2023-03-23 2 1 0 Senate 0 1

Thursday, 23 March 2023

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Sue Lines ) took the chair at 09:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.

DOCUMENTS 1 DOCUMENTS Tabling 1 COMMITTEES 1 COMMITTEES Meeting 1 09:01 The PRESIDENT 112096 I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. STATEMENTS 1 STATEMENTS Personal Explanation 1 09:01 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia I seek leave to make a personal explanation. Leave granted. Senator PRATT I0T Yesterday I accidentally posted a photo on my social media, which I am aware is not permitted within the standing orders. I apologise to the Senate for this. And I'll take this opportunity to correct the record on a statement I made to this place yesterday in relation to when the photos were deleted. I had deleted photos from my phone at the time I made that report. I learned that was not the case with those on the Instagram feed, which were made accidentally, because I didn't know of its existence. It has been deleted and I apologise to the Senate for this inadvertent misleading of the Senate. I'm taking the earliest opportunity this morning to clarify that statement. BILLS 1 BILLS Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023 1

Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023

Second Reading 1 09:03 Senator VAN 283601 Victoria Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. However, what we have seen in areas of the Northern Territory is the blatant disregard and blatant violation of this and of many, many more basic human rights. What is worse is that the violation of these rights has been fuelled by this government's incoherent, ideological driven and socially destabilising policies. After the last election, the Albanese Labor government made a choice—an active choice to do nothing and to let the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act 2012 lapse. This led the Territory Labor government to implement an opt-in model rather than an opt-out model, with communities not required to have any alcohol management plans in place. To be clear, this government, the Albanese Labor government, knew that the communities in the Northern Territory had problems with alcohol and alcohol-related violence, and the choice they made was to do nothing. By doing nothing they increased people's access to and the availability of alcohol. Not taking an action is a choice; we must remember that. The choice that the government made was to help fuel alcohol related violence in our most vulnerable communities. We see that this came true, after all the warnings that were given to them. There was an increase of 54 per cent of alcohol related assaults alone after this policy change. The explanatory memorandum states that the bill before us today, the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023, is: … a Bill for an Act to make provisions for all Territorians to be safe consuming and being exposed to alcohol and alcohol-related harm and violence in the Northern Territory. However, it is more than that. It is a bill that will undo the socially and economically destructive approach that the Albanese government has taken towards managing violence in the Northern Territory. This bill will reintroduce elements of the previous Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act, a legal framework to tackle alcohol abuse while putting in place requirements for the Northern Territory Labor government to work with communities to demonstrate a community driven alcohol management plan for a reinstated opt-out model. It will also, importantly, ensure safe measures are in place for consumers of alcohol, their children, families and communities, upholding the human rights of some of the most vulnerable citizens of Australia right across the Northern Territory. It will help do this by ensuring that the supply of alcohol is regulated, mitigating illegal alcohol supply and providing a framework for prosecution. If the fly in, fly out Prime Minister spent some actual time in these communities, he would see the harm that he caused by letting the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act lapse after the last election. But, no, we see that, with his last trip to Alice Springs, he managed to spend more time at the Australian Open across the following days than he did in the Territory. It was really just for a photo-op. Spending less than four hours in Alice Springs and then holding a press conference is not good enough. That is not leadership. It is clear he went there without an objective other than to get a photo. But that is a defining feature that we are learning about this government: they spend all their time making grandiose statements and make good sound bites for their social media pages that make them feel good, but when it actually comes to delivering outcomes and improving the lives of Australians they are failing at every step. As Senator Nampijinpa Price said in her second reading speech, this bill: … was drafted in response to calls from vulnerable community members across the Northern Territory and a letter that was dated 9 June, representing nine separate Aboriginal organisations, seeking urgent support from the federal Minister for Indigenous Australians after failed attempts at communicating these concerns with the Northern Territory Fyles government. Unlike many of the private senators' bills that we see coming from the Greens, or from Labor when they were in opposition, that are put forward to grandstand and make themselves seem relevant, this bill before us today is because of an urgent need that the government has been ignoring. The Australian Institute of Criminology has told us that there is strong evidence of an association between the consumption of alcohol and violence. This fact has been known for quite some time. My good friend and colleague pointed this out to this government from this place many, many times. All the statistics back this up. Alcohol related assaults in Alice Springs alone have risen by 54.6 per cent from December 2021 to December 2022, and property damage has increased by 59.6 per cent. Those opposite should let that sink in a bit. Under this government's watch alcohol related assaults in Alice Springs alone rose by 54.6 per cent. That is a damning statistic. Reports overnight show how effective alcohol restrictions can be. After some restrictions were lifted in January, youth disturbances declined by 36.36 per cent and unlawful entries across Alice Springs between 2 January and 30 January this year dropped by 45.96 per cent. Alcohol is a factor in domestic violence; it was down 27.7 per cent and had decreased in being a factor in 47 per cent of the 92 domestic violence incidents. And yet those opposite still decide to ignore the facts. They need to start listening to the experts and listening to the facts. They need to stop applying this ideologically driven approach to deal with what is a very complex and difficult matter. Senator David Pocock spoke earlier in this chamber on this bill and, while I disagree with his position on the bill, I agree with him when he said that fixing these issues will be long and hard and that this is a step in the right direction. This government cannot sit on their hands and do nothing anymore. There is all the talk of the Labor government wanting to implement an Indigenous Voice to the parliament, but I think it would be more pertinent and useful if they stopped ignoring the Indigenous voices that actually are in parliament. They're the elected representatives who are screaming out on behalf of their communities about what they want and what they need. Instead, those opposite ignore the very voices they say they need to listen to. The government must take urgent action to restore the rule of law. The federal government must provide law enforcement and social services resources to the Northern Territory to give the people of Alice Springs and other remote communities the law and order that they desperately need. The stories that we have heard coming out of Central Australia as a result of alcohol fuelled crime are heartbreaking. No-one should have to live in those conditions. I encourage everyone here to vote in favour of this bill for the good of all Australians. 09:12 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria I rise to speak on the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023. I would like to thank Senator Nampijinpa Price for providing an opportunity to us in this chamber to discuss the current situation in Central Australia. I want to thank her for sharing the experiences of her family in Central Australia, and for some of her personal reflections on some of the heartbreaking situations there. It isn't often in this place that we get to share concerns about the same matter, but in this instance we do. I also want to thank Senator Malarndirri McCarthy for her speech on this bill. Senator McCarthy spoke so openly about her experiences, and I thank her for her strength and for trusting us to share, in a small way, her story. We, as a country, are made stronger by having First Nations Australians in federal parliament, and I'm looking forward to seeing our numbers continue to grow as the years progress. It's important that First Nations voices are listened to in these debates. It is clear that there is work to do in the Northern Territory to make communities safer. More needs to be done to improve community safety and to support community members to thrive. We note that when you work with and listen to local communities that you achieve better outcomes. This bill is primarily a repackaging of the racist Stronger Futures legislation in that it imposes federal alcohol restrictions onto the Northern Territory. Since the lapsing of the Stronger Futures legislation last year, the Northern Territory government have legislated new alcohol restrictions and are getting on with the job of supporting Territorians. Alcohol restrictions are only one part of the solution, and the Northern Territory and Australian governments are working together to improve the underlying causes of community unrest. Communities on the ground are already seeing a difference. I know my colleague the member for Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour, is working extremely hard and closely with local community members and organisations to deliver the best results in the Northern Territory. This bill is superfluous. In fact, in the last sitting week, when this very bill was being debated, my newsfeed was flooded with some very interesting headlines, and I'll share some of those with this chamber this morning. The Australian had headlines suggesting that crime fell in Alice Springs after alcohol trials. The Daily Telegraph had, 'Crime plummets in Alice Springs after one month of alcohol restrictions'. And Sky News had 'Crime rates begin to decline in Alice Springs'. Senator Dodson tabled a report of the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs from its inquiry into community safety support services and job opportunities in the Northern Territory. I'm proud to be a member of this committee that is doing incredibly important work and I thank all witnesses who contributed to this inquiry. The inquiry was established in this very chamber to inquire into community safety, support services and job opportunities and the Northern Territory with particular reference to the preparation of the sunsetting of the Stronger Futures legislation, community safety and alcohol management, job opportunities and community development program reform, justice reinvestment community services and any related matters. These matters were considered together because we all know that alcohol restrictions are only one part of the problem. We need to work under the social and economic drivers of community unrest. The committee's final report states: It is clear to the Committee that the NT Government has sufficient legislative means to manage alcohol-related harm within its jurisdiction where there is the will to do so. This has been demonstrated by its recent legislative amendments to the Liquor Act 2019 (NT). It is the view of the Committee that this is the appropriate role of the NT Government (informed by the views of community), rather than the Commonwealth. These are the words of the joint committee of this parliament. Those opposite are already in agreement with that report. This bill is not necessary, it is not needed and it is mostly just a lot of hot air. May I suggest that Senator Nampijinpa Price start focusing on ways she can tangibly support her constituents—the community she is here to represent. May I suggest that the senator focuses her efforts on ways to support Territory residents. May I suggest that she has a word with her colleagues about the significant and hugely damaging cuts we saw in the last decade under the coalition government, because we know that these challenges in the Northern Territory did not arise overnight, certainly not just in the last 10 months; it is an accumulation of a decade of neglect. We know that the only solutions that work are ones that from the community, by empowering First Nations communities and working with them to find solutions. When we thrust solutions onto communities we know that those solutions do not work. We have seen under the previous government what it looks like when solutions do not come from First Nations communities, and I want to share just one example of what that is—the cashless debit card. It was a program crafted by the coalition without coming from the community. It was shown that it did not result in widespread or sustained benefits. It was poorly targeted, led to no discernible improvements in employment outcomes, it damaged financial management skills, led to social stigmatism and exclusion, and it increased stress, financial harassment and discrimination. The Albanese Labor government has already made solid inroads to ensuring any income-management programs are designed and managed according to what the communities say they need. Perhaps the senator could have a word with her colleagues about the $245 million cut from Indigenous housing under the Turnbull government, while the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found Indigenous children are at greatest risk when they are removed from their homes and their families, or the federal government's decision to cut funding into national family violence prevention and legal services, the peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander victim-survivors of family violence and sexual assault. Then Morrison cut a promised $10 million from the Indigenous students success program to support First Nations students who are financially disadvantaged and/or from remote and regional areas. And the list, of course, goes on. Maybe if there were a Voice to Parliament, the coalition would have been aware just horrendous these policies would end up being for First Nations communities but, unfortunately, the coalition does not listen to First Nations communities. 'A wasted decade' would be a generous term to describe the last coalition government's impact on First Nations people in this country. The coalition can't hear the gracious request for recognition and consultation, the simplicity of recognition and consultation in this country, being made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It is owed to First Nations communities in this country to listen—at the very, very least to listen. For far too long this place has told First Nations communities what was good for them. Now it's time to hear their voice. You have cut services, passed oppressive legislation, taking what meagre offerings were available to First Nations people, and defunded them. Now, it is time to listen to the impact of the cuts made over the last decade, and now is the time to hear them when they come to us with solutions. Instead of subjecting First Nations Australians to oppressive legislation like this that continues not to work, now is the time to listen. You're putting up legislation that is categorically redundant while the Closing the gap statistics are going backwards. Talk about not being able to focus our efforts in the right areas! You cut funding to the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services Forum, the peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander victims-survivors of family violence and sexual assault, and now you're saying that you want better outcomes for First Nations Australians but your only solution for that is to ban alcohol. Talk about tunnel vision! We're trying to fix the mess that you've left and undo the massive damage you have inflicted on First Nations communities right across the country. This government is here to hear the voices and move forward with real actions that put communities first. The Albanese Labor government has already invested $250 million in a better, safer future for Central Australia. We're focusing investment on those who need it most. We're getting on with the job and working collaboratively with the Northern Territory government. We're certainly not trying to tell them how to suck eggs with legislation that is not actually necessary. We're investing in our youth through on-country learning, improving school attendance and increasing completion rates through caring for culture and country. Moreover, we're investing in youth engagement and diversion programs. Labor is investing in families, listening and supporting elders and parents and boosting domestic violence services. Labor is working to address and prevent Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders through better responses within both the health and justice systems. Labor is working to relieve the stress on the Alice Springs healthcare services by improving the services in surrounding communities. We're creating jobs focusing on and around Alice Springs, making changes to current programs to make them work for communities. On top of that, this government is also investing an additional $48 million in community safety measures, including support for domestic violence services and support for young people to access safe places and support at night. It is through empowering communities and investing in support services and local stakeholders that we will improve outcomes. Getting young people off the streets and into homes will have a direct impact on breaking the cycle that some are in. Giving them the stability to reach out for help and guidance will have significant and positive impact on their lives. We are hearing the voices of the community and we know that we can do more, but, to ensure the voices of First Nations people are heard, we are fully committed to delivering a successful referendum on a voice to parliament this year. It's about giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a say in matters that affect them and their communities. It's really that simple. It's about creating practical and lasting change that will lead to better policies and improve the lives of First Nations people in areas like health, education and housing. And, if those opposite really cared about those things, they would be supporting the referendum. Whilst the opposition have sought to distract attention from the core purpose of the Voice, Uncle Pat, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Minister Linda Burney, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and many, many others continue to share information about what the Voice is about—two simple things: recognition and consultation. Those opposite are so deeply out of touch with the needs of First Nations communities in this country. It's almost as though they don't have a set of ears themselves. The Australian people support reconciliation. They support giving First Nations people a fair go. I urge the coalition to do the right thing by First Nations communities and walk with us to reconciliation for a better nation for all of us. 09:25 Senator LIDDLE 300644 South Australia I rise to speak in support of the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023. What more proof do you need that the federal parliament, the taxpayers of Australia and the residents of Central Australia, Barkly and the Top End should not trust the Northern Territory government? Even the most vulnerable people in the NT surely have endured and experienced enough. On a recent trip to Central Australia I heard a resounding and reverberating message. The message was of bringing to an end the failed service delivery and poor outcomes they've seen delivered by the NT government and by government, non-government and private service providers. They are not referring to all of them, but the names of the organisations and leaders are coming up often. It's time for some truth telling. The people of the Northern Territory will make their choice in an election in 2024, but what I'm talking about is the Commonwealth intervening and protecting its interests where it has the responsibility and ability to do so. The Albanese Labor government was blinded by ideology and political posturing that saw it not intervene until the tide of public opinion left it with little choice. The media doggedly maintained its focus on the government's failure. What more proof do we need? It was the Northern Territory government that spectacularly sacrificed the right to safety, the right to live free from harm and the right to go about their everyday lives, to prioritise what the NT Attorney-General lauded as human rights, the consequences of which will be felt for some time. Some people will feel the consequences forever. The end of Stronger Futures legislation and its alcohol restrictions, without an appropriate transition plan, prioritised the rights of addicts and abusers over the rights of residents: men, women and children who are the everyday Territorians just trying to go about their everyday lives. There was no accountability, no responsibility, no idea and, it seems, no consequences. The NT leadership is the same. The accountability sits with the same people who triggered the chaos. They remain in charge of the Treasury benches and the programs funded by the rivers of taxpayers' money to respond, in no small part, to an issue largely of their own making. Despite the warning of what would happen, and despite immediate and confronting evidence of the consequences, it still took around seven months and federal intervention for a proper circuit breaker. The NT government presided over a jump of 54 per cent in alcohol-related assaults. House break-ins rose by 22.5 per cent, commercial break-ins increased by 55 per cent, motor vehicle theft was up by 31 per cent and property damage jumped by nearly 60 per cent. The cost of living hits regional areas hardest and remote areas hard, and the human, social and economic toll rose to dizzying heights for Territorians. Tourists stopped coming in the same numbers. Locals don't move around so freely, and many residents have simply packed up and left after experiencing or witnessing ongoing damage to property and/or person. Doing what they did—allowing alcohol restrictions to lapse with no proper consultation and no transition plan and, worse, ignoring the pleas of key organisations—is what led to an escalation of community chaos in Central Australia. Even the Commonwealth agency whose purpose is to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples got it wrong when it supported an opt-in clause for those who wished alcohol restrictions to remain. Voices of several key organisations wanted an opt-out clause, but they were simply ignored. Nine organisations—key organisations who, for decades, have worked to improve the lives of Aboriginal people in the NT—wrote to the Albanese government pleading and warning of the catastrophe about to unfold. Those key organisations argued, in a Senate inquiry, that positive discrimination was an appropriate response to protect the most vulnerable and to stop the unravelling of hard-won gains that had been made to close the gap in important health indicators. You can't stand up and talk about closing the gap whilst not responding to issues that are widening the gap. The NT government, in the face of consistent warning, precedence and overwhelming evidence, showed no foresight, had no consideration for the most vulnerable, and with no meaningful consultation or transition plan showed they had no idea. That's why it's not feasible, plausible or responsible to dismiss this bill outright without some serious checks and balances that it asks for. Sure, the NT government has put in place its own legislation, but that lacks detail and oversight—sounds like a familiar story. The bill introduced in the Northern Territory is the Liquor Act 2019. In its six pages it talks of who can make an order, how alcohol management plans will be agreed to and how views of specific stakeholders will be considered. The bill lacks detail. There's nothing that suggests how it will ensure that voices won't be silenced so that a 60 per cent majority endorsement can be obtained. It is with consultation—I repeat, consultation—with police, the government and the relevant local health organisations before approval is granted. I want to know exactly who is going to be consulted. They didn't listen to the most vulnerable or those who worked with the most vulnerable people. This doesn't go far enough to protect elders, leaders, men and women who would want to object to allowing alcohol in their communities and ensure their safety in the process. This private senator's bill requires a review within one year by the Senate in relation to the effectiveness of these laws. It is not seeking to remove the ability for these communities to have alcohol management plans. What it does is describe in greater detail the framework for decision-making in much more detail than the Northern Territory legislation does. It deserves support. I also raise my advocacy, and that of Senator Nampijinpa Price, to get a family with children and sick adults who had been homeless for almost two years, living on a cement slab in Alice Springs—exposed to the elements and the issues impacting the region—off that slab. The NT government had to be dragged into action by the Commonwealth, by the minister and by the local member to find them a safer place, a more reasonable place—permanent housing. But their job is not done yet. You can't take your eyes off the Northern Territory government. Need more proof about the common sense and the competency of that government and its agencies? Let me explain how it took 3½ weeks to get that family off the slab. When they take 3½ weeks to get a place for that family, how can they do the job now of fixing an entire region? Guess what, when they were moved off the slab they said to me: 'You know what? They've told us we need to provide a tenancy reference.' Can you believe that? A tenancy reference. They were told they had to get a tenancy reference to trigger the process of securing a greater place of safety. It's disbelief. They have been neglected for years. Service providers, people who should have known they were there, drove past them, and now they want a tenancy reference. I'm talking about a young woman with advanced kidney disease, on dialysis three times a week. Up to nine children and their family were on that slab, enduring 40-degree heat in summer and below in winter. I invite anyone to do that out the front one night. There was no running water, no sanitation, just beds made up neatly on a concrete slab each day while six of the nine children who were school aged went to school. I can say that because I wasn't 1,000 or 2,000 kilometres away; I saw it for myself. There was no running water, no sanitation. It's just unbelievable in the middle of Australia. They were non-drinking and non-gambling, and they still have to do mount a case of being a responsible family. Last night it continued. You can't take your eyes off the Northern Territory government, I say again. Instead of sending social workers, financial counsellors or the support they need to set themselves up for success and to build a better life for themselves—they don't need government to do that for them; they just need the things that allow them to do it for themselves—they were told that Centrelink was coming to bill them $500 a week for their stay. Right from the very beginning, the only people who have been telling the truth about what's going on in the argy-bargy of negotiations between government and service providers about how to respond to these people are those people—Miranda, Bessie and Kate are their names. They are real people just trying to do their best. So why doesn't Centrelink say: 'Look, we're coming out to check that you're all on the right payments and that you're getting the right money to support your family.' Why isn't it giving them an update on a more permanent housing outcome and making sure that they don't go broke while they're in temporary housing? They wear the same clothes every day. They are coming from a slab trying to build a future for themselves, and now they're being asked to pay that kind of money while they transition and wait for the Northern Territory government and others to make sure that they follow through on what they said they were going do, which was to provide a better future for them. I would say to Minister Burney, 'It's a backflip,' when I'm told their accommodation in a government statutory facility, Aboriginal Hostels Limited, will be covered until they are permanently housed. That gave me and them some comfort, and it should give all Australians some comfort, that at least the effort is being put in to find them a permanent place and that action is actually happening so that they can get on with improving their own lives. You can't take your eyes off this. If you are serious about confirming greater safety for women in the Northern Territory then you have to give the women's domestic family violence services some comfort that their funding will continue. It's a little over 12 weeks before the end of the financial year, and they don't know whether—in the middle of a crisis for women, children and the elderly—they've got funding to continue their important work, or that they've got increased funding to continue their important work. Stop talking about it, stop putting those services and the people who rely on them at risk, and confirm their future funding. These are the reasons it's not possible to support this bill, given the weight of evidence against leaving the Northern Territory government to get this right. These are real examples. They're not made up. I'm happy for people to challenge them and I'm happy to provide the evidence. You can't take your eyes off the Northern Territory government. You can't take eyes of these situations. And we can't take our eyes off the Albanese Labor government in doing the right thing and not just talking about it but making a difference—a real difference—to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. That's why I support this bill. 09:38 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia I also rise to make a contribution on the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023. In doing so, I want to thank all the colleagues who've previously made a contribution to this debate. I acknowledge Senator Nampijinpa Price's genuine concerns for the Northern Territory and her community in Alice Springs as well. We have heard throughout this debate some deeply distressing and personal stories from a number of senators, and I acknowledge that it can be a difficult thing to bring these stories into a public forum. This has been a moving debate and it is clear to us that people in Central Australia are doing it really tough right now. The sticking point here is a difference in opinion over the solutions. I don't think there is any difference in opinion in this debate about the challenges and the problems. I agree with everyone who has come and spoken in this debate and has put forward the view that we of course need to be putting women and children first and prioritising their safety. But, again, the government has a disagreement with the solutions put forward by the senator, and that comes down to this question of whether federal legislation is required. Senator 281603 I haven't heckled anyone during this debate so I would appreciate being able to be heard. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Order! Senator Smith, you have the call. Senator MARIELLE 281603 Fundamentally, this comes down to a question about whether federal legislation is required, whether federal intervention is required. In the Northern Territory we have seen significant steps being taken by the Northern Territory government. We've seen them step up and take responsibility legislating new alcohol restrictions, and I will come back to that point shortly. But there is always a challenge for us. And we have debates in this place, about matters as serious as this, between how we bring what are very difficult things and very challenging things into the light in order to get action, to drive the momentum, to get change, but also how we talk about communities and how we talk about the need to empower them too. Our communities aren't ever served by quick headlines and they're never served by becoming political footballs in here, and that's why I think the tone of this debate is really important. I have seen that happen in Ceduna. I have seen that community being used as a political football over the years and it is no good. People in the community tell me it's no good when they are used as a political football in this place. We do need serious solutions to serious challenges. That work is always done, in my view, when the different levels of government work in partnership together—the Commonwealth working in partnership with the territory governments, working in partnership in different parts of Australia with local government. It's when the government works together well and when communities are engaged, consulted and brought into the solutions that we see the best policy. I note the member for Lingiari, in the other place, has talked about the challenges before us, that this is beyond the political games that get played. She said, 'This is about people's lives. It is about Aboriginal women and children. There are many men who are not drinkers, but we forget about that because of the cheap politics.' She has called for a stop to the political games. I want to acknowledge her work and her advocacy in this place. She has been one of the loudest speakers for more support for Central Australia and for more support for some of these challenges. I have seen her work in the First Nations caucus committee and I want to acknowledge it here today. As I said my opening remarks, there is no doubt of the genuine intention across the chamber here to improve the lives of women and children, particularly the Northern Territory. But this is about the component, the level and the degree of federal intervention. In the Northern Territory we have seen the introduction of the Northern Territory Liquor Amendment Act in 2023. The effect of this legislation is that across the NT town camps and communities have reverted to dry zones. My understanding is that through this legislation there are clear, robust opt-out process requiring the development of community alcohol plans. I also note that the Chief Minister has announced other measures to address crime and antisocial behaviour in Alice Springs. I don't think anyone here doubts that these reforms, changes and measures were necessary. But we also need to be honest about why they were necessary. They came into place because the former government allowed the stronger futures legislation to sunset. When it did these restrictions sunsetted too. It is appropriate at that point for the Northern Territory to step-up and show leadership. Indeed, it was incumbent upon them to step-up, to show leadership, to legislate and to introduce policy for these changes, and that's what these changes that we have seen in the NT are all about. I acknowledge I'm not on the ground in Alice Springs. I represent the state of South Australia. That's where I'm on the ground. That's where I travel. That's where I'm talking to people. I acknowledge that this is not my personal lived experience and I don't speak for these communities. But I have listened carefully to the contributions in this debate, listened carefully to the contributions of Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and listened carefully to the member for Lingiari in the other place, and I see, acknowledge and understand the challenges and the problems we have here. But the thing is, the Northern Territory government has the authority and the responsibility to act in this place. That's appropriate. Just like every other state and territory they are the ones who hold responsibility for alcohol policy and regulation. We have seen what happens when the Commonwealth overrides the states and territories. Indeed, we have seen the Commonwealth make grave errors in overriding the responsibility of the territories before in legislation. Commonwealth interventions in the past have caused significant distress and disempowerment. On this matter it is the responsibility of the Territory government to legislate regarding the issues of alcohol and alcohol access. This power is contained within the Northern Territory Liquor Act 2019. That act governs the sale, provision, service, promotion and consumption of liquor with the purpose of minimising alcohol harm in the Northern Territory. That has been looked at in the parliament. A cross-party parliamentary committee has looked into this issue. The Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, which has cross-party membership—representatives from Labor, the coalition and Independents—found earlier this year in its inquiry on community safety, support services and job opportunities in the NT: It is clear to the Committee that the NT Government has sufficient legislative means to manage alcohol-related harm within its jurisdiction where there is the will to do so. This has been demonstrated by its recent legislative amendments to the Liquor Act 2019 (NT). It is the view of the Committee that this is the appropriate role of the NT Government (informed by the views of community), rather than the Commonwealth. That's what a committee of this chamber, of this parliament, found, and I respect the views that they put forward after their inquiry and after their consultation. Passing this bill would be supporting a federal intervention, and I appreciate that that is what a number of senators in this chamber want to see. But federal interventions like this have caused significant distress in the past, and the scars caused by the Howard government's federal intervention remain and live on in communities. The intervention stripped community and Territory government of capacity. I reflect on the words Senator McCarthy shared in September last year about the intervention when she spoke about the impact it had on her as a member of the Northern Territory parliament: In 2016, when I entered the Senate, I spoke about what happened in the NT in July 2007, when the Northern Territory parliament, the Northern Territory people, were intervened on in such an incredibly dramatic way, without any input, without any view. It was certainly, when I was the member for Arnhem in 2007, standing in the parliament of the Northern Territory, the most disempowering moment, not just for me as the member for Arnhem but for all those constituents I was there to represent. I could say nothing; I could do nothing. The humiliation of people, the shame that people felt, all carried through with the Northern Territory intervention which saw the arrival of the BasicsCard. Supporting this bill would be overriding the Territory's role in legislating for itself and legislating on the topics that it does have jurisdiction and capability to legislate on. But those considerations—this question that where there is a difference here around how an intervention should happen, about whether the federal government should intervene or not—are about a response and a solution. This is not a question about need—the needs of people living in Alice Springs and Central Australia. There is no doubt that they are doing it seriously, seriously tough. I do not undermine or devalue any of the stories that have been brought to this chamber today and on the other days when we've debated this topic and indeed whenever we have a debate on these matters. They are nothing short of shocking and distressing. But it is the government's position that overriding the powers of the Territory government and overriding their responsibilities through federal legislation disempowers local communities. That would be the opposite of what we're seeking to achieve. Policy solutions always work best in partnership. They always work best when people take responsibility. And they always work best when they're co-designed, when they take the community seriously in designing and implementing the solutions they want and need to see for the problems they are living—far away from this building, far away from Canberra and indeed far away from where many of our offices are around Australia. That requires willingness to listen and to learn and willingness for engagement, and that is the focus of our government. Our Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, the member for Kingston, has said very clearly that co-design is one of her key priorities in the Social Services portfolio: Our focus and our objective as a government remains clear: to empower people, empower communities, and provide individuals and communities with a range of supports that they can choose to use when and how it best suits them. This is really important, and many of the challenges that we see in Central Australia are not unique to these communities. We've all read the latest Closing the gap report; the data is there, but we don't need the data. I'm sure all of us spend time in our states and communities talking to people. But that report did make for pretty harrowing reading on some of the indicators, and, while I think there is a strong degree of willingness, desire and motivation to improve on those, a whole lot of good intention has never been enough. There has been a lot of good intention in this building; I think there's a lot of good intention in this chamber today. But we aren't making enough progress in these issues—of course we're not. I reaffirm that, in this debate, I don't think anyone is standing here diminishing the challenges before us, diminishing the motivation behind bringing these challenges to this chamber or diminishing the challenge ahead of us. This is a question around federal intervention and legislative need and whether this bill would have an impact on these issues when it steps into an area of authority and delegation which is held by the Northern Territory government and when we have seen, in recent weeks, a willingness by that government to take some responsibility and legislate to reintroduce alcohol restrictions. These are not easy matters. None of the matters before us are easy matters. There are many things that we need to do and that we know we need to do, as a government, to improve on these issues. I know that Minister Burney takes these views very, very seriously. They are prioritised in cabinet and they are prioritised in government. They are prioritised in some of the programs we are funding. There will be more work to do, but I do note the Commonwealth government's investment in a $250 million plan for a better, safer future for Central Australia, and that plan is about job creation, better services, and improving community safety and cohesion through more youth engagement and diversion programs. It's also about preventing and addressing the issues caused by foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, including through responding better through the health and justice system. We are, as a Commonwealth, investing in families and in on-country learning. That investment—the $250 million program—is on top of the $48 million investment in community safety announced by the Australian government in January this year. The investment includes projects designed to have immediate impact on the safety of the community in Alice Springs. Our government does take these issues seriously. I again want to acknowledge the contributions of senators in this chamber. I do not in any way diminish the motivations or the challenge before us. This is a question about an appropriate response and federal intervention. That is the debating point here. 09:53 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales I find it remarkable that the stronger futures legislation, introduced in 2012 by the then Labor government, is now being called racist by the new Labor government. It's quite incredible. Racist policies— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Order! Senator Smith on a point of order? Senator Marielle Smith 281603 On a point of order, I didn't call that policy racist. I'm not sure if that's what the senator is referring to. Senator Henderson ZN4 On the point of order, there is no point of order made by the senator opposite. It is a debating point and I would ask you to rule it out of order. Senator Carol Brown F49 On the point of order: Senator Davey was reflecting on the contribution made by Senator Smith— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Thank you, Minister. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I think I got your point there. I'm happy to have a discussion in the chamber. Senator Cadell 300134 On the point of order: it wasn't a reflection on any individual Senator. It was a debating point, but it was used as a policy comment, not towards any senator. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Senator Davey, it may have been noticed that the Clerk was consulting with me about a different matter at the time that you were making your comments, and I, therefore, didn't hear them. Senator Marielle Smith 281603 On the point of order: I accept you weren't making a reflection on me as an individual, but that's how it came across to me. I'm happy to let the point of order go. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 252157 Thank you, Senator Smith. Senator Davey, I understand that this is a highly sensitive debate that people have really strong views about, which is perfectly reasonable, but I would hope that, when I give you the call, you move on from that particular statement and back to your speech. Senator DAVEY 281697 I was not reflecting on any specific individual, just comments that have been made during the debate—but I will move on. I want to congratulate my colleague Senator Nampijinpa Price on bringing this legislation to the Senate. I also want to commend my colleague Senator Liddle for her advocacy and for what she did for the family that were living on the concrete slab. Had Senator Liddle not raised this, not been there and taken a photo and put this before the Australian public, that family would still be on that slab, would still be under a tarpaulin and would still be being treated in a way that would be completely unacceptable anywhere else in the world. I applaud both of them, their tenacity, their commitment and their passion to deliver a better life for their community, a better life and a better future for all Northern Territorians. I want to make the point that this legislation is placed based, not race based. This private senators' bill is evidence of their commitment and their tenacity, and that's why we on this side are supporting it, because we support them in their efforts to make their communities a better place. We are listening to their voices. Unlike claims from those on the other side of the chamber earlier in this debate when we first debated it a while ago, this work is not redundant; it is absolutely essential. Earlier, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy shared her story, a very moving story and a very important story, a story of breaking the cycle, of education and of support to show that there is a better way and there are options other than grog. But then Senator McCarthy said the Northern Territory government is best placed to manage the harm reduction policies—really? Ironically, she said that she had raised the sunsetting of the stronger futures legislation with the previous coalition government, who, in her words, did nothing. Yet, when they came into government, the Labor Party, still with time between being sworn in and the actual sunset, did nothing. Senator McCarthy said she and the member for Lingiari contacted the Northern Territory government way back in August last year, who, until February, when this issue hit the headlines, also did nothing. Now Senator McCarthy is saying: 'It's okay. The Northern Territory is alive to the issue. We can leave it in their hands.' I beg to differ. We know the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Bill was introduced in 2012. It was also tied with a $3.4 billion commitment and a 10-year sunset clause. Some of that financial commitment was renegotiated midway through to extend the partnerships to ensure maximum potential for success. The aim of the legislation was to give the Northern Territory government enough time—10 years—to develop strategies to minimise harm, reduce alcohol dependence, and work with Aboriginal people and their communities to incite positive change. It sounds like a great plan. Five years later, in 2017, the Northern Territory government commissioned the Alcohol Policies and Legislation Review to deliver a cohesive approach to alcohol harm reduction. Commonly known as the Riley review, the Hon. Justice Trevor Riley chaired the expert advisory panel, and the panel delivered their final report in October 2017—and a comprehensive report it was. It observed that a recurring theme throughout the review 'was that the lack of coordinated, long-term, appropriately resourced programs targeting alcohol harm reduction is a major contributor to the lack of reduction in alcohol statistics'. The report acknowledged that that the then regulatory framework for alcohol in the Northern Territory was not fit for purpose and that the Territory government needed to deliver a cohesive approach to alcohol harm minimisation for all Territorians. The report, along with the 220 recommendations contained therein, was handed to the then Attorney-General in the Northern Territory, Minister Natasha Fyles. That's right—the current Territory Chief Minister was the Attorney-General at the time who accepted this report, who took 220 recommendations. But, to date, what has she done with them? To be fair, in 2018 she did rewrite the Northern Territory Liquor Act, as recommended. But it is very hard to see what has been done in communities to prepare for the end of stronger futures, which was always on the cards. The chapter on harm prevention in the Riley report offered advice on pricing; on taxing of alcohol; on whether safe and vibrant entertainment precincts should be extended; on delivering better community policing patrols; on studies into alcohol treatment services, including identifying and relocating drinking away from roads, trialling residential managed alcohol programs, and providing sobering-up shelters where they're needed and would be used. As I said, the report was very detailed. That was in 2017. As we know, cultural and alcohol issues in the Northern Territory have a long history, and a report is not a silver bullet. But, when it is such a comprehensive report, with so many recommendations, not to even look at implementing those recommendations, knowing that there is a sunset on the federal legislation that is providing a sense of safety and security, is absolutely remiss. The Northern Territory government should hang its head in shame. It is because of their inaction that we are here today debating a reintroduction of federal legislation to provide some safety, some stability and some certainty for our vulnerable Northern Territory communities. As the stronger futures legislation was coming up to sunset, as I said, the new government did nothing. In fact, the new government was completely silent on the issue. But it was very active in other areas, like removing the cashless debit card for welfare recipients—something that many elders, particularly aunties in the vulnerable communities of the Northern Territory, asked them to not do. In fact, they warned them what the results would be if they took away the cashless debit card for welfare, if they put cash back into hands, allowing the practice of humbugging. When a person gets their welfare—gets their cash—and goes home, they actually get stood over. It's like the olden days. They get stood over and demanded that their cash be handed over. The cashless debit card prevented that from happening because you couldn't take the cash and go and buy your grog. You couldn't buy grog with the cashless debit card. You couldn't gamble that money away, but you could feed your family and you could buy clothes or books for school. That warning was made loud and clear to this government, and they ignored it. They didn't listen to the voices of the people of the vulnerable communities of the Northern Territory and Western Australia and some of the communities in South Australia. The Northern Territory government introduced legislation that made provision for communities to opt in to alcohol restrictions, instead of opt out, so they flipped it on its head. They also said that communities would not be required to have any form of alcohol management plans in place before they chose to opt out. Chief Minister Fyles has said that to do otherwise would implement racist policies. Again, I point out that prohibitions are not race based; they're place based, to ensure the safety of our most vulnerable, regardless of what their heritage is or their background. The blanket policy shift and the inaction of the federal Labor government has resulted in a devastating increase in both consumption and alcohol-related harm. This was what people warned the government about. Alice Springs had identified to the world amply just how serious the problem was and how much the federal and Territory governments have floundered in addressing the issues. They acted only after the issues made headlines, not just in Australia but internationally. People saw what was happening in Alice Springs when it became news headlines; people saw the number of kids roaming the streets in Alice Springs because it was safer to be on the streets than to go home. That alone is an indictment on what we have allowed to happen in those communities. It was only when this made headlines that both the Northern Territory and the federal Labor ministers decided that they actually might have to show their faces. Of course, we know the five-minute visit by the Prime Minister to Alice Springs was not the cure-all. We know that it was actually a media opportunity. We know he had to race back to Melbourne for the Australian Open, after all. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 217241 Excuse me, Senator Davey. Senator McAllister. Senator McAllister 121628 On a point of order, Acting Deputy President: the standing orders prohibit reflections on the motivations of others in the other place. I ask you to consider whether the senator's contribution is consistent with the standing orders. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 217241 Senator Davey? Senator DAVEY 281697 I won't reflect on the motivation behind the Prime Minister's short visit to Alice Springs, but I will observe that it was a very short visit to Alice Springs and yet he managed to find three days to spend at the Australian Open. What we do know is that the media focus actually did force change, finally. It did force a recognition of the issues that governments had been warned would happen if they removed the cashless debit card and reversed the onus of the alcohol prohibitions. Senator Price, Senator Liddle and others from Northern Territory communities, who have constantly brought to light the real tragedies occurring in these communities each and every day, deserve to be commended. Senator Price's bill's intention is to protect all Territorians, especially those most vulnerable Territorians who face alcohol addiction or associated harms from family members with alcohol addiction—the related harms those bring for them, their families and the wider community. I congratulate Senator Price and I thank her for her tireless work. I thank her for bringing these issues to this place, raising them so that we should all be listening. What is happening in the communities in and around Central Australia is a tragedy that need not be. With this bill, we can start to put in place mechanisms that allow communities to introduce harm-reduction policies and to look at what can be done to ensure that their children are safe, their wives are safe and their families are safe. I thank Senator Price for her tireless work, and I trust and implore all senators in this place to have the courage and decency to support this bill. I commend the bill to the chamber. 10:11 Senator McALLISTER 121628 New South Wales I am pleased to make a contribution on the Northern Territory Safe Measures Bill 2023. I thank colleagues for their contributions on this bill, especially those who have shared their personal stories and experiences. I should indicate that in speaking on this bill I am not speaking in my capacity as the minister; I am simply making a personal contribution as a senator participating in the chamber. It is important that the Senate hears about these issues and works on these issues. We know people are doing it tough in Alice Springs and that more needs to be done to improve community safety, particularly to protect women and children. It has been my privilege in my time in this place to have had some responsibilities that have afforded me opportunities to work with the many people in community who every day get up and apply themselves exclusively to protecting women and children right across the country. We need to keep women and children safe in all communities all around Australia. And we need to keep people safe in Alice Springs. But the government and I disagree with the proposed solution to this problem in the bill. This bill is not necessary and federal legislation is not necessary. Federal intervention is not the right step. We have recently had a big and important step in the right direction: the Northern Territory government has taken responsibility, and recently legislated new alcohol restrictions. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted. Debate interrupted. MOTIONS 12 MOTIONS Parliament 12 10:13 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania I seek leave to move a motion in relation to an order for the production of documents regarding the transparency of official appointments. This motion has been circulated. Leave not granted. Senator LAMBIE 250026 Pursuant to a contingent motion 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 relating to an order for the production of documents. In the coming weeks, in the run-up to the budget, the corridors of this building will be swarming with lobbyists, big business representatives and political donors seeking to influence government policies, decisions and beyond. They will be having quiet words with ministers and their staff and they'll be greasing the machinery of government to ensure that their interests, not the public interests, are protected and promoted. Publication of the names of the people who lobby government is a vital transparency and integrity measure for this place, but yesterday Labor and the coalition combined forces to block a motion moved by me that would have provided for the quarterly publication of the names of the people outside government who are meeting with ministers to influence government policy or decisions. There was nothing radical in this motion. That proposed scheme was based on the New South Wales Premier's memorandum M2014-07 on the publication of ministerial diaries, an arrangement that's been in place for nearly nine years. The Premier's memo was born out of the 2010 New South Wales ICAC report titled Investigation into corruption risks involved in lobbying. Publishing ministers' diaries is a key anticorruption measure. Official ministerial diaries are already published in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT. It's also done in New Zealand. Even the United States President releases and publishes White House visitor logs. This is a baseline anticorruption measure that should stand alongside the new National Anti-Corruption Commission and political donations reform, so it's an absolute disgrace that Labor and the coalition combined against the crossbench and the Greens to block this transparency measure. It's all the more a shame because Labor and the coalition have both previously expressed support for ministerial diaries to be transparent. In the previous parliament, Labor—notably, now Attorney-General Dreyfus—supported public disclosure of ministerial diaries. The then coalition government resisted. In this parliament, the coalition initially developed a newfound interest in transparency. Following the government's obstruction of efforts by a journalist to obtain FOI, freedom of information, access to the Prime Minister's appointment diary, Senator Birmingham pursued the matter with Senator Wong in question time. After former senator Patrick was in the news for having been asked to pay $13,444 for 197 days of the PM's diary, paying the deposit and then being told that he was not going to get them anyway, Senator Birmingham pursued the government at February estimates. Senator Wong says there is no need for a general disclosure scheme, claiming that FOI is still an effective transparency mechanism despite knowing full well that, thanks to our broken freedom of information system, the government can delay access for years if not indefinitely. However, Senator Birmingham's transparency enthusiasm apparently evaporated in a puff of smoke yesterday, and now the coalition is on a unity ticket with Labor against openness and integrity. One wonders what happened. Perhaps former Prime Minister Morrison's secrecy obsessions live on inside the Liberal Party. Perhaps Senator Birmingham just has no ticker. In any case, the truth is that both major parties are allergic to integrity measures in this place. Shame on you. In the coming weeks, there will be plenty of lobbyists scurrying along the corridors of power. If you turn on the lights, the cockroaches head for the exits. That's what we need and that's why this motion is urgent. I relented. Instead of taking my ideas, which came from a very normal disclosure arrangement in New South Wales, my motion lets the government decide the best way. How reasonable is that? I've tried compromise. We need this motion passed now so we can have some resolution by next week. It gives the government another chance to do the right thing and live up to its promise from the last election—transparency, transparency, transparency! Oh my goodness, isn't that evaporating at the speed of light? How's that going for you? You just have more broken promises, and transparency is a big one. If they don't pass this motion, then I have to ask: what are you hiding? What are you so scared to show in those diaries? What don't you want the public to know out there? I cannot implore you enough to come back to the transparency measures you promised the people in the last election and do what you said you would do. 10:19 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland The Greens strongly support this motion. After years of political scandals, secrecy, misuse of funds and the trashing of conventions, the community has little confidence that politicians in this place will act in anything other than their own interests, and too often their own interests are influenced by industry lobbyists offering cushy post-parliament roles sweetened by the winking promise of political donations. Far too many deals in this place are thrashed out between ministers and their donors behind closed doors. You only have to see the number of orange lanyards in the hallways to understand that lobbyists are constantly in and out of ministers' offices. And you only have to look at the policy outcomes to see the influence they have over decisions. Privileged access, generous donations and promises of a cushy role when they're done clearly influence political decisions. We know that the minister responsible for regulating gambling has met with the gambling industry seven times more often than she has met with gambling harm reduction advocates, and we only know that because it was interrogated through estimates, not because that information is put out in the public for all to see. So it's safe to assume that the ministers responsible for the safeguard mechanism are being lobbied by the very industries that will be regulated by it. It's no shock that many of them have loudly supported the weak proposal that would allow them to keep polluting. Remember when the Minerals Council toppled a prime minister over a proposed superprofits tax, or when casinos were exempted from COVID restrictions? It's a level of access and influence that most community organisations working in the public interest can only dream of, and it undermines democracy. The very least that the public could expect is for ministers to be open about who they're meeting with and what they're talking about. Labor should be supporting greater transparency. The current Attorney-General took legal action arguing that former attorney-general George Brandis should release his ministerial diaries. The Queensland state Labor government has been publishing ministerial diaries for years, and the sky hasn't fallen in. The Greens want to get big money and corporate influence out of politics altogether. We were calling for a national integrity commission for about a decade before Labor finally saw the light, and we're glad that we'll finally see one this year—albeit without the public hearings and whistleblower protections that we'll keep calling for. But a strong corruption watchdog is just one step in restoring public confidence in democracy. Cleaning up politics is not just about exposing corruption and punishing the corrupt; it's about getting rid of the conditions that allow corruption and poor standards to flourish in the first place. We need better checks and balances on who gets to bend the ears of politicians—a strong lobbying code that lets people see who's meeting with who, and one that would put an end to the revolving door that sees politicians and staffers, within moments of leaving parliament, take on highly paid senior roles in industries they used to regulate. Lobbyists are defined under the current weak Lobbying Code of Conduct as people or companies lobbying 'on behalf of a third party'. This excludes in-house lobbying—lobbying directly for a company or an industry—which is a loophole the size of a mining truck. Ministers exploit that language so that in-house lobbyists and post-ministerial roles are treated in a way that falls outside the lobbying regulated under the code. It clearly undermines the objectives of the code, and it must be fixed. We need an enforceable code of conduct for politicians, with meaningful consequences for misconduct. We've recently strengthened the code to address harassment and bad behaviour, but we need to go further and address integrity. We need a strong public sector providing frank and fearless advice to ministers and curbing their excesses. We need well-resourced oversight agencies, like the ANAO, and freedom of information laws that actually promote transparency. We need a culture that encourages people to expose misconduct, knowing that there are strong protections for whistleblowers and a genuine expectation that the misconduct they have exposed will lead to punishment for those who are abusing their positions. And we need to remove the corrupting influence of political donations. We want to ban donations from industries with a track record of buying influence, like fossil fuels, weapons, gambling and pharmaceuticals, to stop those industries standing in the way of science based reforms and humane policies. We also want to ensure that all donations over a thousand dollars are disclosed in real time, not up to 19 months after the gift, which is currently the case. And we want the definition of gift to capture the full gift—not just the money explicitly given as a donation but exorbitant memberships, meeting fees and expensive dinners. Real-time disclosure of gifts would allow people to know who's funding the parties they voted for. Everybody benefits from a culture of honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability in politics. Let's just get on with it. 10:24 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory We don't support the suspension motion that the chamber is currently debating—although we have, as usual, traversed into the substance of the motion that is being sought to be moved. The reason we don't agree with the suspension is that the Senate has a number of pieces of legislation for this time, which is meant for government business. I note that the suspension motion wasn't moved at the beginning of the day, which allowed for private senators' matters to be dealt with, but is eating into government business time. We have a number of key pieces of legislation that we would like to progress, including—this morning if possible—the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill. As people would understand, it is very important to progress that and to put a new arrangement in place. It is time critical. It needs to pass this week so that we can put in the arrangements required for reporting at a business level about the steps organisations are taking to close the gender pay gap and publicising the gender pay gap that exists in businesses, because that's a real handbrake on women's economic equality. That is the reason we won't support the suspension of the standing orders. There are a range of times in the chamber when this motion could be moved. Notice could have been given to deal with it on Monday. We dealt with a motion yesterday. So there is simply no argument that this has to be done at this point in time. I also say that the usual courtesy is to provide some heads-up that this is happening so that we can prepare. The chamber operates on these conventions. Senator Lambie 250026 Oh, right. Senator GALLAGHER ING Yes, we do try to talk with people ahead of time. Yes, we do. We are trying desperately to put arrangements in this place that give respect to every member of this place about what is happening and when it is happening. I reach out to people. I contact people before each sitting week and say: 'Is there anything we can do? Are there any issues you want to raise? How do we deal with them during the sitting week?' That is so it is done in an orderly fashion and we aren't dealing with situations like this. In terms of the substance of the motion that Senator Lambie is seeking to move—and people have chosen to take their five minutes to concentrate on that rather than debate the suspension of the standing orders—the Albanese government does take transparency and accountability in government seriously. We are implementing a higher standard. We have the National Anti-Corruption Commission. We have, through the joint standing committee of the parliament, agreed on draft codes of conduct for parliamentarians. We will progress that through the enhanced PWSS and the arrangements that have been put in place by Set the standard. Senator Waters, Senator Hume, Senator Farrell, Senator Davey and I, with members from the other place, are members of the Parliamentary Leadership Taskforce that is to put in place appropriate conduct and standards for parliamentarians and make them accountable through their chambers to the people for the standards and behaviour. That is happening. We have whistleblower reform underway. We are dealing with the boards and appointment processes through reviews. We have the Attorney's work that he's doing through the AAT on improving processes there. A whole range of work is going on about cleaning up the mess and putting in place the right infrastructure to make sure that government and the rest of us as MPs and senators are transparent and accountable. We of course have the FOI Act. The FOI Act is followed and is applied in accordance with the law that has been established by this place to ensure that there is a mechanism for people to have access to documents where they meet the requirements of the FOI Act. On the diaries of the Prime Minister—or of any minister—you can mostly see the Prime Minister's diary every day because he's out and about doing meetings, doing functions, meeting with people and holding press conferences. You will not find a busier person in this place than the Prime Minister. He is more than happy to be accountable for the people he meets, the decisions he takes and the positions of the government. There are laws that apply to the seeking of information. They are being followed. In accordance with the approach that we have taken, we are raising the standard of accountability and transparency in government. We do take it seriously. There are plenty of opportunities for us to have a longer debate on this should the Senate choose. 10:29 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory I welcome Senator Lambie's focus on transparency when it comes to diaries. I remind Minister Gallagher that we are only here talking about this today because the major parties voted against what I really see as the bare minimum when it comes to transparency of ministers—who they're meeting with and who is influencing the decisions they make. They wield a huge amount of power, and Australians deserve to know who is feeding into the decisions that affect so many Australians. We hear that the government take transparency seriously, and yet they don't want to allow Australians to see who ministers are meeting. The NACC won't have public hearings unless there are exceptional circumstances. The government doesn't want people to know who the hundreds of in-house lobbyists and the hundreds of people who have sponsored passes in this building are. They point to the lobbyists register. As a new senator to this place, I have been shocked at how many people have access-all-areas passes to this building. Currently there are 700 people who have sponsored passes, and Australians have no idea who they are. They walk down these halls and they have meetings. I have no issue with that. I really have no issue with that. It is the sign of a good democracy that this place is open and accessible. But Australians deserve to know who they are. Australians deserve to know who has that access. It's a check on all of us. If you are going to give someone a sponsored pass, you should have to think: 'This person will be on the register of interest, and the public will know. The public will know who I am vouching for to have access to this building.' As I said, there are currently 700 people with sponsored passes. At the end of the last parliament, it got to 2,000 people. That is 2,000 people on top of the lobbyists register. The government's argument, to me, doesn't stack up. You hear all sorts of excuses, and yet this is disclosed in the UK, the US and New Zealand. If we are going to take transparency seriously, we have to stop seeing this situation where the major parties team up against the entire crossbench to protect themselves. They know that they will have their turn at some stage. I thought this was summed up in question time a few weeks back when Minister Wong was asked about releasing her diary. Her response was, 'I bet you didn't release yours, did you, mate?' It's simply not good enough that when you are in opposition you can say all these things about transparency. When you are in government, do it. Australians want more transparency. The crossbench is listening to our communities say, 'We deserve more transparency.' Yet yesterday this chamber voted against Senator Lambie's motion to get in line with all of these countries across the world that have decided that this is a bare minimum in a democracy, that people should know who is meeting with decision-makers and feeding into these big decisions. So I thank Senator Lambie for this opportunity. I thank the crossbench, including former senator Rex Patrick for his work in this area. This is something that the crossbench will continue to push the major parties on. It is not good enough, and Australians are demanding more. We're here to represent them, and we will keep pushing the major parties on this issue. 10:33 Senator 300706 Victoria BABET (—) (): Thank you, Senator Lambie, for what you did yesterday. I, like most of us here, would like to see who our elected members of parliament are meeting with in their offices in the halls of power. Our liberal democratic system of government is based on trust. That's what it's based on. That is why it is both the strongest and, at the same time, the most fragile form of government on earth. Liberal democracies are strong because of the compact between governments and citizens. Governments like ours do not rule by force but by the consent of the governed. Citizens grant elected officials authority to govern in return for these officials representing them well. If we do not represent the people well, what happens then is we get tossed out at the next election at the ballot box, and rightly so. Abraham Lincoln described 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'—that's what he said. Winston Churchill—what did he say? He said of democracy, 'It's the worst form of government, aside from all the others.' Here in Australia our system of government has served us well since Australia was federated. We're one of the freest and most peaceful nations on earth—we all agree with that one. Liberal democracies are the envy of every person who has ever been doomed to live under autocratic rule. That's why people flee to the West. That's why people never flee to those countries where more coercive forms of government exist. Yet our system of government, like I said before, is fragile because it's built on trust. The strength of our democracy depends on trust between everyone in this place and the public. I know it's a popular pastime to joke about the trustworthiness of politicians, but, by and large, despite some scandals here and there, most people still believe that most of us in this place are here with the best of intentions. I believe that, for the most part, that's true. It is incumbent upon us here to do everything we can to ensure that that belief and that sacred trust remain and grow. It is for that reason that I support the idea that ministers should make their diaries public. It's just a good idea. It's essential to a well-functioning democracy. When people suspect that things are hidden, even if they're not hidden, trust is eroded. But when people see that things are in the open and freely available for inspection then trust is built. There can be no faith in government when government officials are exempt from scrutiny. We in this place want to be well respected. We must respect our electors by committing to transparency wherever it's possible. Once again: transparency builds trust. It's not like we're asking ministers to disclose their secret teenage 'dear diary' entries from when they were kids. These are official meetings, and, for the most part, these meetings are in the public interest. We are elected in this place to serve the public. As part of our public service it is only fair that those who hold powerful positions release their diaries to the public. Ministers have power; ministers have influence. It is important that that power and influence are scrutinised. We know, as has been mentioned, that in this place there exist many lobbyists, many special interest groups—many individuals seeking to exert influence over everyone here. Trust in government ministers benefits those ministers, since the public are probably more likely to vote for them if they trust them. Senator Roberts 266524 Hear, hear! Senator BABET 300706 That's right! And trust in government ministers benefits the nation more broadly, as greater trust means a stronger democracy. I'll point to a recent example. The Prime Minister met with our mate Bill Gates recently in a secret meeting—well, we know that he met with him but we don't know what they talked about. This man is one of the biggest funders of the World Health Organization in the world. Having just come out of a pandemic, I'd love to know what the Prime Minister and Bill Gates talked about. 10:38 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland In working to serve the people of Queensland and Australia, I normally oppose motions for the suspension of standing orders, because I don't want to interrupt the work of the Senate. Integrity, though, is vital to the Senate working effectively, so I compliment Senator Lambie for raising this matter this morning. I've given considerable thought to whether I vote for the suspension, and I will. The minister, in her response, just referred to offers of discussion on integrity but nothing specific—no time, no date, no idea of when it would be. There was no commitment to it. A lack of integrity always hurts our country and hurts the Australian people, because it leads to uncertainty, which leads to fear. Who pays for the financial burden of a lack of integrity? We the people, including the people watching at home, pay for it. Madam Acting Deputy President, I'll give you some examples of the lack of integrity and transparency in the current government. Bills have been withheld from One Nation scrutiny yet were freely given to the Greens and Senator Pocock two weeks earlier. That's a lack of integrity. There's the gas industry nationalisation—another lack of integrity—which will lead to increased prices. There is the climate change bill, which contradicts the empirical statistical evidence and scientific data and contradicts the logical scientific points. It was bludgeoned through the senate with the help of the Greens and teal senator David Pocock, again showing a lack of integrity from the government. There are the Fair Work Act amendments, including compulsory bargaining. The topic was not even raised at the industrial relations summit. Again, this shows a lack of integrity. Added to that, Mr Dan Repacholi and his predecessor, Mr Joel Fitzgibbon, protected the Hunter Valley CFMMEU from our scrutiny. Look at COVID mismanagement. That was a uni-party collusion between the Labor state governments and the Liberal-National coalition in the federal parliament. It led to massive wealth transfer, which the people paid for. It led to massive control—unnecessary control—based on deceit. Why? Because health was never the concern. The objectives were control and wealth transfer. Look at the TGA, and the bill that was passed two weeks ago. The health department secretary alone can approve drugs, without testing. That is a lack of integrity. That same bill destroyed legal fundamentals and removed natural justice and procedural fairness. It removes the right to due process and reverses the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. It introduced strict liability and incorporation of external material at the secretary's whim. How the hell can people comply with the law when they don't know what it says? Then we saw the Aboriginal grog bans lifted. This government abandoned mothers, children and the community, with the help of the Greens. Again, this is a lack of integrity. There is the Voice. This government are deliberately trying to deceive the people. They go around the Constitution and don't let the people know what's involved, because they're hiding the details. They broke their superannuation promise—a lack of integrity. They dismissed the Treasury bill from the parliamentary agenda, because they want to protect their banker mates. The senate will not even get consideration of it. Yet again, this is a lack integrity. One Nation is founded on integrity and service. Our founder and leader, Senator Pauline Hanson, went to jail at the hands of leaders like Labor's Premier Beattie, who showed a lack of integrity. Pauline knows that honesty is best. She knows we are under constant scrutiny and are misrepresented. That's why it has been a blessing for Pauline Hanson and me to always act with integrity. We are strong and principled, and people sense that. That's why One Nation is growing around the country. We will be supporting you, Senator Lambie. 10:42 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales Of course the Greens support this motion. We commend the senator for bringing them forward. The Greens will always stand by transparency. What we can't understand is how the club of Labor and the coalition join together every time to protect their self-interest and to protect their secret contract with the donors and big business. That's what this motion is about. It's exposing how the corporate donor turns up to a minister's office on Monday and gets the policy outcome on Tuesday. They turn up and talk to the minister privately on Wednesday and get the legislation introduced on Friday. That's how the system works. It's no wonder that the club is protecting it. It's no wonder that Labor and the coalition are joining together to prevent showing us who ministers are meeting with. These are public officials delivering billions of dollars of public money—major policy decisions—and they won't even tell us who they are meeting with. This is hardly revolutionary. State governments manage to disclose who their ministers meet with. Even the New South Wales government, not known for its amazing integrity levels, will tell you who the ministers are meeting with. That's how we know the coalition planning minister in New South Wales met with a major property developer on one day and then, on the same day, killed most of the environmental regulations over planning. What are you hiding? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 296215 The question before the chair is that the motion moved by Senator Lambie be agreed to.  

The Senate divided. [10:48]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Cox)

 15 AYES Allman-Payne, P. J. Babet, R. Faruqi, M. Hanson-Young, S. C. Lambie, J. McKim, N. J. Pocock, B. Pocock, D. W. Rice, J. E. Roberts, M. I. Shoebridge, D. Steele-John, J. A. Tyrrell, T. M. (Teller) Waters, L. J. Whish-Wilson, P. S. 26 NOES Askew, W. Ayres, T. Brockman, W. E. Brown, C. L. Cash, M. C. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Colbeck, R. M. Duniam, J. R. Farrell, D. E. Gallagher, K. R. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. McAllister, J. R. O'Sullivan, M. A. (Teller) Paterson, J. W. Payman, F. Polley, H. Pratt, L. C. Sheldon, A. V. Smith, M. F. Sterle, G. Urquhart, A. E. Walsh, J. C. Watt, M. P. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 BILLS 17 BILLS Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 17

Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023

Second Reading 17 10:51 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I rise to speak on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. The opposition will be supporting this bill for a number of reasons, and we're pleased that the government has chosen to implement the reforms which, importantly, began under the former coalition government. In 2021 the coalition government commissioned a review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act. In the 2022 Women's Budget Statement, the coalition also provided $18.5 million to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to support the implementation of recommendations from the review. The review itself was released in March 2022 and concluded that the gender pay gap in Australia was not closing at a fast enough rate. Whilst there has been much progress and work to progress women's economic equality in Australia, there has been slow progress on closing the gender pay gap, with progress stalling at 22.8 per cent in 2021 and 2022. The review considered if the agency had the 'appropriate powers, tools and levers' to achieve the objectives as stated in the act. The review made 10 recommendations to accelerate the rate of change on workplace gender inequality and reduce the reporting burden on business. The measures contained in this bill implement in part or in full the following recommendations from the review: recommendation 2, 'publish organisation gender pay gaps to accelerate action to close them'; recommendation 3, 'bridge the "action gap" with new gender equality standards'; recommendation 5, support Respect@Work implementation 'to prevent and address workplace sex-based harassment and discrimination'; and recommendation 9, set the Workplace Gender Equality Agency up for 'future success to support employers to drive gender equality in Australian workplaces'. Again, as I stated, the opposition are proud to support this bill, given in particular that it implements decisions taken by the former coalition government, and we commend the government for picking up on the work that was undertaken by the former coalition government. The bill includes six amendments to the Workplace Gender Equality Act. It requires the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish the gender pay gap information of relevant employers of over 100 people for each reporting period. It requires relevant employers to provide executive summary and industry benchmark reports to all members of their governing body. It will rename the current minimum standards as 'gender equality standards'. It will include sexual harassment and harassment on the grounds of sex or discrimination as gender equality indicators. It will change the title of the director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to chief executive officer. It will also see a technical amendment to the definition of 'reporting period'. The coalition is supportive of the fact that the government has chosen to implement this in a way that ensures there is no further regulatory burden for businesses under these proposed amendments. No technical change is required by employers in terms of reporting processes or the type of data that's provided to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency in this bill. Currently, organisations with over 100 employees must already provide remuneration data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The main change, therefore, that we are looking at in this bill is to allow the agency to publish this data publicly by organisation as opposed to just by industry type. It's also important to note, though, that businesses in Australia were first required to report this data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency under the relevant act from 1 January 2013. The reporting requirements for businesses, therefore, are not new and, in fact, have now been in place for over a decade. This is a set of reforms that the coalition itself would have introduced if we had continued in government, and I reiterate that we are supportive of implementing them. Again, as I said, when we were in government we provided $18.5 million in funding to ensure that these important steps could be undertaken. The coalition also has a proud record on reducing the gender pay gap, as well as on boosting workforce participation by women to record highs. After we were elected to office in 2013, the former coalition government created in excess of 1.9 million jobs. Importantly, when you look at the breakdown of those 1.9 million jobs around 60 per cent of those jobs went to women. Female workforce participation was around record highs at 62.2 per cent when we left government. That's compared to when we were elected to government in 2013, when it was at 58.7 per cent. The gender pay gap reached 13.8 per cent under the former coalition government and, in fact, when we assumed office in 2013 it was actually at 17.4 per cent, where it sat under the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments. The coalition government also delivered landmark funding of $5.5 billion for women through our two Women's Budget Statements. In 2021-22, we delivered the $3.4 billion 2021-2022 Women's Budget Statement. In the 2022-2023 Women's Budget Statement we delivered $2.1 billion. This included $1.3 billion to drive change for women's safety and additional funding to increase women's workforce participation, to support women in leadership and to improve health outcomes for women and girls in Australia. These budgets built on the coalition government's 2018 and 2020 Women's Economic Security Statements. These reforms are just part of the important actions that we undertook when we were in government to boost women's participation and position in the workplace. Subject to the passage of the legislation, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency is planning to publish the first round of organisational pay gaps in early 2024. I would like to thank the major business peak bodies as well as the many women's organisations which have engaged in the reform process from the commencement, when the coalition first undertook the review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act. Groups like the Business Council of Australia, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group are all supportive of the changes. Groups including the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, the Minerals Council of Australia, COSBOA, Woolworths and the Law Council of Australia were also consulted during the review process. Again, as I stated at the outset, the coalition will support this bill because it implements the important reforms that we had commenced whilst we were in government. We are proud to stand on our record of dramatically reducing the gender pay gap in Australia and of raising workplace standards for women in Australia. I commend the bill to the Senate. 10:59 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. It was well timed that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency released its most recent progress report last week. That report shows how Australian employers are tracking against key gender equality indicators, and it confirms the role transparency and public analysis play in driving cultural change to close the gender pay gap and tackle inequality. It marks the improvements made in the decade since the Workplace Gender Equality Act was introduced. But the report also reports that progress on gender equality is moving far too slowly. In the 2022 global gender pay gap report, Australia ranked 43rd in the world for gender equality. It's a move up from our lowest ebb of 50th under the previous government, but it's still too low for a wealthy country that prides itself on equality. The overall gender pay gap went backwards during COVID, and it's now stalled at 22.8 per cent. We cannot allow equality to go backwards again. In the words of WGEA Director Mary Wooldridge, 'the slowing pace of change signals the need for a renewed approach.' That brings us to this bill. The Greens have long called for reforms to address the key drivers of the gender pay gap: fairer paid parental leave, more equal sharing of care, accessible and free early childhood education, leadership quotas, supporting women in male-dominated industries, valuing unpaid care work, higher wages in the paid care sector, flexible work arrangements, positive duties to create safe workplaces, strong antidiscrimination laws and greater pay transparency. We've also called for measures to strengthen the reporting regime under the Workplace Gender Equality Act. You cannot fix a problem that you don't understand, and you can't understand a problem without clear, consistent and meaningful data. Improving data on diversity, workplace harassment and discrimination, and on actions to address shortfalls, is key to improving workplace diversity, safety and equality, all of which help to close the gender pay gap. While data collection is critical to understanding the problem, it can't be an end in itself. There must be compliance measures and incentives to drive change. Once companies have identified a gender pay gap, they need to take action, they need to be supported to do that and there needs to be consequences if they do not. As part of the 2020 WGEA review, the Greens called for a number of reforms, including extending WGEA's coverage to public and private sector organisations with more than 50 employees, not the current threshold of 100 employees; measuring more than just whether policy exists and looking at whether those policies are implemented and what impact they are having; publishing employer-level pay data rather than sector by sector; naming and shaming, if you like, to encourage change; requiring employers to take action to close the gender pay gap and making employers not working to reduce their pay gap ineligible for government grants and contracts; requiring employers to report on the number of sexual harassment complaints made and the action taken in response; collecting intersectional data to identify hurdles for particular groups of women; and designing a targeted approach to addressing specific pay gaps. They were the reforms that we called for, and I'm very pleased to see that many of those recommendations were reflected in the final report of the WGEA review. I was pleased to see, in particular, the government act on pay transparency in the private sector, an issue on which I had a private member's bill in this chamber in 2015. I was pleased to see confirmation that the whole Commonwealth public sector will be reporting against gender indicators by 2024. I am also pleased also to see more of those recommendations being implemented in this bill and the revised minimum standards instruments. The bill will require WGEA to publish employer-level gender pay gap data, it will require relevant employers to report to their governing body and it will recognise sexual harassment and discrimination as gender equality indicators. The new minimum standards instruments provide for more detailed reporting to bridge the gap between policy and action. In combination, these changes will help shine a light on pay inequality and encourage employers to take meaningful action. Greater transparency will allow employees to see where they are being short-changed, to call out employers for lack of action or to make the decision to move on if they feel like they are not being valued. The changes will also allow more data on the intersectional pay inequality experienced by First Nations women, culturally diverse women, LGBTQIA+ women and women with disability. More work needs to be done to secure robust data collection for non-binary employees and to align data collection protocols across the public sector, but I do note the government's commitment to continue working on that. But some of the things that we have called for have not yet been delivered. Firstly, there's what is reported. Many organisations who have made submissions to the inquiry into this bill called for employers to submit data on both base salary rates and total remuneration packages. Sectors that regularly use incentives or bonus schemes, such as law, finance and tech, are often male dominated, and failure to account for extra payments, generally weighted towards men, risks disguising gender pay gaps within those industries. Reporting on salary should also capture overtime payments. Without that information, pay gap data in professions with high proportions of part-time and shift workers, such as retail, nursing and aged care, gets distorted. Women are often the least able to accept overtime shifts due to caring responsibilities. As I said at the outset, you can't fix a problem you don't understand. We need to make sure that the data that is being collected helps to understand workplace dynamics and why a pay gap persists in some sectors. WGEA should undertake a review of the new gender equality indicators and reporting requirements within three years to identify any key data gaps and assess whether greater transparency on the listed indicators is driving meaningful change. In relation to who has to report, as I mentioned before, the current threshold for reporting to WGEA is companies with 100 employees or more, and only companies with more than 500 employees are required to report against the more detailed gender equality indicators. This means that pay disparities and the volume of sexual harassment in many small and medium-sized businesses, a sector that employs a significant number of people in Australia, will remain underreported. The Global Institute for Women's Leadership looked at gender pay gap reporting in a number of developed countries. The institute concluded that the issue of gender inequality is 'too important for gender pay gap reporting regimes to only target large employers'. The median reporting threshold amongst countries with gender pay gap reporting is 50 employees. This is the case in France, Belgium, Spain and South Africa. In Sweden, companies with as few as 10 employees are required to report. It is no coincidence that these countries have some of the lowest gender pay gaps. We will continue to call for the government to lower the reporting threshold and require companies and public sector entities with more than 50 employees to report against all the gender equality indicators. Small and medium-sized businesses must be supported to meet those new reporting obligations. We urge the government to expedite work to bring state and territory public service bodies under the WGEA reporting regime. While various states require gender pay gap reporting, without harmonisation WGEA can't gather a consistent national suite of data to inform its analysis. In relation to compliance, as identified in the WGEA progress report, reporting obligations have driven action in the past decade. But it has been too slow and too patchy. To drive a rapid cultural shift and close the gender pay gap, WGEA need powers to monitor compliance. They need to be able to hold employers to account when they fail to report or where their reports are incomplete or misleading. The workplace gender equality procurement principles on paper already seek to stop non-compliant employers from receiving government grants, tenders or contracts, but in previous years many non-compliant employers continued to receive government funding and contracts. We welcome commitments from the government to ensure that the procurement principles are given effect and provide a positive incentive for employers to work towards closing their gender pay gaps. Companies with long-term government contracts must meet their annual reporting obligations and take meaningful action to address gender pay gaps or they must risk losing their contracts. We strongly support that approach. Public funding and procurement is an effective lever to drive change. Critically, WGEA needs to have adequate resources to monitor compliance and to identify companies that are struggling to close their gender pay gap. Companies should be supported with targeted training and workplace consultation, with assistance to develop action plans or by encouraging managers from similar types of organisations that have successively closed their pay gap to mentor others. We welcome the additional funding allocated to WGEA in the 2022-23 budget. The government must consult regularly with WGEA about whether any additional resources or powers are required to enable WGEA to achieve the aims of this bill. Closing the gender pay gap is everybody's business. We welcome this bill as a positive step and urge the government to use its promised second tranche of reforms to implement the outstanding recommendations from the WGEA review and drive the change that all employees deserve. The gender pay gap is about equality and economic security, but I want to finish my contribution by talking about the fact that we have more women and children than ever before sliding into poverty, so we can't just have a tick-and-flick on this issue. We welcome these reforms on the gender pay gap reporting requirements, but we have a disproportionate number of women sliding into poverty, a disproportionate number of woman that are reliant on the inadequate JobSeeker payment and a disproportionate number of women who are single mums and currently receiving the inadequate single parent payment. Once their youngest child turns eight, those women then get punted onto the even lower JobSeeker rate, which is a drop of approximately $200 a fortnight. We held a very moving forum yesterday morning where we had some amazing speakers, including Dr Anne Summers; Sam Mostyn, who's now advising the government through the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce; and a number of other really passionate advocates, including Terese Edwards from the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children. They are calling for the government to reverse that terrible decision to drop single mums off the single parent payment once their youngest child turns eight, and the Greens strongly back that call. They've have done the figures. It's a $1.41 billion cost, but it would be life changing for 500,000 single mums. Single mums are the hardest-working people that I know, and we will stand side by side with them and fight for them to have enough money to live on. It's great that we're talking about the gender pay gap in workplaces, but we need to broaden the conversation and talk about the gender wealth gap and talk about the fact that we still do not value women's labour and the unpaid care that we do every single day, disproportionately more than our male counterparts. There are a lot of reforms that need to happen. I'm encouraged that the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce have quite a broad remit, and I'm really looking forward to their recommendations. I'm urging the government to get serious in the budget about gender equality. We've waited for so long. Things aren't getting better. Women are getting poorer and poorer. This is a budget priority issue for this government—it should be. Never mind the $368 billion for the subs, never mind the $254 billion for the wealthy—of course, most of them are men. Actually start funding women, value their unpaid labour and increase those rates of income support, both for people on JobSeeker and for those single parents. They are desperate. They are living in their cars or their tents, and it is not okay. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Smith, you've got about a minute and a bit. 11:13 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia In my minute and a bit, it's great to be speaking on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. I want to respond to something that Senator Waters just said about the collection of data by WGEA. My understanding is that WGEA does use total remuneration, including super, overtime, bonuses and other payments. I just wanted to make a statement about that. It is absolutely a privilege to be standing here talking to a bill called closing the gender pay gap—it's about time! We have been talking in this chamber for many, many years about the inequity that exists in the earnings of working women as opposed to the earnings of working men. The reality is that, for all of us who believe in a more equal future for working Australians, that more equal future requires and necessitates equity between women and men in the workplace. We know that when women go into the workplace—as Senator Waters just said—as well as all the additional caring responsibilities that they carry the additional burden of, to be frank, in most households in Australia, they also then enter the workforce and, for the same job, are not remunerated equally to their male counterparts. That has to stop. There has been a lot of advocacy in this space over many years—indeed, many decades—to close the gender pay gap, but what we do know is that the work we have done to date hasn't been working fast enough and hasn't been working effectively enough. We need to change our approach. We need to get tougher with our approach. The PRESIDE 112096 The time allotted for this debate has expired. It being 11.15 am, we will move to notices of motion. COMMITTEES 21 COMMITTEES Selection of Bills Committee 21 Report 21 11:15 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania I present the third report of 2023 of the Selection of Bills Committee, and I seek leave to have the report incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The report read as follows— S ELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE REPORT NO. 3 OF 2023 23 March 2023 MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE Senator Anne Urquhart (Government Whip, Chair) Senator Wendy Askew (Opposition Whip) Senator Ross Cadell (The Nationals Whip) Senator Pauline Hanson (Pauline Hanson's One Nation Whip) Senator Nick McKim (Australian Greens Whip) Senator Ralph Babet Senator the Hon. Anthony Chisholm Senator the Hon. Katy Gallagher Senator Matt O'Sullivan Senator David Pocock Senator Paul Scarr Senator Lidia Thorpe Senator Tammy Tyrrell Secretary: Tim Bryant 02 6277 3020 SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE REPORT NO. 3 OF 2023 1. The committee met in private session on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 at 7.25 pm. 2. The committee recommends that— (a) the provisions of the Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023 be referred immediately to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 April 2023 (see appendix 1 for a statement of reasons for referral); (b) the Improving Access to Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2023 be referred immediately to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 1 September 2023 (see appendix 2 for a statement of reasons for referral); (c) the provisions of the Inspector-General of Aged Care Bill 2023 and the Inspector- General of Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 be referred immediately to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 April 2023 (see appendix 3 for a statement of reasons for referral); (d) the provisions of the Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023 be referred immediately to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 24 April 2023 (see appendix 4 for a statement of reasons for referral); and (e) the provisions of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023 be referred immediately to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 14 April 2023 (see appendix 5 for a statement of reasons for referral). 3. The committee recommends that the following bill not be referred to committees: Health Insurance Amendment (Prescribed Dental Patients and Other Measures) Bill 2023 4. The committee deferred consideration of the following bills to its next meeting: Broadcasting Services Amendment (Audio Description) Bill 2019 Criminal Code Amendment (Inciting Illegal Disruptive Activities) Bill 2023 Customs Legislation Amendment (Commercial Greyhound Export and Import Prohibition) Bill 2021 Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposals) Bill 2023 Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020 Electoral Legislation Amendment (Lowering the Voting Age) Bill 2023 Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Regional Forest Agreements) Bill 2020 Federal Environment Watchdog Bill 2021 Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023 Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2023 Productivity Commission Amendment (Electricity Reporting) Bill 2023 Snowy Hydro Corporatisation Amendment (No New Fossil Fuels) Bill 2021 [No. 2] Special Recreational Vessels Amendment Bill 2023 Treasury Laws Amendment (Refining and Improving Our Tax System) Bill 2023 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Bill 2022. Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2023 5. The committee considered the following bills but was unable to reach agreement: Financial Accountability Regime Bill 2023 Financial Accountability Regime (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023 Financial Services Compensation Scheme of Last Resort Levy Bill 2023 Financial Services Compensation Scheme of Last Resort Levy (Collection) Bill 2023 Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Services Compensation Scheme of Last Resort) Bill 2023 (Anne Urquhart) Chair 23 March 2023 Appendix 1 Name of bill: Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Complicated issue Possible submissions or evidence from: Sector, Groups Individuals that are affected. Committee to which bill is to be referred: Education and Employment Legislation Committee Possible hearing date{s): April Possible reporti ng date: 28 April 2023 (signed) Wendy Askew Appendix 2 Name of bill: Improving Access to Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Medicinal Cannabis is an issue affecting health care: costs, patient access, safe medical outcomes; social outcomes: alcoholism reduction, domestic violence reduction, workplace health and safety, driving safety; animal health; and finally our obligations under international conventions. Possible submissions or evidence fro m: Medicinal Cannabis Industry Australia (mcia.org.au) The Cannabis Law Reform Alliance (https://www.drivechangemc.org.au/) United in Compassion https://unitedincompassion.com.au/ Michelle Crain from HHIA Expo as point of contact for the production industry The Lambert Initiative, Sydney Uni, (https://www.sydney.edu.au/brain-mind/our- research/lambert-initiative.htmI) CBD Vets Australia (https://cbdvetsaustralia.com.au/) Committee to which bill is to be referred: Community Affairs References Committee Possible hearing date(s): Possible reporting date: 1st September 2023 (signed) Pauline Hanson Appendix 3 Name of bill: Inspector-General Of Aged Care Bill 2023 Reasons for referra1/principal issues for consideration: Interaction with Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, and Royal Commission recommendations Possible submissions or evidence from: ACCPA OPAN COTA Aged care worker unions (HSU and ANMF) Committee to which bill is to be referred: Community Affairs Possible hearing date(s): TBC—potentially on the papers Possible reporting date: 28 April 2023 (signed) Nick McKim Name of bill: Inspector-General of Aged Care Bill 2023 Inspector-General of Aged Care Bill 2023 (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Complicated issue Possible submissions or evidence from: Sector, Groups Individuals that are affected. Committee to which bill is to be referred Community Affairs Legislation Committee Possible hearing date(s): April Possible reporting date: 28 April 2023 (signed) Wendy Askew Appendix 4 Name of bill: Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Opposition (and likely crossbenchers) will request referral —Government has publicly signaled we would welcome referral. Possible submissions or evidence from: ACTU/ACCI/AIG (likely joint), BCA, Tate Directors Australia, ITECA, Community Colleges Australia, Adult Learning Australia, Universities Australia, Group of 8, Aus Tech Network of Unis, Regional network of Unis, Innovative Research Unis, States and territories, COSBOA, Retailers Association, Pharmacy Guild, NECA, National Australian Apprenticeship Association, Chartered Accountants ANZ, Chartered Practicing Accountants, Institute of Public Accountants, SEEK, Linkedln, Tech Council, AMES, WAVE, Equality Rights Australia, Council of Peaks, NFF, BSL. DEWR, Jobs and Skills Australia Committee to which bill is to be referred: Education, Employement and Workplace Relations Legislation Committee Possible hearing date(s): April non-sitting weeks (no preference for specific dates) Possible reporting date: Week of 24 April 2023 (signed) Anne Urquhart Name of bill: Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Complicated issue Possible submissions or evidence from: Sector, Groups Individuals that are affected. Committee to which bill is to be referred Education and Employment Legislations Committee Possible hearing d ate(s) April Possible reporting date: 24 April 2023 (signed) Wendy Askew Appendix 5 Name of bill: National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Consideration of stakeholder views on the VET Data Streamlining project. Possible submissions or evidence from: Independent Tertiary Education Council of Australia (ITECA); TAFE Directors Australia; and Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. Committee to which bill is to be referred: Senate Standing Committees on Education and Employment Possible hearing date(s): 17 or 18 April 2023 (half-day hearing) Possible reporting date: 4 May 2023 (signed) Anne Urquhart Name of bill: National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Data Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2023 Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration: Complicated issue Possible Submissions or evidence from: Sector, Groups Individuals that are affected. Committee to which bill is to be referred: Education and Employment Legislation Committee Possible hearing date(s) April Possible reporting date: 14 April 2023 (signed) Wendy Askew Senator URQUHART 231199 I move: That the report be adopted. 11:15 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: At the end of the motion, add "and, in respect of the Financial Accountability Regime Bill 2023 and 4 related bills, the bills not be referred to a committee". 11:15 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania The Greens do not support this amendment, and that's because we do think an inquiry into the Financial Accountability Regime Bill 2023 and its related bills is warranted. That's because an inquiry could have helped us to get to the bottom of the extraordinary influence that the Australian Banking Association has over both the government and the opposition in this place. We all recall that the Australian Greens had an agreement with Minister Jones to include in the Financial Accountability Regime the capacity for million-dollar fines to be levied against dodgy bankers. History shows that, very quickly after striking that agreement with the Australian Greens, Minister Jones backflipped, and I have no doubt that that's because the Australian Banking Association reached not just into his office but into the Treasurer's office and the Prime Minister 's office and made it very clear that those fines were not to be included. As a result, there will be no civil penalties in the Financial Accountability Regime for dodgy bankers who do not take the necessary steps to ensure that their customers aren't ripped off. The Australian Greens very firmly believe that we should be allowing the disinfectant of sunlight to shine on exactly what went on there and exactly why it is that this is a second-class financial accountability regime framework—because it doesn't actually provide the capacity for million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers. Once again, the political donations that occur in this place, which poison so much of our political debate, are again poisoning public policy in this country, because, of course, the big banks are major donors to both the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal and National parties. It's very instructive that the only significant party in this place that doesn't take donations from the big banks—that is, the Australian Greens—is the only party standing up and fighting hard for the inclusion of million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers in the Financial Accountability Regime Bill. So there was every need, which a reasonable person could see, for an inquiry into exactly what happened and exactly what is the power and influence of the big banking corporations on the major parties and, by dint of their numbers, on this chamber as a whole. Make no mistake, it is the dirty, toxic political donations—the institutionalised bribery that has become normalised in this country—that is corrupting our democracy and corrupting the legislation that this chamber is passing. So it's a sad day, indeed, when both the Australian Labor Party, in government, and the Liberal and National parties, in opposition, are going to collude to ensure that that disinfectant of sunlight is not able to shine on the dirty and disgraceful machinations that happened and that forced the government, the minister, to walk away from an agreement that they had made to include million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers in the Financial Accountability Regime Bill. Question agreed to. Original question, as amended, agreed to. BUSINESS 26 BUSINESS Rearrangement 26 11:20 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: That today— (a) government business orders of the day as shown on today's Order of Business be considered from 12.15 pm; (b) government business then be called on and considered till not later than 1.30 pm; and (c) general business notice of motion no. 195 be considered during general business. Question agreed to. NOTICES 26 NOTICES Postponement 26 BUSINESS 26 BUSINESS Consideration of Legislation 26 11:21 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023, allowing it to be considered during this period of sittings. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 26 COMMITTEES Select Committee on Australia's Excess Mortality 26 Appointment 26 11:22 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria I move: (1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Australia's Excess Mortality, be established to inquire into and report on: (a) current Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data showing excess deaths in 2021 and 2022, with particular reference to: (i) all-cause provisional mortality data reported by the states and territories to the ABS, and (ii) the difference between all-cause provisional mortality data for 2021 and 2022 with the preceding years of 2015 to 2020 (inclusive); and (b) the socioeconomic determinants on health that might have contributed to these excess deaths, such as mental health, cost of living, or other such factors, (c) any other identified factors contributing to excess mortality, (d) the process of death certificate issuance in each state and territory; and (e) any other related matter. (2) That the committee present its final report by the last day of sitting in March 2024. (3) That the committee consist of six senators, as follows: (a) two senators nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate; (b) two senators nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate; (c) one senator nominated by the United Australia Party; and (d) one senator nominated by other minority party or independent senators. (4) That: (a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator, (b) participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee; and (c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of a committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present. (5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that not all members have been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy. (6) That the committee elect as chair the member nominated by the United Australia Party and, as deputy chair, a member nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate. (7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a meeting of the committee or the position of chair is temporarily vacant. (8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee. (9) That, in the event of an equally divided vote, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, have a casting vote. (10) That the committee have power to appoint subcommittees consisting of three or more of its members, and to refer to any such subcommittee any of the matters which the committee is empowered to consider. (11) That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit. (12) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President. (13) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public. 11:22 Sena 266524 Queensland tor ROBERTS () (): I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator ROBERTS 266524 We have witnessed in this country an increased death rate due to COVID vaccines. The evidence is quite clear that the excess death rate is around 17 per cent—unexplained! No-one in the health sector will explain it. No-one in the health bureaucracy will explain it. It is uncaring to let this go. It is a cover-up. There's been gross mismanagement with COVID. It has never been about health; it has been about using deceit to ensure wealth transfer and control over people. The government has been belted by the crossbench this morning for the lack of transparency and the lack of integrity. Show some guts. Show some integrity. Show some transparency. Support Senator Babet's motion. One Nation will be supporting Senator Babet's motion. 11:23 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 The coalition thinks this is a very important issue. Given the number of select committees being operated by the Senate at the moment—I'm being advised that there are five—our preference would be to see this issue interrogated through the Community Affairs References Committee and have an inquiry into these very terms of reference there. As such, we won't be supporting the motion before the chamber. As stated, it's an important issue that requires a bit of sunlight, to coin a phrase from Senator McKim. Let's have a look and interrogate the matter there. 11:24 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 opposes this motion. We oppose it on the basis that there are already mechanisms that exist to undertake the analysis that the motion contemplates. Trusted organisations including the ABS, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Department of Health and Aged Care work together to ensure that we have a robust system of reporting mortality and morbidity at the national level. This work, of course, is informed by the work undertaken by state and territory health departments in their disease surveillance and health-reporting frameworks. Our existing framework of disease surveillance and reporting has been built up over decades and continues to provide the data required by public health experts to undertake the detailed epidemiological research into issues such as social determinants of health that is contemplated in this motion. The PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 194, standing in the name of Senator Babet, be agreed to.    

The Senate divided. [11:29]
(The President—Senator Lines)

 4 AYES Antic, A. Babet, R. (Teller) Hanson, P. L. Roberts, M. I. 35 NOES Allman-Payne, P. J. Askew, W. (Teller) Ayres, T. Brown, C. L. Cash, M. C. Chisholm, A. Ciccone, R. Colbeck, R. M. Cox, D. Duniam, J. R. Farrell, D. E. Faruqi, M. Green, N. L. Grogan, K. Hanson-Young, S. C. Hume, J. Lines, S. McAllister, J. R. McKim, N. J. McLachlan, A. L. Payman, F. Pocock, B. Polley, H. Rice, J. E. Sheldon, A. V. Shoebridge, D. Smith, M. F. Steele-John, J. A. Sterle, G. Urquhart, A. E. Walsh, J. C. Waters, L. J. Watt, M. P. Whish-Wilson, P. S. White, L. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 BILLS 28 BILLS Criminal Code Amendment (Prohibition of Nazi Symbols) Bill 2023 28

Criminal Code Amendment (Prohibition of Nazi Symbols) Bill 2023

First Reading 28 11:32 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I move: That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Criminal Code Act 1995, and for related purposes. Question agreed to. Senator CASH I0M I present the bill and move: That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Question agreed to. Bill read a first time. Second Reading 28 11:32 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill. Leave granted. Senator CASH I0M I table the explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— President, this is a Bill that should be supported by every Senator in this chamber. The Coalition is proud to introduce this Bill which amends the Criminal Code Act of 1995 to prohibit the display of Nazi symbols. There is absolutely no place in our civil society for Nazi symbols which are directly linked to one of the most heinous regimes in the history of the world. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany carried out the deliberate, calculated and organised mass murder of six million European Jews as well as five million prisoners of war and other victims. The Nazis' systemic and state sponsored campaign of persecution dehumanised an entire people. But it was much worse than that. The Nazi regime's industrialised extermination resulted in the Holocaust, one of the worst crimes committed in history. The Nazi regime is one of the greatest evils ever visited on humanity. Nazism is a vile ideology of unparalleled hate. Because of what they represent, this evil, this terror, Nazi symbols are no ordinary symbols. We must condemn Nazi symbols in any form that they are found or are displayed. What we saw unfold on the streets of Melbourne last weekend was absolutely unacceptable and quite disgraceful. Every Australian should find the actions of that small group of protesters, who used the Nazi salute, offensive and every Senator in this place should condemn those actions. Those who display Nazi symbols or use the Nazi salute are either ignorant of the past or they are deliberately promoting evil. The Nazi salute is a symbol clearly associated with the Nazi ideology, and has no place in Australian public life. The public display of Nazi symbols is abhorrent to the Australian way of life and has no part in our political discourse. All Australians are diminished by the sharing and glorification of an ideology which is characterised by genocide, mass murder and other forms of persecution. Australians are entitled to feel proud that, together with allies around the globe, we as a nation fought against the Nazi threat over the course of the Second World War. Prohibiting the display of Nazi symbols aligns with our values and our heritage as Australians. Noting the national security risks connected with far-right extremist groups that are often associated with the display of Nazi symbols, and the related risks to public order, the Bill is a modest and proportionate measure that protects civil discourse in our country. Sadly, the reason this Parliament must act is that disturbingly there is a growing number of cases of the glorification of Nazism in Australia. The Director-General of Security has spoken about the growth of grievance motivated violent extremism. He said, 'As a nation we need to reflect on why some teenagers are hanging Nazi flags and portraits of the Christchurch killer on their bedroom walls and others are sharing beheading videos. Just as importantly, we must reflect on what we can do about it.' Since the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 20th Century, Nazi symbols have been synonymous with antisemitic thoughts and actions, including the devastation of the Holocaust. That association remains to this day. Australia is a tolerant and multicultural country. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 both confirm that every Australian has the right to live free from discrimination based on their race and religion, among other factors. When we talk about Nazi symbols we are talking about a symbol or action commonly associated with the Nazi party. It includes the Nazi swastika, the Nazi salute, Nazi uniforms and other types of symbols identified in the Executive Council of Australian Jewry's anti-Semitism reports. In seeking to amend the Criminal Code, we seek to make it an offence to display such symbols without a reasonable excuse. A person would have committed an offence if the person displays a Nazi symbol or the person knows that the symbol is a Nazi symbol. The penalty for an offence is imprisonment for 12 months or 100 penalty units ($27,500 as at March 2023). These penalties are broadly consistent with penalties imposed under similar legislation in New South Wales. The amendments make clear that religious symbols that are sometimes confused with Nazi symbols are not captured by the prohibition. In particular, the display of a swastika in connection with Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism does not constitute the display of a Nazi symbol. To ensure the prohibition does not interfere with the vital work of teaching young people about the evils of the past, there are limitations and carve-outs in terms of genuine educational, scientific and artistic purposes such as films and documentaries. The prohibition does not apply to journalism or where symbols are displayed for another purpose in the public interest. Some may complain that this legislation will limit freedom of expression. It is important to note that while the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom of expression it does allow for freedom of expression to be limited to protect the rights or reputations of others, national security, public order, or public health or morals. Limitations must be prescribed by legislation necessary to achieve the desired purpose and must be proportionate to the need on which the limitation is predicated. The display of Nazi symbols is closely associated with extremist groups that may pose a national security risk to Australia, and with protest action that presents a highly visible threat to public order. The public display of Nazi symbols is often associated with incitement to violence that can impede the ordinary, civil discourse that is the lifeblood of our democracy. With this in mind, we contend that this legislation is justified and the limitation on freedom of expression is proportionate and reasonable. President, this is an issue that should be able to unite this chamber. That is certainly the spirit in which this Bill is brought into this place. We should be able to work together in this Chamber on issues on national importance. It is important that we send the right signal, particularly to young people and in particular young men in this country who are most likely to be influenced and often indoctrinated into radical extremism. This Bill sends the sort of strong signal that is needed especially when so many young people can be quickly and effectively influenced online by those wishing to spread their evil messages. In the wake of what we saw on the streets of Melbourne last weekend I urge all in the Chamber to support this Bill. It is the right time to send a clear message that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable in our great Nation. There are times when those of us who are privileged enough to be elected to serve in this place are required to move decisively and quickly to deal with an issue—this is one of those times. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Senator CASH I0M I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Modernisation) Bill 2022 30

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Modernisation) Bill 2022

First Reading 30 11:33 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Question agreed to. Bill read a first time. Second Reading 30 11:33 Senator CHISHOLM 39801 Queensland I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— This Government is committed to robust integrity frameworks and enhancing existing mechanisms to ensure statutory oversight of intelligence agencies is commensurate with their responsibilities and powers. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) plays an important role in meeting this commitment by assisting Ministers in overseeing and reviewing the activities of the Australian intelligence agencies for legality and propriety and for consistency with human rights. The Inspector-General performs a number of integral oversight functions including completing inspections, inquiries, and investigations into complaints involving these intelligence agencies. This Bill modernises the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act 1986 (the IGIS Act) and enhances the agency's oversight of the Office of National Intelligence, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation and the Defence Intelligence Organisation. The Bill also improves the IGIS' oversight of the use of Network Activity Warrants by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. The IGIS Act was first introduced in 1986 and was designed for a smaller agency, and a different Commonwealth integrity framework. This Bill will enhance IGIS's oversight of the agencies within its existing jurisdiction, ensuring Australia's oversight functions are commensurate with modern National Intelligence Community (NIC) functions. This will provide the community with further assurance that Australia's intelligence agencies are subject to robust oversight and integrity. The majority of the measures in this Bill have previously been reviewed and unanimously supported by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The Bill This Bill introduces amendments to ensure that the IGIS is able to share information, subject to appropriate safeguards, with other Commonwealth integrity bodies including the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The ability for the IGIS to share information with an integrity body where it is relevant to that integrity body's functions will enhance Australia's integrity framework by facilitating access to information required for oversight purposes. These amendments will also strengthen the IGIS's ability to coordinate with other integrity bodies and minimise duplication in resources. There are strong information protections in place that support IGIS officials to deal with the highly sensitive information obtained in their roles. This Bill will amend the IGIS Act, as well as other Commonwealth legislation, to ensure that people are not prevented from disclosing information, that may otherwise be subject to secrecy offences, to IGIS officials for the purpose of performing their duties or functions, or exercising powers. This will facilitate effective oversight by ensuring that IGIS officials can receive and have access to the information they require to perform their oversight role. This Bill implements recommendations 172 and 174 of the Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community to prevent the head or deputy head of an agency within IGIS jurisdiction from being appointed as the IGIS immediately after serving in that position, and to allow the IGIS to consider employment related grievances for staff employed under the Office of National Intelligence Act 2018. These measures will promote the independence of the IGIS, and resolve an oversight gap to ensure that staff employed under the Office of National Intelligence Act have access to independent review of employment grievances. This Bill makes a range of additional amendments to the IGIS Act to ensure that the legislation governing the IGIS is adapted to contemporary circumstances. This includes technical amendments to improve clarity, modernise drafting expressions and remove redundant provisions, and address certain limitations in the IGIS' oversight functions and powers in order to facilitate effective oversight. This Bill represents an important enhancement to the IGIS's existing oversight of Australia's intelligence agencies. Effective oversight is critical to building and maintaining trust in Australia's intelligence agencies and their important role, and ensuring that the Australian people have confidence in the activities that are pursued in their name. These measures are a further step in supporting the Government's commitment to robust accountability and integrity frameworks, and enhancing existing mechanisms to facilitate effective oversight. Debate adjourned. Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 31

Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023

Second Reading 31 11:34 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia I just have a few remarks remaining in my contribution on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. As I said, I want to keep it brief. It is a privilege to be speaking on a bill called 'closing the gender pay gap'. We know the work that has been done to date hasn't been happening fast enough. The bill before us presents a much tougher requirement in terms of reporting and in terms of the information businesses will be required to provide to WGEA. The impact of this will be uncomfortable for some businesses. We know it will be uncomfortable for some businesses, but it's these uncomfortable truths which will make a difference to closing the pay gap. In other jurisdictions, we have seen what happens when you put that additional layer and burden of proof on businesses to come to the table with a problem—when even well-meaning businesses have to come to the table and explain their gender pay gap. That transparency will drive action, and that's what this bill really is about. It's about the concrete steps that we take. Yes, they will be uncomfortable for some, but that discomfort is our opportunity to drive change. We know that the gender pay gap has been too stubbornly persistent for too long: we know that women are retiring with a massive gap in their superannuation earnings and we know that, when they're ending their careers, their superannuation balances are far lower than those of their male counterparts. There are ways to change this through superannuation, there are ways to change this through participation and there are ways to change this through support for education, training and time out of the workplace, but this is going to be a really significant reform as well. Data matters, how we collect data matters and how we require companies to come to the table with data matters. Despite that discomfort, I hope business comes to this with enthusiasm and support, because we know that if they do—if they come to this with the same degree of enthusiasm and the same intentions and goodwill that everyone in this chamber is supporting this legislation with—we will see some really, really great results. We know that we will see a change and an impact on the gender pay gap. I really hope that when the two-year-old climbing up my back enters the workplace one day—unlike Senator Waters and me, who have been campaigning on this issue for many years—she will be able to enter the workplace and know that she's paid fairly, appropriately and adequately compared to her male counterparts. That's a future we can all strive to work for. There is a lot we need to do, of course, to make women's futures more equal, but, in the workplace, this is one particular thing we can do today. I'm really pleased and enthused by the support across the chamber to make a difference to the gender pay gap, and I commend the bill to the chamber. (Quorum formed) 11:39 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I rise to speak on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. The Albanese Labor government is delivering on our election commitment to help close the gender pay gap at work. This bill will work to ensure that this occurs sooner rather than later. The bill will require the gender pay gaps of employers with 100 or more workers to be published, a key reform to drive transparency and action towards closing the gender pay gap. No longer can bosses around the country hide paying a man and a woman different wages or salaries. For too long women working full time have earnt, on average, 14.1 per cent less than men per week in their pay packet. What does that look like in dollar terms? The average weekly full-time earnings of a woman in Australia across all industries and occupations was lower than the equivalent for men by $263 per week. All Australians should be rightly shocked and outraged. The gender pay gap is also holding our economy back, with $51.8 billion per year lost because of the lack of gender equality on pay. On current projections, it will take another 26 years to close the gender pay gap if no action is taken. Those opposite may want to continue on that path, but the women of Australia, every woman in every sector, deserves pay parity. Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close. Let's not wait another second, hour, day, week, month or year—let alone another quarter of a century. At its core, the bill makes employers more responsible with greater accountability towards gender equality in their workplaces and helps drive the actions required in the workplace to ensure pay parity. Advance Australia fair—they are the words that our country stands by. It is the way we live as people, and that needs to be applied to pay across the workforce, from the shopfloor to the boardroom, and even on the basketball court. Australian women and girls deserve fair and safe working conditions. They deserve equality of opportunity. They deserve equal remuneration. No more excuses—it's time. We know that women have an average of 23.4 per cent less super when they come to retirement age than men. We know that the cohort of homeless women is growing. Ultimately, what has been happening and is still happening is wage theft, and women are the collateral damage during their working lives and at retirement age. I remember when I was working in the finance sector in Melbourne in the seventies. It seems such a long time ago. Women in that company were only invited to join the superannuation scheme after 10 years. If you were a young woman like me, and you were taking time out to have a family, you had no hope, no hope whatsoever, of being able to join that super fund. Even if you were invited, there was no guarantee. It is time to change that once and for all. We deserve pay parity, and with this bill the Labor government is working very hard to close that gap. Too many women in Australia can't afford to retire. Women make up half of Australia's workforce. They represent less than a quarter of all chief executive officers. Of course, gender discrimination in the workplace just doesn't impact women. We understand that. In 2021, a review of the act made 10 recommendations that would help Australia accelerate progress towards workplace gender equality, as well as making reporting easier for employers. The review identified where further action was needed to strengthen the act. The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023, together with the remade instruments under the act, fulfils most of the recommendations of the review that require legislative amendment. The current approach of publishing aggregate industry gender pay gaps is not creating the transparency, accountability and insights we need in order to close the gender pay gap fast enough. But, now, change is here under the Albanese Labor government. Research tells us the value of publishing employer gender pay gaps in encouraging employers to address adverse gender dynamics in the workplace, and in ensuring individuals—both employers and employees—move towards real-world action that will make a change in their workplaces. The bill will align the act with Workplace Gender Equality (Matters in relation to Gender Equality Indicators) Instrument 2013 (No.1) by including sexual harassment and harassment on the grounds of sex or discrimination, as gender equality indicators in the act. This change recognises the importance of these core gender equality indicators and updates the act to bring it in line with its instrument and the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 as well as other recent legislative changes, including the Respect@Work reforms. The bill ultimately reflects the increased ambitions of all these measures to strengthen gender equality and improve outcomes for both women and men in the workplace by amending the act to rename current minimum standards as gender equality standards. This bill is the first step. There is more we want to do and, until gender equality occurs in all facets, we are not there. We will not be advancing Australia fair. There are further reforms to come, and the Office for Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet will continue to work to identify the best pathways for good. Every measure in this bill has been designed in close consultation with stakeholders across Australia, including the business and not-for-profit sectors, employee organisations, higher education providers and the women's sector. The bill represents a critical piece of the government's ongoing commitment and action towards gender equality and empowering every woman and girl across Australia. I have two daughters and four granddaughters. They deserve to have the same opportunities to succeed in life and be paid as much as their male counterparts. To show the gender balance: I have three grandsons as well. We want equality for both genders. With our gender equality legislation and new strategy to achieve gender equality, working in concert with Respect@Work to secure jobs, better pay, and improvement for fairness and families, the bill will help us to achieve our goal of being one of the best countries in the world for equality between women and men. We have already passed Paid Parental Leave, which gives access to both partners parenting a child. That is another reform. We took action immediately on coming to government. Reporting will commence in 2024, drawing on data already provided by employers. Companies' gender pay gaps will be published on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency website. There will be nowhere to hide. Enough is enough where pay parity is concerned. This reform was recommended by the 2021 Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, and I proudly stand on this side of the chamber because the Australian Labor Party and the Albanese government will always fight for fairness, fair pay for women and girls, and equality in the workplace. That will ensure that we have the best possible outcomes for all Australians. 11:48 Senator BARBARA POCOCK BFQ South Australia I rise to speak to the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. I have a very sensible speech written by my wonderful staff about this bill, but I turned 68 yesterday and I'm feeling cranky. In the last two weeks I lost a very dear friend who, like me, has given 40 years to the project of collecting data about the gender pay gap. In my view, there should be more cranky women in this parliament with that kind of experience who can say: 'We need to do what this bill proposes, certainly. We need more transparency in our data on the gender pay gap.' But data is not going to cut it, my friends. I've spent 40 years collecting that data. I've written the books. My friend, Michelle Hogan, whom we've lost, spent many of those years working alongside me amongst low-paid women, trying to improve their conditions of employment. Michelle's 40 years are measured in many ways in activism and in making a difference through the union movement and the women's movement. I have on my desk today a photo of us together at a roundtable on gender pay inequity in 1991, out of which came a book about what's wrong and what we need to do. We worked together for many decades, and our data have not changed. This is not to diminish the incredible work that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency does or efforts by governments—people in this place—over decades to attempt to shift these numbers. But the numbers will not shift through the collection of transparent data. That will not be what is necessary, because what's going on in our labour market is not just about the gap between people in workplaces on full-time earnings, and we cannot deal with the gender pay gap just by looking at pay data. So I support all the measures in this bill, which my colleague Senator Waters spoke about, and the need to go further on better data collection. We need to look, for example, at the gap between part-time workers' earnings, both men and women. That's where the gap is very wide. And we need to look more carefully at total earnings—at bonuses, at superannuation, at cars and at all the things men get more of and women get less of. But we need to do a whole lot of other things, too, and I think of my friend Michelle as I talk about them. I want to first mention what's going on in our low-paid workforce. I see my fellow colleagues from the Select Committee on Work and Care. We need to lift the pay of women in feminised occupations, as is recommended in the committee's recently tabled report—that is, the childcare workers, the aged-care workers, the disability workers, the nurses, the people in all those systems of care, which is a huge economy of the services sector, where 90 per cent of people work, and women work in every workplace at the bottom. Unless we lift the pay rates of those workers and also improve their conditions, we will not narrow the gender pay gap, and a group of very sad parliamentarians will be standing here in 40 years lamenting the pay gap. We have to do better than that. One of the ways we have to do better is by changing the conditions of employment for women in those low-paid service and care industries. These women need more than improvement in their pay rate. They need more security in their jobs. So many of them are casual. So many of them cannot predict what hours they're working tomorrow or next week. They're in the retail sector. Their employers can predict how many Granny Smith apples are needed in aisle 6 tomorrow, but they can't tell these workers what their hours will be; they can't tell these workers what their pay will be. Unless we fix the rostering systems, the uncertainty around rostering and the insecurity of employment, we can sing in here all day about the gender pay gap but we will make no difference. We have to do more than that. We also have to improve the conditions and system of work that supports women. Women's pay is lower because they take time out of the labour market to take care of others—their kids, their parents, their friends and their partners. We can afford, as a first step, to move paid parental leave beyond 26 weeks. It's a good thing that we're going to 26 weeks of paid parental leave, but that's not enough. That takes us to half the international standard. We've recently had costings done on what it would take to bring our paid parental leave system to 52 weeks at minimum wage. It'd cost $2 billion a year. That is 10 per cent of the annual amount for the stage 3 stage cuts. And we women have to come in here and beg for—I mean, it's not nothing, $2 billion, but by hell, it's not $25 billion, which is going mostly to men who are on higher pay. It's time we lifted our paid parental leave system to reach more seriously towards the OECD average. We are at the bottom of the heap, along with the US, and we should do better, as a very wealthy country that can afford to buy very expensive submarines and give a tax cut to mostly men who are earning over $200,000 a year. The third thing we need to do—and these are my top things; I could go all day, but I have a time limit, which is just as well—was referred to by my colleague Senator Waters. Yesterday we were at a meeting for the Friends of Working Women in this place, and it was a very interesting morning, looking at data that Dr Anne Summers has collected and put before us about the relationship between poverty and violence. We have good data on this now that tells us that so many sole parents are alone because they have escaped violent circumstances, and they are at the bottom of the labour market, insecure in their jobs—when they can find them—and dependent on a payment which in 2013 was cut, as my colleagues said, by $100 a week. Anne Summers made the point that if our Prime Minister had been brought up by his mother under the current regime, the current level of JobSeeker payment, he would be more likely to be in juvie than in the Prime Minister's office. People who grow up in poverty have a higher rate of imprisonment and have a lower rate of opportunity throughout their education and into employment. What we've done since 2013 is confined so many sole parents to poverty, with dire consequences for their children and families. At the very least, we lose them as taxpayers. We lose them in our professional workforce. That poor payment system is one of the reasons our labour supply is short. In other countries, where good support is given to sole parents and working mothers and where labour systems don't let 25 per cent of the labour force be casualised or insecure, they have a higher participation rate. It's no surprise that a country like Sweden has an average participation rate for women that's eight percentage points higher than here. That's an average increase in the participation rate of four percentage points, and that's worth $100 billion a year. Even if you want to spend it on submarines, God forbid, or on tax cuts for people on over $200,000, we could pay over and over again for a much better regime of support for our working women. God knows, we could support a Rolls-Royce system of data collection, but it wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on unless we did the essential support changes that our women in our country need. It is time that we stop collecting endless amounts of data without taking action—which is not to diminish the import work that feminists and workers throughout our public sector do in collecting that data. But, alongside that collection of data, we need the actions and the policy supports that will make a difference and the real interventions that we have known for decades, that my friend Michelle Logan has known for decades, that I have known for decades. Any amount of research evidence will tell you the solutions are there, but they do not lie in the collection of data. They lie in action, and that's what we need. 11:56 Senator WALSH 252157 Victoria Colleagues, 2049 is currently the year when the pay gap between men and women is projected to close. In 26 years time, on current trends, women can expect to be paid equally with men in the workplace. I am proud to be part of a government that is not prepared to wait. I'm proud to be part of a government that is ready to act, and I'm proud to be part of a government that is not willing to leave it to the next generation. Because too many generations of women have had to suffer the indignity of being paid less than men for doing exactly the same work, and too many women have had to suffer the economic insecurity of their work being undervalued and underpaid, because their skills are just not properly recognised. We're calling time on that inequality. The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 is part of the solution, ensuring that employers report on their gender pay gap, that they provide that information publicly and that employers are part of the solution not the problem. This is because we are a government that sees women, because we are a government where women make up over 50 per cent and because our economic team understands the critical importance of women's work to the economy, women's work in the care sector, women's work in non-traditional industries and women's workforce participation everywhere. This bill is just a part of our commitment to make sure women are respected and valued at work and that they have the security they need to thrive. So too is our work to support higher pay rises for people on the minimum wage, many of whom are women; our work to support a historic pay rise for aged-care workers; and our work to recognise the critical importance of the care economy and investing in its workforce, who are overwhelmingly women. Women deserve to be equal and respected at work, and to be equal and respected you need to be paid equally. That is what this bill helps to achieve. The gender pay gap alone costs the country over $51 billion a year, and, compared to other countries, Australia ranks poorly. We are currently ranked 43rd in the world for gender equality. It is absolutely not good enough. It's holding our country back, so we are not wasting any time in taking action. This bill is about two things: accountability and transparency. Because we know that you can't fix what you can't see. To truly close the gender pay gap, you need data from employers and you need to hold employers accountable. Gender equality in the workplace starts with pay. That's why this bill will require employers with over 100 staff to report their gender pay gap. It will provide more information on existing inequalities, and it puts employers on notice that they need to take action. This information will be published publicly on the website of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The bill will also require relevant employers to provide reports of that information to their governing bodies, providing even more transparency. Having this data available for all to see is a critical part of holding companies to account. With this legislation, hiding the pay gap between men and women is just no longer acceptable. Undervaluing women's work is no longer acceptable. Transparency is powerful. Not only will government be able to see exactly where inequalities occur but so will current and prospective employees. This allows those employees more power in negotiating for fair wages, and it puts the onus back on employers to fix the pay gap. This bill was an election commitment made by Prime Minister Albanese, a commitment for reform that has been long overdue. We are a government that is committed to making gender equality a national priority, as it should be. Australian women deserve fair and safe working conditions. They deserve equal opportunity and equal pay. Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close, so let's not wait another 26 years. 12:01 Senator PAYMAN 300707 Western Australia I rise to support the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023, which is part of how the Albanese Labor government is working to close the gender pay gap. It charges employers with greater responsibility and accountability towards gender equality in their workforces and helps to drive the actions required to bring about higher levels of gender equality in our country. You see, women on average have 23.4 per cent less super when they come to retirement age than men. They are overrepresented in industries with lower wages and underrepresented in positions of leadership. This inequality doesn't just impact women. It restrains the entire economy. The gender pay gap alone represents a cost of $51.8 billion a year. In 2021, the Workplace Gender Equality Act was reviewed, and 10 recommendations were made that would help Australia accelerate our progress towards workplace gender equality as well as make reporting easier for employers. This bill, together with the remade instruments under the act, fulfils almost all the recommendations of the review requiring legislative amendment. It also fulfils a key election promise to close the gender pay gap, including by boosting pay gap transparency and encouraging action to close gender pay gaps within an organisation. This bill will drive employer action, transparency and accountability to help us progress towards gender equality in the workplace. This bill will achieve this by allowing the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to report gender pay gaps at the employer level. Currently, the approach is to publish aggregate industry gender pay gaps, and this does not create transparency or accountability required to close the gap. Publishing employer gender pay gaps encourages employers to address the causes of the pay gaps internally, and it also encourages individuals to take action to change the workplace. Alongside this bill, the remade instruments will streamline aspects of existing reporting, reducing regulatory burdens and freeing businesses up to focus on their efforts on gender equality action. This bill will align the act with the Workplace Gender Equality (Matters in relation to Gender Equality Indicators) Instrument 2013 (No. 1) by including sexual harassment, harassment on the ground of sex, and discrimination as gender equality indicators in the act. This does not change reporting obligations but, rather, recognises the importance of these core gender equality indicators. The bill goes on to reflect the increased ambitions of all these measures to improve gender equality and outcomes for both men and women in the workplace by amending the act to rename 'minimum standards' as 'gender equality standards'. It is the first step, but there is much more this government wants to do to improve workplace gender equality. While closing the gender pay gap is a major commitment and priority of this Albanese government, it is also an important issue to me personally. Before I was elected to this place, I was an organiser at United Workers Union. That union covers a range of different industries which are highly feminised and highly diverse and where the workers are often overworked and underpaid. From cleaners to aged-care workers to early childhood educators, these industries are majority women and are absolutely essential for the wellbeing of Australians. My time at the union, hearing many tragic and devastating stories of women trying to make ends meet, ignited the desire in me to become involved in politics. It pulled me to join the fight for these workers, because something needed to change. The Australian people voted in a responsible, mature and compassionate government and, in the process, elected me as a senator for Western Australia. My constituents in the west know that I take my responsibility to stand up for workers and women very seriously. Gender equality is important for all Western Australians, and there is clear evidence that increasing participation of women in the workforce brings economic and social benefits to everyone. This bill represents a critical piece in Labor's commitment to gender equality, which will benefit all Australians and help us achieve the goal of being one of the best countries in the world for equality between men and women. 12:06 Senator SHELDON 168275 New South Wales I rise to support the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. This bill is yet another example of the way the Albanese government is delivering on its commitment to grow wages, improve gender equality and close the gender pay gap. It delivers on recommendations of the 2021 Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012. Most importantly, the bill allows the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to establish gender pay gaps at the employer level, rather than just the industry level, and to publish those. Why is this bill so important? Last year the gender pay gap in this country was 14.1 per cent, and for private companies with over 100 employees that ballooned to 22.8 per cent. That is unacceptable, and at the current rate of progress it would take 26 years to close the gender pay gap. Australian women do not have 26 years to wait for equality. They deserve equality now, they deserved equality yesterday, and they certainly deserve equality through this legislation, which will help achieve it. That's why this government has treated gender inequality with the urgency it deserves. We supported the $1 increase to the minimum wage, an increase that supported both men and women in low-paid roles, but 55 per cent of workers in low-paid roles are women. Of course, that increase was opposed by those opposite, and no doubt we'll see them oppose a minimum wage increase for low-paid workers again this year. We made it easier for workers in low-paid, feminised industries to bargain collectively across workplaces, and that is a move that would see this agreement include a wage increase. Of course, that was opposed by those opposite. We made gender equality an object of the Fair Work Act, and again it was opposed by those opposite. We prohibited the use of pay secrecy clauses, which have long been used to stop women from finding out that they are being paid less than their male counterparts. That was opposed by those opposite. We strengthened the right to request flexible work. That was opposed by those opposite. We prohibited sexual harassment in the Fair Work Act, and that was opposed by those opposite. We are introducing the Housing Australia Future Fund, which will provide 4,000 homes for women and children facing domestic violence, and that is being opposed by those opposite. We've introduced 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave. We have made reforms which make child care cheaper and early childhood education more available—measures which enable greater parental workforce participation. And we have made significant improvements to paid parental leave. I want to commend, again, the trade union movement for being at the forefront of driving these reforms. I particularly want to highlight the tireless efforts of the Australian Services Union in the continued fight for gender equality at work. I use the word 'fight' deliberately, because it has been a fight, every step of the way, against those opposite, either through their inaction or direct opposition. It's easy to forget how we have come to this point. Less than 10 years ago, the Abbott government had just one woman in cabinet—just one! At this time last year we had a prime minister who had told women protesting outside these walls that they should be grateful they weren't being shot at. We had a government that cut penalty rates, a move which attacked women disproportionately because they make up the majority of retail hospitality workers. We had a government that delivered delays in the increase of the superannuation guarantee, a move that cost every worker in this country tens of thousands of dollars and at a time when the average woman already had 23.4 per cent less in their super when they retired. We should be finding ways to close the gender super gap. Instead, there are members of the opposition who want to destroy superannuation entirely—obviously, I have to mention Senator Bragg as one of them: the representative of the Financial Services Council in this place. He is one of many on the opposite side: there are members of the opposition who prefer to see Australian retirees, including women, retire without super into squalor and poverty. At a time when the fastest-growing demographic suffering homelessness is women over 55, this opposition doesn't want them to have super. This opposition opposes 4,000 new properties for women and children suffering domestic violence; this opposition doesn't want them to have housing. This opposition doesn't want them to have a fair pay rise. This opposition is opposed to everything that stands, and it stands for nothing. 12:12 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. As we have heard, this is a significant step forward in advancing gender equality in Australian workplaces. This legislation will be instrumental in ensuring that the gender pay gap will continue to close through employer action and greater transparency and accountability, and by progressing gender equality in the workplace. Within our government's term, we have already seen the gap decrease. This is certainly attributable to Minister Gallagher's advocacy in bolstering Australian women's economic empowerment. I would like to commend Minister Gallagher on her incredible dedication and work in introducing the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 to help close the very real gender pay gap in our country. I also believe that the historic representation of women in our government has made a considerable difference in how this government is approaching public policy. You can't replace lived experience, and Australian women can rest assured that their experiences and needs are being considered now more than ever. This bill will see employers with 100 or more workers have data on their gender pay gaps published publicly on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency website. Red tape for businesses will be reduced so that this will be easier for companies to do. This is a key reform to drive transparency and action towards closing the gender pay gap. Data collection and publication of these statistics are so important in furthering our knowledge of gender pay gap progression. From international experience, we know that publishing employer-level gender pay gap data can drive organisations to take action on closing the gender pay gap. Having more clarity about the problem means that we can build and design better policy and programmatic solutions. And it means we can track our progress and best direct future efforts to closing the gender pay gap once and for all. On our current trajectory, it will take roughly 26 years to close the gender pay gap. Recently, the United Nations announced that at the current rate of progress it will take almost 300 years—300 years!—to achieve gender equality worldwide. Currently, and senators may have seen the recent statistics, women in Australia earn 87c in every dollar that men earn. Senators may also have seen the figure that working women who work full-time earn $253.50 less than men every single week. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate interrupted. Australia Council Amendment (Creative Australia) Bill 2023 37

Australia Council Amendment (Creative Australia) Bill 2023

Second Reading 37 12:15 Senator HANSON-YOUNG I0U South Australia I rise to speak to on the Australia Council Amendment (Creative Australia) Bill 2023 today, a piece of legislation that the Greens will be supporting. But I want to put on the record first up just how long the Australian arts community and creative industry has waited for a proper cultural policy in this country. For over a decade or more, Australian artists and creative workers have been sidelined. Year after year, in budget after budget, the government hasn't just ignored them; in a number of ways, under the previous government, they were actively undermined and attacked. I remember standing in this very place only eight or nine years ago when the arts community in this country was under a full-blown attack from the then minister responsible, Senator George Brandis, with what are infamously now referred to as the 'Brandis cuts'. This industry, these creative workers, our Australian artists, the cultural heart of the nation, has never actually recovered. This bill before us today goes some way towards starting to repair the over a decade-long damage to our creative industry and artists. Our cultural institutions, like the National Gallery and National Library, have been starved of funding. Then, in turn, our communities, our children, our educators and our thinkers have been starved of their effective resources. We know that when COVID-19 hit our economy and impacted on our communities it was our creative workers who were hit the hardest. Again, they were ignored and sidelined by previous government responses. Artists, who were already fragile and vulnerable to even the smallest of economic bumps, were left suffering, with very little to rely on—little savings, little infrastructure and very little care from the previous government. This particular bill should be fairly uncontroversial, but it does present a big idea. That is that art matters, that artists matter, that artists' jobs matter and that, if we are to be a bright, smart, resourceful, innovative country, a nation that is prepared for the future challenges, we need a strong foundation of supporting creativity, creative thought and artistic talent. That is a big idea. Whether it is music, performance, visual art, photography, challenging debate or seeing our own lives reflected on our screens as a mirror of who we are and what we aspire to be, it is a big idea that these are foundations for a smart, innovative nation. This is only the first plank in this government's proposed cultural policy. So much more work needs to be done. We need to have the funding aligned with this agenda. We need to make sure that our cultural institutions, who are on the bare bones of their backsides right now, have the support not just to fix the leaky roofs to protect their billion-dollar collections but so that they can open their doors and their resources to the next generation. We need funding for our cultural institutions to be prioritised. I presume that we will have that debate with the upcoming budget. We will need to have further conversations about how we support storytelling in this nation, whether that's through song or through our television screens and digital devices. We're going to have those battles coming forward. I want to put on the record today that up until now, so far, my conversations with the government have been very positive and very constructive, but don't think for one second that the Greens will simply roll over and think that this job is done, because it is not. We have to prioritise artists in this country like never before if we want to deal with the big challenges we have for our future. It is creativity that drives innovation, connection and understanding. Fostering creativity is essential for any nation that wants to be at the forefront of the next industrial revolution. I say to Minister Tony Burke today: 'I will be there to help you prioritise this big agenda, but don't go weak on me now. Don't go weak; stand strong. In the cabinet room have debates over what needs to be funded, why it's worth it and why the soul, heart and creative beat of this nation need to be at the forefront once more.' Don't come in here after the May budget has been handed down and say, 'We just didn't have the money,' because it's about priorities. I think every child in this country deserves access to art classes and to music and the ability to expand, enhance and understand their creativity. Every child in this country deserves to learn about art at school. Every child in this country deserves the opportunity to learn music. That is the big thinking we need after this legislation has been passed. If we're going to put in place the Creative Australia agency, we need to back it up with money and back it up with policy priority. I say this as a proud South Australian. Those in this chamber who have never been to Adelaide in March have missed out on the best few weeks ever. Over these last few weeks the city of Adelaide has been celebrating the very essence of art and creativity. I give a big shout-out to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, which sold over a million tickets this year—the largest festival in this country and the second largest of its kind in the world, after Edinburgh. There was the WOMAD music festival—sold out. So, while creativity is fundamental to the heartbeat and soul of our nation, it also underpins the economic foundation of my home town in Adelaide, and I'm incredibly proud of that. But I want to see this grow; I want to see this continue. I say to the government: don't just put up policies that sound nice on paper, that look good in the glossy pamphlets; let's fund this properly. Don't come in here on budget day saying you couldn't find the money, because we all know where the money's currently going. It's going to the stage 3 tax cuts and some weapons-grade nuclear powered submarines. That's not going to build a smart nation. That's not going to invest in our children's creativity so they can be the innovators of the future. We need a huge investment in skills and training and creativity in this country. We have a massive opportunity, and it's not just about starting it at school, although I reiterate that every child in this country should have the opportunity to do art, to do music and to learn the capacity to think critically through creativity. But, once they've been through school, we need our educational institutions to value creativity and to be funded to also train and teach in the creative sectors. Our educational institutions in the creative industry right now are struggling, and they need investment and they need support. There is a huge drought in skilled, trained, creative workers, and in this nation we are missing out on harnessing their power and we need to get that right. So I say again to the minister: good start; let's finish it with proper funding and proper support. I look forward to getting into the detail of these issues with the Senate inquiry that we have established through the environment and communications Standing Committee, because this issue is not just about art in this country; this is about what kind of economy we want and the strength of the future economy—a decarbonised economy. It is about the strength and level of education of the next generation, and it is about Australia wrestling with the ability to tell our own stories: who we want to be, where we have come from and where we want to go. I'm sick and tired, every time the government wants to claim some win about funding the arts—that they've handed a bunch of cash to some Hollywood film that's come here to shoot for six months, and that's it; or to subsidise some rock concert by Guns N' Roses. That's fine—of course let's have Guns N' Roses in Australia—but what are we doing to fund and support Australian musicians? What Australian shows, particularly in relation to kids television, are we supporting? So there's a long way to go here, and I'm just putting this government on notice. Art does matter. It needs to be funded, and we'll have this battle in the budget. 12:29 Senator CAROL BROWN F49 Tasmania I would like to thank senators for their contribution and commend the bill to the Senate. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 39 12:30 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e68 No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Does any senator require the bill to be considered in Committee of the Whole? If not, I shall call the minister to move the third reading. 12:30 Senator CAROL BROWN F49 Tasmania I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022 39

Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022

Second Reading 39 12:31 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria It is my pleasure to rise and speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022. I am very pleased to reiterate the coalition's support of this bill because it builds on the coalition's strong record of taking steps to improve communications services to better support the safety of Australians and the work of our law enforcement and emergency services agencies. The background to this bill is well understood. It arose from a recommendation of a New South Wales deputy state coroner to remove the threshold of 'imminent' from rules around authorities accessing location data from telecommunications providers. Accessing this data is important, because authorities can use a clever system called triangulation to locate missing persons, suspects or those who may have met with foul play. The problem has been in getting the timely approval from the telcos while they dealt with whether the threshold of a serious and imminent threat had been met. Removing the 'imminent' threshold, in the view of the coalition, is reasonable, particularly as the request has come from a coroner's court recommendation. The bill adds an important safeguard: the entity or person being asked to disclose the information needs to be satisfied that it is unreasonable or impracticable to obtain the other person's consent to the proposed disclosure or use. There were concerns about privacy and whether there had been enough engagement with relevant stakeholders, so it was only fair and reasonable for those matters to be fully explored as part of an inquiry by the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. The committee has now tabled its report and has recommended that the bill be passed. I want to draw from that report and reference the committee's statement that evidence received: … was overwhelmingly supportive of the bill's intended objective of protecting the lives and wellbeing of Australians. The report also dealt with the issue of balancing privacy and protection. The committee's view was that the proposed changes 'do not provide new or additional access to information' but were more about 'the timeliness and utility of existing provisions' around accessing the data. It cited evidence by the department that there were well-established protocols and mechanisms at a federal level by a number of oversight bodies to protect the information obtained from the telcos. The report referred to evidence from the Australian Federal Police, who suggested: … the amendments would be particularly beneficial to vulnerable people, as they would expedite assistance to missing persons at additional risk of harm due to their personal characteristics … The bill would also require more detailed record keeping by the telecommunications providers. In reference to industry consultation, we heard that the government carried out what is called a targeted engagement process, but the report stated that the Internet Association of Australia described the process as involving only select industry representatives, which it argued was not good practice. Yes, the government said it consulted with 20 organisations, and these included Commonwealth government departments. But clearly there are industry question marks about whether proper consultation was conducted. Most of all, it is important that this bill be above politics. I regret to say that the Minister for Communications in the other place could not help herself when she attempted to make some cheap political points in the debate on this bill. In her second reading speech the minister said: 'I regret to advise the parliament that this is not the first time that this issue has been raised', referring to a coroner's case dating back to 2020. But I want to advise the Senate that, despite the minister's attempt to make a cheap political point, a departmental briefing that I had when I was the shadow minister for communications confirmed that the government had not received a written request from the coroner in relation to amending the act prior to October 2022. So it's important that we work together as a parliament to be constructive on addressing these issues, but in a way that is above petty politics. As I said at the start of this speech, the coalition supports this bill, because it builds on our work in office, particularly on this important issue in the communications portfolio. The Senate review report covers this work, and this was referenced in the coalition's additional comments in the report. When in government we were leaders in rolling out advanced mobile location, or AML, technology. The coalition's rollout of AML technology, built into the operating system of Apple and Android telephones, was completed in August 2021. AML provides greater location accuracy to 000 during an emergency call from a mobile telephone, with the objective of saving lives and improving outcomes for mobile callers in Australia. It works by recognising that, when an emergency call is made to 000, AML activates the telephone's location service functions, if not already activated, and also assesses the location information available to calculate the caller's location and automatically sends an SMS with the estimated location to the 000 emergency call service. In 2017 the coalition announced that it would issue a request for tender to deliver the next-generation 000 emergency call service with integrated location based data services, including AML technology. In 2018 the coalition noted discussions with Telstra to implement a new internet protocol platform to facilitate next-generation 000 capabilities as well as AML to provide more-accurate location information by automatically sending location coordinates to 000. In 2020 the coalition announced that AML technology was available for Australians calling 000 on mobile phones. And on 25 August 2021 the coalition announced the completion of the rollout of AML technology for the 000 emergency call service. These are really important developments under the former coalition government, and of course they build on the many achievements of the former coalition government in the communications portfolio. These include funding more than 1,200 mobile base stations and delivering record investment to support regional connectivity and improved telecommunications infrastructure for disaster resilience, particularly under circumstances in which previous governments—the Rudd-Gillard governments—had not invested any money at all in mobile base stations. So, it is a very proud legacy of this government. We also rolled out the NBN to 99 per cent of all Australians, including upgrading the network so that 75 per cent of premises will receive ultrafast speeds by the end of 2023. It is with a great deal of pride that Labor, with its former policy of rolling out the NBN to every premises in the cities, not in any country areas or any town with fewer than a thousand people, which were always going to get fixed wireless or satellite connection, has now adopted the coalition's NBN rollout methodology and is building on that very significant work. We also established the world's first eSafety Commissioner, including delivering the online safety act, which extends important online safety protections to adults. We held the global digital platforms to account, including under the news media bargaining code, and we passed a wide range of new regulations to combat telephone and SMS scams. It was very significant work. I do note with regret that we have seen very little action from this government on combating scams, with is costing Australians, as the ACCC has made clear, several billion dollars per year—potentially up to $4 billion per year. We have seen no action from this government on combating scams on the over-the-top platforms such as WhatsApp. Australians would be aware of scams like the 'Hey, Mum' scam on WhatsApp, and it is astonishing to me that we have seen so little action from this government on an issue which is impacting so many Australians. Nearly every Australian has a digital device of some kind, and combating scams is incredibly important. I say to the government again that the government must get a hurry on with this very important issue. In conclusion, we very much trust that this amendment bill will give the police and emergency services greater support in responding to future emergencies. We are, as I have reiterated, very happy to support the request from the New South Wales deputy coroner made in 2022, and we commend this bill to the Senate. 12:42 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022. This bill is about trying to save Australian lives, so it is of the utmost importance to the Albanese Labor government. The intent of the bill is to improve the operations and transparencies of the relationship between law enforcement agencies and telecommunication companies. For the smooth operations of daily life, the relationship between telecommunication organisations, the public and law enforcement is particularly important. It needs to be a solid and well-functioning relationship. Disclosure of telecommunications data to save a life or a missing person has too high a threshold to reach, and it's arguable that it has previously cost Australian lives. Therefore, the bill before us responds directly to these recommendations to better protect the safety and wellbeing of Australians who may find themselves in dangerous and life-threatening circumstances. The bill increases accountability and transparency through enhanced recordkeeping and requirements for disclosure. That's a key difference between this Albanese Labor government and previous Liberal-National governments. Currently, law enforcement is unduly obstructed in locating missing persons, because telecommunication companies can only help determine the location of a person if there is a perceived threat to a person's life or health that is serious and imminent. Therefore, the bill before us removes the requirement that the threat be imminent. This will allow greater flexibility in cases of life and death or missing persons—a reasonable and just change under the law. Further, in the interests of public safety, the bill enhances emergency disclosures from the Integrated Public Number Database, known as the IPND, a database of all Australian phone numbers and associated names and addresses. Currently, the IPND manager is prohibited from disclosing the associated name and address to emergency call persons if the number calling triple 0 is unlisted, even when that information is necessary to providing someone with life-saving emergency services. The bill amends the act so that the IPND manager can disclose information about a subscriber to the triple 0 emergency call person in connection with a call to triple 0. This will provide emergency services personnel with greater flexibility to locate individuals in need of emergency assistance. As part of the National Emergency Declaration Act 2022, these provisions were broadened to allow telecommunications companies to provide reasonable and necessary assistance to emergency service organisations. However, that act unintentionally did not include protections for telecommunications companies acting in good faith from liability or damages. This bill corrects that error. Following recommendations from the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the bill improves the record-keeping requirements on the telecommunications industry to include more details about the authorisation of disclosures under the act. Major telecommunications providers and the Communications Alliance have been consulted on the bill, with amendments made in response to their requests. These proposed amendments are good for our country. The personal safety of Australians has to be paramount. These amendments minimise regulatory impact and provide benefit to industry, law enforcement agencies and emergency service organisations. I firmly believe that this bill from the Albanese Labor government will save lives. 12:47 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales I rise, on behalf of the Greens, to indicate that the Greens won't be opposing the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022, and I note the work of my colleague Senator Hanson-Young both on the committee and on the substantive work in relation to this bill. The Greens have longstanding concerns about the history, within a variety of law enforcement agencies, of noncompliance with key reporting and record-keeping requirements with regard to telecommunications intercepts and other secretly obtained information. That includes repeated failure to properly store and properly protect, or to destroy, as required under legislation, sensitive data. Whilst we accept that with this bill there is an intention to use these powers in strictly limited circumstances—those relating to serious threats to life—there is the possibility of the powers being used for broader law enforcement measures, and that will require real and ongoing oversight to prevent mission creep. I've read the report from the deputy coroner and I understand the circumstances that led to that recommendation. Implementing that recommendation is a public good. Hopefully, this will give a power to the AFP and state police to, where there is a serious threat to life, find somebody and help them. I think we are all on board with that as the overall objective in this bill, and those of us who have read the deputy coroner's report understand the rationale behind it. That being said, this parliament has previously passed laws that have put in place constrained powers for telecommunications intercepts, and clear reporting measures, and the AFP and state and territory police have routinely ignored those legislative bounds. They have routinely breached privacy laws and routinely breached the laws of this parliament and the restrictions they have. This isn't simply my assertion. I say this having read repeated reports from the Ombudsman, who has an obligation to oversight telecommunications intercepts. The Ombudsman, in a series of reports, has found that the AFP, amongst other law enforcement agencies—including, as I said, state and territory police—repeatedly break data protection laws, including by wrongly accessing personal communications data and failing to properly store, protect or destroy it. Those breaches are reported year in and year out by the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman's reports have also found, repeatedly, that police across the country aren't even aware of their legal obligations for data collection, of the steps they have to undertake when they make the requests or of the key provisions that you'd think would ring warning bells with them, like recordkeeping for journalists' information warrants. The Department of Home Affairs has been woefully inadequate here, because it has provided no materials or guidelines for authorised officers when making requests. And this hasn't been in just one Ombudsman's report; this has been in Ombudsman's report after Ombudsman's report, going back years. So, yes, when we read this legislation we can see that there are checks and balances in it. But, whatever we put in the legislation, the Green's fear is that the people who are meant to enforce the law will just ignore it—particularly the Australian Federal Police. Whatever we put in the law they will just ignore and use the powers regardless. And we have that fear because that's what they have done repeatedly in the past. Given the evidence that police and other agencies routinely break the existing laws to protect our private data, we have a very real concern about how they will use these laws going forward, so we will keep a close watching brief on how these laws will be used going forward. There is a serious lack of transparency in this country in how police gather and manage people's data, and we will examine how these laws are operating closely and critically to ensure that further infringement on people's privacy—unlawful infringement by law enforcement agencies, particularly at a time of unprecedented cyberattacks and other attacks on our personal data—will not be part of the landscape. I'm sure we've all been concerned about how our private data is being accessed unlawfully through cyberattacks by unlawful operators, criminal gangs and people who want to use our data for their own financial advantage or to blackmail corporations or governments. But we should be even more concerned when our law enforcement agencies are accessing our data and breaching our privacy unlawfully. Tragically, they have a real documented and repeated record of doing that. Yes, let's pass these laws and let's put the protections in place. It's right to put these protections in place, but let's not pretend that by passing the laws the police will comply with them. They probably won't. We should commit collectively to holding the police and other law enforcement agencies to account for the laws that this place passes. 12:53 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank senators who have contributed to this debate on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Information Disclosure, National Interest and Other Measures) Bill 2022. I also thank the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for its detailed report on the bill and its recommendation that the bill be passed. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 42 12:53 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e68 As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole. 12:53 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 42

Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023

Second Reading 42 12:54 Senator STEWART 299352 Victoria As I was saying earlier: in Australia, women earn 87c for every dollar that men earn. Full-time working women also earn $253.50 less than every man every single week. There is no justifiable reason for this—no rationale as to why this is the case—except to say that women's contributions are severely undervalued alongside their male counterparts in workplaces across Australia. It's certainly not about our skills or our capability; it is about systemic barriers. We shouldn't have to wait three decades to achieve pay parity. Through these reforms, we are taking serious action to speed up the processes and close the gender pay gap. For First Nations women, women of colour, women with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ women, migrant and refugee women, and women from all culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds there is a gap within the gender pay gap. For First Nations women, the gender pay gap compared to non-Aboriginal men is a mammoth 32.7 per cent, more than double the statistics we so often hear. The gap between First Nations women and non-Aboriginal women is roughly 19.7 per cent. Currently, these statistics aren't readily available. The new reporting requirements we are discussing here today will go a significant way towards remedying this lack of information. As I've said, we will be able to develop stronger and more effective solutions to these disparities when we understand the problem properly. We must place front and centre the experiences of black women and women of colour in all that we do. We have a collective responsibility to leave no woman behind. We need to ensure not only there is understanding but that First Nations women and women of colour are given the tools and opportunities to maintain a seat at the table and make decisions on an equal playing field. The gender pay gap is not just a conversation. It has real and often life-altering implications for women. It can be the difference in our career choices and influence our decision to have a family, our financial futures and our ability to retire. For First Nations women and women of colour, these decisions become even more profound. We are so fortunate to live in a nation home to many culturally and linguistically diverse women. What a wonderful thing that is. We are much better for it. Our government is committed to ensuring that women have economic autonomy and opportunity and that we continue to close the gender pay gap for all Australian women. 12:57 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank other senators for their contribution on this bill. When I introduced the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 earlier this year, projections showed that it would take another 26 years to close the gender pay gap. Women have waited long enough for the pay gap to close, and they shouldn't have to wait another quarter of a century to see their work equally valued. Today, with the passing of this bill, we are taking action to close that gap. This bill will be a key driver for employer action, transparency and accountability and it will help speed up progress towards gender equality in the workplace. It will do this by, for the first time, allowing WGEA to publish gender pay gaps at employer level, not just industry level. This is a critical reform and one that I am proud to be legislating today. The bill responds to the review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012. I recognise the role of the opposition—and I think Senator Cash outlined that in her remarks—in commissioning the review in the first place and responding positively to its findings. I am pleased to see the broad support for the review's recommendations and for the steps we are taking through this bill to progress implementation of those recommendations. I thank the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee for its report on the bill, and I thank those who took the time to make submissions. It was heartening to see that these were overwhelmingly positive and showed a commitment to making progress to closing the gender pay gap. Government has an important role to play in advancing gender equality, but government cannot do this work alone. We need to work with employers, unions and the broader community. We can see that willingness to work together in the response to this bill and to the committee inquiry. I look forward to continuing that work together. I also acknowledge the contributions of Greens senators on the committee in welcoming the report while urging for further work, and I acknowledge Senator Waters and her colleagues for their longstanding advocacy in this area. We will keep working on this because this bill is just the first step. There are further reforms to come, especially in collecting diversity data and lifting the standards for larger employers. I would like to acknowledge both the Office for Women and WGEA and thank them for their work in getting to this point. The team at WGEA, under Mary Wooldridge's leadership, and the Office for Women have worked so hard to get this bill done and in time for us to actually start collecting this data next year. WGEA will work with employers to ensure they are supported and able to step up to the plate. This bill is a critical step towards achieving women's economic equality, because it is getting on with the job of closing the gender pay gap for women in Australia so that they do not have to wait another quarter of a century to achieve equality with male colleagues. I commend the bill to the Senate. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 43 13:00 The ACTING DEPUTY 298839 PRESIDENT ( Senator Allman-Payne ) (): I understand no amendments have been circulated. Does any senator require a committee stage? If not, I call the minister to move the third reading. 13:00 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. BUSINESS 44 BUSINESS Consideration of Legislation 44 13:01 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I move: That the National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023 be called on immediately. Question agreed to. BILLS 44 BILLS National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023 44

National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023

Second Reading 44 13:02 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania On behalf of Senator Ruston, who is unable to be with us today, I'll deliver a coalition contribution in relation to the National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023. The opposition will be supporting this bill, as it provides greater protection for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from fraud and abuse, and we've always been strong supporters of the access to affordable medicines that the PBS provides to Australians and Australian households. We know that ensuring continued and improved access to affordable medicines is now more important than ever, with the cost of living continuing to put significant and rising pressure on Australians. The National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023 amends the National Health Act 1953 to support the sustainability and the operation of the PBS. The bill extends the discretionary power of the secretary and the Minister for Health and Aged Care to suspend or to revoke an approval for a pharmacist to supply pharmaceutical benefits at particular premises, irrespective of whether the approval is held by an individual or under a company structure, where they've been charged with a PBS related offence. By way of background, where a pharmacist has been approved to supply pharmaceutical benefits at particular premises, the approved pharmacist can then make claims for payment from the Commonwealth in relation to the supply of pharmaceutical benefits, and the approval to supply pharmaceutical benefits can be held by a pharmacist as an individual or by a body corporate. However, the power to suspend or revoke an approval currently only applies to an approved pharmacist who is an individual. If a pharmacist operates under a company structure and they are charged with a PBS related offence, there is no ability for their approval to be suspended or to be revoked. This means, for example, that, if the director of an approved pharmacist corporation is charged with a PBS related offence, they can continue to receive payments from the Commonwealth—despite being charged for fraudulently claiming payments. We understand the importance of the change contained in this bill, which will help to ensure the sustainability of the PBS by strengthening the compliance powers and ensuring that they are equally applicable to all types of approved pharmacists. This will better protect the PBS from further fraud and will provide greater deterrence to those who would seek to abuse the scheme. The coalition has always been a strong supporter of the PBS, which ensures Australians have affordable access to critical medicines and will support this bill that protects the sustainability and integrity of this important scheme. We remain absolutely committed to supporting Australians to have access to affordable medicines when they need them most. We are proud of our strong track record in providing Australians with timely and affordable access to effective medicines, cancer treatments and services. When last in government, the coalition listed almost 3,000 new and amended medicines on the PBS, representing an average of around 30 listings per month. But we know that when Labor were last in government they had to stop listing the medicines on the PBS because they couldn't manage the money needed to fund these listings. The government has stated that the measures contained in this bill support the integrity of public funds and ensure that they can be invested in access to new and improved medicines, and we will hold them to account on this. It's vital that they continue our strong track record on investing in improved access to affordable medicines for all Australians. However, we already hold concerns that this government is not prioritising investments in improved access to potentially life-saving or life-changing medicines, particularly following their decision to remove an innovative diabetes medicine, Fiasp, from the PBS. Now 15,000 families have had the rug pulled out from under them by this Labor government's decision to remove this life-changing diabetes insulin from the PBS, which will send the price soaring once it's off the scheme. The former coalition government ensured that diabetes patients have affordable access to Fiasp by listing this fast-acting insulin on the PBS back in the year 2019. We understood that Fiasp is an innovative mealtime insulin that improves blood sugar, controlled at a faster rate than other diabetes medications, resulting in an improved quality of life for patients. We note Minister Butler's band-aid announcement to ensure diabetes patients have access to Fiasp for an additional six months if they are able to secure a script in time to cover them by 1 April. But the minister needs to be transparent with Australian diabetes patients and admit whether he has actually considered all possible steps to ensure Fiasp can remain permanently on the PBS, because we know Minister Butler has the power to come to a solution with the manufacturer, but sadly it appears he has not chosen to use that discretion. The government needs to understand that this callous decision will tear away at the quality of life that this medicine affords over 15,000 people and their families across Australia. Labor went to the election with a promise to ensure cheaper medicines for all Australians, but this decision means that they've already broken that promise. For all their posturing on their promises, Labor shows time and again that their rhetoric in opposition is not matched by their actions in government. It is costing Australians' lives and livelihoods. The decision to break their promise on affordable medicines comes on top of a growing list of broken promises from this government, including their promise to bring down power prices by $275, a promise made on 97 occasions. They also promised they wouldn't make changes to superannuation taxes, but one in 10 Australians will be affected by the changes they have now announced. It is clear that this is just the groundwork for more taxes and more changes to come. Labor promised to strengthen Medicare, but so far they have only weakened it. They slashed Medicare mental health support in half, they have cut 70 telehealth items from Medicare, and bulk billing rates have plummeted after being at their highest levels when the coalition was in government. Labor said they would make it easier to see a GP, but they have ripped GPs out of rural, regional and remote Australia by changing the distribution priority areas. Labor promised cost-of-living relief, but the reality is life is only getting harder for Australians. Right now, to borrow a phrase from those opposite, everything is going up except for wages. Australians with a mortgage now buckle under the pressure of a 10th consecutive interest rate rise, which means a person with a typical mortgage of $750,000 is now paying $1,700 more per month than they were when rates started rising in May. Electricity prices are continuing to spiral out of control, with new increases of up to 23.7 per cent for households and 25.7 per cent for small businesses now announced. More than 100,000 small businesses will also be impacted by increased bills of up to $1,151 a year. It is these rising cost-of-living pressures on Australians, and indeed the cost of doing business in this country, that make access to affordable medicines so critical right now. Once again, the coalition strongly supports this bill to support the sustainability and the operation of the PBS, which provides Australians with affordable access to potentially life-saving and life-changing medicines. However, we'll continue to ensure that we hold the Albanese Labor government to account on investing in and maintaining continued and improved access to affordable medicines, particularly in the midst of this cost-of-living crisis. 13:10 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia I speak on behalf of the Australian Greens in support of the National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023. It really is an energising title that they've given to this piece of legislation! However, I want to use the opportunity to say to the Senate that the availability of medication on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has been insufficient for our community time and time again. On multiple occasions, in my role of health spokesperson for the Australian Greens, community groups have come to us and very clearly said that either they can't access the medications they need under the PBS or it just doesn't go far enough in providing the financial subsidy needed for them to access the medications affordably. For instance, my office is contacted daily by people fighting to get access to insulin, to cancer medications, to basic medications that they need and rely on, quite frankly, to prevent their pain, to manage their symptoms and to provide them with effective treatment. I'm sure there are many people in the chamber this afternoon who live with medical conditions. It's really hard to manage these conditions as well as life with the meds that you need in order to manage them properly—let alone if you're managing the condition and managing life and are not able to access the meds because you can't afford them or they're not on the PBS in the first place. The Greens have welcomed Minister Butler's announcement of a six-month access period to fast-track insulin medication Fiasp and also Fiasp FlexTouch to be part of the PBS, particularly for people who have type 1 diabetes. It's a step in the right direction. We have welcomed it. But it really is on the government to do a bit better in this space. I mean, we've got a situation where people's lives are at risk. They shouldn't need to share their story with the media to achieve and outcome. I'd imagine that many people here are quite used to that phenomenon, right? There's a situation where somebody needs medication urgently. They raise it with their local member. Maybe they raise it with their minister. Nothing happens, so they go to the media, a fuss is created and then eventually something occurs. That's great community advocacy, and congratulations to the people for doing it. But I think we should just stop for a moment and consider whether that's actually how the system should work. Ministers are paid very well for their time and have very large staffs, working alongside massive departments. I think most people would assume that people become ministers and people work for departments and so on and so forth in order to, like, do a job, right? And that job surely should be proactively going out and finding the gaps before they have to be brought to the government's attention because somebody is in crisis. It is hard enough to be in the crisis, let alone to feel comfortable disclosing it to the media—going through the stresses and strains of that—in order to get your medication. And that solves just that one thing. Ministers are applauded for doing this, for responding to individual case-by-case basis issues, but really, it speaks to the deeper systemic problem of what the job of a minister and the department is. What's the point? Surely it should be to do work on behalf of the people to proactively get ahead of these things. We need to see foresight in this space. We need to see medications coming onto the PBS in a way that ends this kind of perpetual catch-up that has to be played and this individual crisis-by-crisis based action. The community need to be consulted sooner and better. If you go out there and talk to people, if you talk to patient advocacy organisations, they will tell you what needs to be added, because often these folks have gone to those organisations first to flag the concern. So there could be a bit of authentic engagement with patient advocacy groups, and maybe—this is a radical idea—you could engage with them in the same way as you would engage with very well cashed up, very influential organisations that might lobby you. You know, put the hat on and think: 'Well, this is a rare condition, this is a small cohort of people, it's a pricey drug, but if this was the AMA, maybe we'd pick up the phone. Maybe we'd sit down and have a conversation earlier because we know if those people got in the media we would have to deal with it.' I understand why these good, effective—I say 'good' in the sense that they have mastered the art of lobbying—organisations are responded to by government in the way that they are, but again, just because I understand it, just because there is a logic to it, it doesn't mean it is right. It doesn't mean that is how it should work. The reality is that as a member of the executive government to be lucky enough to do that and be that, you can actually chart your own course. You can actually decide that the small, often-ignored, peak body for a rare pain condition gets the spot in your diary that would be got by a larger, better funded, better known organisation. You can actually make that decision. The Greens will always fight to reduce co-payments and ensure that the access to and affordability of medications on the PBS is something that is brought down on behalf of the community. In particular, as my second reading amendment addresses today, it is essential that First Nations people have access to medications that they require, when they require them, in order to meet our obligations. Let's hope we think of moral obligations in this sense, but there are also committed obligations under the Closing the Gap targets. Making sure that First Nations people have the opportunity to access their medications when they need them and where they need them is a key part of closing the gap. One such step forward in this process was the Closing the Gap PBS Co-payment Program, which was established in 2010 to improve access to affordable PBS medicines for First Nations people who are living with or at risk of chronic disease. Yet public hospital pharmacists are currently unable to supply PBS medicines to First Nations people under the Closing the Gap PBS Co-payment Program, and this hampers quite seriously Australia's efforts to close the gap in healthcare outcomes for First Nations people. It means that doctors cannot supply medicine at the lower co-payment rate in hospitals, because they are excluded from the co-payment measure. It also prevents the provision of expert advice related to the new medication regime by pharmacists who have, basically, counselled them during a patient's in-patient stay. This results, at the end of the day, in inequitable, higher out-of-pocket costs and co-payments for First Nations people or situations in which the patients miss out on medicines altogether, increasing the risk of readmission to hospital. So we have a situation where the system, as it currently functions, increases the rate at which people are readmitted to hospital, precisely at the moment when we need to be freeing up capacity in our hospitals, particularly in rural and regional contexts. My amendment asks the Senate to call on the Australian government to enable public hospital pharmacists to supply PBS medicines under the Closing the Gap co-payment program. Additionally, I note that the scope of the Closing the Gap PBS co-payment measure needs to be extended to cancer medications and highly specialised drugs listed on various Section 100 programs on the PBS, which are currently excluded from the program. In addition to calling on the government to enable public hospital pharmacists to supply PBS medicines under the Closing the Gap co-payment program to First Nations people who are registered for the program, my amendment also seeks to ensure that this is done immediately. Time is a critical factor here to improve access and equity in relation to medications. This is in line with the call for national leadership from First Nations bodies in Australia, particularly the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and the Society of Hospital Pharmacists, who, in their recent budget submission, costed this measure at approximately $1.2 million. I have the great honour of being the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Australian Greens, and I work closely with my colleagues in the areas of defence as well. I've spent a long time in the defence and foreign affairs estimates hearings with Senator Shoebridge and others, and I can tell you now that our defence programs in Australia lose $1.2 million down the back of a couch before breakfast. So this is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of the Australian government, yet it would change lives. I call on the Senate to support this amendment and for the Labor government to act immediately to ensure that these changes occur. I move: At the end of the motion, add "but the Senate: (a) notes that the Closing the Gap Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)Co-payment Program was established in July 2010 to improve access to affordable PBS medicines for First Nations people living with, or at risk of, chronic disease; and (b) agrees that: (i) poor access to medications can compromise a person's health and cause preventable hospital readmissions, (ii) public hospital pharmacists are currently unable to supply PBS medicines to First Nations people under the Closing the Gap PBS Co-payment Program and this hampers Australia's efforts to close the gap in healthcare outcomes for First Nations peoples; and (iii) the Australian Government should enable public hospital pharmacists to supply PBS medicines under the Closing the Gap PBS Co-payment Program to First Nations people, to improve equity of access to medications". 13:23 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland Before I start my remarks in earnest, I'd like to note the point made by Senator Steele-John, which I thought was very well made, that Australians shouldn't have to resort to the media in order to gain traction with government decision-makers on issues around what medications are listed or not listed on the PBS. In our country, Australians shouldn't have to resort to the media in order to get these matters addressed, and I think that was a point that was very well made. The National Health Amendment (Effect of Prosecution—Approved Pharmacist Corporations) Bill 2023 essentially addresses a loophole in relation to the application of penalties and remedial action taken in the case where a pharmacy has engaged in action which has been inappropriate and in breach of the PBS. The issue it addresses in particular is that you can have a situation where a pharmacy maybe has a licence and a corporate name but then has directors; a suspension action could be taken against those directors, but the pharmacy, under the corporate licence, is still operating, notwithstanding the fact that the director has been subject to some sort of penalty. This bill essentially addresses that loophole, which could allow a pharmacy to use the corporate veil to continue operating notwithstanding the fact that a director has done the wrong thing. In the first instance we should note that the vast, vast majority of our pharmacists do the right thing, and that this is an amendment which is seeking to address a small loophole. But it does give the opportunity for issues to be raised more generally in relation to the PBS, as Senator Steele-John and others, including Senator Duniam, have done. I would like to take this opportunity to make a number of points. The first point is that the PBS and the cost-effective provision of medications to the Australian people is a core function of government. We should reflect on that because in this place, especially since the election, there's all sorts of legislation coming through where the government is looking to spend billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on multifarious sorts of projects. For every single dollar that is spent on those projects, however well intentioned—whether it be the National Reconstruction Fund or whatever else it is—it is a dollar that can't go into our PBS system. There's an opportunity cost. I say it is a core function of government to provide medications and make medications free on a cost-effective, affordable basis to all Australians and especially to Australians who are suffering from diseases and conditions which require medications which are lifesaving. That is core business. So whenever the government comes into this place with one of those spending measures—and one of the next bills on the legislation list is the so-called National Reconstruction Fund, where the government is looking to invest $15 billion of taxpayers' money into various areas of economic activity—we should reflect that that is money that cannot be spent on core functions such as our health system. There is an opportunity cost. There is no magic pudding—there are no money trees around Canberra. It's all taxpayer dollars, and if they haven't got it in tax revenue they've got to borrow it and pay the interest on it. We should all reflect on that fact. The second point I want to make is that the previous government—and I say this from opposition—can be duly proud of the number of drugs which were added to the PBS system under it. Three thousand drugs were added to the PBS list under the previous government. Thousands of Australians had their lives positively changed because of the medications added to the PBS system under the previous coalition government. Thousands of Australians had their lives changed for the better because of that. How did we do that? Through sound economic management. More than 30 drugs a month were added to the PBS system under the previous government. It changed people's lives for the better. That's what sound economic management does. That's what a government that is focused on the core functions of government can achieve. In this context I'm obliged to raise an example of a situation which has happened under the existing government in relation to an insulin drug called Fiasp. I received a communication in my office before this last sitting from a resident in the western suburbs of Brisbane in relation to the fact that this drug, Fiasp insulin, was taken off the PBS without any warning. This is a drug that was on the PBS and people were using this drug—15,000 Australians were using this drug—in order to treat their diabetes condition. Then it was taken off the PBS without any warning. None. No warning. No consultation whatsoever. This resident wrote to me and said: 'I'm a type 1 insulin-dependent diabetic and have been for over 52 years now.' This could be your mother or your sister. 'This morning at 8.42 am I received a phone call from my chemist informing me that as of 1 April 2023 my insulin that I use in my pump will be withdrawn from the PBS listing. This being the case, my insulin purchase on script will go from $30 per filling of five boxes to approximately $220 for the same.' From $30 to $220! This lady, who could be your mother, your sister or your wife, got a call from her chemist who said, 'The cost of your medication to manage your condition, which you've been advised you should be on because of its particular characteristics: fast-acting'— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 281603 Order! It being 1.30 pm, we need to move to two-minute statements. STATEMENTS BY SENATORS 48 STATEMENTS BY SENATORS New South Wales State Election 48 13:30 Sena 300134 New South Wales tor CADELL (—) (): In my nine short months in this place, I've tried to keep it very apolitical and to never overstep the political boundaries. But, today, with two days to go until the state election, I feel I may be about to be severely heckled. There are two days to go until the New South Wales state election in my beautiful home state. So many of my friends are out there seeking re-election or election. Across the regions, the New South Wales Nats are facing many, many different opponents. We are facing the so-called Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, which I regard as the co-branded new Country Labor. We are facing Independents. We are facing all sorts of people—a couple of Liberals in a seat; I must say that. Even in one or two country seats, Labor candidates are standing. They must've got lost! But I notice they haven't gone too far, because the electric bus on that campaign can't even get to outer metropolitan Sydney and back. I would like to say good luck to my good friend David Layzell in Upper Hunter; my good friend Nichole Overall in Queanbeyan, who's in one of those seats where we're facing Labor; and also my friend the honourable Scott Barrett in the trigger seat in the upper house. This is an election where people know the storm's coming. We are seeing interest rate rises, we're seeing $1,700 extra a month in mortgage repayments, we're seeing energy prices going up and we're seeing the cost of living going up. A storm is coming, and it is on the horizon. One thing that the people of New South Wales—especially the people of country New South Wales—can't afford is more surprises. I urge you to get out there and support your New South Wales Nationals candidates to avoid the surprises we saw in Canberra, such as the interest rate rises, the energy price rises and all these things that will make life harder for you. If you stay the course, back the horse you know and support your local Nats, you will have a much better ride through what is to come over the next few years for the whole country. Gender and Sexual Orientation: Protests 48 13:32 Senator WHITE IWK Victoria Outside this parliament a rally is taking place that claims to be fighting for women's rights. A similar rally occurred in Melbourne last week. Let us be clear: what is happening out there today and what happened in Melbourne is not about that; it's not about women's rights. It is about using women's rights as a cover to further an agenda of discrimination and vilification towards transgender Australians and other minority groups. In light of that, I have two simple messages to convey today. The first is to those people who have gathered outside this parliament to spread division and to attack the trans community in Australia. That message is this: you do not speak for me. You do not speak for the government, and I hope you do not speak for this parliament. For those opposite me in the Senate, today presents an opportunity for us to come together and stand against this hate. Daniel Andrews made a strong statement as Premier of Victoria. John Pesutto has made a strong statement as Victorian Liberal opposition leader. The opportunity now is for senators in this place and the federal Liberal-National coalition to join us in condemning this vilification of trans Australians—that includes Senators Canavan, Chandler, Antic and Price. The words that politicians use have an impact on the lives of Australians, particularly vulnerable ones. We would do well to remember that. It shouldn't have to be said, but there is simply no place for hate. My second message is to the trans community in Australia, especially young trans people. I know that the hate is painful. I know that, often, discrimination and stigma seem to follow you down the street, when you're just trying to live your life. I know that the suicide rate for young trans Australians is the highest of any group. But I also know that you are loved and you are supported by me, by our government and by most people in this chamber. You must not forget that you are valid, you are worthy and, even though this week has been hard, your rights are not negotiable. Climate Change 49 13:34 Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE 298839 Queensland The International Panel on Climate Change synthesis report is another shocking reminder that the writing isn't just on the wall for climate change; it's already in the embers and the mud of the communities that are burning and flooding around the world. But, just as we stand at the precipice of disaster, we still have a choice of whether we fall over that edge. This week, the IPCC has again warned us that there is a narrowing pathway through which we can preserve life as we know it on Earth. This pathway does not include 116 new coal, oil and gas projects and $11 billion a year in public money subsidising the fossil fuel sector. As the IPCC and the world's scientists have made clear, if we are going to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis, action must start with no new coal and gas. I know that my community of Gladstone in Central Queensland is one of the regions that was built off the back of the fossil fuel boom. The workers who were a part of that deserve our thanks. If done right, our region also stands to gain from the transition to renewable energy and associated industries. That is why the Greens are calling for the creation of a national energy transition authority, so that workers and the communities around them can capitalise on the opportunities presented by the renewable energy transition. We have a real opportunity to make sure that Gladstone, and other regions like it, can genuinely become an economic powerhouse while avoiding the catastrophic effects of climate change. Prasad, Mr Surendra, OAM 49 13:36 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland It gives me great joy to rise in this place to recognise the outstanding contribution made by a wonderful Queensland citizen, Mr Surendra Prasad OAM. Surendra celebrated his 80th birthday last week, and can I say to Surendra what an honour it was for me to be able to attend his 80th birthday celebration. Surendra has done so much for our state of Queensland and for our country. He has been a leader of our wonderful Indian diaspora in my home state of Queensland, including being President of the Federation of Indian Communities of Queensland. In this capacity, he was actually a driving force behind bringing what is referred to as the Diwali festival into the central business district of Brisbane and sharing this wonderful festival, the victory of light over darkness, with all of the Queensland community. In addition to that, he was the visionary behind the establishment of a memorial to Australians of Indian ethnicity who died in the service of Australia in our armed forces. He made that memorial happen, I'm pleased to say, with the support of the previous government. I congratulate him for that wonderful achievement. In addition to that, he was also the founder and president of the Fiji Senior Citizens Association of Queensland, which has done wonderful work helping all members of the Australian community and our Pacific family in times of need, whether it be in times of bushfires, floods or cyclones. There is no better example or personification of our Australian values, the values which we all aspire to meet, than my good friend, my brother, Mr Surendra Prasad OAM. Gender And Sexual Orientation: Protests 49 13:08 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland It has been a difficult week for members of the LGBTIQ community in this country. It has been difficult, as a queer person in this parliament, to watch anti-trans speakers with neo-Nazi links be supported by members of the Liberal Party in Victoria and also here in Canberra. It's been difficult to hear a national debate this week, but we know this has been building for many months, because the Liberal Party of Australia and their leadership—Mr Peter Dutton and, yes, Senator Simon Birmingham—are desperate for you to believe that it works like this: that somehow you have transphobes over here who are accusing gay people of grooming children; that in the middle you have neo-Nazis, who are using violent extremism to attack vulnerable people; and over there we have people who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine—and all of these ideas are separate. But can I tell the Liberal and National parties of this country that the Venn diagram of these issues and these people is a circle, and you are in the middle of it. That is because you are supporting people like Senator Antic, Senator Rennick and Senator Claire Chandler and people who are trying to get Moira Deeming back into the party. Spewing this division and hate is not the way forward for our country. If the Liberal Party of Australia won't stand up against these foul attacks on vulnerable Australians, then we will. The queer community and the politicians that stand with them have a direct message for these people: our lives, our bodies, our families are not for you to weaponise for your political purposes, and it has to stop. Media 50 13:40 Senator LAMBIE 250026 Tasmania I rise today to speak on the recent reporting of the arrest of an Australian soldier for alleged crimes in Afghanistan. I'm not rising to speak on the conduct of the soldier or any of the allegations. I'm rising to express my disappointment that this young man's name and photograph have been splashed around in newspapers and on 9News articles. I'm worried that this very public process is denying this young man procedural fairness and natural justice. Too frequently we see the reputations of current and former soldiers dragged through the public domain with little to no regard for their welfare, let alone that of their families. The media and relevant authorities should factor in the threat this poses to the immediate family members. What if extremists here decided to target family members of the accused? If you join the SAS, you are told your identity will be shielded from the public for life. If these young men have a case to answer, I have no doubt they will. But that is for the courts to decide, not for the media pack. I want to appeal directly to the Australian media and ask them to show some restraint when they are reporting this story and any further ones to come. Surely the memory of the collapse of the Brittany Higgins trial can't be far from your minds. Wake up! Then in February this year, in the kidnapping case of four-year-old Cleo Smith, Channel 9 came very close to being in contempt of court after airing material that could have prejudiced the judge's consideration. According to legal experts, there only needs to be evidence a story—a newspaper article or a social media post, for you media personnel out there who don't know this—could affect the thinking of jurors in their deliberations. Actual proof that it did, in fact, influence jurors is not required. Contempt-of-court laws are designed to ensure that everyone gets a fair trial. There have been calls from the legal profession for a review of the contempt-of-court laws now for 30 years. Let's get it done. Education Workforce 50 13:42 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria As the shadow minister for education, I welcome the release of the 'Teacher education expert panel discussion paper'. It's an important part of a wider discussion on how we address the alarming decline in student outcomes despite record funding for the education system. The Teacher Education Expert Panel was established to provide advice on key issues raised at the Teacher Workforce Shortage Roundtable last August and an earlier report on the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review, released under the coalition in early 2022. The panel will provide advice on four reform areas: strengthening initial training education programs to deliver confident, effective, classroom-ready graduates; strengthening the link between performance and funding of ITE programs; improving the quality of practical experience in teaching; and improving postgraduate programs to attract mid-career entrants. It's absolutely critical that Australian students are taught by the very best. One month ago today, in my first speech as the shadow minister addressing Universities Australia, I highlighted the decline in enrolments for teaching courses as well as the fact that only 50 per cent of students who commence initial teacher education complete their degrees. For those who do enter the classroom, around 50 per cent leave within the first five years. This is not good enough. We need to do everything we can to encourage mid-career entrants into the teaching profession. That's why a one-year DipEd rather than a two-year master's, which means two years of lost income, is the best way to get more teachers into the classrooms more quickly. These people have the life experience, and they're motivated and passionate. It's disappointing that this discussion paper and the panel did not see a case for returning to a one-year DipEd, which arguably puts the interests of universities ahead of prospective teachers. We need to get on with making this change so that we can get more teachers into classrooms. Aldi: Workplace Safety 50 13:44 Senator SHELDON 168275 New South Wales Fifty-six people have died in truck crashes this year, including 15 truck drivers. Every one of those people was someone's mother, father, son or daughter. There is no job where you are more likely to be killed or seriously hurt than truck driving. And, Amazon aside, nowhere is this more evident than at Aldi. Aldi is the only one of the three big supermarkets which refuses to commit to ensuring that drivers are paid a safe and sustainable rate. Aldi is the only major supermarket which stands by outdated and disgraced business practices, where they are happy to work their truck drivers into the grave if it makes them an extra buck. Drivers have told the Transport Workers Union that when they've complained about being forced to drive longer hours than allowed under fatigue laws, which is illegal, the managers have responded with, 'Maybe you need to go faster,' and, 'It's your job to manage your fatigue'. We have seen what happens with Aldi's approach to safety: an Aldi driver who crossed the median strip on the Hume Highway had a head-on collision with another truck, with so much force that the driver was thrown out of the cabin. Aldi is the only major supermarket that went to the Federal Court to try to silence its truck drivers and their union representatives from criticising these practices. On top of that, Aldi lost the case resoundingly. Aldi should join the rest of us in the civilised community and end their barbaric war on its drivers and the travelling public. Gender and Sexual Orientation: Protests 51 13:45 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales Protest is the language of the marginalised and those ignored by the political establishment. Protest is a tactic used by those who can't buy a political party or the decisions that they want, and by those who don't control the media. Rio Tinto doesn't need to protest, but the traditional owners of lands that are slated for destruction by their open-cut mines so often do. Rupert Murdoch doesn't need to march on the streets, but those demanding climate action from backward governments do, and are. When climate protesters take to the streets and engage in peaceful marches and blockades, it's often because they feel they have no other choice. The science is in and the world is in desperate peril. To have a safe future for themselves and for the people on the planet, they are on the streets and taking urgent action. And all too frequently they're met with violence and arrest by the police forces. When Violet Coco blocked traffic for about half an hour on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in aid of the future of the planet that we all share, she was met with police who fabricated evidence in court in an attempt to get her a harsher sentence. But when Ryan Gosling and Hollywood did it, there wasn't even a peep. Climate protesters are often arrested violently, charged and refused bail. And, if they're released, they have onerous bail conditions that mean there are whole parts of our cities and states which they can't even visit. But no such conditions are imposed on violent right-wing extremists following what they may call 'protests' but which are too often direct violence and threats at marginalised communities. It isn't a protest to have hundreds of men threaten and assault a small handful of activists and allies from Community Action for Rainbow Rights. It sounds utterly terrifying. My thoughts are with those brave people who are standing up with young trans people and against hate and division. I stand with my party, the Greens, with all those in the trans community here and around Australia, and with their supporters: we have your backs. Government Procurement 51 13:48 Senator DAVID POCOCK 256136 Australian Capital Territory 'Canberra' is often used as a synonym for the politicians who gather here, but it is so much more than that. This great city is full of smart, forward-thinking people working to make Canberra a world-leading innovation hub. We should be doing everything we can to support them, and I'm not talking about handouts. I'm talking about the government being open to competitive local businesses through a proper procurement process. There are 2.5 million businesses registered and trading in Australia and yet only 12,000 of those businesses receive government contracts; that's less than 0.5 per cent. Part of the reason for this is that foreign companies are being preferred over Australian competitors in government procurement. That isn't because the foreign company is cheaper or able to offer a better service; often it's because they're simply familiar to government departments. We are missing opportunities to create new and thriving local industries. I've heard stories of contracts being awarded to foreign companies to start developing capabilities that have already been developed here by local companies. Canberra based businesses are sometimes not even given the opportunity to bid for contracts. This has to change and it can change. The owners of these businesses aren't asking for special treatment, they just want an equitable environment in which they can bid for government contracts. It's on us in this place to give that to Australian businesses. Western Australia: Homelessness 51 13:49 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Tonight, 9,729 Western Australians will experience homelessness, and one in four of them will be sleeping rough. Despite all of the rhetoric and all of the stifling hubris from the McGowan government, the number of people sleeping rough in Western Australia has increased by 114 per cent since it came to government. At 25 per cent of people sleeping rough, this is by far the highest number in the nation. Second is Queensland, at nine per cent. These devastating numbers demonstrate the McGowan government's inability to deliver important social programs for Western Australia. The fact is this: today, over 20,000 households, or 34,000 Western Australians, are on the public housing waiting list. This is an increase of over 10,000 people in just over two years. Under the McGowan government, the waiting list has more than doubled, with many people now waiting up to five years and the average being over two years. At the same time, the number of social housing properties has actually reduced, under the McGowan government, by 1,155 houses. I can't even imagine how they could actually have reduced the number. Shamefully, today more than 1,900 dwellings in the remaining housing stock are sitting empty. Three years ago, the McGowan government secured the East Perth site to build multistorey accommodation for the homeless in the city. It remains unbuilt. Further adding to the pressure, median rental prices in Perth have soared from just over $400 to nearly $600, and rental vacancies are now at a historic low. (Time expired) Gender and Sexual Orientation: Protests 52 13:51 Senator 266524 Queensland ROBERTS () (): As a servant to the many different people who make up our one amazing Queensland community, I'm a representative for all Australians, including those with an XY chromosome and those with an XX chromosome—a servant of men and women and those adults who choose to live as something other than their chromosome provides. Today, this Parliament House saw an exercise in democracy of which I'm very proud. The Let Women Speak rally on the lawn outside was conducted with a restraint that was sadly lacking in Belfield. I applaud the commitment to decent behaviour from those who attended to protest in favour of women's rights and those who attended to redefine women's rights, and I thank the AFP for their calm presence. As senators, we have an obligation to pour oil on troubled waters, not pour kerosene on a fire. Yesterday, Senator McKim described our fellow Australians who choose to protest in favour of women's rights as 'trans-exclusionary, right-wing dropkicks—T-E-R-D-S'. It is not a defence for the senator that this actually spells t-e-r-w-d. Just because he can, that does not mean we should address constituents in such terms. I remember the feminist protests of the seventies, when women marched behind banners that read, 'If you see my gender, you do not see me.' Gay rights campaigners, back when there was something to campaign for, marched behind banners that read, 'If you see my sexuality, you don't see me.' In 2023, one group within our community has transformed that slogan to read, 'You will see my gender, or else!' This is not progress; this is division wrapped in a multicoloured bow. In the years ahead, our society will be greeted with many challenges, social, economic and defence. We must face these challenges together, accepting our differences. The one thing that forces trying to reshape Australia fear the most is our unity: Australians facing our challenges united behind one flag, as one community and one nation. Let women speak! Hogan, Ms Michelle Andrea 52 13:53 Senator BFQ South Australia BARBARA POCOCK () (): I rise to remember my friend, union sister and passionate activist Michelle Hogan, who we sadly lost on 8 March. As I speak, the union and women's movements across South Australia are gathering at the Waterside Workers Hall in Port Adelaide to farewell Michelle and celebrate her life. I send my deepest sympathy to Rob, her partner, and to her family and wide circle of friends. Michelle made the world a better place. We worked alongside each other, and many others, at the South Australian Labor council in the early 1990s. Michelle led the Anna Stewart project supporting women unionists. Later, she became assistant secretary at the Labor council and led it through many challenges. For 40 years Michelle was a passionate activist in education, community services, local government and health. She was into celebration—never missing an International Women's Day or May Day. She contributed consistently to APHEDA, Union Aid Abroad, and she chaired the Port of Adelaide National Trust. Most recently she was Chair of South Australia's Working Women's Centre, where she made such a difference and is today so deeply missed. Michelle was a builder, a thinker and a strategist. She was generous, kind, farsighted and principled. She was at the same time a very funny woman. With her dry humour she regularly pierced pomposity and paternalism, but I never saw her make a personal attack. She was not interested in climbing the slippery pole. She was ambitious for others. To so many of us she was also a friend of the best sort. She listened deeply. She remembered what you're up to. She made you laugh. She had a beautiful delicate rose tattoo on her always elegant shoulder, and truly she fought not only for bread but for roses too. Her smiling face, her fabulous humour and her sharp-minded deep commitment to make the world a better place are deeply mourned. We're grateful for her life and the beauty she brought to the world. Gender and Sexual Orientation: Protests 52 13:55 Senator WALSH 252157 Victoria I spoke earlier this week on the disgraceful scenes we saw outside Victorian parliament on the weekend. Now today outside this parliament there was an extremely small rally against trans people in our community—a rally designed to spread hate. Shamefully, it was attended by some members of this place. So let me be clear, there is absolutely no place for anti-trans hatred on our streets, there is no place for it in the halls or on the lawns of this parliament and there is no place for it in our Australian community. My message to trans and gender-diverse people today is: in this place we hear you, we see you and we stand with you. This is an opportunity for everyone in this place to stand together with the trans community. It is 2023, people! It is absolutely extraordinary that the LGBTQIA community are still facing attacks today, after everything that they've fought for, after everything they have stood up for and after everything they have had to go through just to live with pride in our community. We on this side of the chamber will not stand for it. The government stands with the trans community. We will not accept on our watch one backward step on LGBTQIA rights. We will not accept on our watch one backward step on trans rights. This is an opportunity for the coalition to stand with us on this. It is an opportunity for Mr Dutton to stand with us on this. He has still not stood with the trans community. He has not shown his support for a community—and let's not mince words here—who are under complete attack. I call on him to do that today. Vedanta Centre in Melbourne 53 13:57 Senator CICCONE 281503 Victoria Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Vedanta centre in Melbourne in Ringwood East in the electorate of Deakin. They were recipients of a $100,000 grant through the Community Development Grants Program. It was used for important renovations that enable them to support more members of their community. The Vedanta centre in Melbourne plays an essential role in bringing people together to practise their religion and other practices in the community. The Australian government is committed to ensuring that all Australians are supported in their personal, spiritual and ethical development, and that means ensuring that organisations, like the Vedanta centre, have the facilities required for their growing membership. Everyone who comes to our great country should feel welcome and able to practise their faith, regardless of their background. I was particularly pleased to hear how the monks from the centre engage in interfaith dialogues and meetings. This is an important way to demonstrate to the broader community in Ringwood and the Deakin electorate how they can all live in peace and harmony while still practising the different faiths that exist. The Vedanta centre in Melbourne is a fantastic example of the positive role that faith organisations play in Australia, by creating a sense of community and promoting service to others. This was particularly important throughout the COVID pandemic when we were forced to isolate from friends and loved ones. It was inspiring to hear about the work by the monks at the centre to connect with people online and deliver food and other essentials to those in need. It was a pleasure to meet so many wonderful members of the Vedanta community. I thank them again for having me at their centre. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 53 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Economy 53 13:59 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Farrell. Yesterday in question time you stated, 'What is it that Prime Minister Albanese hasn't done to help the Australian people?' Minister, can you confirm that the Prime Minister has not decreased power prices for Australian families by $275, despite promising 97 times before the election that he would do so? 14:00 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Hughes for her question and the opportunity to talk again about what a terrific job our Prime Minister is doing. When he's not progressing the issue of recognition of an Indigenous Voice to this parliament he's of course dealing with all the issues that, regrettably, the former government—your government, the government that you were part of, Senator Hughes—simply failed to do. So, bit by bit, we're trying to restore the Australian economy, to deal with all those serious cost-of-living pressures that every family is facing at the moment because of your neglect of things like an energy policy and like dealing with climate change. Each day the Prime Minister wakes up and thinks, 'How can I help Australian families to reduce and push down the cost of living for hardworking Australian families?' That's what this Prime Minister is focused on—not on picking up other ministries from members of his cabinet, but dealing with the serious issues that are facing Australian people as a result of those nine or 10 years of neglect under your former government. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Hughes, a first supplementary question? 14:02 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales Minister, you said yesterday that the Prime Minister has done so much to reduce the cost of living. Can you please name a single cost to Australian families that is lower now than when the Albanese government was elected? 14:02 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Hughes for her supplementary question. Well, what did we do when we first came to government? We supported a rise in the minimum wage for ordinary Australian workers. What was your policy at the time? Your policy, as— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Hughes? Senator Hughes 273828 A point of order on relevance, and in a bid to ensure that we don't get another 30 seconds of 'um's and 'er's: the question was very specific as to naming a single cost that has come down for Australian families—a single cost. I'd appreciate your redirecting the minister to the question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Hughes. The minister did start off with a bit of a preamble, but as you got to your feet he had started to name some costs. You mightn't agree with them, but he was being relevant to your questions. Senator FARRELL I0N And of course Senator Hughes wouldn't agree with what I'm about to say, but let's go through some of the things that have been the subject of downward pressure as a result of the work done by the Prime Minister and the rest of these wonderful people. We've cut the price of PBS medicines from $42.50 to $30.00— Opposition senators interjecting— Senator FARRELL I0N You don't like me talking about— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell! Senator FARRELL I0N You don't like me talking about the things that have gone down, because we have been doing some— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, the time for answering has expired. Senators, I was trying to draw the minister to sit down, but there was so much noise in this chamber, he was unable to hear me. He is answering questions asked by opposition senators. I am certainly entitled to hear the answers, as are other senators. Senator Hughes, a second supplementary? 14:05 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales Minister, does the Prime Minister follow your rule and not closely follow power prices or grocery prices? Is this why Prime Minister Albanese thinks Australians have had a pretty good 10 months, despite their electricity bills, grocery bills, mortgage repayments and rent all going up? Does this show how out of touch your government is? 14:05 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Hughes for her second question. I have to say I was a bit disappointed about the way in which the leader in particular put up items on his Facebook page yesterday, seeking to misrepresent my views by cutting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Hughes. Senator Hughes 273828 A point of order on relevance: this is a very serious question affecting every day Australians and the rising prices they're facing everywhere. I would appreciate the minister's being relevant to the question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Hughes. I'm glad you pointed out that it's a serious question. I would hope all questions are serious, and I would ask senators to remain silent so that we can all hear the answers. I will direct the minister to your question. Senator FARRELL I0N As I was saying, my staff recommended that I perhaps request that this Facebook page be taken down because it was in breach of the rules. When we discovered that there were only 71 likes of this particular Facebook page, we decided not to. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Hughes on a point of order? Senator Hughes 273828 Madam President, this question was not with regard to Senator Farrell's or Senator Birmingham's social media. I ask that the minister in his last eight seconds address at least part of the question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Hughes, when raising a point of order please come directly to the point. You will note that in your last point of order I directed the minister to your question, and I will direct him again. Senator FARRELL I0N Thank you, President. There is no person in this country who is more concerned about the cost of living— (Time expired) Economy 54 14:08 Senator PAYMAN 300707 Western Australia My question is to the Minister for Finance and Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. Can the minister please tell us how the government is assisting Australian households to deal with cost-of-living pressures? 14:08 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Payman for her question. I can provide an update to the chamber on how the government is working hard and is focused on how we can make life easier for each and every Australian. We are certainly aware of Australians who are facing tough times with some of the increases in the cost of living. Some of these in relation to power have, of course, been caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has driven up gas prices. There is continued disruption on our supply chains following years of chaos, impacted, of course, by the pandemic. And there are the successive interest rate rises that we have seen from the Reserve Bank, which started on its tightening arrangements before the last election. There are other factors that we can address, and where we can, we are. One of the very first acts of the Albanese government was to successfully argue for a minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, an outcome which helped around 2.7 million Australians and was a real change between us and the former government in approach on wages. Our first budget focused on responsible cost-of-living relief that didn't put extra pressure on inflation. That's one of the most important things. In terms of our investments, there were things like cheaper child care, expanding Paid Parental Leave, cheaper medicines, more affordable housing and getting wages moving again. In addition, as winter approaches, we are providing—and will provide through the budget—energy relief to millions of households, payments that those opposite opposed. These households will pay up to a third less in the retail price when their energy bills come in. Again, it beggars belief that those opposite decided to oppose the laws that put in place those arrangements. Then there is—and I will go into this more in the next answer—our investment in early education. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Payman, a first supplementary? 14:10 Senator PAYMAN 300707 Western Australia In 100 days, cheaper child care will be a reality for millions of Australians families. How will the government's investment in early childhood education and care assist with cost-of-living pressures, Minister? 14:10 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory Thank you, Senator Payman, for being on the same page in relation to early education and care. In 100 days, cheaper early childhood education and care will provide cost-of-living relief for around 1.2 million Australian families. The milestone comes as new data from the Department of Education reveals that childcare costs soared by 49 per cent under the previous government. From July, the Albanese government will be taking action to deliver real cost-of-living relief. We know parents who have children under the age of five just want to keep those childcare costs under the weekly household budget. For the average family on about $120,000 a year with a child in care three days a week, the changes will cut costs by about $1,700 a year. The childcare subsidy rates will lift to 90 per cent for families on a combined income of $80,000 or less. The highest subsidies of up to 95 per cent for families with second and subsequent children will be retained. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Payman, the second supplementary? 14:11 Senator PAYMAN 300707 Western Australia Can the minister confirm in the lead-up to the budget any further support from the government to combat the rising cost of living? 14:12 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Payman for her supplementary. We are taking actions, as this chamber knows, because we debated them in December last year. We want to take the sting out of higher power prices through direct energy bill relief through the next budget. It's direct support for households and businesses that, let us not forget, those opposite tried to block. There are encouraging signs that our plan for energy prices is beginning to work, with big drops in the prices on the electricity futures market. We are also focused on growing the economy in the right way so more Australians can get the benefit from good skills, get good jobs and earn good wages. That's why we successfully argued for the Fair Work Commission minimum wage increase in line with inflation. So we have legislation around cleaner and cheaper energy, we brought in a new pensioner work bonus, we are working on the new housing accord and we have important legislation before this chamber that will assist with cost-of-living pressures on Australian households. Housing 56 14:13 Senator VAN 283601 Victoria My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Farrell. According to government analysis, by how much have rental rates gone up since the election of the Albanese Labor government? 14:13 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank the senator for the question. I don't think we want to start this. Certainly I don't want to start this process of trying to score cheap political points. Senator Birmingham H6X Madam President, I think the minister is imputing motives to Senator Van on what was a question entirely seeking a point of fact. Murray is bringing some talking points to the table for Don, but I think you should bring him to order in terms of imputing motives to the senator, who purely asked a factual question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham, please resume your seat. I don't believe there was an imputation against the actual senator, so I am going to call the minister and remind him of the question and the need for an answer. Senator Van 283601 A point of order on relevance: the minister has gone nowhere near the question, other than— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Van, if you were listening, you would have heard me draw the minister back to the question. Senator FARRELL I0N Rather than answering cheap political questions, what I'd like to do is talk about what this government is actually doing in practical terms to put downward pressure on the rental stress that so many Australians are now suffering. Obviously, one of the things that we can do is try and boost the supply of homes to rent and make substantial and significant investment in new social and affordable housing. It's these things, Senator Van, which will result in practical downward pressure on the rental stress on the Australian people at the moment. Senator Birmingham H6X I raise a point of order on the question of direct prevalence. This was quite a precise question. I accept the minister is being generally relevant to the question of rental markets and rental affordability, but there was a precise question there about how much rental rates have gone up. If the minister doesn't know, he can take it on notice and provide context, but simply talking around the margins of it is not directly relevant. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Birmingham. I am not privy to what government analysis Senator Van is directing us towards, but I will remind— Senator Birmingham H6X Any would do! The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Birmingham, please! I have taken your point of order in good faith. I am simply explaining to you that I am not aware how broad or how narrow the government analysis is, but I will direct the minister to the second part of the question. Senator FARRELL I0N A little bit of respect from the leader for the chair would be appreciated. An opposition senator: Seriously? Senator FARRELL I0N Yes, seriously—a little bit of respect for the President! The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Van? Senator Van 283601 Again, direct relevance: the minister cannot just waffle on down a different path. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Van, your leader was on his feet with the exact same question. I have directed the minister to the question. Senator Van 283601 With respect, Chair, he hasn't listened. The PRESIDENT 112096 No. You've raised a point of order. I've responded to that. Your leader raised exactly the same point of order. I've directed the minister to the question, and it's not for you to debate it with me. Senator FARRELL I0N If your side stopped interjecting, then I could answer your question, because we know a lot of people across Australia are struggling— (Time expired) The 112096 Senator Van, first supplementary? 14:18 Senator VAN 283601 Victoria Given the success of that one, according to government analysis, how much more is an average standard variable rate mortgage holder paying per month on an average mortgage since the election of the Albanese Labor government? 14:18 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank Senator Van for his supplementary question. Again, I'm not going to get into gotcha questions. The government is trying to put downward pressure on a whole lot of items that are making life difficult for ordinary Australians— The 10000 Senator Van? Senator Van 283601 President, again, direct relevance: the question was quite narrow in its phrasing, and if the minister doesn't know the answer he can take it on notice and come back to the chamber. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Van. The minister did respond to the question, but I will draw him back to the question again. Senator FARRELL I0N We understand the pressures that Australian families are under. We've talked previously, in your previous question, about the issue of rental affordability. Now you're talking about the issue of mortgage rates. We have been working solidly to put downward pressure on all of these items that are affecting ordinary working Australians. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Your second supplementary, Senator Van? 14:20 Senator VAN 283601 Victoria Given the minister has demonstrated that he is unaware of or unconcerned by the cost-of-living pressures faced by Australians, is he aware that Westpac Business Bank forecast that advertised rents will increase by 11.5 per cent in 2023? Minister, is it correct that this will be the biggest annual increase on record? 14:20 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I completely reject your proposition, Senator Van. This is a government that's deeply concerned about cost-of-living issues facing ordinary Australian people. Every day we focus on how we can put downward pressure on the cost of living, based on the financial mess that you left us and that we inherited when we came to government almost 12 months ago. Australians are facing these issues because of the inaction and the neglect of the former government with respect to all of these issues. Bit by bit, inch by inch— (Time expired) Gambling Advertising 57 14:21 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Senator Watt. Across the country, state governments are proposing actions to limit gambling because of the harm it causes to children and the community. Reflecting this, the Greens in New South Wales are taking a policy to the election on Saturday of phasing out pokie machines from pubs and clubs, introducing a mandatory cashless gambling card and creating a pokies super tax and reparation fund for affected communities. However, it's up to the federal government to ban gambling advertising, which is something that is supported by 70 per cent of Australians. Minister, will the government move to ban gambling advertising anywhere and anytime, in the same way as tobacco advertising was banned years ago? 14:22 Senator WAT 245759 Queensland T (—) (): Thank you for giving us an election manifesto from the New South Wales Greens. I'm not sure, Senator Rice, whether you were here yesterday when I pretty much answered an identical question from Senator Pocock. I could refer you back to my answer of yesterday, but I'm happy to go through it again today. There is no doubt that the Albanese government recognises the importance of gambling promotions being presented in a responsible manner. We know the Greens know a little bit about gambling because we know who their donors have been. We also recognise that there is ongoing community concern about the harms associated with online gambling, including advertising material, and it is timely for the parliament to consider what more should be done to address this issue, and I hope that we can rely on the Greens' support despite their large donations from gambling interests. This is why we have established an inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm. As I mentioned yesterday, the online gambling inquiry is being conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, which has been very capably chaired by Peta Murphy, one of our fabulous Labor MPs. The 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. Of course, the government will consider the committee's recommendations when it releases its final report. The current rules relating to the scheduling and content of advertisements on television are contained in the co-regulatory broadcasting codes of practice. Those codes are developed under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 by industry groups in consultation with the Australian Communications and Media Authority. There is some work to be done here. The Albanese government is on the job. There's a House committee on the job, and we look forward to seeing its recommendations. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Rice, first supplementary? 14:24 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria Thank you, Minister. So, in terms of a ban, at this stage it's a no. Minister, it was a Labor government that refused tobacco donations and introduced changes to tobacco packets that protected people and reduced harm. Will you commit to refusing gambling donations and taking action to protect people from gambling harm? 14:24 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Again, I'm rather surprised that the Greens are choosing to use a question about whether we will ban the very kinds of donations that the Greens have been receiving. You're asking a Labor government to ban you from taking donations from the gambling industry. Is that what this is about? The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Watt, please resume your seat. Senator Rice? Senator Ric 155410 A point of order, President: the minister is misleading the parliament. The Greens do not take donations from gambling companies. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Rice, it's a debating point. Minister Watt. Minister Watt, please continue. Minister Watt, I've called three times. Senator WATT 245759 Sorry, President. I'm just so surprised that the Greens are asking us to stop them from taking the donations that they have been taking for a number of years from the gambling industry. Let me remind you, Senator Rice: in 2022 the Queensland Greens accepted almost $500,000 in donations from a highrolling gambler, despite pushing for a ban on political donations from the gambling industry. In 2019-20 the Queensland Greens MP Mr Berkman had been critical of the LNP and Labor for accepting donations from gambling interests, but the highest donation in an election year in Queensland in 2019 was indeed to the Greens from Mr Turpie. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Rice, it's time for your second supplementary. 14:26 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria It is time, yes! It's time to refuse donations from gambling companies and the gambling industry. It's the insidious, harmful industry. Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Rice, please resume your seat because I can't hear you, and the chamber needs to come to order. Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Order! I haven't heard the question. I don't think Senator Rice has finished the question, but would you start it again, please? Senator 155410 I haven't started the question; I'm just correcting the record. Minister, it is clear that what is needed at a federal level is a national gambling regulator, including to tackle the harm caused by online gambling, which is national and international. Will the government introduce a national gambling regulator? 14:27 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland (—) (): As I said, the House of Representatives is conducting an inquiry into these matters at the moment, and I look forward to its recommendations on what we can do about what is a very serious issue. But I'm interested to note that Senator Rice seems to be enunciating that the Greens' position is that they don't support gambling donations from companies, but donations from individual highroller gamblers are fine. Does that mean that every time we hear the Greens say that we should ban donations from coal and gas companies it would be okay for the Greens to take donations from Clive Palmer, who owns coal companies, or Gina Rinehart? So it's a no to their companies, but it's fine for them. Mr Turpie is a highroller gambler. The Greens don't like it when they're held to account, and Senator McKim is chief among them. You come in here and mouth off constantly about what other parties should do, but the very minute your own hypocrisy is exposed, all you want to do is shout people down. You are a joke, you are hypocrites and you're finally being exposed. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Order! Senator Watt, I remind you to direct your remarks to the chair. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice 58 14:28 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland My question is to the Special Minister of State, Senator Farrell. On this historic day can the minister update the Senate about the progress to recognise First Nations Australians in the Constitution and to deliver an Indigenous Voice to Parliament? 14:29 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I can, as a matter of fact, Senator Green. Thank you for the question and your great interest in this topic. I should start by congratulating everybody in the Senate for the mature way in which the issue of the referendum legislation was dealt with last night. Congratulate yourselves on the passing of that legislation without any opposition in this place. But it is another historic day today, a significant day in the journey towards an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. We have the opportunity for Australia to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia in our Constitution. This will be a simple but powerful act. The proposition that is to be put to the Australian people has been built from the ground up through the work of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This process is the culmination of years of discussion, consultation and hard work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As the Prime Minister said in his gracious and patient ask of Australia, I want to thank the chamber for the goodwill demonstrated last night in respect of the referendum machinery bill. This will be the first referendum in almost a quarter of a century, and a new generation of Australians will be able to have their say. The government believes that this referendum will be a unifying moment for Australia, and I'm certainly keen for that to be the case. It's about taking this country forward for everyone. We look forward to working with the Australian community to ensure that everyone can have their say in a respectful manner on this important opportunity to recognise our first Australians. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Green, a first supplementary. 14:31 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland Ahead of the Voice referendum, what is the government doing to implement Labor's longstanding commitment to improve voter enrolment and participation? 14:31 Sena I0N South Australia tor FARRELL (—) (): Again, I thank Senator Green for her question and her interest in voter enrolment. Since we took office, we have wasted no time on this issue. Last year I asked JSCEM to investigate increasing enfranchisement and electoral participation, and I look forward to working across the parliament on meaningful reform following its report. Last year the government allocated $16.1 million over two years to the Australian Electoral Commission to increase First Nations enrolment and participation in future electoral events as part of the referendum preparatory work. More recently, I approved regulatory changes making it easier for more Australians who are eligible to enrol to actually get on the roll. From 17 February, eligible Australians have been able to use their Medicare card and their Australian citizenship certificate numbers to enrol or update their enrolment. Early AEC— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Green, a second supplementary question. 14:32 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland Minister, it is important that First Nations people have their say at this referendum. Can the minister update the Senate about the steps the government is taking to improve Indigenous enrolment in particular? 14:32 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Thank you, Senator Green. I can say that early AEC data from around the country shows that between 11 and 14 per cent of new enrolment applications are using those new methods of enrolment that I mentioned before. One outstanding initiative from the Gillard Labor government was the Federal Direct Enrolment Update program, which uses information from government agencies to assist with updating elector details and including eligible voters on the roll. Following trials of the new direct enrolment activities, which used new data sources, mailbag addresses and email notifications of new enrolments, the AEC advises that over 15,000 Indigenous Australians were added to the electoral roll. Following these successful trials, the AEC advises me that these activities will be included as a permanent feature of our enrolment program. The estimated Indigenous enrolment rates— (Time expired) Tasmania: Housing Australia Future Fund 59 14:33 Senator TYRRELL 300639 Tasmania My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Housing, Senator Farrell, and it has no preamble. How many homes will Tasmania get under the Housing Australia Future Fund in the first five years? 14:34 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Thank you, Senator Tyrrell, for your interest in this initiative by the federal government to try to increase the number of and access to homes by ordinary Australians. Through a range of significant policy initiatives, we're ensuring that Australians have greater access not only to home ownership but also to greater rental affordability. Senator Tyrrell 300639 I have a point of order on relevance. I asked a very specific question. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you, Senator Tyrrell. I'll remind the minister of your question. Senator FARRELL I0N Unfortunately, as data has shown, in the period from 2016 to 2021, there was regrettably a substantial increase in Tasmanians experiencing homelessness, and I think this is really what your question is directed to. Tasmania has a strong community housing provider sector and has taken many opportunities provided by the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. Of course— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister, please resume your seat. Senator Tyrrell. Senator Tyrrell 300639 I know I'm new, but I thought it was a very plain question. The PRESIDENT 112096 I have directed the minister to your question, and I will direct him once again. Senator I0N Just recently, Minister Collins was in Launceston with the community housing provider Community Housing Ltd to turn the sod on the site of 48 affordable new homes for Tasmanians in need. The Albanese government has unlocked up to $575 million in funding from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to be able to invest in new social and affordable— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Tyrrell, first supplementary? 14:36 Senator TYRRELL 300639 Tasmania The government's commitment that the Housing Australia Future Fund will make independent decisions is admirable. With that commitment in mind, who decided the fund would allocate 10,000 homes to frontline workers? 14:37 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Thank you, Senator Tyrrell, for the question. The issue you have raised was, of course, an election promise that the Albanese government took to the last election. So, in terms of who decided that issue, it was the Australian people, because the Australian people elected the Albanese government to be the government of this country. What we're doing now with our housing policies is implementing those decisions which we took to the people at the last election. In terms of who decided this, well, ultimately— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Tyrrell, second supplementary? 14:38 Senator TYRRELL 300639 Tasmania On current projections, in the next five years 1,100 Tasmanians will be homeless. Does your government agree that reducing homelessness by building 1,200 homes in Tasmania is a good thing? 14:38 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia To be honest with you, Senator Tyrrell, I think you're just focusing on one small aspect of what the government is proposing to do. Let me tell you about some of the things this government is doing by comparison to what the previous government did not do: a $10 billion investment to improve housing outcomes in Australia; 20,000 social homes, including 4,000 homes for women and children impacted by domestic violence, and older women at risk of homelessness; 10,000 affordable homes for frontline workers; $30 million for housing and services for veterans; $200 million to repair, maintain and improve housing in remote Indigenous communities. The PRESIDEN 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator Tyrrell. Senator Tyrrell 300639 I appreciate all that they are doing, but it was a very simple question, and I am here to represent Tasmania. The PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you. I will again direct the minister to your question. Senator FARRELL I0N Senator Tyrrell, all of those things are things that— (Time expired) Energy 60 14:40 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia My question is to Senator Farrell, the Minister representing the Prime Minister. Yesterday during question time, you declared to the Senate: What Prime Minister Albanese says , he does. Mr Albanese said not once but on 97 separate occasions that Australians were going to see a reduction of $275 in their power bills. Minister, when will Australians get a $275 reduction to their power bills? 14:40 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank the senator for his question, which seems to be a repeat of questions asked earlier in the week. I have to say that, on a historic day when the Prime Minister announces the recognition of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, here I am at the third question, and we haven't had a single question about the big issue of the day. The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister, Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator O'Sullivan? Senator O'Sullivan 283585 On relevance: clearly my question was about electricity bills and the prices that Australians can expect to pay, and we're getting an answer on the Voice. The PRESIDENT 112096 I will draw the minister to the question. Senator FARRELL I0N Prime Minister Albanese, just like me, is deeply concerned about the issue of electricity. The Prime Minister and I are deeply concerned about the issue of electricity prices in this country for ordinary working Australians—and businesses, for that matter. Now, the reality is that the reason that we find ourselves in a situation with escalating electricity prices is the 10 long years of inaction by the former government on the pressures in relation to electricity prices and, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, what did we do as soon as we came into government? We took action on electricity prices. We sought to put a cap on gas prices. We sought a cap on coal prices to push the price of electricity down. And what did your mob do? You voted against it. You wanted to keep electricity prices high. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator O'Sullivan, first supplementary? 14:42 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia Does Labor's Powering Australia plan say: It will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year … 14:43 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia We have taken all of the action that we have in respect of power prices to put downward pressure on electricity prices in this country to repair the previous nine years of neglect from your government. Senator O'Sullivan 283585 A point of order on direct relevance: the question asked very simply whether or not Labor's Powering Australia plan said: It will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year … I seek leave to— Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator O'Sullivan, please resume your seat. You were on a point of order. There was so much interjection, it was very hard to hear. I will rule on the point of order. I will direct the minister to your question and I will also ask the minister to—you are seeking leave now? Is leave granted? Senator O'Sullivan 283585 I haven't explained what— Leave not granted. Honourable senators interjecting— Senator O'Sullivan 283585 With respect, President— The PRESIDENT 112096 No, it's not with respect. I asked if leave was granted, and the answer was no. There's no point debating it with me. Please resume your seat. I have the minister on his feet. Senator FARRELL I0N It is customary, when somebody's seeking to table a document, to— Honourable senators interjecting— Senator FARRELL I0N I don't know what the senator has got in his hand. The leader yesterday had the courtesy to hand me a copy of the document that he wanted to put forward, and I'm happy to look at any document which the opposition seeks to table, and respond. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator O'Sullivan, the minister has invited you to show him the document so he may consider the response. Senator Birmingham? Senator Birmingham H6X on indulgence—Given the invitation of the Acting Leader of the Government in the Senate, here it is, and perhaps he'd like to read the highlighted line to the chamber. The PRESIDENT 112096 So we're going to go back to the question. I've asked the minister to respond to the question and to be relevant to the question. Senator FARRELL I0N I don't think I can be any clearer about the actions that this government has been taking to reduce the price of electricity in this country for both— Senator O'Sullivan 283585 A point of order on direct relevance: the question was very tight, and we assisted the minister by providing him with Labor's policy. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator O'Sullivan, in relation to— Senator Watt 245759 What about your 22 policies? Have you got a ringbinder full of them? The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Watt, seriously! Senator O'Sullivan, the minister has agreed to look at what you're seeking to table. In relation to your question and your last point of order, I have directed him to the question. Senator FARRELL I0N This government is serious about putting downward pressure on electricity prices. We came to office, with a former government with something like 22— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator O'Sullivan, second supplementary? 14:47 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia Will the minister say the words 'two hundred and seventy-five dollars'? Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 I am going to sit the minister down again until there is respectful silence—from both sides, thank you, Senator Green. The 112096 Senator Gallagher! 14:47 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I thank the senator for his second supplementary question. This government is serious about putting downward pressure on electricity prices. I don't think I can be any clearer than that. Right from the time that we took office, we started taking action— Senator McGrath 217241 Give me a two, give me a seven, give me a five! The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Farrell, please resume your seat. Senator McGrath, you are clearly out of order, and I ask you to listen in respectful silence. Senator FARRELL I0N We started taking action on putting downward pressure on electricity prices in a way— Senator O'Sullivan 283585 A point of order on direct relevance, President: I asked the question 'Will the minister say the words "two hundred and seventy-five dollars"' because that's what they promised to the Australian people on nine— The PRESIDE 112096 I will direct the minister to your question. Senator FARRELL I0N I'm not going to have words or amounts put into my mouth. We have been the government, with the opposition opposed to cutting electricity— (Time expired) Economy 62 14:49 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. Having previously denied a link between money-printing and inflation, RBA governor Dr Philip Lowe finally admitted during recent Senate estimates that the expansion of the money supply, low interest rates and government support during the pandemic has driven inflation. Prior to the 2022 election the former coalition government ran up hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, with little to show for it but some expired PCR tests—and of course an artificially inflated property market, where it's nearly impossible for first home buyers to get into the market. Do you believe that the irresponsible and unprecedented debt accumulated by the former government has contributed to the inflationary pressures that are currently being felt by ordinary Australians? I will remind you as well that the Labor was in agreement with most of this. 14:50 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Babet for the question and also for his advice that he would be asking a question relating to debt and inflation. I would agree with Senator Babet that a lot of the significant increase in government debt under the former government—they doubled the debt before the pandemic hit—has led to the budget being in worse shape than it needed to be, that there wasn't enough to show for the debt that we currently carry and that the fastest growing area in the budget is managing the interest burden on that debt. So, it is a big problem and it is a big issue that we are having to manage as we work our way through the decisions we're taking in this budget. The inflation challenge has certainly been made worse by the failure in energy policy. Nine years of failure to deal with the reality of a changing energy market and the fact that we haven't been able to be ahead of that and have policies in place to deal with it has certainly contributed. One of the biggest contributors to inflation of course has been energy prices, impacted by the war in Ukraine but absolutely also impacted by the failure of those opposite to land an agreed energy policy—22 of them, and not one of them landed. The fact that we are now dealing with the results of that has certainly had an impact on inflation, which is why we took the steps we took at the end of last year to put caps in place, to put in place the interventions that we did, as unusual as they were, to make sure we were putting downward pressure on inflation and bills at the same time. (Time expired) The 10000 Senator Babet, a first supplementary question? 14:52 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria Thank you, Minister. I guess we're in agreement now that increased government spending does indeed contribute to inflation. So, why is the Labor government not responsibly attempting to heavily reduce spending to balance the budget and to make a start on repaying our nation's debt? Why all the big spending? 14:53 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I thank Senator Babet for the supplementary question. I would say to Senator Babet that the October budget banked 99 per cent of the revenue upgrades that we received through that budget update—99 per cent. It's unprecedented. It goes to show the approach that the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, and I take in terms of budget management. And it's not just how much is spent; it's the quality of the spend: are the investments you're making driving an economic or social outcome? Our childcare investments, our investments in cleaner and cheaper energy and our investments in medicines are all about the quality of the scheme. We don't want to pork-barrel our way around the country like those opposite did. We need to make sure every dollar that's spent is invested in the productive capacity of our country and improves the living standards of Australians. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Babet, a second supplementary question? 14:54 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria Thank you, Minister. So, I guess it's pretty clear that all governments lack the courage to cut spending, because it's unpleasant to do so. Will you rule out future taxes on the family home? And will you confirm that your government will proceed with the stage 3 tax cuts to ensure that Australians can keep more of their own money and keep up with the rising costs of living? 14:54 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory On the question around taxes on the family home, we understand the importance of the family home, and it will remain exempt from capital gains tax. I think the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have made that clear in recent weeks, and our position on stage 3 hasn't changed. On the spending side, I think we do need to acknowledge that a significant amount—the vast proportion—of spending in the Commonwealth budget is in payments through our social security system and payments to the states and territories. These are significant parts of the budget. When people say they want to see big cuts to things, they have to understand that that means big cuts to social programs that people value or payments to the states and territories. We are fiscally responsible. We do have an eye on budget repair. But we're going to be cautious about how we approach it, because we know people rely on services that the Australian budget funds. (Time expired) International Relations: Australia and India 63 14:55 Senator WHITE IWK Victoria My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Watt. One of the largest Indian diasporas in Australia is in Victoria, and they're extremely interested in Prime Minister Albanese's recent trip to India. I've had many constituents ask me about it. I was wondering if you could elaborate further on what Prime Minister Albanese's discussions with Prime Minister Modi were about and provide an update on how Aussie farmers will benefit from the Prime Minister's recent trip to India. 14:56 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Isn't it good that one senator in this chamber has some questions about agriculture— Senator Farrell I0N And India! Senator WATT 245759 and India. It's not surprising that it comes from Senator White, who comes from good farming stock herself. I know that not long ago she attended a very important event with the dairy industry in Tatura, just outside Shepparton, and I thank her for doing so. The Prime Minister's recent trip to India, where he was triumphantly accompanied by his diligent trade minister, Senator Farrell, was obviously a great success. It really underscored the value of the relationship between our two countries, because this is a relationship that runs far deeper than just the cricket field. India was Australia's sixth-largest two-way goods and services trading partner at $34.3 billion last year, and that number is continuing to grow. Much like it is in Australia, agriculture is a massive part of India's economy and its identity. That's why it was so exciting to announce that Australia and India had agreed on two-way agricultural trade to provide new market access for Australian Hass avocados to India and access for Indian okra to Australia. This is a significant market access opportunity for Australian avocado producers, and the good people of India will now be introduced to the wonders of smashed avocado, whether it be on a Saturday morning or any other day, right across India. The opening of this new export market has been estimated by industry to have a potential market value of approximately $25 million, so it's not surprising that this deal, negotiated by the Albanese government, has been welcomed by industry groups across the board. The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance said: This new access is expected to provide a significant boost to the Australian avocado industry, supporting the sector's continued growth over the long-term. Unsurprisingly, Avocados Australia backed in the announcement, saying, 'It's a tremendous achievement, and our growers and packers are very keen to prepare their businesses for India.' (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator White, first supplementary? 14:58 Senator WHITE IWK Victoria Thanks very much for acknowledging my family's history with Tatura, where my grandparents were interned and did in fact work in agriculture. I appreciate that acknowledgement of those great people. During his visit, Prime Minister Albanese also welcomed the recent entry into force of the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, ECTA. Can the minister explain how ECTA is already benefiting Aussie farmers? 14:59 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland I'd be delighted to do so, Senator White. Again, it's good to have people on one side of the chamber who actually have real experience in agriculture going back decades, rather than people who just like to talk a lot about it. I know some of us have little hobby farms outside Warwick, and we whack on the RMs, get the old ride-on mower out and put on the hat on the weekends, but there are a few people who actually care about agriculture and know a little bit about it. Previously, exports to India peaked at $3.38 billion in 2016 on the back of then-record grain and pulse production, but changes to Indian tariffs on grains and pulses resulted in reduced Australian production, which had a massive impact on farmers across the country. The India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement came into force in December 2022, and it's already proving to be a win for Aussie farmers. Not only is it opening up new markets for our top-quality products; we're also seeing the removal or reduction of tariffs on existing trade. This presents great opportunities for Australian farmers. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator White, a second supplementary? 15:00 Senator WHITE IWK Victoria Thank you so much for that answer. Can the minister outline what the Albanese government is doing to support Aussie farmers, processors and exporters to take advantage of new market access opportunities like those with India? 15:00 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland Thank you again, Senator White. Whether it be in the wilds of Warwick or the coffee shops of Elwood, we know the coalition are very strong when it comes to agriculture! The Albanese government is focused on opening— Opposition senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT 112096 Minister Watt, resume your seat. Once again, the interjections are disorderly. I would ask you to listen in silence. Minister Watt. Senator McGrath 217241 It was just on a point of order. The PRESIDENT 112096 Senator McGrath, I remind you to stand and wait for me to come to you. Senator McGrath 217241 That is a good reminder. On direct relevance: as much as Warwick has some wild areas, particularly at my local pub, which you should come to some time, Minister— Th 112096 Senator McGrath, that is not a point of order. Minister Watt. Senator WATT 245759 The Albanese government is focused on opening doors for Australia's agriculture and processing industries to grow and diversify their overseas markets. India's large population and diversifying economy is creating new demand for premium and healthy produce, which Australia is well placed to deliver on. Specifically, rising consumer incomes and increasing rates of urbanisation in India mean that opportunities are likely to be concentrated in the rapidly growing high-end produce market. These are the types of opportunities that will present themselves because of other key free-trade agreements, which are still being finalised, including with the UK and the EU. It's hoped that the UK deal will be finalised shortly, which will be a major boost to Australia's beef, lamb and, in particular, sugar industry. I want to acknowledge all of the work of people from DAFF, DFAT— (Time expired) Senator Farrell I0N I regrettably ask that further questions be put on the Notice Paper. I'm happy to accept the Powering Australia policy, which I recommend all of the coalition read. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS 64 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS Answers To Questions 64 15:03 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania I move: That the Senate take note of all answers given to coalition questions by government ministers today. I move this motion with some reluctance, because I don't think that we could, with any level of satisfaction, say that any question was answered today. The government clearly has no respect for the process of question time and has no respect for the entreaties of the President of the chamber, who repeatedly brought Minister Farrell back to the question—entreaties that were continuously ignored by Minister Farrell. It's a real tragedy that questions being asked quite genuinely by members of the opposition around the cost of living and the government's promises to reduce power prices by $275—a number that Minister Farrell refuses to utter—were ignored by the Acting Leader of the Government in the Senate. It appears that the only thing that we have learnt is that Labor's promises are effectively 100 per cent renegable. We hear a lot about 100 per cent renewable, but the Labor Party's promises are clearly 100 per cent renegable. They're not interested in the fact that they promised Australians a reduction in power prices by $275. They're not interested in the fact that they promised Australians cheaper mortgages. They're not interested in the fact that they promised no changes to superannuation. They're not interested in their promise that Australians would see lower inflation. They're not interested in any of their problems. The concern that Senator Farrell continues to express isn't going to pay high power bills, it isn't going to pay higher mortgage costs and it isn't going to cover the costs of additional inflation. This government went to the election promising the Australian people that it had a plan to deal with the Australian economy. Yet all we see during question time is this government trying to deflect the problems to somebody else. They don't have the courage to stand up in here and take the responsibility for the decisions that they've made. Only a Labor government could spend $1.5 billion to see power prices go up. Only a Labor government could do that. We know, because we remember that it took the coalition six years to get the budget back to an even keel after the last time Labor were in government. It took the coalition six years to do that. Labor have started in exactly the same way that they've left off. The Parliamentary Budget Office told us in the lead up to the election, and it's been proven since, they are spending more money—so higher spending, higher deficits—than the coalition. They started the same way they left off last time. Why would we expect any different? During the time we were in government they wanted to spend $300 for every Australian to get them vaccinated—$6 billion extra that didn't need to be spent because Australians lined up to be vaccinated. We're seeing the same chaos, but worse, we're seeing a complete disrespect for the Australian people and a complete disrespect for the promises they made to them just 10 months ago. All of those commitments, like: 'We have a plan to manage the Australian economy.' Where's any sign of that plan? They promised a reduction in energy bills of $275. The only thing Australians are seeing is power prices going up, and no sign of anything else. They promised that they had a plan to deal with inflation. Where's the evidence of the plan in the context of that, because inflation is at recent high levels of over seven per cent? They pay no respect to the process in this place, because we did not, effectively, get a single answer to a single question today. The minister did nothing but try and palm off responsibility, not answer the question and deflect responsibility to somebody else, but has not been prepared to stand up and have the courage, as a government should, to take responsibility for the issues that are facing the Australian people. But, much worse, they continue to break their promises to the Australian people. 15:08 Senator CAROL BROWN F49 Tasmania We on this side understand that the rising cost of living is hitting a lot of Australians hard, and that inflation is the defining economic challenge in 2023, as it was in 2022. Australians understand that we didn't create these challenges, but they elected us to take responsibility for addressing them. Australians are dealing with the repercussions of almost a decade of the Liberal-National coalition's inaction on modernising the energy grid and on building strong relationships and facilitating our community so that everyone is welcome and their individual characteristics and skills are accepted and appreciated. We know that people are able to fully engage in society and the workforce when they can fearlessly be their authentic self. A study conducted by BetterUp found that, when people are able to show up authentically at work, the workplace experiences 54 per cent lower turnover and a 50 per cent increase in team performance, all of which supports an increase in productivity. That's why the actions of some hate-filled individuals outside this building today and outside parliaments across the country throughout the week, including in my home town of Hobart, must be called out. This hate has been countered by love, acceptance and community. I'm proud to say that the views of the person fuelling this hate are not supported by the majority of Australians—the government certainly does not support them. This government stands with trans and non-binary folk. This government believes equality is a core business. Unfortunately, some senators in this place have given oxygen to someone so damaging. The facts are so clear: 63.8 per cent of young people who identify as LGBTQI+ have been diagnosed with mental health conditions. Compared to the general population, trans and gender-diverse young people are seven times more likely to be diagnosed with depression. Even more distressingly, transgender young people are 15 times more likely to attempt suicide, compared to the general population. While there may be a handful of people trying to divide us, choosing to hate, choosing to discriminate and choosing to spread mistruths, there are many more standing in solidarity with trans and non-binary people. How can we tackle some of the most corrosive issues influencing the cost-of-living crisis if people cannot be their authentic selves in society because the risk of doing so is just too great? To increase productivity, workers must feel safe, supported and valued at work, no matter who they are and who they love. Trans people have a right to live in safety and thrive. Just like everyone else, trans people should be treated with dignity and respect at every single stage of their lives. No-one should ever have to experience such an invasion of their right to exist. I want to make clear to our strong trans and non-binary community: you are welcome here and you are celebrated here. Our message to the LGBTQI+ community is simple: no matter who you are or who you love you should be valued, equal and celebrated. I also give a shout-out and congratulate the people in my home state of Tasmania and in my home town of Hobart for turning up and supporting our trans and non-binary people. I wish I could have been there with them, but, unfortunately, we were sitting. I hope that the person fuelling this hate understands that Australians do not stand with her. 15:13 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia I thank Senator Brown for her warm and generous remarks. I'm sure that many senators in this place will support her. The matter we are debating at this part of the schedule though is question time. It was quite revealing. Senator Farrell gave us an insight into the Prime Minister's morning routine. Senator Farrell said that the Prime Minister wakes up every morning and thinks about what more he could be doing to help Australian families. That will come as very cold comfort to those Australian families who wake up every morning and ask themselves: 'Why is the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, and the Treasurer, Mr Chalmers, making my family poorer?' The cost-of-living crisis in this country is real and it is immediate, and the scale is serious. The best way to demonstrate that, of course, is with the data. Just think for a moment about a family which took out a loan at a fixed rate of 2½ per cent on a residential property worth about $450,000—remembering that the average loan in our country is $600,000. They were paying $2,060 a month but now they're paying at least $2,900 per month on a variable rate of about 5.8 per cent. That's an extra $840 a month, or $10,000 a year, that an Australian family has to find. I know that Senator Green is sort of smirking and unsettled in her chair over there. Let's think about the scale— Senator Green 259819 I— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Green, through me, please. A point of order? Senator Green 259819 That's completely unprofessional— Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Well, when I talk about— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Smith, please! Members should be able to sit in the chamber without having a reflection on their personal demeanour. Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Thank you, Deputy President. This fact will make senators uncomfortable and this fact will make Labor senators squirm: how many people—how many mortgages themselves—do those opposite think have shifted from fixed to variable? I know they'll be thinking, 'I've heard that number before; I think that's about 880,000 mortgages.' I can see Senator Ayres there nodding. That is correct. That is the 2023 figure—this year's figure. What was the 2022 figure? It was 590,000. And what is next year's figure? It's 450,000. What does that mean? It means that 1.9 million mortgages are shifting from fixed to variable in the term of this government. And what is their plan for a remedy? The scale of the problem is 1.9 million. That's not my figure. That figure was released yesterday by Senator Gallagher in answer to a question on notice by me, which was late in being responded to. It wasn't one day late and it wasn't two days late, it was weeks upon weeks late. Why was it that the government thought it necessary to delay the return of its answer to my question on notice which revealed that 1.9 million mortgages were shifting from fixed to variable rates over the life of this government? I know that Labor senators find it tiresome to listen to coalition senators talking about these issues, but the issues are real and they're serious. They're on a scale that I think would surprise many, many people. So don't listen to Senator Smith. Let's listen to the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus. What did she have to say? She conceded that real wages are going backwards—her words—by a shocking 4½ per cent, and that the wage rises of 2022 and early 2023 have now been, in Sally McManus's words, 'eaten up by price rises and interest rate rises'. The head of the labour movement is saying that the government's lack of action on price and interest rate rises is eating away those very, very modest gains that people might have had in their wages. When the Prime Minister wakes up tomorrow, I hope that he will wake up with a renewed sense of urgency about the scale of the cost-of-living crisis that is impacting on Australian families across the country. It's serious, it's real and it's on a scale that is unprecedented, and Australian families deserve better. 15:19 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland What this government takes incredibly seriously is the cost-of-living crisis that Australians are facing. We certainly know that there are incredible pressures on people around the kitchen table, and that is why we're taking action at the cabinet table. But I want to make it clear that what I think Australians take most seriously is Australian taxpayers being left with a trillion dollars of debt and no economic dividend to show for it—because that's what the former government left behind for Australian taxpayers. It wasn't just for our government to deal with and to manage; Australian taxpayers were left with a trillion dollars of debt and nothing to show for it by the Liberal Party. Australians were left with a budget mess. They were left with a decade of no energy policy to actually deal with power prices or to increase renewable energy. They were left with a government that was more interested in pork-barrelling than it was in investing in our economy, fixing the carer economy, providing opportunities for women to get involved in the economy and making sure that people could have real wage rises. We never saw that in the 10 years under the former government. That's why we sitting on this side of the chamber take these issues incredibly seriously. It's hard to take seriously the objections of those opposite when they now pretend to care about real wages and about power prices. It's hard to take the Liberal and National parties seriously when they say they care about budget management, when they left Australian taxpayers with a trillion dollars of debt. But they were happy to go and spend that money like Liberal-National money, using colour coded spreadsheets. That is what we are hearing from those opposite today. What does make me smile, Senator Smith, and what makes me happy is that we finally have a government that's getting on with the hard work of addressing these issues. Since the Labor government started, we've managed to successfully argue for a wage rise for minimum-wage workers, something that people had been waiting for for many, many years. We've delivered legislation to drive investment in cleaner and cheaper energy to put downward pressure on power prices—finally, after 10 years, to have a policy in place! They had 22 policies, and they couldn't land a single one because they're so divided on climate change. They don't think it's real. That's why they never landed a policy. We finally have a policy that we're implementing and delivering to put downward pressure on power prices. Last year we actually recalled parliament—we got everyone back to Canberra—to put through a bill for energy price relief because we could see this coming down the line and we wanted to put a cap on gas prices. We brought that legislation to the parliament. It should have been a unifying moment for the parliament, but instead those opposite voted against the energy price relief bill. They voted against giving Australian families relief on their power bills. This government is delivering cheaper child care. That's about to start—in 100 days. I know that it's really hard for those opposite to understand that child care is an economic issue—that cheaper child care is something that will deliver an economic benefit to our country. To have women who are not choosing between a day's work and putting their child in child care and to have that bill reduce over a certain amount of time is incredibly important. That's why we prioritised cheaper child care. We're delivering cheaper medicines. We're delivering fee-free TAFE for more students. We're expanding paid parental leave to make it easier for families. We're delivering the national housing plan to have cheaper houses, with more funding for affordable homes, but also to make sure that we have housing for people leaving domestic violence situations. Our government is getting on with the job of reducing the cost-of-living pressures that Australian find themselves under, and it's no thanks to 10 years of complete disunity, disarray and denialism from those over on that side of the chamber. I'm incredibly proud of the work that we're doing and of our Prime Minister for the work that he is doing. We've got a long way to go and we're not afraid of the hard work, but it's no thanks to those on that side of the chamber. 15:24 Senator RENNICK 283596 Queensland Let's start off with the smear about child care that we just had from the other side. As a stay-at-home parent I'm very passionate about child care, and that's why I want child care to be optional, not made compulsory—that you only get child care if you put your child in a childcare centre. I say let's pay the childcare payment to the actual parents and let the parents decide how they spend it on child care. For example, nurses, the police and all those people who work shiftwork can't pick their child up at six o'clock at night. There are other people who work part time, and they may only want to use child care for three or four hours a day and not have to drive 40 minutes to a childcare centre, just like all those parents in regional Queensland that have to drive 40 or 50 minutes off the farm. I don't want to hear from Labor, who only use child care as a means to pay the childcare centres so they can clip the ticket on union fees. No, no, no—our children are much more important than that. They are not a means by which you collect union fees, thanks very much. Let's go to the issue of the trillion-dollar debt. We actually had $800 billion in debt, and can I say that we were tracking very well. I know that in my first year here as a senator we had a deficit of less than a million dollars, and we had the debt back down to $500 billion after Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard's crazy expenditure. But, unfortunately, we had state Labor premiers create a wall of hysteria. It was like a raging bushfire that they just couldn't control. There were COVID press conferences day in, day out—one at 9, one at 10, one at 11 and one at 12. They were scaring everyone about COVID and wanting more and more money. We still haven't got an audit yet on all that money paid by the federal government to the state governments for COVID cases in hospitals. If you look at the NSW Health data last year, they had more deaths from COVID than what the ABS recorded nationally. So you've got to ask yourself: what type of bookkeeping went on during this COVID hysteria, and was it just a means for these autocratic state health bureaucrats who were locking people down and collecting the money in their back pockets? That's not to mention the billions of dollars spent on vaccines that all of the premiers mandated on people. It was, basically, you've got to take this vaccine that costs a lot of money, which we're going to pay a foreign multinational for, and it didn't even stop transmission or infection. We found out just this week from ATAGI that, for young people under 30, there's actually greater risk of myocarditis from the vaccine than from the virus. This was what I stood up for, and no-one listened. Not only did we not get bang for buck, but those people over there, the other side, Labor, have the gall to accuse us of racking up debt, when they were fuelling the fire day in, day out with daily press conferences. But let's focus on the cost of living, shall we? Heaven knows, all we've been doing this week is talking about identity politics yet again. This is the great distraction for that side of the chamber. These people are only ever interested in command and control. They do that by dividing the people based on identity politics. We've had enough of that, and we've heard that here today in the chamber. We're talking about the cost of living, and suddenly we pivot to identity politics. Do you know why they pivot to identity politics? Because they have no idea how to manage an economy. I know that in my home state of Queensland the Bligh-Beattie government sold all of our infrastructure. I'll tell you how you control costs. If you want to control costs you build infrastructure, and you build power stations—power stations that provide cheap reliable energy that drive down the cost of electricity. That's how you do it. You build dams that provide irrigation to more farmland so you can have cheaper food, and you build better roads. You do it through good economic management and sound monetary policy. We know that the other side of the chamber aren't focused on the things that matter. They aren't focused on people. That is who put us here: the people. They are focused on empowering their bureaucrats, their superannuation fund managers and their corporate executives. They've taken over the big end of town on that front as well, now, through superannuation. If they were really worried about the cost of living, they would make superannuation optional. Let the workers keep their wages. It's their money. Let them pay off their mortgages. Imagine if we could give that access to the workers. They could access their super, pay down their mortgages and not have to pay these high interest rates. That's the way you deal with the cost of living. Question agreed to. Gambling Advertising 68 15:29 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to gambling harm. Frankly, Minister Watt's answers were pathetic—totally pathetic. We have so much harm from gambling that is being experienced by people in this country through losses from gambling. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that Australians lost approximately $25 billion on legal forms of gambling in 2018-19. Those are the largest per capita losses in the world. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said that 11 per cent of Australians gamble online. In my home municipality of Maribyrnong, I know that the average losses per adult are $1,000 a year. Most of the adults I know don't gamble at all, so that means the gambling losses of the people who can least afford to lose money are massive. There's such huge damage and harm being done to people in Australia today by gambling. My question to Minister Watt went to three very straightforward actions that governments can take to limit the harm of gambling. One is to ban gambling advertising; 70 per cent of Australians want to see gambling advertising banned. They want it to be banned everywhere and all the time, and yet, in response to my question on whether the government would ban gambling advertising, Minister Watt said that we have to make sure that gambling promotions were being presented in a responsible manner. Come on! That just does not cut it. We know that the damage done by gambling advertising is very similar to the damage that was done by tobacco advertising decades ago. Governments were finally moved to ban tobacco advertising, and we need to have a strong commitment to ban gambling advertising now. The second area that I put forward as being necessary to limit the harm from gambling was to ban donations from gambling companies. We know the insidious harm and the influence that those gambling donations have. We have stark evidence of this from the Minister for Communications: the minister who manages online gambling accepted almost $20,000 in donations to her own election campaign before the last election. That is outrageous and shows absolutely the influence of the gambling companies on this government. And yet, in response to the question about whether the government would consider banning donations, the minister went off on some complete deflection and tried to equate the fact that the Greens received donations from somebody who made money out of beating the house at gambling to the Greens receiving donations from gambling companies. It's like trying to equate getting a donation from a smoker to receiving donations from the tobacco industry! It's a complete irrelevancy, and it just shows the lack of focus and commitment by this government to reduce the influence of the gambling companies. We know the insidious influence that they have. The third area where we need to have action that I proposed to the government was to introduce a national gambling regulator to regulate the online gambling that is doing so much harm. Online gambling occurs nationally and internationally, so we need to have national regulation to reduce the harm from online gambling. Instead, we got a commitment to another inquiry. If you don't want to do anything, well look into it, 'We're going to have another inquiry!' If you talk to any advocate, anybody who knows about the harm being caused by gambling, they'll tell you that we don't need another inquiry. We need a national gambling regulator to regulate gambling in this country. There's a need for action on gambling at all levels of government—local, state and federal. At the state government level, state governments right across the country are taking action. If you live in New South Wales, you have the opportunity to vote for the Greens on Saturday, and they have an election platform that would really tackle gambling issues. They want to phase out poker machines, introduce a cashless gambling card, introduce a pokies super profit tax and ban political donations from gambling companies. These are the sorts of measures that need to happen, and these are the sorts of measures that the Greens are willing to take action on at the local, state and federal government levels. And they're the sorts of measures that this government really needs to take seriously. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 69 COMMITTEES Work and Care Select Committee 69 Report 69 15:36 Senator BARBARA POCOCK BFQ South Australia Two weeks ago to this day I had the honour of presenting the final report of the Select Committee on Work and Care to the Senate, and since then I've been overwhelmed by the public's response to the report's recommendations, particularly the recommendation for a four-day week trial and the right to disconnect. Australians are increasingly having to juggle work and unpaid care. Many workers are trying to balance multiple jobs to make ends meet, and technology is causing availability creep, bringing work into rest time. People are working more than ever, whether in unpaid care or in paid work, but not feeling the reward. In fact, real wages are going backwards for many Australians while the cost of living continues to rise. The public response to these issues is clear. We need a new working-time regulation fit for a 21st century workforce. When Australia's labour laws were first set, they were based on the assumption that a worker had a wife at home—someone to care for the kids and run the household. Today, almost half of all workers are women, and neither they nor most men have a partner running their home. On any day of the week, four in 10 workers are juggling their job and care responsibilities. Despite all this change, we're still awaiting a 21st century workplace law that recognises this reality. This report sets out two things we could do right now to better regulate working time: implement a right to disconnect and trial a four-day work week. The committee heard substantial evidence in favour of the four-day week. Notably, we heard from Momentum Mental Health, a not-for-profit mental health service currently participating in an international four-day week trial. All the organisation's staff have caring responsibilities, and the trial followed the 100-80-100 model—100 per cent of wages, 80 per cent of hours, 100 per cent productivity. The results to date have been amazing. Productivity has been maintained. In some parts of the organisation, it's increased. Client satisfaction, external stakeholder engagement and the number of hours of service delivery have all increased. At the same time, employee sick days have decreased, while measures of happiness, work-life balance and the amount of sleep have increased. These positive results are reflected in the findings of the world's largest trial of a four-day week, conducted in the UK, which were released around the time of this report. It gives the same positive picture. An 18-month trial at Unilever in New Zealand, showed a four-day week brought about a 34 per cent fall in absenteeism, a 33 per cent fall in stress and a 60 per cent fall in work-life conflict. Today, we've heard about a new agreement at Oxfam, where 90 employees have negotiated an enterprise agreement with a four-day week. The evidence could not be any clearer: a four-day week is good for business, good for workers, good for carers and good for the economy. It's worth considering a recommendation that received wide support in our report for implementing a trial of a four-day week more broadly. Reducing working hours is of course just one piece of the puzzle. We also need to take action to reinforce limits on working time, with a legally protected right to disconnect—a right to turn off your phone or your technology—and look after yourself, your family and friends. Evidence given to the inquiry told us that our constant connection to work through our phone has no limits, but it has many and varied negative consequences for people's health and for our relationships. It affects people in insecure jobs, in particular, where they're constantly waiting for the phone to vibrate, telling them when their next shift or hours might be. It also affects people in full-time jobs, who have to check for texts and emails outside of hours, worried they might have missed an important piece of information, long after they've knocked off for the day. As a result, as a nation Australians are working massive amounts of unpaid overtime—$93 billion worth across the economy, which is an average of 4.5 hours each per week. This amounts to a very massive level of wage theft. The Greens want to see a legal right to disconnect from work, and Labor have joined us in a majority report, which was a key recommendation of this report. On Monday, my colleague Adam Bandt introduced a bill to the House that, if passed, would create a law that prevents employers from contacting employees outside working time unless it was essential or for the welfare of the worker. It's time to update our standards in this area, as has been done in France, Spain, Ireland, Canada and many other countries. I commend the government for supporting the recommendations of the Work and Care committee's report. Workers and families can't wait any longer. I urge the government to support our bill to implement a right to disconnect for all workers and to undertake a comprehensive four-day work week trial. It's beyond time that our workplace relations system and our labour law caught up with the way we actually live and reflected our 21st-century workforce. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 287062 Senator Steele-John, if you're speaking on this document, at the end of your contribution could you consider whether you wish to keep it in the list? 15:41 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia The benefits of a four-day work week are undeniable. There is evidence from all around the world that speaks to this reality. The case studies cite numerous examples of improvements in the physical and mental health of workers, higher rates of employment retention, fewer sick days taken and increased focus and engagement while working—also known as enjoying your job! All of this is achieved while maintaining productivity and output in the vast number of studies that have been undertaken. So the case is strong; it's pretty spectacular. What I want to do this afternoon is add a few specific benefits for members of the disability community. Managing a full-time workload is challenging for anyone, especially with the astronomical rises in childcare costs, soaring interest rates, stagnant wages and a general pressure around the rise in the cost of living. On top of this, many disabled people and many chronically ill people have additional expenses, including medical appointments, medication and assisted technology equipment. The list goes on and on and on. It really is important to remember that many disabled people and chronically ill people don't receive any financial benefits or assistance with these costs. Many of us aren't eligible for the NDIS or other forms of support. Even when we are it is rare, in my experience, that the supports available meet someone's actual costs and actually cover the cost of being disabled. Put this together with the reality that many disabled people and chronically ill people are in a situation where they are forced to work beyond their capacity in order to afford the care and the supports they need to live a good life, and you begin to see the picture of why a four-day work week would be so beneficial for disabled people and chronically ill people. Over time, the fact that we are forced to work beyond our capacity in order to live puts us at a much higher likelihood of burnout and the need to take an extended amount of time away from the workplace—or in some cases to stop work altogether—typically at a huge personal, professional and financial cost. Maintaining 100 per cent of the salary for 80 per cent of the work hours and having that become the standard, as the Greens' four-day work week plan proposes, will help correct this structural imbalance that is not serving so many disabled people. Allowing people to take more time—to take the time needed to gain the energy to get better and to be able to work through struggles in their lives—while simultaneously having the funds they need to do that would transform people's lives. Hopefully, over time, we will be able to support people to avoid periods of burnout altogether and to avoid being forced out of the workforce and onto the DSP, JobSeeker or other allowance payments. I constantly hear from disabled people about how difficult it is to access these payments when they actually need them and the way in which they force them to live below the poverty line. One of the key barriers to successfully navigating the workforce as a disabled person or a chronically ill person that I hear of constantly in the community is that struggle of juggling working for five days a week while also attempting to attend all the medical and healthcare appointments that you are required to engage in as a disabled person to maintain your care. Work-from-home options and flexible start and finish times obviously help with this tremendously, but I cannot emphasise enough how valuable additional accommodations would be to the community and how important it is that these types of flexibilities that would be enabled by a four-day work week actually become the norm. Even with these in place, we know that most medical appointments still happen during business hours, so we need to give people more of their week back. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. National Disability Insurance Scheme Joint Committee 71 Government Response to Report 71 15:49 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia The era of independent assessments was a harrowing time for so many in the community. As a member of the NDIS joint standing committee, I heard countless stories of people's distress and concern in the face of that proposal. At the core, the concern that the community had with independent assessments was that the NDIA would require them to have an interaction with a healthcare professional who they did not know and who did not know them to prepare reports that would determine how much support they got from the NDIS. What really concerns me in the government's response to this inquiry report is that so many of the recommendations made by the committee, after hearing from hundreds of members of the community, have been bumped into yet another review process—recommendation 3, for instance, which clearly states that assessments should be carried out by health professionals 'nominated by a participant and/or their nominee' where appropriate and available. The government have not supported this in principle. That's a really big red flag for so many people in the community. We heard very, very clearly that there is an absolute need to have a primary responsibility for developing reports related to the NDIS that should sit with medical professionals who know the participant and know their needs. Let me say that again: the government have not supported that recommendation in principle. They have bumped it off to the NDIS for review, when it was so clear that one of the primary problems with independent assessments was that they proposed to force a disabled person to interact with a medical practitioner who they didn't know, who didn't know them and who would then make reports that would influence how much support they received in their plan to live their life. The only response that the disability community both expects and would accept from this government in relation to that recommendation is wholehearted support. I say clearly to the government: if there is any thought in your mind that you can get away again with forcing disabled people to interact with medical professionals they don't know to make reports about their life then we will go back to where we were before the election, with the disability community united against that proposal, because that is not okay. It is not okay to ask a disabled person to be dissected, have their life looked at and have everything that they need and all of their private support needs put on display before a doctor they don't know—before a specialist they don't know—who maybe doesn't even know anything about their condition. That is not okay. The disability community told you clearly that we would not cop that, and we will not cop that just because it is a Labor government proposing it. Let's just make that very, very clear. Another recommendation of the committee inquiry report was that there needed to be consultation undertaken in relation to the definition of co-design. I acknowledge that the government so far is better than the previous government in relation to co-design—it's not hard because they didn't do any—and there have been some improvements in that process. However, in their response, the government have stated that they 'will consider further specificity about the definition'. This statement is not certain enough for the disability community. We know that when governments use the word 'consultation' they often do it when it's convenient for them, and we know that they don't consult when it is not convenient for them to do so. I strongly urge the government to authentically consult with disabled people around this definition of co-design and accept the definition disabled people give you, not the one you think would be most easy to implement. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Consideration 72 DOCUMENTS 72 DOCUMENTS Department of Education: Startup Year Program 72 Order for the Production of Documents 72 15:54 Senator AYRES 16913 New South Wales by leave—I table a document relating to the order for the production of documents concerning the Startup Year program. Global Methane Pledge 72 Order for the Production of Documents 72 15:55 Se 195565 Tasmania nator WHISH-WILSON () (): by leave—This is a very important topic, and I'm pleased that the government has released information about the Global Methane Pledge, which is a voluntary international agreement that Australia has signed on to. I was very pleased that the Labor Party did sign onto the methane pledge. It's a voluntary agreement and of course I hope that Australia is going to be able to contribute our fair share to the reduction of global methane. Agriculture is going to be an important part of that, as is tackling fugitive emissions from the mining sector. The Global Methane Pledge is important, and not just for Australia to reduce its emissions. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas; it's up to 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The methane pledge has to include agriculture and other sectors, such as the fugitive emissions from mining. I did want to speculate on what the Liberal Party's motives may be for wanting to see these documents relating to the government's signing of the methane pledge, as per their request for an order for production of documents on 26 October last year. I'm hoping that it might be because they want to work with farmers to take action on reducing methane emissions and of course to reduce emissions across the board more broadly. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Farmers for Climate Action, who had a fantastic event in Parliament House today. I'm hoping to meet with them later this afternoon. Farmers for Climate Action have released a report, Farming forever. They have given copies of it to various members of parliament today. It's their national plan for climate change in agriculture, led by farmers. Farmers for Climate Action have 7½ thousand different farms as part of their network; they represent over 35,000 individuals in rural and regional areas, and that's growing by the day. I went to one of their conferences in Launceston; 180 participants were there, and they didn't have room for extra participants. I chatted with a number of farmers there and they're a very diverse bunch. Some of them are big farmers and some are smaller, and some had diversified portfolios and crops. But they were all really interested in what they could do for climate change. If senators haven't met with Farmers for Climate Action I urge them, please, to meet with them personally and to read this report. The report actually has survey results from over 600 farmers, who were randomly selected from their members plus from attendees at various meetings where they raised a number of issues that need to be addressed. This is important in relation to things like methane reduction across agriculture. I just want to read a few lines from the executive summary. They say: Climate change poses a serious and ongoing risk to the Australian agricultural sector's viability which, in turn, impacts our long-term food security and the sustainability of regional communities. Agriculture is the most vulnerable sector to climate impacts and projected productivity declines are likely to impact all subsectors. Changes in seasonal conditions have already reduced farm profits by an average of 23% over the period 2001 to 2020. So I hope the National Party are listening to this information and are going to meet with Farmers for Climate Action to hear this. They say: Currently, a cohesive national plan to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change while improving resilience in agriculture to ensure farmers benefit from the shift to a zero carbon economy does not exist. But clearly they would like it to. They say, and rightly so, that the agriculture sector has been leading Australia in reducing emissions in some sectors. They talk about how some of their key farming groups are well ahead of where governments have been. Of course, they provide a number of recommendations for what they would like to see from leaders in politics. They say that farmers need to get over a series of hurdles around what climate action actually looks like. The point I'd like to make is that they're very willing participants in taking climate action. The Global Methane Pledge, which relates to reducing methane emissions, is one part of the overall equation. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. But the pledge is a voluntary agreement. At the moment, we're hearing a lot about the potential to put in seaweed as an additive, which has bromoform in it. Tasmania has been at the forefront of growing Asparagopsis, one type of seaweed that can reduce emissions. There's a lot of work to do to prove that it can be broad-scale and reduce emissions across the board. That's one exciting thing that has been going on for a number of years. I know the government has a national seaweed plan, which will help with that. I'm pleased to say the Greens have been working with stakeholders in this area for some years now. But it won't be enough. There are many other things we need to do to reduce methane in this country to make a meaningful impact on climate change by taking climate action. I look forward to hearing more from the government in the next 18 months or so on exactly how we'll meet our methane pledge. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Infrastructure Australia 73 16:02 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria by leave—I rise to take note of the Infrastructure Australian annual report for 2021-22. When the Albanese government came to office, they inherited an ambitious infrastructure investment agenda, the legacy of the coalition government. We were delivering a $120 billion 10-year infrastructure pipeline of projects, providing industry with certainty to help their forward investment and workforce planning. Our government had committed to more than 1,200 major land transport infrastructure projects, of which more than 500 had been completed and more than 300 were under construction. The new government will likely be able to cut the ribbon on many of these over the next 18 months. We've had more than 400 projects in planning, in partnership with state and territory governments, and we were investing in productivity-enhancing economic infrastructure in capital cities and in regional Australia. Not only was this an important element of our economic strategy to return to surplus but it was a vital consideration of how we would strengthen both our national and, importantly, our regional economies to help make the economic adjustment for the net-zero commitment of the Morrison government. Unfortunately, in the October budget, Labor cut infrastructure investment. It cut some $9.6 billion from infrastructure programs. At a time of high inflation and rising cost of living, when it was important for the government to get control of its spending priorities, the government made cuts to the wrong areas. Instead of exercising restraint in recurrent expenditure priorities, Labor made cuts to productivity-enhancing infrastructure spending and job-creating national projects. Thirty-six infrastructure projects were cancelled and many more delayed, with funding pushed way beyond the forward estimates, which begs the question of whether they'll ever be started. Many of these projects were for regional infrastructure, intended to enhance freight efficiency, supporting delivery of products to ports and markets overseas. Unsurprisingly, many of the cancelled, cut and delayed infrastructure projects were targeted in coalition held electorates. For example, in Victoria, six projects were cancelled in Aston, including three major road projects identified as priorities by the RACV back in 2018. The people of that region know that Labor does not see that region as a priority. State and federal Labor have shown no interest in outer eastern Melbourne. Not only were there cuts to infrastructure-building projects; there were cuts to road safety programs in the budget, with $60 million stripped from black spot road safety programs over the forward estimates. More than $280 million in Road Safety Program funding originally scheduled for this year has been deferred by the federal Labor government. These road safety cuts come at a time when road fatalities are increasing. The Australian Automobile Association is calling on the government to act urgently. On 1 March, Minister King delivered a speech at the National Press Club. I was looking to see if the minister had a positive message about restoring investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure in advance of the government's May budget. Unfortunately, it appears the minister was merely softening us all up for a further major cut to road and rail infrastructure projects this coming May. There was nothing but bad news for communities wanting to see their local roads upgraded to be safer, to respond to the pressures of growing populations and to move products to market more efficiently and safely. Minister King made it clear she plans to hollow out, or 'streamline', the list of infrastructure projects. So we can expect a further partisan purge by the minister of planned road and rail upgrades funded by the former coalition government. Regional roads of strategic importance and congestion-busting urban road programs were specifically singled out by Minister King, but nothing in the 10-year infrastructure pipeline can be considered safe from the axe in this upcoming budget. There is every indication these programs will be cut, including regional airport programs, something so critical to connect our regions to capital cities for work, for health and for education priorities, not to mention looking forward to welcoming so many tourists to our regional areas as a result of that program. The former coalition government saw the importance to the economy of a bold infrastructure agenda, investing in future growth and tackling decades of underinvestment by states in infrastructure needed to support population growth. The Albanese government appears bereft of any ambition or vision for infrastructure and to lack understanding of the contribution that it can make to strengthening our economy and ensuring that we grow to be safe, prosperous and stronger over the coming decades. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 264449 For the reference of the chamber, we will go back to the ministerial statement. There was a statement provided by the minister in relation to an OPD. Were there any senators wishing to take note of that statement? Department of Education: Startup Year Program 74 Order for the Production of Documents 74 16:08 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia I move: That the Senate take note of the document. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Consideration 74 MOTIONS 75 MOTIONS Excess Deaths 75 16:08 Senator BABET 300706 Victoria I move: That the Senate acknowledges that: (a) there has been a concerning number of excess deaths in Australia in 2021 and 2022, as evidenced by recent all-cause provisional mortality data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics; and (b) there is a need for further inquiry and scrutiny as to the reasons for these excess deaths, including why dementia and diabetes have seen significant increases in recent years. Earlier today, I moved a motion to create a select committee to examine excess deaths in our country. It was voted down by 35 senators in this place whose names will live on in infamy. Statements were made by both major parties as to why it would not be supported. I've got to say the response was as predictable as it was unsatisfactory. Many of us here in this place claim to care about Australians, but by the actions that happened today it doesn't look like we do. The opposition at least expressed concern over the excess deaths, but they are potentially more interested in covering up the mistakes of the past. As for the government: 'Well, don't worry, Australia,' they said. 'It's all being handled already by the institutions we have in place—nothing to see here.' That was the thinly veiled message. The fact that Australia is right now experiencing its highest mortality rate in over 80 years must be cause for concern and it must be a priority for everyone in this place. It should be front-page news. According to Actuaries Institute figures released earlier this month, Australia experienced an 11 per cent increase in excess deaths in 2022, the greatest number since World War II. It's not all COVID. Only around a third of nearly 23,000 excess deaths, according to the most recent ABS report, have been attributed to COVID-19. The remainder, a truly significant amount of excess mortality, is not recorded as COVID related; in fact, it is largely unexplained. What's more alarming is that the Actuaries Institute states that excess mortality was a significant percentage in all age groups in 2022. So we're seeing significant excess mortality across all age groups, even among young people. There is an urgent need to examine what is giving rise to this sudden and extraordinary increase in mortality. Australia is a sick country, and we know there isn't a simple solution. It is a complex issue. It requires investigation. Whether it's heart disease, cancer, diabetes or dementia, whether the underlying causes are diet, lifestyle, unexpected consequences of lockdowns or something else, there needs to be an urgent investigation. We must emerge with answers for the Australian people—we must. When Australian citizens are dying in numbers well beyond expert predictions, at rates not seen in a hundred years, it is appropriate for us to inquire as to the reasons. I don't know any member of parliament who could just shrug off excess deaths or dismiss the need for more investigation. My call earlier today to establish this committee would, at the very least, have given us a better understanding and would have, hopefully, given us a practical way to address what is now a deeply disturbing trend. Like I said before, that call went unheeded by the majority of those in this place. Only a few caring, dedicated senators decided to stand with me, and I thank them for doing so. We must find answers. We owe it to our family members, to our neighbours and to the people we represent. Imagine if a Boeing 737 crashed. Imagine how tragic that would be. Surely the government would have something to say then? But what if a 737 crashed every two to three days for 11 straight months—131 planes falling out of the sky? That's what we're dealing with here. The data from the ABS clearly shows this, albeit in a more silent way. There were 22,886 more deaths in the first 11 months of last year when compared with the historical average—a 15 per cent increase. Year-on-year increases in deaths should be around one per cent, yet we saw 15 per cent in 2022. While this is happening, the government and the health authorities say nothing and, more importantly, do nothing. Like we heard today from the government: 'It's already being handled. Don't worry about it.' That's just not good enough. Our media are largely silent on the issue of people dying in big numbers. Forget the football results, forget the latest woke outrage; this needs to be front-page news. This needs to be on the nightly news bulletins. The media fronted up and ran hour-long press conferences with health ministers to report one or two COVID cases in 2020-21, but where are the media now? We know that 8,824 of the 22,886 excess deaths recorded by the TGA have been linked to COVID 19—that is, around a third—which means we have 14,062 excess deaths with COVID excluded as the cause. It's a big number. We need to know why. Dementia deaths are trending 15 per cent above average; diabetes deaths, 19 per cent above average. Interestingly, influenza and pneumonia deaths are down 15 per cent for the year, which makes the numbers more alarming. I'm not sure if many senators here in this place want to turn their minds back to 2020 and 2021. I assume most of us have buried those years in a deep, dark corner of our minds, hoping those years will just disappear. Well, they won't. Those years have set in motion a chain of events that could quite reasonably have contributed in many ways to our excess mortality. If only we were able to set up a committee, if only we were able to inquire into the reasons why—if only my colleagues in this place had listened; if only they'd cared, and supported my proposal just a few short hours ago. So many interventions were forced on our people in those dark times just past. There were so many actions that contradicted previous learnings and best practice; so many actions that were not supported by any evidence whatsoever; so much bluff, fear and intimidation. Our borders were closed internationally, between states and sometimes between our local neighbourhoods. Lockdowns were brutally enforced. Elective surgery was cancelled. Cancer screenings were delayed and missed. Gyms were closed. Outdoor activities were outlawed. The elderly were brutally cut off from society. Jobs and businesses were destroyed, and some of them still haven't recovered. Families were separated. People were dying alone. Funerals occurred without loved ones attending. Marriages were an afterthought. And novel drugs were introduced and mandated without any long-term safety data. The list goes on, and we all know that every one of these things could have adversely impacted our health and potentially led to death. We'll probably never know, because the vast majority of those in this place thought it not worthy of investigation. The Australian people were initially told that mRNA injections would stop them getting infected with COVID, would stop them spreading it and, most importantly, stop them dying from it. We were told that we were selfish if we were not willing to be vaccinated and that we could kill Grandma or Grandpa. Around 97.5 per cent of Australians over 16 followed the government advice and have had at least one dose—one mRNA injection. Yet the only data that accurately identifies the vaccination status of those who got COVID, which was published in New South Wales for six months, until December last year, showed quite clearly that the vaccinated are more likely to be infected, to be hospitalised and to die of COVID. It is time for the government to be honest with the public. We need to see the vaccination status, age and comorbidities of every person dying in Australia. More than 11 million cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in Australia, and almost 20,000 deaths. It is clear, very clear, that the mRNA injections do not adequately prevent infection, transmission or death. At best, they are ineffective. 'Safe and effective'—I'm sure we all recall being told that over and over again. In fact, I'm still hearing that same old line here in this place. We've even got government ministers still pushing the herd immunity line—still, after all that we know today. The science has let us down. Our authorities have failed us. It is time that we in this place remedy the harms that have been inflicted on our people, the harm to science and the harm to medicine. There is only one way to rebuild trust, and I keep talking about it. It begins with transparency. Mortality rates don't just increase for no reason. There's always a reason. I want to find out why. I want us to investigate. The majority of senators decided that that was not going to happen. Instead, they wanted to keep us in the dark. Why don't we just put this matter to rest? What are we afraid of? It's time for government to admit that it's time to stop recommending these injections and it's time to stop them being mandated: they do nothing. This is why earlier today I proposed a committee to address the issue of mortality, and everything else. We have a duty in this place to give people answers—at least, I thought we did. Many of us have shown today that we are simply in this game for power—maybe it's power, maybe it's to protect each other, maybe it is to protect both sides of the chamber. We have a duty to seek the truth, and we just failed that today. We denied the Australian people the opportunity to have answers and for our medical professionals to save lives. The Australian people elect us to represent them. That's what they do. They elect us to represent them in the big issues that we face as a nation. They deserve more than what they got today. May God help the Australian people because, clearly, some in this place are not. It is hard to deny what happened over the last two years. We've all got eyeballs; we all can see what happened. We were misled—at best, we were misled—by big pharma and by global organisations like the WHO and the UN. I call on everyone in this place to do better. 16:21 Senator RENNICK 283596 Queensland I congratulate Senator Babet on moving a motion to have a Senate inquiry into excess deaths. I think that is well overdue. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars. We shut people down for a number of years—we locked them down, we locked them out, we locked them up. We shut down our borders. People were unable to see loved ones. I've got friends who didn't get to see their dying sister. There were extremely traumatic circumstances where people were denied their fundamental human rights, all in the name of keeping us safe. Yet, here we in March 2023, three years since the actual pandemic. It's almost three years to the weekend, actually, since we engaged in this experiment, for want of a better word. It looks like tomorrow we will see close to 190,000 deaths recorded in 2022. That is almost more than 30,000 deaths higher than what was recorded in 2019, despite the fact that we've only had a couple of per cent increase in the population. At one point, we actually had a decrease in the population, when everyone decided to pack up and get out if they could. That was people who had other passports and things like that. We deserve an inquiry. The premiers promised that they would keep us safe. We heard it ad nauseum, back-to-back, every day for about two or 2½ years straight. Yet, this is where we're at. I think that examining 2022 excess deaths is very important, but I also think it's very important to examine excess deaths in 2021. The reason why examining excess deaths in 2021 is so important is that there was next to no COVID in the community throughout that year. Therefore, we have a very clearly delineated set of numbers that can't be tainted by allegations of long COVID or anything like that. I want to run through what happened in 2021. In 2021 we had 171,298 deaths, according to the ABS. In 2020, we had 162,592 deaths and in 2019 we had 164,800 deaths. So, because of the lockdowns in 2020, we had approximately 2,300 less deaths than we did in the prior year. Then, if we go to 2021, we've had a jump of 9,000 deaths. To those people who want to claim that the jump in excess deaths in 2021 was a catchup from the lockdowns in 2020, I would argue that that is a fair point to make. However, 9,000 is much greater than the 2,300 decline in deaths. The other thing we need to note is that in 2021 New South Wales, the biggest state in Australia, with a third of Australia's population, was actually locked down for almost three months, in tandem with Victoria, which was locked down for about two months. So Victoria was locked down for the same period of time as it was in 2020, plus we had three months of lockdown in New South Wales. There is a fair argument to say that the number of deaths in 2021 should actually have been as low as, if not lower than, 2020 because of the extended lockdowns in 2021. But they weren't lower; they were almost 9,000 lives higher. If we break it down even further and look at a month-by-month comparison, we can see that the jump in deaths from the prior year—the jump in deaths in 2021—only started to accelerate from May onwards. In the first four months of 2021 there is no difference; as a matter of fact, there are actually fewer deaths for the first there months. There was a slight spike in April, which was the month the vaccine rolled out, and then the deaths jumped dramatically—by over 1,000 a month, increasing to 2,000 a month in June, then 4,000, then 2,000, and then it petered back to about 1,000 as the early rollout declined. Then it jumped again towards the end of the year. That's significant for a number of reasons. That 9,000 increase in deaths occurred only in the last eight months, after the rollout of the vaccine. It wasn't seasonal. If you look at 2017, another bad year for the flu, you see it was a seasonal jump in deaths from July-August to September. Those are the months, not June, because it generally takes about three to four weeks to record those deaths. So we have had a significant increase of three standard deviations from the mean, which is a sigma 6 event, which is a one-in-1,000 event, in 2021. The other statistic that is really worth noting in 2021 is that the largest jump in deaths actually occurred in the states that had no COVID whatsoever. The largest jump was in WA, of all places, and was about nine per cent. It was followed by Queensland, which had a jump of 10 per cent, and then the other states, like Tasmania and South Australia. Victoria and New South Wales, which had some COVID, actually had a lower increase in mortality. That would be explained by the lockdowns, which tends to reduce the number of deaths, especially in younger people, who have fewer car accidents and things like that. It's really worth asking yourself what happened in 2021 that didn't happen in 2020. We can refine that even more: what happened after April 2021, because that's when the spike in deaths happened, and what happened in those states that didn't have COVID? Of course there is only one obvious conclusion that: the rollout of the vaccine. If we then jump to 2022, we can see in the early months of 2022 that the jump in deaths spiked again from late 2021, and that highly correlated with the rollout of the booster shot as well as the rollout to young children and teenagers. It is worth noting that just this week ATAGI admitted that the risk of myocarditis is greater in people younger than 30 if they received the vaccine than it is from the virus. Can someone please explain to me why ATAGI didn't identify this risk before they rolled out the vaccine to young children and why they ignored the advice of the Doherty Institute, which the federal government commissioned in August 2021, that they didn't need to give the vaccine to teenagers or children, because it wouldn't make any difference to transmission? This was throughout the period where they were trying to say it would stop transmission. As we all know now, it never actually stopped transmission or infection in the first place, but let's put that to one side. Again, why weren't these risks identified, and why aren't we looking at the increase in excess deaths? I haven't counted the number of standard deviations from the mean in 2022, but it's actually more than three standard deviations. We are looking at a very low probability. It's worth noting that just today it was reported in the Australian by an extremely good journalist, Adam Creighton, that the number of excess deaths in Sweden, which didn't lock down at all, was one of the lowest in the world over a three-year period. Australia was fifth lowest, and Sweden was lower than that. So you have to ask yourself: did all these lockdowns really make a difference at the end of the day? We certainly don't see that reflected in the numbers from 2021 onwards. Yet again there are more questions to be asked. Let's now break it down by what the deaths are and see whether it was the vaccine, because we have numbers that highly correlate to the vaccine. We need to look at the causes. One thing the ABS need to do—and I've asked them, as well as the TGA, twice now in estimates—is give the temporal association between the date of vaccination and the date of death for both reported and suspected deaths to the TGA of 980 deaths, plus the 171,000 deaths to the ABS in 2020-21 and the almost 190,000 deaths for this year. We need to look to see how many people died within a number of days from the vaccine and we need to look at the average daily rate of deaths. If we have 170,000 people dying every year, for example, and there are 52 weeks in the year, you would expect about 3,500 deaths a week, which equates to about 400 or 500 deaths a day. If suddenly we start seeing 600 or 700 deaths a day within a short time frame, you can start to draw temporal association correlation. The other thing is we need to look at the types of deaths that have been occurring. The biggest jumps in deaths have occurred in dementia and diabetes. That's very important. If we know the types of deaths and where the increases have been, we can start to look at the biochemistry pathway and ask ourselves: is it possible to conclude from the numerical data and the types of deaths that we're seeing that they were related to the vaccine? Dementia is basically a vascular disease. It could be caused by a number of things, but one of the causes of it could be the addition of the spike protein to the circulation system. We know from the top of page 8 of our favourite document, the Pfizer non-clinical evaluation report—FOI 2389 document 6 on the TGA FOI site—that the spike protein can be secreted from the cell membrane. If the spike protein that is created by the mRNA that the vaccine delivers via the lipids into the body cells—and all body cells by the way—can secrete the spike protein back into the circulatory system, that could lead to dementia. As we know from page 45 of the Pfizer non-clinical report, the lipids can be found in the brain, the eyes and the heart. And what is the cause of myocarditis? We asked Professor Skerritt that question in estimates, and of course he said they're doing more research into it. Hey, we're doing more research into it now. Who can remember Anthony Fauci's comments last year when he was asked about the increase in menstrual bleeding? He said we have to do more research on that. Tucker Carlson went off his head, saying that it's just incredible when we are dealing with the reproductive organs of the human species that they decided not to research that before they rolled out the vaccine. Could dementia be caused by the spike protein in the circulatory system? Quite possibly. We don't know that for sure, but evidence seems to indicate that the spike protein has stayed in the blood much longer than what the trials—animal trials, mind you, not human trials—showed in the Pfizer non-clinical report. So that's very important. The other thing is diabetes. Diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Yet again we ask ourselves: could the vaccine cause an autoimmune disease? When we read page 8 of our favourite document, the Pfizer non-clinical evaluation report, we see that the vaccine has induced an autoimmune response. It has actually induced CD8 cells, which are known as killer T cells. Those T cells are going to kill cells. That's what they do. You have your helper cells, your B cells, and they create antibodies and destroy the foreign body in your body. That's the big difference with this vaccine. We have to remember that a normal vaccine will develop antibodies that attack the foreign object in your shoulder, in your deltoid muscle. This vaccine goes in and takes over your cell's reproductive process in terms of making proteins, and then that protein can sit on the cell membrane, as stated in the document, and that can induce an autoimmune response from these killer T cells. What's scary about this is that—shown on page 45 of the document—these lipids can enter your spleen, your bone marrow and your lymph nodes, and these are responsible for regulating your immune system. Our bone marrow creates white blood cells, and our spleen creates red blood cells. If we start messing around with the organs that are meant to protect us and our immune cells, then we can start getting autoimmune problems. It's very important to note that the virus itself can't get into those immune organs because the spleen and the bone marrow don't have the ACE receptors that the virus does. We need to ask ourselves: is it possible that there is a correlation between the fact that this vaccine creates an autoimmune response—and induces killer T cells—and the increase in diabetes? This is why Senator Babet quite rightly wants a Senate inquiry into excess deaths, and I'd like to conclude by supporting him in that move. 16:36 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the many amazing people who make up our one Queensland community, I rise to speak to Senator Babet's motion, which One Nation supports. I thank Senator Babet for his motion. Why are senators scared of the truth? Why are they paranoid about having an investigation or an inquiry? If everything is hunky-dory, then, wonderful, let's get it out there. Why are you afraid? In September 2019 three junior lab assistants from the Wuhan Institute of Virology presented to a Wuhan hospital with flu-like systems. COVID had escaped. In the four months after that reported event 100 flights were leaving Wuhan's Tianhe airport every day and going around the world. On some days five direct flights would come to Australia. That volume of movement was enhanced by the Chinese New Year, a time when, like our Christmas, people travel to see loved ones. COVID was upon the whole world and spreading at the speed of jet aircraft. There's no doubt the virus spread from Wuhan, and there is no doubt it was the result of gain-of-function research, as Nobel Prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier correctly stated in April 2020—right at the start. In 2014 President Obama banned gain-of-function research, yet Anthony Fauci, the genocidal maniac, confessed to congress that his American National Institutes of Health moved the research offshore. They got around the law in their own country. Where did they take it? Wuhan. The ban was then lifted in 2017 to legitimise their continuing research. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council's 2022 report says that it funded 17 gain-of-function studies. Some were conducted at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in conjunction with the scientists based in the Wuhan facility. It's clear that calling COVID the Wuhan flu lets the rest of the world off way too easily. COVID was a team effort, and the blame must rest with many governments, including our own. The idea that university academics should be allowed to engineer dangerous viruses in a lab just to understand them better is an idea born of hubris in those who have not been questioned in so long that they believe they should never be questioned. I'm thinking of Professor Skerritt, the Chief Medical Officer and the federal health department secretary when I mention those words. After spending time in the break travelling this beautiful country, I appreciate that many Australians are fed up with COVID. One Nation continues to pursue the government over COVID for a very important reason: past actions predict future actions. At the heart of the issue is the question: what happens next time? Only a Senate inquiry or a royal commission can ask: what happened, why did it happen and how do we stop that happening again? Had all the countries participating in this gain-of-function research confessed and agreed to effective oversight, the world would have endured only a bad flu and we would now be out of it. After all, the previous record holder for the world's worst flu, the spanish flu, lasted only two years. COVID is far less severe, yet is now supposedly at 3½ years and counting. The Chief Medical Officer himself advised me in writing that COVID severity is low to moderate and less severe than many past flus—I have it in writing. Sadly, for the world and all those that government COVID mismanagement killed, a confession did not happen. A cover-up is what happened. There's no doubt in my mind that COVID has become the Watergate of the 21st century. The cover-up has become worse than the crime. The cover-up involved falsely repurposing an escaped flu virus into a 'pandemic of the ages' in order to open up a whole new round of drug patents using mRNA technology—money. We all remember videos coming out of China of people dropping dead in the streets right in front of a perfectly framed camera shot, because people film strangers just standing there on the off chance that they will drop dead! We know those videos were fake, if it were not so obvious at the time, because the behind-the-scenes photos and videos are coming to light. This new material features 'dead bodies' unzipping their body bags to have a smoke. There was a dead body on the street posing for selfies with a camera team. The videos were designed to spread fear and, with fear, control. That's what our health authorities were banking on when they did not call out these Chinese videos at the time, and I do mean 'banking on'. Nobody just drops dead from COVID. It takes a COVID vaccine to do that. Let me be honest: I briefly fell for it back in early 2020. We all fell for it. We all decided the precautionary principle was the right option because we were seeing hundreds of these videos coming at us. But why are governments still keeping us on this unscientific and inhuman path? After two months, in around May and June 2020, it was obvious to me and many others that the level of harm from COVID was nothing like the risk that these fake videos had us thinking it was. COVID was demonstrated to be a flu threatening only our most vulnerable. It's not too late to come clean on the extent of the cover-up, yet every day that passes, every Australian suffering a new vaccine side effect and every unexplained death makes that harder. Senate estimates Health sessions were a low point in accountability. I do understand the chair felt the need in Senate estimates to suspend proceedings the moment senators got into it with Health bureaucrats to ensure that nobody confessed to anything in the heat of the moment that they would later regret. And, still, they did. In response to my question on a freedom of information request for the TGA—the Therapeutic Goods Administration—summary of the 400,000 pages of patient data relating to the Pfizer stage 2/3 clinical trials, Professor Skerritt confessed that nobody in Australia reviewed the patient-level data on the Pfizer trials. Instead, we used the American Food and Drug Administration's summary of the data, made without ever having seen the original source data. This is intolerable. This was a life-and-death decision taken on behalf of 26 million Australians, and we took the FDA's word for it. Actually, the FDA itself did not even look. It took Pfizer's word for it, and that means that so did our health authorities. They trusted Pfizer when it was glowing with tens of billions of dollars, in the largest wealth transfer from Australian taxpayers ever. Here's why the TGA made a criminal error in its judgement. When the world's leading virologists spent 18 months examining all 400,000 patient records, these eminent doctors concluded that Pfizer's stage 2/3 clinical trials showed that the vaccine caused 18 per cent more harm than no vaccine and should never have been authorised. The lid is starting to be prised open on a can full of corruption, cronyism, arrogance, hubris and lies amongst those we trusted to act in our best interests and who failed to do so. Senator Babet is entirely correct when he points at the very high rate of unexplained deaths and asks, 'What the hell is going on?' Our health authorities have pursued a course of action that involves ignoring years of science on natural immunity and early intervention to make COVID worse than it needed to be and to create room in the market for a whole new class of drug: mRNA, which is unproven and untested. Now people are dying, and the authorities are saying, 'It's got nothing to do with us.' Yes, it is. It is everything to do with you. Let me break this down. Firstly, natural immunity is equal to vaccine immunity. The Lancet journal on 16 February 2023 reported mean immunity against severe illness after being infected with COVID once was 90 per cent at 40 weeks. Ninety per cent! The European Union COVID digital certificate accepts that 'recovered from COVID' is equal to 'vaccinated'. So why are we still promoting vaccines to a population in which natural immunity is now most likely the dominant immunity? Secondly, a healthy vitamin D level reduces COVID infections 48 per cent, almost half. University of Southern Queensland statistician Dr Hoque and colleagues have studied the link between vitamin D levels and COVID-19 infection rates from 10 countries and found COVID-19 infection was 48 per cent less in people with normal levels of vitamin D—almost half. The study found: Vitamin D is known to strengthen the immune system and could possibly play a direct role in the prevention of COVID-19. And yet we locked people up in their homes and in aged care, away from sunshine, and used police and the military to keep them there. Thirdly, Betadine worked. While health authorities promoted hand sanitisers on a meagre six per cent benefit, in a paper from March 2023, Betadine containing Povidone-iodine was found to offer a 51 per cent improvement in symptoms. Our health authorities criticised Betadine and every other early intervention. Why? Fourthly, Interferon is an effective early treatment for COVID. On 9 February 2023, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a peer-reviewed paper found that Interferon IFL-1 reduced the incidence of hospitalisation from COVID by 50 per cent, independent of a person's vaccine status. Interferon has been available off the shelf throughout COVID. This data was known in 2020 and we should have acted on this information back then. Fifthly, Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work. How many more times could proponents of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine show the scientific proof? These two prevent and reduce the initial severity of COVID and stop transmission and are a prophylactic to preventing people getting COVID. 'It's horse paste,' the health authorities said, while knowing all along these early interventions worked and were completely safe and extremely effective at treating COVID, preventing COVID, stopping transmission and stopping people even getting it. Health authorities knowingly and deliberately turned COVID into a pandemic of the ages. Here's why. A brave new world of medicine by gene editing awaits the pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies, the media and health bureaucrats signed onto the vision without reading the fine print. That's killed millions of people around the world. It simply didn't matter that there were multiple treatments for COVID sitting on shelves in chemists ready to go. Doctors' and nurses' social media musical theatre performances might have looked like rejected scenes from the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Nonetheless, they deceived everyday Australians and convinced them to get the injections, and those that refused were forced, coerced or mandated into it. And now people are dying. Unexplained deaths in Australia are up 22 per cent. That's nearly a quarter. Maybe about half of those could be COVID deaths, which necessarily proves the vaccines themselves are crap. The other half is unexplained. How many health bureaucrats are we paying to sit on their arses and examine this? What are they doing? Nothing. Half are unexplained. It may be delayed treatment, lack of exercise, lack of social connection or something else. It's without a doubt vaccines destroying the ability of the body to fight off COVID and the flu, leaving anyone infected vulnerable to serious infection and fatal infection. Why would the TGA and their agencies behave so contrary to the interests of everyday Australians? Why? We need to know. A Senate select committee can answer that question and restore confidence in a new generation of health officials. I call on the Albanese government to convene a Senate select committee into the Commonwealth's response to COVID-19 immediately. I make this point: today, 23 March 2023, is exactly three years since we had the first single-day session of the Senate on Monday 23 March 2020. We all jumped into that and said to the government, 'Open cheque, safety first,' and we supported them. But I said to the government at the time on that day, 'We want a plan, we want to see your data and we will hold you accountable.' I pointed to Taiwan's success and to the success of Ivermectin in Monash University's in vitro trials. On Wednesday 8 April 2020 we had our second single-day session, and I repeated the same points. I then wrote to the Prime Minister and to Premier Palaszczuk in May, June and July 2020. And they misled us. They gave us rubbish! The Chief Medical Officer himself gave me a graph showing that COVID had low to moderate severity—low to moderate! He couldn't answer basic questions on it. I will hold you accountable, as I promised on 23 March 2023, and I will continue until you are accountable. So get the monkey off your back and get these bureaucrats into an inquiry immediately. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 264449 Thank you, Senator Roberts. Before I give the call to Senator Canavan, I will remind senators to be particularly diligent in their use of parliamentary language during this debate. 16:51 Senator CANAVAN 245212 Queensland I'll start by congratulating Senator Babet for bringing what should be the most important topic in our nation into the Senate for discussion. I thank him for the courage and bravery he has shown on these issues. I also want to pay tribute to the work of Senator Roberts and Senator Rennick, who have gone before me and who know more about this than I do. I especially want to recognise the tireless efforts of Senator Rennick. Sometimes when I'm out and about with Senator Rennick, I see he just gets messages all the time from people right around the country. These are individual cases of people who have been hurt by the vaccines. He'll break from having a coffee or dinner in order to speak with them and to take up their cause and their issue. He's a hero to so many people because he is one of the few of us here who is doing the work that a good politician should do: hearing people's complaints and trying to help them. These are people who, through no fault of their own, have had their lives destroyed through vaccine injuries. This has become such an emotional debate but, ultimately, a vaccine is a drug and pretty much all drugs have side effects. This drug has been developed in record time and has side effects. But because so much social control and promotion went into it, we can't even seem to have the humanity and dignity to recognise the tough circumstances that many innocent people have been put into by the rollout of the vaccine. It's an absolute disgrace that very few of us here are even willing to recognise their issues or that their lives have been turned upside down, let alone take up their cause in a fight like Senator Rennick has. So I pay tribute to him. I don't have the answers today to Senator Babet's motion. I'm mainly going to ask questions, but I think they're very important in questions—as I said, probably the most important questions in front of this room for people right now. As has been outlined by other speakers, we have an epidemic of excess deaths in this nation. We did go through the coronavirus epidemic and, according to the official statistics, 20,000 Australians lost their lives to coronavirus. We were fortunate not to be impacted as badly as some other countries, but I think there are questions over those statistics because, often, we have seen people being categorised as dying of COVID when they really died with COVID and not necessarily of it. But let's take the official statistics of 20,000 Australian deaths from COVID over the past three years. If we look at non-COVID excess deaths over the past two calendar years, then over the last year, as has been outlined by my colleagues here today, we're looking at around 13,000 non-COVID excess deaths. And in 2021, the year before last, there were around 8,000 non-COVID excess deaths. That adds up, roughly, to a figure of 21,000 excess deaths not related to COVID over the past couple of years. More unexplained deaths occurred over the past few years than occurred from coronavirus itself, and that statistic and that alone should put this into stark relief for us all. How much time, how much discussion, how much money and how many restrictions were put in place by governments to deal with the threat of coronavirus, which has tragically killed 20,000 Australians over the past few years? Look at the effort we put into that. And compare that to the complete silence that is existing in a vacuum down here over the 20,000 Australians who have lost their lives in unexplained ways over the past few years. Why is there this double standard? So the questions I ask today are on behalf of those 20,000 Australians and their families who have lost their lives, and no-one can seem to give them any answers. Worse than that, no-one is seemingly even putting a lot of effort into trying to find the answer. What is the government doing on this? Twenty thousand more Australians than normally is the case have lost their lives, and we can't explain it. It is as big a loss of life as we have seen through coronavirus, and what is the response from the government? The first question I have for the government is: Where is your royal commission into coronavirus? Where is it? The Prime Minister promised a royal commission or a royal commission-like inquiry into COVID at the last election. It is now almost a year since that election, 20,000 Australians have died inexplicably, and we still do not even have the outlines of a terms of reference for this royal commission or royal commission-like inquiry. Where is it? It is an absolute national shame that we can have royal commissions into robodebt and we can have royal commissions into all these different types of political topics, which just benefit lawyers, but we seemingly can't have a proper inquiry into the heartache that has been caused to so many Australians, not just through these particular deaths being discussed here but the lockdowns, the restrictions, the border closures, the failure to be able to go to your relatives' funerals—all of those things deserve a proper inquiry. I give the West Australian government their due—I've disagreed with them a lot over the last few years—because they have announced an independent inquiry. Premier McGowan has announced one over there. I believe it's the only one that has actually started, three years on from the start of all this madness. But the Prime Minister of Australia made this commitment last election. In fact, when he was grandstanding a few months ago about former Prime Minister's Morrison's multiple portfolios, he repeated the claim that he would hold this inquiry. It was put to him, 'If you're concerned about all these different portfolios the Prime Minister had,' and notionally, at least initially, they were there to respond to coronavirus, 'why won't you have an inquiry into it all?' Under pressure from the press, he said, 'Yes, yes, we will have one, just not now.' His specific words were 'just not now'; we were still dealing with an outbreak in August last year. Well, we're not dealing with an outbreak anymore, guys. We are far past coronavirus. Hardly any of us are wearing masks. There are no border restrictions anymore. People are getting on with their lives. We can have this inquiry now. If not now, it will never happen. The 20,000 Australians who have lost their lives for inexplicable reasons deserve that inquiry today. They deserved it last year. They definitely deserve it today. Where is that royal commission? The next question I've got is: where is the government's response to this motion—or anyone's response for that matter? As I say, there seems to be complete silence about the issue. Any time other senators in this place do raise these excess deaths—like Senator Rennick, Senator Roberts, Senator Babet, Senator Antic and myself have in Senate estimates—we're ridiculed for daring to question the health authorities' wisdom, daring to question the expertocracy's advice. Well, where's the ridicule today? Where is it? So far we've heard from Senator Babet, Senator Rennick, Senator Roberts and me, and next on the speakers list is 'government (frontbench)'. Who's that? No-one's put their hand up. Who is this hapless member of the frontbench? Senator Pratt I0T I'm speaking next. Senator CANAVAN 245212 Senator Pratt has drawn the short straw. She won't put her name on the list, but she will have to dutifully read out some talking points that have been prepared for her by some hapless staffers over there on the blue carpet in the ministerial wing. They've had to put together a defence. It's hardly a rousing defence of the health bureaucracy's record over the last few years, because no-one seems to be able to question it and put it back to them and ask, 'Why aren't we having an inquiry into this? Twenty thousand more people than we expected have died. Where is the inquiry into this issue? I hope Senator Pratt can enlighten us, because it seems like the white flag has been put up here on this. They are no longer defending the potential shortcomings and significant side effects of the vaccine rollout. But it's not enough to be silent now. It's time for questions and, ultimately, answers about what went wrong. We also deserve to know, and the question should be asked: how have our health bureaucrats got things so wrong? We spent so much time in COVID—and I was guilty of this, early on—agreeing with and believing the advice of the health experts. We said that we would have to just listen to the advice. They were the experts who knew what they were doing, so we should do what they tell us. And we dutifully did that. It turns out that so much of their advice was completely, utterly and tragically wrong. A report was released just in the last day about the excess deaths over the past few years in different countries. Despite all our border closures and largely being untouched by most of the worst COVID outbreaks, we have actually ended up with more excess deaths than Sweden—by some margin. I remember at the time all the health bureaucrats and experts were saying how terrible Sweden was. They were killing grandma and grandad! It was terrible! In fact, we know that the official advice before coronavirus arrived about how to deal with an airborne pandemic did not call for lockdowns. All our official documents, including here in this country, by the health experts said that we shouldn't have lockdowns: you can't use lockdowns to control an airborne virus. It's not going to work. Despite all that, Sweden was about the only country in the Western world that actually complied with the initial advice on this. Everyone else became panicked and we locked people in their houses. I still think about how we locked single mums up with two or three kids in an apartment in Western Sydney and told them they could only go outside for one hour. That's what did! We told them, 'You can only go outside for an hour.' An honourable senator interjecting— Senator CANAVAN 245212 Yes, fresh air was the best thing you could do for them. They were struggling with screaming kids in a house, and we locked them inside for 23 hours a day and said we were protecting everyone. They also deserve this inquiry—although they did not suffer as much as those who've unfortunately died in the last couple of years—about what the hell went on and how did we get things so wrong. What really frustrates me is the double standard that we see from our health experts. They seem to be engaging with something much more akin to behavioural science, or discredited behavioural economics, than they do with actual, real virology or pharmaceutical science. At estimates just a couple of months ago, Senator Rennick raised the case of two children, a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old, who had died after receiving the vaccine. The head of the TGA at that time, Professor Skerritt, went to great lengths to say: 'Look, you can't draw conclusions from isolated cases. There are only a couple there. There could be other factors.' That is a perfectly reasonable point, may I add, from Professor Skerritt. That is true: a couple of cases is not enough to draw strong scientific conclusions—I still think there should be an investigation—but you can't draw the necessary conclusions. But it seemed just a little unusual that Professor Skerritt would make such a conclusion on something like that, when I remember that every time a single child tragically died from coronavirus the health bureaucracy played it up like it was the worst thing ever. There's an article here in The Australian saying that Professor Skerritt at the time was grumpy and unloaded on people about downplaying COVID's effect on children, when one child—very tragically—died of the coronavirus. Yes, that is very concerning and should be investigated. But here we have a situation where Professor Skerritt used one case to scare people to get their children vaccinated but refused to use two cases to investigate the side-effects of the vaccine itself. Perhaps one of the worst things we have done throughout this period is to force, or pressure people, to vaccinate their children when there was almost zero evidence of the scientific benefits of that. I can accept weighing up the risks of vaccinating older and vulnerable Australians, but children should have been left alone. The risks of COVID were always clearly low. They were lower than the flu. I'm not saying that COVID itself was less worse than the flu, but for children it was. The evidence was always clear, and we don't force or pressure people to vaccinate their children for the flu, but we did so here with an experimental vaccine that we knew didn't stop transmission. It wasn't going to save Grandma—it didn't save Grandma—yet we exposed our children to that risk anyway. Again, we deserve that inquiry, because I would hope that we can get back to giving people broad-ranging advice on their health, while respecting their intelligence. One thing that has frustrated me the most over the last few years is the way our health bureaucracy all treated us like idiots. We were force-fed these scare tactics and propaganda, rather than just being given the advice and being treated like adults who can weigh up the risks and benefits of different medical treatments, because—I come back to where I started—every drug has a potential risk. And I worry that the pharmaceutical industry here seems to constantly push the drug option on us, rather than the best health option for us. We could have told people to invest in their health, over the last few years—to exercise a bit more, eat a bit less, take some vitamin D. All of these things would have helped reduce the risk of coronavirus, as well as lot of other diseases. But, of course, what that health advice wouldn't have done was help the profits of pharmaceutical companies. It would not have done that. Most of all, if this inquiry ever does get up, if the government finally announces this inquiry—and I hope Senator Pratt can announce it right now—those pharmaceutical companies must be hauled in front of it to explain why they didn't provide more data and more evidence about the risks to people, and didn't put their profits above the 20,000 people in this country who have inexplicably lost their lives. 17:06 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia There are those opposite who support this motion, but we haven't seen credible debate coming from others in the opposition who have been through the data and the science. Instead we see the usual conspiracy theorists trying to attach a headline critique to what is actually very robustly unpacked by the ABS if you drill down into their explanations, and the explanations of others, into why we have some variations in our mortality data. So I would encourage those opposite, if they want to get in deep, to say, 'Let's make sure we are referring to the evidence and the data, and look at what's real.' I would have expected a little more from you in your speeches in terms of actually looking at said ABS data. What we know is that the Department of Health and Aged Care has an ongoing and continuous job to closely monitor patterns of death using the ABS data. It is validated mortality data. They also look through other provisional sources, including the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, the Therapeutic Goods Administration's Database of Adverse Event Notifications and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's National Mortality Database. Before I go on and unpack some of the detail behind some of the trends in the mortality data that we have as a nation, I do want to reflect on Senator Roberts's remarks where he impugned the chair of the community affairs committee, suggesting that the chair had suspended the committee's estimates hearing in order to prevent evidence coming out. I was there that evening, and senators were disrespectful to the chair and witnesses. They were speaking over the chair, and the suspension of the hearing took place in order to restore order and for no other reason. I remind you—through you, Acting Deputy President Fawcett—that, in our estimates committees, just because you don't like the answer to a question you have asked or you disagree with it is not an excuse to create disorder in the hearing. I note that we have been called upon by the Jenkins review to ensure that we have a respectful workplace, and it was very hard work that afternoon, during that session of questioning. Anyway, I will now drill down into the data. Indeed, ABS data does show that there was excess mortality in 2021. But if you drill down and look at the explanations for it, they are actually very reasonable. The overall age-standardised mortality rate for 2021 was in fact the second lowest since 2015. Logically, that would show that we need to adjust for age demographics—how many people of a certain age, how many people have certain conditions—in order to get a true reflection. You can't just say, 'Well, more people died this year than any other' without accounting for the age and health for all of those people. We know that the age-standardised mortality rates are an important comparative measure, as they take into account the fact that we have an ageing population in Australia. The more recent ABS reports show a higher number of deaths than the baseline in 2021 and 2022. However, data released in February this year shows that in the later part of 2022 there was a notable drop in excess deaths. A recent study comparing Australia with the other OECD countries shows that excess deaths in Australia were among the lowest in 2020 and 2021. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU Senator Canavan, you've had your opportunity to make a contribution. Please follow the standing orders and allow Senator Pratt to make her contribution in silence. Senator PRATT I0T The pandemic, as we know, changed many Australians' lifestyles. This in fact presents a challenge in interpreting excess mortality data. We know, for example, that there were fewer road deaths—a remarkable decline in road deaths—in Western Australia, for example, in 2020 and 2021. But those were more significant in states where there were significant lockdowns. When we compare deaths against expectations during a normal year—whatever that is—we expect to see natural variations in excess mortality rates. In 2017 Australia experienced an excess mortality rate of a statistically significant 2.6 per cent. Again, the ABS sees that as a natural variation. The following year we saw an excess mortality rate of minus 1.4 per cent; excess deaths were negative in 2020, at minus 1.2 per cent. So yes, we did a good job of looking after ourselves during COVID. Again, we can attribute that to closed nightclubs, fewer traffic accidents—a whole range of things that saw excess deaths decline. It is therefore really important that we follow this data. It's where the progress in how we manage our nation's road rules came from. We have driven down road deaths by looking at the data and addressing the causes of such deaths over many years—and there's more to do. In 2020 we saw that excess deaths were in fact negative, at minus 1.2 per cent, followed in 2021 by excess deaths at 3.5 per cent. ABS publications such as Provisional mortality statistics provide some core specific insights, such as patterns of deaths due to cancer, dementia and diabetes and whether they are in fact above or below expected ranges. But I tell those opposite that this data does not take into account changes in basic things like population size, age structure or other factors influencing mortality. For those reasons, the ABS states that the provisional mortality statistics report is quite straightforward. They say, 'It should not be used as an official excess mortality estimate.' But it does point to specific pockets and trends of issues that, indeed, we do need to be aware of in our population. The ABS publication on excess mortality is released annually for the previous year. The most recent analysis, released in March 2022 for deaths occurring up to the end of 2021, saw patterns of excess deaths attributed to cancer, dementia and diabetes. That shows expected variations, with some weeks and years being higher or lower than baseline mortality rates for those conditions—for the excess deaths for those conditions. For example, from cancer they were higher than expected in 2021 but remained within the expected range. Deaths from dementia were, in fact, below the expected deaths in 2020 and above expected deaths in 2021. Deaths from diabetes in 2021 exceeded expected the upper threshold range for mortality for one week and was below the expected threshold for two weeks in 2021. While we can't exactly say, given all that data and all of that overlaying information, what the exact cause of non-COVID-19-related excess deaths actually is at this stage, there are several possible reasons. One of them is, of course, the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 itself, or where COVID-19 has worsened another health condition, causing death. I was really pleased to bump into a range of health experts who'd been working on this issue very seriously. They include the very well respected Dr Fiona Stanley, who is a remarkable health epidemiologist. They are drilling down into the data around deaths, but they are very much drilling down into the data of the impacts of long-term COVID symptoms. They've said that long-term COVID impacts are, for a small proportion of the population, very real. They also say very strongly that the severity of long-term COVID impacts can be reduced by reducing the severity of the disease, including by getting vaccinated, which I hope and I know the majority of Australians will continue to do. There are delayed deaths from existing underlying health problems due to the absence of many respiratory diseases in 2020 and 2021 which otherwise would have caused deaths in those earlier years, in turn impacting on the long-term averages and trends in this data. One of the benefits of COVID masks, the precautions that everyone has been taking et cetera is that it meant that we had much lower incidence of the flu and a whole range of respiratory illnesses that kill people. We've seen reductions in the timeliness of emergency and routine health care and diagnostic testing for elective surgeries, which also would have had an impact. So I encourage those opposite not to stay on your conspiracy theories about COVID vaccination. I would have much more respect for the arguments you put forward if you actually drilled down into a balanced set of data and could even begin to mount an argument that looked at specific sets of data alongside the other significant trends that I have outlined today. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT DYU The question is that general business notice of motion No. 195, moved by Senator Babet, be agreed to. A division having been called, I remind honourable senators that, when a division is called on Thursdays after 4.30 pm, the matter before the Senate must be adjourned until the next day of sitting, at a time to be fixed by the Senate. The debate is adjourned accordingly. ADJOURNMENT 85 ADJOURNMENT Queensland: Infrastructure 85 17:20 Senator SCARR 282997 Queensland Before I start my remarks, I note the presence of Minister Farrell, who has had a big week thus far this week. It's good to see you here at the end of today's sitting day, Minister Farrell. The Gulf of Carpentaria has been hit with catastrophic flooding during the course of 2023. Whilst it is usual for the Gulf of Carpentaria to experience large rainfall events, the latest events have been catastrophic. Given the gulf community is one of the most remote communities in Australia, the scale of the events needs to be recognised by everyone in this place. To underline the significance and catastrophic nature of the rainfall events, we should bear in mind that communities in the Gulf of Carpentaria region have been without supplies for months. Communities have been cut off for months. The road network has been consistently cut off. The airstrip in Burketown has been flooded, and this has restricted the ability of planes to take off and land, which has meant that smaller capacity helicopters have been the only way to bring essential supplies into the community or to evacuate people in medical emergencies. This week a delegation of senior representatives of the Gulf of Carpentaria community arrived in Canberra to discuss their concerns and to provide their perspectives on what is happening in the Gulf of Carpentaria and on how we as the nation's parliament should respond to what is happening there. I pay tribute to Councillor Ernie Camp, the Mayor of Burke Shire Council; Councillor John Clarke of Burke Shire Council; Mr Dan McKinlay, the CEO of Burke Shire Council; and Mr Troy Fraser, the CEO of Doomadgee Aboriginal Shire Council. I would like to thank each and every one of you for your leadership in the community at this extraordinarily difficult time. I'd like to thank you for coming to Canberra, for leaving your communities in order to make the forceful representations which you have made in Canberra during this time, and thank you for the passion you have for your community. It was an absolute privilege and honour to meet with each of you during the course of this week. The passion and the concern you have for your community shone through in the meeting which I had the honour of attending with each and every one of you. I'll take this opportunity to put on the record of this place what this community needs moving forward. Everyone in this place needs to give careful consideration to the very reasonable requests that are being made by the representatives of this community. First is the need for Gregory-Burketown-Doomadgee road flood-resilience works. The need for these resilience works has been demonstrated by the most recent catastrophe. There is a need to raise a number of crossings in the region to assist with the reopening of these communities and their access to the broader road network in Queensland. It is estimated that these works would cost up to $75 million, but they are absolutely essential. We cannot have a situation where communities in our country are isolated for months and months on end. These roadworks are necessary for these communities. There is also a need for waste transfer stations to be constructed in both Burketown and Gregory. We also need to look at the opportunity for people in this community to access community health and wellbeing facilities of the nature that we all take for granted when we come to a place like this, which includes a 25-metre, four-lane swimming pool. We've got one in Parliament House. The communities in the Gulf of Carpentaria deserve to have the same facility in their region. The Burketown airport runway needs to be raised so it's flood proof. That is such an obvious request that no further comment is really needed. The Doomadgee Aboriginal Shire Council need a Doomadgee disaster evacuation centre. They need somewhere safe where, in the event of an extreme rain event such as the current one, everyone can come in from the outstations and find safety and support. Again, that is not too much to ask. We have many such centres in other places in Queensland, and the people of the Doomadgee Aboriginal Shire Council deserve the same facility. Defence Procurement: Submarines 86 17:25 Senator SHOEBRIDGE 169119 New South Wales I rise in the same parliament that failed to prevent Australia from going to war 20 years ago, a war based on lies. Right now, the same forces that campaigned for that failed, devastating war in Iraq—powerful forces in the media, the weapons industry and the political class—are again baying for war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been lost since that first failed war, over a million Iraqis are still displaced as refugees, and their government still cannot provide basic material needs or basic security—all from a war of aggression that our country took part in and that was based on a proven lie. Unless we learn from that history and demand accountability, we are at serious risk of repeating it. We should be building a safe, peaceful future for Australia and our region. Instead, the Albanese Labor government is seeking to permanently handcuff us to the United States military's aggressive war-fighting plans in our region. The Albanese government has now officially adopted a hand-me-down coalition war plan and jettisoned any pretence of a foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. That is a national strategic surrender by Labor to the coalition. Unless this deal is reversed, Prime Minister Albanese will go down in history as the PM who drove us towards a war we never chose and one that no Australian wanted—that is, provided the war is not so cataclysmic that no-one will be able to write history after it. First, let's deal with the big lie behind this AUKUS submarines deal. It's a lie to claim these nuclear submarines are about defending Australia. They are all about projecting lethal force well beyond our maritime approaches into the South China Sea. This is worth repeating and repeating often. These submarines are not designed to defend Australia. They have been specifically designed to threaten other players well outside our immediate region. There is no question that this will inflame regional tensions and further drive a regional arms race. In fact, since this announcement I—and, I note, others who have spoken out against it—have been asked by senior journalists across the media spectrum, including from the ABC: given the Greens or others don't support the $368 billion plus being spent on the AUKUS submarines, what would the Greens do to prevent Australia being invaded by China? Not one credible analyst—not one—has said that that is the strategic risk faced by Australia. War is not inevitable, and the Greens join a growing chorus of former prime ministers, former foreign ministers, defence experts and millions of people from across the political spectrum who are pointing out the sheer recklessness of this deal. This deal marks the demotion of Australian diplomacy and the bypassing of Foreign Minister Wong and Foreign Affairs for an international posture literally driven by Defence, defence hawks and, in this case, the US and UK arms industries. We've seen Indonesia and Malaysia express very real concerns about this project. We are negatively impacting our relations with some of our key neighbours, and what are we getting in return? At best eight submarines, at the cost of damaging relations with some of our key neighbours. How will that make us safer? We cannot crew, maintain or deploy these nuclear submarines without the express consent of the United States. That is the very definition of surrendering sovereignty. The next big lie is, of course, the cost of this deal. Having backgrounded key journalists the night before the announcement, the government is now refusing to publicly back the $368 billion figure. That was always, it seems, intended to be an interim backgrounder, given to a handful of chosen media, to bridge us towards what the real cost is. Last week I, like millions of Australians, went to bed one night with a reckless $200 billion deal for the AUKUS submarines and woke up with a $368 billion problem, secretly backgrounded by the government. Now they're telling us that that's not even the figure. It's 0.15 per cent of GDP, whatever that may be. What a bizarre way of costing a project, and what a way of handing a blank cheque to Defence, who have now been told by the Minister for Defence that this reckless project is too big to fail. Albanese Government 87 17:30 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania The Albanese government has a three-point plan for addressing the inflation challenges in our economy. It's about relief, repair and restraint. It's about responsible cost-of-living relief, cheaper child care, cheaper medicines and direct energy bill relief. It's about repairing supply-side constraints with our fee-free TAFE policy for students across the country and cleaner and cheaper energy. We're establishing the National Reconstruction Fund, and there will be more affordable housing with the Housing Australia Future Fund. We have a responsible budget with spending restraint, returning almost all revenue upgrades to the bottom line and keeping spending essentially flat over the next four years to not add to inflation. That's our plan. We understand that the rising cost of living is hitting a lot of Australians hard, and it's being driven by the illegal invasion in Ukraine. One of the very first acts of the Albanese Labor government was to successfully argue for the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, an outcome which helped around 2.7 million Australians. We're always better when we back Australians to have better pay and conditions, and we will back Australians every single day, unlike those opposite. All those opposite want to do is drive down wages. We had nine long years of exactly that policy from the Liberal-National government. Our budget focused on responsible cost-of-living relief that didn't put extra pressure on inflation. Our commitment as a government and as responsible economic managers is for cheaper child care, expanded paid parental leave, cheaper medicines and more affordable housing, and we are committed to closing the gender pay gap and getting wages moving again. That's what the Australian people know they can count on a Labor government for. Rating agencies have affirmed our AAA credit rating and pointed to the fact that our first budget not adding to inflation was a factor in their decisions. Terms of trade are improving. We have the Minister for Trade and Tourism with us in the chamber tonight, and what a fantastic job he's been doing in rebuilding trade with our neighbours and across the globe. You couldn't get a better trade minister, unlike those who were in government for nine years. The best trade deal that those opposite ever did and that they claim credit for is running manufacturing out of this country. Now we have acted to take some of the sting out of the higher power prices, including through direct energy bill relief in the next budget and direct support for households and businesses, which the opposition tried to block. There are encouraging signs that our plan is beginning to work, with big drops in prices on the electricity futures market. We're also focused on growing the economy in the right way so that many Australians can benefit from good skills, get good jobs and have good wages. Manufacturing will come back to Australia with our national reconstruction policy. All week those opposite have come into this place and given their best Brothers Grimm impressions. We've had scary fairy tales about what this government is and isn't doing and has and hasn't done, but the reality is that those opposite are the opposition best known for saying no. They're quickly becoming the 'no-alition-—that's who they are. They have nothing positive to contribute to our national debate. What they want to do is come in here and try to rewrite history and smudge over the failings, chaos and mismanagement of a government in which the Prime Minister couldn't even trust his foreign minister and five other ministers, who he felt he needed to take control of. Senator Farrell I0N How many? Senator POLLEY e5x Five! Senator Farrell I0N I heard it was six. Senator POLLEY e5x It could have been six; I think this will unravel for some time to come. But we have a prime minister who is a leader and has confidence in his cabinet and his ministers. That's why we are a government that the Australian people know that they can trust. Senate adjourned at 17:35