine of business be varied to require that the motion or motions be called on for debate at 3 pm, with each senator speaking for not more than 5 minutes each, and the questions necessary to determine the motion or motions put at 3.30 pm. We see the need for meeting on Fridays to cover more of the bills that the government wants to push through the Senate. Fridays, in my opinion, should be for government business to deal with the bills. As it is now, the government is proposing to deal with the bills for four hours, but, with the amendment that's being circulated in my name, it would be seven hours—almost doubling the amount of time. That would cut back the need for guillotines and allow proper debate of bills that the government puts up. Instead of theatre, we would like to see debate completed on those bills. Whatever the will of the Senate is, I will abide by it, but I think it is prudent to remind the Senate that we are masters of the Senate and that it is up to the Senate to decide whether it will support my amendment or not. The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that the amendment moved by Senator Roberts be agreed to. A division having been called and the bells being rung— The PRE 112096 Lock the doors. Before I put the question on the amendment moved by Senator Roberts, I remind senators that when a division is called it requires more than one voice. On this occasion I am fairly certain that the second voice came from the Jacqui Lambie Network. Under standing order 100 you can't seek to vote for an amendment and then vote against the amendment, so at this point that amendment is not carried. I'm going to put the substantive motion. I am happy, Senator Roberts, to record your support for that amendment. That has now lapsed. I now put the question on the substantive motion, which is the hours motion moved by Senator Chisholm. It's an hours motion in relation to Friday the 24th. It has been circulated. The question is that that motion be agreed to. Question agreed to. DOCUMENTS 38 DOCUMENTS Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation 38 Order for the Production of Documents 38 15:46 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales I move: That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Industry and Science, by no later than 9 am on 23 March 2023, any documents reviewed by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) working group prepared by the submarine taskforce, including: (a) review of safeguards requirements for a nuclear-powered submarine program; (b) characterisation, classification and acceptance of risks in a nuclear environment; (c) a review of computational codes and models that ANSTO uses for safe and effective operation of Open Pool Australian Lightwater and other nuclear facilities; (d) review of options for management of operational wastes arising from a nuclear-powered submarine program; (e) advice on approaches to safety; and (f) any minutes of meetings or visits held between members of the ANSTO working group and the submarine taskforce. 15:46 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator CHISHOLM 39801 The government will be opposing this motion. Disclosure of material of the nature requested by Senator Shoebridge would be contrary to Australia's national interests, including because it may be prejudicial to the security or defence of the Commonwealth, and could prejudice international relations as well. The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that the motion moved by Senator Shoebridge be agreed to.  

The Senate divided. [15:48]
(The President—Senator Lines)

 14 AYES Allman-Payne, P. J. Babet, R. Cox, D. Faruqi, M. Hanson, P. L. Hanson-Young, S. C. McKim, N. J. (Teller) Pocock, B. Rice, J. E. Roberts, M. I. Shoebridge, D. Steele-John, J. A. Waters, L. J. Whish-Wilson, P. S. 32 NOES Askew, W. (Teller) Ayres, T. Bragg, A. J. Brown, C. L. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Colbeck, R. M. Davey, P. M. Duniam, J. R. Farrell, D. E. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. Henderson, S. M. Lambie, J. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. McLachlan, A. L. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Ruston, A. Sheldon, A. V. Smith, M. F. Sterle, G. Stewart, J. Tyrrell, T. M. Urquhart, A. E. Walsh, J. C. Watt, M. P. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 NOTICES 39 NOTICES Postponement 39 15:50 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania At the request of Senator Cash, I seek leave to postpone the consideration of general business notice of motion 183 to tomorrow, 22 March. Leave granted. DOCUMENTS 39 DOCUMENTS Treasury: Australian Securities and Investment Commission Investigation 39 Order for the Production of Documents 39 15:51 Senator BRAGG 256063 New South Wales I move: That the Senate— (a) notes the failure of the Minister representing the Treasurer to comply with order for the production of documents no. 160, relating to the report of an investigation conducted by the Treasury into allegations made about the conduct of an Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Deputy Chair, referred to in a letter from Treasury Secretary, Dr Steven Kennedy, to ASIC Chair, Mr Joseph Longo, on 1 February 2022; (b) notes that on 9 March 2023, the Minister made a claim of public interest immunity in relation to the report in its entirety; (c) acknowledges the public interest in personal information relating to confidential informants remaining confidential, but rejects the Minister's claim of public interest immunity over the remainder of the report; and (d) requires that there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Treasurer, by no later than 10 am on Thursday, 23 March 2023, the report referred to in paragraph (a), with appropriate redactions to protect the identities of confidential informants. 15:51 Sena 39801 Queensland tor CHISHOLM (—Assistant Minister for Education, Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Deputy Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (): I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator CHISHOLM 39801 The government will be opposing this motion. The government notes that the complaint, investigation and ruling all occurred under the previous government and were not disclosed. As the government has previously explained, it would be inappropriate for a report into a confidential workplace investigation to be tabled in the parliament. Even with redactions, there is a risk that the tabling of such a report would have implications for the privacy of the subject, complainant and witnesses and could act as a deterrent for further complaints. 15:52 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania I seek leave to make a one-minute statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator McKIM JKM The Greens will not be supporting this motion, but I want to make it clear that we do not accept the government's public interest immunity claim on the ground that the document contains legal advice. However, the governments claims in respect of the privacy of individuals, the integrity of investigations and undue prejudice have some merit. This is not necessarily the end of the matter. I intend to raise this issue at the next meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Economics to examine whether the committee might be able to assure itself of whether this document is confined to a workplace relations matter or whether, and if so how, it has any broader public policy ramifications. The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 181 standing in the name of Senator Bragg be agreed to.    

The Senate divided. [15:58]
(The President—Senator Lines)

 32 AYES Antic, A. Askew, W. (Teller) Babet, R. Bragg, A. J. Brockman, W. E. Cadell, R. Canavan, M. J. Chandler, C. Colbeck, R. M. Davey, P. M. Duniam, J. R. Fawcett, D. J. Henderson, S. M. Hughes, H. A. Hume, J. Lambie, J. Liddle, K. J. McDonald, S. E. McGrath, J. McKenzie, B. McLachlan, A. L. O'Sullivan, M. A. Paterson, J. W. Payne, M. A. Rennick, G. Reynolds, L. K. Roberts, M. I. Ruston, A. Scarr, P. M. Smith, D. A. Tyrrell, T. M. Van, D. A. 34 NOES Allman-Payne, P. J. Ayres, T. Brown, C. L. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Cox, D. Dodson, P. Farrell, D. E. Faruqi, M. Green, N. L. Hanson-Young, S. C. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. McKim, N. J. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Pocock, B. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Rice, J. E. Sheldon, A. V. Shoebridge, D. Smith, M. F. Steele-John, J. A. Sterle, G. Stewart, J. Thorpe, L. A. Urquhart, A. E. (Teller) Walsh, J. C. Waters, L. J. Watt, M. P. Whish-Wilson, P. S. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 Department of Education: Startup Year Program 41 Order for the Production of Documents 41 16:00 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria I move: That the Senate— (a) notes that: (i) on 29 September 2022, the Government announced the commencement of the Startup Year program consultation process, releasing a consultation paper, and called for submissions by 15 November 2022, (ii) during the consultation, the Government also conducted a survey in relation to the Startup Year program with current students and recent graduates, (iii) the Government has not made public all submissions it has received or details of the student survey, and (iv) following the introduction of the Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023, the bill is scheduled to be introduced into the Senate on 23 March 2023; and (b) orders that there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Education, by no later than 10 am on Thursday, 23 March 2023, the following information relating to the consultation on the Startup Year program: (i) a copy of each such submission made to the Government, and (ii) a copy of the details of the student survey, including all data collected and the analysis of such data. 16:00 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator Chisholm 39801 This is an unnecessary motion. The Department of Education is engaged in a process of clearing submissions from the consultation process and de-identifying student survey data for publication. This is a standard process to address privacy issues. The process is ongoing, and it's expected that it will be completed in the coming days. The minister's office has been responsive to the shadow minister's office on this bill, going so far as to prepare, at their request, a bespoke mark-up of the bill for their consideration and pointing to where public copies of certain submissions are already available. This motion will be opposed, as cleared submissions will be available in the next few days. The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 186, standing in the name of Senator Henderson, be agreed to.    

The Senate divided. [16:05]
(The President—Senator Lines)

 46 AYES Allman-Payne, P. J. Antic, A. Askew, W. Babet, R. Bragg, A. J. Brockman, W. E. Cadell, R. Canavan, M. J. Cash, M. C. Chandler, C. Colbeck, R. M. Cox, D. Davey, P. M. Duniam, J. R. Faruqi, M. Fawcett, D. J. Hanson, P. L. Hanson-Young, S. C. Henderson, S. M. Hughes, H. A. Hume, J. Lambie, J. Liddle, K. J. McDonald, S. E. McGrath, J. McKenzie, B. McKim, N. J. McLachlan, A. L. O'Sullivan, M. A. (Teller) Payne, M. A. Pocock, B. Pocock, D. W. Rennick, G. Reynolds, L. K. Rice, J. E. Roberts, M. I. Ruston, A. Scarr, P. M. Shoebridge, D. Smith, D. A. Steele-John, J. A. Thorpe, L. A. Tyrrell, T. M. Van, D. A. Waters, L. J. Whish-Wilson, P. S. 22 NOES Ayres, T. Brown, C. L. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Dodson, P. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Sheldon, A. V. Smith, M. F. Sterle, G. Stewart, J. Urquhart, A. E. (Teller) Walsh, J. C. Watt, M. P. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 Australian Carbon Credit Units 42 Order for the Production of Documents 42 16:09 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I move: That— (a) the Senate notes: (i) the failure of the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to comply with order for the production of documents no. 162, relating to Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), and (ii) the Minister failed to comply with the order despite the Senate rejecting the Minister's claim of public interest immunity in relation to the documents that he provided to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on 1 March 2023; (b) the Senate again rejects the Minister's claim of public interest immunity, provided to the Senate on 9 March 2023; (c) further consideration of the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 be postponed and made an order of the day for the next day of sitting after the documents and modelling relied on for the forecast usage of ACCUs over the decade to 2030 are laid on the table; and (d) the Senate further notes that the Government has indicated that it will use regulations to implement elements of its safeguard mechanism reforms, which will come before the Senate for scrutiny through the disallowance process. 16:09 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator CHISHOLM 39801 As the Senate will already be aware, these documents are both sensitive and cabinet-in-confidence, and, as such, cannot be released. 16:09 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania I ask that the question of paragraph (c) be put separately. The PRESIDENT 112096 The motion is listed as (a), (b), (c) and (d), and you've asked for (c) to be put separately. The question is that general business notice of motion No. 182, standing in the name of Senator Duniam, clauses (a), (b) and (d), be agreed to.    

The Senate divided. [16:11]
(The President—Senator Lines)

 46 AYES Allman-Payne, P. J. Antic, A. Askew, W. Babet, R. Bragg, A. J. Brockman, W. E. Cadell, R. Canavan, M. J. Cash, M. C. Chandler, C. Colbeck, R. M. Cox, D. Davey, P. M. Duniam, J. R. Faruqi, M. Fawcett, D. J. Hanson, P. L. Hanson-Young, S. C. Henderson, S. M. Hughes, H. A. Hume, J. Lambie, J. Liddle, K. J. McDonald, S. E. McGrath, J. McKenzie, B. McKim, N. J. McLachlan, A. L. O'Sullivan, M. A. (Teller) Payne, M. A. Pocock, B. Pocock, D. W. Rennick, G. Reynolds, L. K. Rice, J. E. Roberts, M. I. Ruston, A. Scarr, P. M. Shoebridge, D. Smith, D. A. Steele-John, J. A. Thorpe, L. A. Tyrrell, T. M. Van, D. A. Waters, L. J. Whish-Wilson, P. S. 22 NOES Ayres, T. Brown, C. L. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Dodson, P. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Sheldon, A. V. Smith, M. F. Sterle, G. Stewart, J. Urquhart, A. E. (Teller) Walsh, J. C. Watt, M. P. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 16:16 The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 182 standing in the name of Senator Duniam, clause (c) only, be agreed to.    

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

 31 AYES Antic, A. Askew, W. Babet, R. Bragg, A. J. Brockman, W. E. Cadell, R. Canavan, M. J. Cash, M. C. Chandler, C. Colbeck, R. M. Davey, P. M. Duniam, J. R. Fawcett, D. J. Hanson, P. L. Henderson, S. M. Hughes, H. A. Hume, J. Liddle, K. J. McDonald, S. E. McGrath, J. McKenzie, B. McLachlan, A. L. O'Sullivan, M. A. (Teller) Payne, M. A. Rennick, G. Reynolds, L. K. Roberts, M. I. Ruston, A. Scarr, P. M. Smith, D. A. Van, D. A. 37 NOES Allman-Payne, P. J. Ayres, T. Brown, C. L. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Cox, D. Dodson, P. Faruqi, M. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. Hanson-Young, S. C. Lambie, J. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McCarthy, M. McKim, N. J. O'Neill, D. M. Payman, F. Pocock, B. Pocock, D. W. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Rice, J. E. Sheldon, A. V. Shoebridge, D. Smith, M. F. Steele-John, J. A. Sterle, G. Stewart, J. Thorpe, L. A. Tyrrell, T. M. Urquhart, A. E. (Teller) Walsh, J. C. Waters, L. J. Watt, M. P. Whish-Wilson, P. S. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 SmartCard 44 Order for the Production of Documents 44 16:18 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria I move: That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Social Services, by no later than 5 pm on 11 April 2023: (a) each contract for the delivery of the SmartCard, including the contract with Indue Ltd (Contract Notice ID: 3945982); and (b) any documents showing the total cost of the SmartCard scheme since inception. Question agreed to. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 44 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 44 16:19 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x A letter has been received from Senator Thorpe: Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion: The continuing crisis of people dying in custody, in particular First Nations people, and the government's unwillingness to take urgent action and fully implement the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Is the proposal supported? There's only one person— Senator Th 280304 If anyone cares about deaths in custody, please stand up. We need four people. Come on, Babet. Help me out. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x There are not four people standing— More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips. 16:20 Senator THORPE 280304 Victoria First Nations deaths in custody are a national crisis. In 1991 we had a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, yet here we are, 32 years later, more than a generation later, and more and more of our people are dying in custody instead of there being an end to this crisis. When I first walked into this chamber, I carried this message stick, engraved with one line for each death in custody since the royal commission, which was supposed to put an end— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x Senator Thorpe, you know very well that we don't allow props to be used in the chamber. I would ask you— Senator THORPE 280304 I was allowed to bring it in when I walked in to be sworn in— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x That was when you walked in. Senator THORPE 280304 There were 441 deaths in custody when I walked into this place. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x Senator Thorpe, I ask you to be seated. Senator THORPE 280304 Now we've got over 500. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x Senator Thorpe, are you going to continue? Senator THORPE 280304 Yes. Can I continue? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x You can continue. Senator THORPE 280304 That stick, when I walked in here, had 441 deaths in custody on it. Now we have over 540 deaths in custody. At least back in 1991 this got public attention—but not now. Nobody wants to know about it, even though Labor's own father of reconciliation, Senator Dodson, has called the government out about its inaction. In the last three decades, we have seen government after government letting us down, clearly showing that they don't care. You didn't care, and now you don't care. Each and every one of those lives matter to us and to many people. Some of those people whose lives you threw away were not even sentenced or held for even minor offences, as was the case with Tanya Day, who was arrested because she put her feet on the train seat. She died because she put her feet on the train seat! A whitefella wouldn't be arrested for that. Labor and the coalition are in a race to the bottom to be tough on crime. However, we all know that social factors are first and foremost in determining crime rates. Most of the recommendations of the royal commission were about social factors to make sure that our people are not being left behind. Every government comes up with new buzzwords on how they are going to deal with black people in this country—'closing the gap'—and they introduce advisory body after advisory body, yet there are no changes on the ground. More of our people are being incarcerated, more people are dying in custody and more of our people are taking their lives. I talk to blackfellas in prisons, and they tell me about the hanging points. They tell me exactly where the hanging points are in the prison cells. The recommendation talks about the hanging points in these cells, and these young men are telling me where they are and how they tell each other how to hang themselves! You can't blame them; what does their future look like in this country? The system knows about these hanging points, but nothing is being done; it isn't a problem if another one of us dies. Worst of all are the privately operated prisons—those operated by the criminal Serco, which the government loves having on board and paying. Serco are the real criminals here; they're the ones hurting and killing our people. All this is allowed because there is still wide-ranging systemic racism in this country. It's in all institutions, but first and foremost in the police. Police violence against First Nations people is off the chart in this country. All your voices to parliament and all your closing the gap Garmin statements are all worth nothing, because you ain't saving our people's lives in this country. So do it! Get the 339 recommendations from the royal commission that this country paid for and implement them now. Black lives matter in this country! Stop killing us! (Time expired) 16:26 Senator LIDDLE 300644 South Australia The last project I worked on directly before being elected to the Senate was to put in place a custody notification service in South Australia for the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, ALRM. The custody notification service, CNS, provides round-the-clock support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people taken into custody by the police. The service required police to notify ALRM as soon as practicable after arrest that they had an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in custody. The benefits were to assist police in discharging their duty of care and in reducing risk for everyone. The service facilitated communication between the arrested person and ALRM, which provided an holistic wellbeing check and, basically, got advice and communication with police for those who were held with or without charge. It was a simple step in reducing preventable deaths in custody and related harm. One of the saddest stories I've heard was from the NT a few years ago, when a woman was taken into custody after police responded to a domestic and family violence report; a baby, left behind, died. The CNS discloses issues related to medication and/or mental health issues, or personal issues that might create risk for a person held in custody and/or others. It was funded by the coalition while in government, and the NIAA website advises that an evaluation to determine the effectiveness of CNS is underway to identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement. It has been that way since September 2022, and I very much look forward to finding out what the future of CNS is. I want to talk about the fastest-growing cohort of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody: it's women. Although Indigenous Australians make up 3.2 per cent of the general population, they make up around 32 per cent of all prisoners. The Australian Law Reform Commission suggests that the rate at which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are imprisoned is a reflection of the multiple and layered nature of disadvantage they face—they are the links between entrenched disadvantage, including social, cultural and economic forms, and increased rates of criminal justice contact. These are well established and must also be tackled. This is the reason why I argue so strongly for improving expectations, performance and accountability of service provision everywhere, because improving these outcomes will provide the foundations for people to build their own lives and their own futures. Where these fail to deliver as they should, the people who rely on them struggle. The Law Reform Commission provides evidence that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are frequent victims of crime, particularly interpersonal or violent crime. Female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners are likely to have been victims of crime themselves, particularly family violence and sexual abuse. When I was in Alice Springs recently, I went to visit the Alternative to Custody Life Skills Camp run by the Drug and Alcohol Services Australia organisation. There I met a number of women—young women, mothers—who were behind a high fence and wearing ankle bracelets, and who generously and confidently shared their stories, hopes and desires for building a better and different future on release. They explained how their decision to participate in the alternative to custody program enabled them to live in a 10-unit complex, learning cooking skills, literacy and numeracy and getting relevant support from counsellors. It's a six-month program, a community model to address behaviour, and it recognises cultural and individual needs and values. Women can self-refer or they can come directly from custody. The women shared that their greatest fear on leaving custody was finding housing that would support them to maintain a stable home from which to anchor and rebuild their lives and the lives of their families. They were also concerned about remaining safe and free from the of domestic and family violence. While addressing deaths in custody is important, it is equally important to focus on prevention. That means children going to school, the expectation of parents to send those children to school, teachers who are focused on high expectations for those children because they turn up to learn and opportunity for reward and training in a job when they finish learning, to ensure they are on a much more positive life trajectory. It's quite simply not complex and it's not too much to ask us. 16:31 Senator DODSON SR5 Western Australia Any death in custody should concern us all. It's clear that the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples dying in custody is a sad matter for families and reminds governments that things need to change. I was a commissioner of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which reported more than 30 years ago. More than 500 Aboriginal people have died in custody since that time. That is a statistic that I know unsettles us all. As the royal commission found after its exhaustive four years of inquiry, it's not that the death rates of Aboriginal people are higher than that of non-Aboriginal people in custody; it's the rate at which they are taken into custody that leaves Aboriginal people so grossly not only overrepresented in our prison populations but vulnerable to deaths in custody. What's the root cause of this dreadful statistic? There are simply too many Aboriginal people being locked up. Imprisonment should be the measure of last resort, as the royal commission said. The Productivity Commission reported last year that First Nations people are 13.5 times nor likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous Australians. First Nations people make up only 3.8 per cent of the Australian population but represent 32 per cent of the adult prison population. These figures are completely unacceptable. There have been dreadful examples of neglect and abuse in our state and territory criminal justice systems, in lock-ups and prisons and in custody more generally. It's long been my position that those who have responsibility for care and supervision of people in custody must be held to account. I was particularly disturbed by the findings earlier this year by the Victorian coroner, who inquired into the horrific death of the lady who died in spite of having sought help from custodial officers more than 30 times. I do note that the coroner found that, if all the recommendations of the royal commission had been implemented, her death would have likely been avoided. But I reject the premise of this matter of public importance—that the government of which I'm a part is unwilling to take action. We are serious about reducing the number of First Nations people going to jails. That's why in October's budget last year we committed $99 million to fund First Nations justice packages. Of that money, $81.5 million will be invested in up to 30 community-led justice reinvestment programs across the country. We've already identified two priority sites for early intervention: Alice Springs and Halls Creek. We want to build on the success of initiatives like in Bourke, New South Wales. There the Aboriginal community has worked with governments and service providers with great success to support local initiatives. That's what's going to have to happen across the country if we're going to meet the justice targets under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap for both adults and youth. Of course, this is not the only approach required if we are to make progress. In our federal system, many of the levers of change sit with states and territories. They are the ones with control of the police, the prisons and the health care that is provided within them. National leadership is critical. The previous government was intent on abdicating responsibility back to states and territories. This government will not shirk its duties. This government has reinstated the Standing Council of Attorneys-General and made Indigenous justice a standing agenda item. It's working with states and territories to develop a proposal to raise the minimum age for criminal responsibility. It's funding, for the first time, legal representation for families at coronial inquests. And it's advancing real-time reporting of deaths in custody to ensure better accountability across the country. We need to keep First Nations people out of jails and out of lock-ups. That's our goal, and we're determined to achieve it. 16:35 Senator COX 296215 Western Australia On behalf of the Australian Greens, I rise to speak in this MPI debate on deaths in custody. As a First Nations woman, I know all too well about the unacceptable rates of deaths in custody in Australia's history and also at present, particularly being from Western Australia, which has the highest number of First Nations deaths in custody. I want to acknowledge the families and the descendants from the town of Roebourne in Western Australia, my home state, which was the catalyst for the royal commission after the death of John Pat. We don't know exactly how many First Nations people have died in custody since the 1991 royal commission, because it just keeps happening. But we do know that more than 520 First Nations people have died in custody in the last 30 years. I want to take a moment to acknowledge those 520 families and communities that have lost loved ones, taken from them all too soon. My heartfelt thoughts are always with them as we continue to do this work. In itself an unnecessary and cruel lack of action has resulted in their loss. Unfortunately this is not a new issue either. I mentioned earlier the 1991 royal commission into deaths in custody, which produced a list of 339 recommendations, at least 36 per cent of which have not been fully implemented. We've got a report. What do we need to do now? Why aren't we doing it? It's absolutely shameful. The Greens have continually called for Medicare in prisons. Coroners have stated that this could help reduce deaths in custody. Our deaths while in custody are from health conditions which are in fact treatable, meaning that many deaths are entirely preventable if there is adequate, community controlled and culturally appropriate health care available in custody. Identifying presenting health issues and maintaining people's health whilst they are in prison is vitally important in playing a key role in preventing deaths in custody. I want to finish by speaking about my time as a police officer in the Western Australian Police. During this time I was responsible for transporting, caring for and processing people in custody. The continuum of this care is important to contextualise and understand the fundamental human rights frameworks based on the UN human rights principles for people in custody. These include: All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings. There shall be no discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. An example of this is the requirement for police officers to conduct cell checks every 20 minutes unless they get an alarm raised for whatever issue may be presented to them. A clear example of that is the case of Ms Dhu. Everyone has the right to be treated with humanity, dignity and respect, and this includes people who are in custody, regardless of time, place and circumstance. But, unfortunately, this is not the case for First Nations people. (Time expired) 16:39 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland I rise to speak briefly on this matter of public importance on deaths in custody. I thank the speakers who've contributed to this debate and I particularly acknowledge my colleague Senator Dodson. He asked me to speak on this important matter. I do so acknowledging his longstanding work in Aboriginal affairs, particularly as director of the Kimberley Land Council, and, of course, in relation to this important matter, as commissioner of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It's clear that there's been little to no change in some of the facts and figures that have been cited by those in this debate. This is a case of national shame and a case of national tragedy. On this side of the chamber, we are certainly not sitting on our hands, ignoring Senator Dodson and his calls for action or ignoring those in the community who want to see change. First Nations deaths in custody are a national shame and a major marker of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. They cause devastating, intergenerational trauma for families and community. I live in Far North Queensland, and it's fair to say that deaths in custody in our region have formed part of the identity of communities, and the tragedy of communities. I speak without naming the person in the death in custody in 2004 on Palm Island, which caused so much heartache and despair in that community. Our government is listening to communities about taking steps, something that the previous government failed to do. The government is absolutely committed to addressing the ongoing tragedy of First Nations deaths in custody. It is completely uncalled for and inappropriate for those opposite or anyone in this chamber to insinuate that this government is ignoring these recommendations or even the royal commission itself. As the royal commission has made clear, there are many reasons that Indigenous deaths in custody occur, but, of course, the main reason is that the rates of incarceration in the Indigenous community are so high. Too many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in particular, are being robbed of their futures by a system that has completely let them down. First Nations people are 13 times more likely to be imprisoned, making up to 30 per cent of the adult prison population but only two per cent of the Australian population. Certainly, we know that young Indigenous people make up a major proportion of people in juvenile detention. Our government is taking steps. That's why we've invested $81.5 million in 30 community led justice reinvestment initiatives across Australia. We're establishing an independent national justice reinvestment unit. This was a recommendation from the Australian Law Reform Commission, and we are putting it in place. This is the largest funding package in justice reinvestment ever committed by the Commonwealth. Justice reinvestment will involve a community led and holistic approach to keeping at-risk individuals out of the criminal justice system in the first place. It's such an important step to be taken. Justice reinvestment is something the former government failed to do, and we are righting that wrong by investing in this important strategy for First Nations people. These projects will address the underlying socioeconomic drivers that increase First Nations people's risk of contact with the criminal justice system, by working with local communities on local solutions. That really is key to achieving any type of reform or change in this policy area or space: working with local communities. We need to listen to what the solutions are on the ground, and we need to implement those solutions. That's why existing justice reinvestment programs have been proven to deliver record reduced incarceration, reduced crime and reduced recidivism. It is incredibly important that these programs are supported, and we seek that support from those across the chamber. 16:44 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland If we want real solutions to our country's problems, we must deal with facts. With deaths in custody, the data shows there is no crisis. The rate of deaths in custody has been steady for around 20 years, at around half it's early-nineties peak. These are indisputable data from the Australian Institute of Criminology, the government agency tasked especially with monitoring deaths in custody. Adjusted for population, non-Indigenous prisoners were twice as likely to die in prison than Indigenous prisoners. Yes, you heard that right. If you are not an Indigenous person, you are twice as likely to die in prison than an Indigenous prisoner. Due to the small numbers, deaths in police custody fluctuate from year to year. The data on Indigenous deaths in custody per Indigenous population has drastically reduced since the nineties and has remained steady at this low rate for nearly 20 years. The real crisis is male deaths in prison. On a population adjusted basis in the last reported year, men were 60 per cent more likely to die in prison than women. 16:45 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales The sickening regularity of deaths of First Nations people in custody is cause for national shame. It's indeed cause for international condemnation of our country, our government and this place. More than 540 First Nations people have died in custody since 1991. This is not an accident. First Nations deaths in custody are the product of a racist criminal justice system which overpolices First Nations communities, of systematic disadvantage, of courts that are more likely to send First Nations people to prison and of prisons that are unsafe in structural and systemic ways. And all these, as Senator Cox made clear, are the result of political decisions by parties in this place who won't stand up when powerful police associations demand more powers and more resources, and by those who are more interested in funding new prisons and new cells than programs to support communities or even in listening to communities in the first place. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was announced in 1987, more than 35 years ago, and it was in response to the shocking and awful deaths of First Nations people, including 16-year-old John Pat from WA, who died in a police cell in 1983. John Pat was brutally murdered by police, who beat him to death outside of a police station, and no-one has ever been found guilty of his murder. In fact, in the 234 years since the invasion of this land, not a single prison officer has been convicted for a black death in custody. This is why the common chant at First Nations rallies rings across this country and rings so true: 'They say accident. We say murder.' The royal commission made crucial recommendations to make prisons less dangerous, an obvious one being the removal of hanging points in cells—a simple matter to undertake, you would think, when we're seeing billions and billions of dollars spent on new and expanded prisons. But, 32 years later, there are thousands and thousands of prison cells in this country that still contain hanging points, where desperate people can and do hang themselves. So, when we're told by the former government or by this government that it's fixed, that the recommendations have been implemented, it's a downright lie, and it's a lie that is killing First Nations people. The lack of proper medical care in prisons is also a deadly assault. It's a deadly assault on First Nations inmates. Our supposedly universal healthcare system literally stops at the doors of a prison and often, therefore, fails to meet those who most urgently need help—like Douglas Shillingsworth, who died in a New South Wales prison following an ear infection. 'Mootijah' means 'the strong one', which was his name in Murrawarri language. He was killed by an ear infection, because of inadequate care. We need to urgently put Medicare into prisons, and we need that Medicare delivered by Aboriginal controlled health organisations so it delivers the culturally safe care that First Nations people need. (Time expired) Cost of Living 48 16:48 The ACTING DYU DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ) (): The Senate will now consider the matter of public importance proposed by Senator Hughes, namely: Despite Labor promising cheaper mortgages, power prices and higher wages throughout the campaign, interest rates, power prices and inflation have skyrocketed while real wages have fallen. 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 With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements which have been made by the whips. 16:48 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales The government made some very grand promises to the people of Australia before the election. They were promises that we on this side warned were either ineffective or not so simple to implement. But this Labor Party and the Prime Minister said, 'Let's throw caution to the wind turbines. We'll just legislate now and work out how it all works later. And, until then, we'll just blame everybody else.' Sadly, those empty promises worked—the electorate bought them—and got them into government, because these lofty goals, understandably, sounded wonderful. But once again we've seen the reality. Labor has no real plan, Labor has no detail—only ideology. And, when that ideology hits reality, we know what Labor does next. It comes for your hard-earned money. It uses your income to prop up its own failures. This government has had more than enough time now to either deliver or come clean to the Australian people on its election promises. They said, 'We'll bring down your mortgages.' But all Labor has managed to do is make a mess. To deal with inflationary pressures, we have seen nine consecutive interest rate rises, but, when the Treasurer and Prime Minister would rather write essays and go to music festivals than work in tandem with the Reserve Bank to bring down inflation, what else can you expect? As Australians with mortgages buckle under the pressure of a 10th consecutive interest rate rise, the Albanese government's only solution is to break promises and increase taxes. A person with a typical mortgage of $750,000 is now paying $1,700 more per month than they were when interest rates started rising in May. That's an extra $20,000 a year for the average Australian family. Interest paid on mortgages grew by 23 per cent during the December quarter. Families are therefore being forced to pull back on other spending, and household savings are plummeting. Many mortgage holders are starting to feel the pinch; they're struggling to find the money necessary to just make the repayments. What we're staring down the barrel of is an increased number of defaulted loans in the months ahead. Australians are being forced to tighten their belts on their budgetary spending, as household bills continue to skyrocket. Research has shown that nearly half of all Australians have cut back on purchasing things like take-out, while a third have resorted to buying less meat and seafood. So why is this government sending this country back to the Dark Ages? That could become a literal question this winter if energy prices and supply continue down the path they're on—blackouts for the east coast. Australians have been warned by AEMO that there'll be energy rationing and blackouts in the coming years, due to the early retirement of coal and gas generators, along with construction delays to Snowy 2.0 and the Kurri Kurri gas plant. When the coalition left office, there was no reliability gap. Labor's lost control of Australia's energy system. This government has harped on about how they're championing the cause of the elderly, but, under this government's watch, we've seen more deaths in aged care than during the first two years of the pandemic. More deaths in aged care since this government came to power than during the first two years of the pandemic—just let that sink in. They're hard numbers. They're not things you can fudge. They're not something you can yell and point your finger backwards about. These are hard figures. More people have died in aged care since you came to government than in the first two years of the pandemic. That is the hard, cold truth. The reality is though, as we head into this winter—and it's an absolutely appalling thought, with these blackouts that are being predicted, this energy shortage and this supply shortage—I sincerely hope it is not a very, very cold winter, because very cold winters, high energy prices and budgetary pressures on family incomes mean that people don't put the heater on. What does that mean for the elderly? It means there will be deaths. We know that there are dire consequences when elderly Australians do not provide heating for themselves in their home because they cannot afford to do so. That will be firmly and squarely on the shoulders of those opposite, due to their recklessness, the fact that they have no plan and, when they do attempt anything, it is market intervention that is going to make every single problem worse, as market interventions all too often do. 16:53 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I'm proud to be part of the Albanese Labor government. Why am I proud? Because we are addressing the mess that those people opposite created over nine very long years. It's all very well for us to have a fairytale contribution to this debate. Next it'll be goblins and witches that come out, and we're going to rewrite history once again. But the reality is that we were left with a trillion dollar debt. That's what those opposite left for the Australian people, not just the Labor government but the Australian people—a trillion dollar debt. We had a contribution just then about aged care. I'm gobsmacked—I really am—that anyone from that side of the chamber would come in here and question the Labor government's commitment to aged care after 10 months of being in government. What have we seen on that side? What we saw over nine long years was a failed government and five ministers who failed in aged care. They were so bad they had to call a royal commission into their own failings. What has Labor done since we came into office? We have focused on respect and proper care. We want to put nurses back into residential aged care. These are the things that we are doing and the things that we are addressing. There's no getting away from the fact that there is a cost-of-living crisis and people are doing it hard. If you were really sincere about addressing this crisis, then you would support the Housing Australia Future Fund. That's what you'd do on that side of the chamber, because the biggest cost-of-living crisis for the Australian community— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Order! Senator Polley, I remind you to put your remarks through the chair. Senator POLLEY e5x I wasn't talking to anyone. I was saying, 'Those on that side of the chamber,' but, if you think I did— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Senator Polley, you were using the word 'you' several times. Address your remarks through the chair. Senator POLLEY e5x I apologise, Acting Deputy President. The reality is that those opposite—those under Mr Dutton—will not agree to support the housing future fund which will provide the opportunity to get women and children off the street and into their own homes. It will get older women off the street—away from being forced into living on the street. It will also help women who are leaving domestic violence situations. You can't come in here and cry your fake tears when it suits you. These are real issues that are facing the Australian community. People cannot afford the rent. They cannot get affordable housing. Support the legislation that is coming before this chamber and then you will actually have a reason to come in here and make your contribution. But if you're not prepared to help resolve the issue, you can't just come in here and blame all world events on this government after 10 months. What we have done since we've come into government is to reduce the cost of medicine, put forward cheaper child care that will benefit 1.2 million— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Order! Senator Polley, resume your seat. Under standing order 197, interjections are disorderly. Senator Hughes, you've had your opportunity to make a contribution. Senator Polley will be heard in silence. Senator POLLEY e5x Thanks for that protection. I don't really need it, because, when they start interjecting, you know that the truth is hurting those on that side of the chamber. We will be introducing electricity bill relief as a key feature of the May federal budget. It will provide direct support for households and businesses that the opposition tried to block. Let's put this on the public record. They tried to block it. Unlike the previous government, we have invested in 180,000 fee-free TAFE places that are now available to tackle the skills shortages. From the contribution that was made in question time today, we know about the attributes that were displayed by those opposite when they were in government. They had a finance minister who didn't even know that the Prime Minister at the time had taken over his portfolio, and now they come in here and try to lecture us about the cost of living and what needs to be done for the economy! We know that there have been difficulties. We know that some of that can be attributed to the Iraq War and what's happening there in terms of energy prices— Senator Hughes 273828 Iraq? Senator POLLEY e5x but those on that side had nine years to come up with an energy policy. They had 26 of them but delivered not one. You can rewrite your fairytales as often as you like when you come into this chamber, but the Australian people saw right through you. They are reliant on the leadership of Anthony Albanese and the Labor government, who will do what is necessary to protect and to support those doing it tough in this country. (Time expired) The ACTING DE PUTY PRESIDENT 10000 I remind senators to address remarks through the chair and to address members of the other chamber by their correct titles. Senator McKim, you have the call. 16:59 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania I've got a memo for the Labor Party: people voted for change at the last election. People voted in a new government because they wanted it to be different from the former government. But what have we got? We've got more of the same from a Prime Minister who every day is looking more like 'Scott Morrison light'. Labor is pushing ahead— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Senator McKim, I've just reminded senators about using the correct titles for members in the other place. Senator McKIM JKM Just remind me: we can't use someone's full name anymore, Mr Acting Deputy President? Is that your ruling? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU You need to use either a title or the seat they represent. Senator McKIM JKM You can't use their full name? The ACTIN G DEPUTY PRESIDENT 10000 Not alone, no. That's never been the case. Senator McKIM JKM Well, memo to the Labor Party: people voted for change at the last election. What that means is that they wanted the government to be different to the former government. What they've got is a Prime Minister who more and more, every day, looks like a pale version of the former Prime Minister. They've got a Prime Minister who jets overseas to hand over $368 billion in a new submarine deal where he is, as former Prime Minister Keating said, the only one paying. Of course, it's Australian taxpayers who are actually paying. They've got a Labor Party that is pushing ahead with the $250 billion worth of tax cuts for the wealthy that were put on the table by the former Prime Minister, Mr Morrison. They've got a Labor Party that is pushing ahead with the safeguard mechanism, a policy of the former Liberal-National government designed to fail. All the while, interest rates are going up, in direct contravention of a promise made by the RBA, and real wages are going backwards at the fastest rate on record—faster than they were going backwards under the former government. How can the Labor Party look the people who voted for them in the eye and defend tax cuts for the wealthy and expenditure of $368 billion on nuclear submarines? They are ghastly, indefensible policies. They perpetuate social injustice and they will make it harder for everyday Australians to get by. Poverty doesn't have to exist in this country. It is a political choice that poverty exists in this country, and it is a choice that wasn't only made by the Liberal-National coalition, who I would expect to make that choice every time. It's now a choice being made by the Australian Labor Party, because they would prefer to give tax cuts to the wealthy than to end the prospect of someone starving on income support in this country. That's how far the Labor Party have fallen. 17:02 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia I thank Senator Hollie Hughes for bringing this very important matter before the Senate today. It's an opportunity for us to make a contribution as senators, and I stand today in solidarity with what Senator Hughes said in her contribution. We are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis—that's for sure. Every Australian is experiencing it. Obviously, it's affecting some far more than others, but it is a crisis. I don't think that is putting too strong a word on it. I don't tend to use alarmist language—I try to be as measured as I can be, though sometimes I have a little flourish here and there—but it is a crisis that Australians are facing. Cost of living is without doubt the No. 1 issue that Australians are facing. When the government were in opposition they repeatedly said that they were going to make the cost of living easier for Australians. Well, it's clear that the Albanese government have no plan at all to deal with this cost-of-living crisis or, indeed, inflation. Inflation is running out of control, and I don't think the government have brought forward a single policy that goes to addressing it. They've left it all up to the RBA. The RBA just put interest rates up, which of course impacts the amount of money people have in their household budgets, because their mortgage payments go up. The government are not doing anything to reduce inflation by putting downward pressure on government expenditure. They've said that wage growth should match inflation so that people don't go backwards. With no plan at all to place downward pressure on inflation and chase inflation with wage rises, inflation is only going to continue to rise. As I said, instead of working in tandem with the Reserve Bank to bring down inflation, the government is putting all its energy into breaking election promises and taxing Australians more. Someone who would know something about the impact that Australians are facing, particularly those on low to middle incomes, is the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army's general manager of policy and advocacy, Ms Jennifer Kirkaldy, said: What we have found is that the people who were already doing it tough are now experiencing extreme hardship. The people we work with, especially those reliant on government payments, are making impossible decisions between food and rent or essential medicines and school supplies for their children. The current situation is unsustainable. Immediate action is needed to relieve pressure on the most disadvantaged in our community. But everything that this government does, frankly, is only making matters worse. We are now up to the 10th consecutive interest rate rise. An Australian with a typical mortgage of $750,000 is paying $1,700 extra per month—that's, $20,000 per year. Late last year the government hurried in their new enterprise bargaining laws. It was just before Christmas. They claimed it was a Christmas present. Well, it was only a Christmas present for the union movement. It certainly wasn't a Christmas present for workers and for people struggling to pay that extra $20,000 a year on their mortgage. Just this last week we saw the Productivity Commission tell us in its five-year productivity inquiry report: … the new multi-enterprise arrangements pose some risks that could constrain productivity growth and hence the scope for enduring real wage rises over time. …   …   … Forcing unwilling employers or employees into multi-enterprise agreements in which they had no bargaining role may limit these shared productivity and other benefits. This may not just affect individual employers, but employees too may relinquish beneficial changes in working arrangements or higher wages. So the government are actually putting in place policies that are increasing hardship on families, just because they need to pay their masters within the union movement and just because they don't actually understand how to manage an economy and put downward pressure on inflation. What we're seeing is that this government is unwilling to make tough decisions. Instead, they just allow Australian households to bear all the burden. 17:07 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland President Ronald Reagan once said, 'The top nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."' The words 'I'm from Labor and I'm here to help with your cost of living' are even more terrifying. Labor lied and promised the world to get elected to government on less than a measly third of the votes. Instead of a Labor utopia with rainbows and unicorns, Australia is waking up nearly a year later with the mother of all hangovers. Inflation is roaring out of control. Mortgage payments have skyrocketed. Fuel is still $2 a litre—we've just grown to expect it. Electricity bills are positively shocking, driven higher by climate policies pushed by both major parties. We said it wouldn't be easy under Albanese. I don't think anyone thought it would get this bad this fast or be this arrogant this fast. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESID DYU Senator Roberts, remember you need to address members of the other chamber by their correct title. Senator ROBERTS 266524 One Nation advocates getting back to basics on energy, taxes, manufacturing, food production and value-added mining. We are the richest country in the world. Let's use the resources for the people. (Time expired) 17:08 Senator WHITE IWK Victoria The government understands that the rising cost of living is hitting a lot of Australians hard. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer know that it's not easy. The government knows that it isn't easy. I know that it isn't easy. The Australian people understand that we didn't create these challenges. Australians elected us to take responsibility for addressing these challenges, and we are. After 10 years of failed energy policies, 10 years of Liberal Party debt and 10 years of wages either being stagnate or going backwards, Australians had had enough. Now we are embarking on the long road of trying to right the ship after the Liberals-Nationals government trashed our country for the best part of a decade. We've heard a lot about electricity prices recently from the opposition. I want to talk about energy prices too, and put on the record what is really going on. Last year, the Albanese government legislated to cap wholesale energy prices on coal and gas. We did that, in large part, because we had to deal with a wasted decade of failed energy policies from the coalition, and we did it, in part, to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has put enormous pressure on global energy markets. We recalled the parliament before Christmas to deal with this situation. The government took it seriously and acted. We legislated the Energy Price Relief Plan and now, just three months later, we're already hearing from the Australian Energy Regulator that had we not acted when we did then energy prices would be 40 to 50 per cent more expensive than they are now. Without that government intervention, Australian families would have paid an extra $530 for energy; without that government intervention, Australian businesses would have paid an extra $1,243 per year for energy. That is what real action to address the cost of living is about—that is what it's about for Australians. But when given the chance to support cheaper power prices, the coalition said no. When asked if they would support Australian households and businesses by stabilising the energy market, the Liberal and National parties said no. The 'no-alition' voted against cheaper energy prices and voted against support for Australians feeling the sting of inflation. If the coalition had been in charge, Australians would now be paying hundreds of dollars more for electricity than they currently are. What makes it worse is that it was their 22 failed energy policies over a decade of inaction that put us in this mess. When we came to government, there was no plan from the coalition to deal with what was coming down the pipeline—no plan to deal with higher domestic wholesale energy prices and no plan to shore up and stabilise our domestic energy market, even though the war in Ukraine had been raging for months when they were in government. Now it's up to us to fix the mess, and that's what the Albanese government is doing. This is more than just stabilising power prices; we're taking action both to fix the budget and to provide Australians with targeted cost-of-living relief. Our budget focused on responsible cost-of-living relief that didn't put extra pressure on inflation—that's the most important thing. We're also doing things like cheaper child care; expanding paid parental leave; cheaper medicines; more affordable housing; and getting wages moving again. Getting wages moving, in particular, is important in the face of the inflation challenge. The 'secure jobs, better pay' bill that the government legislated last year is already doing that. Employers and employees are sitting back down at the bargaining table in good faith and reviewing their arrangements. Zombie agreements that were way out of date and unfair are gone. That's a very good thing, because there were many more out there than we first thought. We also gave the Fair Work Commission the ability to facilitate industry-wide and collective low-paid bargaining. This is for the lowest-paid workers in society, giving those who need the most help an opportunity to get a pay rise. It really is a bit rich for the coalition to raise what we're doing to address the cost of living and to respond to inflation. Their track record is one of saying no and distorting the truth about their 10 years in government. The Labor government is working every day to make Australia a more productive and fair place to live. We're working hard to solve problems and are being honest with Australians. Australians recognise that the Albanese government has a plan, in contrast with the coalition. That's why, when it comes to the coalition, as Taylor Swift would say, 'You've got to shake it off'. At the last election, Australians did just that. 17:13 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria As a member of generation Y, I often hear older generations reflecting on the late 1980s and home loan interest rates of 18 per cent. I have no doubt that those were very tough times, but following 10 consecutive interest rate rises, excessive money printing and government debt accumulation we now live in even tougher times. The reason is quite simple: short-sighted government intervention that only stimulates the demand side of the equation. It has resulted in households which are overburdened with debt. It's an unsustainable reality of modern society. Economics reporter Stephen Johnson recently wrote that a rich Australian, in the top 3.6 per cent of earners and bringing in $180,000 a year, is in more mortgage stress than an average income borrower who bought a typical home in 1989. I urge the Treasurer to acknowledge that the government's spending drives inflation and to put the brakes on now. We just can't take it anymore: stop spending money! (Time expired) 17:14 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Yesterday, in question time, I asked Minister Farrell if the Labor government would deliver the $275 power bill reduction they promised the Australian people no fewer than 97 times before the election. He didn't answer. I then asked if he would admit that the Labor government broke their election promise to make no changes to superannuation. We now know that one in 10 Australians will be impacted by their superannuation changes, far from the modest broken promise that Minister Gallagher keeps talking about. But again, of course, he had no answer. I then asked if the minister would admit that his government broke yet another election promise to lower the cost of PBS medicines after they removed a life-changing diabetes drug from the PBS. That is a fact. Of course, he had no answer for that either. It is very clear that with this Labor government, as with every other Labor government, you should never ever listen to what they say before the election and to the promises they make on what they will do and what they won't do. There is nothing more certain—and this government has asserted that truism—than that they will say one thing before the election and do another thing afterwards. In fact, the very same Minister Farrell in estimates in response to questions about the NDIS admitted, on behalf of Minister Shorten, that they said one thing before the election and, suddenly, new facts were revealed that made them change their position and break promises—in this case, that there would be no cuts to the NDIS. So they say one thing and do another thing. Let's have a look at the facts and how they say one thing and do another. They break promises without shame. The promise to lower electricity prices has been broken. The promise of cheaper mortgages has been broken. The promise of no changes to super has been broken. The promise to lower inflation has been broken. The promise that they were not touching franking credits—guess what?—has been broken. They promised that industry-wide bargaining was not part of their policy. We know that that was broken, too. The list goes on and on. The promise that they would be doing their bit to assist real wage increases was broken. The promise not to raise taxes was broken. The promise to cut the cost of consultants and contractors was broken. Western Australians, who I represent in this place, are seriously struggling already in less than a year under the Labor Party and this Labor government. Everything is going up except their wages. There is no relief in sight. Listening to those opposite in this chamber again this week, they have been blaming everybody else, saying, 'We didn't know the state of the economy.' Let me tell you that the fact is that we left the Labor government, if not the best, one of the best and strongest post-COVID economies in the OECD and, in fact, in the world. That is a fact. Now a procession of Labor Party members, senators and ministers are saying: 'We didn't realise that we'd actually have to govern, that we'd actually have to make decisions to deliver the promises that we made Australians. It's somebody else's fault. We didn't actually read the budget papers for the last year or the year before or the year before that. We didn't actually read any of the documents to understand the state of the economy.' They supported at the time the decisions we made to save Australians' health and the economy during COVID. You supported all those at the time and now you are saying, 'Oh— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Order! Senator Reynolds, please refer— Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Those opposite are saying, 'We didn't really realise that that meant we'd have to make some hard decisions and we'd have do some tough things to deliver on our promises.' Instead, they are just breaking promise after promise. The impact is severe for people in Western Australia. Western Australians have experienced the biggest jump in their grocery bills. It's been by more than a third since those opposite came into government. It's been by more than a third in less than 12 months. Increases in grocery prices add up to an additional just under $2,000 per year per household for Western Australians. It is money they cannot afford. With nine consecutive interest rate rises, Western Australians— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU The time for the discussion has expired. DOCUMENTS 54 DOCUMENTS Department of the Treasury 54 17:19 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland I move: That the Senate take note of the document. I rise to take note of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Black Economy Taskforce Measures No. 1) Act 2018 statutory review of the operation of schedule 1 to the act, dated December 2022. This legislation dealt with what is referred to as sales suppression technology when it was first introduced into the Senate. What is sales suppression technology? Sales suppression technology is technology that is used and marketed to be used at point of sale in retail businesses to essentially change the records of sale. Why do you do that? You do that in order to bring down the records of your revenues in terms of your sales information in order to avoid paying tax—simple. This sort of technology is being deployed all across the world. In the United States it's referred to as Zappers, and it's also applied in Canada, Scandinavia and across the whole of the OECD. In 2019 this place, before I came to the Senate, adopted some laws which came out of the Black Economy Taskforce report undertaken by Mr Michael Andrew AO into the black economy in Australia, and we should note the size of the black economy in Australia is substantial. It was estimated—and this was back in 2012, at the time of the report—to be worth at least $25 billion, or 1.5 per cent of GDP. So this is a material issue in terms of the raising of tax revenue for the Australian people, but it's also a material issue in relation to all those small businesses, especially small businesses who are out there doing the right thing, who aren't using this sort of technology, who meet their obligations under industrial relations laws and workplace health and safety laws and incur the costs involved in meeting those laws and discharging those obligations and who are materially disadvantaged when their competitors adopt schemes and scams—ways in which to avoid their lawful obligations. It is interesting to read this report and the impact that the legislation, the penalties that were adopted, has had in relation to the promotion and use of this sophisticated technology. What have we learned from the report that has been provided by the ATO and by Treasury? There are a number of interesting observations in this regard. There have actually been a total of 31 cases with prosecutions and penalties levied against Australians in relation to: possession, with 10 cases; use, with eight cases; aiding and abetting possession, with six cases; and aiding and abetting use, with seven cases. That's a total of 31 cases where this sort of electronic, or what's referred to as ESST, technology has been utilised and discovered and where enforcement action has been undertaken. I'd like to take this opportunity to commend everyone in the ATO who's been involved in these compliance activities. It's estimated that the total amount of revenue that's been recovered or preserved as a result of this activity undertaken by the ATO is over $7 million, so we're actually talking about quite a significant amount of revenue. Another observation that can be made is that, following the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in the digital economy, this sort of technology is becoming more and more prevalent, so those who are marketing this sort of technology are actually pitching it to businesses as they enter into the digital economy. This is becoming a more prevalent issue, and the technology is becoming far more advanced, which means that the ATO needs to be appropriately resourced with the capability to uncover this sort of conduct. The first thing, of course, that occurs when the initial discovery is made is that the perpetrators try and destroy the audit trail and make it extremely difficult for investigators to actually build a case. The other thing I should note—and apparently this was raised in this debate; I'm not sure if it was raised by any of my colleagues who are here in the chamber—are the legitimate questions and concerns about penalties being applied for accidental possession or use of ESST software. Maybe you have a software system which has been uploaded to your system, you really didn't know what it was and you weren't using it, and you've been discovered to be using this sort of software. The ATO has found that it has not received any complaints about penalties being applied, despite accidental possession or use of ESST software. So I'd just like to take the opportunity to commend everyone at the ATO and Treasury on this important reform, where the law is working as it should. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted. COMMITTEES 55 COMMITTEES Legislation Committees, Intelligence and Security Joint Committee, Public Works Joint Committee, Treaties Joint Committee 55 Report 55 17:25 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia Pursuant to order and at the request of the chairs of the respective committees, I present reports from committees in respect of the examination of annual reports tabled by 31 October 2022. On behalf of the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present its Advisory report on the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Modernisation) Bill 2022. On behalf of the Chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present the committee's Eighty sixthannual report. And, finally, on behalf of the chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee's Report 207,Australia-Iceland Double Taxation; Underwater Cultural Heritage. 17:26 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland by leave—in relation to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report Annual reports (No. 1 of 2023), I move: That the Senate take note of the report. In doing so I would first like to commend the secretariat of that committee in relation to the preparation of that report and, of course, the usual collegiate way in which members of that committee conducted themselves under the chairmanship of Senator Nita Green. The particular point I would like to make about this report is on the performance of the Attorney-General's Department. Colleagues in the chamber will quickly realise the reason why I'm making these observations. If one turns to paragraphs 2.6 to, approximately, 2.12 it can be seen that the Attorney-General's Department, under its rigourous reporting standards, actually—and I'll quote from paragraph 2.11 of the report: Of its 29 performance targets, 73 per cent were achieved (21 targets) and ten per cent were partly achieved (three targets). AGD reported that 17 per cent of its targets were not achieved (five targets). This is a lower rate of achievement than reported during the previous reporting period. During the previous reporting period, 87 per cent of targets were achieved, 11 per cent were partly achieved, and one target was not achieved.25 AGD explained that the lower rate of achievement is due to the reduction in the number of targets under its performance measures and the rigorous system of assessment it applies to the analysis of each performance measure. In the first place, I would like to make the observation that I think it's incredibly important that our government departments, whether or not it's the Attorney-General's Department—whichever department—adopt performance measures which are appropriate, fit for purpose, are set at a reasonably high level and, importantly, are assessed rigorously for performance. That's the first point that I want to make. The second point is that there are a number of explanations given with respect to targets which were not satisfied. As I said, of its 29 performance targets, 73 per cent were achieved, at 21 targets; 10 per cent were partly achieved, at three targets; and 17 per cent of targets were not achieved. One of these targets is target 1.5.2: Satisfaction of government lawyers with initiatives provided by the Australian Government Legal Service (AGLS) greater than 80 per cent. That's the stated key performance indicator benchmark. It goes on: Results from the department's stakeholder survey indicated that 66 per cent of respondents were 'somewhat' or 'very satisfied' with the AGLS and its initiatives, compared to 32 per cent of respondents in 2020-21. That is quite a reasonable uplift, from 32 per cent to 66 per cent, and it is a pleasing result. What confuses me is that, in that context, when I look at those results in the Attorney-General's own department and then I look at the results in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal annual report, which is referred to in this report, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the AAT, actually performs better on some of the relevant, analogous key performance indicators than the Attorney-General's Department. The AAT actually performs better, and let me give you an example. In terms of the AAT user experience rating, the result was 74 per cent against a benchmark of 70 per cent. So 74 per cent of users, who include practitioners and individuals whose case was coming before the AAT—a 74 per cent approval rating against the benchmark of 70 per cent. Then I compare it. I go back to the quote I gave in relation to perceptions of the performance of the Australian Government Legal Service, and the benchmark was greater than 80 per cent. So it's a more aggressive benchmark for that stakeholder user experience rating than the AAT had—80 per cent versus 70 per cent—but the result was only 66 per cent. They failed to meet that benchmark by an amount of 14 per cent. They're going in the right direction. I'm not critical of the Attorney-General's Department. What I'm critical of is a government which, notwithstanding the performance of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal based on key objective data, key performance indicators, which indicate that the AAT is actually performing—in the face of that key objective evidence that the AAT is actually performing—is hell-bent on a course of abolishing the AAT. If the Attorney-General applied the same rigour to his own department, he'd abolish his department because the satisfaction with his department is less amongst government lawyers than the satisfaction of lawyers with the AAT and of users of the AAT. If he applied the same logic to his own department, he'd look at abolishing his department first before looking to abolish the AAT. In my view, it demonstrates that the motivations in relation to the abolition of the AAT are political. They're not based on objective evidence. It's political. In the course of estimates, when I asked the minister at the table what objective evidence the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, had obtained with respect to the performance of the AAT which was contrary to the objective evidence contained in the annual report of the AAT, I was told the Attorney-General is in contact with his community; he gets feedback across the community. It was general waffle. Absolutely no objective evidence whatsoever was provided. So, Attorney—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan—if you think the AAT should be abolished when it is actually meeting its performance metrics in relation to stakeholder perceptions of its performance, what about your own department? What do you say about your own department? Let's go on in terms of the AAT performance in its annual report, which is referred to in this report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. To me, this is a key benchmark: the proportion of appeals against Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions allowed by the courts. The benchmark of the AAT—the KPI it set—was less than five per cent. So less than five per cent of appeals to the Federal Court should be successful. That's a reasonable benchmark—fewer than one in 20. What result did the AAT achieve? Fewer than one in 50 were successfully appealed against in the Federal Court. It's an outstanding result. If you look at the data over time, the results have actually been improving. The Attorney-General is going down the course of abolishing the AAT. He's made extraordinarily prejudicial comments about many members of the AAT. One cannot accept the proposition that the Attorney should be in any way involved in assessing the performance of those members over which he has cast a general slur. He shouldn't be involved in assessing their performance at all, and he should absolutely recuse himself from the process of considering those members. One is left to ponder how it is that, on the one hand, we have an agency in the same portfolio, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which is exceeding, at 74 per cent, its target regarding user satisfaction, and, on the other hand, we have, within the same department, the Australian Government Legal Service, which is not meeting its target—in fact, it's 14 per cent under its target. So, Attorney, why are you picking on the AAT? It's become a monomaniacal obsession of the Attorney. It's like Captain Ahab with Moby-Dick the whale—it's become his monomaniacal obsession—and it is not based on any objective evidence. I agree with the Attorney when he says the AAT is absolutely crucial as an institution to protect the rights of Australian citizens—I absolutely agree with the Attorney—but if you are going to embark on a great reform such as this, where you're actually abolishing this body at the cost of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, base it on objective evidence. This report from the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee demonstrates that the Attorney-General's policy in this regard is not based on objective evidence and he should reconsider. Question agreed to. Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee 56 Government Response to Report 56 17:36 Se ING Australian Capital Territory nator GALLAGHER (—) (): I present the government's response to the report of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee on its inquiry into the provisions of the Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 and a related bill. I seek leave to incorporate the document in Hansard and to move a motion in relation to the document. Leave granted. Australian Government response to the    Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee report: Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 [Provisions] and Data Availability and Transparency (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020 [Provisions] April 2021 MARCH 2023 Introduction The Australian Government welcomes the opportunity to provide a response to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee (committee) report, Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 [Provisions] and Data Availability and Transparency (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020 [Provisions], tabled on 29 April 2021. The Government acknowledges the work and recommendations by members of the Committee. The Government would also like to thank those who made submissions or gave evidence to the inquiry for their contribution, which shaped the report and recommendations. The Committee looked into the provisions of the Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 (the Bill) and the provisions of the Data Availability and Transparency (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020 (the Consequential Amendments Bill) after referral by the Senate on 4 February 2021. Recommendations Recommendation 1: The committee recommends that assurances are provided to Parliament regarding appropriate ongoing oversight by security agencies of data sharing agreements and potential securi ty risks. Response: The Government supports this recommendation. An amendment was moved in the other chamber to ensure that data sharing agreements take effect only once registered by the National Data Commissioner (the Commissioner), rather than upon parties' signature. This change mitigates potential risks by supporting the Commissioner to work with relevant security agencies to identify agreements which may pose security risks, or not comply with the data sharing scheme, prior to any data being shared. In addition, amendments were moved to ensure that foreign entities are not able to become accredited, which means that data cannot be shared with a foreign entity under the scheme. Recommendation 2: The committee recommends that any relevant findings of th e Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry into national security risks affecting the Australian higher education and research sector are taken into account as part of the development of any additional data codes and guidance mate rial and inform continued engagement with the national security community. Response: The Government supports this recommendation. Since passage of the Bills, the Commissioner has made a data code, the Data Availability and Transparency (National Security Measures) Code 2022, establishing a default rule that all data sharing agreements made under the scheme must provide that access to data shared with an Australian university accredited under the scheme is restricted to individuals within the entity who are Australian citizens or permanent residents. If a foreign national within an Australian university is to be provided with access to shared data, the data sharing agreement covering the data sharing must specifically name the foreign national and provide details of their proposed role in the project. This data code takes into account the findings of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry into national security risks affecting the Australian higher education and research sector, and the Guidelines to Counter Foreign Interference in the Australian University Sector. Recommendation 3: The committee recommends that consideration is given to whether amendments could be made to the bill, or further clarification added to the explanat ory memorandum to provide additional guidance regarding privacy protections, particularly in relation to the de-identifying of personal data that may be provided under the bill's data-sharing scheme. Response: The Government supports this recommendation. Amendments were moved in the other chamber directly addressing the committee's concerns and strengthened the privacy protections in the Bill. The privacy protections include: Minimising the sharing of personal information as far as possible without compromising the data sharing purpose. Prohibiting the re-identification of data that has been de-identified. Prohibiting the storing or accessing of personal information outside of Australia. Making it mandatory for Accredited Data Service Providers to undertake any complex data integration for projects to inform government policy and programs, and research and development. Requiring express consent for the sharing of biometric data. Furthermore, the Commissioner has made a data code, the Data Availability and Transparency Code 2022, requiring consent to be current and specific, and providing that an individual may withdraw consent at any time with prospective effect. Additional privacy protections are also required, dependent on the data sharing purpose. Personal information will be able to be shared without consent for the delivery of government services where the individual concerned is receiving the service. The amended Bill minimises the sharing of personal information for informing government policies and programs, and for research and development, by promoting de-identification of data. Senator GALLAGHER ING I move: That the Senate take note of the document. Question agreed to. Consideration 58 Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee 58 Reference 58 17:37 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the many amazing people who make up our One Queensland community, I move: That the following matters be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 September2023: (a) the suitability for human consumption of in vitro protein, also known as lab-grown meat; and (b) any other related matters. Food Standards Australia New Zealand are processing an application right now to approve laboratory grown meat, known in Australia as in-vitro meat. It's called cultured meat, although I can see nothing cultured about it; it's slop. I'm horrified that bureaucrats, university academics and representatives of the business sector that will make bank out of this move could decide this once-in-a-century shift in agricultural production—conflicts of interest! Today One Nation is moving to refer in-vitro meat to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for inquiry. This reflects that FSANZ, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, reports to the minister for agriculture. There are 450,000 people employed in the red meat industry in Australia, working in 63,000 businesses, who collectively are the lifeblood of the bush, the lifeblood of our country. This does not include the poultry industry, which is the subject of this first fake meat application. The poultry industry produces 1.3 million tonnes annually of high-quality, affordable meat—white meat. This contributes $7.9 billion to our economy, employing another 58,000 Australians. Seafood is another industry where in-vitro technology is being concocted. Seafood contributes $3.1 billion to the Australian economy, employing another 17,000 people. Australia exports beautiful natural produce which is in strong demand worldwide because of its high quality and reasonable price. The livelihoods of half a million Australians, and their families, rest on the outcome of this inquiry. The economic welfare of rural Australia rests on the outcome of this inquiry. In-vitro meat has many issues that do need an inquiry. The cells that are cultured—yes, cultured—in an intensive near-urban-area industrial production facility are obtained using a painful muscle biopsy on a live animal. Every year, thousands of biopsies will be required to get the muscle cells needed to grow enough fake meat for projected production. At the same time, the Red Meat 2030 plan provides for a doubling of the price of red meat, pricing natural meat out of the reach of everyday Australians. This is an attempt to force the consumption of fake meat, like it or not. In-vitro meat is a seismic shift in health, nutrition and culture. We don't know what issues will arise on the production line for these products, or what diseases, what fungi or what bacteria will creep into a facility like this. Most likely, meat will still need antibiotics and chemicals to control such contamination. With in-vitro meat, the cancer risk is high, as cells are replicated over and over, increasing the chances of a cancerous mutation being packaged for sale. Real animals have a self-healing system, though, that hunts down and kills cancerous and precancerous cells every minute of every day. In-vitro cells do not. An alternative technique to in-vitro replication of muscle cells is to use a bioreactor to use cornstarch, plant skeletons, fungi and gelatine to engineer fake meat in an immortal cell line. What a name—an immortal cell line. The final product has all the nutrition contained in whatever nutrient supplements or additives can be added to this slop before it is formed into fake meat. It is slop with nutrients. The environmental credentials of in-vitro meat are suspect. In-vitro meat still needs food, hormones and growth factors to grow. The equation is still 'energy in, stored energy out'. The faster the growth, the more profit is generated. And there will be a lot of profit. The billionaires who are lining up to bring in-vitro meat to the market are the same billionaires who are telling us how much damage cows are supposedly doing to the environment. Nobody is apparently concerned about the obvious conflict of interest. Livestock production is not bad for the environment. Livestock farts, burps and belches are part of the biogenic carbon cycle, which works like this: plants absorb carbon dioxide and, through the process of photosynthesis, harness the energy of the sun to produce carbohydrates such as cellulose. Cattle are able to break down cellulose for food, releasing methane into the atmosphere. Methane is CH4. Note the 'C' for the carbon atom. Over a 12-year period, the methane is converted back into carbon dioxide through hydroxyl oxidation, a naturally occurring process in our atmosphere. The carbon released in that process is the same carbon that was in the air prior to being stored in a plant and then released when the plant consumed it. It's a cycle. For a constant herd size, the cattle industry is adding no additional methane to the atmosphere—none. Insect-based fake meats and lab-grown in-vitro fake meats are a solution to a problem that does not exist. I know why this is happening. Fake meats offer a scalable production system in a controlled environment located right next to major markets, offering high profits on a predictable, stable cash flow, independent of weather conditions—natural weather conditions. No wonder the billionaire predators that run the world are lining up for their slice of this new multibillion dollar market. All they have to do is get their mates, their underlings, in government and the bureaucracy to persecute farmers out of existence, and the market for fake meats will present itself. Look at Holland and New Zealand, and now look at America, Britain, Canada and, with this application, Australia. Why should we even let them call this rubbish 'meat'? Meat is a natural product brimming with goodness. Fake meat is a chemistry experiment that has more in common with pet food than human food. It is flavourless cells cultivated in a test tube, with additives for taste and additives for so-called 'nutrition'. It's fake. As Senator McDonald's inquiry into the definitions of meat and other animal products recommended, this stuff should not be labelled or sold as meat. Clarkson's Fa rm, on Prime Video, has been, I'm sure, an eye-opener for city dwellers who have no clue how bad the persecution of farmers who grow our food has become. After watching the very entertaining Jeremy Clarkson teach himself farming, contending with the rules, the paperwork, the long hours, the lawyers, the activists, the heartbreak and the never-ending expense, one has to ask, 'Why would farmers do it?' That is the idea. If billionaire predators can get decent, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth farmers to walk off their land, walk away from the love of providing the public with nature's bounty, they can sell their Frankenstein food from their factories and make out like bandits while wrecking the health of everyday citizens. I hear people say that fake meat will be dearer than natural meat, yet the billionaires promoting this putrid slop are not spending all this money just to make a product that is less tasty, less nutritious, less safe and dearer than the competition. Production volumes will soon ramp up, and quality and safety checks will be compromised to ensure the product is cheaper. The war on farmers will keep ramping up until room in the market has been conjured for their fake meat. I understand that Labor, the Greens and teal Senator Pocock will oppose this motion, How can the Labor Party possibly still consider themselves the party of the people when over and over they sell out the people? The further left the teals, Greens and Labor Party march, the less relevant they become to the lives of everyday Australians and, worse, the more harm they do to the lives of everyday Australians. I thank Senator McDonald for her comments and ask the Senate for its support for this motion. As long as we have amazing farmers bringing us natural, safe, nutritious protein, the world will never need dangerous food grown in a laboratory. One Nation is now the party of the people. 17:47 Senator STERLE e68 Western Australia I appreciate getting the call now. Colleagues, I am hosting a road safety thing upstairs, so I appreciate that you have allowed me to get out of the way. I want to talk to this motion. What we do know is that the food sector is seeking rapid innovation and change in products and markets globally. We understand that. We understand that, by 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, we will need to produce 60 per cent more food to feed an expected 9.7 billion people. Those are scary figures. Across the world, we know, enterprises are looking at opportunities to diversify protein supply to meet global demand. We know the Australian government is committed to ensuring we are well placed to meet this demand through the expansion of both traditional livestock and alternative protein industries. Australia has some of the strongest food safety provisions in the world, and we want to keep it that way. The Australian government, with our state and territory counterparts, is committed to keeping food safe through legislation and regulation such as the Food Standards Code. The primary role of the Food Standards Code is to ensure safe food supplies so Australian and New Zealander consumers can be confident that the foods they choose to buy are safe to eat. God knows we all want that. We know Food Standards Australia New Zealand, which we refer to as FSANZ, is responsible for setting food standards in the Food Standards Code. In February this year, FSANZ accepted its first application to permit cell-culture quail as a novel food. It is the only cell-culture meat application currently being assessed. FSANZ follows a rigorous process for assessing the safety of food. The assessment of cultured quail meat application will include chemical, nutritional, microbiological and dietary exposure assessments. It talks about detailed examination of the applicant's production process and review of the food science to ensure that, prior to going on sale, the product is safe to consume. FSANZ's assessment will also involve two rounds of public consultation. In fact, I think it should be more—we should be talking a lot more—but they're going to do two at this stage. Details will be made available on the food standards website as consultation dates are set, and we hope that they are too. It is expected that this assessment will take approximately 12 months, so who knows how long that will take. If FSANZ approves the products, Australian and New Zealand food ministers will have 60 days to review the decision. The government views FSANZ as the appropriate body to deal with matters of food standards and safety and suggests that inquiries of this nature go to FSANZ directly. I was sitting here earlier. I have to be honest. I'm always honest—what am I saying? I'm sharing it with you more. I thought, 'What the hell is cell culture meat or cultured quail meat?' I was on the committee that Senator McDonald drove that inquired into what is meat and into some of the nonsense we call meat. I'm on Senator McDonald's side on most of this stuff. But I thought, 'I've got to look this up.' With modern technology and the help of my good friend Senator Payman—I asked her, 'How do you google this?'—I found this. I want to share this. Senators, you'll love this. I have to share this with the Senate. This is what I found. Bear with me because I'm reading from an iPhone and I've forgotten my glasses. It says: Several continuous tissue culture cell lines were established from methylcholanthrene-induced fibrosarcomas of Japanese quail. It's as clear as day! You don't have to be Einstein to work that out! It's helpful that I could read that. Do I have a worried look on my face? I'll keep going. It says: The lines consist either of fibroblastic elements, round refractile cells or polygonal cells. Simple! It says: They show transformed characteristics in agar colony formation and hexose uptake, and most are tumorigenic— Of course they are. What else would they be? It says: Their cloning efficiency in plastic dishes is not increased over that of normal quail embryo fibroblasts. It goes without saying, as day follows night. It says: The quail tumor cell lines do not produce endogenous avian oncoviruses— thank goodness— and fail to complement the Bryan high titer strain of Rous sarcoma virus— whew, we dodged a bullet— those tested lack the p27 protein of avian oncoviruses. Most of the cell lines are susceptible to subgroup A avian sarcoma viruses, but are relatively resistant to viruses of subgroups C, E and F as compared to normal quail embryo fibroblasts. What do we have to worry about? It's in the hands of the experts, seriously, so I see no problem. I'd rely heavily on FSANZ. I mean, that's as clear as day! I understand Senator Roberts's concerns. We do have to have concerns, but if anyone can't understand what I've just read out then they shouldn't even be in this joint. Are you coming back truck driving with me? I thought it was just me. But on a serious note, Senator Roberts, I understand your passion. I understand where you're going. Unfortunately—and I mean unfortunately for you, sorry, and fortunately for me and others who would be doing the inquiry; I don't know yet—we won't be supporting it. We do have faith in FSANZ. We have faith in our scientists, specialists and experts in this field. If we do do the inquiry, I'm looking forward to going through this with you, Senator Roberts. We can share some of this info while we're waiting to question people. I just found it as clear as day and not a problem! The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 283585 Thank you very much, Senator Sterle. I think we're picking up what you're putting down. I'll go to Senator McDonald. 17:54 Senator McDONALD 123072 Queensland I support Senator Roberts's motion for a committee inquiry because I think that transparency in the decisions we make around food is critical. It's important. Nobody should be afraid of transparency and inquiries into something like this. So I congratulate Senator Roberts for bringing this forward. The food we eat is the most important thing that we think about each day. Some of us are better at thinking about it than others. I'm afraid that I fall off the wagon regularly with things that are certainly not approved on the healthy foods list. But, generally, we think about food a lot, particularly the food that we give our children and that we put on plates to share with our families and friends. We think about it in terms of cost and we think about it in terms of nutrition. When we plate up, we think about whether we going to be regarded as a superhero. I learnt a lot about that from running butcher shops. Those are the sorts of decisions that we as humans make as we decide what it is that we're going to feed our loved ones, our in-laws and ourselves. This idea of having an inquiry into what cell based meat protein is, what in-vitro food is, makes complete sense. It makes complete sense to provide an environment where Australians and other people around the world can see a very open and transparent discussion. I believe there is nothing to be afraid of from either the meat industry or the cell based meat industry, because we should welcome consumers feeling confident in the food that they buy. Last week I had the benefit of being at a summit with a very interesting panel of people. One of them researches the human desire for food and what the future of food will look like. There is a great deal of data that shows that consumers are looking for an understanding of what they eat, of trust in what they eat. Australian farmers are very high on the list of trusted professions. I believe at the moment it is doctors, nurses, farmers. There has been a huge investment into people understanding where their food is grown and how it's grown, and we should celebrate that. But, if there are new entrants to the market, they are actually seeking that same tick, that same quality understanding, that same desire from humans that this is something they should feel confident about. This application that's in process for in-vitro protein has gone before FSANZ. I have to tell you that I am not satisfied that they are a transparent organisation, because, in 2016, they allowed an application from a major food manufacturer to go through to change the definition of meat. They allowed it to become so broad that you can now have processed vegetables, processed plant protein, being called meat. Put a picture of the animal on the front and talk about meat, and that's branded on the product. I'm not afraid of that, but it's not right. We spend so much time demanding that consumers have truth in labelling, that they can trust the claims that are made, and yet we allowed a process to go through that, frankly, allowed consumers to be misled. The idea of this referral that Senator Roberts is making is about transparency and about confidence, and I would hope that one element of that will be the definition of what this is. One of the people I met during the process of the inquiry was Professor Paul Wood AO. Just last week, Professor Wood addressed the Rural Press Club in Queensland. He talked about exactly this topic—the production of cell based meats. This is an important topic not just because of consumer sentiment and not just because of nutrition. We have recently seen a whole lot of startups that have taken taxpayers' dollars and the hard-earned dollars of mum-and-dad investors, and, very sadly, those startups have not been able to support the claims they have made, and millions of dollars have been wasted. The problem is not that the project is unworthy of investigation; it's that their claims have been too great—too outlandish. It reminds me of when you get a rush on a market: 'This is so exciting! We're going to pour money into these things!' You then run the very real risk of cell based claims doing what has already been done with plant based claims and of people losing a lot of money. These claims being made about the production systems do bear scrutiny. Will they stand up to the scrutiny of a senate inquiry? If they have nothing to be frightened of, then they should welcome this. This government has come in based on them saying: 'We believe in transparency. We believe in a new kind of government.' Well, this is just one more example of how hypocritical that is, because, the moment we want to shine some light on a very important topic, it's: 'No; we're going to shut that down. We're going to shut down any transparency of examination.' There is no risk, I believe, that these new plant based proteins or cell based technologies are going to drive out production by traditional farming methods. They just won't. As much as some people—like my good friends in the Greens, and like some industry people—would like to have us believe it is, this is not about a competition between red meat, or farming organisations, and these new products. Please do not think that is the point of what I'm trying to say tonight. I'm trying to say that there is a new technology coming to town which, if it were successful, could potentially feed poorer parts of the world—parts of Africa and South America—by providing a different form of protein. But billions of dollars are being poured into this new technology and into an estimated 150 cultivated-meat startups around the world, because they're betting that investor money that they'll be able to produce lab-grown protein alternatives at a commercially viable scale, while also attracting customers. Now, that is a noble and fair pursuit of commerce. That is the way the world works: new products come to market; they're invested in; and then consumers make a decision about whether or not that is going to go ahead. But, given some of the technological issues, that has a very real risk of actually sending a lot of these investors and companies to the wall, because the science is very difficult. It is very challenging. Some cell-based-meat startups have publicly announced that they have commissioned fermentation vessels of up to 250,000 litres in size. The biggest that has ever been done to date in cell culture has been about 10,000 to 20,000 litres. So this is the first example of a commercial claim of a company that is attracting investor dollars but that is not supported by any technology or any manufacturing process in the world to date. I think that it is only fair that we start allowing people to have a transparent discussion of what these technologies are and whether or not they are a whole lot of hype. I've got no doubt the technology works. We've seen it in Japan. They can produce pieces of protein that look like meat grown from an animal. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is these products being sold as if they are an investment certainty. If that is not worthy of a Senate inquiry—of the full public examination that we have the benefit of having in this country—then I don't know what is. I want to know what the government is frightened of and what the Greens are frightened of. When did they become frightened of transparency and good public decision-making? This is the point of the Senate! This is the reason why our forefathers designed an upper house: to allow us to have an in-depth look at legislation about government investment and at issues that keep Australians awake at night. This is a perfect example of a new technology, where an application is going to FSANZ and there will be absolutely no scrutiny by Australians. They deserve to know if this is a good idea. Does it work scientifically? Are there manufacturing schemes that allow this? And, most importantly of all, should they risk their hard-earned dollars by going into this? These fermenters run at 37 degrees, which requires a lot of energy and generates a lot of heat. The room needs to be cooled down, which requires more energy. These facilities are going to need a lot of electricity and a lot of inputs; they will not have a low environmental footprint. This is a process where it isn't easy to grow cells. Extraneous agents such as bacteria or fungi can quickly outgrow and destroy the culture if they're allowed into the sterile environment. I recommend that, if you have the time, you read Adjunct Professor Paul Wood's address that he gave to the Rural Press Club. It has been widely reported on Beef Central; it was only last week, on 17 March. This deserves an inquiry. If this new technology is so good, then the publicity and transparency should be welcome. But, if it is not, why don't Australians get to see that? Why can't we have a discussion about new food products? As I said, as I stated at the very beginning, what we put into our bodies is the most important trend happening in the world at the moment. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a First World country, get to decide about whether we have organic food or food that has been grown free range, or whether our food has been grown in an environment that has been ticked off by accredited agencies. But when we move into new products and new lines we should allow consumers to have the same confidence that they expect from a farmed product. That's all I'm saying. They should be given an appropriate definition. We should understand this: are we going to use the same food definitions that we use for meat or for vegetables? This is a far bigger and more serious issue, and I think it's being fobbed off. Senator Sterle, who I have the utmost admiration for, is a man who is very genuine and who fights hard for his part of regional Western Australia. He calls a spade a spade. I enjoy that, but he has been sent in by the government to fob off transparency in the examination of a new technology. Instead, it will be sent off to FSANZ, where it will happen behind closed doors. We should be ashamed of that, because this is our job. Our job is to come to the Senate and examine these serious issues. So good on you, Senator Roberts, for coming up with this motion to make sure that it's examined properly. I call out the government, who continue to say that they believe in transparency and open government—I call that out for the lie that it is. When they vote against this tonight, be clear: they'll be voting against investors having transparency, consumers having transparency and the broader food industry having transparency. I think it's shocking, and they should be ashamed. 18:09 Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 Tasmania Senators might not be aware, but this was referenced in Senator McDonald's contribution tonight. The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee just produced a big, thick report into the definitions of meat and animal products. It looked at this issue repeatedly—repeatedly. It came up across a number of experts, and the evidence, as I passed on to Senator Roberts today, was that the commercial application of this technology, if it is successful, is decades away. We know there are some products that are grown in vitro, but their commerciality is decades away. So I'm not exactly sure what we would be examining. I'm a little bit scarred from this Senate inquiry because, contrary to what Senator McDonald said tonight, it was a not-so-thinly-veiled attack on the plant protein industry, which I believe suffered damage because of this Senate inquiry. It was pointed out to us in evidence—and I am glad Senator McDonald has accepted it, because I didn't hear her acknowledge this in previous contributions around this inquiry—that there is plenty of growth potential for the plant based food industry and alternative meats and the traditional industry. Both, according to CSIRO, ABARES and a number of experts, have massive growth trajectories. It is not an and/or thing. They both have big growth trajectories. Plant based foods, be they any kind of alternative protein, are a massive opportunity for markets. When I go back and have a look at this inquiry and the submissions, they were evenly matched. AUSVEG, a massive industry body, gave the Senate evidence that they were happy to see some changes to some labelling standards but didn't appreciate the not-so-thinly-veiled attack on their industry and the growth potential. That's what this is, as we listen to Senator Roberts's contribution here tonight. This is just another way to raise the issue. I don't know if Senator Roberts might be up for election next time around and wants to get some Senate action out in country areas and wants to call in some farmers to give evidence. I can tell those farmers now that this inquiry is a road to nowhere. There is no evidence before us to examine. If there were, there are other good ways that we as senators all understand to get that information, starting with the estimates process, questions on notice and using FOIs and OPDs. Senator Roberts is having a go at FSANZ for its lack of transparency. He can start putting in some FOIs and OPDs and building that information base and then he can come back to the Greens if he wants our support, if he believes there is something substantial to see here. We've got a number of inquiries before the rural and regional affairs committee. I believe that this inquiry that we just did well and truly dealt with the issue. If we want to help farmers across the board, be they vegetable farmers growing chickpeas for vegetable burgers or farmers growing peas for alternative proteins in products like Beyond Meat burgers, which are obviously very popular and very successful, then the most important thing we can do for all of them right now is take meaningful climate action. There is no bigger threat to the farming community in this country than climate change. The costs have been estimated by CSIRO at $29,200 per annum per farm in this country lost from climate impacts. We know the whole agricultural supply chain gets impacted by extreme weather events. We've seen copious evidence in recent years around the impacts floods have had on supply chains and farmers' livelihoods. Sadly, we've seen evidence over decades now about the impacts that extreme droughts are having on farming communities right around the country, including on the mental health of farming families. There are all sorts of biosecurity issues that our committee is also dealing with that are directly related to our changing climate. If we actually want to do something substantive for farmers, why don't we look at fracking in prime agricultural farmland? I think it might have been Senator Canavan that famously said a few years ago that the Nats don't represent farmers anymore; they represent mining communities. Well, farming communities need to be represented in here on issues like fracking. Non-traditional gas is a major threat to the water in these areas, as it is to agricultural land and to access to agricultural land. As we're talking in the Senate today, there are hundreds of farmers out protesting in New South Wales, trying to stop companies like Santos and Origin from fracking their land with thousands of wells, poisoning land and water. Why aren't we discussing that? Why aren't we standing up for farming communities in this country? Why aren't we taking meaningful climate action? We saw the IPCC synthesis report last night, the sixth and final report. We're not going to get another report for a decade, not until 2030. It was dire. It warned that we need to act now. Time is up. We need to act now. It said that action means cutting emissions in a deep, meaningful and significant way, bringing forward the rapid transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and other energy sources, and fast-tracking the development of renewable energy projects. It also said no more fossil fuel projects, including leaving in the ground any existing fossil fuels that have already been discovered. It couldn't have been more clear. That is what the science tells us, but Senator Roberts doesn't listen to the science. He honestly doesn't give a fig about science, and he never has. He can laugh all he likes. The joke's on you, Senator Roberts—through you, Madam Acting Deputy President. These are the world's most eminent climate scientists, who have been working on this for decades. For decades, they've been plugging away, looking at the data— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, resume your seat. Senator Roberts, do you have a point of order? Senator Roberts 266524 The President herself made an announcement that we are not to impugn other senators in statements we make in this chamber. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, do you have a response to that? Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 I didn't impugn Senator Roberts at all. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, I think your intention is to clarify that you did not seek to impugn Senator Roberts. I ask that you continue in the spirit of respectful conversation in the chamber. Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 Let me clarify my comments. Anybody who denies climate science, like Senator Roberts does, doesn't respect the science. I've seen him come into Senate estimates and embarrass public servants— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senators Whish-Wilson and Roberts, please resume your seats. Senator Whish-Wilson, I did just give you the benefit of allowing you to continue with the call on the basis that you would effectively move through these comments and continue your remarks, perhaps going back to the topic at hand. If you could do that, I think that would be in the interest of the Senate. Senato 195565 I don't think it's in the interest of the Senate, Acting Deputy President, but I'll do it for you, to assist you as the chair. This is important, because it goes to Senator Roberts's disregard for the science and empirical evidence. The same will apply to this— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, resume your seat. Senator Roberts, do you have a point of order? Senator Roberts 266524 Yes I do. He's continuing to impugn me. He's telling lies about me. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Roberts, resume your seat. Senator Whish-Wilson, I'm going to return the call to you, but, on a couple of occasions, I've tried to draw you away from your current line and back to the broader topic of the reference. I'd ask that you do that in your comments. Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's exactly what I was doing. I was pointing out that someone who disrespects science is hardly going to use the Senate process effectively and efficiently. This is very important to my contribution. You can also— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, resume your seat. Senator Roberts, I assume you have the same point of order, which I've made a couple of rulings on. Senator Roberts 266524 I do because I respect the science. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Thank you. I've made a ruling, Senator Whish-Wilson, so I ask that you abide by my ruling. Please move away from this particular line in relation to Senator Roberts and continue your comments on the broader reference. Please don't dispute my decision in your comments. Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 I won't dispute it, Acting Deputy President, but I'll ask you to go away and review it because you can't influence my substantive debate when it is actually in line— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Whish-Wilson, I'm wondering if anybody else would like the call at this point. Senator Davey is seeking the call. Senator WH 195565 Are you taking the call off me? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 No. Senator Davey, please resume your seat for a moment. Senator Whish-Wilson, I've asked you four or five times to abide by a ruling in relation to Senator Roberts's points of order. I'm not making a decision either way about the topic, but I'm asking you to please continue for the convenience of the Senate. Go back to the topic of the reference and avoid what could unconventionally be called a game of whack-a-mole right now. For the convenience of the Senate, could you just continue your remarks. Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 I would point out that Senator Roberts is deliberately playing that game so that I don't get to finish my speech. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 You still have the call, and I note that Senator Davey is waiting. Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 As a point of order, though, Acting Deputy President, I ask that you go away and review your ruling in relation to this. I don't believe I have been disrespectful. I've been very clear about why I've framed my comments, but I will move on. If we respect the science on climate change, and I hope senators do, we listen to the IPCC scientists. Many of them are very good Australian scientists; two of them are actually very close friends of mine. Hobart, as Senator Duniam knows, is full of some of these scientists who work for the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and others. They've dedicated their lives to studying climate change and its impacts, its costs and its future impacts on this country, including on agriculture and on the farming community. When we talk about food security, there's nothing more important than acting on climate change. My suggestion to Senator Roberts is that perhaps he initiate another Senate inquiry that actually looks at, for example, the impact of fracking on farming communities and the impact of poisoning the land and the water. If he cares about farmers, that would be a constructive alternative for him. I would certainly talk to my colleagues about supporting that reference if he were to bring that to the rural and regional affairs committee. I'll finish my contribution by saying that I know the government is not supporting this, and Senator Sterle has offered some constructive ways forward. I suggest to Senator Roberts that he pursue this directly with the department using the toolkit that he has as a Senator to get the information that he needs. Perhaps we will keep talking, and, over time, if there's something substantial, I will talk to my colleagues about potentially supporting an inquiry. I bet my bottom dollar that Senator Roberts hasn't read this report from the rural and regional affairs committee that looks at synthetic meats and how they're grown, and presents the issues that were raised and discussed around this. I believe an inquiry would be a waste of the Senate's time and resources at this point, as there are other ways Senator Roberts can get information on this topic. 18:23 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales I thank Senator Roberts for bringing this motion to the Senate. I note what Senator Whish-Wilson has just said. I want to make the point that, regardless of what he feels about anyone's personal positioning on listening to the science, the whole point of a Senate committee inquiry is to operate as a committee. To say that one person can hijack or disrespect a committee process actually disrespects the committee process of this place. I think it is highly unfair to not support a committee referral based on your personal opinion of one person's viewpoint. I support this referral not because I am opposed to cultured meat, lab-grown meat or cell based meat, as it can variously be referred to, but because I do believe we need to investigate it further. I have a very interesting journal article here from the Quest International Journal of Medical and Health Sciences. The journal article is a very good outline. The article's titled 'A review on lab-grown meat: advantages and disadvantages'. It covers off on both components. One of its conclusions is: Large-scale research, clinical trials need to be done to obtain more data to support cultured meat as a climatically sustainable alternative. Based on currently available information, it will be too early to comment on the viability, environmental impact, carbon footprint, and necessary rethink for unrestrained culture meat production and consumption. This was written and published in 2021, so it's not an old report. It identifies—and I found this very interesting—that cultured meat was first developed in the 1930s. While our modern technology has improved, the processes, the concept, the idea and the ability to produce cultured meat, cell based meat or lab based meat was developed in the 1930s. As the article says: Winston Churchill even predicted, 'Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.' I find that absolutely fascinating. It goes to the basis and the reasoning for lab-grown meat. There are lots of different opinions about why we should be converting to lab-grown meat or not. I do note and agree with Senator McDonald's comments that this is not an either/or. I do not believe that investigating lab-grown meat will suddenly see the demise of our farming and livestock industries. I am certainly not of the opinion that lab-grown meat is any more humane, kinder, gentler or better and should replace farming, because our farmers and livestock producers, on the whole, are some of the best in the world. They treat their animals humanely while they are in the production line. One of the original concepts behind producing lab-grown meat is that we know the world's population is growing almost exponentially. The world now produces more than three times the quantity of meat it did 50 years ago as developing countries grow in both population and prosperity. Global meat consumption increased by 58 per cent over the 20 years to 2018 to reach 360 million tonnes annually. We know that, as some of our developing nations become more prosperous, their meat consumption is going up. We also know protein consumption is a vital component of the human diet. A lot of the original concepts of lab-grown meat were looking at ways that we could produce an ethical, affordable, sustainable protein to particularly help feed our Third World nations. Where we haven't got to yet on the whole concept of lab based meat production is cost-effectiveness. At the moment, it is much more expensive to produce lab-grown meat than traditional meat. Indeed, the first lab-made hamburger, created in 2012, cost about US$325,000 to produce. I'm glad I wasn't at that dinner party and paying for it! More recently, Dutch startup Mosa Meat estimated that the price of production is about $80 a kilo. If you want marble score five-plus wagyu, you can accept paying that price, but, if you're just going for a hamburger patty at 80 bucks a kilo, I don't think so. So my sheep producers aren't quaking in their seats just yet. However, that's not to say there that won't be a role for lab produced meat in future. That is why I support having this Senate inquiry, having this investigation and looking at all aspects. I do tend to agree with Senator McDonald: yes, there's an application before FSANZ at the moment, and, yes, FSANZ have a role to play in assessing the safety of foods that are allowed to be sold in Australia. By and large, they do a pretty good job, but this is also the same organisation that now says it is healthier to drink Diet Coke than orange juice. I sometimes question, when they are purely looking at things through a fixed lens and assessing things according to a fixed formula or algorithm, whether they are actually looking at the whole picture. I have no problem—in fact, I completely agree—that the Senate has a good role to play in looking at this issue and evaluating it and in hearing from scientists, because we do all respect the science, and some of the technicians. There are a lot of claims about the environmental benefits of cultured meat or lab-grown meat and the potential reductions in methane production from meat grown in a lab. But, on the flipside, lab produced meat is highly energy intensive. It requires more power and therefore produces more CO2. So, while it might be reducing methane production, it could be increasing CO2 production. CO2 has a longer lifespan than methane. So is it truly more environmentally sustainable, when we're talking about greenhouse gas emissions? I do think the conversation is a little bit akin to the use of gene technology in our food production systems. Once upon a time, there were huge concerns about the role of genetically modified organisms in our farming production systems. But we've also learnt over time that, with tried and tested methods—thoroughly tested—we can get good outcomes. There are ways—and there are proposals—to use gene editing or gene modification to improve nutritional benefits of certain foods. In the case of things like genetically modified cotton, we have significantly reduced our chemical usage, which is good for the environment. I think thoroughly investigating this is better than just saying yes or no so that we understand it, understand what benefits it could bring and understand the risks that are involved. Let's not forget that lab-grown meat is not a vegetarian alternative and not a vegan alternative, because it is meat. It is produced from taking a biopsy from an animal—taking muscle cells from an animal and putting them in a bioreactor, more often than not in foetal bovine fluid, to produce the meat. Unlike 'plant based meat'—and I use quotation marks because I would rather call it plant based protein—this is a cultured meat. It actually is a meat. But it's not grown in paddocks. It's not fed grain. It's not grazing on pastures. It's a cell that's put into a Petri dish in a lab, into a bioreactor, and allowed to multiply. Conceptually, it sounds just a little bit too sci-fi for my liking. However, I do think that there may be a role for it. But I think that we should be able to investigate it. I must say, I am actually very surprised that the government and the Greens are not supporting this referral, because they like to come here and tell us to listen to the science. Well, that's what we want to do. They like to come in here and tell us that they are the parties for openness and transparency. Well, that's what this referral will do. It will allow us to have a public investigation into the pros and cons of lab based meat, and to properly assess not only what impact it would have on diets or on consumers, but also what impact it would have on competing industries. Will it impact our meat and livestock industry, or will it have no impact? I don't have a predetermined idea. That's why this referral needs to go ahead, because there are a lot of open-minded people like me out there who would just like to learn more. That's exactly what this referral is about. And that's why I commend this referral to the chamber. I would encourage the Greens and the government to change their positions and support this referral, in the interests of listening to the science and having an open and transparent process. 18:37 Senator CANAVAN 245212 Queensland I rise to support this referral and congratulate Senator Roberts on bringing it forward. It is very timely to have an investigation of this sort, for the reasons that other senators have outlined. Before I, myself, elaborate on some of those reasons, I would like to make a couple of general comments about the need for inquiries like this. Obviously, we have in front of us a question of scientific development—of, in this case, lab-grown meat. It's something completely new, and somewhat terrifying, I think, for some, as to the possibility of risks and issues that might occur in laboratories. I want to make the point that there must be much greater oversight of the endeavours of our scientific community, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic. This pandemic we've just experienced was the worst in 100 years. It may have been the first pandemic caused by science—caused by scientists—if it did come from a laboratory. We do not know exactly where it came from, but I think the evidence is building and growing that, more than likely, it did come from experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Certainly that seems to be the conclusion of the intelligence agencies and the department of energy in the United States, and the circumstantial evidence is quite significant. Be that—all that evidence—as it may, I have found, in my work as a senator, trying to expose some of these issues through the Australian Senate, a complete lack of willingness to engage, from the scientific community; a complete lack of introspection about what their role may be; and, in fact, worse: an explicit, co-ordinated attempt to denigrate anyone who may suggest that somehow scientists, like the rest of us, can make mistakes or sometimes be conflicted and do the wrong thing. That's because what is worse about the potential involvement of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that scientists in Western, free countries were definitely involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and, potentially, involved with the experimentations on coronavirus that may have, potentially, led to this tragic outbreak that has killed six million people around the world and counting. In the United States, we know that United States government funding went through to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the EcoHealth Alliance, based in New York. This stuff seemed to be illegal at the time, but Dr Anthony Fauci and the EHA seemed to find a way to get that funding through without scrutiny by their government. Here in Australia there were behaviours that perhaps weren't as consequential, but still the CSIRO were involved in training and working with Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists, including on coronaviruses. Perhaps these were not the experiments that led to this outbreak, but they definitely worked with them on coronaviruses. All of this has been exposed through the great reporting of Sharri Markson and stuff that I followed up here in the Senate. Despite all this evidence, to this day the Australian government, the CSIRO and the department of industry are refusing to reveal of what gain-of-function research they conducted with taxpayers' money over the past 10 years. I have asked for information about that and through those questions it has been revealed that we have funded 17 gain-of-function experiments over the past decade. But, apart from some very broad generic descriptions, we have no information about what papers came from that and what the findings of that research were. They will not release any of this because of the trumped-up excuse that, somehow, releasing this information, which is taxpayer funded, would cause the safety and security of scientists to be put at risk—that they would potentially be at risk of death threats and what have you. This is ridiculous. These gain-of-function experiments may have led to the deaths of six million people around the world and yet we cannot get basic information about them through the Australian parliament, even given that they were funded by the federal government. That isn't exactly what's in front of us, but there's a similar situation here: the scientific community seems resistant to any outside non-scientific examination of what the hell is going on in these laboratories and what the risks are to the rest of us. There were certainly risks at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which impacted on the rest of us and, because of that, we deserve to have appropriate scrutiny of what occurs in laboratories here in Australia and, indeed, around the world if we are to use the products that come out of those laboratories—if they were to be approved here. The second general point that I'd like to make is that it's quite depressing to see the state of the once proud Australian Senate right now. There's a cabal over there on that side of the chamber that is coordinating to stop and prevent legitimate Senate inquiries from occurring—to stop the proper scrutiny of government and decision-making. Effectively, we have a Greens-Labor alliance in this chamber. They are one; they vote together almost all the time. This is a very sensible inquiry being brought forward by Senator Roberts; not everyone has to agree with the concerns he has raised, but it's clearly in the wheelhouse of what we would do in a typical Senate inquiry. I, as the chair of the committee—the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee—would be happy to conduct an inquiry into this matter. I thank Senator Roberts, who checked with me before moving this motion. It's just very unfortunate that we have this protection racket over there on the other side, working to stop the Senate from doing its proper business. They're literally only allowing inquiries to occur into things that aren't going to cause any embarrassment. This one itself is not really into anything to do with the functioning and workings of government—only in a tangential way. As I said earlier, it's really about science and the developments here that will of course one day find their way to a regulator's desk. But there's nothing that would really necessarily embarrass the Albanese government if Senator Roberts exposed anything through it. But we still see this resistance to it and the combination here which doesn't allow legitimate inquiries. I think it's very, very sad to see the Senate reduced to being, effectively a rubber stamp for the government; it's not what we're here to do. The conduct of Labor and Greens senators in combining with the executive in this way to prevent the normal functioning and scrutiny that should occur in this chamber diminishes us all. There is a need for this in this particular area because, just like in the example I used around coronavirus, there seems to be a level of zeal from those pushing alternative proteins—in this case lab-grown meat—that really concerns me. It's one thing to be proud and forward-thinking about innovations and excited about technological changes that can make people's lives better, but some of these scientists seem to think that the experiments that happen here or the technology that comes out of a laboratory—in this case with lab-grown meat—will somehow save the world. That's the mission some of these scientists seem to be on—somehow these alternative protein sources will stop the world from instantaneously combusting at some point in the next few decades. My concern is that, when you have such a Messianic ideology and approach to life, you're more likely to put aside any potential risks or countervailing issues that arise in your pursuit of that Messianic goal. Because these scientists think that their work and developments are potentially the key to saving humanity, they are less likely to worry if these products cause greater disease and carcinogenic issues or spread zoonotic disease. Any issues like that that might crop up in the development of these technologies would seem small against the potential benefit of saving humanity as a whole. You see across a lot of different human endeavours and behaviours the Messianic approach loses all perspective of the fact that there are multiple factors to take into account when evaluating something as tectonically changing as growing our food in a laboratory rather than organically. This is another justification above and beyond the fact that we should be scrutinising technological and scientific developments. In this case there should be greater scrutiny of it because of that Messianic approach I sometimes see in the scientific community. It goes beyond just the lab grown issue. I think this inquiry is needed but not just for the lab grown meat issue. I note that the terms of reference do allow for inquiry into any other related matters. I spoke to Senator Roberts about looking at other alternative protein sources as well if we get this inquiry up. Obviously a plethora of plant based proteins have come onto the market, and there have been a lot of labelling issues around those. I know a separate inquiry with Senator McDonald did fantastic work on that when we were in government. We allowed those sorts of inquiries when we were in government. It was not an inquiry that the executive necessarily welcomed, but we allowed the Senate to do its work and look into the labelling of meat products. Senator McDonald did an excellent job on that. There are those issues, but there are also health issues. These plant based proteins include enormous amounts of sodium. Salt is put into these products to improve their taste. That quite possibly has deleterious health impacts. I note too that, despite all the hype around plant based proteins, they haven't exactly been to the taste of consumers. The much-hyped company Beyond Meat has suffered massive reductions in the consumption of its products and has had huge losses of hundreds of millions of dollars a year—its stock is way down. Indeed, when explaining these losses the CEO of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown, commented that the plant based meat industry's biggest obstacles are taste, awareness of the health benefits and price. Apart from that, it's great. It doesn't taste very good, it's very expensive and we're not really sure about the health benefits, but, apart from that, it's fantastic. Why aren't people buying it? It's a complete mystery! On top of that we've also seen this very strange promotion of the need to eat bugs. I don't know if people have been watching this. I thought it was a joke when it first came up. Senator Scarr 282997 Not moreton bay bugs. Senator CANAVAN 245212 No, not those bugs, Senator Scarr—not moreton bay or balmain bugs. They're pretty tasty. I thought it was a joke. In Beef Week 2021 I was up in Rocky enjoying lots of beef, as you do—too much beef in Beef Week. CSIRO chose that week to put out a report on the exciting opportunities for Australians to eat more bugs. As I said, I thought was a bit of a joke back then in early 2021, but I see now that all sorts of people, including Nicole Kidman and others, are all promoting that we need to switch to eating bugs. If we get this inquiry up, we should definitely look at the bugs and look at whether this is something to do. As for me, to each their own; if you want to eat bugs, go for your life. But, as I said, I do think we should look at these health issues properly and scrutinise them. A recent report from the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations found a number of particular health issues that could arise from using insects. In particular, the pathogenic microbes of insects are considered potential vectors for viruses. Keep in mind that, when you process an animal, one of the first things you do in a meatworks is take out their gut and intestines, because that's where a lot of the microbes and potential bad things that can do harm to humans could be. You take all that out. You can't do that with insects, obviously; they're too small to take out all of that intestinal matter, and that's potentially where this bad stuff is. So, while other cultures have used bugs at different times, there's a lot of risk here in translating that into mass production. It should be examined and investigated, and this inquiry could potentially do that. I could go on about these issues for a long time, and I think it would have been quite useful for not only the Senate but the entire Australian community for other Senators and me to have the time in a Senate inquiry to ask these legitimate questions and expose some of the issues that have been raised, but it would appear that this Greens-Labor cabal over there will ensure that there is not proper scrutiny in this place on these issues. I don't exactly see why; as I said, I'm not asking that other senators necessarily agree with all the concerns that I, Senator Roberts or others have put on the table, but they are definitely legitimate matters for investigation in an inquiry. It's very sad that the Senate tonight will most likely not do its job to make those appropriate investigations and inquiries. Instead, we will be mere puppets of others, who are presumably making these decisions on carpet that is not red in other parts of this building. 18:51 Senator CADELL 300134 New South Wales I was going to take a lot more time to give a speech, but I think I can beat my colleague Senator Canavan's 'It's good other than its price, taste and health benefits.' I'm going to focus on something else: what Senator Roberts said earlier about the potential corporatisation of our food supply. There are many things this is called. It's called slaughter-free meat, clean meat, cultured meat and in vitro meat. There are many things it is called, and one thing we know it is not is meat. That happens with a lot of foods that are so unpopular that they piggyback on the name recognition and benefits of others, it would seem: almond milk, cashew milk, soy milk, rice milk—nut juice, basically, is what that is, and they are out there selling that as other foods. We have to get beyond that. My fear, away from the health constraints, apart from the impact on an industry that is vibrant and good—and I note that Senator Canavan, of North Queensland, will probably hit me when I say Rockhampton is the second beef capital of Australia behind Casino, in northern New South Wales!—is what happens if these companies if these labs hold IP. Do they put in patents? Do they hold the world to ransom because their IP works for protein in the future? We heard about price complaints and the price drama with some of these things. As we allow governments to ramp up the controls on farming, on methane—we've heard these things come in—they put more constraints on how a farmer can do their work. They ramp up the price of meat to make this artificial protein more competitive. We talk about 'big pharma'. Will we find 'big agriculture'—'big lab food'? If I come across something like fixing taste and I hold that, do I then hold the world to ransom because I hold that IP? I'm pretty sure no-one holds IP to a cow, a chicken, a lamb or any of these things. I'm pretty sure that applies to bugs too, but I don't want to eat those. So what happens if that happens? Who's looking at that? Forget about safety and all these other things; what about control of the world's protein supply if this goes wrong? Knowledge is a good thing. Senator Roberts is not asking to stop anything. We've heard from Senator Roberts and we've heard my colleagues in the Nationals say: 'Let's just ask some questions. Let's have a look. It may be good.' We talk about all the health things and about some concerns in other spaces, but I notice that there's no longitudinal study about the health effects of protein meat—none in the world. There's a great longitudinal study on what real meat does to you. From the time of Fred Flintstone, the brontosaurus burger and the beginning of mankind, we've known what meat does to you. It makes you stronger, it feeds you and it gives you protein. That is a longitudinal study. We are the end result—me probably a bit more so than others!—of eating meat and what happens from that. These are the things we could look at. There can never be too much knowledge when we're trying to make an informed decision. This is all we're asking for. All we're looking to do is shine a light on a somewhat murky field, to look at these things of health, of price, of taste and of the commercialisation of the world's food supply. Senator Roberts was right when he said the billionaires are behind pricing out naturally occurring foods and those sorts of things, because they can't make a buck out of big agricultural holdings. There are too many small things and too many small countries, and they can't make that money and get that around, where they're keeping their buffalo and their other meat sources. It is with sadness that we think we know what will happen. We'll probably vote tomorrow morning, and this will not get up. It is a shame that we can't explore all of these things. Who knows what we'd uncover? The right expert at the right time with the right question may just shine a light or, even better, may have some answers. They may not. From what we learn, we may be able to move legislation that makes Australian people safer. Woe betide us trying to make the Australian people safer because we learn something! I'm probably the last speaker tonight, and we are at a sad point on something that goes to the cornerstone of Australian agriculture, to every mum and dad who are feeding their kids some sort of food and to where we will be in the future. There is great opportunity in artificial foods and in artificial proteins. It may be a future where we can feed people, but it is not meat. It is not milk, when we look at these other things. If we know more, that can be a pathway through to finding more opportunities and separating them from the dangers. It is sad that this reference will not get up. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 The question is that the motion moved by Senator Roberts to refer a matter to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee be agreed to. I note that it's after 6.30 pm. As a division is required, the matter will be adjourned until the next day of sitting. The debate is adjourned. BILLS 69 BILLS Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 69

Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022

Second Reading 69 18:58 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia As we move forward, we have to remain vigilant and resolute in our defence of Australia's foundational principles and resist any attempt to undermine our Constitution, particularly in today's environment of fake news and foreign interference. Australians are, very wisely, naturally cautious about making amendments to our Constitution. It is only fair to the people that we serve in this place that we ensure they have all of the available facts, which they can trust, so they can make a fully informed decision about whether they support the upcoming referendum. In this age of disinformation, it is important that the government takes the lead and provides clear information and a robust referendum process to Australians. The opposition has raised three points with the government to address our concerns with the referendum process. The first is to restore the pamphlet to outline the 'yes' and 'no' cases. Again, while the government may have indicated support for that, the devil will certainly be in the detail. The second is to establish the official 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations. The third is to appropriately fund both of these official organisations to ensure that the process is fair and has integrity. These measures are fundamental to having a referendum with informed voters and, as I said, a process that is transparent and that voters can clearly trust because it has integrity. It's fair to say that this change in the bill to the existing legislation will actually have profound implications not just for this next referendum but also for subsequent referendums. So while, as I've said, we welcome the government's announcement that they will restore the pamphlet, we have to now see the detail of what that will mean for the change to the legislation. On our side of the chamber, we cannot support and we will not support a bill that does not have a plan for how to properly regulate donations and how to properly regulate foreign interference—the very real threat of foreign interference—or one that does not provide a plan for how scrutiny of the referendum itself will be conducted. All of this could be resolved by the establishment of appropriately and equally funded official 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations. We welcome the engagement of government on this bill, but, as we said, we still have concerns. Why do we have concerns? Let's have a look at what this bill is designed to do. This bill will determine the settings for how the referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament is conducted. However, the coalition has no doubt that the changes included in this bill will also be used for future referendums. The bill does—and we do acknowledge this—make a number of non-controversial changes to the act to bring the operation of referenda into line with the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which hasn't been done, I believe, for nearly 20 years. It is out of date and it is out of step with the Electoral Act. However, there are three key concerns and issues that remain for us on this side of the chamber. The bill as it stands removes the requirement to provide all households with a pamphlet outlining both the 'yes' and the 'no' cases for changes to our Constitution, the bill does not make provision for official 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations, and the bill does not outline any official funding for these campaigns. These positions have been advocated consistently to the government by those on this side of the chamber, because, while the government are desperate to get this referendum through, they keep mismanaging it, and the prospect of not doing that—due to their own mistakes and fumbles in this area—is making them more desperate to get this through. But by stacking the deck, as the government is proposing to do in this bill, not only will it corrupt the process but it will actually make it less likely for this to go through if the majority of Australians and all voters don't have access to information that they can trust so that they can make an assessment of both the 'yes' and the 'no' cases before casting their vote. People listening might be wondering why we're advocating the retention of a pamphlet. On the face of it, it seems like it might be a little outdated—a written pamphlet in the days of modern media. But this sets a very dangerous precedent. There is no precedent at all, in nearly a hundred years, for deliberately not providing a pamphlet. This would be the first time since before Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup for the first time that there is not a pamphlet. The requirement for a pamphlet was instituted in 1912 for a very good reason. There have been three referenda—in 1919, 1926 and 1928—for which there wasn't a pamphlet, but there were very good reasons for that each time. In 1919 there was literally insufficient time to produce the pamphlet, in 1926 there was no agreement on how to produce the 'yes' argument itself and in 1928 there was overwhelming agreement between parties and government and it wasn't thought necessary. But none of the circumstances for those three exceptions apply here today. We know there's not complete agreement on the issue itself, we have the time to prepare the pamphlets and we can get agreement on how to argue the cases. In 1967 and 1977 only 'yes' pamphlets were provided to the electorate. That, again, we think is wrong. We need to put to the people of Australia the arguments for both the 'yes' case and the 'no' case and people can then be in a position to make up their own minds. Why the pamphlets? We know that people still trust written material that comes from the government as official material. We've heard from the AEC that, when they provide material to electors in our federal elections, 40 per cent of recipients will use this documentation as their main source of information for how to cast their vote. But we also know that electoral events are increasingly influenced by misinformation and social media algorithms that provide an echo chamber of thoughts and ideas for voters' minds, whereas this would be official material that people can trust. Additionally, the ACCC has published data that has reported that 92 per cent of respondents to the ACCC's news survey had some concerns about the quality of news and also the journalism that they were consuming. The analysis has identified consumer concerns and competition harms across a wide range of digital platform services which are widespread, entrenched and systematic. If you think about that, it is even more important today that we provide, support and fund material that people can trust when you have 92 per cent of respondents in the latest ACCC news survey having concerns about the quality and veracity of the information they receive on online platforms. Why are we advocating for official 'yes' and 'no' campaigns? We're doing that simply because it will clearly increase the trust of the Australian voters in the integrity of the process itself, which is absolutely critically important. Having official 'yes' and 'no' campaigns will make things simpler for the regulatory environment and for the proper conduct of the referendum itself. The AEC has given evidence to the parliamentary committee JSCEM that the donation disclosure regime remains the most complex part of the Electoral Act. We will be applying that regime in this referendum and to participants who are not regularly involved in elections. An official campaign structure will be the best way for our regulators to ensure that the appropriate education and enforcement of the electoral laws is in place for the referendum. We know that there will be a significant number of participants, including organisations, in this referendum who will not be associated with political parties or do not have regular events in the electorate. That is okay. That is what we would expect in a functioning democracy. But having a single point of coordination to provide education and to commence any audit processes for donations or foreign interference is the best way to protect the integrity of the referendum from misinformation and foreign interference. The Senate has already heard from officials that there might be people who will fall under donations legislation and other electoral laws who won't know about it because they're not regular political donors. The AEC has said the education of participants will be significant given that these events happen so rarely and that they aren't the usual political parties that they will be regulating. They've acknowledged that even political parties, who go through this process all the time, sometimes struggle to get it right. On the final point, why we are asking for equal funding: we on this side of the chamber are seeking an assurance that once these bodies are established and there is a guarantee of equal funding for both cases—if it is provided—it is provided to each side, to ensure that neither side is advantaged or disadvantaged and that they can comply with the disclosure and regulatory regimes at the referendum. In short, it is a big thing for Australians to consider changing our Constitution, and the— (Time expired) 19:10 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia It is with great pleasure that I rise tonight to speak on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022, because it is a very significant day in our history when we seek to ask the Australian public to make a decision about changing the founding document of our country—that is, our Constitution. I know, when it comes to constitutional matters, that those on this side of the chamber take the issue very seriously. We need to make sure that the approach we take when we seek to change our Constitution is principled, underpinned by sound reasoning, consistent and fair. I am particularly concerned, as I stand this evening to talk about this bill, that we are being asked to change the machinery that sits behind the establishment of a referendum in a way that has never been done before in this country and that, in my opinion, seeks to make the putting of this really important question to Australia an unbalanced activity. The principles that underpin our democracy are the very reason we stand in this chamber. The principles that underpin democracy are the very reason that our parliament, the Westminster system, is the most important in the world. I believe, as I know many of my colleagues on this side of the chamber believe, that the sovereign will of the Australian people is something that we must treat with the greatest respect. Changing the document by which our country lives is one of the most serious things that we will ever be asked to do in this place. It's not something that we should be taking lightly and it's not something that we should be using for our own political purposes. So, in standing here today, I raise a concern that I'm sure just about all of my colleagues on this side, when they've contributed to this debate, have raised—that is, the responsibility of the government to make sure that they take the lead and provide clear, consistent, unbiased information to the Australian public so that the strength of our referendum process is not compromised by political interference. There are three main issues that we came to the table with and that we told the government were extremely important for the maintenance of the integrity of the referendum process. The first one was providing to the Australian public a pamphlet that outlined the arguments that sat behind the case for a 'yes' and the case for a 'no', and, in doing so—understanding the broad scope of Australia, the many multicultural communities that exist—making sure that the pamphlet was provided in writing to every household in Australia in appropriate format for that household so that the people who lived there could understand what the two arguments in relation to the proposed change in the Constitution actually meant. We were obviously delighted when the government agreed that it would restore the pamphlet. The original bill that went through the other place actually sought to have that pamphlet removed. It sought to deny the Australian population the opportunity to be provided with, in an independent and unbiased way, an assessment of both of the campaigns and why they were proposing either the 'yes' case or the 'no' case. Whilst the government are bringing to this chamber, I believe, amendments to the bill that will enable a 'yes' and 'no' pamphlet, obviously we're very keen to see where the government finally land in relation to that pamphlet, because it underpins a hugely important component of the integrity of the referendum—that is, providing Australians with fair, unfettered, unbiased information about what the government are asking them to do. The idea that the government would seek to change our founding document—our Constitution—without providing them with information about that particular change was going to be I think undermines completely the integrity of the process of the referendum. The second issue that we're asking the government about, and which we think is entirely reasonable, is to establish 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations. This bill, in its current form, does not provide for 'yes' or 'no' campaign organisations to be established. This is a really dangerous precedent, because we know that the campaigns themselves provide us with vehicles through which we can ensure the integrity of the process and would make things very simple for the regulatory environment and for the proper conduct of the actual referendum. We note that when it comes to issues such as foreign interference that the 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations provide the very vehicles through which we can test, assess and regulate to make sure that things like foreign interference don't occur. In their absence, there really is no mechanism by which the Australian government can assure itself that that sort of interference is not occurring. The Director-General of ASIO, only two weeks ago, told Australians that we're seeing the greatest level of foreign interference that we have ever seen in the history of this country. We know that foreign interference is something that continues to grow around the world. To enable us to put full confidence in the integrity of the process and that there is no foreign interference in this really important decision that we're asking the Australian public to go and vote on, we would think that there should be provision of 'yes' and 'no' organisations through which we can monitor donations and foreign interference. It should be just as simple as finding an organisation through which we can determine how scrutineers will be able to be made available on the night of the counting of the ballots. It seems to me like this is a very simple and fundamental mechanism through which we can make sure that the ease, simplicity and streamlining of the delivery of this referendum could be assured. But, for some reason, those opposite—the government, are denying Australians the opportunity to have that particular provision. The third matter that we're particularly concerned about is the fact that there's no funding available for these independent 'yes' and 'no' organisations that will be the vehicles through which we would be able to operate the integrity of this particular referendum. In the absence of any 'yes' and 'no' organisations and, therefore, in the absence of any funding to any 'yes' and 'no' organisations, we are left with half-baked bill here that seeks to provide a half-baked act. It does not afford the greatest amount of support and integrity to this system. As I said in my original remarks, the integrity of the referendum is based on the information that is received by the voters, and consistency with precedent is something that should also give voters great confidence—that this government is taking this really seriously and is not using this mechanism to actually deliver a political argument. The reality is that this government has a bit of a track record so far of ticking and flicking election promises without any great regard for appropriate process or the integrity through which they seek to deliver it. So it's really disappointing, as we stand here today, after months of discussion and negotiation and the putting forward of an extraordinary amount of very good arguments for how the Australian public can maintain trust in the integrity of referenda in Australia going forward, that we sit here with a bill which is clearly seeking to politicise an opportunity because of the numbers those opposite have in the other place. And, sadly, they're obviously taking advantage of the numbers that they have here. I call on the government to seriously think about making sure that you are honest with the Australian public. Don't stand here with a referendum before us whilst you are basically leaning on one side of the scales and trying to influence the decision of the Australian public. I think that, if you're going to ask the Australian public to change our Constitution, you should be allowing them to do it in an environment that is completely open, without caveat and provided to them without political influence. I know that after tonight there will be a number of amendments put forward by a wide range of different parties in this chamber. The Labor Party, the Greens, many of the crossbench and, of course, the coalition will also be putting amendments forward in an attempt to see if we can make sure that this bill is actually going to deliver the kind of integral process that we believe is essential to ensure that the Australian public are given a fair and reasonable opportunity to make a change to their Constitution. The problem that I have is with the track record of this government so far while it has been in government over the last nine months. It is a government that has been pretty quick to backflip. They often don't very well think through the policy positions that they put forward. We saw a lot of headline rhetoric when we came into the election, and now we're seeing ticking and flicking of those particular election commitments, without any real regard for the consequences that sit behind them and the flow-on effects of those decisions. We know that many of their promises haven't been kept. We've seen broken promise after broken promise, and most often these promises have been broken because this government has not bothered to do the hard work to put in place the things that need to sit behind those headline promises to make sure that they're deliverable. Today we talked about 24/7 nurses in aged care. That's not deliverable, because the minister forgot to actually go out there and speak to the industry and realise that the workforce that was needed to deliver her election commitment just didn't exist. There were promises made about superannuation and franking credits: they weren't going to be touched. But somehow now they are. Of course, there were promises that your power bills were going to go down, and all we've seen is them going up. They come in here as a government and say: 'It's okay. We're not going to give you all of those protection mechanisms that have normally been afforded to referendums in the past. We just want you to trust us that it will all be fine.' Their track record so far shows that I wouldn't really be trusting this government, and that's why, as the opposition, we're saying to the government: 'If you want the Australian public to absolutely trust you, put out there transparently the things you're prepared to do to make sure that the integrity of this referendum is assured and that this is the bill through which you are able to do it. Come forward and support the people's right to vote, but support the people's right to a fair vote and to have the information that they need through the method and the mechanism that they are most able to understand so that, when they turn up at the polling booth, they have full information to make their decision.' I have to say that the most disappointing thing would be for this bill and this referendum to fail because Australians think the mechanism is either unfair or biased. It would be a significant failure of this place if it were actually the political interference in the process that was the reason why this particular bill did not get passed and the referendum ultimately didn't get up. I will reserve my right, as others have before me, to see what this final bill looks like after the amendments have been put to the chamber before I make a decision about how I intend to vote on it. Of course, there is much that could change over the coming days, with the amendments that are before us. As I said, I absolutely support the right of Australians to vote on important issues and to have their say on this particular issue, but I also support their right to have fair and unbiased information on which to base their decision when they go to the polls to vote in this referendum. I am absolutely a supporter of the appropriate mechanisms that this institution, the Parliament of Australia, has held proud since Federation, and I think that what we have before us today, what we are likely to see in the coming months and what we've seen from this government's behaviour in previous days is a government that's prepared to trash the convention that has led to this place being held in such high esteem for so long, in an attempt to tick and flick an election commitment. They are now prepared to provide a lopsided, one-sided approach to this. I hope the government will listen to the concerns that have been put forward—some very valid concerns in the contributions that have made in the second reading debate on this particular bill. I ask them, for the sake of the integrity of this place, for the sake of the integrity of our referendum process: please make sure that you provide a fair and balanced approach to this referendum. 19:25 Senator McDONALD 123072 Queensland The Constitution is the guiding document of the nation, and referenda to alter that document are among the most important discussions that we can have. It is the document that has seen Australia develop as the stable and functional society that we enjoy, and it is therefore critical that the government of the day provides comprehensive information to support both the 'yes' and 'no' cases to allow all Australians to make an informed decision. More than a quarter of all Australians were born overseas and almost half have a parent who was born overseas, so the production of this material in other languages is paramount to allow those for whom English is not their first language to make the same informed decision as others. If Labor is serious about a multicultural society, this should be a priority. In fact, today is Harmony Day, and we heard earlier from the minister about how important a multicultural society is to this government, yet the very demonstration of how that should happen has been called into question by their decision not to provide a multilingual pamphlet with the 'yes' and 'no' cases outlined. A neutral civic program—the pamphlet—allows Australians to consider their decision in an informed and deliberate manner away from the din of public debate, and I think this is critical because this is a serious decision. Despite the commentary from the Prime Minister about Australians being generous and how Australians should do this, it's not fair to expect Australians to make a decision of such import, to change our Constitution, without doing the work that is required. I've been reflecting on Senator Ruston's comments that the failure of this referendum will be sheeted home to how well this government has provided the clarity and transparency to make a decision. That is why this is so important. The coalition raised three major concerns with the draft bill. We wanted to restore the pamphlet to outline the 'yes' and 'no' cases, we wanted to establish official 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations and we thought it was appropriate that there be appropriate funding for these official organisations. I acknowledge the government's announcement that there will be both cases published on the pamphlet, but, of course, we have not yet seen that amendment to understand exactly what they intend to do. But it is fundamental to our society—to good, balanced decision-making for Australians—that we have informed voters, we have good process and we have consistent process aligned with the precedent of previous referenda. This pamphlet is vital to the consistency of referenda. As I said, we welcome the government's signals, but we do need to wait for the final amendment words. I'm also concerned about there being no plan to regulate donations to provide security and to promote a fair platform. Foreign intervention into critical decisions of national importance is a subject which is the matter of much discussion around the world, so it is important that this government also regulate donations and provide transparency about who is influencing the decisions that Australians make. If we were to have no pamphlet, it would be the first time since 1928. That is a dangerous precedent. A pamphlet has been required since 1912. We have had three referenda where there hasn't been a pamphlet—1919, 1926 and 1928—for three very good reasons. In 1919 there was insufficient time to produce a pamphlet— Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 74 ADJOURNMENT Migrant Resource Centre 74 19:30 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania Australia is often described as a multicultural country. We have for many years relied on skilled migration to support our growing economy, and this chamber has debated those benefits on many occasions. As a nation, we've relied on skilled migrants to help build and expand this country, from the postwar 10-pound Poms through to the thousands of workers, of over 30 nationalities, working on the original Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme in the fifties and the sixties. Australia has been fortunate to benefit from the migration. As an island, Australia is the ultimate migrant destination. It could be argued that, outside those of First Nations descent, every Australian, at some point in their family tree, is a migrant, and we come from a diverse range of countries and cultures. Migration is what has supported our economy for decades, and skilled migrants have helped to stimulate our economy through recessions and the fiscal challenges of most governments in this place. Migration is like moving out of the family home, but on a much larger scale. Do you remember what it was like to move out of home? Were you nervous or maybe excited? I suspect you were a little of both. Now imagine if the place you were moving to had an economic and social system that was not one you were familiar with, was a place that didn't often fully understand or recognise your social customs or was even a place where you struggled to understand or speak the language. While I acknowledge that this is the experience of many thousands of people every year and that many of them navigate it with resilience and grace, it's equally important to note that taking that leap can be destabilising, which is why it's crucial to have services in place like those provided by the Migrant Resource Centre of Northern Tasmania. The Launceston based, not-for-profit Migrant Resource Centre recently celebrated 40 years of service. That is four decades of support for Launceston and the region's expansive migrant community, who have come from all over the world to Tasmania. It provides welcoming and non-judgemental support for migrants, including services such as NDIS support and settling and social experiences. The organisation is led by CEO Ella Dixon, who has lived experience as a migrant herself—experience that has been crucial for the role. Ella was born in the Philippines and moved to Australia with her family in 1981, when she was a young girl. Ella says the overarching goal of the organisation is to facilitate independence, but what they provide is so much more. They provide non-judgemental support for migrants which allows them to succeed, find employment and contribute to Tasmania's social fabric. Ella describes it best when she says they do a raft of things to increase people's capacity to participate in life. While that might seem simple to some, it's the capacity for kindness of Ella Dixon and the Launceston Migrant Resource Centre that drives this organisation, because sadly, migrants often bear the brunt of racism and antisocial behaviour. But having a support network like the Launceston Migrant Resource Centre means migrants do not feel alone when they arrive in Tasmania, and it means they have someone to fall back on when they are navigating things such as finding employment, finding social networks or even traversing government systems like the NDIS. Launceston Migrant Resource Centre assists around 500 clients every year. Clients have come from countries such as Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Burma, Sierra Leone, Iran and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Migration is good for regional economies like those of Tasmania. Skilled migrants help address skill shortages and, by relocating, they stimulate the local economy and support small businesses. As we are all aware, there are great benefits in increasing the number of skilled migrants coming to Australia. It's one of the main themes to emerge when discussing the current jobs and skills shortage crisis that we face. Helping migrants navigate the cultural and social challenges of moving to a foreign country helps make their relocation so much easier. I'm in no doubt that the Migrant Resource Centre has been responsible for fostering healthy migrant populations in Tasmania and ensuring they have the capacity to succeed. I'm extremely grateful for the work the Migrant Resource Centre does. So, tonight, during Harmony Week, I want to formally thank everyone associated with the centre for their hard work and the worthy goals they pursue in assisting migrants to gain independence and settle into their new communities in Tasmania. Many are volunteers and they do it for the love of the job. So thank you very much, Ella and your team. I look forward to many more years of success of the Migrant Resource Centre. Asylum Seekers 75 19:35 Senator THORPE 280304 Victoria I recently had the honour and privilege of meeting a group of young Tamil refugees who have experienced the horrors of the genocide in Sri Lanka which continues to this day. I wish to read a statement that was written by a Tamil refugee to highlight their experience of this genocide as well as the ongoing violence suffered as a result of our immigration system, which is full of torture. This is his statement. I am 33 years old but only when I was 10 my father was killed. He was simply a fisherman and was contributing for the Eelam Tamils in our homeland. In 2009 in Mullivaikkal our own homeland, the so-called no fire zone. A zone the Sri Lankan government said was specifically made to not kill us. But the Sri Lankan government made all of us go to that area and continuously bombed, raped and massacred us till half of us were killed just for being Eelam Tamil. I am a witness to this. I was there and bombs were dropped only metres away. People were shot in front of me while they were still in the bunkers. It has been 10 years since I came to Australia full of hope that I would have a permanent and safe home. But whilst I am on Temporary Protection Visa and the announcement about permanent visas has been made, many of my friends are waiting. My friends are not sure and their mental health has decreased. We are worried as some have been admitted to the hospital with suicidal thoughts. We were forced out of our own homeland and came to a land where we have contributed to Australian society. Some have opened new businesses to help others. Only last year in November my friend died due to suicide with still an uncertainty of his future. We all want to have permanency. It has been more than 6 months since labour has come into power we were all so hopeful— What a joke!— but now we are again slowly losing hope. People on bridging visas are unable to marry, have a permanent job, start a business or even buy a house with our visas. We are scared we will be sent back and knowing that we will be detained and most probably continuously harassed. Our own homeland is being taken away and we have nothing to back to. We want to live with our families in Australia and bring them to safety. We all deserve peace in Australia and an acknowledgement of the ongoing genocide in our homeland Tamil Eelam. I have so much more to say but due to time constraints I have shortened my story. Thank you for listening to my story but this is the story of thousands of refugees who are currently either outside protesting or in Australia waiting for hope. COVID-19: Vaccination 75 19:39 Senator ANTIC 269375 South Australia The previous four ABS provisional mortality statistics data releases revealed 15.1 per cent, 16 per cent, 17 per cent and 17.3 per cent increases in excess deaths above the baseline average. Clearly something serious—I would say 'catastrophic'—is occurring in Australia and in other parts of the world. And yet, strangely, the censorship industrial complex—namely, the mainstream media and the health departments in this country—is almost entirely unconcerned about investigating this dramatic increase in excess deaths and why they may be taking place. ABS data released in 31 March 2021 dealing with data throughout 2020, the first year of the pandemic, reads as follows: 141,116 doctor certified deaths occurred between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020 and were registered by 28 February 2021. This equates to an average of 385.6 deaths per day, in line with the baseline average of 385.8. Basically, the mortality rate didn't significantly rise in 2020 but drastically rose throughout 2022 after most of the population were injected with an mRNA shot for COVID. To put it another way, Australia had 141,116 recorded deaths in 2020 and 174,717 recorded deaths in 2022, an increase of 33,601 deaths. That's over the baseline average. I recall a lot of noise from the media and health departments in 2020 about every single COVID case and the associated deaths in the entire country. So I'm curious as to why the censorship industrial complex is so uninterested in the number of excess deaths that we're currently seeing post the vaccine rollout. One would have thought that this would be a cause for great alarm. COVID-19 was associated with 8,824 deaths from January 2022 through to November 2022, which doesn't necessarily mean in each case people died from it but that in some instances they died with it, meaning another 14,062 of the excess deaths were not associated with the virus. What could possibly be driving this increase that isn't COVID that was around that time in 2022? This trend is not isolated to Australia. Last year the Scottish parliament announced an inquiry into excess deaths in Scotland since the start of the pandemic, citing an 11 per cent increase in excess deaths. Many European countries have also seen dramatic increases since the start of 2020 that simply cannot be dismissed as 'long COVID'. Eurostat, the official statistical office of the European Union, recently published an article which read: Excess mortality in the EU in December 2022 soared to +19% of the average number of deaths for the same period in 2016-2019, the highest recorded value in 2022. According to Eurostat, Germany saw a 37.3 per cent increase in deaths compared to their 2016 to 2019 average. For France it was 24.5 per cent. In the Netherlands it was 22.7 per cent. In Ireland it was 25.4 per cent. Again, the censorship industrial complex and the health departments seem largely unperturbed by what, to me, looks like a global catastrophe. Over the in US, the CDC's data revealed 300,000 excess deaths above the baseline average which were not actually attributable to COVID-19. Given the hysteria and fear propaganda we experienced two to three years ago, surely such incredibly high excess deaths across the world would spark some interest? Is it due to long COVID? Is it due to climate change? Maybe it's systemic racism and white supremacy! Who knows? If there was some way of determining a common factor between all of these deaths, like, for example, if they received a particular medical treatment, that would provide some clarity as to what's causing this phenomenon and perhaps help us save some lives. Of course, there is a way of determining this and getting to the bottom of what's happening. It's just that your health bureaucrats, politicians and blinkered corporate media handmaiden journalists don't want you to know. Tasmania: Employment 76 19:44 Senator TYRRE 300639 Tasmania LL (—) (): Bureaucrats are costing investment in Tasmania and Tasmanian jobs all because they keep changing the goal posts. There are some projects in Tassie that have been gathering dust on the desks of state and federal ministers for five years. It's been five years since they submitted their paperwork, and they still can't get any developments approved. Some of them do get an approval though, and, just while they're popping the champagne, along comes a new email with a new condition—a new hoop to jump through. So they drop everything to go back to the bureaucrats; they blow out the time line, and the project keeps grinding its gears. Businesses are getting to the end of a marathon, and the finish line is in sight, but, just when they're about to break that ribbon, it gets yanked back another few hundred metres. They're always told, 'It's with the minister,' or, 'It's with the department,' and that's where it stays—in that black hole of bureaucracy. I'm not saying companies shouldn't have to go through the checks and balances for these major projects. Of course they should. We have guidelines in place for a reason. But they're decision guidelines because, at some point, you're supposed to make a decision. Now, I'm not naive. Things don't move quickly in political circles. But some projects are over five years in, have spent millions of dollars and still haven't turned a sod of dirt. This red tape is holding up projects for years. It's costing us hundreds of potential jobs. Take the proposed tailings dam at MMG. When you talk to the locals in Rosebery, they're all for it. They know the town needs the mine. They're one and the same. You can't have one without the other. Every time I go to visit, it seems like another shop has closed down. The mine has hundreds of employees, most of whom drive in and out every week for work, and, without the mine, the place would be a ghost town. If a decision on the project isn't made by the state and federal governments soon, the decision will be made for them, because it will be too late. MMG says the mine and the 500 jobs with it will not survive beyond 2024 without this new tailings storage solution, but they haven't got a decision, and crunch time is closing in. Jacqui and I can't get a straight answer about who exactly is holding up the process. The state government says it's the feds. The federal government says it's the state. It's the same with the Robbins Island wind farm, down Circular Head way. ACEN renewables spent more than four years working with the environment protection agency. They worked to try and make sure the project could still go ahead without hurting the environment. Out of the blue, they've been hit with a condition that says they have to shut down for five months of the year. Find me any business, any industry, that can shut down for five months of the year and not operate at a loss. It's ridiculous! It's like a business getting approved to operate as long as it agrees to go bankrupt. The project is going through an appeals process about this five-month condition. That's more time and more delays. They won't wait forever; they can't. But if we lost them, we'd be losing up to 400 construction jobs and 65 ongoing jobs. I've spoken to three world-class businesses who want to bring work to Tasmania. These are large projects with hundreds of jobs attached and a lot of money behind them. They want to be here, and we need them. But they're worried. They've seen what's happened with other projects. They don't want to get years in and have nothing to show for it. They need to get moving now. These businesses are really questioning if it's worth their time and money to build in Tassie. We need to find ways to cut the red tape, to stop moving the goalposts and to stop adding track to the end of the marathon. No business can afford to spend five years and millions of dollars trying to get a project up and then, even if they do, risk getting approved with conditions that make it impossible to operate anyway. Who would invest in Tasmania if we've got bureaucrats doing everything they can to make the process as painful as possible? We aren't the only state that needs investment. We're just the only state that makes it impossible to invest here. International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance 77 19:48 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia Earlier this month, a motion in the House of Representatives included an acknowledgement of the rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia of more than 40 per cent since 2020. It also acknowledged the work that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance does to promote Holocaust remembrance and combat antisemitism, and the need to reaffirm the House's commitment to the great work over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism and the compelling justifications behind this working definition. Reviewing that discussion in the other place, this significant rise in antisemitic behaviour and the important advances that have been made in defining 'antisemitism' causes me tonight to stand up in the Senate and add my support to that motion supported in the House of Representatives. In indicating my support for that motion, I also indicate the importance of highlighting the work that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance does to promote education about the Holocaust and counter antisemitism. The 40 per cent figure I referred to earlier—actually 41.9 per cent, almost 42 per cent—was reported by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who utilised the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism to record the trend. The SBS recently published an article detailing some of the specific instances of anti-Jewish bigotry and listed everything from vandalism to assault. The article reported cases like Orthodox Jewish men in Melbourne being verbally abused and physically assaulted, with their religious garments forcibly removed. That happens in Australia. In another instance a Jewish man in Sydney's Bondi was told he did not belong in the area, before having his hat taken from his head and thrown to the ground. That happens in Australia. In the 2022 federal election we witnessed appalling vandalism on advertisements of Jewish candidates from both major parties. These problems sadly extend also to our university campuses. As the member for Berowra noted in the other place a few weeks ago, universities are becoming the epicentre of the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment, even in Australia. There are instances where extremist groups of the Left and Right join forces to attack Israel and Jewish people more generally. In accordance with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition on antisemitism, hostility towards the legitimacy of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to statehood is ultimately an act of antisemitic hate. It can be too easy to focus only on the numbers and statistics on issues and matters like these, so we must ensure we recognise that it is a shocking reality. It is the only way we can hope to understand the deeply personal affront it is to the dignity of the Jewish community and, by extension, the dignity to our own country. Take a moment to consider some elements of our own identity that shape us: our religious views, our cultural heritage, our personal beliefs. The idea of being targeted, silenced or assailed for any of these values and traits is contrary to the Australian spirit. Our identity as a nation is one of acceptance, as a country built on the work of migrants from all over the world. Belonging in Australia is not about where you come from but rather who you are. One of the contributors to this rising antisemitism is a lack of education. Last year, Deakin University found that 24 per cent of Australians over the age of 18 have little to no knowledge of the Holocaust. Only half could correctly identify the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. It is why the work of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is so critical in this endeavour. Through providing educational resources, policy advice and intergovernmental cooperation, it helps to better inform our community. In order to tackle the problem meaningfully, we must first define it. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has built this definition as a means of specifying what antisemitism continues to be so that we can do more to identify it and prevent it in our own communities and suburbs. The mission of remembering the Holocaust and doing all we can to counter the very discrimination that led to some of the darkest moments of our humanity remains essential. Each year it becomes more important as the number of survivors of the Holocaust dwindles. When the last survivor passes on, the responsibility falls to all of us to ensure that their story is not forgotten. Ipswich 78 19:53 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland Before I start on my contribution, I'd like to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Smith in that regard. Indeed, I think it is a great think that this country, with the support of both governing parties, has adopted the definition of antisemitism set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. I think that is a very, very positive thing, and we should be proud of that unity. I'm going to speak about a place in Queensland called Ipswich. As I was about to get up to make my remarks— Senator Watt 245759 Switch! Senator SCARR 282997 and I was hoping to grab your attention too, Senator Watt—I was thinking there are some similarities between the infrastructure requirements for Ipswich and those for the Central Coast of New South Wales. There is a large population that needs to travel quite often to the central business district or in your case to Sydney, Madam Acting Deputy President O'Neill, as a former member for Robertson. In the case of Ipswich, there is a big population that needs to travel to the capital of Queensland—namely, Brisbane. So I'm pleased that you are in the chair to hear my remarks in this respect. I'm also pleased Senator Watt's here to hear my remarks, and I'm always pleased when Senator Ciccone's here. It's just a pleasure to have him around. It's a great thing that today there was a delegation from the great city of Ipswich that came to Canberra to make some representations to both sides of politics in relation to, amongst other things, the Ipswich to Springfield Central Public Transport Corridor. I know that they had some meetings with the minister's office. I would first like to acknowledge the members of the delegation: the Deputy Mayor of Ipswich City Council, Jacob Madsen; Councillor Sheila Ireland; Mr Dan Heenan from the public administration of Ipswich City Council; Mr Taku Hashimoto, a representative of Sekisui House, which is the developer of one of Queensland's fastest-growing suburbs, Ripley; Ms Christine Castley, a representative of Multicultural Australia—and I should note Ipswich has a very large multicultural community; and the President of the Ipswich Show Society, Mr Darren Zanow, who has done a tremendous job as president of that show society. Congratulations to the delegation. I'm sure their representations to other members of this place and of the lower house were as persuasive as the representations that they made to me. Their representations fell on fertile ground when it came to this senator—in particular their representations with respect to the necessity of the Ipswich to Springfield Central Public Transport Corridor. I was very pleased that prior to the last federal election both the previous government—through its decision and its input into the South-East Queensland City Deal—and the then opposition, now the government, supported $10 million being allocated for studies for the Ipswich to Springfield Central Public Transport Corridor. I want to outline why this is such an important piece of infrastructure and why it needs to be built as quickly as possible. As I said, Madam Acting Deputy President O'Neill, I'm sure you'll be able to draw analogies with your area on the New South Wales Central Coast—well, now your area is the whole of New South Wales, of course. I just want to quote from the strategy paper which was released in 2020 in relation to this proposal: 'Connectivity and transport inequality is creating disadvantage across Ipswich. Ipswich is currently serviced by two heavy rail lines and several suburban bus lines. The rail lines are not connected, and only one of the services provided in Ipswich is high frequency. The existing public transport provision in the Ipswich local government area is not servicing the region efficiently, with close to 40 per cent of residents dissatisfied with the available public transport services.' So what does this mean in practice? When you consider the arithmetic in this regard, it is quite profound. In the strategy paper, it is described as a '$1.4 billion per annum congestion problem'. The impact of not delivering critical new transport infrastructure is demonstrated in the cost-of-the-problem analysis. It found that the estimated cost of total congestion in the study area would be $466 million per year in 2026, rising to $1.4 billion per year in 2036. Just reflect on that. This is the cost as a result of congestion—cars on roads—because the public transport is not sufficient to service the growing population of the Ipswich region. That congestion cost is predicted to rise to $1.4 billion per year in 2036 if nothing is done. That is why it is so pleasing that in the South-East Queensland City Deal, on page 23, there's a reference to the $10 million of commitment from three levels of government and from both major parties in this country, which is a great thing. I'd like to take this opportunity to also personally acknowledge the role that the Hon. Paul Fletcher played in ensuring that this Springfield to Ipswich transport corridor was contained in the South-East Queensland City Deal. Thank you very much. I went through the presentation which was delivered earlier today by the representatives of the City of Ipswich, and it is just profound when you look at the growth in population that is occurring in this wonderful area of Queensland, which Senator Ayres should take the opportunity to visit as soon as possible. I'm sure he'll be extremely impressed with this area of Queensland. I'll just let you know the figures in relation to population and job growth in this fastest growing city in Queensland. It is estimated that between 2011 and 2041 there will be an extra 416,000 people in this region—nearly half a million extra people in this region—and an extra 65,000 jobs. This is one of the fastest growing areas in Queensland, but it needs infrastructure to support that growth. At the earliest opportunity after I was elected as a senator, I escaped from the central business district of Brisbane and moved my office to one of the fastest growing areas of Australia—namely, the Ipswich region. My office is in a wonderful place called Springfield, in Queensland—Springfield City. Everyone is invited to come along and visit me in Springfield. It's a great place. The reason I did that was so I had a better appreciation of the issues facing the people in what we refer to as the south-west corridor of Queensland, the fastest growing region in Queensland. When you speak to the people, the local residents, they tell you what they need: more roads, more rail and more bridges. Road, rail and bridges are the issues. Transport infrastructure is what the people need. If we're going to provide opportunities for young families to buy homes at affordable prices, we need to develop and provide the infrastructure in regions like Ipswich. The Ipswich central to Springfield central public transport corridor is a crucial piece of infrastructure. Nine stations would need to be constructed between Ipswich central and Springfield central to close that rail loop in this part of Queensland. I'd also like to make it clear that it is so important for the people of Ipswich to have the same opportunities to access services, jobs and study as other people in Queensland, and they need the public transport to assist in that endeavour. I would like to pay my regards to Multiculture Australia for their work in relation to the Redbank Plains Community Centre. Multiculture Australia has done a great job in terms of promoting what's referred to as the Redbank Plains Community Centre. That community centre provides a great service to the people of Redbank Plains. In their social impact assessment of that area, they found that some of the major issues were limited public transport, isolation, mental health pressures, financial pressures and pressures of rapid growth. That's why they need this infrastructure. Lastly, I'd also like to pay tribute to the wonderful president of the Ipswich Show Society, Darren Zanow. They have a proposal to construct a convention centre on the Ipswich showgrounds, which would be connected by this public transport corridor. I think that's an idea that deserves a lot of close attention. It was wonderful to see the delegation from Ipswich. They presented their case well. Let's get the Ipswich-to-Springfield transport corridor done. Queensland: Floods 79 20:03 Senator McDONALD 123072 Queensland The most recent flood in northern Australia has seen floodwaters extend from the gulf south for hundreds of kilometres. The complete lack of interest and support from this federal government is shocking, and it is frankly distressing. In opposition, Minister Murray Watt was full of advice on the speed of response and what the government should do—all advice that he has now completely forgotten. As Australians we care about this region. It grows a huge amount of food and extracts significant resources. It is a critical front line of defence for Australia. Yes, it has only a few communities, but they are proud communities. Flooding is not new, and neither should the government's response be. Owners of the Tirranna Springs Roadhouse 34 kilometres south-west of Burketown, Jill and Tim Wilson, their children, Hunter, six, and Holly, four, and their brother-in-law Mick Wilson, were rescued off the back of a truck by a mustering chopper. They have lost their home and their business. The fences are flattened or missing. The generators and pumps are gone. Their home and business is saturated and all their hard work of the past five years lies covered in mud. Three horses, pigs, poddy calves and poultry were all drowned. Now they're worried about the insurance company paying the $3.2 million dollar reconstruction bill. I can tell you other stories. At Roxborough Station a young woman, Courtney McMillan, has done a terrific job talking about what they have done: building a levee around their property to protect the homestead, the station workers' quarters and a little bit of their country there. At Urandangi, the floodwaters swept that town away. There are stories like this right across the top of North Queensland and into the Northern Territory. There are people who have been rescued and plucked out of the waters by mustering helicopters. Neighbours have used heavy equipment to build defence walls and come to the aid of others, and communities have come together. In 2019, we learnt lessons from flooding in the north. When the north-west monsoon event happened, we learnt lessons and we learnt them fast. Disaster relief payments were made quickly. We didn't have to wait that week or more until that $1,000 per person and $400 per child was announced by the emergency services minister. The Prime Minister came and the Defence Force was called in. The Army choppers dropped fodder to save stock, and 150 Australian Defence Force members were involved. There were 70 working in Richmond, Julia Creek and Cloncurry. They delivered 32,000 litres of fuel to affected communities using transport aircraft. Defence planners and advisers worked with local, state and federal government at Julia Creek. The ADF team included three engineering officers, an aviation officer, a vet, a logistics officer and an environmental health specialist. The RAAF delivered personal protective equipment and fuel drums where needed. The local transport department, finally, got approvals made to allow stock washed up against fences to be buried. The coalition pledged $3.1 billion in aid all up for North and north-west Queensland. So why didn't the Queensland government ask for help this time? Why didn't they ask for the Army to be called in? People are angry. They're asking: 'Where are the Premier's regular press conferences? Where's the Prime Minister?' They're saying to me, 'Cattle don't vote,' and they're feeling abandoned. It doesn't matter what the government says it's doing; it's the perception of the people on the ground that's damning. That is important. We have to address this debacle that is preventing people from accessing funds. It's been nearly a week to allow them to release the special $1,000 payments for people who have lost everything—whose houses have gone, whose motor vehicles are underwater and who can't get work. What is needed now? Most immediately, we need mechanics to go on to remote communities, stations and other places to repair generators, to get the power back on, to fix farm equipment, to get Toyotas and other equipment running. I thank, most sincerely, the civilian mechanics from as far away as Toowoomba who have volunteered their services. We are truly grateful. In the future, we have to start thinking about what the infrastructure requirements are. Normanton had been cut off since 3 January because of the wet season. Can you imagine saying to Canberra: 'Giddy-up everybody. You will be out of contact for at least two months. You will not be able to drive out of this town, because of seasonal floodwaters'? Yet, that is what the people of Normanton are facing. We need better culverts. We need the Burke and Wills Roadhouse and the adjoining airstrip sealed, and we need wet season drops of 5,000 litres of diesel and 5,000 litres of jet fuel just to start to make sure that we have a launching pad for floods in the far north region of Queensland. That's because these communities are cut off every year. Kowanyama was cut off for six months of last year. Six months! Where else in Australia is that acceptable? I can tell you: nowhere else. They need that road sealed and they need bridges built up to cross rivers, allowing for longer crossing periods. I'm afraid that the strength of being resilient, which is what happens in North Queensland and other parts of northern Australia, is also a weakness. Regional people have learned just to get on with it and not wait for help, but it's not good enough to let these people be isolated each wet season and then completely forgotten in a flood event. Regional and remote Australians are used to having to go to each other's aid and looking after themselves, and this flood has proven no different. I could stand here for hours and tell stories of neighbours assisting neighbours. I could tell you of families rescued, of moving stock and of properties protected. The importance of northern Australia must be reflected in this government's policy-making and planning, and I'm afraid that it is sadly, sadly lacking at present. The northern Australian minister couldn't even be bothered to comment to the media about these floods, and Senator Watt turned up last Friday. The latest media release from the minister for northern Australia about northern Australia was on 2 February. There has been radio silence since. And that 2 February media release was about the floods in north-western Australia; there has been nothing about the Territory and nothing about North Queensland. Why? What signal does it send if the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia doesn't even care about these things? It's sad that this Labor government spent years politicising natural disasters and demanding that more be done, and yet when the responsibility lies with them they're missing in action and full of excuses for why they're doing less. After so zealously and viciously attacking the coalition's response to the Lismore floods, you'd think Labor might get its own house in order. It takes a special level of hubris to follow such strident criticism with what they've offered in north-western Queensland. We know that state and federal Labor do not care about the regions. We know that they will not fight for regional communities, and these recent flooding events have just highlighted that once again. People feel that Labor went missing in action when regional Queensland faced a crisis. Why is it that the Premier can so quickly respond to floods in South-East Queensland, a region full of Labor seats, but takes time to say anything else about regions they don't hold any seats in? When people have been through a disaster like this they need to feel that their government is standing with them. When they don't see any serious presence by the Prime Minister or the Premier, how do you think they feel? Why have they not been to Burketown, to Doomadgee or to Urandangi to offer real assistance to the people in need there? Is it because there's no red carpet to roll out and no flashy press conference? Why is Murray Watt not calling out the Queensland Premier for not visiting these towns and communities? I could quote Murray Watt all night, but in his very own words: … no more excuses, no more obfuscation, no more blaming the states, just taking responsibility and delivering. (Time expired) Cost of Living 81 20:13 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland I've said it before in this chamber and I'll say it again: hypocrisy is just the latest virtue of Green-Left activists and politicians to signal, and there's nothing more hypocritical than the destructive climate change ideology. The price of this hypocrisy is being paid right now by the Australian people, not by the Green-Left politicians themselves. This self-appointed elite is doing just fine, thank you very much. They don't give a damn that their actions are destroying this country and hurting the people who live in it. The rising cost of living in Australia is literally forcing families into homelessness and greater debt, and into making greater sacrifices to keep their children fed and in school. The biggest component in the rapid inflation we're experiencing in Australia is soaring energy costs. Labor lied directly to the Australian people. No government in Australian history has more rapidly broken a promise than Labor's pledge at the election last year to reduce household energy bills. Labor knew it couldn't deliver the promise and they never had any intention to try, because it was totally incompatible with their obsession with reducing human-caused carbon dioxide emissions in Australia. This is nothing new. Energy bills have risen around 300 per cent since the large-scale penetration of renewable energy began some 20 years ago. It is no coincidence that, as more wind forms blighted the landscape and more solar panels were installed in wealthy homes, all with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer support, the energy bills paid by less fortunate Australians went up and up and up. And it's only getting worse. It's these same people now looking at a 56 per cent rise in electricity costs and a 40 per cent rise in gas costs over the next two years thanks entirely to the green left obsession with human CO2 emissions. This obsession, pushed on by the corrupt UN and the IPCC, is also forcing the reliable power generated from coal and gas out of the system, and our energy-rich country now faces serious shortages that will cripple farming and industry while leaving households in the cold this coming winter. What do the Australian people get in return for the enormous price they are forced to pay? Surely all this tremendous sacrifice and pain in Australia is achieving what the green left hypocrites say is their intention: to save the world from temperature increases, sea level rise, droughts, floods and cyclones. The short answer is that it's achieving nothing at all. Ninety-seven per cent of the world's CO2 comes from nature: from the soil, from the sea, from volcanoes. Only three per cent is caused by humans, and Australia's contribution is barely one per cent of that three per cent. Tell me how the hell shutting down our coal, gas and fossil fuel use is going to compete with more than a million volcanoes above and below the ocean's surface? To state some facts for you: the IPCC use the unique chemical fingerprint of carbon dioxide in the air to determine the amount of human emissions from burning fossil fuels, gas, stubble, timber, forests and peat. However, there is just one slight problem: the carbon chemical fingerprint of carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans from past volcanic activity and later released to the air by ocean degassing is the same as that released from the burning of fossil fuels and vegetation. Now they're attacking our cattle. I'd be more worried about solar cycles and the occasional impact event than farting cows! No amount of money or sacrifice can change this. None of this matters to the green left hypocrites looking down on us from their energy-intensive mansions, their fuel-guzzling four-wheel-drives that never see a dirt road and their high-polluting private jets. They just continue with the lie that, unless Australians act as they dictate, the entire planet is doomed. They lie while reaping the dividends from taxpayer money invested in this global green scam based on faulty computer models, doing their best to scare Australians into giving them their misinformed votes. Why don't Labor and the Greens condemn China, which emits more CO2 in two weeks than Australia does in a whole year and is planning to build 1,000 new coal power plants? Can you imagine the idiot activists who are vandalising works of art and gluing themselves to roads in Australia going to China to do the same? Neither can I. That's because they're not only hypocrites but pathetic, gutless cowards too. For them, China deserves leeway as a developing nation. Never mind it has the world's second-largest economy, nuclear weapons and an active space program. This green Left hypocrisy is on display in so many ways. Thousands of hectares of natural vegetation are cleared to build wind farms. Massive environmental damage is caused by producing the materials used for wind turbines, solar panels and rechargeable batteries. They refuse to even consider permitting the use of one of the low-emission technologies that will deliver reliable energy—nuclear power, which is safely used in 30 countries around the world. Despite the fact that global CO2 emissions continue to rise, this hasn't even remotely led to the disasters we were promised by the green Left prophets of doom. Remember when Tim Flannery promised that our dams would run dry and our coasts would be permanently flooded by the sea? Our dams are full and our coasts remain exactly as they were. In a radio interview in March 2011 Flannery also implied that so call climate action was futile. He said: If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years … These green Left prophets of doom were big on wild scaremongering. We were promised that huge storms of unprecedented intensity would destroy our homes and infrastructure. That hasn't happened. Storms are no worse than they ever were and, in fact, have become less intense in the past 50 years. These are the hypocrites for which the Australian people are being forced to pay and sacrifice so much. Yet it's not enough for the green Left political elite who can't even tell us what net zero actually means. It's never enough for the gutless activists. They will not be satisfied until Australia is a Third World country in which only they are secure and comfortably well off. They're already destroying what's left of Australian manufacturing, crippling it with energy shortages and high energy costs and allowing it to be held hostage by union thugs. They're already killing off mining industries, which have been a mainstay of our economy for centuries and employ hundreds of thousands of Australians. They're already attacking our world-leading agricultural industries, taking away their water and forcing higher production input costs on farmers—that is when they're not selling off our land to foreign interests. I despair for the future of this country held captive by the green Left while they work their hardest to make everyone poorer and more dependent on government handouts under the guise of saving the planet. It's the Australian people who need saving from this hypocrisy and patronising arrogance. Energy policy must prioritise affordability, reliability and resilience, not reducing the human pool of CO2. Energy policy must prioritise the use of a range of technologies, from renewables through to nuclear, to make sure that we don't put all our eggs in one basket. Energy policy must leverage the advantages provided by our abundance of natural resources—coal, natural gas and uranium. Energy policy must put Australia and Australians first, not loyalty to the cult of climate change. Like all cults, the cult of climate change is ultimately about utilitarian control. Climate change is used as an excuse to control energy production, control manufacturing, control travel and freight, control trade, control food production and control water supply. When this is achieved they will have total control of the people. They will control where we live, the work we do and even the food we eat. Today's report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spells it out. The UN Secretary-General's statement was full of the language of doom. He demanded that countries like Australia place more controls and restrictions on energy production. Are we listening to them? No, we're not and shouldn't. We should stand up for ourselves and— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 296215 Thank you, Senator Hanson. Senator Roberts? Capitalism 82 20:24 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland I speak as a servant to the many different people who make up our amazing one Queensland community. I have not yet had a chance to make fun of Treasurer Jim Chalmers's ode to soviet glory titled 'Capitalism after the crisis', so let me start there. A Treasurer with no real-world business experience, no firsthand knowledge of free markets and no life outside the machine of politics has decided to tear down Australia's economic system and rebuild it—hammer in one hand and sickle in the other. Reinventing capitalism is not visionary, as Jim Chalmers hopes; it's a cliche. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 296215 Senator Roberts, can I just remind you to address people in the other place by their correct titles. Senator ROBERTS 266524 Mr Jim Chalmers? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 296215 I believe he's the Treasurer. Senator ROBERTS 266524 Worse, it confuses political theory with economics. The Treasurer has studied only one of those, and it's not economics. Mr Jim Chalmers has studied political science and now sees every problem as a political one. The Treasurer knows nothing about economics and clearly dismisses the need for it. How ironic that Mr Jim Chalmers's now legendary article opens with a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitis, when he says: No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it's not the same river, and he's not the same man. What? It's not without merit that Heraclitis is known as the 'obscure philosopher'. This nonsense may make the Treasurer sound smart at a dinner party for pseudo-intellectual lefties, yet, to everyday Australians struggling with the rising cost of living, falling real wages and a housing shortage, it's nothing more than intellectual masturbation. When you hear 'command capitalism' from the Treasurer, what he's really saying to the Australian people is this: 'I don't trust you. I don't respect your choices. I don't recognise your freedom. Everything you have belongs to the state, and you will do as we command.' Commentators refer to this fantasy as Jimbonomics. That's their view. In reality, it's about threat, force and regulation designed to herd businesses into supporting fringe activism that rewards the elites at the expense of everyday people. It's about control over 'we the people'. Rather than the state owning everything directly, all the wealth in the Treasurer's economy will be owned by the billionaires that own the UN and the World Economic Forum. Already, woke politics has engineered a rapid descent of employee privacy, with governments ranking businesses based upon the race, religion, sexual preference, gender and disability of their staff. Human beings have become commodities in the implementation phase of the great reset, the new world order. The recent Workplace Health and Safety Amendment Bill 2023 from this government actually requires an employer to know the vaccine status of their employees and to bar those people from the workplace if they are not vaccinated—inhuman. Pfizer says, 'Cheers for that bill. Thank you.' Treasurer Chalmers has lit a fire at the heart of parliament that seeks to destroy everything good and prosperous that everyday Australians, across the 235 years of Western settlement in Australia, have built. As many have said in criticism of the Treasurer's treatise on communism, there can be no democracy without capitalism, and there is no capitalism without the free market. It's time we started asking if Labor is planning on reimagining democracy itself. Is it? The Albanese government have introduced legislation that clearly shows this is their intention, so at least the Treasurer has been honest about his intentions. Listen to this. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022 was nationalising the gas industry. The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023 represents the government distorting the free market, taking it upon themselves to direct investment in manufacturing, using government money, and to stop key investments in our future. The Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022 imposes egregious controls on industry, with ministerial direction to provide all of the details in the future—unfettered power. I'm sick of these bills that are all shopping bag and no shopping. It's not the purpose of the state to give the government of the day a bill with nothing actually in it so the government can fill in all the important bits later, as it wants. Shame on the Greens and the teals for going along with this insult to the Westminster system of government. It must now be clear that George Carlin was absolutely correct: it's a club, and everyday people, everyday Australians, are not in it. Australians have never wanted the economy to be subservient to its political leaders. We have never wanted that. Command capitalism is anticompetitive. It allows the Albanese government to decide which Australian businesses get to succeed and which fail. Why does Mr Jim Chalmers feel the need to reinvent capitalism? Why does he feel that he is the first Treasurer in Australian history that must take this step off the cliff into the abyss? I'll tell you why. The free market doesn't like what Labor is selling. The Australian people do not want to spend their money on inferior eco-products and self-serving CEOs who, so long as they achieve their carbon dioxide footprint, would happily see Australian families starve or freeze. Net zero policies are all fun and games until the lights go off and the bugs are served cold because, well, gas is now selfish and the power has gone off again—so cold it is. Why is it that the only environments the Labor Party doesn't want to help are the investment environment and the human environment? If the market doesn't want Labor's globalist vision, then the Prime Minister and his Treasurer must accept that. They have no right, and they were not voted into power, to dismantle capitalism, reimagine it or duct tape it to a chair in the basement. It took Mr Jim Chalmers 6,000 words to explain that values based capitalism means, 'You will do as we say.' The Soviet Union fell 30 years ago, but Treasurer Chalmers is doing his best to drape its banners all over our parliament. Treasurer, give it up. Russia has. 'Jimbonomics', as some call it, will harm small and medium-sized businesses and transfer wealth to the people at the big end of town whose market power allows them to comply with the Treasurer's demands. To comply is easy for them: pass the cost on to the consumer. That's all. From the perspective of everyday Australians, green is the new red. From the perspective of the billionaires who shadow-wrote the Treasurer's opus, green is the new gold. The only part of the Treasurer's opus that was not lifted from the World Economic Forum's Great Reset was the part that was deliberately left out: you will own nothing and you will be happy. Who will own what everyday Australians are no longer allowed to own—the houses, cars, furniture and electronics? Why, it'll be the predatory billionaires for whom Jim Chalmers is just a mouthpiece. Commanding the market during COVID has wrecked the market. Wages are falling, inflation is out of control and economic activity is down. Exports have grown in countries that ran their economies better than we did. They have the demand and the economic strength. Now Jim Chalmers wants to use more command economics to get us out of the hole in which command economics has buried us. Australia will not survive a second round of abuse from a treasurer who is handsy with other people's money. Markets do not belong to Mr Jim Chalmers. They do not belong to the Labor Party. Markets belong to the people and their private businesses. They belong to Australians. The big business investors in whose pockets the Treasurer so often resides, bankers in particular, would like nothing more than to kill off their market competition and to bury the small and medium-sized businesses in a new mountain of controls and regulatory bondage. Their deaths will be celebrated in the name of saving the planet. Make no mistake: destroying small and medium-sized businesses is the goal, not the unintended consequence, of green politics. For Labor, dealing with a handful of powerful CEOs is easier than dealing with 10 million small directors. But those directors are the ones keeping Australia back from the brink of ruin. The safest economies in history have been the nimble free markets. It has been repeatedly proven. They adapt to disasters, bounce back after injury and seek out the best solutions for the future. Free markets are far smarter than Jim Chalmers. The beauty of free markets is that they are smarter by far than any individual or group, and sensible, honest people know this. Competent people know this. Jim Chalmers and his Soviet counterparts are too arrogant, or maybe too fearful, to understand that basic truth. The secret to being a truly great treasurer is to step back, relinquish power, cut regulation, lower taxes and let Australians do what Australians do best: lift themselves up through their own hard work and enterprise. Businesses are not ideological vessels to carry Labor's election slogans, tied to the Greens and the teals. Businesses are not fodder in the insatiable thirst for more money, more power and more influence from the billionaires at the World Economic Forum. It is about control. Shame on the Treasurer for reaching well beyond his mandate. Put your greedy paws back in your pockets. It's time for the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to tell their billionaire masters, 'No.' We have one flag, we are one community and we are one nation, founded as a penal colony. I'll be damned if the One Nation party will let you take us back there again. Senate adjourned at 20:34