I move:

That the amendments be considered immediately.

Senate's amendments

(1) Schedule 1, page 21 (after line 25), after Part 9, insert:

Part 9A — Certain mandatory terms of workplace determinations must not be less favourable

Fair Work Act 2009

58A Section 270A (heading)

Repeal the heading, substitute:

270A Certain terms must not be less favourable

58B After subsection 270A(2)

Insert:

(2A) A term that is included in the determination to comply with subsection 273(2), (4), (5) or (6) must be not less favourable to each of those employees, and any employee organisation that was a bargaining representative of any of those employees, than a term of the enterprise agreement that deals with the same matter as the term included in the determination.

Note: In addition, the delegates' rights term included in compliance with subsection 273(6) must not be less favourable than the delegates' rights term in any modern award that covers a workplace delegate to whom the determination applies (see subsection 273(7)).

58C At the end of section 270A

Add:

(5) For the avoidance of doubt, subsection (2A) does not apply to any agreed term for the determination that:

(a) is of a kind referred to in subsection 273(3), (4) or (5); or

(b) is a delegates' rights term for the workplace delegates to whom the determination applies.

58D Subsections 273(4) and (5)

Repeal the subsections, substitute:

Flexibility term

(4) Unless the FWC is satisfied that an agreed term for the determination would, if the determination were an enterprise agreement, satisfy paragraph 202(1)(a) and section 203 (which deal with flexibility terms in enterprise agreements), the determination must include:

(a) unless paragraph (b) applies—the model flexibility term; or

(b) if the model flexibility term does not comply with subsection 270A(2A)—a term that complies with that subsection and that would, if the determination were an enterprise agreement, satisfy paragraph 202(1)(a) and section 203.

Consultation term

(5) Unless the FWC is satisfied that an agreed term for the determination would, if the determination were an enterprise agreement, satisfy subsection 205(1) (which deals with terms about consultation in enterprise agreements), the determination must include:

(a) unless paragraph (b) applies—the model consultation term; or

(b) if the model consultation term does not comply with subsection 270A(2A)—a term that complies with that subsection and that would, if the determination were an enterprise agreement, satisfy subsection 205(1).

(2) Schedule 1, item 62, page 26 (after line 15), after Division 7, insert:

Division 7A — Amendments made by Part 9A of Schedule 1 to the amending Act

138A Application of amendments — intractable bargaining workplace determinations

(1) Sections 270A and 273, as amended by Part 9A of Schedule 1 to the amending Act, apply in relation to intractable bargaining workplace determinations made on or after the commencement of that Part (including determinations in relation to which the intractable bargaining declaration concerned, or the application for that declaration, was made before that commencement).

(2) Sections 270A and 273, as amended by Part 9A of Schedule 1 to the amending Act, also apply in relation to intractable bargaining workplace determinations made before that commencement, in the circumstances specified in clause 138B.

138B Application of amendments to intractable bargaining workplace determinations made before commencement

(1) This clause applies in relation to an intractable bargaining workplace determination made before the commencement of Part 9A of Schedule 1 to the amending Act (the original determination).

(2) On application by an employer, employee or employee organisation covered by the original determination, the FWC must make a determination (a variation) varying the original determination where required so as to give effect to sections 270A and 273 as amended by that Part.

(3) An application under subclause (2) must be made before the end of the period of 12 months commencing on the day that Part commences.

(4) The FWC may make a variation despite paragraph 603(3)(c).

(5) Any variation must be made by a Full Bench.

(6) A variation operates from the day specified by the FWC in the variation, which must not be a day before the variation is made.

The question is that the amendments be considered immediately.

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

The amendments are a sensible reform to Labor's intractable bargaining reforms to ensure they operate as intended, to ensure mandatory terms included in workplace determinations are not less favourable than the corresponding terms in the previous enterprise agreement, and I commend the amendments to the House.

I move:

That the question be put.

The question before the House is that the question be put.

The question is that the amendments be agreed to.

I move that so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving the following motion immediately: that this House condemns the Albanese Labor government for its dirty deal with the Greens—

Member for Wannon, pause for a moment. The Leader of the House?

I move:

That the government business of the day be brought on immediately.

The question is that the business of the day be called on.

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

The bill establishes External Reporting Australia, or ERA, Australia's new body responsible for the development and maintenance of accounting auditing and assurance standards. In recent years, we've seen behaviour from large accounting, auditing and consulting firms in Australia that is not fair or honest. This bill represents a major development in the setting and maintenance of standards. The amendments on which we seek the House's concurrence are all consistent with the policy intent of the bill. I commend the bill to the House.

I move that the question be put.

The question is that the question be put.

The question is that the amendments be agreed to.

I declare that, unless otherwise ordered, the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026 stands referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration at the adjournment of the debate on the motion for the second reading of the bill.

I want to start by talking about sport, the inspiration that is sport and what it can do for young lives. I was inspired, as the federal member for Moncrieff, just a few weeks ago when I attended the Benowa State School, where there was a boccia tournament for three primary schools across my electorate. Benowa, Ashmore and Surfers Paradise came together for a boccia tournament for students living with disability. I can tell you there was hope in their eyes—and in their parents' eyes—when they got to actually participate in something greater than themselves and think about what it would be like to perhaps be a Paralympian at the 2032 Paralympics. There was light in Xavier's eyes and in Florence's eyes when I spoke to them and they told me about the enjoyment they got from participating in sport. That's what it does. It inspires a nation, and it inspires our youngest athletes and would-be Paralympians and Olympians alike.

Last week in the parliament, I met with young athletes preparing to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games—a moment they've trained years and years for. They have spent their whole lives training every spare hour, quietly chasing the dream of one day pulling on the green and gold on the world stage. I think of the children right across Australia who are currently lacing up their boots, stringing racquets and stepping onto ovals for the first time, not knowing it yet but beginning a journey that could one day lead them to a World Cup or indeed an Olympic Games perhaps in 2032.

The Team Australia uniform means so much more than a piece of clothing. In the lead-up to major events like the Commonwealth Games, a World Cup or the Olympic and Paralympic Games, thousands of young Australians are being inspired to dream bigger because they can see a pathway in front of them. I think of the pride in the eyes of families when a child puts on an Australian jersey for the first time. It is a symbol of years of hard work, sacrifice and inspiration. I think about the excitement that builds every time the Socceroos take the field, when children across the country pull on jerseys, wave scarves and believe that maybe one day that could be them.

The legislation that we have before us amends the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014. The act protects the commercial rights associated with major sporting events in Australia. It protects against unauthorised reproduction of indicia and images. It essentially protects against fake merchandising. The act already does this. The protections already exist. The Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026 amends the act by changing the process by which a major sporting event will be recognised, and it does so by proposing that events are recognised by a delegated instrument, moving power from the parliament, from primary legislation, and giving it to the executive, to the minister, into delegated legislation.

It's important to note that the laws that provide protection of indicia and images essentially remain unchanged in the proposed new arrangements. What's actually changing is whether sporting events will be recognised by a change to the primary legislation, as has been the case since 2014, or by a disallowable instrument. The government claims this bill modernises legislation to recognise a future major sporting event by a disallowable legislative instrument and makes the process more efficient. Although the proposed changes to legislation may create efficiencies, they do so by trading off transparency so that members of parliament only see those decisions once they are law. We only see the words afterwards once the disallowable instrument has been introduced.

The debate on this bill is not about whether or not indicia or images should be protected, because that already occurs, and we all agree that, of course, they should be protected. The debate on this bill is actually based on the philosophy of legislating. A key theme of legislating is that all laws should be placed in primary legislation, unless it's critical to do otherwise. The government has not made an argument here as to why it's critical to change the legislation process. However, I wish to thank the minister for the departmental briefing, where I was informed that this legislation change has been initiated by the minister. It has come from the minister, not stakeholders, and there's no time imperative on this change. We've got plenty of time in the run up to major events.

It is important to note that there is sufficient lead time for a major sporting event of international significance to be recognised and protected under the current legislation. This is because there are often long lead times from the announcement of an international sporting event—think about Brisbane 2032—to when they are played. Examples of major sporting events that have been legislated under this act previously are the International Cricket Committee T20 World Cup 2020, which was recognised by this act by a legislation amendment in 2019; the International Cricket Committee Men's T20 World Cup 2022, which was recognised by this act by a legislation amendment in 2019; and the Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023, which was recognised by this act via legislation amendment in 2019. This is already happening. Examples of future major sporting events to be recognised by this act include the 2027 Men's Rugby World Cup, the 2028 cricket world cup and, as I've mentioned, the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games, which we are so excited to host in South-East Queensland.

Whilst we're on the topic of sport, which this bill is about, one needs to be wary of this minister and the government in terms of how they say one thing and appear to support the sport industry and then do something quite different. The Albanese government has a track record of a lack of support for our sports stars, leaving them in the lurch. In February 2026, Labor left 2,000 athletes in the dark with an imminent funding cliff. Labor left around 2,000 Australian athletes without certainty about their scholarships and funding with just weeks until the lion's share of national sporting organisations' funding expires on 30 June 2026, which happens to be today.

In Senate estimates, the Australian Sports Commission's CEO, Kieren Perkins—a gold medallist—confirmed that 'circa 2,000 athletes' currently receive direct athlete support and have no certainty their scholarships will continue beyond 30 June 2026. He also confirmed that NSOs likely won't know the outcome until the federal budget in the first week of May, leaving just six to seven weeks before the funding runs out. These athletes are being asked to make major career and education decisions with no idea whether their support will continue, and that's simply unacceptable, particularly with Brisbane 2032 on the horizon.

Government officials also confirm approximately 60 per cent of cash grants to NSOs come from terminating budget measures, meaning the majority of high-performance funding for Australia's 46 high-performance programs has no certainty beyond 30 June 2026. The United States and China, our competitors, both operate on multiyear funding cycles, giving their athletes and coaches genuine long-term certainty. Yet Australia, as the host nation for 2032, cannot currently guarantee funding beyond the next few months. That's not a runway; it's a cliff. While the Albanese government has talked up its major sporting events legacy framework as a centrepiece for its sports policy, the coalition has exposed it for what it really is: a policy document with no dedicated funding pool and no grant guidelines.

When pressed on the total budget allocation for the framework in 2025-26, government officials confirm there is none. Instead, approximately $130 million has been handed out on a case-by-case basis with no transparent criteria and no competitive process. What we have is a minister with a chequebook and no rule book. There are no grant guidelines, no published criteria, no competitive processes—just whatever the minister decides. That is not a framework; that is a slush fund. Meanwhile, the very NSO expected to deliver on Australia's ambitions for Brisbane 2032 can't get certainty on their core operating funding six weeks out from expiry. That tells you everything about this government's sports policy priorities.

Then, if that wasn't enough, we heard in the recent budget estimates in May this year that Labor cuts put grassroots sport at risk. The Albanese Labor government has dealt a $182 million blow to grassroots sport. Australian Sports Commission CEO and Olympian Kieren Perkins revealed during Senate estimates that the government ignored advice to provide ongoing funding for a group of key sporting programs. Programs facing uncertainty beyond the next 12 months include Sporting Schools, Play Well, Local Para Champions and Local Sporting Champions. Mr Perkins said:

Mr Perkins warned that the Sporting Schools program alone would see 'close to two million children' participate in free after-school sport this year and that ending the program 'would have an impact on the number of children getting the opportunity to play free sport after school'. He said that this lack of long-term funding certainty 'would limit those organisations' capacity to provide participation based growth programs within their sporting environments'.

But, despite these warnings, the Albanese Labor government stripped ongoing funding for these programs, slashing the sporting grants budget from $331 million in 2025-26 to $151 million in 2029-30, a reduction of a massive $182 million. Labor is more interested in their bottom line than supporting grassroots sport and the communities—like the communities of everybody in this place—who rely on it. At a time when families are tightening their belts, affordable community sport has never been more important. Families are choosing whether their kids are able to play sport or not at this time while they're having to pay their huge mortgage bills, their huge electricity bills and all of the other bills, like the groceries and the insurance.

These programs help millions of Australians stay active, connected and involved in sport, and cutting support for community, school and disability sport programs will hit families and local clubs hard. Instead of backing grassroots sport, Labor is creating more uncertainty for the organisations delivering these vital programs. With the 2032 Olympics fast approaching, the government should be backing the programs that help develop our future Olympians and Paralympians, not putting them at risk.

With a government minister who's more focused on justifying using taxpayer dollars to go to a mate's birthday party on a Saturday night in Adelaide and calling it a work meeting, it's only right that we question the transparency of bills that the same minister puts forward. For those birthday party events that the minister tried to justify as a legit use of taxpayer dollars, an independent inquiry found the minister was in breach of the rules. It ordered the minister to pay back the money and issued a fine.

Back to the bill in front of us, this is a bill that changes a process, to give more power to a minister—the same minister who had to pay back the debt—and a bill that nobody has asked for. The government has not justified the need for a change in process. The coalition indeed supports the protection of indicia and images for major sporting events. This bill aims to change the legislative process by which an international event is recognised to receive these protections. The government has not made a clear case as to why the parliament should lose transparency and concentrate powers into the executive and into the minister of the day. I note that the scrutiny of bills committee will convene tomorrow to consider this bill, and I look forward to their assessment of it.

At the end of the day, this is about more than legislation. This is about protecting the integrity of events that inspire Australian children—in fact, children all over the world—to the dream of becoming tomorrow's Olympians, Paralympians and world champions. When the Socceroos represent Australia, they carry with them not just a team but millions of young Australians who see a version of themselves in that green-and-gold jersey. The scarves, jerseys and merchandise worn in schoolyards and living rooms across the country are not just products; they are symbols—symbols of aspiration, of belonging and of national pride for Australia. Every major sporting event we protect is another spark for a young Australian to decide that sport could be their future, and that matters more than any administrative convenience.

As we look to events like the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we should be strengthening the connection between young Australians and the dream of representing their country, not weakening it. While this debate is about process and legislative structure, its impacts will be felt far beyond this chamber—in every backyard, on every school oval and by every child who dares to dream of one day wearing the green and gold.

Debate adjourned.

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026, and I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) recognises that the former Coalition Government delivered world-leading online safety reforms, including the enactment of the Online Safety Act 2021, which set an international benchmark for protecting Australians, and children in particular, online;

(2) notes the Government's social media age restrictions were poorly designed, and badly implemented which has compromised the online safety of Australian children and failed parents, and this bill is an embarrassing admission the Government is failing;

(3) expresses concern the Government's proposed digital duty of care remains ill-defined and uncertain in its scope and operation, and that the Government has failed to explain how it would work, what obligations it would impose, or how it would be enforced without creating unintended consequences; and

(4) expresses further concern that much more needs to be done to protect children online, including by giving parents access to effective mobile device safety tools, and combating the addictive algorithms which fuel harmful 'doom scrolling' on social media feeds".

I do so with a simple observation. The Albanese Labor government has been forced back to the parliament to fix a law it told Australians it had already fixed. Let us be clear about what this announcement really is: doubling the maximum penalty to $99 million and legislating new information-gathering powers. These are not the actions of a government that has got it right. They are the admissions of a government that got it wrong. The Albanese Labor government's social media ban is half baked, poorly designed, rushed and badly implemented, and every Australian parent who was promised that their children would be safer is today learning the truth—that this ban was built on very thin scaffolding indeed.

You don't just have to take my word for it. The eSafety Commissioner herself described this ban as a 'very blunt force approach', developed very quickly. She now says she was 'not keen on it' when it was first discussed. She said it did not give her the 'potent powers' that she needed. When your own regulator tells you the tools don't work, there's a real problem, and that problem has a name: incompetence.

The evidence is damning. A landmark Australian study published just last week in the British Medical Journal found that 85 per cent of under-16s are still accessing social media—we know this; we see this out and about in our communities—and that ban was unlikely to improve adolescent mental health in the short term. The study concluded there had been limited implementation, incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention. The eSafety Commissioner's own compliance update in March this year found that 70 per cent of children remain on these platforms. That is a verdict on the Albanese Labor government's signature child-safety policy.

And, while children slip through the cracks, the minister flies around the world taking credit for a policy that this side of the House made possible. Minister, the work that needed to be done was here at home—the hard work of design, of enforcement, of getting it right. That work was never done. Worse, the government continues to mislead Australians, boasting that more than five million accounts have been removed. But we know a large proportion of those are Google accounts used for Gmail and other purposes that have nothing to do with social media accounts. Australians deserve honesty, not spin dressed up as success.

The coalition will not be lectured by this government when it comes to protecting children online, because, when it comes to online safety, it is this side of the House that built the frameworks that Labor now leans on. It was the coalition that established the eSafety Commissioner, the first dedicated online safety regulator of its kind anywhere in the world—although I have questioned the overuse of the eSafety Commissioner's powers. We did not follow other nations. We led them. Australia became the global benchmark, and governments around the world looked to what we had built and sought to replicate it.

It was the coalition, through the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Act, that first gave Australia a Children's eSafety Commissioner, with powers to have cyberbullying material taken down, protecting young Australians from the torment of online abuse. It was the coalition that expanded that office in 2017 to protect all Australians, not just children, recognising that online harm does not stop at the age of 18. It was the coalition that delivered the landmark Online Safety Act 2021, the most comprehensive online safety regime in the country's history. We halved the time platforms have to remove harmful content, from 48 hours to 24, and built an adult cyberabuse scheme, strengthening protections against intimate images being shared without consent. And the coalition put in place the basic online safety expectations, putting the onus squarely on the tech giants to make their platforms safe by design, not as an afterthought. It was the coalition that gave the eSafety Commissioner the power to order the removal of the very worst content—and I think everyone would agree: child sexual abuse material, pro-terror content, abhorrent violent material—no matter where in the world it is hosted. That's a record. That's leadership. That is the hard, methodical work of governing by designing laws that actually function, which stands in stark contrast to what we have seen from the Albanese Labor government.

The coalition supported a minimum age for social media. We want to keep children safe, but supporting the goal was never the same as endorsing Labor's execution, and on execution the Albanese Labor government has failed. Labor inherited a world-leading framework and a world-first regulator, and it still managed to deliver a ban that 85 per cent of under-16s simply ignore. They had every tool the coalition built at their disposal. They have now squandered the goodwill of this parliament through incompetence, haste and a minister out of her depth. So let this be said plainly: much more must be done for our children. Parents must be given proper mobile device safety tools. We must confront the addictive algorithms that fuel doomscrolling and prey on young minds, and we must block the live streaming that enables the very horrors of child sexual abuse. The online safety of our children is not a press release, nor is it a photo opportunity; it is a solemn responsibility. On this government's watch, that responsibility has been dropped. Australian parents deserve better, and Australian children deserve better. Until this government does the hard work it has so far avoided, the coalition will hold it to account every single day.

Is the amendment seconded?

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

A few weeks ago, the United Kingdom announced that it too would introduce a minimum age for social media use, and when the British government set out how it would be done it said its ban would be built, in their words, using the 'same model' as Australia. I read that with a sense of pride, because keeping children safe online is something we should all agree on, no matter your political persuasion or the country you call home. I think that, by leading the way, we have put those words into action, and now the world is following.

When we pass our laws we're out on our own. There was no shortage of people lining up to tell us it couldn't be done. Our government ignored those naysayers. We saw the data from experts, we listened to those with lived experience and we delivered sensible measures that are now keeping our children safe. What we heard from the UK prime minister in his announcement speech was a phrase that we had heard throughout the debate last year in this chamber, which was that this was about giving children their childhood back. While the UK is taking the next step, the likes of Canada and parts of Europe are also considering doing the same. The formula they are using came into effect in Australia on 10 December last year, when our government brought in a minimum age for social media and took under-16s off the platforms that were doing them harm.

The idea behind it is as simple as it gets: keeping kids safe from these platforms should not be the job of 14-year-olds or their parents around the kitchen table; it should be the job of the people who have built the platforms in the first place. We did not undertake these measures because we thought badly of young people or we didn't trust them. We did it because they had been allowed into a world that had been designed to target them, not to support their development, and today with the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 we make that law stronger, and I'm very proud to support it.

Before being elected to this parliament, I trained as an educational and developmental psychologist. I spent years studying how young minds grow, and it has stuck with me. So let me tell you how I see these platforms, because I think we keep describing them all wrong. We talk about social media like it's somewhere people go to hang out in the same way my generation hung out at Hungry Jacks, the local park or a shopping centre. It's not that. These platforms are not public areas that happen to have a few teenagers in them. They are products that are brilliantly built, backed by billionaires and designed to do one thing above all else, which is to get a hold of a person's attention and never let go.

We all know what being a teenager is like. As a parent, I've seen it from both sides. The science confirms that, in all of the years of your life, it is when your attention is the easiest to grab. Your mind is at its most curious because you're working out who you are, and what people think of you feels like the biggest thing in the world. Part of your brain chases that next hit of excitement, and that part is way out in front of the part of the brain that's meant to say: 'Wait. Hang on—maybe not.' And there's nothing wrong with that. That's simply how growing up works and how it always has. What my daughters are experiencing now is exactly what I and my siblings experienced a little while back.

But what's new is that we've handed some of the cleverest companies on earth a direct line into exactly that, and we've let them turn it into profit. The endless doomscrolling, the notifications pinging left and right, the little lift that you get when someone likes your post and the gut punch when nobody does—none of that happens by accident; it is the whole design. It's doing precisely what it was built to do. But the Online Safety Act 2021 is already pushing back. Since it came in, parents in my community have told me what it's meant at home, and the stories rhyme. At the beginning it was difficult, but now the evenings are calmer. The late night scrolling has stopped. Bedtime is a thing again, and even the odd kid has picked up a book. Others whose children are not quite at the age of wanting social media have also said what a relief it is that they now have these laws to point to when eventually they have the conversation with their children.

So change is happening in homes right across Maribyrnong and right across the country, yet, in the months since, we have learnt something else, and that is why this bill is before us today. Some of these platforms have looked at their obligation and decided that the bare minimum will do just fine. Earlier this year, the eSafety Commissioner put out an update on how the law is going, and the headline number was good: more than five million underage accounts removed or restricted. It also said that these measures swept through the platforms. But the same update found something else: too many kids are still getting back on, not because the law is weak but because these companies are letting them. A kid gets knocked back because of age restrictions, so they just try the age check again and again until it finally clicks. An account gets shut down on Monday, and it's back up again on Tuesday. And a parent who goes looking for somewhere to report to finds, half the time, there's no-one on these platforms listening.

We know these aren't accidents. They are deliberate choices, and we've seen this playbook before from some of the very same companies. They believe they can do as little as they like and get away with it while telling everyone they're doing heaps. They also make it as hard as possible for anyone outside to check whether it's true. If they receive a fine, they treat it as if it's just a cost of doing business. Because they have done this over and over, we know the game, and our response is that the bare minimum does not cut it when we're talking about children's safety.

The bill strengthens the law we've already got, and it does it in two ways. The first is about getting to the truth. Right now, when a platform tells the commissioner it's taking reasonable steps, that's a very hard claim to check from the outside because the platform is basically the only witness to its own behaviour. This bill addresses that head on. It lets the eSafety Commissioner demand information and documents not just from the platforms but from anyone who holds the goods on whether the law is being followed—the age check providers included. So, basically, if a company says its age assurance works, the commissioner can go and ask the people who built the age checker and find out whether that's actually true.

The second change is about consequences. The bill lifts the maximum penalty for breaking the minimum age rule to $99 million. These are companies that can build a car that drives itself and build software that writes emails for you, but somehow they can't tell a 13-year-old from a 30-year-old—I don't buy it. Our government doesn't buy it, and I'd hazard a guess that most parents don't either. Lifting that penalty and lining it up with the changes we've already made under our consumer law will make sure that doing the right thing is the cheaper option and that doing the wrong thing is not. To be fair to these companies, they're not short of money or brains or talent. They can clear this bar without breaking a sweat. The only real question—the only one there's ever been—is whether they'll choose to, and our government is determined to make sure the answer is yes.

When I discuss these restrictions, I always come back to the parents, because this goes to something I feel strongly about. No parent, however on the ball they may be, wins this by themselves. You can take the phone from them at night; they'll still find a way. You can set every control the device has got, and the design on the other side is still a step ahead of you. One parent, on their own against a massive company with AI on its side, gets worn down, worked around and, in the end, ignored. But a whole country and its government that sets a clear rule, stands behind it and hands its regulator the teeth it needs to back it up is a lot harder to ignore. The whole point of doing this is to give our kids the time they need to grow and to give Australian parents some breathing room.

I know there are members in this House and people throughout the country who still don't believe in these restrictions. I sometimes hear the argument that a kid who is determined to get around the rules will find a way and that, by pushing them off the big platforms, we might push them somewhere worse. I get it. But what I will say is that you don't judge a law by whether someone is determined to break it. We don't scrap the speed limit because some people speed. You continue to set the standard. You make doing the wrong thing harder rather than easier, and the evidence right in front of us says that there are fewer kids on this platform today than there were a year ago.

So it is working. We know this because the data says so and because parents are telling us so. The idea that you have to get everything right all the time is nonsense. Legislation, especially legislation involving technology, will always require room to grow. The debate in this chamber shows that, while others may wish to continue to bury their heads in the sand so they can continue to play cheap politics, our government understands the modern world in which we live. In the end, while this legislation and the restrictions it aims to strengthen are about technology, it is really about childhood and what we owe it.

I've spent my whole working life arguing that the early years of a child's life aren't a warm-up act for the important stuff later on; they are the important stuff. And these years, the teenage years, matter every bit as much in their own messy but brilliant way. They're not a rehearsal; they are the real deal. They are the years that decide who our kids turn into and how they come to see themselves. We all get one shot at it. My own two girls are growing up in this online world, the same as every child across Maribyrnong—the same as every child across this country. I want them to have a childhood with a bit of room left in it—room to be bored, to be curious, to muck around, to be young for as long as they get to be before the world starts to ask them to be something else.

Our government is not handing that over to a handful of companies that are more interested in their profits and performance. We have made a cracking start. We are leading the world, and this bill seeks only to make it stronger for parents and safer for our kids. I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Sometimes I reflect on the promise of the internet, of social media and of our digital platforms. We thought that they would be a place to connect, to cross oceans and skies, to stay in touch with family and loved ones despite the distance. We thought they would give everyone the opportunity to have their say. Suddenly, all you needed to have your voice heard was a phone and an internet connection, and we thought that that would contribute to a flourishing democracy. We thought that they'd be spaces for children to learn and for people to find support and friendships. We thought they'd spark incredible productivity and growth.

Imagine sitting down with someone from the 1970s or 1980s and telling them this: within 50 years, nearly everyone on earth will carry a device in their pocket that gives them instant access to the sum of human knowledge—every book, every paper, every fact, available in seconds. They would have assumed the obvious consequence: productivity would soar. But it hasn't. Productivity has declined, and almost all of the promises of our online spaces have fallen flat. It is not necessarily because the potential wasn't there but because the downsides of our online spaces have well and truly trumped the positives. Our online spaces are now vectors for incredibly harmful material: child sexual abuse material, suicidal content, aggressive bullying, radicalisation and racism. But the harms are actually deeper than this. Social media is now home to a constant negativity and enshittification that wears people down—constant misinformation, constant AI slop, constant misogynistic and racist comments, constant outrage and polarisation.

So many of the adults and children I speak to don't like social media. They're sick of algorithms that produce outrage and negativity, but they feel obliged to use it. They feel obliged to use it because we've welcomed these technologies into our lives without thinking about the harms they would cause, and now it is too late. Our lives are so entwined with social media and digital platforms that it's impossible to undo, and it makes unpicking the harms really difficult—not to mention that the big tech companies are now as powerful as many nation-states.

In this context, I strongly commend the Australian government's world-leading work in regulating online spaces. The under-16 social media ban is world leading. It required courage to implement, and I congratulate the government for this courage. It's great to see so many countries overseas now following in our footsteps, and I'm glad to see we're not stopping there. The government's commitment to a digital duty of care could be a transformative policy for improving our online spaces. It wouldn't just protect children by removing them. It would force companies to make their platforms into better sites and experiences.

But there's no question that the implementation of the under-16 ban has been questionable. The vast majority of teenagers I speak to have made their way around the ban. Studies show around 80 per cent have found their way through the ban. And part of the reason it's not working is because our eSafety Commissioner hasn't had the powers or the resourcing to properly enforce the ban. The eSafety Commissioner herself described it as trying to fence the ocean. This bill will make a difference here. It gives the eSafety Commissioner expanded powers to compel documents from digital platforms and other related stakeholders to assess whether the social media companies are actually doing as much as they can—and I have no doubt that they're not. These companies want this ban to fail. If it fails here, it means other countries won't pursue the same policy. If it works here—and we can make it work—we set an example for the rest of the world to follow. So I strongly support the greater empowerment of the eSafety Commissioner. I also support the doubling of penalties for noncompliance, although I don't think a $100 million fine is a huge deterrent for some of the world's wealthiest companies.

I also remain concerned by the eSafety Commissioner's budget. The commission will need to take on these technology giants in court, and it remains unclear whether it has a sufficient litigation budget to take them on. The minister has said that that is something that she's aware of and that she will guard against, and I will take her at her word on that. Without a doubt, properly resourcing and empowering the eSafety Commissioner will be essential for the success of the under-16 social media ban and essential to Australia's long-term approach to online safety.

Beyond the social media ban, the next step is a digital duty of care. Establishing a digital duty of care places an obligation on all digital platforms and services to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to users, including through AI chatbots, social media sites and other digital platforms that incorporate AI. This is an online safety framework that's proactive rather than reactive, a framework that requires platforms to be safe by design, not endlessly catching up with the latest harms. It would mean that social media platforms would not just have to remove extreme content but would also have to reconsider how their algorithms are developed in the first place. Similarly, an AI chatbot developer, if covered by a digital duty of care, that builds a product it knows is likely to be used by children for emotional support cannot claim it bears no responsibility for the foreseeable consequences.

In practice, a digital duty of care would require digital platforms—including AI developers, I think—to take steps like conducting risk assessments before deploying new products or features, implementing age-assurance measures where their products are likely to be used by children, implementing effective mitigation measures to remedy risks identified in assessments, designing recommendation systems that do not exploit psychological vulnerabilities, having accessible and effective mechanisms for users to report harm and taking prompt action when harms are identified. It could also require operating systems to be required to integrate an AI classifier that's set to block illegal child sex abuse material. Overall, it will shift responsibility to those who can actually prevent the harm in the first place.

The government has committed to implementing this digital duty of care, and there are a few design features that are essential to make it effective. Firstly, it's important that there is a single overarching duty. This would mean platforms have a general obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to their users, rather than a list of named specific obligations. And the difference is significant. A list of specific duties only captures what the drafters anticipated, not new and emerging harms, and this space is moving so fast that legislators cannot keep up with an ongoing list of harms as they become apparent. Specific duties for the highest risk categories could sit underneath an overarching obligation to give industries and regulators greater clarity, but the overarching duty must not be traded away. This is about creating a new culture where platforms think about those safety issues before they roll out new products, rather than taking a strict compliance approach.

Secondly, the framework must capture the full range of harms. The government's current issues paper sets the threshold at 'serious harm', but serious harm means loss of life or severe physical injury, and that threshold risks leaving out harms that are less acute or immediate but deeply damaging and widespread. This could include the erosion of a child's developmental capacity through unhealthy relationships with AI companions or the slow degradation of mental health in a teenager who spends years in an algorithmic environment that continues to serve up distressing content. None of these may clearly meet a serious harm threshold as currently framed, but they are still deeply problematic, and the government must lower the bar to use a threshold of harm rather than serious harm.

Thirdly, the eSafety Commissioner must be properly resourced and empowered. A well-designed duty of care on paper means nothing without a regulator capable of enforcing it. This bill is an important step towards this, but the government will have to continue to monitor the situation and empower and resource the commissioner as required as this space changes when we recognise a digital duty of care.

Fourthly, strong enforcement measures and penalties are needed. This would ensure that platforms actually meet the digital duty of care and are held to account. Again, that involves the eSafety Commissioner having resources and powers to compel the production of documents and data from platforms and audit algorithms. This bill is a step in the right direction there, too. The eSafety Commissioner also needs resourcing to litigate any appeals, because these big tech companies are not going to go quietly. Penalties must be substantial enough to change behaviour.

Fifthly, transparency requirements are needed to ensure the government and the public understand and can monitor how digital platforms are managing the risks. This would involve regular transparency reporting to government on key metrics such as usage statistics and quantitative data on exposure of children to harmful content. This would also involve requirements for platforms to make data available publicly to increase transparency.

Sixthly, AI models—like general-purpose chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT—need to be included. This is currently ambiguous, but these cause a range of novel harms like attachment hacking and erosion of critical thinking, and in 15 years we don't want to be in the same position with AI that we are now in with social media. We need to get the framework right so that it is actually dealing with technology as it continues to change.

I commend the government for its approach to online safety so far. We have been world leading with the under 16's ban. We need to back that up with this bill to ensure that we can enforce that and make it meaningful, partly for all the other countries who are looking to see if we can pull this off. I urge the government to continue to be brave and consultative and to listen to the community as it develops that digital duty of care so that we can lead the world and make sure that we are creating spaces that can be used safely. I commend the bill to the House.

It's school holidays in my home state of Queensland, and, across Griffith, families will be out and about enjoying time with their kids. They will be at South Bank, one of our local parks like Raymond Park, at a local pool like Musgrave Park Swim Centre, at the movies like Hawthorne cinemas or the Dendy at Coorparoo, at one of our local libraries or just at home where parents are trying to fill in the days. As a parent of two beautiful young men myself, I know how great these days are. There is noise, mess, sunscreen, snacks. The kids are asking what they can do next and us parents are doing our best to keep everyone busy and happy.

There is another part too, and many parents know it too well. There is the constant pull of the phone, the tablet, the group chat, the notifications and the platforms that want a child's attention and do not give it back easily. Ask any parent what has changed most in childhood and many will point to the phone. It follows children into bedrooms, schoolyards and weekends, carrying pressures that parents can feel but cannot always see. It is the young person who cannot sleep after something cruel was said online. It's the child who feels left out after seeing photos from an event that they were not invited to.

It's been a year since I was elected into this government, and, in that time, one of the things I am most proud of is our social media ban for under 16s for those exact reasons. I am the mother of an 11-year-old and a 13-year old boy. Like so many parents, I want my children to grow up curious, kind, confident and safe. I want them to make friends in real life, learn how to be bored, play sport, ride bikes, read books, tell terrible jokes like their stepfather, argue over board games and spend time in the world around them. Most of all, I want them to have the space to become themselves before a platform starts measuring them, ranking them, tracking them and selling their attention.

The world has changed since I was a primary school student. I remember playing Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on my father's PC somewhere in the 1990s. I also remember playing DOOM, and I have to admit I thought the graphics looked pretty good back then. That was a very different type of screen time. It belonged to a very different childhood. The game stayed on the computer. That screen time did not follow me to school, sit by my bed, buzz in my pocket, count my likes or push endless content to me when I was meant to be asleep—although I will admit occasionally I did have the radio underneath my pillow when I was meant to be going to sleep. It did not learn what made me anxious, angry, excited or insecure then serve me more of it.

Children today face something far more powerful. Social media platforms are designed to hold attention, learn behaviour, reward reaction, push comparison and turn popularity into a visible score. For adults that can be hard enough to manage. For children, it can be totally overwhelming. A child of 12 or 13 does not have an adult brain, an adult sense of risk or an adult ability to step back and see that a platform is trying to keep them there. Yet too often we ask children to resist systems built by some of the richest companies on earth. That is not fair on children, and it's also not fair on parents.

Australian parents led this movement. Parents told us they were tired of fighting alone. They were tired of platform rules that looked good on paper but failed in practice. They were tired of children being exposed to bullying, violent content, sexualised content, scams, manipulation and social pressure before they were ready. They told us they needed more than advice. They needed the law to be on their side. The Albanese Labor government listened, and we acted to delay access to social media to the age of 16.

Since our minimum age law began on 10 December, more than five million underage accounts have been removed, deactivated or restricted. These are children who have been given back time to sleep, move, study, talk, play and step away from the pressure of being constantly watched and judged. We started seeing early signs of change. A recent YouGov survey found that 30 per cent of young Australians aged 13 to 15 are spending more time playing sport, 27 per cent report better sleep, online bullying is down nine per cent, and exposure to inappropriate and violent content has fallen by 18 per cent.

Our laws have made a strong start, but some platforms are still not doing enough. The eSafety Commissioner's public compliance update in March 2026 raised serious concerns. A substantial share of Australian children under 16 still hold accounts, create new accounts or bypass age checks, as we've heard in this chamber this morning. Some platforms appear to allow underage users to try age checks again and again until they pass. Some do too little to stop a child whose account has been closed from opening a new one straightaway, and some make it too hard for parents and others to report underage users. These are gaps that children can slip through, and they are failures by companies with the money, people and technical skills to do better.

The eSafety Commissioner is now actively investigating potential noncompliance of five platforms, and we can guess who they are: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. These are not small startups or backyard businesses; they are some of the largest and most powerful digital companies in the world. They have the engineers. They have the data. They have the money. They have the skill to build products that can hold a child's attention for hours. They can use those same resources to comply with Australian law. The Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 strengthens the enforcement framework behind the social media minimum age law. It does two main things: (1) it increases penalties for noncompliance and (2) it gives the eSafety Commissioner strong powers to gather information and documents.

The bill doubles the maximum penalty for breaches of the minimum age obligation, bringing the maximum penalty to $99 million. That is a serious penalty, and it needs to be serious for these multinational tech companies to take it seriously. The increase brings these penalties into line with recent changes to competition and consumer law, and it reflects the scale of the companies this parliament is regulating. A small penalty can become just the cost of doing business; a strong penalty sends a different message. We are firmly signalling to these multinational tech companies that, if you want to do business in Australia, then you must comply with Australian laws. It says children's safety cannot be treated as a public relations issue. It says platforms cannot make promises in public then do too little in private.

A strong and robust regulator like the eSafety Commission cannot enforce the law with public statements alone. It needs evidence, documents, records and the power to test what platforms say against what platforms do. These new changes will give the eSafety Commissioner stronger tools to get the information needed to assess compliance. The commissioner will be able to issue notices requiring information and documents from any person where the commissioner reasonably believes that person holds material relevant to the minimum age framework. That can include the platform itself. It can include third parties, age assurance providers, app store providers and others who hold information that can test a platform's claims. This is a practical change, and it goes to the heart of enforcement.

Platforms should not be able to mark their own homework. They should not be able to say 'trust us' and then refuse to provide the evidence. For example, a platform may say its age-check system works; a third-party provider may hold information that shows the system fails. A platform may say it has closed underage accounts; other records may show that many of those children came straight back through the front door. A platform may claim that parents have simple reporting paths; evidence may show those paths are hard to find, hard to use or slow to act. If a platform fails to comply with information-gathering notices from the eSafety Commissioner, we are doubling the penalty for doing so. This bill will help the commissioner get to the truth, and that is exactly how enforcement works: you find the facts, you test the claims and you act where the law has been broken.

We should never lose sight of the people at the centre of this debate: children. It's about the year-seven student who has just started high school and feels pressure to be on the same apps as everybody else. It's about the 13-year-old who lies awake at night thinking about a message that no child should ever have received. It's about the 14-year-old who scrolls for hours and feels worse after every swipe. It's about a child who is bullied in the schoolyard and then followed home through their own phone. It's about the parent who wants to protect their child but feels outnumbered by technology built to break down every boundary.

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be granted leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.

Refugee Week was held from 14 to 20 June this year, with the theme of 'A Million Stories'. I have lived one of those million stories myself. As the first member of the House who is of Vietnamese refugee heritage, I'm humbled to stand here today.

I joined the students of Liverpool Boys High School for their harmony celebration in Refugee Week. I want to thank the school community for their warm invitation. I watched these young men proudly showcase who they are, Arabic drumming, Bollywood dancing, traditional Samoan dancing and proudly displaying cultural flags. What makes this even more remarkable is that the school is doing all of this from a temporary campus while their own school is being rebuilt. To put on a celebration with such pride and energy under those conditions is a real credit to the students, the teachers and the families. I congratulate them.

What I saw that day was a perfect reflection of Fowler. We are one of the most multicultural communities in the entire country. Our community is built on the resilience of people who arrive from every corner of the globe, many with very little, carrying heavy burdens but holding on to hope. I live and breathe this every day. A day like this teaches our young people to be proud of their heritage, to respect our differences and to be grateful that we have all found a home in this wonderful country. We are one, but we are many.

So my message to the students of Liverpool Boys High and right across Fowler is simple: be proud of your heritage, as well as being proud Australians.

Tomorrow brings the end of the 2025-2026 financial year and the start of a fresh new one. Unlike the start of the calendar year, people are not talking about gym memberships, new diets or pledges to cut back on alcohol and chocolate. This new year brings with it a raft of financial benefits for individual Australians and for small business.

A key example is that, from 1 July 2026, the $20,000 instant asset write-off comes into play. This means that small businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $10 million can deduct the full cost of eligible depreciating assets costing less than 20 grand that are first used or installed ready for use in an income year. This is proposed on a per-asset basis, so small businesses can instantly write off multiple assets under $20,000 in a single financial year. The arrangements apply to new and second-hand assets.

The benefits of this are multiple and include improved cash flow and the release of immediate liquidity, allowing businesses to reinvest these funds directly into the business. The compliance burden is also minimised because the need to maintain complex multiyear depreciation schedules and records for qualifying assets will be eliminated. Multiple assets under 20 grand, better cash flow, lower compliance costs and more liquidity—this is a measure designed to support and back Australia's small businesses and those who own and operate them.

Next year, an arts degree will cost $54,000 and a double degree over $90,000. For five years, the Job-ready Graduates scheme has doubled the cost of arts, law, business and commerce degrees, and in those five years students have also found themselves paying 40 per cent more for rent, 27 per cent more for groceries and 43 per cent more for fuel.

Behind those figures are real people from Kooyong. One constituent works part time as a social worker while studying for a master's degree. She was unexpectedly hit with a $5,000 bill for her HECS repayment and had to spend hours negotiating with the ATO. She described it as one of the most deflating experiences that she has experienced as a low-income single parent. There's another Kooyong constituent who had repaid about half of his $11,000 HECS debt when he found himself with a serious illness. He was unable to make loan contributions and his debt ballooned to $22,600. He says the HECS system is clearly broken.

Australia's cost-of-living crisis is already hard enough, and we're giving young people a cost-of-learning crisis on top of it. We have to end the harmful Job-ready Graduates scheme and make education affordable again so that Australians have a shot at getting ahead instead of being punished for choosing to invest in their education.

Happy financial New Year Eve, as everyone says. Every single day, the Albanese Labor government is focused on making things better for hardworking Australians in my community, in Menzies, and right across the country. From tomorrow, we're giving every worker a tax cut, reducing the lowest tax rate and putting more money back in people's pockets every single pay day. From tomorrow, those on the minimum wage will receive a six per cent pay rise, taking their pay to $1,000 a week for the first time. And some of our lowest paid workers, those on award wages, people working in essential services like aged care and child care, will receive a 4.75 per cent, much deserved pay rise. From tomorrow, payday superannuation begins, giving workers more certainty and more chance to accrue retirement savings. From tomorrow, the $20,000 instant asset write-off becomes permanent, helping small businesses right across the country with their cash flow. From tomorrow, paid parental leave reaches a full 26 weeks—six months of support for new parents to be shared amongst them, as they see fit. And from tomorrow we're banning supermarket price gouging, ensuring the duopoly doesn't rip off hardworking Australians at the checkout.

Only the Labor government has a positive vision for Australia: an economy that works for people and not the other way around. That means higher wages, combined tax cuts of over $2,800, protecting people from price gouging and support for families.

I rise to speak about absolute legend Charlie Verco, the courageous 24-year-old Mackellar local and Newport surf club member who paddled towards the jaws of a shark to save Leah Stewart, who was being attacked at Coogee Beach on 13 June. In a moment of crisis, Charlie showed extraordinary bravery and selflessness, putting the safety of another ahead of his own. As one northern beaches local put it, 'Charlie is the epitome of a hero: a brave young man who risked his own life to save that of a complete stranger.' He is also the epitome of all volunteers who make up Surf Life Saving Australia. Surf lifesavers all around the country give up their time and undertake training to keep our community safe not just for a moment but for years and sometimes decades at a time. They, too, are absolute legends.

Charlie's actions reflect the very best of our community and the values that define Australia's surf lifesaving culture. On behalf of the northern beaches community and everyone across Australia, I'd like to thank Charlie for his courage, selflessness and unwavering commitment to serving others. You are a remarkable role model for young Australians and someone we are all so proud of. As we hear the welcome news that Leah is out of critical condition and has been reunited with her family, we send her our love and support as she begins her road to recovery and rehabilitation.

It was another perfect dry season weekend in Darwin and Palmerston, with heaps of community events, which of course gave me the opportunity to get out amongst our groups and explain all the really positive cost-of-living supports that are starting on 1 July—tomorrow!—which is Territory Day. Happy Territory Day to all Territorians.

I went along to the COTA Seniors Expo. Thanks to Sue Shearer and the team for putting on this great annual event for our senior Territorians. I then went and spoke with the younger crew in Darwin at the Kindness Festival, which is put on by our international student community, with excellent work by the chair, Sushan, and team. There was a festival of hockey on the weekend. Well done to the SRA Territory Stingers Men, who won the series against Indonesia. The SRA Territory Stingers women didn't quite make it, so well done to the Indonesian women's hockey team. Well done to all the organisers. It was a really fantastic event.

On Saturday evening I attended a dinner at the Palmerston Mosque. I want to thank the president and all of the committee members there. Before I flew back on Sunday, I also had the opportunity to attend the beer can regatta put on by the Lions Club. Well done to all the teams: the Mix FM team, the military team that had HMAS Wilson and the winners, the Down Under Safari Pirates. Well done.

Yesterday Labor voted to increase taxes on widows and divorcees. That tells you everything you need to know about this government. This tax is appalling, but it doesn't surprise me, because over the last few weeks I've been advocating fiercely for a Whyalla constituent, Kate Edwards, who is a registered midwife. Unfortunately, Kate has been slapped with over 70 grand in taxes and fees because of an admin error when she bought her own home. Kate packed up her life in the United Kingdom to fill a skills gap in Whyalla, which saved a maternity ward that had been forced to close in 2023.

Today, after pressure from Kate and my office, state treasurer Tom Koutsantonis apologised on air and has guaranteed that Kate will get her state fees of about 28 grand back. Putting aside state Labor's hypocrisy of spending 12 months asking the feds for a refund while not refunding their own fees, finally, state treasurer Tom Koutsantonis admitted today that 'it's something we could have fixed earlier'. Labor loves unfair taxes, and this is just another example. I call on Treasurer Jim Chalmers to take Kate's issue seriously, respond to my requests and, like his state colleagues, see the light and immediately refund the $44,000 that has been taken from Kate.

Tomorrow, 1 July, Australia's first independent National Environmental Protection Agency will begin its work. It marks a brand new chapter for the protection of Australia's natural environment. For the first time in our nation's history, Australia will have an independent national regulator with the power, focus and responsibility to uphold our environmental laws. That is a proud achievement of this Albanese Labor government. In just over six months, the National EPA has gone from a long held ambition to a working reality. For decades, Australians have called for stronger environmental protection. They have asked for clearer rules, better decisions and a regulator strong enough to make sure that our rules are followed. They have asked for a system where the environment has a real voice. Tomorrow, that begins.

I want to thank the environmental groups, legal experts, scientists, First Nations people, community advocates and local volunteers who helped make this happen. In my community of Griffith, this is something people have been asking for for many years because people deeply care about the environment around us. I joined with my community to campaign for stronger environmental laws and our first national EPA. Too much of what we love is under pressure: our threatened species, rivers, reefs, forests, wetlands and oceans. The National EPA will help people understand Australia's environmental laws and it will make sure those laws are respected. Labor has always understood this responsibility. Tomorrow will be a proud day for our government, but more importantly it will mark the beginning of a new era for Australia's environment.

Last night, Labor failed a very simple test. They had the opportunity to stand with Australians who've already endured some of life's greatest challenges—widows, widowers, divorcees and families trying to rebuild after loss and hardship. Instead, Labor voted to increase their taxes. Can you believe it? That tells Australians everything they need to know about an incompetent government that cannot tell the truth. Before the election, Labor promised Australians that they wouldn't come after their savings, their investments or their future. But once those votes were counted those promises disappeared into thin air.

This government keeps talking about fairness while punishing Australians who've worked hard, saved hard and planned responsibly. First, it was toxic taxes on housing, investment and aspiration. Now they're reaching into the pockets of widows, widowers and divorcees. Life has already dealt them a very tough hand. Labor shouldn't be making it harder for them. Labor can't manage the nation's finances, so they keep coming after everyday Australians. The coalition believes that Australians should be rewarded for hard work, not punished for it. We'll continue to fight these toxic taxes. We'll stand up for families, retirees, small businesses, widows, widowers and divorcees, and we'll keep fighting for a fairer, freer, better Australia.

Our government is laser focused on assisting with the cost of living. On this side of the chamber, we understand that many Australians feel as though the economy isn't working for them. We know that right around the country Australians are looking for solutions, and that's why Labor is delivering real change. From tomorrow, every worker is getting another tax cut, and about three million workers are getting a pay rise. We're banning supermarket price gouging to give Australians a fair go at the checkout. We're extending paid parental leave to a full six months, which gives families more time with their little ones and more support. We're making urgent care clinics a permanent part of Medicare so anyone can see a GP for free, and we're tackling the big challenges that have been thrown in the too-hard basket for way too long. We've passed new laws to give first home buyers a fair go because, if you work hard and save, you should be able to buy a home of your own.

Lower taxes, higher pay and a fair go for families and first home buyers—that's real change, and that matters to people in my community. It's real change that we'll keep delivering. This would all be at risk under the right-wing trio opposite. They would like to take this country backwards. It's only Labor that will lead this country forward.

With your indulgence, Deputy Speaker Claydon, I'll say happy birthday to my end-of-financial-year baby, Clancy, who turns 25 today.

Labor's tax attack is killing confidence in Australian real estate, and Mallee is feeling it. While the Minister for Housing was bragging in the House yesterday, people on the ground in Mallee were seeing the damage firsthand. Wes Davidson is a prominent real estate agent in Horsham, in Mallee, and he says: 'We are now seeing the biggest lack of confidence in real estate that I have ever seen in over four decades in the industry. I am seeing clearance rates at record low levels across the country. They are lower than in the first couple of weeks of COVID, and that was a pretty uncertain time. Now people are saying we're in a more uncertain time because aspirations are being killed by these regulations.' Wes goes on: 'This is the dumbest economic policy we have and the dumbest government I've seen, both state and federal, in terms of housing policy. It's wrong. It's criminal. And hopefully they'll both get the boot at the next election.'

'Twas the night before delivery, and all through the House not a creature was stirring, not even those in their five per cent deposit houses.

When the calendar turns to 1 July tomorrow, the following changes will come into effect. Working Australians will wake up with another round of tax cuts, keeping more of what they earn, which will help ease cost-of-living pressures. Families will gain greater security through the continued expansion of paid parental leave, moving us closer to six months of support for new parents. Workers will receive higher minimum and award wages because a fair day's work continues to deserve a fair day's pay. Small businesses will have the certainty of a permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off. Everyone will benefit from stronger investment in our public hospitals alongside permanent Medicare urgent care clinics that make it easier to receive treatment close to home. More women will have access to specialised endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, ensuring conditions that have been overlooked for far too long receive the attention they deserve. Veterans will be supported through a dedicated veteran wellbeing agency, recognising that those who have served our nation deserve coordinated care and lifelong support.

While those opposite remain divided on who should lead their party or whether they require a glam-up or a makeover, we will continue to deliver change and a better tomorrow for every Australian.

There was a time when governments actually did the hard work. They consulted widely. They carefully considered the impacts of policy, and they understood and dealt with potential unintended consequences. But we are in a new era now. Under the Albanese government, we get a cluster of thought bubbles delivered as a budget and presented in half-baked legislation that requires more backflips than a trampoline competition.

The Treasurer has been unable to explain changes to trust arrangements, and the frontbench are all over the place to the point where they don't seem to have understood the policy change or the rationale for it. Then, in a deal with the Greens, out of nowhere comes this attack on self-managed super funds and their ability to borrow for housing. As it turns out—and this should have been understood by the government—these arrangements have been used by widows and divorcees to ensure they have security and dignity into their later years, but a law was passed that threatens that security. The government say, 'We'll fix it in a new tranche of legislation.' But wouldn't it have been better to have understood what you were doing in the first place and prevented the fear and confusion that have been the result of this mess?

All of this confusion leads to a stall in investment, including housing investment, and that leads to fewer houses. At the World Cup in North America at the moment there are a few own goals being scored, but the Albanese government has just scored a few own goals as a result of this budget, and the Australian people are the ones who are losing.

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, you just assured me that I could speak. Tomorrow, 1 July, working Australians will get another tax cut. Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest. See those chaps over there? These are the blokes that voted against the tax cuts. When we propose cost-of-living relief for working Australians, they grapple with it and then they vote against it. Ah yes, I see that they know their judo well. When residents of my electorate visit one of the 23 bulk-billing clinics in Hughes, what is the charge? It's free. When they get scripts for their PBS medicines, what is the charge? It's $25, the lowest it has been since 2004. Good one! Australians told those opposite at the last election, 'Get your hands off my Medicare card.'

Those opposite claim to oppose monoculturalism, but they won't defend the multiculturalism that defines modern Australia when it counts, even if it's eating a meal, a succulent Chinese meal. Tomorrow, from 1 July, underpaid—I'm under what? Underpaid minimum-wage workers will be getting a pay rise—a pay rise not backed by those opposite. Why did they do this? For what reason? Are they waiting to receive another tax cut to vote against? This 1 July the Labor government is delivering higher wages and cost-of-living relief for working Australians while those opposite talk down our country. Tata and farewell!

The PM is the ultimate political insider spending his life working in politics, and he has the same playbook every time: he rushes legislation through the House, he stifles and guillotines debate, not allowing members to have a say, and then he does a dodgy deal with his good friends and coalition partners in the Greens. This flawed insider action has consequences—real consequences—for Australians. It has resulted in tax increases for widows, widowers and divorcees—people at their most vulnerable. It says it all about this government, taxing people at their most vulnerable.

We saw the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury last Thursday say that they would not change this legislation. The Treasurer refused to outline how and when they would change this legislation. This is causing heartache. It is causing confusion for the Australian people. This is a heartless government. They have destroyed confidence in the housing market. They have destroyed confidence for small-business owners and tech start-ups. They have destroyed confidence for every Australian.

Every Australian is struggling. They realise that they have a prime minister that is focused on internal politics, focused on ramming things through this House not in the best interest of the Australian people but in the best interests of his own agenda, and he will pay the price.

Today there are three very special little visitors to the gallery: my niece, my nephews and my niece. They're just up there. And what an appropriate time for us to talk about what we do in this place and what the Labor government is delivering for Australians. Given that it's their first visit to Canberra, and their first visit to Parliament House, what greater day to visit than the day before 1 July. On 1 July—tomorrow—your mum and dad, along with every other taxpayer in this country, will get a tax cut. Tomorrow, if your parents or your friends' parents want to expand your family, they will be able to access 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Tomorrow, the first National Environmental Protection Agency will roll out and come into effect so that the environment that you will live and work and raise your families in will be protected. Tomorrow, people who work at early childhood centres as educators and workers—the people who look after you every day—will get that 4.75 per cent pay rise. We welcome you to this House. Our job is to make your life better, and even though we live in a challenging time, your future is very bright.

The Albanese government is not so big on truth bombs, but they're definitely big on inflation bombs. The first of July this year brings in the next round of consequences from the Treasurer's active inflation agenda, where he stokes inflation, taxes inflation then spends inflation, and he's got families and small businesses on his hip list. The Treasurer keeps pouring debt petrol on the inflation fire, and what's the consequence? Well, because he can't control his spending addiction, many fees automatically go up because of indexation. Company registration fees will go up. Business registration fees will go up. NBN plans will go up by 10 bucks. The cost of sending a parcel will go up by close to five per cent, and the price of fuel will increase too. That's the way the Treasurer likes it. He wants inflation to be the silent thief in the night so he doesn't get caught with his hands in your pocket. What he's doing is charging—and, of course, it's going to be the same thing with taxes. That's why the coalition's tax back guarantee will return overtaxation from inflation automatically. We're on your side. The coalition actually backs Australians and their wages to hold their money. We think you should have it better. We will draw a line under the Treasurer's tricky take.

From 1 July, a whole range of changes come into effect that will make a real difference to Australian households. As a proud geriatric millennial, I have to say it is nice to see government policy for people who survived dial-up internet, MSN Messenger, WorkChoices, overpriced uni parking and being told for 20 years that, if we stopped buying avocado on toast, we could finally afford a house. From 1 July, every taxpayer gets another tax cut. Award workers and people on minimum wage will see their pay go up. Super will have to be paid on payday, not months later when everyone has forgotten about it, which is good because nothing says retirement security like actually receiving money you earned. Paid parental leave expands to six weeks, because raising children is real work and toddlers behave like they're in tiny workplace relations disputes with no cooling-off period. Small businesses will benefit from the permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off, and we are cutting more annoying tariffs. And we are cracking down on supermarket price gouging because Australians should not need a forensic accounting degree to work out why a cucumber suddenly costs as much as a streaming subscription. These changes are practical. They are about wages, tax, super, families, small business and the cost of living. Or, in millennial terms, a few system updates have been installed and for once they're not asking us to accept cookies!

Over and over, again and again, the Australian people see the same pattern—the CFMEU engulfed by corruption, kickbacks, organised crime, intimidation, violence and mistreatment of women. It is a culture summed up in two chilling words—'everybody eats'—except that's not right. It's the Australian taxpayer who pays the bill, and Labor keeps protecting the CFMEU. Last night, the Prime Minister was asked about organised crime and corruption in the Victorian government's Big Build projects. He said he had no tolerance for it and he has taken the strongest possible action against it. Surprise, surprise—another perversion of the truth! The government's aware of at least four allegations of corruption on the Suburban Rail Loop. So what did it do—seek assurances that taxpayers' money wouldn't be misused? Of course not. The Prime Minister gave the project another $3.8 billion in the budget. And, today, in the parliament, they're doing it again, handing unions control over taxpayers' money, writing corruption into law. Labor's protecting its mates in the CFMEU from scrutiny. Labor's giving a green light to organised crime, to rackets, to rorts, to rip-offs, in the CFMEU. It's time to get organised crime out of our construction sites. Every Australian knows it. The only people pretending otherwise are those opposite.

Tomorrow marks 1 July, the day that eligible families will be able to get up to 26 weeks of paid parental leave, backed by this Albanese Labor government. Families accessing the full entitlement will receive almost $30,000 across their paid parental leave. This is more than double the entitlement available to families before Labor came to government. Meanwhile, the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation don't seem to have such a positive view of the working Australian family. In 2017, Senator Hanson claimed that women will get pregnant to access paid parental leave. Just recently, at the National Press Club, she asked, 'Why should a business pay them if they're not at work?' And we've seen the member for Goldstein say, 'It's not my choice that women have children; it's genetic.' This is what the three right-wing parties have to offer Australian families. While they tear down and belittle working Australians, Labor is backing Aussie families every step of the way.

In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.

My question is to the Minister for Housing. Last April at the National Press Club, the minister said this about first home buyers: 'Many of them have taken on incredibly large mortgages while interest rates were particularly low, and we don't want—nor is it good for the country—to see that generation go into negative equity.' How many first home buyers have fallen into negative fallen into negative equity since the budget?

The Leader of the Opposition is asking about the house price impacts of the budget. We covered this matter in some detail yesterday, but let me go through it again for those who are a little bit slower off the uptake. Firstly, legislation passed the parliament last week which does two really important things. It delivers a tax cut for every single one of Australia's 13 million workers and it delivers for the first time a level playing field for our nation's first home buyers. That's going to get 75,000 Australians who are today stuck in renting into the home of their own that they deserve.

Now, house prices in Australia, according to Treasury, will continue to grow over time but a little bit more slowly than they otherwise would have. I think those opposite surely have availed themselves of the information about the Treasury modelling that suggests a slower rate of growth of about two percentage points. That ballpark figure is backed up by other major models, including that of the Commonwealth Bank and the Grattan Institute.

I say again that we had this conversation in the parliament yesterday, but it's pretty clear where the Labor Party stands on this. We support first home buyers. We support them through the five per cent deposit program, we support them through Help to Buy and we support them by providing for the first time a fair go at winning an auction that they deserve.

My question is to the Prime Minister. Tomorrow is 1 July. Why is this an important day for those of us who are committed to strengthening Medicare, helping Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn and delivering real change? Is there anything standing in the way of these efforts?

I thank the member for Dunkley for her fantastic question and for her advocacy for the people of Frankston and her region, keeping them strong. And indeed tomorrow is a very good day because tomorrow we will see the delivery of the real change that we are committed to. Tomorrow, every Australian on award wages will receive a 4.75 per cent increase and those on the minimum wage an even higher increase than that—the fifth consecutive increase in the minimum wage under this government, something that we have advocated for, unlike those opposite, who opposed every single every single wage rise and, indeed, said that lower wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic architecture.

But not only do we want people to earn more; we want them to keep more of what they earn, so tomorrow will deliver another tax cut for every single taxpayer. The deputy Liberal leader this week has backed in and said that these tax cuts that passed this week and that will flow through in future are egregious. But these tax cuts, of course, were the ones that were legislated last year that the Leader of the Opposition, when shadow treasurer, first said they'd oppose, then voted against, then said they'd roll back, committing to legislating for higher taxes for 14 million Australians.

In addition to that, tomorrow we have paid parental leave increased to six months and will be paying super on top. Those opposite declared that parents getting paid parental leave were double dippers. Double dippers is what they called them. In addition to that, workers' superannuation will be paid on payday. Again, it's increasing the dollars that are in the pockets of Australian workers. Tomorrow, we strengthen Medicare even further, making urgent care clinics a permanent part of Medicare. Those opposite called them 'wasteful spending'. Tomorrow, we expand cheaper medicines further with another 10 cheaper medicines listed on the PBS.

We want Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. Wages are up, taxes are down, paid parental leave is expanded, and Medicare is made stronger, helping Australians under pressure right now and preparing for the future. That's our government's agenda: delivering real change which was the platform we were elected on last year.

My question is to the Minister for Housing. Labor's correction in house prices means the value of an Australian home could collapse by 10 to 20 per cent, smashing Australia's nest egg. Did the minister receive or review any advice from Treasury or APRA about how many first home buyers will be pushed into negative equity because of Labor's deliberate correction?

I appreciate that question from the shadow treasurer. Again, I'm being asked effectively the same question that I was asked just before. Let me come back to a bit of advice to those opposite. The impact of the budget changes on house prices is actually in the budget documents, and I would really encourage those opposite to have regard to those documents. I'm going to refer to page 5 of the factsheet on CGT and negative gearing, and I'm quoting directly from the budget:

Treasury modelling suggests that the reforms will increase the owner occupier share of the housing market, resulting in around 75,000 additional owner-occupiers over the next decade.

I continue:

This is equivalent to reversing around 10 years of declines in the home ownership rate.

The document goes on to say:

The reduction in investor demand is expected to lead to a small and temporary slowing in house price growth, estimated to see prices grow by around 2 per cent less over a couple years relative to no tax policy change.

It's there in the budget documents, and I'd encourage those opposite to actually read them.

I'm not sure what you're doing; resume your seat. We don't approach the dispatch box in that manner. No-one does that.

My question is to the Treasurer. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to help Australians with the cost of living and to help people get ahead? How does that compare to other approaches?

I thank the member for McEwen for his question, and I acknowledge his wonderful granddaughters in the gallery today. Ava and Lacey, welcome to the House of Representatives, where your pa makes a really terrific contribution to our team on this side of the House. You're here on a really important week because tomorrow is a really important day where we deliver more cost-of-living relief for Australians in every corner of the country.

We are delivering tax cuts, we are delivering a stronger budget, we're delivering real change in the tax system to help first home buyers, and, from tomorrow, we are delivering more help with the cost of living as well. From tomorrow, which is 1 July, we cut income taxes again, we boost wages again, we extend paid parental leave, we pay super with wages, we extend petrol price relief, and we make the small business instant asset write-off permanent.

Earlier today, I was with the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Minister for Social Services and the member for Bean at Uniting in Weston. It's a wonderful aged-care home there. We were talking to the workers there. A personal care worker, from tomorrow, gets 59 bucks extra a week because of the award increase. A registered nurse gets 86 bucks a week and an enrolled nurse $67 a week. We support these wage rises, and we support these tax cuts, unlike those opposite. We've made progress on inflation, and we've seen petrol and diesel prices come down substantially. But people are still under pressure, and that's why there is more help on the way from tomorrow.

This is the cost-of-living relief that Australians need and deserve, and this Albanese Labor government is providing it. We're providing this help at the same time as new numbers show that debt is now $200 billion lower than what we inherited from those opposite, and the deficit this year will be smaller as well. So we are delivering for workers, for first home buyers, for parents and for motorists, and those opposite want none of this cost-of-living relief, none of these tax cuts to flow—

Opposition members interjecting—

I take their interjections. I know that the member for Lindsay has been saying that they need to rebrand their values over there. It's not a marketing problem over there; it's a meltdown. The member for Hume said that his leadership was a change or die moment, and then he made the wrong choice. He said it was a change or die moment, and then he forgot to change. So that leaves only one option. They haven't changed a bit. They haven't learned a thing. All three of the right-wing parties over there share a divisive anti-worker and anti-housing agenda, and that more than anything explains the mess that they're in. We're delivering cost-of-living relief, with more cost-of-living relief from tomorrow, 1 July. We're proud to do that, and it's happening despite those opposite not because of them.

I'm pleased to inform the House and welcome in the gallery today a representative of the Cronulla RSL sub-Branch President Cory Rinaldi and board members Paul Zaat and Greg Crumblin, guests of the member for Cook.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

My question is to the Infrastructure minister. The New South Wales government's recently announced fix for the 'convict bridge' on the Great Western Highway merely replicates an 1832 one-lane-each-way bottleneck and locks in a hopelessly inadequate business support package. It's all second best while Sydney gets billions. Has the New South Wales government approached you or the federal government for funding for either the roadworks or the support package, and will your government now stump up funding to get us some decent highway access and a support package that genuinely helps our businesses that are dying because of government negligence?

I thank the member for Calare for his question, and I also acknowledge the member for Macquarie for her advocacy. She's been in my office consistently about this on behalf of the Blue Mountains community. Of course, as the members know, the closure of the Great Western Highway has had a very substantial impact on not just businesses but also families trying to get their kids to school as well as on freight operators. I've been briefed regularly by my New South Wales counterpart, Minister Aitchison in the New South Wales government, who's managing the closure and now the delivery of works.

In March, Transport for New South Wales, as you know, identified it as a really complex issue. There is a complex geotechnical failure on that 194-year-old Mitchells Causeway. NSW Government has been working to develop an engineering solution and a procurement process in parallel. That's not normally how it works, but they've been trying to expedite that as quickly as possible to work out the way forward. There's been a detailed and careful process to do that because we know we can't take shortcuts with this. On Friday, the New South Wales minister announced a contractor has been appointed, with construction to begin in July to provide residents with a clear pathway to reopening the highway next year.

I understand right at the moment detailed design work is currently under way, and that includes the possibility of adding an extra lane as well. They're working their way through if that's possible at the moment, and they will then have a clearer picture of how much this will cost. They will then work with my department on a specific funding request, but I spoke to Minister Aitchison on Friday to signal my support for the Commonwealth assisting in what we know is a very significant piece of infrastructure not just for the Blue Mountains but also the member for Calare's community. I'm very happy to keep the member for Calare and the member for Macquarie informed as we progress those works.

My question is to the Minister for Housing. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering real change for first home buyers, and why is this approach better than others for first home buyers?

I really thank the member for Paterson for her question. She is an absolute powerhouse in advocating for better housing opportunity for regional Australians. More than 2,000 people in her electorate have got into their first home with our government's assistance, and there are many more to come. We've put in place first home buyer assistance because we recognise that there is no greater aspiration than owning your own home, and Labor is delivering real change to help more Australians realise that dream. I want to tell you about Nicholas and Anthea, who have a little girl called Adeline. Like so many Australians, they were desperate to get into a home of their own. They saved for years, and they just could not make the numbers stack up. Then they found out about Labor's Help to Buy shared equity scheme. Nicholas told us that this changed everything for their family: 'Help to Buy allowed us to go from a small, rented two-bedroom apartment to a well-located three-bedroom townhouse close to shops, schools and family and made it affordable.'

It's pretty simple. Our housing policies are about helping Australians build a better future for themselves and their families, and, last week, the parliament took a critical next step towards that plan. I want to explain to the parliament how our approach fits together. We've got Help to Buy, which is delivering smaller mortgages for low- and middle-income families, we've got the five per cent deposit program that is helping Australians get to auctions years earlier, and now we've passed legislation so that, when a young family gets to an auction, they're on a level playing field with other first home buyers. Our government is firmly on the side of first home buyers.

Order, the member for Fisher!

I'm asked about some of the alternatives, and, last week, Australians got a really clear look at what they are. We saw the Liberals vote against first home buyers, we saw the Nationals vote against first home buyers and we saw One Nation vote against first home buyers. The three right-wing parties are teaming up to disadvantage first home buyers at every single auction in our country. They're opposed to the expansion of the five per cent deposit program; those opposite say it's supporting the children of billionaires. They want to scrap Help to Buy. Let's be really clear. Under those opposite, Nicholas and Anthea would still be stuck in renting, many of the 260,000 Australians who have bought their home through the five per cent deposit program would still be stuck in renting, and the 75,000 Australian households that will go out of renting and into their own home through our tax changes would also be consigned to renting. You can't claim to support first home buyers and then repeatedly vote against meaningful change that's going to support them. We've seen the evidence; those opposite are the only man left standing, defending our broken housing system. We're delivering real change for first home buyers right across the country.

My question is to the Treasurer. The day after the budget, the Treasurer was asked by Peter Stefanovic if he negatively gears any properties, and the Treasurer said, 'I don't, Pete, no. I did maybe a decade ago or something like that.' Can the Treasurer explain to Australians why it's fair for him to benefit from negative gearing and then rip up the same opportunity for millions of aspirational Australians?

Order! The imputation in that question wasn't particularly within the standing orders. Reflecting on a member in such a way, regarding his own financial benefit, is barely within the standing orders. But out of respect for the member for Flinders—

An honourable member interjecting—

Yes. I think we'll hear from the Leader of the House on the point of order because I'm not comfortable with the tone of the question. The subject matter is important, so I want to find a way that we can have this question answered.

Mr Speaker, under page 555 of Practice, it's not in order for questions to be reflecting on the private affairs of a minister. That's entirely what this question does.

Let's hear from the Manager of Opposition Business. We may find a way with the question being rephrased, like we did last week with another question in that vein. But we'll find a way.

Speaker, last week you allowed questions to be asked of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Housing about their arrangements because they contained a contemporary hook to their portfolio responsibilities. This question is similarly constructed. I also note the ruling Speaker Smith gave about these types of questions on 15 October 2015. Questions are not permitted purely about a minister's or prime minister's private affairs. There needs to be a connection with their responsibilities. I have listened very carefully, and that connection has been made on this question. That's exactly what this question did. We made sure that it did, because this is all about—

Okay. We don't need to go into analysis.

I'm happy to go into the analysis, but I won't.

I'm aware of that ruling. Where we intersect on page 178 is discretionary powers of the chair, which can always deal with some of these topics. I'm not happy with the imputation, just as I wasn't last week, but we're going to allow it. I remind the House that it's a bit of a dangerous slope to go down for everyone in the House if we're going to open this can of worms up. It is not within the dignity of the House to go to the specific financial matters of any individual member of the House. Language is important, but the manager is correct. There is a policy area that the Treasurer is responsible for, so I'm going to be very broad with allowing the Treasurer's response in light of what I've just said.

I'd be very surprised if the Leader of the Opposition wants to go down this path, which I suspect is why nobody on the frontbench asked that question. Just like the Leader of the Opposition, the questions from the Liberal and National parties are becoming increasingly desperate and more than a little bit pathetic. Our changes in the budget that we announced less than two months ago are about making the housing market fairer for everyone. They're about making sure that, for the first time in a quarter of a century, first home buyers—and, particularly, young Australians—get a fair go in a housing market that has locked them out for too long.

We understand that those opposite—all three of the right-wing parties over there with their divisive, antihousing, antiworker agenda—would like to leave the housing market and the tax system exactly as it is. They are entirely comfortable with this idea that, for a quarter of a century since Mr Howard and Mr Costello made a big policy mistake to distort the housing market and lock more young people out of the market—that is the status quo that they will go to any lengths to preserve. We have a different view about the housing market. No objective observer of the housing market in this country would say that it's working exactly as it should be, and it's especially not working for first home buyers.

Once you come to that realisation and acknowledge that truth, you've got two choices: (1) do nothing about it, which has been their approach for a decade; or (2) do something about this challenge to make it easier for first home buyers to get a toehold in a market that has been too difficult for them for too long.

You're pulling up the ladder.

The Leader of the Opposition has been interjecting once again about the ladder, and I'll say once again to the Leader of the Opposition that not everybody fails upwards up the ladder like the Leader of the Opposition does. Not everybody starts their life at the top of the ladder. There's not much point in a ladder if the first few rungs are missing. That's the case when it comes to the housing market in this country. We are making the housing market fairer for first home buyers. We are proud to be doing that. No amount of increasingly desperate, increasingly pathetic questions from those opposite will deter us.

My question is to the Minister for Emergency Management. How is the Albanese Labor government supporting communities across Australia to prepare and respond to natural disasters? How does this compare to other approaches?

I thank the member for Lingiari. She's a fierce advocate for her community, and her community has been severely impacted by floods and cyclones. Thank you for all the time you've spent with me in my office speaking about that. We know Australia's experiencing increasingly frequent, severe and complex natural disasters, and it requires a coordinated response from all levels of government. And that's why the Albanese government supports all Australian communities to prepare for and respond to disaster.

In just the last high-risk weather season alone, we saw 60 severe weather events, impacting more than 190 local government areas. I saw firsthand the impacts on our communities, from Harcourt in Victoria and Dolphin Sands in Tassie to Julia Creek in Queensland and Katherine in the NT—homes and livestock lost, businesses closed and major infrastructure damaged. And, tragically, we lost community members, including first responders.

Our government has made substantial investments in emergency management, from establishing the National Emergency Management Agency to create a single nationally coordinated—

Order! The minister will pause. The member for Fisher is returning to his bad habits, again, of continually—

The member for Fisher then left the chamber.

Thank you. He has taken the cue that that sort of behaviour is disrespectful to the House—particularly as a former Speaker. We're not going to have random people just saying what they want, non-stop. He's had a good go this week, but everyone's got to draw a line in the sand with their behaviour.

As I said, we've created the National Emergency Management Agency to provide a nationally coordinated agency to better prepare for, respond to and recover from disaster; we've got our $1 billion Disaster Ready Fund delivering disaster resilience and risk reduction across the country; we've created the National Emergency Management Stockpile, supporting the rollout of critical goods and services to communities quickly; we're delivering AusAlert, our new national emergency warning system, that sends near-instant emergency alerts to mobile devices; and we're investing more than $100 million in national aerial firefighting capability.

I was asked how this compares to other approaches. Well, those opposite ignored warnings from fire commissioners, they delayed and played politics with recovery support—

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! Members on my left!

and now you only have to look at the comments from the Leader of the Opposition in the media today to know nothing has changed. If there were a Rhodes scholar amongst us who had done a dissertation on bushfire management then they might be qualified to comment on how firefighters do their job, but there isn't.

Opposition members interjecting—

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! The minister will just pause a moment. There was way too much noise. The minister can just resume her seat for a moment. Thank you. The Manager of Opposition Business on a point of order?

Yes. It just goes to alternative approaches, Speaker. This is a ruling of Speaker Smith, who, as you know, like you, tried to be very balanced and fair on these things. Just because you're asked about alternative approaches does not mean that you can embark on a character assessment. You're going to need to actually find an alternative policy approach that you can refer to that's relevant to the question that has been asked. I point you to that from Speaker Smith, Speaker.

We'll hear from the Leader of the House.

Mr Speaker, to the point of order: what the minister is responding to is completely consistent with what the Manager of Opposition Business just read out. It is extraordinary that the Leader of the Opposition made the comments about firefighters that he made, but they will be responded to.

The member for Braddon is warned. I couldn't hear because of the interjections, so I'm just going to remind the minister she's entitled—she was asked a question about natural disasters and how this compares to other approaches. She was reading some information about a quote or some information, so she is being directly relevant. But I remind her and all members—if we're going to talk about character, Manager of Opposition Business—that we don't bring personal matters into the parliament, as I just said in the last question, at all.

A minute ago.

Order. We've just had that conversation. So the minister needs to be directly relevant. She's entitled to state her claims that she's answering the question with, but I'll listen carefully to make sure she is following the standing orders.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I was pointing out, the Leader of the Opposition stood at a precipice in front of people and pointed the finger at rural firefighters, saying that they let the 2003 Snowy Mountains bushfires run. That is absolutely shameful. I am disgusted, and so are the first responders who have come into my office to complain about it. And I have a message for first responders.

Fucking bullshit!

Order! Everyone resume their seats immediately. I'm not sure what transpired there, but I'm going to ask everyone to reflect on their behaviours. The member for Warringah, on a point of order?

It's for the member for Groom to be named for unparliamentary behaviour.

I can appreciate the member for Warringah's view, but I genuinely did not see what occurred. If there has been an incident before the parliament, I will review footage. I will report to the House if necessary. I'm asking everyone to rise to the challenge of representing their electorates and showing more dignity in this chamber. I will inspect what happened. I ask all members to please follow my lead. I ask the minister to conclude.

As I said, first responders have come into my office upset and unsure about why someone in a leadership position has said that they didn't do their job. I spent a lot of time with first responders in my own community during the Black Summer, Tathra and Yankees Gap fires. My message to those first responders is our government has your back in the difficult decisions you have to make to keep us safe. The Leader of the Opposition should stand up, be a man and apologise now. (Time expired)

My question is to the Prime Minister. Last night, Sarah Ferguson asked him whether he had sought assurances from the Victorian Premier that no Commonwealth funding would end up in the hands of organised crime. The Prime Minister responded 'of course'. When did the Prime Minister seek these assurances, and what form did they take?

I, like the Victorian Premier, am opposed to corruption in any form. It's up to authorities, wherever there is evidence—as I said last night—for action to be taken by those authorities should there be any evidence of corrupt conduct.

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. How is the Albanese Labor government improving outcomes for working Australians, and why is this effort so important? What are the risks?

I'd like to thank the member for Moore for his question but also for his years and years of advocating for working Australians both before and after coming to this place.

From day one, this Labor government has been committed to improving wages and delivering tax cuts for hardworking Australians. From tomorrow, Aussie workers will see further cost-of-living relief because of this government's action. From tomorrow, 1 July, over 14 million Australians will get another tax cut. This is on top of the tax relief we've already delivered since coming to government. And, of course, there will be more tax cuts to come under this government.

Not only are we ensuring that people get more of what they earn by cutting taxes; we're also focused on improving the wages of Australians. This Labor government has advocated year after year for pay increases for our lowest paid workers to the Fair Work Commission. From tomorrow, almost three million workers will receive a real wage increase. Workers on awards will receive a 4.75 per cent increase, and workers on the national minimum wage will receive a six per cent increase. From tomorrow, the national minimum wage will be more than $12,000 higher per year compared to when we came to government. And, for the first time ever, a full-time worker on the national minimum wage will earn over $1,000 a week. Not only is this Labor government backing workers on the minimum wage; we've also made significant changes to our workplace laws to reinvigorate enterprise bargaining, and we are seeing those laws delivered, with higher wages for millions of workers.

I'm asked about the biggest risk to our efforts to deliver for workers. Of course, the biggest risk is those sitting opposite. At the most recent election, the coalition promised a tax increase to working Australians. When the coalition were last in government, they made low wages a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. The Liberal and National parties never once advocated a wage increase for our lowest paid workers. Of course, they've always been in good company. They've been in the company of One Nation, who have continually failed to back workers in this country as well.

Despite these three right-wing parties opposite taking every opportunity to stand in the way of pay rises and try and stop tax cuts for hardworking Australians, it is this Labor government that's getting on with the job. (Time expired)

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that no Commonwealth taxpayer funds have directly or indirectly been paid into the hands of convicted criminal and underworld figure Mick Gatto or any associated companies?

This goes to the first question that I was asked after the 2022 election, and at that time I pointed out the action that I took as Leader of the Australian Labor Party within three weeks of my election. Within three weeks of my election as Leader of the Opposition, I took on some people such as John Setka. I expelled him from the Labor Party. He took action and took us to court. He appealed that court action, and we defended that, and John Setka remains outside the Labor Party. We also have excluded the CFMEU from being affiliates of the Labor Party. We also put the CFMEU into administration. That stands in stark contrast—

Speaker—

Has the Prime Minister concluded his answer?

If he doesn't want to hear it, yes.

My question is to the Minister for Communications. How is the Albanese Labor government continuing to lead the world when it comes to keeping kids safe from the harms of social media?

I thank the member for Bass for her question and for the thoughtful and optimistic contribution that she has made to the parliament in her time here so far.

Australia's world-leading social media minimum age laws sparked a global conversation that is rapidly becoming a global movement. Since our laws started on 10 December, more than five million social media accounts belonging to under-16's have been removed, deactivated or restricted. But the impact of our social media minimum age laws isn't stopping there. Our goal is for tech companies to compete on the safety features of their platforms in the same way that car companies promote themselves as the safest for your family. After my meeting with the founder and CEO earlier this year, Roblox introduced children's accounts with improved safety features, and Apple will soon implement a significant uplift to parental controls—a change the CEO said was inspired by Australia's world-leading approach to children's online safety.

Building on our social media minimum age laws, the Albanese government will introduce a digital duty of care that will require platforms to have systems in place to prevent harm before it occurs—harm from AI chatbots that send people down dangerous paths, or 'nudify' tools that strip people of their bodily autonomy, and harm from personalised algorithm recommended systems that maximise engagement and put profit before user wellbeing; systems that amplify extreme content, entrench social biases and negatively impact mental health through addiction and harmful online comparisons; and systems that send users down rabbit holes and create echo chambers that fuel division or extremism in the community. The Albanese government is proud to stand with parents, and we will not back down from our mission to keep kids safe from the harms of social media.

As Wayne Holdsworth, the founder of SmackTalk, said yesterday:

The implementation of this legislation—

The social media minimum age law—

and the day that it was effected December 10, 2025 is an historic day in this country's history and I'm really proud to be an Australian.

The world is watching. We will continue to lead the way and, going forward, I implore all members of parliament to support the Albanese government's amendment to the social media minimum age law so that the eSafety Commissioner can hold social media platforms to account.

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Murray Primary Health Network, which services most of Indi, recently had its after-hours funding cut, apparently because demand is now serviced by Medicare urgent care clinics. The government says four in five Australians live within 20 minutes of a Medicare urgent care clinic, but in Indi, if you live outside Wodonga, it's zero. Minister, can you guarantee that rural communities without a Medicare urgent care clinic will not lose access to after-hours care?

Thank you to the member for her question. I think she and I have been corresponding about one particular after-hours service—I think it's called Walwa Bush Nursing Centre, or something like that. I responded to the member, I think last week, about this. It is true that we have adjusted the funding that has traditionally been paid to primary health networks to support after-hours services across the country, and let me give a bit of a sense of why. The member says that's apparently because of the rollout of the urgent care clinic network. That is part of the reason, but it is only part of the reason.

As the member knows, given how familiar she is with the health area, there has been a bit of a transformation about the way in which people access health, particularly after-hours, since COVID. This has been particularly driven by the explosion of telehealth services. Really, what's happened that is more significant, I think, than the urgent care clinic network rollout, particularly for communities like the member's, is the rollout of 1800MEDICARE, which now gives all Australians 24/7 access to high-quality nurse advice and triage services and, after 6 pm, in that period of time that the after-hours service pre telehealth focused on—from 6 pm to 8 am—free-of-charge, high-quality telehealth services from a GP as well.

It's true to say that the urgent care clinic network has also picked up a significant part of what used to be serviced through the after-hours program. It's also true to say that that's not covering every single regional community, as the member knows far better than I do, coming from a city electorate as I do. But I'm convinced that, with the rollout of 1800MEDICARE, which, since January, has responded to 700,000 episodes of service, plus the urgent care clinic network, plus the degree of support that our Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program has given to communities like the member's, which has seen bulk-billing practices triple since just November last year, we are delivering a much stronger Medicare service now.

I think, as I said in my response to the member's letter about that particular after-hours service, the PHN, the primary health network, has provided some funding to that service through the 2026-27 financial year. They have, on my advice, been experiencing quite low service volumes. That, around the country, is seen as a reflection of these new services like 1800MEDICARE and the urgent care clinic network, so the funding that they will receive over the 2026-27 financial year will reflect the quite significant reduction that I understand this service has seen in their after-hours volumes.

My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. What progress has been made by the Albanese Labor government to repair and rebuild our aged-care workforce? Why was it necessary, after a decade of neglect?

Thank you to the member for Werriwa. I know many colleagues on this side of the chamber share my great admiration for her and the fearless way that she fights for the people of South Western Sydney. When we came to government we found an aged-care sector on its knees after a decade of neglect—a workforce stretched beyond its capacity to deliver care to our loved ones and wages that didn't reflect the value of the skilled and challenging work that they do. On this side of the House we know that better care for workers means better care for older Australians. We came to government with a commitment to rebuild aged care. Keeping skilled workers in the sector has been central to this promise, and it's why we've invested almost $18 billion to increase aged-care worker wages. This morning I had the pleasure of joining the Treasurer, the Minister for Social Services and the member for Bean to celebrate yet another wage rise for workers around the country, including our aged-care workers.

Tomorrow's increase means an extra $85 per week in the pocket of a registered nurse on the award, $67 per week for enrolled nurses and $59 per week for personal-care workers. That's around $3,000 to $4,000 a year, depending on your role. That's food on the table; it's rent or the mortgage paid; it's a family holiday with the kids. It comes on top of our previous increase to aged-care wages, which already have the average registered nurse in aged care more than $28,000 a year better off under this Albanese Labor government. It's tens of thousands more than what workers were receiving in the nine miserable years under those opposite. After just four years, our work to boost wages for those in aged care is helping us keep the dedicated people who do the work in this sector, in the sector for even longer.

All of this comes on top of our focus on delivering real change for every working Australian. Five tax cuts, cheaper health care, more homes and more home owners—we're delivering more cost-of-living help and building a more productive economy, a better tax system, a fairer housing market and a stronger and more sustainable budget. Today isn't the last of our work delivering better wages for workers in the sector, with another increase for nurses to be delivered in just a month on 1 August.

If there's one thing that we learned from the Liberals' time in office, it's you can't have a strong aged-care system without a strong and supported aged-care workforce. Our aged-care system is better when workers are properly supported at work and at home. To every single aged-care worker across Australia, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for the dignity and the compassion that you bring. Thank you for working around the clock. You're the best of us and you deserve every dollar that these wage increases deliver.

My question is to the Prime Minister. What assurances was the Prime Minister given by the Victorian Premier on whether Commonwealth taxpayer funds, directly or indirectly, made it into the hands of convicted criminal and underworld figure Mick Gatto or any of his associated companies?

I will take up that question from where I was speaking before, before I was rudely interrupted. I'll make three points. One, I confirm the actions that this government has taken. Two, that stands in stark contrast to the former government, that had a royal commission into unions, but it was about having a crack at the then leader of the opposition using Commonwealth funds to have a crack at the then member for Maribyrnong and have a go at the former prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. Millions of dollars were spent during the same period of which John Setka increased his influence in the CFMEU and expanded it from Victoria into South Australia and Tasmania.

I'll make two further points. In 2024 the Commonwealth put specific provisions in funding agreements with states and territories that place obligations on jurisdictions to report any allegations of unacceptable behaviour. That was something that wasn't there under the former government. Further than that, Victoria continues to keep the Commonwealth informed of the work that they've done to strengthen the integrity processes. Those measures include requirements within tenders to develop a management plan for fraud—

It can't be more relevant!

Order. The Prime Minister was asked a specific question. He's reading about Commonwealth assurances that he was asked about. There cannot possibly be a point of order, Member for Cowper. If he was asking about other topics—he specifically referenced 2024. Resume your seat. Resume your seat. He was asked what assurance he was given. He was reading about it. Resume your seat! There has been far too much disrespect in this chamber today.

These are the measures that the Victorian government have put in place: (1) requirements within tenders to develop a management plan for fraud and integrity matters; (2) broaden conflicts of interest and gifts and hospitality requirements; (3) a requirement for contractors to install robust security access arrangements at sites; (4) minimum requirements for timesheet systems—

Fail!

The member for Goldstein is warned

(5) requirements for contractors to provide a register of subcontractors and suppliers engaged on a relevant project; and (6) the establishment of a mandatory register of approved industrial relations consultants and mediators. Those are the measures that have been put in place. The measures that have been put in place by this minister are substantive as well—measures that were not in place under the former government.

My question is to the Minister for Education. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to make sure early educators are paid fairly while strengthening the safety and affordability of early education?

I thank my friend the big-hearted member for Blair for his question. As he knows, tomorrow, every Australian worker will get a tax cut and three million Australians will get a pay rise, and that includes hundreds of thousands of childcare workers right across the country. As I told the House last week, when we were first elected, childcare workers were leaving the job in droves not because they didn't love the job but because you could earn more money stacking shelves than educating our kids. That has now changed. It's changed because of the 15 per cent pay rise that we've delivered. As a result of that, there are now 20,000 more childcare workers working right across the country. It turns out that if you pay people more, more people want to do the job. That's why what we announced a couple of weeks ago and locking it in is so important. It's good for the workers because they get paid more, but it's also good for parents because the centres have got to cap their fees to get the money. For the average family with a child in child care, it'll save them about $1,500 over the next two years.

So it is good for workers and good for parents, but it's also good for our kids because we've added a new condition. To get the funding, the centre also has to meet the national safety standard. This builds on the work that we've been doing over the last 12 months—the banning of personal mobile phones in centres, the CCTV trial and the mandatory safety training. I can tell the House that now 99 per cent of workers have done that national mandatory safety training. That's the first phase. The next stage of that training will start to roll out next month.

The reforms also include the legislation that we passed through this parliament last year, which means that if you don't meet the standards, you can have your funding cut. That wasn't an idle threat. I can tell the House that we've now issued notices against 115 centres. Forty-seven centres have now suddenly fixed the problems they've refused to fix for more than five years, and seven centres have voluntarily relinquished their licences. I can inform the House that, today, my department has cut funding to a service in Victoria that has been warned and continued not to meet the standard. This is not the end; this is just the start. The truth is that this work will never end, and we'll continue to take the steps we need to keep our kids safe.

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Young Australians are being diagnosed with early onset bowel cancer at the highest known rate in the world. Many report that GPs are reluctant to screen because of their young age, which is leading to advanced cancers being diagnosed. How can the government better raise awareness among young people about early onset bowel cancer, and what supports can be provided to GPs to encourage earlier access of screening?

Thank you to the member for Mayo. I think members right across the chamber, and senators as well, met with younger Australians from their own electorates that came to this building last week to talk about this extraordinary, terrible trend that we're living through now with, as the member said, the largest increase in younger onset bowel cancer we can find anywhere in the world. It's not the only cancer type where we're seeing big rates of increase in younger diagnoses—head and neck is one, and there are a number of others as well—but colorectal or bowel cancer really does stand out.

We've provided funding and requested advice from Cancer Australia to start a research program particularly focused on this question. We did that a year or two ago; I can't quite remember when. One of the clinician researchers that is leading some of that research was part of the delegation last week. I'm not sure whether the member for Mayo managed to talk to him. I think people like that—extraordinarily smart, experienced people—are pretty honest that we just don't know what is driving this big increase in diagnosis rates among younger Australians. I'm not talking about the 45-year-old to 50-year-old cohort, which has been the subject of a NHMRC investigation about whether we should move the bowel cancer screening age from 50 down to 45. The member is talking about people in their 20s and in their 30s.

There are a range of hypotheses. Some of them are being tested and probed by the research that we've funded through Cancer Australia. This research is happening in cooperation with clinician researchers right across the world. We talked to that group—and I've talked to others involved in bowel cancer—about ways in which we can lift the awareness of general practitioners, not to simply discount reports from their patients about symptoms that should be investigated and not to simply put it down to something unrelated to bowel cancer.

I know that those groups and government are talking to the college of GPs about materials and resources we can give to their GP members, who, as the member knows, really are the front line when young Australians in their 20s, 30s and 40s are going to their GP and asking questions about these symptoms that they're having. That terrific campaign group that came to see us last week and that came to see us at the same time last year is doing everything they can to raise awareness among young Australians—not to look past some symptoms that simply are not normal. But we need to do more. We need to understand what is driving this big increase in diagnosis. We need to help lift the awareness among GPs about this issue and for them to know what to do about it.

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering on its commitment to strengthen paid parental leave, and how is it supporting families and women in the workforce? What are the risks to this?

I want to thank the member for Dickson for her terrific question. I know, when she's out doorknocking, which she does a lot of, many families that have received paid parental leave in her electorate raised this with her. One thousand seven hundred parents in her electorate, just last year, received paid parental leave. This morning, as the Treasurer and the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors said, we were out at the Uniting Care Mirinjani—which is a fantastic facility—with Sharon and her team, as well as the member for Bean. Sharon, of course, heads a workplace that is mostly female and that takes care of older Australians when they need it most. From tomorrow, this fantastic group of staff will receive a range of terrific benefits, including higher wages, including tax cuts and including payday super, and, of course, they'll see increases in their family tax benefit tomorrow as well, if they've got kids. If they have a baby, from tomorrow onwards, they'll of course, receive the full six months of paid parental leave—more time at home. They'll receive more money, over $1,000 a week, now. More people will be eligible, and the scheme is more flexible.

Thanks to our changes since coming to government, the Albanese Labor government has more than doubled the entitlement for paid parental leave. It's around $30,000 now. We know that is particularly important in female dominated industries like aged care where we've also seen the benefits of our changes to industrial relations, which has meant we've got the lowest gender pay gap in history because of the changes this government has made.

In industries like aged care, you also see a lot of casual workers and a lot of part-time workers who are women. They, of course, also benefit from paid parental leave, as long as they meet the work test, and that's very important to know. Of course, we know that those opposite have been completely all over the place on that. The shadow treasurer disappears every time I talk about paid parental leave. He's gone again! Of course, One Nation is only 50 per cent here. We've got one of them but not the other one. What happens when the Liberals and One Nation gang up on paid parental leave when they both have such odd—

Opposition members interjecting—

Oh, they support it. The shadow treasurer doesn't. Since 2017, the leader of One Nation has been saying that women get themselves pregnant for the money. The idea of One Nation and the Liberals ganging up on this is a disaster. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. Since coming to government in 2022, how many older Australians have died while waiting for their home-care package?

I thank the member for his question. It stands to reason—certainly any reasonable person's judgement—that no-one in this place wants any older Australian to pass away waiting for the care that they deserve. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety examined exactly this. At the peak of the aged-care crisis, which was around 2018, more than 16,000 older Australians were dying on the waiting list each year, approved for what was then a home-care package but passing away before they ever received it. It's why the commission recommended that the aged-care system should be better at supporting Australians to age in place and to receive those services quickly to keep them healthier at home for longer. This parliament acted on those recommendations together on a bipartisan basis through the new Aged Care Act and the Support at Home program that began on 1 November.

That number today is still too high, but the number of people dying while waiting for care has significantly reduced, and the way we're bringing those tragic deaths down further is by investing to cut wait times for Support at Home services. The latest data shows that standard-priority cases are now waiting, on average, three months less. Medium-priority cases are waiting around two months less. High-priority wait times are now just one to two months, and, as always, those assessed as urgent priority are always allocated their full funding within a month.

Our investment of $47 billion in the aged-care system next year, including an extra 32,000 new Support at Home places on top of the 83,000 that we finished delivering today will continue our work to drive these wait times down.

There's much more work to do to ensure that the system moves faster and is more responsive to older people's needs. Our job is to get those wait times down further and get care to people faster, no matter where they live. The number is the same as it has been for some time. It has been reported publicly, and I have given it in this House. It is distressing that, last financial year, 4,812 Australians were on that list. We have made significant progress, but, for all of those people and the older people to come, we'll continue that work to deliver on the promise of the royal commission and provide the safe, dignified care that every older Australian deserves.

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How are Medicare urgent care clinics helping Australians around the country see a doctor when they need it, and why is it so important to strengthen Medicare after a decade of cuts and neglect?

Thank you to the member for Robertson, who is affectionately known as Dr Gordon in his electorate, where he still pulls shifts as an emergency physician at the Wyong hospital. Through that work and his other work as a doctor he is a terrific source of advice to us about our program to strengthen Medicare, and I'm glad to say he's seeing the results in his own electorate. Our record investment in bulk-billing in November last year has already seen the bulk-billing rate climb by more than 10 per cent for people who don't have that concession card—more than 10 per cent in just five months.

At around the same time, we opened the urgent care clinic at Erina. That has already seen about 9,000 patients, and from tomorrow the Erina urgent care clinic will become a permanent feature of our healthcare system, along with the other 136 clinics that we have delivered. As I said, last week, we opened the last of the 137 clinics we committed to delivering before 30 June. It was in Caloundra, in the electorate of Fisher, and, just like the urgent care clinic at Erina, the Liberal Party refused to match our commitment to the urgent care clinic at Caloundra in the member for Fisher's electorate.

I say to the member for Fisher in his absence that at least we had his back on the Sunshine Coast. More than 3.2 million Australians have now gone through these new clinics. They're staffed by high-quality doctors and nurses, they're open seven days a week and they're fully bulk-billed. That confidence to try something new comes from knowing that these clinics are backed by Medicare—that cornerstone of the world's best health system. They're not just urgent care clinics; they're Medicare urgent care clinics.

There's been a bit of chatter recently about older brands getting a bit stale—chatter that happened again this morning, for some reason—and older brands needing a bit of glitter and a bit of pizzazz. Well, I can tell you that the Medicare brand needs no pizzazz. It doesn't need any glitter, because it hasn't changed in 40 years. People still get the same Medicare cards that Bob Hawke was posting out to people in 1984, and people still trust that brand more than ever before because it delivers for them. It delivers real change in their lives. It builds a healthy Australia, and that, Mr Speaker, is how you build a strong brand.

My question is to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. Shane is 64, has served in the Australian Army for 21 years and lives with multiple injuries. Shane will hit the proposed $5,000 limit for veterans' allied health services in less than four months. Many veterans have said to me they will need to choose between physical and psychological health support—or be retraumatised trying to seek extra support above the cap. Will the government do the right thing by veterans and raise or reverse the proposed cap?

I thank the member for the question, because it's important to be able to provide the House with the full suite of information about the package that was announced on budget night. At the moment, we know many veterans are having difficulty accessing allied health services because, historically, DVA has not paid those allied health professionals enough. And so we announced that we'll make the biggest increase in 20 years to those fees. As part of that, we're also scrapping the treatment cycle that meant that veterans would have to go back to a GP for a new referral every 12 sessions with an allied health professional, which was of course adding to the administrative burden and the complexity for those veterans as well as for GPS. We're replacing that with the $5,000 allocation, as we mentioned, but, importantly, our commitment is that any veteran that has a clinical need to go over that amount will be able to access additional allied health services.

Now, to put that $5,000 in context, the median use of allied health services by veterans is $1,900. Around one in 10 veterans may go above that $5,000 amount, and we've committed, as you would expect, to working with the veterans community in consulting with them about the best method for obtaining those approvals where they may need more, because we understand that some veterans have very complex needs. For different allied health services, that may work in different ways, recognising the diversity of allied health users. So we'll work with the veterans and with the Allied Health service professionals around a system to make sure there's a good approval system with no gap in delivery of service to a veteran that has a clinical need to receive it.

Opposition members interjecting—

And I say to those that are heckling opposite that it would be helpful if they would engage in constructive conversation around this instead of trying to create fear in the veterans community as we engage with the veterans community to make sure this system works well for them with better access to allied health care going forward.

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. What policies are helping to lower the cost of fuel and energy to households, and what policies would see Australians paying more?

I'm very grateful for the call and for the question from my honourable friend—and what a wonderful job she does representing the people of northern New South Wales in this House. I'm asked what policies we have to help people with the costs of fuel and energy, and of course we have several. We have the cheaper home battery policy, which tomorrow turns one year old. It was introduced on 1 July last year, and I'm pleased to tell the House that 456,320 Australian households have introduced cheaper home batteries. That equates now to 13 gigawatt-hours of storage. Now, the House might ask, 'What's 13 gigawatt-hours?' Well, some honourable members might remember the Hornsdale battery, which was at the time the biggest battery in the world. We thought it was a great national achievement at the time. Australian households have now installed 100 times the capacity of the Hornsdale battery just in the last year alone. These are Australians reducing their bills, in many cases, to zero but also putting downward pressure on bills for everyone, because they are storing that cheap renewable energy from the middle of the day and using it at night, which means we are using less of the more expensive energy.

What we are seeing is Australians in the suburbs and the regions taking up this policy with great enthusiasm. I told the House last week that there are four electorates that have more than 10 per cent of the households with cheaper home batteries: Greenway, Mitchell, Mayo and Wright. They are people who are taking up the cheaper home battery policy with great enthusiasm. But I can tell the House that, since last week, there has been a development. There is now another electorate in which more than 10 per cent of the houses in that community have put in cheaper home batteries. 'What inner-city, woke electorate is it?' I can feel the House asking. Would it be a member who supports the cheaper home battery policy or one who opposes it? Well, the electorate in question is the electorate of Hume. More than 10 per cent of the good people of Hume have now put in a cheaper home battery.

Is the local member pleased with this development? Has he said, 'Fantastic! Well done, Hume!' or is he against the policy? Well, I'm sorry to tell the House he has called for the abolition of the cheaper home battery policy. He doesn't want those 5,405 households in Hume to be able to reduce their bills to nothing. He doesn't want them helping reducing bills for everyone. When the members opposite have a chance to help Australians reduce their fuel bill or reduce their energy bill, they say no. They're against cheaper home batteries. They're against the EV tax cut. They're against the new vehicle efficiency standard. They're against any policy which helps Australians reduce their bills, because of their prejudice and their anticlimate action. They don't want to stand with the people of the suburbs and regions of Australia, including the people of Hume. Well, we do.

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.

A serious incident occurred during question time, and it has been brought to my attention what occurred. I'm deeply concerned and troubled by the incident. The member for Groom has shown severe disrespect to this House through his words and his actions. I take these matters extremely seriously. This is a new low that I have witnessed, and, as a result of these actions, I've been left with no other choice. Because of the respect and dignity of this House and because of his actions, I now name the member for Groom.

I move:

That the Member for Groom be suspended from the service of the House.

The question is that the member for Groom be suspended from the service of the House.

The member for Groom is suspended from the service of the House for 24 hours, and I certainly hope the member for Groom, when he does return, will apologise to the House.

Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Does the Leader of the Opposition claim to have been misrepresented?

Yes, most egregiously, Mr Speaker.

You may proceed.

During question time, the member for Eden-Monaro said that I impugned RFS firefighters. I did no such thing and never would. I was referring to the failures of national park management in the lead-up to the devastating 2003 fires in the Snowy Mountains. This is what I said in Kiandra, in the heart of the Snowy Mountains:

Year by year by year, the National Parks decided they didn't want people here. … They thought the only knowledge or experience that mattered was in an office … or in a bureaucracy.

… In January of 2003, the dry storms rolled through … and fire started and the National Parks said, 'We're not going to put them out' …

So I did not blame firefighters; I blamed the mismanagement of the National Parks bureaucracy. What I said was based on a Commonwealth report published in 2003 called A nation charred that showed evidence that the National Parks's mismanagement had resulted in excessive fuel load, inadequate hazard reduction, poor fire-trail access and a lack of management planning. I table this report, Mr Speaker. The member for Eden-Monaro should withdraw and apologise.

Is the Leader of the Opposition seeking to table a document?

I do seek leave to table the report.

Leave not granted.

I present the Auditor-General's report No. 45 of 2025-26 titled Australian Taxation Office management of small business collectable debt.

Document made a parliamentary paper.

Documents are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

I have received a letter from the honourable Leader of the Nationals in the House of Representatives, the member for Gippsland, proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government's failure to govern for older Australians.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor. It's as simple as that. The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor. Now, through deliberate measures in a budget of broken promises and higher taxes and through rationing the services that our seniors need, the Labor Party has sent a clear message that it simply does not respect older Australians. The message we are receiving back in return is equally simple. Australians want their country back. After four years of this government, Australians are worse off and our country is heading the wrong direction. It's older Australians who are copping it the most. Budgets are about choices, and this government simply doesn't choose to support our older Australians.

Now, for a prime minister who promised to govern for all Australians, this is yet another broken promise because our aged-care system is in crisis. There are now 230,000 Australians on waiting lists, and what those Australians don't need is the fake empathy we saw in question time from this minister. They need action. The aged-care system has 230,000 people on waiting lists, and now what we're seeing on top of that, in terms of impacts on older Australians, is this government coming out and deciding to cut private health insurance rebates. We've seen this government come along and change the arrangements for capital gains tax, change the arrangements for negative gearing and change the arrangements of trust and self-managed super funds, all after the Prime Minister said not once, not twice, but 50 times he was making no such changes. The Australian people weren't even given a chance to vote on those changes at an election.

I'm going to focus my comments today more on aged care for a very good reason. This is literally a matter of life and death for a lot of older people in our community. I have spoken on this issue in the past, in this chamber and in the Federation Chamber as well, and I make this contribution with a heavy heart because it should never have come to this. We have written repeatedly to this minister on behalf of constituents. In fact, my office is now tracking 18 outstanding representations to the minister since the start of the year. This minister can take three to four months to bother responding to correspondence on behalf of my constituents. I'm not trying to score a political point in saying this, but we are trying to instil a sense of urgency in this minister and his department about the real-life consequences of their failure to fix the aged-care system.

Now, the minister has told the House previously:

Aged care is a fundamental promise this country makes to older Australians that … they will be safe, they will be seen and they will be cared for with dignity.

But, given that Senate estimates has been told that 4,800 older Australians died in just 12 months waiting for their Support at Home package, isn't this just another broken promise to the people of Australia? We simply don't know what the current figure is. The minister was invited today to give us a figure from 2022 to now. He failed to do that. There could be up to 100 Australians dying each week as they wait for the support they are entitled to receive.These people have been assessed and have been deemed eligible for support, and they are dying on the waiting list. These are not abstract numbers on a page. These are real people who have worked hard, contributed their taxes and helped to build our nation, and they find themselves needing a little bit of help to stay in their homes. They've been assessed for care, and they're not receiving the care they're entitled to.

I'm going to give you one tragic example. I've spoken about this in the past and in local media. I have the permission of the family to do so. I was contacted by a family member who was concerned about his 99-year-old parents, Frank and Velma, who were both 99 and both living at home. They wanted to stay at home—and we all know that older people in our community do better if they have that opportunity to stay in their own, familiar surroundings. After some recent falls, Frank and Velma were reassessed as being eligible for a modest assistance package under the Support at Home program. Did they get the help, as the minister tries to pretend in this place? No. Frank and Velma were told their package would be delivered in 11- to 12-months time. They were 99 years old! We warned the government that they could very well die before they received that package. We asked in Senate estimates if there was any way we could fast track this package for Frank and Velma. I wrote to the minister. We waited 74 days for a response from the government, and poor Frank died seven days before that letter arrived in my office. Frank died on the waiting list. We received no additional action, and the letter itself contained no commitment to try and fast track support for this 99-year-old couple. I urge the minister and I urge the department to take some responsibility for these long delays and show some urgency on behalf of older Australians who are now waiting up to 12 months to receive Support at Home packages that they've been deemed eligible to receive.

Sadly it's not an isolated case. I've got one other case here in a letter from Marie, who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago, I think, about her 100-year-old mother. She says, 'My mother is 100 years old. She has already waited many months after being approved for funding and now faces further delays before any practical assistance can be provided. The government promotes programs that support older people to remain in their own homes, but the reality is that the system seems unable to deliver supports within a timeframe that reflects the urgency of their needs. Perhaps those responsible for designing these changes should ask themselves a simple question: if this were their own mother or father, would they be satisfied with this outcome?'

I appeal to the minister, and I appeal to the department: if this were your mother or father, who was 100 years old and waiting month after month for support in their own home, would you be satisfied? I ask the department, and I ask the minister to do better. Just do better. The minister can't claim that he hasn't been told. As I said, I've written to him on many occasions and so have my colleagues. In March this year the minister said:

I think the Integrated Assessment Tool is doing a good job.

Then, on 3 June, he announced a so-called rapid review of the same system that apparently eight weeks earlier was doing a very good job.

Surely the minister now understands that the system is not responding well to people whose conditions are deteriorating quickly and that they have been left on these waiting lists without receiving any support in their own homes. The algorithm simply isn't working. I've listened to the minister give media interviews. The algorithm isn't working, human assessors in our communities are incredibly frustrated and the prioritisation of cases has resulted in warped outcomes. Various advocacy groups have written to the minister and have spoken publicly about their concerns. What did the government do in response? Well, the government tried to bury the wait times report by releasing it in budget week because that wait time report showed older Australians were waiting more than a year to receive their Support at Home packages.

The Older Persons Advocacy Network Director, Samantha Edmonds, in relation to aged-care waiting figures being confronting, said:

It's so detrimental to the health and wellbeing of older people to have those wait times, to watch their health and wellbeing decline.

We have the New South Wales health minister saying that older Australians are now blocking beds in hospitals—up to 800 per night—because there's no support for them in their own homes. What happens when people are left on this waiting list is that their health deteriorates. They have falls. They then need more help. They end up calling ambulances, and they wind up in hospital rather than in more appropriate settings. Ryan Park, the New South Wales health minister, said:

The reality is the lack of aged-care places and the wait times for those places mean 800 people remain stranded in New South Wales hospitals … This is not good for patients—it decreases mobility. It increases their risk of further complications. They and their families deserve better.

That is the bottom line. They and their families deserve better than this.

This government's war on older Australians is hurting their health. This government's war on older Australians is hurting their finances and their retirement incomes. It's hurting the people they love, who are seeing their family members suffer. Families are being traumatised by a government that is failing in its fundamental duty to all Australians: just keep Australians safe. Worse than that, we now know that the government is trying to hide the facts from the nation with sneaky political tactics which are unworthy of a minister in the Parliament of Australia.

Listening to the member for Gippsland, it strikes me just how far this parliament has drifted from where it used to be. There was a time, and it wasn't so long ago, when aged care and looking after seniors across our community wasn't a contest in this chamber. We were working on this together.

The royal commission into aged care was established by a coalition government. It was backed right across this parliament, by both sides of this House, and, as it reported its findings, nobody in this place stood up to defend the system as it was. The new Aged Care Act was passed with bipartisan support. It was a commitment that we would work together, knowing the urgency and the importance of this task—to deliver better outcomes for the people who have built our communities. We agreed, all of us collectively, that we had let older Australians down. We agreed it could never be allowed to happen again.

But, if those opposite want to talk about failing older Australians, let's talk about what that same royal commission found on their record. There were three volumes in its interim report. The commissioners needed only one word for the cover: Neglect. It was a system that, in their words, diminished Australia as a nation. Older Australians were left in pain, left alone and left waiting for care that never came. Commissioner Lynelle Briggs put the cause of it beyond doubt. She said that the coalition government's main consideration was 'the minimum commitment it could get away with, rather than what should be done to sustain the aged-care system'. The minimum they could get away with—that's an independent royal commission's verdict on those opposite being in office for a decade. It's the reason that the mountain we have to climb to deliver better outcomes for older people is so very steep.

I note that the member for Gippsland was a minister in that government—

Why don't you answer your letters?

It was within his power every single day to stand up for older Australians across all of our communities and demand that his government did better—

Why won't you respond to a letter? Come on, show bag!

before we got to a point where a royal commission accused him and his colleagues of systematic neglect.

Member for Gippsland, everyone showed you respect during your 10 minutes. I want you to apply the same level of respect back. The cross-table interjections are very unhelpful. You have all got an opportunity to contribute to this debate and express your opinions during that. The minister has the floor, and I'd like to hear him uninterrupted, please.

Since the royal commission, the member for Gippsland has been party to the bipartisanship of these generational reforms that we're seeking to implement, but now, wracked with the desperation of facing their own political senescence, they are crab-walking away from this bipartisan reform program.

I'm thankful for small things, and at least at least the member for Gippsland has recently—but very recently—found some sort of part-time moral courage when he comes to this chamber on these important matters. But I stress how recent it is and how very part time it is.

The member for Gippsland! I will not repeat what you are just uttering across the chamber, but I don't want to hear it again. I think you know very well what I'm talking about, and if I hear it again, you'll be leaving the chamber. The minister has the call.

Forgive me, Deputy Speaker, if I find today's MPI and the member for Gippsland's carry on a little hard to swallow, because here is what those opposite have chosen to do: they've walked away from the bipartisanship we built around older Australians. And this week, as this parliament prepares to take the next steps in rebuilding the very system that they hollowed out, they've decided that older Australians are worth a cheap political stunt rather than showing up to work together to work hard on supporting older Australians to rebuild the system that they rely upon. We don't accept that—we never have. Where they choose division, we choose delivery, and we've got the record to prove it. Rebuilding a system that a royal commission called a national shame doesn't happen overnight; you do it brick by brick.

So let me lay out the building blocks of the new system—everything that we've achieved in four years after that miserable decade of neglect: a new Aged Care Act, the first full rebuild of the Act since 1997 that, as of 1 November last year, wrote the rights of older Australians into law for the first time in this nation's history; stronger standards; a regulator with teeth. The very first bill that we passed in the 47th parliament was an aged-care bill. We launched Support at Home alongside the new act to replace the old Home Care Packages program, a way to make aged care a government service that will be around when the member for Gippsland needs it, when I need it, and when all of our children need it. Already, in just eight months, tens of thousands more older Australians are getting care where they actually want to be—in their own homes. Wait times are coming down in the order of months. There are an extra 83,000 packages that, as of today, have now been fully rolled out to get people care where they need it, sooner.

Once that system started in November, we did what Labor governments always do; we listened to older people's experiences, we refined, in this year's budget we invested so that no older Australian will pay a cent out of pocket for clinical care under our Support at Home program. We've delivered a package of consumer protections so people get a fair go on prices and a clear statement of exactly what they're paying for. We've digitised the hardship process so the people doing it toughest aren't drowning in paperwork to prove it. The workers—we inherited a workforce that had been told for years that it simply wasn't worth more. Carers said, 'I could get paid more working on the checkout at Aldi.' We didn't think that was acceptable, so in four years we've invested nearly $18 billion to fund the largest pay rises in the history of aged care. The average registered nurse on the award is now $28,000 better off every year, and that goes up again tomorrow. We put registered nurses back in nursing homes around the clock. We lifted care minutes. There are now millions of hours of extra care being delivered to older Australians that simply weren't there before. We know that when we value our workers, when we pay them what they're worth and when we support them to have long careers in the sector, older Australians get better aged care.

We've invested in the buildings. This is where years of underinvestment has a particularly long tail. It takes anywhere from five to seven years from inception to delivery of a new aged-care home, so to say we're still playing catch up would be an understatement. But we're ambitious about moving towards delivering the 10,000 new aged-care beds this country needs every year to keep pace with our growing population, so we've invested more than $1 billion through the Aged Care Capital Assistance program—more aged-care infrastructure investment than any government in our nation's history. That means new homes, new beds in the communities that need them most. We're making aged care work for every Australian. This week, the government will move to establish Australia's first permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner—a dedicated, independent voice for First Nations elders built into the architecture of the system to ensure that they are central to the care that they receive.

We're not finished. Next year, this Labor government will invest $47 billion in aged care, the single largest aged-care investment this country has ever made, and it will keep going up every year after that. Those opposite are stopping at nothing to frighten older Australians about how that gets paid for. Every dollar we ask for through the changes to the private health insurance arrangements for older Australians goes straight back into the aged-care system—every single cent—so that, when an older Australian needs aged care, it's there for them. That's the deal we've made. We're reinvesting in the care people will genuinely need rather than leaving them to find it in the system the royal commission called 'neglect'.

Let me put it as plainly as I can. They had the road map, and they did the minimum. We got the report, and we got to work. They bring a motion. We bring a record. This side of the House does not treat older Australians as a political football. We don't do division; we do delivery. And we'll keep doing it brick by brick for as long as it takes to get the right care for every older Australian.

If confidence delivered outcomes, I'm sure that the Labor Party would do a fabulous job, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't. Nobody held back, nobody left behind—that was the promise of this prime minister. Older Australians remember it. They were told this prime minister understood aged care, the cost of living and dignity. Now they actually see the truth.

Labor has broken faith with the people who built this country—those who worked hard, paid taxes, raised families, volunteered, served their towns and did the right thing all their lives. Many went without so they could keep private health insurance not for luxury but for security. They wanted to know that—if they needed a hip replacement, a knee replacement, surgery or specialist care—they would not be left waiting in pain in that incredibly long queue. What has Labor done? It has targeted them. Labor wants Australians over 65 to pay more for private health cover. More than three million older Australians will be hit. Many will pay hundreds more a year. Some couples could be forced to find well over $1,000 extra. For pensioners and self-funded retirees on fixed incomes, that is not loose change. It is the groceries. It's the fuel. It's the medicine. It's the power bill.

This is not fairness; it is a blatant Labor tax grab on older Australians. There is nothing fair about punishing people for ageing, nothing fair about telling someone in their 70s after decades of premiums that they're now the budget problem, and nothing fair about pushing people out of private health and pretending public hospitals can absorb the pressure. In regional Australia, we know what happens when the system is stretched. People wait longer. They travel further. They sit on lists. Families take time off work to drive mum or dad hundreds of kilometres for care. When Labor makes private health more expensive, it does not just hurt household budgets; it piles pressure onto already stretched hospitals across the nation.

Aged care is no better. Older Australians were promised dignity and better care. Instead, too many are waiting a year or more for the support they need to stay safe at home. They deteriorate while they wait, as the member for Gippsland aptly described—many of the constituents in my electorate. Families are left exhausted. Some end up in hospital beds because help did not arrive on time. Home support is not a luxury. Help with showering is not a luxury. Meals, transport, cleaning, nursing and personal care are not extras. They allow an older person to stay in their own home in their own town close to the people they love. Yet, under Labor, older Australians are told to wait, pay more and accept less. They are pushed through phone assessments and computer systems when what they need is a person who will listen. I hear from older people who are proud and independent. They do not ask for much. They want to pay their bills, see a doctor, stay safe at home, keep the private cover they worked hard to maintain. They want respect, not lectures. Labor has no credible plan for the future of the Commonwealth Home Support Program beyond 1 July 2027. That matters. These basic services keep people out of hospital and out of residential care for longer.

This is the Labor pattern. Promise compassion, then bill Australians for it promised reform, then deliver delay. Promise fairness, then make older Australians pay. Older Australians are not the problem. They are the backbone of this country. They built the roads, staffed the hospitals, ran farms, opened businesses, built homes, cared for children, paid taxes and held communities together through drought, flood, fire and hardship. Older Australians are not savings measures—better than a health policy that forces a choice between insurance and food, better than an aged-care system that makes people wait until their health collapses. Labor's attacks on older Australians must stop. This parliament should stand with older Australians. They kept their end of the bargain. It's time this government kept theirs too.

I rise to oppose this MPI on so many fronts. I want to call it out for what it is: a shabby, cynical little stunt from a Liberal Party trying to crawl out from under the wreckage that they created. For those opposite to come into this chamber and lecture Labor on older Australians is not just hypocrisy; it is gall on stilts. They had years in government yet ignored all the warnings, letting families fight through a broken system and leaving older Australians waiting, worrying and often, heartbreakingly, begging for the dignity that they deserve. And what did those opposite do? They sat on their hands while aged-care services buckled, and that was even with access to the departments, access to the budget and access to the cabinet table. There were the warnings and the royal commission. They had the power and every opportunity to act. But now, in opposition, this Liberal Party slithers back into this chamber, draped in concern, pretending that they are the champions for older Australians. Please just spare us the performance.

This MPI is not about older Australians. It is about the Liberal Party trying to torch the evidence before anyone reads the file. They want the country to forget who was in charge when they were in government. They want aged-care workers to forget who undervalued them. They want families to forget who let the system decay. They want older Australians to forget who looked the other way. But Australians aren't fools. The Liberals come in here with clean speeches and dirty fingerprints. They did not just discover compassion here today. No, what they discovered was opposition. And now, apparently, after years of neglect, they found a conscience—conveniently located somewhere between a press release and a media opportunity.

As a doctor, I know a bad handover when I see it, and I'm seeing one right now. The Liberal Party handed over an aged-care system in distress—understaffed, underpaid, neglected and unstable. And now they want to blame the treating team for starting the resuscitation. That is not leadership or concern; that is political cowardice dressed up in a cheap suit.

Under this prime minister and under this minister for aged care, this Labor government is doing the work that those opposite were too weak, too lazy and too divided to do, and we are delivering a rights based aged care act, putting dignity, safety and respect at the centre of aged care. We are delivering support at home so older Australians can stay independent, supported and connected in their own homes, and we are backing aged care workers with real wage increases, because you cannot fix aged care while treating the people who provide it like an afterthought. We are strengthening Medicare, making urgent care centres permanent and making medications cheaper, and we're also investing in hospitals, all of which our older Australians access. This is what governing looks like.

What the coalition and One Nation are offering is heckling from the wreckage. They had the power and wasted it. They had the responsibility and they ran from it. They had the time and they squandered it. Older Australians on the Central Coast and right across this country deserved better. What they don't deserve is to be dragged into what we've all witnessed here today, this grubby, little memory-loss exercise of the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation. This MPI should be rejected for exactly what it is. It is a cynical stunt from a Liberal opposition with, from what I can see, no plan, no shame and—what's more—no moral authority.

I rise today to speak for a proud generation of Australians who have shamelessly been targeted by this hapless Albanese Labor government. They are our seniors, our retirees and our pensioners. These are the people who built our nation, worked hard, paid their taxes and sacrificed for decades so they could enjoy a secure retirement. They were promised certainty in their twilight years, but instead they've been handed a brutal betrayal of a budget. This Albanese Labor government has looked at the hard-earned savings of older Australians and treated them like a cash cow to fund its reckless spending. When Labor run out of money, they come after yours.

Hidden in the budget papers is the widow's tax, the title transfer trap. Under the new rules, the simple administrative act of updating a property deed due to the death of a lifelong partner strips away the grandfathered protections. This is a financial penalty on grief. The moment an asset changes to a surviving spouse's name alone, their capital gains tax discounts vanish, triggering a massive unplanned tax bill during a period of deep personal trauma.

To add insult to injury, the private health insurance rebate has been slashed. The budget systematically reduces the private health insurance rebate for anyone over the age of 65, breaking a decades-old promise to look after seniors on fixed incomes. This will exacerbate the hospital crisis, forcing seniors off private cover through artificial premium spikes. This will drive vulnerable patients back into the public system, placing immense pressure on struggling regional hospitals. And we certainly know that regional hospitals are already at breaking point.

The cruellest blow of all is the allied health cap for our veterans. The government has slapped a rigid $5,000 annual cap on allied health services for veterans, including physiotherapy, podiatry and occupational therapy. That's an insult to their service. Our aged veterans did not put a cap on their service when they stood up for Australia. This government has no right to put a cap on their medical care.

In this budget, those opposite have abolished the 50 per cent CGT, capital gains tax, discount. Completely removing the longstanding capital gains discount heavily penalises regional small-business owners and retired farmers who have spent a lifetime building an asset to fund their own retirement. A lot of these people haven't had the resources to put money into super. Their farm was their super. By destroying the nest egg, decades of physical labour and early morning work has been treated like a sudden windfall, with the tax office taking a massive bite out of independent savings that were meant to create wealth in these people's twilight years.

The changes to trust income attack self-funded retirees. Changes to discretionary and family trusts directly harm self-funded retirees who utilise these legal structures to manage steady retirement income. Restricting financial independence, these changes penalise older Australians who've worked hard to maintain self-sufficient, independent funding for their aged care.

The hidden trap is the inflation. We're living in a Labor created cost-of-living crisis. With inflation, everything has gone up. Groceries have gone up, insurance has gone up, and mortgages have gone up. Every single thing that those opposite do is creating a bigger cost for people, and the most affected are our elderly. This budget strikes a cruel blow to anyone over the age of 65. It's a calculated assault on financial independence, and it's happened during the worst time this country has ever seen. You do not build a fair country by making our seniors poorer, and you certainly do not build a strong economy by penalising the people who have worked hard to achieve self-reliance. This budget tells older Australians that their lifetime of effort does not matter.

I'm very pleased to rise on this matter of public importance. I, like others on our side, do find it very bizarre that the opposition have put this forward because we all remember when the Liberals and Nationals were in government. We all remember the extent of all their cuts—

An honourable member interjecting—

Yes, that's exactly right. Whether it was aged care or health, no matter what it was, right across the board—there were cuts to pensions. But I'll detail that a bit later on. What I want to talk about is what we on the Labor side think about our older Australians and why we're very proud to deliver for them. Let's always remember that these are the people who built our nation. They worked hard, paid their taxes and raised their kids, and that's at the heart of everything we do to deliver for them. Of course, our funding increases and assistance to older Australians are quite extensive, whether it's lowering cost-of-living pressures, or expanding healthcare access or aged-care access, they're all major areas we've invested in.

Let's look at health care first. We strengthened bulk-billing right across the board by increasing—tripling—the bulk-billing incentive. So many older people can actually access a bulk-billing doctor now, and they couldn't do that before. Cheaper scripts have made such a huge difference to all the general population by capping it at $25, and we've also frozen it at $7.70 for pensioners and concession card holders. Urgent care clinics are amazing. I know so many older people in my electorate. It has made a huge difference for the health care that they need. We know, obviously, that older people do need to access health care more. We continue to deliver for them. We've also got workforce incentives and other cost-of-living relief measures. Commonwealth rent assistance is 40 per cent higher than when we first came into government. That assists so many older Australians. Our deeming rate adjustments, our energy bill rebates and, of course, all of our reforms to aged care which have made such a huge difference, as well as our indexing of the pension. As we know, we are really getting on with the job of delivering once-in-a-generation reforms to deliver high-quality aged-care services to older Australians.

Let's look at the record of the Liberals and Nationals. They did establish the royal commission into aged care, and the interim report, tabled October 2019 just needed one word for the cover. What was that word? Neglect. That really summarised their time in government when it came to aged care. In the commission's own words: 'The coalition left behind an underpaid, undervalued and insufficiently trained workforce.' That's what we inherited as a government. We're investing $47 billion in aged care, the largest investment in our nation's history, and those investments are right across the board for residential care, for Support at Home and for the workforce, with nearly $18 billion to fund the largest pay increase in the history of aged care. All we saw were cuts from them.

Let's turn back the clock and go over some of the cuts they had. We all remember before the 2013 election. They were then crowing that, if they got into government, there'd be no cuts to education, no cuts to health and no changes to pensions. What's the first thing they did? It was to cut all of it. These cuts were horrific. In 2014, they tried to introduce a GP tax. I know many older Australians in my area remember that. They cut $57 billion from hospitals, they tried to cut pension indexation, and they tried to increase the pension age to 70. Always remember that the Liberals and Nationals teamed up with the Greens and cut the pension for over 370,000 pensioners. I can tell you, every one of those people in my electorate remembers what they did with them. We know how devastating that was.

We also know what the Liberals and Nationals want to do. They talked about it a bit. They want to bring back the cashless debit card. What an impact that'll have on pensioners! That still worries people in my electorate. They know that they want to bring it back, and we know what that means. It means 80 per cent of their pension payment would be put on a privatised cashless card. They had it in government before. They wanted to expand it to pensioners. We got in, and we got rid of it. I know that pensioners were very worried when they talked about doing that.

Of course, it's not just the Liberals and Nationals that people in my electorate are concerned about; they're equally concerned about the other conservative party, One Nation. We know now that they're just a sort of conglomeration of three parties all trying to outdo one another. We know when we look at One Nation's policies that they want to have cuts to the PBS. How devastating would that be for our older Australians? We also know One Nation MPs have voted 15 times to cut or freeze the aged pension. They've also voted many times to make GP and specialist visits more expensive.

All we can say when we look across there at the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation is: what are they going to do? They're going to make cuts to health, aged care and pensions. The Greens helped them to do that as well, so you can't trust them on that. But this is a fact. Conservative governments and conservative parties make cuts that hurt older Australians. We've seen it time and time again. It's only Labor that continues to deliver for our older Australians, whether it's health, aged care or pensions, because we will always stand with our older Australians. (Time expired)

I know the topic today is Labor's failure to govern for older Australians, but, given the snowball effect of announcements over the last six months, it seems more appropriate to say that Labor seems intent on punishing our older Australians. Under the changes in the FY27 budget announcement, older Australians will now be forced to pay up to $1,600 more for their private health insurance per year, which is going to put significant pressure on their household budgets, particularly those of retirees on limited or fixed incomes.

Since the day of that disastrous policy announcement, my office has been literally inundated with pleas from directly affected constituents asking for my help. In my electorate of Cowper, over 26,000 residents will be negatively impacted. In many cases, these people are already sacrificing other essentials in order to afford the health cover they vitally need. They are choosing between eating three meals a day or having their cover. While we live in a region rich with natural beauty, that wealth does not extend to the average weekly household income, with a significant number in my electorate relying on pensions.

Regional Australians are acutely aware of the shortcomings and extended waitlists seen in our public hospitals, so these considered, older Australians have taken the necessary steps not only to safeguard their own health and wellbeing but responsibly take the pressure off the public health system. Labor's reward for that careful planning is another bill to their ever-increasing cost-of-living pressures. This is the age group in our community that can least generate additional income. It's not like they can go to Coles and stack shelves at night-time to make ends meet. Moving the goalposts in these circumstances, at their stage of life, is cruel and unusual punishment.

This Labor government needs to listen to the real issues facing older Australians, and not just those in metropolitan areas. I suppose this lack of acknowledgement and practical care was foreshadowed months ago when the ill-considered unconsulted changes were introduced to the aged-care home-care packages in November. Those flick-of-a-pen changes have now been in effect for over six months, with the snowball now a full-blown avalanche. To date, we've seen a few press releases touting new processes or a small number of packages being released, but, cruelly, every announcement and adaptation being made has ultimately left older Australians increasingly vulnerable.

The number of requests for urgent assistance through my office has increased 10-fold in recent months. The issues range from inhumane wait times for a home-care package assessment and newly implemented algorithms arbitrarily stripping some recipients of basic essential supports without warning to a significant escalation of service costs. They are some of the common issues. The compounding effects of every new hurdle are leaving many elderly Cowper constituents in significant distress and providers at their wits' end. To hear from local providers that they had clients in palliative care who were forced to go on a waitlist and subsequently passed away before receiving any level of support isn't just heartbreaking; it's indefensible. And it is demoralising for the providers who are genuinely there to do the best they can for their clients. As Ben Kleeman from UPA Aged Care Solutions in Port Macquarie, in my electorate, told me last month, 'We want to help. We have capacity. We have been through reforms before, but right now we are disempowered from providing care.'

In the last few months, I've reached out to advocates asking for their input, and the picture they paint is one of negligence through government ignorance. I'm asking for their input, and I want to share that input on a bipartisan nature. I will give it to those opposite, and we will see what happens.

While we listen to those opposite try to throw blame around and cynically, desperately, try to claw back some votes, we should turn to an independent arbiter as to why the aged-care system is where it is right now. The independent aged-care royal commission called it when they released their interim report entitled Neglect in 2019, under those opposite. It's a condemnation of those opposite. They left a mess. They left a disaster. But now, shamelessly, they play politics and spread misinformation rather than help us fix the problem.

The Albanese Labor government is the government for older Australians. We are for older Australians living in dignity and security. We are for older Australians being able to access the care they need when they need it. This government recognises the magnitude of the task before us. The demographics are not in our favour. Next year, 90,000 additional Australians will turn 80; 15 years ago that number was 15,000. This has an impact on the service offerings we need to provide, specifically in aged care and health. It means that we need to build an aged-care home every three days for the next 20 years in order to accommodate a rapidly growing older population and deal with the backlog of no beds built over the last decade.

But the Albanese Labor government has a plan that will tackle the issues head on and provide older Australians with the quality of care that they need and they deserve, and that will be sustainable for generations to come. That's why we're putting $47 billion in the coming year into expanding and improving the provision of aged-care services in Australia. This means 5,000 more beds year on year. It will mean being able to build and maintain quality residential accommodation. It will mean making Support at Home fairer and more affordable and making assessments faster and wait times shorter. In the last two quarters we processed 260,000 assessments. More recently, we announced that we will strengthen consumer protections for those on Support at Home by empowering the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to be able to order refunds for overcharged services and to be able to report publicly on investigations and enforcement actions; by producing each quarter a national summary of Support at Home prices in order that participants and their families can compare prices across providers; by monitoring prices of personal care as they transition into the clinical care category, on top of the free showering, dressing, continence support and clinical services already provided; by limiting increases to no more than twice per year; by working with the Older Persons Advocacy Network, Council of the Ageing, Ageing Australia and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to establish clear and enforceable definitional guidelines around what constitutes 'reasonable' pricing.

The government's plan to expand and improve aged-care services in Australia will also mean an expansion of end-of-life pathway, providing dignified care to older Australians in their final months. It will mean 20 additional specialist dementia care program units and the expansion of the Hospital to Aged Care Dementia Support Program, providing crucial transition support for older Australians going from hospital into residential care. The Albanese Labor government's plan means more aged-care beds, more packages and better care.

The Albanese Labor government is for older Australians. The growth of our older population is rapidly outpacing our capacity to provide crucial supports and services, and, unfortunately, we inherited a service system in crisis. The system risks collapsing under its own weight. We are confronted with this reality and we are confronting the reality with a plan—a plan that will ensure that every older Australian can get affordable and timely access to the quality care they need and deserve, and a plan that will improve and expand the system to make it fit for purpose and sustainable well into the foreseeable future. Labor have always stood for older Australians, and we will continue to stand for older Australians. When you think about the Liberal-National party commitment to older people, just remember that one word: neglect.

I commend my friend and colleague the member for Gippsland for moving this motion in relation to the government's failure to govern for older Australians. I am livid. I am livid on behalf of the thousands of older Australians not only in my seat but around this country, because some of the changes that the government has proposed and that the government is making are going to affect them in such an unconscionable and a serious way. And I say to those opposite, the ones who have contributed to this debate and those who are sitting in the chamber today or watching, you should really look at yourself and look at the content of what we're saying, because this is about your parents, it's about your grandparents and it's about people that you represent, or are supposed to represent, in this place, and what you're doing to older Australians is not something worthy of representatives.

I ran a campaign in my electorate after the changes for those aged 65-plus were announced that mean that older Australians are going to be paying more for their private health insurance. We received over 2,000 responses to those surveys, and most of the responses focused on the fact that these are older Australians who have worked for this country, who have done the right thing for so many years, and now they're finding themselves in a really difficult spot as a result of this government's characterisation of them. It was said by the member for Gippsland—and I absolutely echo his comments—that we need to call this out for what it is. It is a Labor government that is punishing Australians who don't vote for them, and that is fundamentally disgusting and it's dishonest.

I'm going to read out some of the comments—I know there are some opposite laughing, but this is a serious matter. I'm going to read out some of the comments that ordinary Australians in the 65-plus category have sent to me and give them a voice in this place, because those on the opposite side of this parliament are prepared to go against them. I quote one person: 'That's a joke, Leon. We currently struggle to maintain existing low cover. Any further change will force us to the public system.' Another person said:

It's a money grab by Labor who've wasted money, now targeting aged people who've been prudent with their money throughout their tax paying years.

Someone said:

I'm 79 years old on pension and still working because of rental costs. I think this is excessively unfair. Please consider excepting pensioners from these continual rises. I have tried to stay independent not to be a burden in the govt. But it's becoming really frightening when there is nowhere else to go if i can no longer afford rent and health care too.

Another person said:

As a still working, self funded semi retiree (73years) old, I feel disillusioned and disgusted by our current govt, who seem to be hell bent on removing any incentive to be a self sufficient, hard working person. This is in complete contrast to what I was taught growing up! (Work hard, take responsibility for self and family! We see aged care and NDIS funding being misappropriated in the Millions of $, while inept ministers seek to take funds from the disabled and elderly victims!

There are many of these comments:

When we joined a health insurance the government advised the rebate would be for life. We trusted that promise.

Another person said:

To do this to older retirees is criminal. A lot of them are hanging on by the skin of their teeth financially, when they need their insurance the most and after paying premiums for years with minimal claims. Labour will pay the price if they mess with older Australians …

Another person said:

So this is over $1200 for the two of us. If more people drop out of private health, not only will it affect the elderly, hospitals are struggling now, how will they cope with the extra patients. Waiting list will lengthen even more. The younger population will also be impacted with increased premiums due to the large number of contributors dropping out.

I have so many. I asked my staff to print out the first 50 that came through out of 2,000 people. These are some of those comments.

I say to those opposite: you can dismiss this topic in here—you can come into this place and act as though you're gods and you're not doing anything against older Australians—but older Australians see through your mess. They see through your lies. They see through your incompetence. What we're—

Member for McPherson, you'll need to withdraw the unparliamentary reference.

I withdraw. But, those opposite who are calling out things from across the chamber, you should sit and look at yourselves, because you're doing this to older Australians who have done nothing but the right thing. They've worked hard their whole life, and you're coming into this place and ripping out their future from under them.

I'm just going to remind all members in the House, when making contributions to the debate, to direct your comments through me as the chair. That way we avoid the personal attacks. I'm giving the call to the member for Deakin.

This is an incredibly serious topic. After all, the way we judge a society is by how we care for its most vulnerable. We know that the aged-care system was correctly categorised as a reflection of neglect in that initial report in 2019. There have been years of ignoring the statistical fact that we are an ageing population and that more and more of us are getting older and will need support. And what was done? Not enough.

Now we're at the stage where we would need about 10,000 extra aged-care beds a year for a whole number of years even to keep up. As the member for Boothby quite rightly noted, that would be about three extra facilities a week for the next 20 years. That is a mammoth task, and it's not going to be easy. It's going to take a very long time to make up for a very long period of ignoring the obvious and predictable outcome of becoming an ageing population.

Older Australians have deserved a steadfast resolve to improve the system. Up until this government, they haven't had it. The legislation was changed, and it is already making a difference. Tens of thousands more Australians are now receiving care in their own homes. Does that mean we're content with the system as it is? Of course not. We're not asking people to be pleased about the status quo. In fact, we are doing everything we can to drive it forward to make sure more older people can live their remaining years and complete their final seasons with dignity and with as much health as possible. But this is a mammoth task. It was something that we committed to do together, across party lines, not that long ago, but in a desperate attempt to find partisan issues and reasons for grievance, we now see these debates devolve into personal attacks—personal attacks relating to the implementation of legislation they voted for, no less.

These are incredibly serious matters, and I take them seriously and, I have to say, so does the minister. In Ringwood North in my electorate of Deakin we had an aged-care facility, Della Dale, that simply hadn't been meeting standards over a long period of time. The aged-care quality and service regulator had made that clear and had given them every opportunity to make a difference. The difficult decision was made to close that facility down. I have to thank the minister for all his assistance in helping to ensure that all of the residents in that facility were relocated to ensure that they received the care that they needed going forward. The reality is that we cannot let standards slip.

We know from the royal commission that, because of neglect, too many older Australians were left malnourished and effectively abandoned during the day, and some were subjected to all sorts of torrid abuse too graphic to describe in this chamber. It was a system failure, and it was allowed to happen for years. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Well, no more. It's time that, as a whole, this parliament stands up for older Australians. We must make sure that we insist upon a proper quality standard across the industry, and we're working to do just that.

Not only are we investing in more facilities; we have got a clear focus on ensuring that they meet appropriate standards and that the rights of older people are taken into consideration in the design and delivery of aged-care services across the board. Are we there yet? Of course we're not, but we need to make sure that the standards that we uphold are what we would want for our own families, because I think all of us have got a story of an elderly loved one who has been subjected to care that we would find simply unacceptable. These are the most vulnerable people in our community, and we do have to stand up for them. They've referred to a change to the subsidy for private health insurance, and, as the minister said, that is going straight into aged care to ensure that people receive the supports they need at home, because we know that, the longer they can stay at home, the higher their quality of life is.

This isn't just a game about people living longer. We have to make sure that older Australians who have contributed their entire lives to our society get to complete their final innings with dignity, to make sure that families aren't left tearing their hair out worried about their loved ones not receiving the support they desire—people with family members with dementia worrying that there are going to be chemical restraints in facilities just because they're understaffed or because there's no nurse in the nursing home. This government has taken clear action—the remarkable idea that a nursing home should have a nurse in it. Finally, a government came in and made that the standard, and we are seeing it in the vast majority of aged-care facilities now. These issues could not be more serious.

In addition to that, in other areas of policy—the MPI goes to governing for older Australians—across portfolios, we're seeing more work being done in superannuation to ensure that older people receive advice before they retire to improve their retirement outcomes. In areas of communication, we're ensuring that the antiscams frameworks are preventing criminals from taking advantage of older Australians. Across the board, we are taking into account the legitimate rights and interests of older people because we know that older Australians need a government that has their back, and they can rely on the Labor government to do everything we can to improve their lives and conditions.

This discussion has concluded.

I move:

That in accordance with section 5 of the Parliament Act 1974, the House approve the following proposal for work in the Parliamentary Zone, which was presented to the House on 22 June 2026, namely: Commemoration of Nangar (Jimmy Clements) and Ooloogan (George John Noble).

When the Duke of York officially opened Old Parliament House in 1927, the event was billed as a pageant of empire. There were around 15,000 people in attendance—politicians, military officials, dignitaries and Canberrans. But, at a time when Indigenous Australians were not even counted on the census, no invitation to any representative of our First Nations community was extended. Despite that, there were two Wiradjuri elders among the throng: Nangar, known as Jimmy Clements or Billy King; and Ooloogan, known as George John noble or sometimes simply as Marvellous. These two men, well into their 80s at the time, had walked barefoot from the Brungle Aboriginal mission across the Brindabella Range—a multiday trek of some 150 kilometres—to attend the opening.

On arrival, they were nearly evicted for their lack of appropriate attire. But bystanders intervened, saying that no-one had more right to be there. They took a place of prominence and even spoke to the future monarch. Billy King later stated that he was there to demonstrate his 'sovereign rights to the federal territory'. Today this act is seen as the first instance of Aboriginal protest at the parliament. To commemorate this event, the National Capital Authority has made plans to construct a life-size figurative sculpture of the men and their two dogs. This piece will be located on the lawns opposite Old Parliament House in a setting purpose-built to suit the sculptures. Works are intended to be completed by May 2027 to align with events to mark the centenary of Old Parliament House. A design and construction team has been selected to deliver the commemoration. Regal Innovations will lead the team, with sculptor Julie Squires to deliver the sculptural elements.

A hundred years ago, Billy King and Marvellous were seen as uninvited interlopers on their own land. Today we welcome them with a permanent place of honour here at the seat of our democracy. Theirs is a remarkable story, and this piece will help ensure their legacy is seen, understood and carried forward by generations of Australians to come. I commend the motion to the House.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, I present the committee's interim report incorporating dissenting reports entitled Inquiry into the conduct of the 2025 federal election.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—Australians have a lot to be proud about: our values and culture, our lifestyle and natural environment and our economy and standard of living. We should also be incredibly proud of our world-class electoral system. For a long time we've had the privilege of participating in a healthy, vibrant and safe democracy characterised by high standards of conduct, transparency and fairness. But something happened at the 2025 federal election. It was something that felt like an assault on our democracy, especially in targeted seats. Many describe this assault by third parties identified in submissions to the committee, like the Plymouth Brethren and ADVANCE, as a fundamental disruption to the foundations of our free and fair voting process. This parliament cannot ignore this evidence.

In an electoral system where it is compulsory for adults to participate, every effort must be made to ensure that the electoral process is safe, fair and inviting for all involved. In reviewing the 2025 election, the committee is considering a purported increase in antisocial conduct which impacted this experience for voters, political participants, volunteers and Australian Electoral Commission officials. The inquiry is also looking at potential reform to safety and security arrangements, including the AEC's powers and capacity to address this conduct. It is also considering universal voter access and the suitability of authorisation requirements, noting our rapidly changing communication technology. The inquiry is also looking at domestic interference in our electoral processes.

There have been 360 submissions to the inquiry to date. Many submissions illustrate experiences with aggressive and intimidating conduct at polling places and a rise in activity by third parties in the electoral process. Submissions have also highlighted concerns regarding the authorisation and enforcement of political advertising, especially in an evolving technological landscape. The committee has conducted 12 hearings in locations around Australia, with evidence received from a range of witnesses. The interim report makes 13 recommendations in time for the government and the parliament to consider their implementation before the next federal election.

The committee has recommended reviewing the thresholds under the significant third party and associated entity framework to capture coordinated involvement in elections at scale. The committee has also recommended that an enforceable and mandatory code of conduct be developed for all participants at polling places. Recommendations also include registration for polling booth campaigners and strengthening the AEC's statutory powers to address misconduct at polling places. The interim report recommends the creation of a new campaign zone in which the code of conduct is enforceable and that the number of campaigners and the amount of campaign signage is reduced and regulated. These recommendations respond directly to the many accounts of overwhelming, unsafe and intimidatory experiences at polling places during the 2025 federal election in targeted electorates.

To counter concerns about deliberate interference in Australia's electoral processes, the interim report recommends a review of electoral laws to protect the process and, importantly, to protect voter experience from domestic interference. Interestingly, the Election Integrity Assurance Taskforce, while easily able to define and identify foreign interference, did not do the same for domestic interference. In the face of evidence received by the committee to date, a strong argument can be made that any behaviour designed to dissuade participation in the electoral process could be considered domestic interference. In order to protect the electoral process, the committee recommends that the matter of domestic interference be considered and addressed as a priority.

The committee also heard that the authorisation framework and requirements for electoral matter are increasingly out of step with our communication and technological landscape and lack clarity regarding third parties engaging in political communication. Recommendations have been made to ensure accountability for communications and that the AEC has appropriate enforcement powers to remove or block non-compliant material. The committee also recommends that privacy and safety risks be urgently addressed in relation to public access terminals.

Not all of the inquiry's terms of reference are addressed in this interim report, and more evidence needs to be sought and considered with regard to the use of generative AI in electoral matter, the consideration of fixed and extended terms of parliament and on the size of parliament as a whole. The committee will continue to hold public hearings, consider evidence and address all terms of reference in its final report due in November 2026. I move:

That the House take note of the report.

By leave—Unfortunately, I stand here today to convey to the House that the coalition's position is that one of the most serious committees in the parliament has been reduced to a one-eyed, hyperpartisan witch-hunt of a group of religious Australians. That someone would seek to deny someone, on the basis of their faith or indeed not having faith, a role in our precious democracy should be called out for what it is. This is a committee that has had standing in previous parliaments as being charged with stewarding, upholding and protecting our precious democracy.

The dissenting report the coalition has tabled in response to this details a litany of gross overreach on the part of this partisan witch-hunt because, ultimately, this is anything but a fair, balanced and impartial approach to assessing the feedback of the Australian community that we saw in the wake of the 2025 federal election. I won't go on, but I urge Australians to read the dissenting report. It's a stinging condemnation of the hyperpartisan approach that was taken through this committee, a very serious committee, an approach that ultimately leaves our parliament and our democracy cheaper.

The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

I move:

That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate.

Question agreed to.

I have spoken to parents who feel exhausted by this. They want their children to have friends and they do not want them isolated, but they do not want every family dinner to become a fight about an app. They don't want to be the only household saying no. They want a fairer set of rules. The Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 gives parents backing. It says the burden should not sit on families alone and it says social media companies must take responsibility for the products they put into children's lives.

In my community of Griffith, I see families trying their best every day. I see it at school gates, at community events, in local sporting clubs and in conversations with parents who are proud of their children and worried about them at the same time. Griffith is full of families who care deeply about their children's wellbeing. They want their kids to learn, explore, volunteer, play sport, join a club, get outside and be part of their community. They know technology is part of life. They are not asking for childhood to be frozen in the past. They are seeking for childhood to be protected in the present and that is a fair ask. We can support children to use technology well, and we can set limits where harm is clear. We can value connection, and we can still say that some platforms are not suitable for under-16s. We can back young people, and we can hold companies to account. This bill does just that.

Australia's reform has not stayed within our shores; we are world leading in this area. More than 20 countries have created or committed to creating their own laws to delay access to social media. They include countries across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America and beyond. Australia acted first, and others are now watching. Australian parents are watching too. They do not expect perfection overnight, but they do expect persistence. They expect us to keep going, fix weak points and respond when companies drag their feet. That is exactly what we are doing and what we will continue to do. We will continue to prioritise the health of our kids over the interests of these multinational companies.

This government could not be clearer to these platforms: if you want to do business in Australia, you must obey Australian law. The same principle applies to local businesses across our communities. It applies to local shops, cafes, builders, pharmacies and childcare centres, and it must apply to the largest technology companies in the world. It is the principle behind our consumer laws. Australians deserve clear rights, fair treatment and real protection when powerful companies do the wrong thing. For too long, some of these companies have acted as if their size puts them above the rules. They have shaped childhood, friendship, news, entertainment and social life at a speed that the law has struggled to match. That cannot continue.

This bill strengthens enforcement of the social media minimum age, but the work of protecting children online cannot end there. The next step in the government's work is to legislate a digital duty of care. That will put responsibility on digital service providers to build safer systems and protect Australians, especially children, from harm before it occurs.

I recently met with a local mother who told me what happened to her family after her eldest daughter, then just 12, was seriously harmed by an AI companion chatbot. Her daughter was first introduced to an AI roleplay website at school on a friend's phone. From there, she built a relationship with this chatbot AI character over months. The character told her she was worthless and made references to self-harm. Looking back, her mother described the exchanges as having the hallmarks of grooming and gaslighting. This was not a platform her daughter should have been able to access. The app's own terms of service said that it was not for anyone under 16, yet Google Play listed it as suitable for ages 12 and up. Her daughter was 12. Her daughter is now in regular therapy. Her mother describes what they are managing at home as having the features of an addiction.

Parents can do everything right and still find themselves outmatched by products designed to pull children back in. Too often, safety is treated as something to add later. That is just absolutely, utterly backwards. Children should not be the testing ground for unsafe design. Safety must be built in from the start, and that is the work that the government is continuing to undertake.

The Albanese Labor government has already shown that Australia can lead the world in online safety. More than five million underage accounts have been removed, deactivated or restricted. Early signs point to more sport, better sleep, less online bullying and less exposure to harmful content. That is real progress, but it's not the end of the task. It is not enough if platforms still leave doors open for children under 16, and it is not enough if parents are still fighting these battles alone at home. It's not enough for powerful companies to say they are doing the right thing but then refuse to provide the evidence that proves it. This bill strengthens those laws, those important laws, that we introduced in December last year.

Australia's world-first social media ban came into force in December 2025. As of June 2026, seven countries have implemented similar bans, four countries have legislated similar restrictions and 15 countries are actively considering taking stronger action on social media. The aspiration behind this reform is something of which Australia can be proud. We have led the world in recognising that children deserve better protection from the harms of social media. But good intentions don't necessarily produce good policy, and aspiration and goodwill are not the same as keeping children—or adults—safe online.

Immediately following the commencement of the ban, the eSafety Commissioner reported that 4.7 million age restricted accounts had been removed from social media platforms, and she described those early results as being very encouraging. Unfortunately, she spoke too soon. By March this year, eSafety's own data showed that about 70 per cent of children who had accounts prior to that ban were still using restricted platforms.

I'm hearing that in my electorate. In February this year, a group of young constituents from Methodist Ladies' College in Kew visited my office in Kooyong. They said that the ban just wasn't working. They told me that their classmates routinely bypassed its restrictions. Their experiences reflected exactly what the emerging evidence was beginning to show.

Over time, that evidence has only become stronger. This week, researchers from the University of Newcastle published a survey of 408 Australian adolescents which found that 85 per cent were still accessing social media three months after the ban commenced. The researchers, in fact, found very little evidence that this much-trumpeted ban had succeeded in getting young people to stop using platforms like TikTok, X, Facebook or Instagram.

None of this should surprise us. I warned the House about this potential outcome in November 2024. When this parliament first debated the social media ban, I opposed that legislation because I believed that technological workarounds—VPNs, false age declarations and other methods of circumvention—would inevitably undermine the effectiveness of a blanket ban. The data that we've seen this week confirms that those concerns were well founded.

I also warned that a ban could unintentionally increase risks for those children who continued to access social media platforms. A child who lies about their age to access Instagram is no longer recognised by the platform as a child. Whatever safety settings or other protections that might otherwise have applied disappear, and the child is then treated by the platform's algorithms as an adult.

That outcome was entirely foreseeable. It was the predictable consequence of legislating too quickly without sufficient evidence, meaningful consultation or a credible implementation strategy. It was legislation which flew in the face of the expert advice. It turned out the experts were right. We've ended up with a policy that has failed to substantially change children's online behaviour.

This brings me to the bill before the House today, the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. On Saturday, the government proposed to double the maximum civil penalty for platform noncompliance, increasing it from $49.5 million to $99 million. The bill also strengthens the powers of the eSafety Commissioner to compel platforms to demonstrate the steps that they have taken to comply with the ban.

Those are sensible measures. We know that the eSafety Commissioner is actively investigating possible noncompliance by five platforms: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok. Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, has sent those platforms formal notices demanding information on how they're implementing age checks. Stronger investigative powers and higher penalties will assist that work. For that reason, I support this bill. I want Australian children to be safe in online spaces.

But let's think about those legislative changes in context. Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire. The maximum penalty that we're proposing for his platform, X, is approximately US$68 million at the current exchange rate. X's income in 2026 has been estimated at $1.4 billion, so A$68 million would represent about 11 to 12 days of Elon's profits. For the largest technological companies in the world, these bans and fines are still hardly an existential threat. They risk becoming simply another cost of doing business.

More fundamentally, my concerns about the bill from November remain unabated. Doubling fines on a broken system doesn't fix the system. Empowering the eSafety Commissioner with stronger powers helps with monitoring and enforcement, but it doesn't reduce the harm that, as we've heard from both sides of the House today, still exists in online spaces.

In 2024, I asked the House: what is the problem that we are trying to solve with this legislation? Is the problem that children and teenagers are using social media platforms, or is the problem that billion-dollar companies are marketing unsafe digital products in Australia?

I said then and I say now that a ban is not going to address the root causes of online risks. It's not going to make platforms safe for anybody—not for young Australians, not for other Australians. Age-gating will not make an unsafe product safe. If the product itself creates unacceptable risks then regulation should focus on the product and not simply on restricting who can access it. That's why I continue to believe that Australia needs a comprehensive digital duty of care. The government has committed to introducing one later this year, with somewhat less urgency than it has demonstrated in putting this legislation in front of the House this week.

Digital products should be designed according to public health principles, with safety built in from the outset rather than added as an afterthought. The evidence supporting that approach continues to grow. Excessive and addictive use of digital media has been associated with poor physical health, poorer sleep patterns, reduced social connectedness and worse mental health outcomes for many young people. While researchers continue to investigate questions of causation, the evidence is already more than sufficient to justify stronger safeguards.

Those safeguards should apply to everybody. We should require platforms to design products that are safe by default, that are more transparent, that are less addictive and that are more accountable. But, instead, we've created incentives for children to conceal their age, deceive their parents and thereby lose the protections that currently exist.

A digital duty of care would achieve what I argued for when this online safety legislation was first put in front of the House. It would preserve the legitimate benefits that social media provides while making digital platforms safer for everybody. Back then, I said social media is not just entertainment. For many young Australians, including those under 16, it is a source of essential information. It's where they get their media knowledge from. It's a source of education; they all love YouTube videos. It's a source of community and it's a source of civic participation. That is particularly true for LGBTQIA+ young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, young people living in remote and regional Australia and young Australians with a disability.

For many of those young people, online communities provide communities that are impossible or at least difficult for them to find offline. Access to social media may well be more important than ever for those young people with a disability who will soon be moved off the NDIS by this government. Those who remain in the NDIS will soon have their social and community participation supports cut in half. We know where they'll be turning.

Young Australians also exercise democratic participation online. They increasingly access news, debate public issues and engage in political communication through social media platforms. That makes the constitutional issues raised by this legislation difficult to ignore. Reddit has now challenged the validity of the social media ban in the High Court on the basis of implied freedom of political communication. The government should explain how it intends to respond to those concerns.

Finally, if we are serious about taking on a public health approach to this online environment, then we should apply that principle consistently. A public health approach is not simply about restricting access. It's about reducing foreseeable harm at the source. It's about ensuring that digital products are designed to be safer, that harmful commercial practices are addressed and that companies take responsibility for the risks that they create.

Australia's young people are growing up in a digital environment. It's built for engagement, not for wellbeing. The costs are now plain to see: rising rates of anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and gambling-related harm in our children and our teenagers.

Social media platforms have been allowed to operate for much too long without a legislated duty of care. They optimise algorithms for time on screen while exposing minors to harmful content, predatory contact and addictive design features that our children are simply not equipped to resist. At the same time, the explosion of gambling advertising and online wagering products has normalised betting for the next generation. It has embedded harm into our homes through kids' phones and screens rather than betting shops. A digital duty of care would shift that legal and moral obligation back onto the platforms. It would require them to proactively identify and mitigate risks to our children rather than just react after the damage is done. Coupled with stronger restrictions on gambling promotion and advertising, it's not about restricting freedom or innovation; it's about ensuring that the platforms that shape our children's daily lives are held to the same standard of care that we would expect of any product or service that was marketed to our young people.

We owe it to young Australians and to their families to act before further harm accumulates, not after. That's why it's difficult to understand why the government has this urgency about social media while it continues to drag its heels on online gambling harm and on other safety concerns in the public space. The Murphy report called for a comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising online that leaves no room for circumvention. But, under the government's reforms, if a person is logged into an account, they'll be exposed to online gambling ads until they opt out. That is not a safe digital environment for Australians, and it's incongruent with the principles that are expressed in this bill.

So, when the government's gambling legislation is introduced into parliament, I will be introducing a detailed amendment that will honour the late Peta Murphy, that will honour her clear recommendation that Australia needs a comprehensive ban on online gambling advertising that leaves no room for circumvention. My amendment will provide for a full ban on online gambling advertising across digital platforms, including social media, streaming services and online video environments, where Australians are now currently routinely exposed to targeted content. My amendment will ensure that Australia's approach to online safety is consistent, that we don't take a strong regulatory approach to one set of harms, as we are here, while continuing to tolerate another source of significant harm to young Australians and their families. If we are serious about an evidence based public health approach to Australia's digital environment, then we cannot be selective in its application. We can't treat social media harm to children as urgent, as the government is doing today, while treating their exposure to gambling harm in online spaces as optional.

So I commend this bill to the House, but I ask the government for more, more quickly and more effectively. In doing so, I move:

That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"(1) notes that:

(a) strengthened penalties and expanded information-gathering powers for the eSafety Commissioner are sensible improvements to enforcement of the Online Safety Act 2021;

(b) effective online safety policy requires a consistent approach to harm prevention across digital environments; and

(c) the Government does not plan to implement key recommendations of the House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs' You Win Some, You Lose More report, including a comprehensive prohibition on online gambling advertising, leaving Australian children and families exposed to significant and well-evidenced harms; and

(2) calls on the Government to apply the same priority to addressing the harms of online gambling advertising as it has demonstrated in relation to social media regulation".

Is the amendment seconded?

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

On 10 December 2025, the Albanese Labor government launched the social media ban for children aged under 16. It captured global attention. It was lauded by world leaders as world leading, and it was celebrated by many other governments across the globe. But I want to take a moment to highlight how Australian parents and how Australian carers, the drivers of this law, reacted. I think that the quotes, while you may have heard them before, are worth repeating. Shortly after the ban came into effect, one mother said:

Our son can no longer access his apps—this has already had a profound effect. This morning my son said, 'Mum, do you want to do something with me after school today, like putt putt or something else together?' Normally he would be consumed with his phone, watching mind-numbing videos.

Another said:

My daughter is six and she watches YouTube. She is already displaying signs of body issues, not wanting to eat, wanting to be beautiful. The rabbit hole that is available through the algorithms is horrible.

This is the last one:

Now I feel backed by the government and relieved that our country is taking the online safety of our youth seriously. Many parents are blind to what their kids get up to online.

Those last two points are particularly impactful. They reflect a core priority of the Albanese Labor government: keeping Australians safe online and keeping Australian children safe online. That's the reason we're here today debating the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026.

Since the ban, more than five million social media accounts belonging to under-16s have been removed, restricted or deactivated. Last December's ban, however, was not ever meant to be a one and done, because when you are on the leading edge, as we have been on this important reform, you must always strive to keep getting better. That's what this bill does. We need to keep pushing forward to protect young Australians from the constant and, quite frankly, powerful influence of social media. These days social media companies are big household names. I'm talking about platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. When you chat to young people, it's not long before someone mentions their favourite YouTuber or asks if you've seen a particular reel or TikTok and then shares it with you, much in the way that in the past we used to reference the morning's newspaper headlines in everyday conversation.

The social media companies that we're talking about here are large, influential, big and global. They've got resources, they've got expertise and they have the capacity to meet their obligations to uphold the social media ban for under-16s. However, in March 2026, the eSafety Commissioner, the independent regulator, publicly released a compliance update which highlighted that a significant number of Australian children under 16 still maintain social media accounts or have found ways to create new accounts by circumventing existing age-verification measures, and that's not good enough. The pressure and reach of these platforms are far from harmless. These platforms are designed to draw people in. They're designed to hold attention. They impact lives. When it comes to young people, that impact is not momentary. It can last a lifetime. Algorithm driven feeds, endless scrolling, constant alerts and unhealthy popularity measures all work together to capture and keep young people's focus.

Those of us in this chamber and this place are guilty of sitting up late at night, scrolling through and watching videos; there's no doubt about that. But we did not have the misfortune of growing up in an environment where that was available at the absolute developing moments, the moments when you're deeply impressionable, and this is about safeguarding our children against that. These features are not accidental. They're deliberately engineered to maximise engagement, and this is often at the expense of time; face-to-face socialising; family life, such as playing putt putt with your mum; school work; wellbeing; and development.

Scrolling on social media can consume hours of the day and can continue late into the night. That's why the Albanese Labor government is not leaving this important work unfinished. From the first discussions, Labor has acknowledged that this fast-changing space would require us to adapt accordingly and to make sure that legislation reflected that adaptation and that change. Fighting for the safety of Australian children online is a fight that we are more than willing to have. It's a fight that we should have and it's a fight that we are having.

The eSafety Commissioner is currently investigating the compliance of five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. This bill strengthens the investigation and enforcement framework for the eSafety Commissioner. So what have these platforms in particular been doing? The eSafety Commissioner's compliance update shows that many of them seem to be doing the very bare minimum to comply instead of taking real, robust and strong action to protect young people. This includes practices such as allowing users under 16 to keep retrying age checks until they get through. It could be failing to stop underage users from quickly setting up new accounts after theirs have already been shut down. And we've also seen reporting systems that are difficult to use or ineffective for parents and others trying to flag underage accounts.

When you talk to parents, these algorithms, these platforms are the things that keep them up at night. They're worried about what their children are watching. They're worried about the profound impact it may have on their lives. They've heard the stories and they don't want to be another example. It is one of the defining challenges of modern parenting not just in this country but around the world. These are parents who need someone on their side, and this is a Labor government that is on their side.

The Prime Minister made it clear that the leaders for this reform have been parents who have undergone unimaginable pain, and I was incredibly privileged to meet one of those parents in Mia Bannister recently. She came to my daughter's early learning centre, and her role there was to educate other parents, to explain what had happened to her and to talk about the impacts that social media can have on everyone's lives. This is about backing Mia in and this is about backing every parent like her in.

This bill takes aim at these platforms in two ways. Firstly, it will increase the maximum civil penalty substantially. Currently, noncompliance with the minimum-age obligations can result in a penalty of 30,000 units, or a total of $49.5 million. This will increase to 60,000 penalty units, increasing the maximum penalty up to $99 million. This change is designed to increase accountability and send a very clear message that platforms are expected to take the minimum-age requirements seriously and fully meet their obligations. By strengthening the consequences for noncompliance, this aims to deter weak enforcement and encourage more proactive steps to protect our young users. It also brings the penalty framework into line with recent updates to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, ensuring consistency across Australia's regulatory approach and reinforcing that these are obligations that carry real weight and real consequences.

The second part of this bill strengthens the information-gathering powers of the eSafety Commissioner, which means the compliance of platforms can be assessed when required. The amendments specifically give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to request information and documents from any relevant party where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they hold material related to compliance with the minimum-age framework. Importantly, this extends to information provided by third parties, such as age verification services or app store operators, which can help verify, support or challenge the claims made by platforms about their compliance. This includes situations where it is necessary to determine whether a particular service falls within the scope of the law or is meeting those very important obligations. For instance, information obtained by those third parties could challenge or contradict what a platform has reported about its own compliance efforts. This information could also reveal that measures claimed to be in place are not actually working as intended. This helps ensure that platforms cannot rely solely on their own representations without scrutiny, transparency and accountability.

Overall, these changes will give the eSafety Commissioner a more complete and a more accurate picture of how platforms are operating in practice day to day. With better access to evidence, the commissioner will be in a stronger position to thoroughly investigate potential breaches and, where appropriate, take enforcement action to ensure that this is a law that is properly followed.

Australia is at the forefront globally when it comes to protecting our children and our young people online. Since Labor's ban came into place in December last year, numerous countries have either passed their own legislation or put restrictions in place. There is no doubt that we have been leading the way, but what this legislation shows is that we know there is more to do. Online safety for children is something that resonates worldwide. Malaysia has banned under-16s from accessing social media. Indonesia has applied an age gated approach with restrictions. Brazil has implemented an under-14s ban, and France has an under-15s ban coming into force in September this year. I could go on. As the Prime Minister has said, I'm heartened by the shift in conversation and the global momentum that we've seen since introducing the social media minimum age. But it's clear big tech is not doing enough to comply with the law. There are still too many children on social media.

The Albanese government is utterly serious about enforcing compliance by the big social media platforms, and this bill is a very clear signal to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. It tells them that we expect them not only to do the right thing but to fully comply with the law. Labor is not stopping with this bill. We are driving upcoming work to legislate a digital duty of care, and this will build on the existing reforms and reflects a stronger, more proactive approach to tackling harm in the digital environment. When it comes to a digital duty of care and making sure our children are safe, we will not rest. We owe it to our young people and we owe it to our children.

Is it any surprise that we find ourselves here? Let me start with a history lesson, because, in respect of this reform and its failures which today we are here trying to mop up, a history lesson actually matters. Back in the 46th Parliament, my friend—a strong-minded, most clever coalition MP—the member for Fisher led an inquiry into age verification for pornography and gambling sites. That committee concluded in its report, which was called Protecting the age of innocence, that age verification is not a silver bullet but a useful tool to create a barrier to young people's access to harmful online content.

Protecting the a ge of i nnocence was handed down on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it set out a future course of conduct, including that the Digital Transformation Agency should lead the development of standards for online age verification, that the eSafety Commissioner should lead development of a roadmap for mandatory age verification for online pornographic material, that the Australian government should implement mandatory age verification for online wagering alongside existing identity verification requirements and, finally, that some educational resources for parents should be prepared. That report was largely bipartisan, but, in Labor's minimal additional comments at the time, they posted a warning to their future selves, where they quoted the eSafety Commissioner:

Age verification is a nascent field, and if it is to be leveraged to protect children and young people from accessing online pornography, then we need to develop a supportive ecosystem, develop robust technical standards and requirements for this type of technology, and better understand the effectiveness and impact of age verification solutions in addressing this policy concern.

They also drew attention to comments by the Communications Alliance:

Translating this objective [of ensuring that Australians younger than 18 years should not have access to online wagering and pornography sites] into a robust and practicable framework that also protects the privacy and cyber security of individual users of an age verification system is, however, a complex task that must be approached carefully and methodically.

Further, they said:

Labor members of the Committee acknowledge that the necessary review and research requires time, expertise and resources to properly examine the complex range of issues that age verification gives rise to, across data security, trust, privacy and freedom of expression.

Many of the members of the then House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs remain on the government's benches today—the members for Newcastle and Macarthur. While the formidable former member for Dunkley Peta Murphy is no longer here, her presence is felt loudly and proudly for her leadership on the topic of age verification and gambling. Her impact remains felt in this chamber each and every day. Learning from his strong leadership in this policy space, the member for Fisher became my firm friend after I got up in my very first speech and discussed the impact of screening and social media on the generation of young Australians that had just come through the COVID era.

In that speech, I reflected on the period the Mornington Peninsula had just passed through and what it had done to the relationship between young people and screens. I said:

The 262 days of lockdown in metro Melbourne, in which the Mornington Peninsula, bafflingly, found itself included, further embedded their generation's relationship with screens, social media and other online content. Whatever systems our households had in place to balance online time with offline time in the form of study, sports, sleep or social activity collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worse still, the school system became the dealer of the digital drug, putting laptops and tablets into every lounge or bedroom.

I went on:

… increasingly, data shows us that today's adolescents—24/7 connected to devices, addled by algorithms and autoplay—are showing signs of stress and, indeed, in some cases, distress. Self-control difficulties, impulsivity, family conflict, sleep disturbance, inactivity, concentration impairment and poor language development are often observed among those children whose technology use is above the recommended two hours a day. Of highest concern is the well-documented epidemic of anxiety and depression in teenage girls, which we know correlates with high use of social media.

At the time, I admit, no-one much was listening, but it was a conversation I continued with former colleagues in tech and telco from my time on the NBN board, with families and teachers across my electorate, and with researchers and policymakers around the world. The work by Professor Jean Twenge was already detailing the impact of technology on young people.

Published in 2017, her book iGen detailed the impact of technology on the generation who had grown up with it in their hands. She studied the cohort of young people born between 1995 and 2012 and the impact internet enabled devices were having on that generation. Twenge's book iGen provided reams of data on what we were seeing in terms of behavioural change, cultural change, and social and economic change due to social media but also on mental health, social cohesion and to a lesser extent radicalisation. I thank Professor Twenge for the time she has given me personally while being here speaking in Australia. Her work has been pivotal in giving me the data and determination I needed for what I could already see was happening in our homes and communities over the last decade.

Twenge's work was followed by Jonathan Haidt's more popular work of 2024, The Anxious Generation, which captured the public's attention. It also captured interest in this place. Many of my colleagues pulled me aside, saying: 'I remember you mentioning this in your maiden speech. Can we have a chat?' It was perhaps helpful that many by then had kids who were in their teens and the battle over iPhones and platforms was real and rife at the dining room table. Haidt's thesis was that we had 'rewired childhood' and that we had let play cede way to phones. Again, Haidt detailed a number of perils—social isolation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction—particularly the trap of the compulsive dopamine driven design of many of the social media platforms.

Early in 2024, my then leader Peter Dutton stood up and said, 'There's an age verification regime which has been recommended by the eSafety Commissioner from 2023. We think that's something that the government should pick up straightaway as well, but the Online Safety Act has significant powers in it, we passed it when we were in government and it needs to be enforced. If the laws are inadequate and they need to be strengthened or added to, then we would support any effort from the government.'

By then, a number of parents groups had already got organised and were running hard, demanding reform, like the Heads Up Alliance, and 36 months and News Corp's Let Them Be Kids campaign had kicked off in May 2024. A local hero from the Mornington Peninsula, dad Wayne Holdsworth, had started his SmackTalk outreach work across the country. All these efforts were getting increased public attention.

Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen visited Australia a number of times. Listeners will recall she was the person who revealed that Meta knew exactly how much damage was being done to young people, particularly girls, on their platforms. I thank Frances for coming to Flinders and for meeting with me and my local schools to talk to young people about their experience with social media.

On 13 June 2024, Peter Dutton made an even clearer statement committing a future coalition government to implementing an age limit of 16 for social media platform use and making it a top priority for his first hundred days in office. Premiers Minns of New South Wales and Malinauskas of South Australia were quick to read the room and held a summit a few months later. But, for months, Australia's Prime Minister remained largely silent on the issue, as was his then communications minister.

In May, the Prime Minister sought to pump the issue into the long grass, referring the matter to a select committee, the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. Unsurprisingly, the member for Fisher and I bullied and begged our way onto that committee. I do recommend the committee report to all and sundry to read, as indeed I did this morning when talking to Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, an Independent Quebecoise senator in Canada. Julie rounds out conversations and communications I have had with policymakers and influencers in New Zealand, the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the EU and the OECD since 2022 on this issue. It has always been clear to me that Australia will not get there alone—without bigger, more substantive and more lucrative markets getting on board to force change and practice within the social media business model.

But there's another reason why the joint select committee's report is worth reading. That is because, in the final report, called Social media: the good, the bad and the ugly, nowhere in it do the Labor members of the committee recommend a ban on under-16s holding social media accounts, the accounts being the vector for algorithmic push and influence. The coalition members' comments, written by the member for Fisher and me, argued for meaningful measures to address recommender systems, persuasive design features and customised feeds. We demanded that platforms report on foreign interference and transnational crime, as well as intelligence relating to child sexual abuse material, child sexual exploitation material and non-consensual sexual images. We demanded action on scams which flourish on Australian social media platforms but not elsewhere, and we demanded additional resources for the eSafety Commissioner and the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. We demanded a statutory duty of care on social media platforms, and we demanded concerted action in relation to the possible perils of generative artificial intelligence as well. But, above all, we demanded that Australia create an effective market for safer social media as it concerns young people.

On 8 November, after a National Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister announced an intention to legislate a minimum age for access to social media, and many of the committee's coalition members' recommendations found their way into a speech given by the then Minister for Communications at the Sydney Institute on 13 November 2024. I sat up the back of the room that night, somewhat flabbergasted to hear her commitment to all the things which the member for Fisher and I had argued for throughout the select committee process but which had gone unsaid, unsought and unfought for by her colleagues on the committee.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 was passed on 29 November 2024 with bipartisan support. But, in the eSafety Commissioner's own words, which she has subsequently shared publicly, she was not given the powers she needed to do the job. In a lunch with Jacqueline Maley, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the legislation was drafted 'very quickly' and said:

… if you're going to take on the biggest technology companies in the world … it's not like you're sticking a pink parking ticket on a windshield …

She said:

What you're effectively asking us to do with this is fence the ocean. We might be able to create some friction and some degree of safety but it's a futile exercise if you think you're totally stemming the ocean.

That would all be fair comment if the government who had given her instructions in these tasks without the requisite powers had not been on notice for at least 2½ years, if not, in fact, four. At the time, my side knew the reform was flawed, but we were on the eve of an election and something, anything, was better than nothing. We were comforted that, should we be successful at that election, we'd be able to make the reform more rigorous. Frankly, as we've heard from others, parents were desperate.

When I quietly said to parents groups, 'I cannot promise you yet that this will work,' they would invariably reply, 'I am desperate; you have to give me something to strengthen my arm at the nightly battle at the dinner table,' and so we did. The social media platforms had a year to adapt to the reforms, but, rather than rigorously test the adequacy of the implementation, this government got busy on a world victory tour. It was shameless, it was grandiose, it was decadent, and it was a dereliction of duty. We had the new minister for communications spend some hundred thousand dollars to wear the shiny ribbon of reform at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September 2025 before a single social media account had been cancelled.

On the weekend just passed, almost out of nowhere, the Prime Minister declared that the reform had failed and recognised that failure by social media companies to comply with our 'world-leading law' needed to be addressed. Then, to double down on this government's ineptitude, this bill was rushed in yesterday afternoon—so rushed that there were no copies of the bill at the table yesterday when the minister god up to give her second reading speech. It seems this government is determined to repeat its mistakes through haste and being seen to address issues rather than addressing them in any meaningful way. We are being asked to pass this bill within 24 hours, and it is not clear from the content of this bill that it will actually bring about change and efficacy in the operation of this reform.

Efficacy here is not optional. The rest of the world is watching us. I addressed a political tech conference in Berlin in January of this year which brought together hundreds of politicians, public policy makers and regulators in the social media space across all continents regarding our laws and especially the importance of the EU, France and Germany following suit to provide ballast and back in the reforms with a 450-million person market.

This time last year, I met with the French president's advisers at the Elysee on this topic, and, in January, France's National Assembly passed a bill to ban social media accounts for under-15s. In February of this year, I met with members of the German Bundestag, looking at this as a possible reform. I was in the room at the CDU national conference in Stuttgart when the then-ruling CDU committed to a ban for under-14-year-olds. I'm proud to say that, unlike the Minister for Communications, the Australian taxpayer didn't need to pay a single dollar for me to have these conversations with policymakers around the world. I do thank the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Meliore Foundation for their support, and I thank others for agreeing to meet with me and to do work together on my self-funded holidays to get meaningful reform done.

Growing up, I was spared what we now know as the intrusion of Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms. However, as my sons grew from children to adolescents, technology developed so rapidly. There was a plethora of platforms to engage with friends and others. This included online games they played with their friends and, dare I say, their online acquaintances. Here we are in 2026, where not only is there a plethora of platforms available but there are also algorithms that push content that can be predatory and harmful to young people.

I was concerned about what my sons had access to 15 years ago to the point that we insisted that their online games were played in the living room, where it was possible to keep that little lazy ear on the discussions between them and the people they really didn't know. We didn't know their values either, nor what they may be saying to two very vulnerable young lads, who, like any teenagers, were trying to work out who they were.

As parents, we obviously want our kids to explore, we want them to find their peeps, and we want them to be safe. They are rightly curious. Their brains are sponges, they want to feel part of the community, and they want to feel loved. But those traits, however, also make them vulnerable to pressures in what they see and what they hear. We've seen the worst that this can lead to, which is why keeping Australians safe online, particularly children and young people, is a top priority of the Albanese Labor government.

Last year, we introduced some of the most significant and controversial technology reforms Australia has seen in recent years—to introduce a minimum age of 16 for social media use. This reform did spark debate across the country. Some believe it was necessary to step up and protect young Australians from online harm. Others argued it limited freedoms, is difficult to enforce and may create new problems rather than solve existing ones. On this side of the House, however, we make no apologies for keeping our children safe from online social media harm.

Since the introduction of these reforms in December last year, we have seen over five million accounts belonging to under-16s taken off social media, and that really is a positive development. But it is clear that big tech companies aren't doing enough to keep children off their platforms. That's why this government has stepped in again to do more. With this bill, we are doubling the penalties these companies face when they do the wrong thing, and we're also giving more power to the regulator so they can investigate what's going on.

But why did the government have to act? Social media has certainly transformed the way we communicate. Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X have become a normal part of our modern life. While these platforms offer opportunities for learning, creativity and connection, they also expose young people to significant risks. As we heard in the chamber earlier, research has linked excessive social media use with increased rates of anxiety, depression, body-image concerns, cyberbullying, sleep deprivation and reduced attention spans amongst teenagers.

Many young people compare themselves to unrealistic online standards, and algorithms often prioritise sensational or emotionally charged content because it keeps the user engaged. This can create an endless cycle of scrolling that is difficult for adults to manage, let alone children. Parents, teachers and mental health professionals have increasingly expressed concern that social media companies have been prioritising engagement and profit over children's wellbeing. In response to this, our government has acted and announced legislation requiring major social media companies to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from accessing social media and creating accounts. Importantly, the responsibility takes a bit of the effort away from parents and puts it on technology companies themselves.

What are the benefits of these reforms? The first is improved mental health. Teenagers are still developing emotionally and psychologically, and removing constant exposure to social media comparisons, cyberbullying and addictive algorithms may reduce stress, anxiety and depression. The second is the benefit of increased face-to-face interaction. Young people are spending more time participating in sport and hobbies, outdoor activities and even conversations with friends and family—activities we did as kids—rather than endlessly scrolling through content. The third is better sleep. Many teenagers use social media late into the night, reducing sleep quality and affecting school performance. Less screen time before bed could improve concentration, learning and overall health. The fourth is greater protection from online predators, scams and harmful content. The internet, as we all know, contains misinformation, violent material, gambling promotion and inappropriate content that younger users may struggle to interpret critically. Finally, the reforms send a strong message to technology companies that child safety should be built into platform designs rather than treated as an afterthought or something that they just have to deal with.

When these reforms were first announced last year, there was excitement across the country but also trepidation. 'Will it work?' 'How will it work?' 'What do I need to do?' That's why I decided to hold a social media forum in Brisbane, alongside our state MPs Grace Grace and Jonty Bush, to discuss with parents the reforms and what to expect. This session was designed to give parents the knowledge and confidence to help guide them and their children in the new social media landscape. We enjoyed a presentation from Paul—who was representing the eSafety Commission—which was very informative, and we finished the evening with Professor Morawska from the University of Queensland. She partners with Triple P, an organisation that specialises in child psychology.

But even with our existing historic laws, it's clear that big tech is not doing enough to protect our children from online harm. Social media companies are some of the largest and most influential companies globally. They have the capability and they have the resources to meet their obligations under the social media minimum age framework and protect young users. Speaking of resources, Meta alone has a market cap of more than US$1.4 trillion. In March 2026, the eSafety Commissioner released a public compliance update which found that while platforms have removed, deactivated or restricted access to more than five million accounts there is a substantial proportion of Australian children under the age of 16 who continue to hold or create new accounts or are able to bypass existing age assurance systems. It's just not good enough. The eSafety Commissioner is concerned.

The commissioner is actively investigating the compliance of five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. In considering enforcement action, the eSafety Commissioner has advised the government that it needs stronger investigative powers to build stronger evidence against potentially non-compliant platforms. This bill responds to those challenges by strengthening the enforcement framework so that platforms take their minimum age obligation seriously and do more to comply. With this bill, the maximum civil penalty for noncompliance with minimum age obligations extends from 30,000 to 60,000 penalty units, or it brings that maximum penalty up to $99 million. It's also important that the information-gathering powers of the eSafety Commissioner are strengthened so they can get the information they need from the platforms to access compliance and understand what's going on. In particular, the amendment enables the commissioner to issue notices requiring the provision of information and documents from any person where the commissioner reasonably believes they hold material relevant to compliance with the minimum age framework, including whether a service falls within its scope.

For example, there may be situations where information and documents are held by a third party that might refute the information provided by, or claims made by, the age restricted social media platform, or they may show that the steps taken are not operating as claimed. The bottom line is that these changes will provide the commissioner with more information as to how the platforms are complying with the laws, which will support more effective investigation and potentially stronger enforcement action. But the Albanese government is not stopping here. The next step in the government's mission to protect Australians from online harm is to legislate a digital duty of care. That duty of care will put the responsibility on digital service providers to adopt safety by design and have systems in place to protect Australians—and, in particular, young Australians—from harm before it occurs.

However, as we know, every major reform has challenges. I've heard about the previous challenges from some people in my community, and we'll see where we go with this lot. Teenagers are technologically savvy. Some teenagers may simply create accounts using false ages, virtual private networks or accounts registered by adults. Some people think that social media may not be entirely harmful. For many young people it provides friendship, support networks, educational content and opportunities to express creativity. People living in rural areas or experiencing isolation rely heavily on online communities for connection, and critics argue that banning access altogether may remove these positive benefits. There is also concern that responsibility should remain primarily with parents, rather than with government. Some families say they're capable of deciding when their children are mature enough to use social media safely. Other families question whether government intervention is the right approach. But, overall, these reforms raise broader questions about the role of technology companies.

We have to take steps to ensure that our community is safe, so we have to ask ourselves: should companies that make billions and trillions of dollars, whose business model depends on keeping users online, be responsible for protecting children? We argue—yes. For years, platforms have developed sophisticated algorithms that are capable of predicting what users will watch, buy and click, then they push this content to them. If companies possess technology advanced enough to personalise data and advertisements within seconds, surely they can also develop effective systems to protect children. Increasingly, governments around the world are asking technology companies to accept greater responsibility for the products they create. Australia's reforms are already world leading, and they could become even more so with these reforms.

Over the past months, many countries have restricted or announced plans to restrict social media access for children and teens. The UK is the latest country to announce a ban on social media for children; it did that in June, this month. There are 16 other countries: Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Vietnam, Türkiye et cetera just to name a few. This is important, and the reason it's important is we know that if we work together around the world, at a global level, we can send a clear and strong message to the tech giants that this is a serious issue and they must act. It was brave for Australia to go it alone, and I am proud that we took the steps to act in the interests of young people. Governments must stand strong, and that's exactly what we are doing.

Of course, legislation alone cannot solve every problem. In this space, digital literacy remains essential. Young Australians still need education about misinformation, online scams, cyberbullying, privacy settings and responsible online behaviour. Parents play a crucial role by maintaining open conversations with our kids about online experiences, modelling healthy technology use and setting clear boundaries. Schools likewise have an important responsibility to teach students critical thinking skills so that they can navigate the digital world safely. Ultimately, protecting young people requires cooperation between families, educators, governments, community and technology companies.

So where does this leave us? Australia's social media reforms represent a bold attempt to address one of the defining public health and technology challenges of our generation, and the strength of their success will depend on how effectively these laws can be enforced, whether privacy can be protected and whether technology companies genuinely cooperate. The debate reminds us that technological innovation should always be accompanied by ethical responsibility and that ethics should be introduced at the start of the development of any product or service that is delivered through the digital space. Just because technology evolves rapidly, it doesn't mean society should accept every consequence without question or without compromise.

As Australians, we must continue asking how we can enjoy the benefits of digital technology—we know there are many—while protecting the wellbeing of future generations. As leaders, we have to have the courage to take on the big issues, and the issue of social media addiction for our young people is one of these big issues. The Albanese Labor government are on the side of parents and kids, not the side of platforms, and we will keep fighting for them every step of the way.

(Quorum formed)

Unfortunately, the Labor members have all just departed the chamber. It is unfortunate because they could have actually learned something. Between you, Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander, and me, with our experience in this particular area, we could teach them a lesson. But the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 is a very important bill, and it's one that I know that you have a great deal of interest in, because you and I have worked very closely together over the years on the protection of young people. No government has any greater responsibility than the protection of its citizens. Drilling down into that even further, that is particularly so when we talk about the protection of its most vulnerable—that is, children. There's an old phrase that goes something like this: you can always judge the state of a society by how it treats its most vulnerable.

The issues that we have looked at together, Mr Deputy Speaker, over a number of years, with the harms that are being caused by social media to young people, are very significant. When the coalition was in government, we led the charge on things such as the implementation of the eSafety Commissioner. When the eSafety Commissioner was first introduced, the role was actually called the Children's eSafety Commissioner, and then the coalition expanded the role across all age groups because we recognised that, unfortunately, bad things were happening online. Not only did we create the Children's eSafety Commissioner in 2015; in 2017 we built the world's first scheme to force platforms to take down intimate images shared without consent, which is sometimes referred to as revenge pawn, and hit perpetrators and non-compliant platforms with real financial penalties. In 2021, the coalition introduced and passed the Online Safety Act. It was the most comprehensive online safety regime in the nation's history. We codified the basic online safety expectations, created an adult cyberabuse take-down scheme and slashed the time platforms have to strip illegal and terrorist content from their feeds.

This wasn't window dressing, Mr Deputy Speaker. This was real reform. You and I both sat on that inquiry of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, which I chaired, and you named the report Protecting the age of innocence. I'll be forever grateful for the work that you and I did because that really kicked off in this parliament the importance of age assurance. In that inquiry, we looked at restricting, with an effort to eliminating, online pornography and gambling for under 18-year-olds, and we wanted to introduce that age assurance. That was the first time that this place had considered that, and, unfortunately, still today, in 2026, those recommendations have not been fully implemented. I lament that. It is very unfortunate that those two issues of online pornography and online gambling for under-18s are still not properly looked after. But I digress.

The social media ban for under-16-year-olds was a coalition conviction. It was a coalition policy born out of the good work that we did on the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs. In 2023, in November, there was a coalition private member's bill—which, if I remember correctly, was moved by then shadow minister David Coleman—to force age verification onto the agenda for social media, and Labor knocked it back. This Labor government knocked it back. This Labor government has been dragged kicking and screaming to introduce a social media ban. Those members opposite will try and rewrite history, especially those members opposite who are new to the party or new to this place and who are given the talking points by the Labor Party. But the reality is the under-16s ban was born of and from the coalition. The Labor Party wanted nothing to do with it.

That was until a group of parents who had lost children to the sort of abuse that many children experience on social media—mums like Emma Mason, who lost her daughter Matilda to the most wicked forms of online abuse. Mr Deputy Speaker, when you and I were lads—you were a lad a fair bit longer ago than I was a lad.

Correct.

When you and I were lads, bullying stopped at the school gate. But, now, bullying continues day in, day out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Poor little Tilly succumbed to that bullying and took her own life in her own backyard. Emma Mason led the charge with a number of other parents to force this government to act. She then went to the UN and did some great work in the UN—if it's possible to do any great work in the UN, but I digress again. The work done by those family members, those parents, brought this to the front of mind of Australians and showed that this is not just some sort of boutique issue; this is something that is costing Australian lives. I want to thank them again for their work.

In May of 2024, there was a parliamentary inquiry which was engaged and begun under this government, but at the coalition's behest, when David Coleman was the shadow communications minister. I remember serving on that committee with the member for Flinders, and we did some really good work once again to look at bringing those age assurance issues into social media. I'm pleased that the government finally woke up to itself and adopted that recommendation. We also made recommendations around the significance of algorithms and recommender systems and how those systems can significantly sway what young people—all of us but particularly young people—see on their screens and how that can have a significant, deleterious impact on their mental wellbeing. I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, how much you, as a renowned paediatrician, take those matters very seriously.

I want to thank the member for Flinders for her outstanding work on that committee because she helped me immeasurably in the recommendations that we ended up putting up. I want to acknowledge the great work of David Coleman and the former opposition leader Peter Dutton, who made a commitment, at the last election, that within the first 100 days of a coalition government we would introduce a social media ban for under-16s.

But things haven't gone so well since then. The Labor Party took what was a good policy and they wrecked it. The numbers don't lie. The eSafety Commissioner's own March 2026 compliance update identified that 70 per cent of children under 16 are still on social media. A landmark British Medical Journal study identified that 85 per cent of under-16s are still logging on. Its verdict was 'limited implementation, incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention'. The eSafety Commissioner herself called the ban a 'very blunt force approach' that was thrown together 'very quickly' with 'very thin scaffolding' and no 'potent powers'. In her words, taking on the world's biggest tech companies is not like 'sticking a pink parking ticket on a windshield'. She also described it as like trying to 'fence the ocean'.

The amending bill before the House tonight is actually a confession of the Labor government. Labor is rushing to bolt on the powers it should have built in from day one. Today, as the law stands, the commissioner can only compel a platform or platform providers. This bill allows the eSafety Commissioner to compel documents from age-assurance providers, app store operators and anyone reasonably believed to hold compliance information. It provides penalties with bite. It provides for the doubling of penalties, up to $99 million for a corporation and up to $19.8 million for an individual. These are all good things, but they are late to the party.

It would be remiss of me not to comment on the sorts of dangers and ills that we are experiencing today on social media. Did you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in the 2024-25 financial year the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received 82,764 reports of online child exploitation? That's 227 reports each and every single day. This is something that we as Australians should be ashamed of, and there is much more work for the minister to do.

There are some really simple things that this government could do. There are, unfortunately, bad actors that are operating in the dark web, which has led to child sexual exploitation being absolutely rife throughout the dark web. There are ways and means that this government should be using to identify perpetrators and victims. I'm not sold on this particular product, but there's a product out there called Clearview AI, which enables law enforcement to identify perpetrators and victims. But we can't use products like Clearview AI which scrape the dark web, because some genius in the privacy commission decided that that was a breach of Australian privacy law. So we are at the mercy of these grubs that operate on the dark web who seek to exploit children in Australia and around the world, and this government won't arm our law enforcement agencies with the tools that they need to identify victims and perpetrators.

I implore those members opposite—the Attorney-General, the Minister for Communications and anybody on the government benches—to have a look at the concept of a proprietary product called Clearview AI. It identifies perpetrators and victims so that we can charge and arrest these grubs and try to identify victims and help them get away from the situations that they're in.

I rise today to speak in support of the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. This legislation is about one simple but vital principle: when laws are made to protect children, those laws must be strongly enforced. A law without effective enforcement is merely a statement of intent, and this bill ensures that Australia's social media minimum age laws are backed by serious consequences for companies that fail to meet their responsibilities.

Social media has transformed how we communicate, learn and connect. It has brought enormous benefits to society by allowing people to stay in touch across continents, access educational resources, build communities and express themselves creatively. These advantages should not be ignored. However, alongside these benefits come serious risks, in particular, for young Australians. Children today are exposed to cyberbullying, inappropriate content, online predators, scams and unrealistic social comparisons at unprecedented levels. This is completely unacceptable.

These are not isolated incidents; they are systemic problems that demand systemic solutions. Keeping Australians safe online, particularly children and young people, is an important priority for the Albanese Labor government. That's why we've delayed people's access to social media until they're 16 years old. It's to protect young Australians from the pervasive impact of social media. Social media companies are among the largest and most influential digital platforms in the world. They have the capability and resources to meet their obligations under the social media minimum age framework and to protect younger users. We are expecting them to demonstrate their social responsibility to children and young people in our society and to use that capability to protect young people.

In March 2026, the eSafety Commissioner released a public compliance update which found that while platforms have removed, deactivated or restricted access to more than five million accounts—and this is a good start—a substantial proportion of Australian children under the age of 16 continue to hold or create new accounts, or they are able to bypass existing age assurance systems. The eSafety Commissioner is actively investigating the compliance of five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. In considering potential enforcement action, the eSafety Commissioner has advised the government that stronger investigative powers are required to build stronger evidence against potentially non-compliant platforms.

This bill responds to these challenges by strengthening the enforcement framework underpinning the social media minimum age requirements. The Albanese Labor government is on the side of parents and children, not platforms. The eSafety Commissioner's public compliance update shows that social media giants seem to be trying to get away with doing the bare minimum. If these social media companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws and they must uphold their social responsibility.

This bill increases the maximum civil penalty for noncompliance with minimum age obligations from 30,000 to 60,000 penalty units. This brings the maximum penalty up to $99 million. These changes are intended to strengthen deterrence and reinforce the expectation that platforms take their minimum-age obligations seriously and do more to comply. Our government will strengthen the eSafety Commissioner's information-gathering powers so they can get the information they need from platforms to assess compliance when they need it. In particular, the amendments enable the commissioner to issue notices requiring the provision of information and documents from any person where the commissioner reasonably believes they hold material relevant to compliance with the minimum-age framework. (Quorum formed)

The next step in the Albanese Labor government's mission to protect Australians from online harm to is to legislate a digital duty of care. A digital duty of care will put the responsibility on digital service providers to adopt a safety-by-design approach and have systems in place to protect Australians—in particular, young Australians—from harm before it occurs. Our original social media minimum-age legislation recognised these dangers by requiring social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from holding accounts. Importantly, the responsibility was placed where it belongs: not on parents, teachers or children but on the tech companies themselves.

Today, our proposed amendments strengthen that framework by ensuring those companies cannot simply ignore their obligations. Some of the largest tech companies in the world are impacted by these measures, and they generate billions of dollars in annual revenue. For businesses of this size, modest financial penalties can come become little more than another cost of doing business. This bill addresses that problem by significantly increasing the maximum penalties for companies that systematically fail to comply with Australia's online safety laws, and that's why we are doubling maximum penalties to $99 million while giving regulators stronger investigative powers. That's about ensuring accountability. When multinational corporations profit from Australian users, they must also respect Australian law. No company, regardless of its size or influence, should be above the law.

Critics have argued that these reforms place too much responsibility on social media companies, but we disagree. Technology companies possess some of the most sophisticated data-collection and identity-verification technologies ever developed. These companies know what users watch, where they're located, what ads interest them and even how long they pause while scrolling. If companies possess technology capable of delivering personalised advertising with remarkable accuracy, then surely they possess the capability to implement reasonable age-assurance measures to protect children. The question is not whether or not they can; the question is whether or not they will. This legislation ensures that they must.

This debate is ultimately about protecting children. Parents across Australia are increasingly concerned about the amount of time their children are spending online. Where parents can control this, they do, but there is so much outside of their control because of the content that children can now access online. Unfortunately, this is now a challenging feature of modern parenthood. Many families struggle to monitor social media use around the clock. Children can access content at school, at friends' homes and on multiple devices. Some of the content that children can now access on social media is horrifying and distressing and far from being age appropriate. Parents should not have to fight billion-dollar technology companies alone. Government has a responsibility to create an environment where families are supported rather than undermined.

The evidence surrounding online harms continues to grow. Research has linked excessive social media use among adolescents with increased rates of anxiety, depression, body image concerns, sleep disruption and exposure to harmful content. Young users are particularly vulnerable because their emotional regulation and decision-making skills are still developing. Social media that is designed to maximise engagement does not distinguish between content that is healthy and content that is harmful. Instead, it prioritises whatever keeps users scrolling. For children, this can mean repeated exposure to unrealistic beauty standards, self-harm material, misinformation, disturbing material, cyberbullying or addictive content. No child should become collateral damage in the pursuit of advertising revenue.

Some opponents argue that young people need social media to remain socially connected. That concern deserves consideration. Social connection is important. However, this legislation does not seek to isolate young people from the digital world altogether. The law was designed so that messaging services such as WhatsApp, online education platforms and essential health services could continue to remain available where appropriate. This bill is not anti technology; it's pro safety. It recognises that not every online platform carries the same level of risk.

Some have raised concerns regarding privacy and age verification. Privacy is an important right. Australians rightly expect that any age assurance systems introduced under this legislation will protect personal information and minimise unnecessary data collection. That's why implementation matters. Age verification technology should be proportionate, secure and subject to strong oversight. Protecting children and protecting privacy are not mutually exclusive objectives; both can and must be achieved together.

Australia is starting to be recognised internationally as a leader in online safety regulation. Other countries are closely watching our approach. If these reforms succeed, they may influence similar protections around the world. Leadership requires courage. It requires governments to act in the interests of their citizens and, in this case, their younger citizens. Waiting for technology companies to regulate themselves has not delivered adequate protection for children. This bill represents a recognition that stronger government oversight is now necessary.

There are those who will say that determined young people will always find ways around restrictions, and they likely will. No law achieves perfect compliance. Seatbelt laws do not eliminate every road fatality. Speed limits do not prevent every accident. Yet we continue to support these laws because they reduce harm. Similarly, this legislation will not eliminate every underage social media account, but if it prevents thousands of children from being exposed to harmful online experiences, then it will have made a meaningful difference. Public policy should not be judged against perfection. It should be judged against whether it improves outcomes.

My children are now aged 21, 16 and 15. As a parent, I battled for many years to protect my children from damaging online content. It was important to me to allow my children to have a childhood. I wish that this law had been in place years ago. As a parent, I know we need better protections for children online.

As lawmakers, our responsibility is to safeguard the wellbeing of future generations. Children cannot negotiate terms of service. They cannot fully understand complex algorithms. They cannot realistically challenge multinational corporations. The responsibility therefore lies with us. This legislation reflects a fundamental principle that has guided public policy for generations: that, where there is a risk of significant harm to children, governments both have the authority and the obligation to intervene. We regulate tobacco. We regulate alcohol. We regulate seatbelts. This bill follows in the same tradition. We are seeking to protect children from harm.

I need to fast-forward some of my speech because it was interrupted. To recap, more than five million under-16 social media accounts have now been removed and we really want to strengthen the approach that we've already taken. I sincerely hope that these attempts at protecting children online are effective. We know that we are signalling to social media companies that we are serious about online harm to children, and we expect them to do everything they can to comply.

Well, the government is now back in the parliament trying to strengthen enforcement for its social media age ban. The central problems were obvious when the first bill was rushed through this place in 2024: the technology was not settled, the age assurance model was not settled, the privacy implications were not settled and the core legal test of whether the platforms would take reasonable steps was certainly not properly defined. Those problems remain. I support strong enforcements against big tech. Platforms should not be allowed to hide behind vague community guidelines or the usual Silicon Valley playbook of delay, denial and minimal compliance. But let's also be really clear about how Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 came to play and the selective approach the government is taking in what harms they're protecting children from and what ones they are turning a blind eye to.

I also want to thank the eSafety Commissioner. I know she works incredibly hard in this space as a local constituent. I've met with her many times, and I know how hard she worked in this space. This bill gives the eSafety Commissioner bigger sticks and better evidence-gathering powers. It doubles maximum penalties and allows the regulator to compel documents from platforms and third parties. Those are important tools. The bigger question remains, though, in the billions of dollars of profit these platforms make. Even the doubling of penalties of maximum penalties may be such an insignificant consequence that they are more than likely to want to continue to risk it or use their very deep pockets in circumstances of litigation. I have strong reservations around how much more of a bandaid this is to a bigger problem.

What we know is that this legislation and these amendments do not fix the central weakness in the scheme: what 'reasonable steps' for age verification actually means in practice. The government calls this a world-leading ban. Well, a world-leading child safety framework would start with safety by design, safer algorithms, safer default settings, stronger privacy protections, transparency over recommender systems and a real statutory duty of care on platforms. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications are already spruiking this social media age ban as a success on the international stage despite the evidence showing that it has had limited effect in terms of actually keeping young people off and protecting them from harm.

We have other countries now following Australia's lead whilst we're still working on the legislation that would actually make social media safer: a European Digital Services Act-style model focused on platform accountability and safety by design. The government continues to promote this bandaid fix internationally when the evidence so clearly points to a systems focused European Digital Services Act-style model as being far, far superior. This will be what I'll be looking for when the government introduces its long-awaited promised digital duty of care framework later this year—a best practice framework not watered down as we have seen and has occurred in other jurisdictions. A ban can only ever be one part of the answer, or you just push the problem underground.

In Warringah parents, teachers and young people have been very clear with me in their feedback. They're worried about what children are exposed to online. They're worried about the addictive design. They're worried about the algorithms pushing harmful content. They're worried about cyberbullying, eating disorder content, misogynistic material, scams, AI deepfakes and the relentless pressure children feel to post their lives online. But young people have also told us something else: that social media is not only a space of harm. It is also where they communicate, organise, seek, help, build communities and have a voice.

When I spoke to the original legislation in 2024, I referred to Lucy Flynn, a 14-year-old from Warringah who had recovered from an eating disorder and used social media to petition for more public hospital beds for eating disorder treatment. Lucy harnessed the power of social media to tell her story and amplified the issues in the eating disorder funding. Online platforms can provide a platform to reach people outside their geographical communities, provide an avenue for youth leadership on issues that matter to them and provide the ability for young people to feel that they have control over their future.

So I disagree with the government. The answer is not a blanket ban on social media. It is to make social media socially safe by design, fit for the digital age and for young people like Lucy to pursue their passions and find their tribes. A cynical hypocrisy exists when a government lets gambling ads harm the wellbeing of Australian children—children as young as six can identify gambling company brands—while posturing here in this place to be cracking down on social media tech giants with an ineffective and, I would say, disingenuous age ban for social media platforms.

The social media minimum age scheme requires age restricted platforms to take reasonable steps—this is important for people to understand what this legislation actually does—to prevent children under 16 from creating or keeping accounts. The platforms covered include major services such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X, Threads, Reddit, Twitch and others subject to the statutory criteria. Keep in mind, there are a lot of concerns around gaming platforms that also create cause for harm. What it's really important to understand is there is no narrowing of that definition around reasonable steps, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

The government says this new bill will strengthen eSafety's information-gathering powers and double maximum penalties for systemic breaches from $49.5 million to $99 million. Again, I say, for companies that are making billions of dollars of profit, there is the question of whether that is even meaningful in terms of a stick or a penalty. This amendment will allow eSafety to compel evidence from platforms and third parties, including age assurance and app store providers. That is what this bill provides for. These are simple changes and fine in their own right if one believes that the system actually works.

But the context of this debate does go back to the original bill in 2024. Then, crossbenchers and experts noted that it did not specify how the ban would be implemented and that 'reasonable steps' was not defined in the legislation. It continues to not be defined. I've asked that of the minister, and the explanation was, 'We don't want to be held to it now and to allow for that to continue changing.' But what it does do is create a huge legal grey area. The Senate inquiry into the original bill recommended that the government legislate a digital duty of care, meaning a positive legal obligation on platforms to proactively identify, prevent and reduce online harms.

Instead, the government rushed through a blunt age based scheme before the age assurance trial had reported, before the practical enforcement model was clear and before the parliament had properly tested for unintended consequences. I said at the time that the bill was misguided, that it was window dressing and that it risked driving harms underground while failing to hold platforms properly accountable. I also said the government was putting the cart before the horse by legislating first and working out the detail later. But, of course, here we are, fine-tuning some detail. The recent evidence bears all of those concerns out two years on.

A University of Newcastle study found little immediate evidence that the restrictions had reduced access, with more than 85 per cent of surveyed under-16s still using restricted platforms after the policy began. Young people reported bypassing age checks through fake accounts, friends or family, incognito browsing and other workarounds. Experts have made the same point: a simple ban is unlikely to be enough if the underlying causes of harm, including platform design, algorithms and age-inappropriate features, are left untouched.

There are also now live constitutional challenges in the High Court—one by Reddit, another by teenagers—arguing that the scheme burdens the implied freedom of political communication and that less restrictive alternatives were available, including safety-by-design tools. That doesn't mean the challenges will succeed, but it does show the legal risks were foreseeable in the event they do. The constitutional challenge to the social media minimum age scheme cannot be viewed in isolation from the enforcement issues this amendment bill seeks to address. They're linked by the same unresolved problem: the act still does not clearly define what reasonable steps are actually required of the platforms.

If the Prime Minister thought a royal commission into domestic violence would be a lawyer's picnic, let me tell you that this bill is a lawyer's picnic, especially when you're talking about social media platforms with extremely deep pockets and an extremely well-developed desire to contest these kinds of restrictions. Without a clearer definition of 'reasonable steps', the government is simply inviting exactly the kind of litigation it says it wants to avoid. Platforms will argue over what was reasonable, lawyers will test the boundaries of the act, and the courts will be left to do what the parliament should have done in the first place.

The government should not mistake stronger enforcement powers for a stronger policy. I support giving the eSafety Commissioner the tools it needs to investigate powerful platforms. I support higher penalties where companies fail to comply. I support holding big tech accountable. But I do not accept the fiction that the original scheme was well designed and now merely needs some heavier penalties. The obstacles were obvious then: vague obligations, unsettled technology, privacy risks and the absence of a proper digital duty of care. Parents deserve better than being told that the problem has been solved when they can see every day that it has not. Young people deserve better than a policy that treats them as the problem rather than focusing on the platforms that profit from harmful design.

The proposed digital duty of care must be the centrepiece of the next stage of reform: a best-practice framework that requires platforms to design for safety, gives regulators visibility over the algorithms shaping children's lives and backs prevention with proper enforcement, education and support. If not, it is just more window-dressing.

(Quorum formed)

I certainly support the amendment put forward by the member for Lindsay in relation to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Today, I spoke to and listened to the Lutheran School Wagga Wagga, a primary school of children visiting on their excursion to Parliament House in Canberra. I gave to those youngsters, as I do to all school groups, two bits of advice. One of those bits of advice is to not smoke, because it's dumb, it's unhealthy and it's expensive. The other bit of advice I always give the children—these days, the primary school ones are not or should not be on social media, but I always say this to them—is, 'When you do get on social media at a later age, don't write something about someone else that you wouldn't like said about yourself,' because online bullying is every bit as bad as every other type of bullying. Face-to-face bullying, bullying by exclusion, bullying by any means—it is unacceptable in the schoolyard, in the classroom and anywhere else. The difficulty for children these days is that bullying doesn't just stop at the school gate. It doesn't just stop a little bit after three o'clock, when the school bell tolls to end the school day. It continues online. It continues via TikTok, it continues via Snapchat, it continues via Facebook, it continues via any other social media platform for children and for adults. And it's not nice.

Sometimes, when the schoolchildren visit Parliament House, we are hardly an example of good behaviour, I'm sad to say. We should reflect upon that. But this is a robust debating chamber, and there are things said across this table that are contested. Whilst I don't always agree with the members opposite, I respect their views, for them to be able to represent their electorates, their policies and their philosophies—even though I don't necessarily always agree with what is being said.

On other elements to this particular amendment which worry me, I do believe that this is the government scrambling and playing catch-up. I appreciate that the member for Lilley, the minister, has done some good work in this space and place. I appreciate, too, that there are different views on this legislation. I commend the government, of sorts, for some of the elements they've put forward—and the minister too—because our children do matter. Our children do need protection. I grew up in—well, I began reading in the late sixties, and, certainly, by the seventies, I was very much a fan of Enid Blyton.

Hear, hear!

I thought you were about to say, 'You probably still are!' and I am. I know that some of the publications of the late Enid Blyton have been banned. But it was an age where children played outdoors and where books were read and enjoyed. It was a much calmer, better stage, I believe, for kids growing up—

The faraway tree!

The Magic Faraway Treewith Mr Watzisname and others! I do feel for children these days. I'm now a grandfather. I have two grandchildren. I read to little Adeline down in Melbourne. She loves books. She's probably too young to appreciate fully the books that I'm reading her, but she loves books. I want what's going to be best for my grandchildren, and I know that any parent or grandparent would feel the same. It doesn't matter what you achieve or do in life; it's what you are able to pass on to the next generation that's going to be the most important thing. Long after our time in parliament is finished—and anything else we ever achieve in the workplace—our families are not going to remember or care about it. They're just going to remember that we were 'Dad' or 'Pop' and that we were a good father or grandfather or whatever the case might be.

The coalition has done some good work in this space. We don't just talk about online safety. Our words are also our actions. We built, constructed and established the global model for it. All the major protections that Labor now relies upon were legislated by the coalition. In 2015, we created the Children's eSafety Commissioner. It was the first dedicated online safety regulator anywhere, and we're proud of that fact. The world didn't lead us; we led the world. That's a good thing. Other democracies are following our model. In 2017, we put together the first scheme to force platforms to take down intimate images shared without consent. It's image based abuse. We whacked perpetrators and non-compliant platforms with financial penalties which had meaning—and they can never be too severe, quite frankly.

These tech companies, these big global giants, are making an extraordinary amount of money. I appreciate there are difficulties, but, if they want to do business in Australia, they have to comply with Australian law, whether that's law put in by us in the past or laws put in by Labor presently. I think we would all agree—everyone in this chamber, everyone in this parliament, all 226 of us—that our children are 100 per cent worth it. No big tech company making decisions in some overseas boardroom, with their big tech mogul executives making big tech mogul paycheques, cares about our kids like we do. But we care—the coalition does; the government does.

In 2021, the Online Safety Act introduced the most comprehensive online safety regime in Australia's history. The basic online safety expectations were codified, an adult cyberabuse takedown scheme was implemented and the timeframes for platforms to strip illegal and terrorist content from feeds were slashed. That's a record. That's what we did. It was important work.

The under-16 ban was born of a coalition conviction that childhood is worth protecting. In November 2023, a private member's bill by the coalition brought four-stage verification onto the agenda. At the time, it wasn't agreed to by the government, but it bowed to pressure and it funded a trial in the 2024 budget. And I say thank you, because it doesn't matter who brings the legislation to the parliament. If it's going to protect just one child—if it's going to prevent one child from self-harm or taking their own life, which is such a tragedy—then it's worth it. The parliament agreed that more needed to be done, but Labor's two-year implementation has been marked with missteps, unfortunately.

The eSafety Commissioner's own March 2026 compliance update reported that 70 per cent of children were still on social media. I know it's hard, sometimes, to make kids do what they're supposed to. I'm a parent; I get that. A landmark British Medical Journal study showed that 85 per cent of under-16s are still logging onto platforms that they should not be. Its verdict was limited implementation, incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention—getting around it. I know some will say that kids will find a way, and kids are smart—much smarter than us when it comes to these little devices. But certain actions need to be taken to ensure that children who are under 16 have their minds on something other than a damn mobile device. We have to put in place measures that are going to ensure that the law is not only implemented but also being followed.

Whilst the framework was collapsing in homes across Australia, unfortunately the minister went overseas to talk at the United Nations about the ban. I'm not sure that the trip was entirely value for taxpayer money. That said, I do understand that the Labor government wants to spruik what it's done in this regard. I get that. But whilst this was all happening, children were still circumventing the ban and using social media platforms. This amendment is coming in now because the proper work on the ground—via stakeholders and via any other means to ensure that children would not get around the ban—wasn't done when the ban was introduced in the first place. Politics is like anything: you have to do the groundwork; you have to fully explore every detail before you come into this place, put a bill down, have it read by the clerks and then vote on it. Unfortunately, all too often since May 2022 we have seen rushed legislation.

I say to the government: sometimes you need to calm the farm. Sometimes you've just got to take a breath, take a step back and fully examine the legislation. This might be an idea: have a chat to the coalition about it, or the crossbench—the member for Clark is a smart person—and sometimes, on issues such as this, take on board the views of those opposite, because there are people of goodwill here, particularly on issues such as this, where our children's health and harm is at stake. Be a little bit more bipartisan, because what Labor is doing all too often is bringing legislation into this place, rushing it through—ramming it through, because they've got a 50-plus seat majority—and then going over to the Senate and doing dirty deals with organisations such as the Greens political party. And the Greens, I will warn, do not have the same views or philosophies about a better Australia as the coalition has. So this is a mistake.

We then see Labor playing catch-up. We then see legislation such as this being brought back and amendments having to be put through. I appreciate that this is going to sit and rest, as I'm told, over the recess period. That is good, because it might give the government some time to, again, take a breath, look at it and make sure that the follies and the missteps taken when the legislation was first introduced by the Labor government are not repeated. This is too important to get wrong again. This is too important because children's lives are at stake. It is that serious. We need to make sure that, at every step of the way at the moment, in every measure, we get this legislation right and we protect kids' lives online.

To be clear, I will support the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Although I didn't support the original bill, the Online Safety Bill, legislating the media ban, we have it, it's real, and history can't be unwound. I want to make this law as good as it can be made because I care as much about the safety of our young people as anyone else in this place does.

But I lament, though, that we are trying to put lipstick on a pig, because the social media ban was ill conceived and badly designed and has been badly implemented. If only we could rewind history, go back and think about this from the beginning, start again and listen to all of the people who ventilated their concerns about the bill when it was being designed and legislated. There were a lot of people who voiced a lot of concerns. I note that there were some 13 members—all were from the crossbench, except for the wonderful Bridget Archer, from the then opposition—who voted against the original bill when it came before this place.

We had so many concerns, and they were pretty much all ignored. Probably one of our most significant concerns was we hadn't listened to young people to find out their perspective. The government did, quite rightly, listen to parents and other family members that had been affected, heard of their concerns and tried to respond appropriately to their concerns. That's good in isolation, but it didn't go far enough. I don't know that the government ever actually spoke to people younger than 16 who were using social media, relying on social media, and heard their perspective about why they were on social media, what they found harmful about social media and whether they thought there was anything that could be done to make social media safer. That would have been very, very beneficial.

We were also concerned that it would just be unenforceable—that it wouldn't work. We had concerns that people could just enter incorrect birth dates when prompted by the social media platform. We've learnt, of course, of all sorts of tricks since it was implemented—such as people scrunching up their face and making it look a bit wrinkly—and how they fool the platforms and the software. Young people are actually getting their older sibling, an older friend or a friend who looks a bit older to stand in front of the device's camera at the time they are verifying their age. Of course, it was always going to be the case that some young people would get around the ban using things such as virtual private networks. And there was the fact that there were other platforms that hadn't been legislated against yet and that they would be places that young people would go to.

I'm going to out two of my stepsons. They're both now over 16, but I know that, before their birthday recently, they were both still on social media, and there was nothing I could do to guarantee they would get off it. I hope Bertie and Ru didn't mind me confessing that—they'll probably be boastful of it! In other words, the way it was designed was never going to work. And it's a bad law if it's a law that can't be enforced and a law that doesn't work; that's a bad law. It shouldn't have been brought into law.

Of course, there were so many other issues that were raised by us at the time. It particularly concerned me that the problem here is the behaviour or the misbehaviour of the tech companies and these platforms but that, instead of more rigorously going after them and making them clean up their act and ensure that their online environments were safer—because, heavens, they've got the technology, the know-how, to make them safer if they want; these tech companies can find out any information they want when they apply their mind to it—we were in effect punishing children by trying to take them off social media. We're punishing them when they're not the offenders. They shouldn't be the ones who are punished and denied their social media when it's the tech companies that are the villains and the guilty parties in all this. Didn't we hear from so many experts in youth mental health before the ban and since that there are a lot of young people who rely on social media for connectivity, particularly kids in rural and remote areas for whom it is one of the few ways they can really connect with a large group of their friends? And we're trying to deny them that. I think that's an issue. I think that's a problem.

I've got to say—excuse me for harping on about one of my favourite subjects—but we're going straight to this unachievable social media ban and ignoring the achievable ways of making the online environment safer, for example, banning gambling advertising. On one hand we're saying, 'We'll try and get kids off social media,' but, in our next breath, we'll say, 'We can have ads on streaming services, ads on websites, three ads an hour on the telly and ads for gambling in the print media,' and so on. We're turning a blind eye to the things that can be achieved and racing to something that, frankly, is very appealing politically.

I'll admit, when the government first announced the social media ban, my instinctive response was that's great and that's a really good idea. I have five teenage children—two teenage daughters and three teenage stepsons. You can imagine how, a couple of years ago, my first response was that this is a great idea. So I could see how the government scored a lot of political points with this. At first glance, for a lot of parents and a lot of other people, it's very appealing, but, of course, when I started to do my research and started to speak to subject-matter experts and technical experts—child psychologists and others—I did a backflip, and I said as much in an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper. I was the first to admit that those of us who were jumping to applaud it hadn't actually done our homework and that it wasn't going to be as simple or as effective as was suggested.

When I'm talking about what I think is the failure of it so far, I've got some pretty good research to draw on. In fact, these are very recent figures. In May this year, research by Western Sydney University found that 61 per cent of under-16s who had previously been using banned platforms reported little or no change in their social media use. That's 61 per cent of under-16s who said it hadn't made much or any difference to their social media use. That's a pretty damning figure. That same research by Western Sydney University found that only 26 per cent of people under 16 who were in the research reported that their social media use had been significantly affected. That's all the evidence you need—that, up until this point in time, it has not worked. I could refer you to a University of Newcastle study in June this year. They found that, on a positive note, around two-thirds, or 66 per cent, of adolescents reported encountering some form of age-verification requirement. That's good. But, of course, we've already spoken about how easy it is to get around the age verification. For some of these platforms, you just enter a different date and you're in. But that's the end of the good news from the University of Newcastle. It generally found that the early impact on access and behaviour has been limited. It found that around 86 per cent of under-16s reported accessing at least one restricted platform in the past week. It found that most adolescents continued accessing platforms through their own accounts. That included 54 to 68 per cent of users under the age of 16. In fact, it found little significant change in daily use or time spent on social media, particularly for that younger cohort, in particular, under-13-year-olds. Now, you know, we have this ban. It's been legislated. I actually want it to work. I wish the government well, and I'll support this bill today because, hopefully, it will go some small way, at least—hopefully it goes a long way—to addressing that point I made about how we've got to stop punishing the kids and that we've got to start going after the tech companies who have the know-how to make things such as age verification or facial recognition more effective. They have so far chosen not to.

When you look at figures like that, heavens, you've got to be very concerned. I get it. I know the government has got to get out there and crow about their achievement. I know that it's the job of the Prime Minister and the minister to boast about how many countries overseas are following this very closely and have expressed an interest in implementing a similar or, in the British case, an hopefully even better system. They're not going to come in here and say, 'It was ill considered and ill implemented, and we failed.' I know that politics don't allow that.

But I think the government could be a bit more honest with people and, instead of crowing so much about the success of this, say: 'Okay, these are small steps. We've learned a lot, it's not working nearly as effectively as we hoped, and we're going to bust our boiler to remedy the shortfalls in this.' The substance of this bill would be one small step of a raft of reforms to try and make this work. Just cracking down on the tech companies in some way—increasing fines—is a fraction of what's needed to turn around these figures. It really is a fraction of what is required. If we can't turn around these figures, then I suspect we should stop giving parents a false sense of confidence that their kids are now safe.

According to these figures, their kids are not safe. I'd rather parents know their kids are not safe and for the parents to be more involved in remedying the situation than to have given parents a false sense of security so that parents can say: 'Oh, governments have solved that problem. We don't really need to be alert to what our kids are seeing online on social media.' Sometimes it's better to do nothing than to do something which fails and gives people a false sense of confidence. I won't detain the House any longer. I will support it. I hope it actually achieves something, but I am comfortable with my opposition to the bill, along with 12 of my colleagues—11 from the crossbench and Bridget Archer, who was then the member for Bass. I tell you what, I'll work with the government. We'll all work with the government to try and make this work, but, at some point, if they can't make it work, they should ditch it and stop giving parents that false sense of security.

The Albanese government has delivered a social media ban that gives parents false hope and fails to keep children safe online. This is not a passing critique; this is a stark reality.

Today, the coalition stands before you to expose the glaring deficiencies in their approach. We are witnessing a monumental failure of administration that directly compromises the safety of our most vulnerable Australians. The announcement to drastically double the penalty to massive financial extremes is a desperate admission of defeat. It confirms our deepest concerns regarding this flawed framework we see today. Labor completely botched this policy. The ban, while well intentioned, is poorly designed, dangerously rushed and badly implemented. The eSafety Commissioner was never given the necessary powers to enforce compliance against multinational technology giants.

This glaring omission highlights that Minister Anika Wells is highly unqualified to be in the world of tech billionaires and their businesses. Rather than flying around the world attempting to take credit for coalition policy, the minister should have stayed home. She needed to do the hard work required to ensure this policy was properly designed and implemented. Today, we see an embarrassing admission that our oversight has been totally flawed, chaotic and ultimately harmful to our young children.

Keir Starmer used a ban as a high-stakes distraction to try and save his crumbling leadership; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plays the same card. He is using this to distract the Australian people from his disastrous budget of endless mistruths, broken promises and higher taxes. It's quite funny, really; if the Prime Minister were to spend half as much time fixing the economy as he does looking for a convenient political distraction, we might actually see inflation drop. Instead, he treats online safety like a shiny object designed to trick frustrated voters.

There is shockingly little evidence to suggest that teenagers have turned away from social media as a genuine consequence of this minimum-age law. The laws are failing in real time across our country, at all levels. In March this year, the eSafety Commissioner released a compliance update that revealed the age ban is dramatically failing. A staggering number of children are remaining on social media without any barriers. We have seen platforms added at the last moment, causing widespread confusion over the very definition of an age restricted social media platform. Reports of kids easily getting around age verification are rampant.

The government proudly claims that millions of accounts belonging to young people have been removed, deactivated or restricted. However, this is misleading on a multitude of levels. We know for a fact that a huge proportion of those supposedly removed accounts are actually just Google accounts used for basic email and everyday purposes, completely unrelated to social media. The government are padding the numbers to hide their own immense legislative failures.

The online safety of children is of critical importance to families, yet Australian parents and their children are being badly let down by a lazy government which has badly dropped the ball. They are being led by a communications minister who is seriously out of her depth and completely unable to deliver real results.

Recently, the eSafety Commissioner provided criticism of Labor's exact design of the ban. It is further evidence of another monumental policy failure by this government. During a reported lunch meeting over a lovely beef cheek ragu and delicious swordfish, Ms Julie Inman Grant revealed her genuine thoughts to a journalist. She explicitly stated that the ban was a 'blunt-force approach' which was developed too quickly. Her damning appraisal shows once again that communications minister, Anika Wells, is not up to the essential job of protecting young Australians from predatory online environments. In comments which laid bare the incompetence of the minister, the commissioner said the ban was flimsy 'scaffolding' that simply did not provide her with any potent powers. She added that she was 'not really keen on it when it was first discussed'.

Taking on the biggest technology companies in the world is not like sticking a parking ticket on a windscreen. It is not easy. Actually, given how this government manage their projects, they would probably accidentally stick it on their own forehead and then hold a press conference to brag about it. The commissioner noted:

… a regulator is only as good as the tools … that they're given.

These are certainly not the comments of a confident person who feels she has been provided with a workable implementation framework by a capable minister. These admissions completely undermine the minister and her ridiculous claim in January that early figures were showing that this law is making 'a real, meaningful difference'. Instead, they indicate a deteriorating relationship between the independent eSafety Commissioner and the minister.

The fundamental implementation of this critical policy has been chaotic from the start. The government's absolute first duty, absolutely, is to aggressively protect its citizens. Above all, it must protect its children. The sandpit and the playground of old moved online long ago, and, online, it is highly predatory, unpoliced and getting exponentially more dangerous for young people.

The bill before us exists for one reason: it exists purely to frantically patch a massive ban that Labor completely botched. The coalition will always support giving regulators the strong teeth required to take on big tech, but let us be honest about exactly why those teeth are so desperately needed. They are needed because Labor's rushed implementation has been an absolute shambles from day one. Australian families deserve much better than a minister who arrogantly claims credit while leaving the regulator to awkwardly explain why these laws are simply not working. We in the coalition do not just endlessly talk about online safety; we actually built the premier global model for it. Every single major protection that the Labor Party now relies upon was originally legislated by the coalition government.

Back in 2015, we created the Children's eSafety Commissioner. This was the first dedicated online safety regulator anywhere on earth. The world certainly did not lead us in this critical endeavour. We proudly led the world, and many other advanced democracies are still closely copying our incredibly successful legislative model to protect everyone. In that year, we boldly built the very first scheme to forcefully compel platforms to take down intimate images shared without consent. We hit predators and completely non-compliant platforms with real penalties. Then we proudly passed the massive Online Safety Act. It remains the most comprehensive online safety regime in our national history. We confidently codified the Basic Online Safety Expectations, we created a powerful adult cyberabuse take-down scheme and we drastically slashed the time platforms have to strip illegal content from their feeds. This is not just empty political rhetoric; this is a very solid historical record. Furthermore, the proposed ban itself was born of a deep coalition belief that every childhood, and the innocence it comes with, is genuinely worth protecting.

A coalition private member's bill initially forced strict age verification onto the national agenda. Labor knocked it back, then eventually bowed to immense public pressure and funded a trial in their federal budget. The coalition then formally pledged we would quickly deliver an effective ban within exactly 100 days. Only then did the Prime Minister scramble to catch up. The subsequent legislation only managed to pass both houses with our support. The parliament agreed on the fundamental goal, but Labor's execution has been a disaster. The numbers absolutely do not lie. We have a regulator who was sent into battle unarmed. While the entire framework collapsed at home, Communications Minister Anika Wells was in New York. She was burning massive sums of taxpayer money just to arrogantly boast about this broken ban to the United Nations. She allowed platforms to bolt on compliance measures at the last minute. Key definitions were left in absolute confusion. Circumvention remains rampant because of Labor's failures.

The current government has completely dropped the ball, actively failing Australian parents and their children. But simply increasing financial penalties cannot magically cure extreme administrative incompetence. The Prime Minister must stop governing by hollow press releases and taking international victory laps for completely broken promises. Everyday Australian parents and vulnerable children deserve highly competent administration, and they are certainly not getting it from this disorganised government. We are witnessing a terrifying trifecta of continuous foot dragging, unbelievable incompetence and dangerous legislative overreach happening all at once. This government displays completely backwards priorities when protecting our future digital generations today. They persistently let down children on social media, while relentlessly chasing widely condemned misinformation laws that threaten free speech across this nation.

We also hear about phantom digital duty of care. This has involved big talk but absolutely zero delivery. More than a year ago, not a single line of legislation regarding this duty had been brought before this parliament. We just received the vague promises of a draft, followed by a further 12-month transition period before even one obligation takes effect. After four long years in power, they are still scrambling around. The political spin from Labor never stops, but the vital protection of our children never actually arrives. Consequently, our children remain exposed to online dangers every single day.

We urgently need a different approach to solve this escalating national crisis. Much more needs to be done right now to keep children truly safe online. What we in the coalition would do is fundamentally different. We would immediately put robust, built-in device safety tools directly into the capable hands of parents everywhere. We would aggressively hunt down predatory algorithms deliberately engineered to trap children. These toxic algorithms fuel highly addictive doomscrolling on endless social media feeds, destroying young minds. We must act now and comprehensively block livestreaming features to prevent the absolute horrors of child abuse material from spreading.

The coalition demands real action, potent regulatory powers and competent ministerial leadership. The time for empty promises is completely over. The online playground is far too dangerous for half-baked measures and chaotic strategies. The coalition will continue fighting fiercely to ensure our children are permanently protected from these severe harms.

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026, which strengthens enforcement of the social media minimum age. This reform is overdue, and I do support it. In 2024, I spoke in support of the original minimum-age bill, which restricted access to social media for those under 16. I commended the bill then and I do support again the intent of the bill today, though I will continue to reserve judgement on its effectiveness until it is implemented and I continue to urge the government to move on duty of care, because, until it moves on an online duty of care, these are just bandaids and are not dealing with the broader ecosystem and protecting not just our children but others from online harms.

The social media ban was a significant step towards addressing the concerns about social media impact on our young people: the addictive design of these platforms, exposure to extreme and distressing material and a growing sense of disconnection among young Australians. In the lead-up to that legislation, I spoke with countless parents and families who are genuinely frightened about what social media was doing to their kids: the bullying, the threats, the abuse and the sheer volume of harmful content these platforms had consistently failed to remove. We had seen this play out as close to a game of whack-a-mole, with platforms removing harmful material only after the damage was done. That concern has since been vindicated. Meta and Google were recently found liable in a US trial for deliberately designing addictive products and for misleading consumers about the safety of their platforms. We do not allow people to put unsafe items on our supermarket shelves—physical products. We should not allow that. We should expect safety in our digital products as well.

But we should also be honest about how this first phase of the ban has gone. The eSafety Commissioner has raised serious concerns that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat are not properly complying with the minimum-age restrictions. Research from the University of Newcastle found that more than 80 per cent of under-16s in Australia were still using social media three months after the ban took place, and I have seen this reflected closely in my electorate. One school in Wentworth ran an internal survey of students in years 8 to 10, receiving 142 responses. Of these students, only just under half—49 per cent—reported losing access to at least one social media account because of the ban. Of the rest, 45 per cent said their social media use stayed the same; 37 per cent said it had decreased; and a small number said it had actually increased. Sixty-five per cent of students believed it remained easy for under-16s to access restricted platforms. Only a quarter thought the ban had reduced social media use overall. So students were not sure that it had worked significantly at all. There has been a shift, but nowhere near what a ban would imply.

I've also run leadership forums across my electorate to hear directly from young people on this issue. At a senior school forum of students aged between 15 and 17, opinion was genuinely split, with nine students still supporting the ban, seven opposing it and several remaining undecided. Among supporters, the common view was that the ban came perhaps too late for their own cohort because they were already on social media, so it was harder to get off, frankly, and they were able to get around it. But they did see that a real opportunity lay in protecting the next generation of 13-year-olds coming through. Several noted that parents were already shifting younger siblings onto basic non-smart phones without access to social media apps, and that this approach seemed to be working well for that age group.

Among those opposed, the concerns were consistent and specific—that the ban is easy to circumvent, that age verification doesn't work and that new accounts can be created in minutes. Enforcement felt inconsistent. A 15-year-old was blocked, while a 14-year-old in the same friendship group was not. One student described how a single student in a friendship group was banned from their social accounts, leading to that student's social exclusion. Another had run a campaign against the ban and met with politicians directly, telling me he believed that the intention was right, but the execution was poor. Several made the point that the ban, as it currently operates, targets a minority who are already addicted or being bullied while restricting everybody else and question whether this is the right way to design the policy.

At a junior school forum I ran with students around the ages of 11 and 12, the response was more positive. Twenty-three students supported the ban, eight did not. Those in favour shared positives about communicating more with friends in person, feeling more included and a reduction in cyberbullying. One of my favourite comments was from an 11- or 12-year-old, who didn't have social media on her phone. She said, 'But my older brothers now talk to me more, and that is a good thing, and I appreciate that.' That was probably the most heartwarming story I heard. Those opposed to the ban pointed out how easy the restriction was to get around and the difficulty it created for friends who lived further apart geographically. That was a real concern for students who board.

I raise these voices because they matter. These are the young people who are intended to be protected by the legislation and their lived experience tells us that enforcement to date has fallen well short of the policy's intent, and that, because of this weak enforcement, it actually reduces the community support for the legislation because it's seen as too easy to get around and therefore not really making the difference that it wants to, or only punishing certain people but not being consistent. The overwhelming feedback was that they do want this to work.

Separate from these general harms, our community has also lived through profound tragedy. Graphic footage was livestreamed and shared online during and after the Bondi Junction attack in 2024 and two years later in Bondi Beach. Children across the country have been exposed to this content. For children in my electorate, it is deeply personal. Despite the best efforts of the eSafety Commissioner, young people are still encountering this material. This goes to the hatred that is spread through social media, the radicalisation that goes on through social media and the polarisation that is driven through social media.

This is why I support the ban for under-16s. This is why I think this is important, despite the genuine challenges of its implementation. I have seen the hate that is spread about different parts of our community and the vitriol that is directed towards the Jewish community. I have seen the antisemitic attacks that are directed online and how that drives hate and polarisation. I have seen this in my community and in other communities of other faiths and different backgrounds. It is important that we regulate social media. It is important that we protect our children. And it is absolutely critical that we ask and, frankly, demand social media and digital firms to take responsibility for the harms that they facilitate through their platforms. Even if they don't direct or create that content, it's certainly facilitated and exacerbated through the algorithms and the business models these businesses undertake. It is time to step up. I support this part of this legislation for what it does. But, again, I come back to the point that it needs to go further. We need to have a digital duty of care that protects all Australians and protects, in particular, against the online hate, vitriol and extremism that we see on our online platforms today.

Why do I welcome the bill? Firstly, the bill expands the eSafety Commissioner's information-gathering powers. The existing section 63G is repealed and replaced with a broader provision allowing the commissioner to compel any relevant party—meaning not only platform providers—to produce information or documents relevant to compliance with the minimum-age obligation. This will capture the securing of evidence from third parties such as age-assurance providers and app store operators, something the commissioner has directly requested. Entities that fail to comply face penalties of up to $1.65 million. This could include internal emails, implementation directions to company branches or board minutes—material that would allow the commissioner to properly assess whether reasonable steps are genuinely being taken, rather than relying solely on the limited monthly reporting that platforms choose to provide.

Secondly, the bill doubles the civil penalties under sections 63D, 63DA and 63DB, lifting the maximum penalty from 30,000 to 60,000 penalty units. That's from $49.5 million to $99 million. I support both these measures. I do, however, hold reservations that even the double penalty represents sufficient financial disincentives for platforms at this scale. Once again, I outline that I remain concerned with how this regime will be enforced in practice and believe that the eSafety Commissioner may need greater resourcing to be able to make full use of these powers.

There are other concerns I have with this bill. The bill does not clearly define what constitutes 'reasonable steps'. There is a balance to be struck here. We want to encourage platforms to innovate in age-assurance technology while ensuring there is a clear, measurable standard the commissioner can rely on when bringing enforcement action once she has obtained the relevant documents. Again, I'm not sure that we really have the incentives right yet to get these companies to innovate on age-assurance technology. There's a distance to go there. Perhaps, with changes around the world, that innovation will step up. But I think not seeing this is going to be a continued weakness, and it is a concern I have in this space.

There are also gaps that the bill does not address. Children can still view social media content without logging into an account at all. Platforms like Roblox sit outside the current framework in ways that warrant greater scrutiny. I also remain concerned about generative AI chatbots, which can offer unfiltered advice to young people on their lives, their schoolwork and their mental health, with no safeguards in place. I've said that the government needs a clearer plan on how children are interacting with artificial intelligence, and that remains true today.

It is also worth remembering that these harms do not end at age 16. Those for whom the ban has been effective will log on for the first time as 17-year-olds with no transitional support. Adults, too, continue to experience real harm from these platforms. This includes people in their 20s and 30s who are being radicalised online by extremists, terrorists and misogynistic content, as ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess shared in his annual threat assessment just last week. I have long advocated for greater transparency and stronger regulation of the algorithms that quietly determine what content we see and how much we are shown. An opt-out system like Teach Us Consent's Fix Our Feeds initiative would put choice about what they see and when they see it back in the hands of every single Australian, and I do support that.

But we need a broader framework: a digital duty of care that this parliament has been waiting for. The government has said it's forthcoming. The government has been slow to the party. It has been in government for four years now. The online harms are not new and its not that they are not yet understood. We are completely aware of them, and this legislation should have been in the parliament before now. Holding technology companies accountable for building safety into their platforms by design is desperately needed—for our children and for our adults.

In conclusion, I am hopeful that this legislation will aid the work of protecting our young people from social media harms. I recognise the challenges and imperfections of trying to do this work, but I still think it is worthy. I do support the government's actions and work in this space. But I urge the government to move more swiftly and decisively on not just a digital duty of care for our young people but also to combat extremism and to combat polarisation—and to keep our adults safe as well, including from online radicalisation. I think that is absolutely critical.

I still raise questions as to whether this is going to deliver what we want. I believe that we need to work out how to incentivise our social media companies to provide safe places—to provide safe types of social media. If they are incentivised to innovate in that space, we may get better outcomes. I do hope that this sort of ban that is in place will help these platforms and others develop safer types of social media structures. I think we need to get there too, because otherwise we'll always be playing whac-a-mole. I think we need to work out how to incentivise them. I hope that these laws help drive those companies to develop what we need, as well as help to just ban them outright among our 16-year-olds.

I will continue to support this legislation, but we will have to see how it goes. I think clear reporting on its success or not is absolutely critical if we are going to deal with online harms and manage the impact on our young people.

This is a very important piece of legislation that is before the House. It is a clear admission of error from the Albanese Labor government and Minister Wells, but you have to give them credit, even though they won't say that they made a mistake. It's clear that the intent was good at the start, but the practice and the reality have not lived up to it six months later. So I'll give them credit, even though they won't say the words, 'We made a mistake.' They're at least acknowledging that by bringing this Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 to the House.

It is important legislation, and, as I said, the intent is very good. It was the coalition in June 2024 that announced our policy to ban under-16s from social media. It was months later—after the coalition led the way and South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas talked about doing his own banning in South Australia—that the Prime Minister had a change of tune and followed us into this policy.

Governments have always had a history of protecting children, whether it's banning children from smoking, drinking or driving. There are many things governments do to protect children, and this is another important step in this conversation. But it is the most challenging ban that we have to put in place when it comes to young people, because it involves technology and they have ways and means to get around the system.

It absolutely has to be a requirement of the technology companies that they uphold the ban. Let's be very clear that, for these social media companies, there is no upside incentive to get children off their platforms. Their business model is predicated on people using their apps and people spending as much time as possible on those applications. They do not care if you are 12, 13, 17, 25, 35 or 50; they want you on there as much as possible so they can sell your attention to advertisers. That is their business model. But we have a responsibility to protect young people, particularly as their brains are forming and they are learning how to survive and thrive in the real world.

At high school, that's challenging enough without social media. I'm grateful every day that I'm old enough to have gone through high school when social media didn't exist, and I am stressed every day when I think about my 12-year-old son starting high school this year and navigating high school with social media. He assures me that, even though some of his friends are on social media, he is not, and I have complete confidence that he would never mislead me at all. But that is the reality and the challenge we face.

One of the opportunities is obviously if more young people come off social media through their parents, because, ultimately, the best way to keep young children off social media is when their parents make a decision to really talk to them about the dangers and why they want to keep them off social media. That's a conversation we've had with our son and with our daughter. And, as more young children stay off social media, it then creates a reverse network effect; they realise that their mates aren't on it, and then it's not as attractive as it was—because one of the real challenges parents have had and are still having is when their children come to them and say, 'Everyone else is on it, so I want to be on it as well.' So this battle, and it is a battle for our young people, is ongoing and continuous.

I've had the opportunity to visit a lot of schools, and there is a level of frustration among young people who really want to continue to be on the app, particularly the cohort between 13 and 16, who were on it and have been taken off. They have a real frustration. But, particularly for the new generation, those younger children who are below 10, we can keep them off it ongoing.

Member for Casey, you can continue your remarks at another time.

Debate interrupted.

This government has set affordable and high-quality child care as a key policy goal, and I fully support these efforts. Good child care involves our children getting the best possible start to life, our essential workers being supported and well paid, and more parents having the choice to re-enter the workforce. We know that good child care generates benefits well beyond the individual child and the family. It's often described as one of the highest return forms of public investment because it delivers social, educational and economic benefits simultaneously.

I commend the government for reforms made to date, including establishing a minimum entitlement to three days per week of subsidised care; safety reforms, including mandatory child safety training for educators; directly investing $1 billion in expanding childcare capacity; and improving childcare worker salaries to address systemic workforce shortages through the worker retention payment. I welcome, too, the government's decision to extend the worker retention payment to 30 June 2028 with another $3.6 billion behind it and by opening it up to more family day care and in-home care services. I acknowledge the work being done to work out what safe quality child care actually costs to deliver. This is an unglamorous but necessary task, and the government has commissioned Deloitte to undertake it.

All of this represents progress at a high level. I look forward to the government providing an update on this project delivery timeline. All of this represents progress. But in my electorate of Bradfield, things look a little bit different on the ground. Much loved non-profit and community providers are struggling to stay afloat, and some have already closed despite being at capacity with extensive waitlists. These centres have been squeezed between increasing fixed costs, such as rent and insurance, and the need to meet strict conditions around fee growth to receive the worker retention payment. At the same time, plenty of for-profit providers haven't signed up to the worker retention payment at all, so workers aren't benefiting from higher wages and Bradfield families are facing higher fees. Or they've signed up, but the changes haven't improved their workforce shortages because, even with higher wages, workers simply can't afford to live and therefore work in the Bradfield electorate. Bradfield is one of the most expensive electorates in which to rent or buy a home and has some of the highest child care fees anywhere across the country.

Constituents contact me regularly to say that, even if spots are available, they simply cannot find one that they can afford. For a lot of families, it comes down to one parent, usually the mum, deciding to work essentially for free once they take out the childcare gap fee or just not work at all. To repeat, that means all of one parent's income sometimes just goes to childcare. If you're in that position, hearing that a worker retention payment is lowering your cost of living or that the government is waiting for Deloitte to finish a report before they can increase the child care subsidy just doesn't hold up.

When costly child care locks parents out of work, we lose valuable skills, and productivity slows. Businesses miss out on experienced employees, and our tax base shrinks. Paradoxically, this contributes to a glut of expensive childcare places in Bradfield that nobody's filling. So local planning that prioritises for-profit over non-profit providers, workforce shortages and high out-of-pocket fees mean supply and need just aren't lining up, and that points to a market in need of proper stewardship through a national early childhood education and care commission.

This is something I wrote to the minister about in November last year. A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry backed this idea last month, and so did the Productivity Commission. Thrive by Five, the Parenthood and Early Childhood Australia are all calling for it. The commission would oversee national data and systems performance; drive consistent safety regulation, including a national working-for-children check; and manage government payments incentives. This commission could be established alongside the Deloitte project and existing investments in childcare capacity. I call on the government to keep the momentum going and work with the states and territories to establish a national commission now.

I want to congratulate the four outstanding residents of Bullwinkel who were rightly recognised in the recent King's Birthday Honours List.

Emeritus Professor Mark Bush AM was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his significant service to engineering, tertiary education and our community at Parkerville Volunteer Bushfire Brigade.

Mrs Alva Knuckey OAM was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her tireless, selfless service to charitable organisations.

Superintendent Jason Beesley APM received the Australian Police Medal for his exceptional, meritorious service to policing.

And, of course, my good friend Colin James has been awarded the prestigious Australian Fire Service Medal. Colin has dedicated nearly 50 years to protecting our community, starting with the Darlington Bushfire Brigade in 1978. From serving 16 years as a Shire of Mundaring councillor—I took his spot on council when he retired!—to managing the high-stakes logistics for more than 20 aircraft during the devastating Black Summer bushfires, his leadership is legendary. Yet when you ask Colin what he's most proud of he points straight back to the community and his bushfire-ready group that he founded in 1996. 'It's all about the community working for the community,' Colin says. These recipients embody the spirit of service, and Bullwinkel is safer, stronger and richer for their contributions.

I rise to give a heartfelt shout-out to the Forrestfield United Football Club for the incredible work they are doing. The club goes well beyond the game—teaching, mentoring and supporting local young people while truly embracing and celebrating the rich multicultural fabric of the area. Recently, the club raised an impressive $8,000 for the Kids Cancer Support Group through raffle ticket sales, a sausage sizzle and a fun run. This is a remarkable example of clubs helping kids, and I want to sincerely thank Paul Mansfield and everyone involved in the club for their dedication. As someone who loves sport, I will continue to advocate for you. I look forward to supporting your efforts to getting new goalposts and LED lighting.

I want to extend my warmest congratulations to the Lesmurdie Tennis Club, who celebrated a momentous milestone this past weekend: their 60th birthday. For six decades, this club has been a hub for health, friendship and community connection in the Perth Hills. It was an absolute pleasure to join them on Saturday to mark their diamond jubilee, which happily coincided with the official turning on of their fantastic, new LED lights. This $105,000 upgrade is a game changer for the tennis club. It allows for more twilight and evening play.

I'm incredibly proud that the election commitment made by the state Labor candidate Karen Beale was honoured by the Cook Labor government, who, alongside my colleague Klasey Hirst MLC, delivered a $60,000 grant. With Tennis Australia contributing $20,000 and the club investing $25,000 of its own hard earned funds, this project is a brilliant example of what happens when partnership meets community ambition. As a proud sponsor of the junior tennis club at Lesmurdie, it was a joy to be there for the junior club awards, the birthday cake and to see between 60 and 80 members brave the winter weather to celebrate their 60th birthday. I want to thank the Treasurer, John Daff, and the entire committee for their invitation and their tireless work behind the scenes.

Whether it's protecting our hills from fire, raising funds for sick kids in Forrestfield or keeping the lights bright for the next generation of tennis players in Lesmurdie, the people of Bullwinkel look out for each other. I congratulate all of our local heroes and look forward to continuing to support them in this House.

Last week was the National General Assembly of the Australian Local Government Association, and almost a quarter of my 47 local government authorities made the 3,000-kilometre trek to Canberra. For many, it was a chance to network and share information with their peers. For others, it was an opportunity to raise serious local issues with ministers and their shadow counterparts and offer solutions to problems common to regional Australia. I give a shout-out to the cities of Albany and Kalgoorlie-Boulder, the northern Goldfields shires of Laverton and Menzies, the remote shires of Ngaanyatjarraku and Dundas and the Wheatbelt shires of Bruce Rock, Narembeen, Lake Grace, Corrigan and Ravensthorpe. It was great to welcome you all to Canberra, facilitate your meetings and hopefully secure some positive outcomes.

The Roe Regional Organisation of Councils, or RoeROC, is an alliance of my Wheatbelt shires of Corrigin, Kondinin, Kulin, Narembeen and Wickepin. They're collaborating to address the common challenges of severe housing shortages, which prevent employers from attracting and retaining essential workers—from healthcare and childcare staff to teachers, local government employees and agricultural workers. Through their proposed Key Worker Housing Project, RoeROC have developed a practical, locally led solution to deliver affordable workforce housing in communities where private development is not financially viable. They are calling on the state and federal Labor governments to support place based funding models and provide targeted co-investment to bridge the regional housing viability gap.

Under the previous coalition government, there were targeted regional infrastructure programs, like the Building Better Regions Fund, which enabled O'Connor shire councils to build seniors residential villages, long-term and seasonal worker accommodation and tourism infrastructure. Funding has dried up under this city-centric Labor government.

And it's not just my small O'Connor councils who are being stymied by federal government funding constraints. The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder Water Bank Project is a staged water security initiative designed to increase the capacity to capture stormwater, recycle wastewater and expand water storage, reducing reliance on the century-old Goldfields long-distance water supply network. Building on the city's existing infrastructure, this project will create new storage dams, upgrade treatment facilities and improve water transfer systems and water-saving technologies. As part of the Australia-wide Mining Cities Alliance, the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder was here advocating for federal infrastructure funding to address residential housing shortages that see Goldfields workers living long term in hotels, caravans and camps. The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a thriving mining hub located on the edge of the desert. It needs water infrastructure not only to support industry but for the entire community to thrive and grow.

The Local Government Rural Health Funding Alliance brings together six O'Connor Wheatbelt shires facing the same health challenge: how to maintain health services in small rural communities where patient numbers are too low to support a GP practice under existing Commonwealth funding models. The shires of Lake Grace, Gnowangerup, Jerramungup, Ravensthorpe, Narembeen and Kojonup collectively contribute more than $1.4 million from ratepayers every year, as well as providing housing, vehicles and medical facilities, to attract and retain doctors. These costs can amount to up to 16 per cent of a shire's annual rate base. This innovative alliance is advocating for targeted Commonwealth action to address these thin market conditions, including a dedicated pilot funding program for MM6 and MM7 communities, tailored sustainability payments for rural GP services and reforms to existing incentives so that there is equity between the health services offered in the city and services for those living in the bush. To this end, the alliance hosted their own information and advocacy session during ALGA week, attracting over 30 like-minded councils. They plan to build a national alliance to secure sustainable health funding for the bush so small local governments would no longer carry the financial burden for this Commonwealth responsibility.

Another innovative shire president is Patrick Hill of the Shire of Laverton, and he's the founding chair of the Outback Highway Development Council—something very close to your heart, Deputy Speaker Scrymgour. Together with the northern Goldfields shires of Menzies and Ngaanyatjarraku, they were in Canberra to launch the Outback Way Action Plan here in Parliament House last week. Pat reported the good news that the 2,700-kilometre bituminisation of the trans-Australian route linking Laverton to Winton in western Queensland is almost complete in all but my electorate of O'Connor, where 760 kilometres of gravel remains. Elsewhere along the Outback Way, the focus is moving to social, cultural and economic development, but, sadly, the WA Labor government is dragging its feet delivering this long-term road infrastructure. For every year this funding goes unspent, the cost of the road-build grows, leaving the visionary stakeholders like Pat watching their 28-year dream drift away from reality.

Tomorrow is not just the beginning of a new financial year; it is another significant milestone in the Albanese government's ambitious reform agenda because 1 July brings with it real change for millions of Australians. It will mean more money in the pockets of Australians, more support for Australian families, and more economic and job security.

For new parents, tomorrow marks another major expansion of paid parental leave. Eligible families welcoming a new baby or adopting a child will now be able to access up to 26 weeks of government funded paid parental leave. That means more time at home with the newborn and less financial pressure during one of life's biggest milestones. Families accessing the full entitlement will receive about $30,000 in support. Parents receiving paid parental leave will also receive a higher weekly payment of more than $1,000.

Tomorrow is also another important step in improving women's economic security. In groundbreaking reform, parents will receive superannuation contributions while on paid parental leave, helping to build their superannuation savings. For too long, women have retired with significantly less superannuation than men, in large part because they stepped away from paid work to raise children. This reform recognises something that women have always known: caring has value. Raising children is valuable work, and parents should not be financially worse off in retirement because they chose to give their child the best possible start in life.

Tomorrow also brings welcome cost-of-living relief for millions of Australians. Every Australian worker will receive another tax cut. Workers on the national minimum wage will benefit from a six per cent pay increase, and workers on award wages will also see their pay rise. Millions of Australians receiving government payments will benefit from indexation, helping people keep pace with the cost of living, and more than 1.2 million families will receive higher family tax benefit payments to help with the cost of raising children. I know that for many families every dollar counts. Whether it's paying the electricity bill, buying school uniforms or covering the weekly grocery shop, these changes will make a real difference.

In another first, we will reach another significant milestone for Australian consumers. For too long, Australians have been watching supermarket prices climb while wondering whether they were paying more than what they should. It's frustrating and stressful for those on a tight budget. So, from tomorrow, we are making it illegal for the largest supermarkets to charge excessive prices beyond the cost of supply and a reasonable margin. These are tough new laws. They give the ACCC real enforcement powers and significant penalties for businesses that do the wrong thing. Australians deserve the confidence to know they're getting a fair deal when they walk through the supermarket doors.

Tomorrow will also bring new and expanded access to 10 life-changing medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Australians living with conditions including cancer, severe asthma, diabetes and other serious illnesses will have access to medicines that would otherwise cost thousands of dollars. For many people, that means the difference between hoping they can afford treatment and knowing they can. It's another reminder of why the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare remain among Australia's greatest achievements and why the Albanese government continues to strengthen them, and Medicare urgent care clinics will now be a permanent feature of our health system. People across our region are really embracing the urgent care clinic in Torquay. It's making a real difference and delivering better health outcomes for so many locals.

Tomorrow also marks the biggest reform in Australia's veterans support system in generations. A new single compensation and rehabilitation claim system will simplify support for veterans making new claims with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. It's another important step in ensuring that those who have served our country and the families who support them receive the care and support they need.

In closing, these reforms represent government delivering on an ambitious reform agenda to improve people's lives. Tomorrow is more than the start of a new financial year; it's another step to a fairer, better Australia.

As the federal member for Casey, there are many highlights to my role. One of those is visiting local schools within my community to meet students and share my experience as a member of Parliament. It was a privilege to visit Birmingham Primary School recently to celebrate this year's student leaders and present them with their certificates, recognising their efforts as leaders of the school. Congratulations to school captains Saisha and Nayak, Italian captains Kirrah and Zahra, global education captains Georgie and Hayden, STEM captains Charlie and Jeremy, visual arts captains Jessie and Lewis, performing arts captains Ruby and Jed, library captains Evie and Zac, and PE and sports captains Harper and Rhys. You're all doing a fantastic job as leaders at Birmingham Primary School. Congratulations, and I look forward to visiting you again soon.

As students near the end of their secondary journey, many are learning about the democratic processes and their responsibilities as they enter adulthood. It was wonderful to visit two local secondary schools in my community over the last few weeks: Belgrave Heights Christian School, to speak with the year 11 legal studies class, and Oxley College, to speak with and answer questions from the year 9 students after they completed their intensive election program. They'd also visited Parliament House, so the year 11 students at Belgrave Heights had some great questions for me, including how laws are made, my role in our democracy as the representative for Casey and democracy in action. It was also enjoyable to hear from the students about their two-day trip to Canberra and what their favourite activities were, which included their visit to Parliament House, glow-in-the-dark minigolf and a trip to the High Court—from one extreme to the other.

My visit to Oxley College also highlighted how the next generation of young people are engaged and passionate about their future. I appreciated their well-thought-out questions, ranging from the first bill that I spoke on to how laws are made to a passionate interrogation on the government's recent social media ban. It was fantastic to see the year 9s so engaged with our civic system after completing the intensive 2026 election program, where they learnt the basics of government, laws, forming a party and holding an election. We are privileged to live in a country where democracy is the foundation of our political system, and it is encouraging to see so many young people in my community engaged with the real-world issues that our country is facing. As I stand here in this House, I am grateful for my role and the trust my community has placed in me to be their representative.

My community is one that comes together often to help and support each other, share a laugh and have some fun, and that was clearly present at the Big Freeze 12 at the Ville event earlier this month to raise vital funds for FightMND. I was honoured to be asked to take on the slide at this event in tribute to all those who have fought and are still fighting the beast that is MND. As all Australians know, FightMND started due to one man's willingness to fight and never give up. That man was the great late Neale Daniher—a father, a husband, a son, a grandfather, a footballer, a coach, a leader, an inspiration and a hero, and a man who did everything he could to fight the beast.

Neale's legacy will be forever ingrained in the minds of all Australians. It was a privilege to help raise funds for this important cause, to honour him and all fighters of the beast. Thank you to Healesville Greyhounds for organising this important annual event and inviting me to join in. Thank you to our community for your ongoing support of this important cause. On the day, $56,442 was raised. Another $96,912 was raised through the sale of MND items from the Coles within my electorate—this community. That's $153,354 from our community all going to fight MND. Thank you, everyone.

Tomorrow marks a proud day for Australian families. From 1 July 2026, eligible parents welcoming a new baby or adopting a child will have access to 26 weeks of paid parental leave. That is six months backed by the government—six months to recover, to bond and to settle into life with a new baby. Anyone who has brought a newborn home knows that the first months are hard to describe. They are full of love, but they are also tiring. They bring joy, but they can bring worry too. There are feeds through the night, appointments, recovery, nappies, washing, visitors and the fleeting—very fleeting—rare moments of silence. That time is precious, and it should be available to every family. It should not depend on the size of someone's bank account, their workplace's policy or whether a parent can afford to go without pay.

It was a Whitlam government that introduced paid maternity leave for Commonwealth employees in 1973, and, in 2011, it was a Gillard Labor government that introduced our national Paid Parental Leave scheme, providing 18 weeks of government funded parental leave. Before then, Australia was one of the few developed countries without a proper, funded national scheme. For generations, parents were expected to make it work on their own. Mothers returned to work sooner than they wanted. Fathers often had little or no time at home. Families used savings, credit cards, annual leave, unpaid leave or whatever they had. Labor changed that. We created a national scheme, we defended it, and now the Albanese Labor government is building on it.

From tomorrow, families who access the full entitlement will receive almost $30,000 across their paid parental leave. That is more than double the support families received before Labor came into government. The individual income limit will also increase, meaning more families will be covered—more time, more money, more families supported. In my community of Griffith, 1,560 parents received paid parental leave last financial year. I think about what this change means for those families. It means a mum in Coorparoo can have more time to recover after her birth. It means a dad in Morningside can spend more time at home in those first months. It means parents in West End, Camp Hill, Cannon Hill and Bulimba and across our community can make decisions with a little less financial pressure. It means a parent can stay home longer without being punished for starting a family.

As a proud mum of two, I know how much that time means. Twenty months after I had my first child, I gave birth to my second baby. By then, my savings were depleted from the unpaid time I had taken after my first child. I was deeply grateful for the government paid parental leave I received for baby No. 2. I think it gave me around 13 weeks. But I could not afford to take off more time, and I returned to work earlier than I wanted. I was breastfeeding, caring for two small children and trying to keep everything together. I know many parents have their own version of that story. They have stood in the kitchen late at night doing the maths. They have wondered what they will lose in income, savings, super or career progress. They have felt the pressure of wanting to be with their child and needing to pay the bills. That is why this change means so much. It says that time with a new child is to be valued. It says that parents should be backed by their country at one of the most demanding and meaningful times in their lives.

These changes did not happen by accident. They happened through the work of parents, unions, advocates, women's organisations and community members who kept making the case. And they happened in the face of people who still want to drag this country backwards. We have heard the same tired attacks on paid parental leave for years. We have heard women being called 'rorters' and 'double dippers'—on Mother's Day, no less. We have heard Senator Hanson in the other place suggest that paid parental leave should be left to companies, as though a parent's time with their newborn should depend on who signs their payslip. Labor rejects that view. A child's start in life should not depend on where their parents work. A mother's recovery should not depend on whether her employer has a generous policy. A father's chance to be present should not depend on workplace culture. This country can do better, and Labor is doing better. Every new parent deserves time to hold their baby, to learn their cries, to recover, to rest and to build routines that carry a family through those early months.

Labor introduced paid parental leave. Labor protected it, Labor expanded it, and, from tomorrow, Labor is expanding it again, to a full 26 weeks for eligible families. This is a very proud achievement for this Labor government. Most of all, it is a better start for those thousands of babies, parents and families right across our country and most especially in my community of Griffith, where we have so many young families starting out. I know how much of a change and how much of a help this new policy will be for families in my community.

House adjourned at 20:00

I rise today to speak on an issue that has caused deep concern, frustration and real distress within communities and country communities right across our nation, particularly those communities in regional Australia. I speak of the recent state and federal gun law reforms and the way they have been introduced, rushed through and ultimately imposed upon law-abiding Australians. Let me begin by stating clearly that every single one of us in this chamber condemns without hesitation the horrific acts of violence that occurred on 14 December 2025. These acts of terror were evil, they were shocking, and it shook our sense of safety as a nation. In the face of such tragedy and such terror, our responsibility as lawmakers is to respond carefully, transparently and based on evidence. Above all, it's to ensure that we are seeking to prevent future harm and, in doing so, that we do not unfairly penalise those who have done nothing wrong.

Unfortunately, what we've seen from the state and federal governments has fallen short of that standard. From the very beginning, many country Australians observed that the government's first instinct was not to call a full and transparent royal commission into the causes of this terrorist attack. Instead, the first impulse was to immediately push for tighter gun laws, and that decision left many people asking, 'Why the reluctance to fully examine the circumstances that allowed such an act of terror to unfold?' There are serious questions that remain unanswered—questions like how individuals with known links to extremism, dating back years, were able to get access to licensed firearms in circumstances where at least one of them was on a watch list. How was it that alarm bells weren't ringing when these people visited high-risk regions or extremist hot spots? Where were the gaps in our intelligence-sharing systems, and why were they not closed earlier? How did these terrorists slip through the net? These are not abstract questions. In the aftermath of that, law-abiding gun owners in regional New South Wales and Australia have been shocked that the law turned to them rather than asking these key questions in the first instance. This is not good governance, and it's not respectful policy-making that engages and consults with regional Australians.

In the electorate of Calare, the impacts of these reforms are far reaching. They are hitting our small-business people and genuine, licensed firearm owners. Take, for example, the story shared with me by Glenn Floyd from Canobolas Hunting Club. Glenn, like many others, has expressed deep concern about not just the substance of the laws but also the process. He spoke about the complete lack of transparency and the growing sense of uncertainty and of everything being up in the air with too many unanswered questions. These sentiments are widely shared. He says:

In regional communities, firearms are part of everyday life. They are used responsibly in farming, pest control, and sporting activities. They are tools of trade and tradition, managed under strict licensing and regulation.

Yet he feels that, under these new laws, these same law-abiding individuals are being unfairly affected and unfairly treated. He adds:

Small businesses, like his, are bearing the brunt of these changes. I know of a local gun shop owner that usually sold between 15 and 20 firearms per month, he is now lucky to make a single sale every three or four months.

Ray Hawkins and Matt Shirm from Bullets & Bits in Orange shared Glenn's view and said the new gun laws are having a hugely adverse impact. Matt said:

In the last six months we've sold 15 firearms, when before we sold between 3—5 firearms per week. When you're not selling firearms, you're not selling the accessories like scopes sand mounts—

that should be 'scopes and mounts'—

the only real turnover is ammunition.

Ray and Matt have also had to pull stock off the shelves and remove clothes racks out of the store, because they can't afford to restock them. Ray said:

Before the gun laws were passed, we ordered a lot of stock for 2027 and now we simply can't sell it. It's had a significant impact on my staff with hours being reduced and cut back.

They said the ability for people to purchase a firearm permit is up from 28 days to 120 days, averaging around 90 days. All of this combined has had a big flow-on effect to wages and employment. Ray said:

You have to make significant cuts to keep things going. We were already locked into rent and other bill payments when reforms were introduced, so there is no way out.

For now, Ray and Matt struggle with no direction. He added:

It's frustrating, you just have to try and keep people in jobs and pay your bills.

These are small businesses that are going out of business because of these gun laws, both state and federal. Shane from Mudgee Firearms has had to take up other work to keep his staff employed and his shop open. Shane said:

Since the laws were passed trade is down … 80%, he said speaking with some other local businesses trade is down to 85%.

Like Glenn from Bullets & Bits, Shane said:

We have to now heavily rely on the sale of ammunition to keep things afloat. The biggest requirement that has slowed sales is the permit process. I am taking more people through the Firearm Safety Training course, but everything stalls after they complete the course because of the permit process. The biggest thing for people is the uncertainty of it all, what do we do? It's very stressful.

He then adds:

Being in Mudgee and having to deal with the closure of the Great Western Highway has also compounded these issues because people simply stop … coming out to the Central West.

Firearm retailers across the country are reporting dramatic downturns in sales, some by as much as 75 per cent. These businesses are being destroyed. These business owners have put their lives into these businesses and made massive financial investments, and these businesses are literally being destroyed.

One of the other things that law-abiding gun owners are asking is: who exactly should these laws be targeting? They're not targeting criminals at the moment. Criminals and terrorists do not obtain firearms, generally, through legal channels, they do not comply with licensing regimes, and they are not going to be the ones to hand in illegal weapons as part of a buyback scheme. It's going to be the law-abiding gun owners that hand in their guns, and the simple truth is that these laws do not address the core issue of illegal firearms and the networks that supply them. Instead, they penalise those who are already doing the right things. The crooks and the terrorists are not going to be handing in their guns.

You've got political parties using these laws to deflect from the failings of government, which, quite frankly, could and should have prevented these attacks, and our streets are awash with illegal firearms. I recently spoke to a police officer and had this conversation with him. What we need to be doing is getting those illegal firearms off the street, not penalising law-abiding firearm owners, who are doing the right thing and continue to do the right thing, and also the small-business owners who are going broke because of these laws. What we want is for the government to get to the bottom of what went on that day. But the interim royal commission report which was released was very concerning. That report said on page 8:

No Commonwealth or state intelligence or law enforcement agency has suggested that it was prevented from taking prohibitive actions before or on 14 December 2025 by the then current legislative and authorising framework. In these respects, no issue requiring urgent or immediate action has been identified.

That's what we're worried about: that law-abiding gun owners are going to bear the brunt of these laws for political reasons, and we're not actually going to get to the bottom of what happened and we're not going to be dealing with the genuine issues out there that this country needs to address.

The choices a government makes make a great deal of difference and show a great deal about its values. For the Albanese Labor government, those values are crystal clear: we value families, we value opportunity, we value aspiration and equality, and we value the contribution women make every single day to their families, to their workplaces, to their communities and to our nation. That's why so much of the work we do in this place is about creating opportunity for women, strengthening families and building a fairer Australia, because, when women do well, everyone benefits.

Across my electorate of Corangamite in Victoria, I've spoken with countless women about the realities of balancing work and family. I've often spoken to mums preparing to welcome their first child, to women and men returning to work after parental leave, and to grandparents helping care for grandchildren during the school holidays, after school and over weekends so that their daughter can stay in the workforce and pursue a career. While every family's story is different, the challenges they describe are remarkably similar: the pressures of paying the mortgage while taking time away from work, the cost of raising children, and the concern about whether taking time away from work today will affect their financial security tomorrow. These are real pressures. They are lived experiences. That's why paid parental leave matters.

From tomorrow, eligible families welcoming a new little person or adopting a child will be able to access up to 26 weeks of government funded paid parental leave. This really matters. It means families accessing the full entitlement receive almost $30,000 in support—more than $1,000 a week. Because of our changes to the system, more families will be eligible as income thresholds increase. This means more time with the newborn, more financial security and more choice and flexibility for Australian families. Being a first-time parent comes with so many unknowns and so much uncertainty. These reforms are designed to give parents the time and financial security to set up a family for success and share parenting duties.

These changes to paid parental leave speak to our government's values. We recognise that caring has value and that it's not always easy. For too long, women have paid an economic penalty for taking time out of paid work to raise children. This has contributed to women retiring with significantly less superannuation than men. It has reinforced inequalities that last long after children have grown up. That's why paying superannuation on paid parental leave is such an important reform. It recognises that raising a family is one of the most important contributions anyone can make, and no parent should be financially disadvantaged in retirement simply because they choose to give their child the best possible start in life.

Supporting women and families is, of course, about far more than just one policy. It's about recognising the value of work that has too often been overlooked. No sector demonstrates that more clearly than Australia's care economy. Whether it's the early childhood educator helping children learn and grow, the aged-care worker supporting an older Australian with dignity and compassion or the disability support worker helping someone live independently, these are professions built on care. They are professions that have traditionally been undertaken by women and, for far too long, they have been undervalued.

Our government has taken a different approach. We have invested in aged care. We have supported significant wage increases for both early years educators and aged-care workers. We have expanded access to early childhood education because we know it helps give children the best start in life while making it easier for parents, particularly women, to participate in the workforce. These are investments in Australians. These are investments in women and in families.

These are reforms driven by the Albanese Labor government, and they are reforms built on values, but not everyone in this place shares our view on the value of these reforms. Australians have not forgotten when mothers were labelled 'double dippers' by former coalition treasurer Joe Hockey. They've not forgotten when women accessing paid parental leave were described as 'rorters'. The member for Goldstein said, 'It's not my choice that women have children; it's genetic.' More recently we have heard calls to wind back workplace rights and attacks on paid parental leave itself. Senator Hanson is on the record stating that women get themselves pregnant for the money, and, more recently, when speaking directly to women across Australia, she said: 'You have the equipment. That's what you're here for.'

Those comments reveal a very different set of values. They reveal a disrespect for women. They suggest that caring is somehow less valuable, that supporting parents is an unnecessary expense and that investing in women is not only optional but, to some, unnecessary. The Albanese government rejects that thinking, and so do Australians. We know that supporting women is not a cost; it's an investment. It's an investment in stronger families, an investment in a child's future, an investment in economic growth and an investment in a more equal Australia.

That is why our work does not stop with paid parental leave. We have made the leaving violence payment permanent. We've introduced 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave. We are reforming the child support system to stop financial abuse. We're investing record funding to address family, domestic and sexual violence. We are strengthening women's economic security, at every stage of life. Each reform is important on its own. Together, they tell a much bigger story. They tell the story of a government that believes women should have the opportunity to participate fully in our economy, to build financial security, to raise a family if they choose and to live free from violence.

There is still more work to do. There always will be. But tomorrow, on 1 July, another important step will be taken. More families will receive paid parental leave. More women will receive superannuation while they care for a newborn. More parents will have the opportunity to spend those precious early months with their children. That is what progress looks like, because the choices a government makes do matter. They reveal what we value. This government values women. We value families. This government will continue building an Australia where every woman has the opportunity, the security and the support she deserves.

I'm not sure he'd agree with me, but I think 2019 may have been Bill Shorten's finest hour. In the election in May 2019, he took a radical taxation package to the people. There were changes to negative gearing. Shadow treasurer Bowen, as he was then, threw in double taxation of dividends and franking credits, and the country had a debate. We had a debate on the merits, or otherwise, and history shows those changes were voted down. To Bill Shorten's credit, he took those changes to the people. They made the arguments. The then shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, famously said, 'If you don't like them, don't vote for them,' and quite a lot of Australian people took his advice and didn't vote for them. Bill Shorten, as the then opposition leader, at least had the courage of his convictions to take those changes to the people.

Fast forward seven years, and what we've seen from the current government is virtually an identical set of taxation reforms announced in this year's budget speech, which were not taken to the people. There is no mandate. Whatever people may say or whatever opinion polls show, or whatever else, there is only one poll that counts—and that is the poll that you take to the Australian people. These changes were not taken to the Australian people. Nothing has changed dramatically in the last 12 or 14 months since the last election to justify this 'change of position' that the Prime Minister announced to the Australian people. Housing affordability was difficult leading into the 2025 election. There is not a great deal of difference today. In fact, in some cities—Melbourne, mainly—the price has come down in the last six months. I don't buy the argument that things have changed so dramatically that it justifies a change in position.

I'll go back to the capital gains tax changes and, more pointedly, the changes to negative gearing. When we had that debate in 2019, quite a lot of interesting information came forward, which I've retained to this day. Firstly, contrary to what many on the other side will have you believe, most people—in fact, 70 per cent of people—who own a negatively geared property only own one. They're not 'Slumdog Millionaires' who are taking advantage of vulnerable tenants. They are mums and dads, nurses, police officers and people who work on middle incomes who are just trying to build some wealth for themselves and their families for retirement over and above superannuation. The only mechanism those people have to do that is to negatively gear a property, to leverage some of the equity they have in their existing home, to buy a second property and to build some wealth over time. I absolutely applaud the people in my electorate of O'Connor who are doing that. There are around 17,000 people who own negatively geared properties, and I'll come to the reason they do that in O'Connor in a moment.

The reason negative gearing came in—in 1933, a long time ago—was to encourage private investors to invest in housing stock for the rental market to save the government doing it. The current government seemed quite happy to step in and spend—I think the latest number is $50 billion—in some attempt to replace private sector investment with public housing, which, by the way, is a state, not a federal, responsibility under our Constitution. But the reason negative gearing was brought in, in 1933, was to encourage that private investment.

If you own a negatively geared property or a rental property, you are effectively running a small business. You purchased a property; you've purchased an asset. In many cases, you've borrowed the money to do that. You then rent that property out to generate revenue and income. That is no different, effectively, to what a large listed company does. They own assets, they borrow money, they generate revenue and they are allowed to deduct the costs of generating that revenue from their income, and that is what they pay tax on. That is a negatively geared property in a nutshell.

The government has said that they will take one business class across the entire economy—the ownership of housing for renting—and take that out of the taxation system that every other small business operates under. That is my first concern.

My second concern is that, in 1985, when a previous Labor government under then treasurer Paul Keating removed negative gearing concessions—if we can call them that; I don't see them as that—there was an absolute drought of investment in rental properties, and we saw rents skyrocket. When rents skyrocket, vulnerable people, particularly those on low incomes, can't afford to pay rents, and we see a massive spike in homelessness as well, which we are already experiencing across parts of my electorate.

The reason I want to raise this issue on behalf of my constituents in O'Connor—and my good friend the member for Lyne is here and will understand this—is that many people who live and work in our electorates are doing so, effectively, on a temporary basis. If you're a police officer who took a financial incentive to go and work in Laverton, you're probably living in a GROH house—a government provided house. You're looking to your future and your family's future. You're probably going to return to Perth at some stage. Perhaps you're going to move to the coast. So you need to buy a property. You can live in the government house, but, if you want to set yourself up for the future, you need to buy a property where you can retire. You need to have a foot on the rung of that particular ladder.

Effectively, the government has said: 'Okay, there's a police officer in Laverton who's bought a property in Perth and is renting that property out under the current negative gearing arrangements. In future, the next police officer who goes to Laverton will not be able to do that.' What does that mean for my community? It means it's going to get a lot harder to get the copper to go out to Laverton. It's going to be a lot harder to get the nurse to go to Kalgoorlie or Leonora or any of those types of places because the financial incentive that they're offered to go to those places is going to be negated by the loss of negative gearing concessions on the property that they will buy.

In other country towns where housing is cheap, people want to retire to the coast. Many people who live in smaller country towns—where, yes, housing is very affordable—will also be looking to invest in a property somewhere they want to retire. They might not want to retire to my home town of Katanning, which is 170 kays from the coast in either direction. Most people I know want to retire to the coast. The mechanism for doing that is one of the reasons they stay living in an inland country town, so they can take that next step. They can invest in property on the coast. Financially, it works for them because they can set themselves up for their retirement. That avenue is now going to be cut off for people going forward.

Finally, I want to talk about the capital gains tax changes and how those are going to impact people. Young people saving—I've got a daughter who has just started her first job, and she is saving for her first home, but, with inflation running at five per cent and bank interest not quite running at five per cent, she's actually going backwards if she puts her money in the bank. My advice to her, prior to 12 May, was to invest in stocks and shares and, particularly, exchange traded funds, where, over time, the return is much greater than bank interest. But I can't give her that advice now, because, when she goes to sell those shares that she's accumulated, she will be taxed at her marginal rate without the 50 per cent discount, and that makes it pointless for her to try and save money through that avenue.

I rise today with a pretty simple message on behalf of households, pensioners, families and small businesses across Petrie: when energy prices come down, people should see that reflected in their bills, not buried in fine print, not cancelled out by new fees and certainly not delayed for months while energy companies work out how much savings they can keep. Those savings should be passed on to the hardworking women and men of Australia.

People in our community are doing everything they can to manage their household budgets. They are checking their bills. They're switching off at the wall. They're running appliances at different times, and they're trying to make every single dollar stretch that bit further. Small businesses are doing the same. Local cafes, hairdressers, tradies, shops, manufacturers and community clubs are all watching their costs closely. For them, electricity is not a luxury. It is not optional. It is one of the basic costs of keeping the doors open. So, when the independent Australian Energy Regulator says the default market offer is coming down in south-east Queensland due to the reductions in wholesale electricity costs, people in Petrie should feel that across the retail offers. It should mean lower bills. It should mean real cost-of-living relief. The default market offer matters because it is the benchmark price that protects customers on standing offers and helps shape pricing across the market. In south-east Queensland, that benchmark is heading in the right direction. That is good news for households and small businesses.

For a long time, the debate around energy has been dominated by fear campaigns and slogans directed by the other side, but the truth is the work the Albanese Labor government has been doing is starting to show results. Trigger warning for those opposite—more renewable energy, more storage, more investment in the grid, a more sustainable wholesale market and a solar share offer are all helping to take pressure off of power bills. That is what we've been working towards. We have delivered energy bill relief, backed cheaper and cleaner energy, invested in renewables, batteries and transmission, and supported households and small businesses through a difficult cost-of-living period.

We're seeing electricity prices in south-east Queensland starting to come down through that default market offer, but here is the issue: a price drop only helps people if it actually reaches them. A lower benchmark does not mean much to the pensioner in Redcliffe if their bill stays the same. It does not mean much to the family in North Lakes if the savings are swallowed up by higher fixed charges. It does not mean much to the small businesses in Deception Bay if they're stuck on a bad plan. That is why energy providers are on notice.

If companies operating in Petrie do not pass on these savings to local households and small businesses, they should expect to be called out. If retailers' prices are falling, they should be passed on to the consumer. If a company offers a better deal to new customers while leaving loyal customers on worse plans, that should be exposed. If providers refuse to give people in Petrie a fair go, I will name and shame them. People deserve transparency. They deserve honesty, and they deserve the full benefit of falling energy prices. This is not about having a go at the providers that are doing the right thing. If retailers pass along savings, explain changes clearly and help customers move onto better plans, they deserve credit for that, but any company that uses complexity to avoid giving customers a fair deal should expect scrutiny.

We all know energy bills can be confusing. Daily supply charges, usage rates, time-of-use tariffs, controlled load and solar feed-in tariffs can make it hard enough for a person to work out what they're actually paying, let alone whether they're on the best deal. People should not need a law degree or a background in energy policy to know whether they're getting a fair price for electricity. That complexity can work against consumers. It can make it harder to compare offers. It can punish people who have stayed with the same provider for years. It can allow savings to disappear before they ever reach a household budget. That's not good enough.

This is why the Albanese government has put more protections in place for energy users. From this week, new rules for retailers will stop sneaky price hikes, preventing retailers from increasing prices more than once a year. They'll prevent customers from being charged more than the standing offer price if the initial low-cost offer changes or expires. They'll ban excessive retailer charges, like late payment fees, for all retail contracts and ensure all customers will be entitled to a fee-free payment method. From later this year, they will ensure vulnerable Australians are receiving the best offer from their retailer, placing a stronger onus on the retailers to assist hardship customers. The government is even committed to making energy free for three hours a day. With the solar sharer offer, energy will be free between 11 am and 2 pm in south-east Queensland. I look forward to actually using that myself. When wholesale costs fall, when benchmark costs fall and when the independent regulator says prices should be lower, people should see that clearly and fairly on their bill.

This matters in Petrie because our community is full of people who are already doing their best. We have families with young kids, pensioners on fixed incomes, students, shift workers, small-business owners and community organisations. For them, energy prices are not some abstract policy debate. They are part of the weekly budget. They're the difference between feeling like you're getting ahead and feeling like you're falling behind. They're the difference between using the air conditioner on a hot Queensland night and worrying about what the next bill is going to look like. They're the difference between a small business putting money into new equipment and it putting it aside for electricity costs. That is why this issue needs close attention.

Over the coming months, I'll be encouraging people in Petrie to check their bills and compare their offers on energymadeeasy.gov.au and ask their provider one simple question: am I getting the benefit of the price drop? If the answer is no, they should ask why. If that answer is not good enough, I'll want to know about it. Retailers should be able to explain exactly what they're going to do to pass along the savings to customers in Petrie. They should be treating existing customers as fairly as new customers. Small businesses should be seeing the reductions they are entitled to. Loyalty should not be punished. A pensioner who has been with the same energy company for 15 years should not be paying more simply because they did not spend hours shopping around online. A busy family should not be left on a worse plan because they missed the notice buried halfway through their bill. A small-business owner should not have to spend half a day trying to decode energy tariffs just to make sure they're not being ripped off. If prices are coming down, bills should come down. It really is that simple.

The Albanese Labor government understands that the cost of living is still the biggest pressure facing many households. We know that people have had to deal with higher grocery bills, higher rents, higher mortgage repayments and higher insurance costs. That is why every bit of relief matters. Energy bill relief matters, tax cuts matter, cheaper medicines matter, strengthening Medicare matters and making sure power price reductions are actually passed on matters. This is about fairness. When government action helps bring costs down, families and small businesses should not be left waiting while big companies protect their margins. When the market improves, ordinary people should feel that benefit. When retailers are doing the wrong thing, they should be held accountable.

I welcome regulators looking closely at retailer behaviour, I welcome scrutiny of pricing practices and I welcome this government's actions that will make the energy market fairer and easier for consumers to understand. But local members of parliament have a role to play too. My job is to stand up for Petrie, to make sure households in my community are not ignored, to make sure small businesses get a fair deal and to make sure that, when a price drop is announced, people actually see it. So let me be clear. Retailers should not expect silence if they fail to pass along savings. Complicated bills are not an excuse. A lower benchmark price must lead to lower local bills. Loyal customers should not be treated as easy targets.

The message from Petrie is clear. Energy providers need to do the right thing. They need to pass along savings, explain changes clearly, treat existing customers fairly and support small businesses, and make sure the lower energy prices reach the people they're meant to help. The Albanese Labor government is working to bring energy prices down. The default market offer shows progress is being made. Now retailers need to do their part. Cost-of-living relief only matters if it lands in the household budgets. A lower benchmark only matters if it reduces real bills, and a fair energy system only works if people can trust that the savings will be passed on. That is what I will fight for, that is what the people of Petrie expect and that is why any provider that fails to give our community a fair deal should expect to be named and shamed.

I'm very pleased to speak at the grievance debate today because, let me tell you, there's a lot to grieve about. Australians are hurting. People are doing it tough, and the people in my electorate of Dawson are seeing their standard of living declining. We're also seeing that the Albanese Labor government are totally devoid of responsibility. They have no plan to get this country back on track. Everybody knows, after four years of Labor, they are all worse off. And what has the answer been? It has been to bring in a new budget that's high in toxic taxes, high in spending. There's actually $77 billion more of taxes in this budget. It's the highest-taxing budget in history. Let that marinate for a short period of time. It's typical of Labor—when they run out of their money, they come after yours.

Let's have a look at the budget in detail. It's also full of broken promises. Remember the Prime Minister said before the election—50 times, I might add, not just a slip of the tongue—that no, there ae going to be no changes to capital gains tax, no changes to negative gearing, no changes to trusts and yet, here we are, in this budget, changes to capital gains, changes to negative gearing and changes to trusts. It is a direct assault on young people. People of my vintage have had all those tools for wealth creation but they have now been taken away by this cruel Albanese Labor government. Young people in my electorate come up to me and say, 'Andrew, we want to get a house but we can't afford a deposit at the present point in time, so we're going to invest in some shares or some cryptocurrency or some Bitcoin or something like that so we can actually get a higher return and can then afford a deposit.' But now, due to the capital gains, they're going to lose half of that opportunity, so it's going to make it harder for them to get that deposit.

Negative gearing is another double whammy. For somebody investing in a house, a rental property, who then can't negative gear it will have to put those extra costs onto the rent, so the rent will go up. So for young people who have just been slipped the capital gains, now negative gearing is going to hurt them, making it harder and harder for young people to get ahead. All the while, under the Albanese Labor government, inflation's going through the roof. We're seeing the price of food go up, insurance go up, gas go up, electricity go up, mortgages go up. Now, they haven't gone up just a small amount. Grocery prices have gone up over 15 per cent; insurance prices, 37 per cent; gas prices, 38 per cent; electricity prices, 40 per cent; and mortgages, well, they just keep going up and up and up, so it's harder and harder for young people to get ahead. And these are the aspirational classes. These are the people that will look after us, will pay their taxes into the future. They will look after us.

Another segment that has been totally destroyed in this budget is the veterans, with the $5,000 cap on allied health. I don't know how those opposite sleep at night knowing they've done that. These fine men and women have put their bodies on the line, put their lives on the line, for this country. When they went overseas or when they put the uniform on they signed a blank cheque. They were prepared to pay for their life and pay for it in blood. Yet now, when they come back, their allied health has been capped at $5,000. I think that's atrocious. I've had veterans in my community come up to me and say, 'Andrew, $5,000 will only last me three months; what am I supposed to do for the rest?' I think that's a very good question. What concerns me the most is that these fine men and women who put their bodies and lives on the line for our country might then have to sacrifice their physiotherapy for their mental health. They might have to sacrifice having the physio, to be able to get around, so that they can go to their psychiatrist. I think these fine men and women should be looked after.

What about the housing—the five per cent deposit? I'll tell you a little bit about that. It's actually forced housing prices up, so people are going to pay more for their house. It also means they haven't got as much in their deposit, so, when times change or there's a decline, they could end up with negative equity in their property. This housing policy is an absolute disaster.

What about the widow tax, hidden in the budget papers? If, unfortunately, someone gets separated or divorced, or someone dies, they will lose their provisions of capital gains and negative gearing. That's been grandfathered. That was hidden in the papers. And private health care for over-65s: this Albanese Labor government has slashed the rebate for the over-65s. So not only is the Labor government attacking the young people; they're also attacking our pensioners and our older people. It's clear that they want to tax from the cradle to the grave. There's nothing surer. I've never seen something that those opposite don't want to tax. But we on this side of the House all know that the more you tax things the less of them you get.

And the fuel excise has just been cut, so now it's 16c. That is harder for rural and regional people. People in my electorate don't have all the trams or the buses. They can't jump on public transport; they have to drive. So, again, disproportionately, rural people are worse off with these increases in fuel prices. And we're the engine room. Our cane farmers are already doing it tough with input costs—for fertiliser, for fuel, which have gone through the roof. These farmers need to be looked after with the fuel excise, because big tractors, cane harvesters and other cane machinery do not run on fresh air and sunshine. The other thing that needs to be looked at with the excise is our volunteers—people who look after Meals on Wheels, who volunteer their time as well as their fuel. Something needs to be done for them as well.

The other big issue I have is the EPBC Act. I have farmers in my area who have what we call white X land. They'd been entitled to clear that land, but the new rules say they can't clear it; it's got to be locked up. For those opposite, I just need you to understand: locking up good agricultural land—or locking up any form of land—simply does not work. All it does is build up pests and diseases, because the pests don't get the memo. When the weeds seed, all the seeds blow next door, and you end up with them back on your farm. The pigs don't just stay in that property. They don't understand that we've got a yellow line around it, so they'll decide to go next door and wreck everything else. The policy simply doesn't work.

I'm also concerned about manufacturing in this country and the safeguard mechanism. The safeguard mechanism is basically a carbon tax 2.0, and it is killing all our industries. And what happens to sovereign capability when you kill all the industries in the country? We are then more reliant on our inputs than ever. If COVID has taught us anything, it's that we need to be able to do more things in this country for our own sovereign capability.

With the bit of time left, I want to talk about the Bruce Highway. The Bruce Highway is our main arterial. It's how we get our products to market, and it's how we get our supplies up from the city. It is in an atrocious state. The Albanese Labor government promised money to go towards it, but we're yet to see it. There's a little bit of money for maintenance—which is a little bit cosmetic, like putting lipstick on a pig—but we want to see some real money, some real investment in the Bruce Highway to keep the people in my electorate safe.

Good governments remove barriers, create opportunity and give Australians the confidence to look to the future. That is exactly what the Albanese Labor government is delivering. For parents of young children, returning to study, training or work is not always easy or as simple as just updating a resume or applying for a job. That is why the Albanese Labor government created Parent Pathways, Australia's first voluntary pre-employment service for parents and carers of young children.

Recognising that every family's circumstances are different, participants are matched with a qualified mentor who helps them identify their goals and build a pathway towards them. Support can include career guidance; help accessing child care, connecting with education and training or improving language and literacy skills; or assistance with practical things like work clothing, computers or getting a drivers licence. Importantly, Parent Pathways is entirely voluntary. Choosing not to participate does not affect any component of income support.

I recently had the opportunity to visit ETC, one of the organisations delivering Parent Pathways, in Upper Mount Gravatt in my electorate of Bonner. Meeting with the mentors and hearing about their work was genuinely inspiring. The mentors absolutely love their jobs. Their role isn't simply helping people to find employment; it's about building confidence, listening without judgement and helping parents believe in themselves again. The parents that I met during the visit were glowing about their mentors, and one of the participants even started crying as she recalled to me the feeling of her mentor guiding her and coaching her through that process, restoring her confidence in herself, which then gave her the confidence to apply for roles and interview in a way that ended with her being successful for multiple opportunities. With a young family, it was the first job that she had had in years, and that relationship with her mentor shone through.

Another story that stayed with me was of someone by the name of David who was experiencing homelessness and living in a park with his five children. Through Parent Pathways, he received support to obtain his drivers licence and began flexible work that allowed him to support his family while continuing with his caring responsibilities. Today he's working, he's able to provide for his children and he's planning to establish a community organisation to help others who have experienced hardship. That is what this opportunity looks like. As I said, it's not simply about finding a job but restoring dignity and giving people the opportunity to provide that support to their young families.

More than 30,000 parents across Australia have now participated in Parent Pathways, including more than 6,800 in Queensland. In Bonner alone, over 200 parents have participated and are connected currently through the two sites in our electorate, in Mount Gravatt and Wynnum. Behind every one of those numbers is a family able to move forward with their lives with respect and dignity.

Supporting Australian families also means helping parents to navigate a rapidly changing digital world. Every parent knows that raising children today is different from even five or 10 years ago. Smartphones, social media feeds and online platforms are available around the clock, and technology has created extraordinary opportunities for young people but it's also created unprecedented risks. That is why we are trying to protect children from things like cyberbullying, harmful content, online exploitation and algorithms that are designed to keep them scrolling.

The Albanese Labor government's world-leading social media legislation was introduced because Australian families deserve to know that children's safety comes before the profits of multinational technology companies. More than five million under-16s' accounts have already been removed, deactivated or restricted, but some platforms are not doing enough. That's why the Albanese Labor government is strengthening the powers of the eSafety Commissioner and doubling the maximum penalty for companies that fail to comply from $49.5 million to $99 million. The commissioner will have stronger powers to require social media companies to provide evidence of what they are doing to keep under-16s off their platforms, because accountability only works when regulators have the tools they need to enforce the law. If companies want to operate in Australia, they must comply with the Australian law.

The Albanese Labor government is also improving transparency for telecommunications consumers. From today, new industry standards require telecommunications providers to publish clearer, more consistent mobile coverage maps, making it easier for Australians to compare providers and understand the level of service they can expect. Providers will also be required to publish standardised information about network outages, giving Australians greater visibility when services are disrupted. These practical reforms put Australians first by ensuring consumers have the information and protections they deserve.

Over the past few weeks, I've also had the opportunity to spend time with some wonderful schools, businesses, volunteer organisations and community organisations right across my electorate of Bonner, and I want to take a moment to share some of those stories with the chamber. It was a pleasure to attend—and it's the first time I've had the opportunity to do this—the inaugural Brisbane to Bundaberg Offshore Yacht Race. As someone who grew up sailing, it was a real honour to be there for that first inaugural race as the fleet departed from the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, just off the coast of Manly in my electorate. I know the dedication, teamwork and lifelong friendships that are built through the sport of sailing. The Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron is a wonderful jewel in the crown of my local Bonner community, and it was great to see that spirit alive and well on the day. Events like this support our local businesses, attract visitors to the area and strengthen relationships between both the city and regional communities, like Bundaberg. Congratulations to everyone who was involved in that inaugural race. I hope to see it continue for many years to come.

A healthy democracy depends on young Australians understanding how it works and knowing that their voices matter. That is why opportunities to engage with students in our roles as parliamentarians is so important. In the last couple of weeks I visited some local schools, Belmont State School and Holland Park State High School, to speak with students about civics, democracy and the role of a federal politician. The questions that the students asked were incredibly thoughtful—some quite challenging—but also insightful about what's on young people's minds. I love being able to get out and about in the community, talking not just with the students but also with the teachers and principals who are all growing and developing the minds of our young people in Bonner.

Finally, I also want to talk about some of our dedicated local volunteers. In Bonner, we have around 20,000 people who volunteer each and every year right across the electorate. Since 1942, the Wynnum Manly Red Cross has supported people through disasters, emergencies and some of life's most difficult moments. Their trauma teddy program provides comfort to more than 1,400 people every year. The trauma teddies are a real team effort. Some of the volunteers I've met with are forming the bodies, and some of them do the little faces on the teddies. They're providing them to local police stations, local hospitals and charities to give people in those moments, particularly children, comfort during times of great distress. Thank you to all of our volunteers at the Wynnum Manly Red Cross. It's a real privilege to be involved with your organisation, and I absolutely love visiting you every couple of months to see the great work that you are doing.

There being no further grievances, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Sitting suspended from 13 : 35 to 16 : 00

Last week Bowel Cancer Australia made its call on Canberra, and 43-year-old Emma, from Kangaroo Island in my electorate, came to visit me. Despite Emma's symptoms and a family history of bowel cancer, Emma originally wasn't offered a bowel cancer screening test at the age of 42. A colonoscopy was eventually recommended, but there was a six- to 12-month wait, and a test result led to Emma receiving that colonoscopy within a month. Emma is a teacher and a mother of two daughters, and she was shocked to be diagnosed with early-onset stage 3 bowel cancer at just 42 years of age. She had surgery followed by chemotherapy. She says her care was exceptional from that point, but getting diagnosed took longer than it should have. Unfortunately, since we met Emma, she's found out that she needs to have some more follow-up tests, which she said really brings home the urgency of getting this message to decision-makers.

Nurses told Emma they'd seen a tidal wave of early-onset bowel cancer among under-50s. Free testing kits are sent to people aged 50 to 74 every two years, and the government funds bowel cancer screening for people aged 45 and over. But few young people and health professionals seem to be aware that there are also low-cost tests for people aged under 45.

What does the data from Bowel Cancer Australia say? Since the early 2000s, rates of early-onset bowel cancer diagnosed before age 50 have been increasing in Australia and indeed worldwide. Australia now has the highest rate of early-onset bowel cancer among 50 countries, which is extraordinary. Like Emma, some young Australians report challenges with diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Some are told they are too young to have bowel cancer. But, in fact, one in eight Australians diagnosed with bowel cancer are under the age of 50. That is, 12 per cent of people diagnosed are aged under 50. That's quite a lot. The risk of being diagnosed with bowel cancer before the age of 40 has more than doubled since the year 2000, and bowel cancer is now the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Australia for those aged 25 to 49. Bowel cancer rates are two to three times higher among Australians born in the 1990s than those born in the 1950s.

But the incidence of bowel cancer is decreasing for older people, and that's perhaps due to screening and timely detection. So I call on the government to do more with Bowel Cancer Australia and others to raise awareness and increase access to screening for young Australians. Let's get our GPS up to date and make sure they're talking to young people about this. I would particularly like to thank Emma for taking the time to come all the way from Kangaroo Island to Canberra to spend time with me in the parliament.

I rise today to celebrate Deloraine High School and its OzHarvest FEAST program. I had the great joy of visiting recently and meeting with student leaders and the broader class to talk about the work they're doing to understand food waste. As they were performing and cooking in the classroom, I was just so impressed by the way they communicated and worked together as part of a team and what they've learnt about food waste in Australia.

The FEAST program is delivered through OzHarvest. Ronni Kahn, the founder, was at the school, along with Jenn Heggart, the OzHarvest state manager for Tasmania. Through that program delivered by their classroom teacher, Leanne Wickham, they were taught that 2.1 million households are experiencing food insecurity and regularly skipping meals, and that Australia wastes 7.6 million tonnes of food every year. They also learnt that that's enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground more than nine times. So, through the FEAST program, they are understanding how to use the items in their home, which they might have otherwise thrown out, to prepare nutritious meals for themselves and their loved ones. And the kids were doing a great job! I was so impressed with their behaviour and the way they were really engaging and learning about the subject matter. They were having a lot of fun while doing it. And they made some terrific, tasty-looking cupcakes.

We know that food waste is a really significant issue in our country. Our government is responding by developing a national food security strategy, which is an initiative delivered through the Minister for Agriculture's portfolio, but we're also responding to provide food relief to Australians, with a $460 million commitment over five years, so that we can support those most at risk. I congratulate these students for learning how to use food waste and turn it into nutritious meals.

I also want to congratulate the Brighton Robbins Football Club, where I attended an event recently. We had a ladies day to raise money for Tassie Mums, a charitable organisation in my state that helps to collect and redistribute essential baby and children's items to families who are experiencing hardship. Chelsea was the MC for the day. She did a marvellous job. The panel included Holly McConnon, the Karana TNL co-captain; Lauren Dykes, the Brighton senior women's captain; Kath McCann, the Chief Marketing Officer for the Tasmania Football Club; and myself.

We spoke about some of the challenges that women face playing sport, particularly participating in the higher premier league sport. We also spoke about the opportunities and the brilliant relationships and friendships that are created. I congratulate the club for putting this on and giving us the chance to talk about this. I also congratulate them on the supportive and inclusive culture they've built that has seen a lot of girls participate in premier league footy for the very first time and for the great role modelling they are demonstrating to girls who are watching and cheering them on. Well done to the Brighton Robbins Football Club.

Today I want to pay tribute to two incredible humans from Wentworth, people who have shown unwavering community spirit and courage. The first is Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins. Rabbi Kamins has been the senior rabbi at Emanuel Synagogue since 1999. In that time, he has led the community through periods of both transformation and adversity. He's now stepping away from his active service to become the synagogue's inaugural Rabbi Emeritus, with his mantle taken up by the wonderful Rabbi Ninio.

There is so much that I admire about Rabbi Kamins. He's got great wit and charm, but he matches his good humour with a deep commitment to Jewish values of egalitarianism and inclusion. Someone who leads from the heart with open arms, Rabbi Kamins has been an advocate of First Nations and refugee rights. He has consistently spoken about protecting our natural environment and of building bridges between faiths, and he officiated Australia's first religious same-sex wedding.

Over the last few years, during which the Jewish community has endured so much pain, he has been a pillar of strength. To Rabbi Kamins directly, I say thank you. To have known you is one of the great privileges of my role over the last few years, and I genuinely feel I'm a better representative for my community because of your example. I wish you nothing but peace and happiness in your next adventure.

I also want to take a moment to pay tribute to Charlie Verco. Charlie is a volunteer lifeguard at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club and was paddling from Bondi to Maroubra on the morning of Saturday 13 June when a shark attacked a woman, Leah Stewart, in the water off Coogee Beach. Despite the clear and present danger, with the shark still in the water, Charlie stayed with Leah and helped her get to the safety of the shore, where she was able to receive urgent medical attention. I have no doubt that this was an utterly terrifying experience, but Charlie stayed calm and focused, doing what he could to help.

The other thing that struck me about Charlie is how even now. in the aftermath, he is using his platform on social media to encourage people to donate blood to aid in more life-threatening situations like the one Leah was in. All of this speaks to his bravery, his composure under extreme pressure and his humility. I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that Charlie is a hero, and I want to thank him for the courage and selflessness that he showed, which no doubt saved Leah's life.

To Leah, I want to send my best wishes for your recovery and send those wishes to your family and friends, who must have been absolutely terrified by what you went through. I hope you know that the entire eastern suburbs community is behind you and your family and your loved ones, each step of the way as you heal.

In my electorate of Lilley, on Brisbane's north side, too many people have been working hard and trying to save but feel that the dream of homeownership is just out of reach. That's why, since being elected, the Albanese Labor government is making it easier for people to buy their very first home. Recently I received a letter from north side resident Dot about the real-life impact these changes are making in the lives of Lilley residents. Dot wrote:

My 28-year-old daughter, Jackie, has recently purchased and settled in a home unit in Stafford as her very first home.

As a young single woman who had worked and saved very hard, she had just about lost hope of entering the property market.

When the Help to Buy Scheme commenced, she decided to apply and was approved within two weeks.

Whilst there were obstacles competing against investors and other first homebuyers like herself, she was lucky enough to find a seller who wanted to give a first homeowner a go.

All this would not have been possible without the help of the many Labor state and federal policies that she took advantage of, those being the First Home Super Saver Scheme, the First Home Guarantee, the First Home Concessional Stamp Duty and most importantly, as mentioned, the Help to Buy scheme.

So this email is just to say thank you. We really appreciate all the implemented initiatives that have helped and, we hope, continue to help young Australians in the future.

Dot will be pleased to know that we are not stopping there. In the 2026-27 budget, our government changed property investor tax breaks to give first home buyers a fair go. Sandgate resident Dirk recently wrote to me about our budget measures. He said:

I was so pleased to see the government's budget trying to improve housing affordability by taking some action on negative gearing and capital gains tax.

I am a bit surprised to see reports in the media of these reforms apparently not being "accepted" by millennials (of which I am one).

The reforms perhaps aren't perfect but you are the first government in my living memory to take real action on this issue.

So thank you. I hope the government will stick to its guns amidst actual or media-perceived pushback.

Also thanks for reforming student loans ('HELP debts') and getting these debts/payments more under control.

Keep up the good work.

Rest assured, Dirk: the Albanese Labor government knows there is a lot of work to do to ensure that Australians get a fair go when it comes to securing a house of their very own. It won't be fixed overnight but we are making real progress.

With my remaining time, may I indulge and say congratulations to Lucas Herrington, Brisbane's very own, who at 18 is the youngest-ever Socceroo to make his debut at the FIFA World Cup. At the game at noon on Friday, not only was he able to debut at such a young age but, by the way he carried himself, he showed that he's clearly a big game player. I think he's from Toowong Football Club. On behalf of his very proud, I'm sure, parents in Brisbane, congratulations to Lucas Herrington, and the very best of luck to the Socceroos as they go up against Egypt at 4 am our time on Saturday.

Two young dads in Warringah have sat with me in recent times and shared diagnoses no family should have to face. They are two different diseases with different stories, but the same problem: more medical research funding is desperately needed. One urgent question: why are more young people being diagnosed with diseases we still do not properly understand?

The first is Ron, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at just 35. He and Anna are raising two young children while facing a disease that is aggressive and progressive and currently has no cure. MND affects the nerves that control movement. As the messages from the motor neurons stop reaching the muscles, people gradually lose the ability to move, speak, swallow and breathe. These people can still feel, think and understand what is happening while their body gradually stops responding. Every day in Australia, two people are diagnosed with MND and two people die from it. Around 2,800 Australians are living with this cruel disease, and more than half of people with MND are now under the age of 65.

Recently, Ron and Anna invited me to join the Middle Harbour Public School Big Freeze and get dunked to help raise funds to fight MND. I was very happy to be dunked.

The second story I want to raise is that of Chris. He's 37. He had no symptoms and no genetic history of it, and yet he has been diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. He's a dad of young children. Bowel cancer is one of Australia's most common cancers and one of the deadliest. Australia has one of the highest rates of early-onset bowel cancer in the world. The risk of being diagnosed before 40 has more than doubled since 2000, yet there is little funding for research and better diagnosis. This must urgently change. Too many young people are still being misdiagnosed or dismissed because bowel cancer is wrongly seen as an older person's disease. We urgently need stronger investment in early-onset bowel cancer research. We must understand why Australia is leading the world in early-onset bowel cancer and we need better awareness across our health system and the community so younger patients are taken seriously, diagnosed earlier and treated faster.

I say to Ron, Anna, Chris and every family facing these diseases that your advocacy matters. I know there were many others here in Parliament House last week advocating for early bowel cancer detection. Thank you for sharing your incredible stories. This parliament must listen to their stories and their experiences, invest in the research that can save lives and have greater funding for medical research. And, of course, we need wraparound care, because when diseases strike at an early onset the implications for young families is so incredibly dire for earning capacity, family security and the raising of young children.

At a time of cost pressures and a time of global turmoil that's created supply shocks and caused inflation, communities around Australia are looking to their government to help tackle those challenges, not with a magic wand but by delivering real change that makes a difference at a tough time. Tomorrow, on 1 July, we'll deliver more of that real, practical change to support Australians.

Tomorrow, more than three million Australians will receive a pay rise, continuing the record of the Albanese government in delivering real wage rises after a decade of wage stagnation under the coalition. Award workers will get a 4.75 per cent pay rise, and those on the national minimum wage will see a six per cent increase. Tomorrow, every working Australian will receive a further tax cut, continuing the record of the Albanese government in delivering tax relief, especially for low- and middle-income earners. Indeed, the average worker will now have benefited annually to the tune of $2,800 in tax cuts thanks to the Albanese government.

Tomorrow, Paid Parental Leave will be extended to six months and we'll see superannuation added to Paid Parental Leave. From tomorrow, price gouging by supermarkets will become illegal. From tomorrow, Australians will be paid super into their accounts on their pay day. From tomorrow, people in New South Wales, South Australia and south-east Queensland will be able to benefit from Solar Sharer, an initiative that means customers with a smart meter can choose a plan that includes a three-hour free power period each day.

This is real change. These are real measures that will make a difference at a difficult time and will build on the work we've done since coming to government in a range of areas. We've just introduced and passed through the House of Representatives momentous and courageous tax reforms to make sure that we eliminate the Howard government distortions that saw the price of housing grow twice as fast as wages, a piece of policy madness that's fuelled the housing crisis and made homeownership out of reach for many, especially young Australians.

In being prepared to take on difficult but necessary change we're making sure that our tax system doesn't put a heavier burden on the vast majority of Australians who earn their living from wages than on those who earn income from asset investment. It's a change in the direction of fairness. It's a real change that takes courage and makes a difference, which is what the people that we represent rightly expect from their government.

On 1 July, through wage rises, tax cuts, our strong action on supermarket prices and cheaper energy, the Albanese government will be continuing to deliver real and positive change of a practical kind to the Australian community at a tough time. That's what the Australian people expect of good government. That's what the Albanese government is delivering.

Health care in this country, despite the press releases and the political spin, is under real pressure. In regional communities like mine, the pressure continues to mount on families who simply can't afford it. We're seeing hospitals under strain and emergency departments stretched thin. Last year, I rose in this very chamber to draw attention to the ambulance ramping crisis in my seat of Forrest, and, since that time, neither Labor government has taken action to address it. Ambulance ramping is unacceptable anywhere, but in the regions it's worse, because there isn't another hospital just down the road. The reality is that, in regional communities like mine, the consequences are sharper and felt more deeply for local families.

I was recently contacted by Kim in my electorate who shared his telling experience with our local healthcare system. Kim doesn't need to see a doctor very often, but, on this occasion, he required a basic consultation by phone. He was told that it would cost him $75 for a few minutes on the phone. How can we expect that people struggling to manage their health affairs are faced with this as the first point of call with the health system? At the same time, we know that families are dealing with a lot right now. The cost of living is rising. Groceries, power bills, rents—everything seems to be going up. For those managing an ongoing or chronic condition, those pressures don't just add up; they multiply.

What creates that situation is where people are forced into a choice no Australian should have to make—a choice between getting care or keeping up with the bills. That's just not good enough. Despite every talking point from those opposite, people in the regions don't feel the progress that this government claims to have delivered when it comes to health care.

Take, for instance, Margaret River, where a surging population for the last 25 years has placed an ever-increasing demand on healthcare services. The local community in Margaret River is crying out for upgrades to the Margaret River Hospital because the current situation is simply unsustainable. That's through no fault of the local staff, the nurses and doctors on the ground, who are doing absolutely everything they can to deliver quality care to locals. This is a question of systemic underresourcing. That's what I've heard from the locals. I encourage everyone in the Margaret River area and the surrounds to have their voice heard in this place by signing my petition to upgrade the Margaret River Hospital. If state Labor won't fund it, federal Labor should. At the end of the day, someone needs to step in and salvage this totally unacceptable situation for local people. Together, we must stand up for better health care in Forrest, because this Labor government surely isn't.

Today, I want to speak about housing, not as a market and not as a headline but as a place where a person can close the door and feel safe. Recently, I met with the Victorian Homelessness Fund. Since 1987, the fund has worked to provide long-term homes for women and children escaping domestic violence. Their model is practical. Homeowners partner with the fund and community housing providers to provide homes to families in crisis, and these homes are not empty shells. They are furnished, and the pantry is fully stocked. They are ready for a mother and her child to arrive, take a breath and begin again with dignity, because, for someone escaping violence, housing is not a political debate. It can be the difference between staying trapped or finding a way out.

Before entering parliament, I worked in the homelessness sector at Homes for Homes. I there helped to build a pipeline of more than $110 million for social and affordable housing. During my time, I worked with property developers and helped them to engage with the organisation and raise that money. During that time, I met with some property developers, went up to their beautiful office at the top of the building, had a look out at their view and spent some time letting their staff know about Homes for Homes and how they could help end homelessness.

Just as I finished, I walked to the door and someone called out my name. I thought I'd left something behind. A woman came up nice and close to me in her lovely suit and said to me, 'Sarah, I am homeless.' I couldn't believe it, because she was in a well-paid job. But what had happened to her was that she had experienced domestic violence. Her husband had stopped her bank account. She was living on a friend's couch and couldn't stay there any longer. I was completely shocked. It is also a reminder to me that homelessness can happen quickly and it can happen to anyone.

That is why housing affordability matters. That is why I am proud to be part of the Albanese Labor government's legislation to change housing affordability and cost-of-living support. Our housing reforms will support 75,000 more Australians into homeownership. They will help investment to flow into new housing supply. Our tax reforms will reduce the tax burden for more than 13 million workers.

We cannot accept a future where homeownership is only for people who already have wealth. We cannot accept a future where women and children who are escaping violence are left waiting for a safe door to be open. The Victorian Homeless Fund shows what practical action can look like, and Homes for Homes shows what industry help can deliver.

The Warrnambool-to-Melbourne rail line has been an issue that keeps dogging the Labor government both at the state and the federal level. I say to both the Albanese Labor government and the Allan Labor government: it's time you got it right. We still have elderly passengers having to stand or sit on the floor when taking the more than three-hour trip. We have young children and their mothers not being able to find seats. This is despite the coalition government providing over $460 million in funding for this line when we were in government. The incompetence of the Allan Labor government and the lack of interest from the Albanese Labor government in what is happening to passengers on this rail line literally beggars belief.

Enough is enough. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be addressed. I can tell you that people will vote with their feet at the next Victorian state election unless this is fixed—and fixed quickly. They're sick of standing on their feet for the whole three hours because of this failure.

The other issue that I would like to raise today is what is happening to small business in this country and the failure of the Albanese Labor government to do anything about it. All we're seeing from the Albanese Labor government is regulation upon regulation and tax upon tax on the small business sector, including in my electorate. I thank the farmers, the retailers, the hospitality businesses and all those other small businesses that have had discussions with me over the last few months. I understand that you're hurting. I understand that the government is doing nothing to help you. I understand the pressures you are facing, and I understand your complete and utter dismay at what you saw in the budget and how it's going to put further pressure on you. Enough is enough. Seriously.

I say to you: the coalition knows and understands the pressures you're facing. We are putting together a package that will make your life easier, not harder, and we'll be announcing that over the coming months. I look forward to further engaging with you over the coming months as well.

Based on the most recent polling, cost of living remains the most pressing issue for Australians, with around 75 per cent of people putting it at the top of the list of issues that matter to them. Another survey has 3.7 million Australians living in poverty, whilst 122,000 are homeless. Between 35 and 70 per cent of Australians are reportedly under financial stress. Welfare groups face increasing requests for food assistance, and every day governments come under increased pressure from people who are struggling with housing, health, aged-care needs, energy costs and other general living expenses. In the relatively wealthy country that Australia is—a land of opportunity to which so many people from overseas wish to come—why are so many people struggling? There are multiple views on that. However, two issues that I believe directly contribute to Australian poverty are gambling and illicit drug use.

According to the most recent figures, $32 billion is spent annually on gambling in Australia, with Australians rated as the biggest gamblers in the world per capita. That figure equates to $1,500 per adult each year, while over 70 per cent of Australians reportedly participate in some form of gambling. It is also estimated that 10 per cent of the income of low-income households is spent on gambling, and, according to one analysis, three million Australians experience some form of gambling harm. With illicit drugs, it is estimated that one in 20 Australians has an addiction or substance misuse problem and that around $11.5 billion is spent annually on illicit drugs. Some 3.9 million Australians recently used an illicit drug, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Both gambling losses and illicit drug use are increasing. In particular, online gambling has increased by over 60 per cent in recent years and cocaine use has surged by 69 per cent in a single 12-month period. Illicit drug use and problem gambling are both having devastating effects on Australian families. We cannot continue to respond to these issues in the way we have to date if we are to overcome the financial stresses facing too many Australian families and the demands on the federal budget. Additionally, much of the gambling and drug expenditure ends up overseas, so the money doesn't even circulate within the Australian economy.

Gambling and drug addiction are both, and often together, directly the cause of poverty, homelessness, suicide, divorce, financial stress, crime and other social problems. I welcome the Albanese government's latest gambling reforms, which I believe will make a difference to Australian gambling rates. However, if we are to address poverty we must also reverse the continuing rise of gambling and illicit drug use, which, in addition to adding to the burdens of government, have devastating impacts on individuals, families and communities.

You hear all the time in this place that small and medium businesses are the backbone of this nation. Yet, this Labor government's policies keep punching down and turning these small businesses to insolvency or to face creditors. Their livelihoods and their opportunities have been snatched away because of bad policy.

Instead of just getting up and giving a speech about good business, I thought I'd convene a roundtable in Townsville, led by the Townsville Chamber of Commerce as the experts on small and medium businesses. I thought I'd get people together, those that represent these groups and these businesses, from all walks of life. I could sit there and not talk, not tell them how great politics is or how great I am, but listen. I could ask: 'How can we better support you? How can the parliament—how can the government—better do its job?' It was abundantly clear that the insurance side, the cost of living, the overheads, the margins—everything—is getting tighter and tighter, and people are wondering why they continue to work in small business.

They do it because they love it, they do it because they want to leave a legacy, but they also expect the government to listen to them when they have concerns. We heard about housing and investment. I heard directly from Ben Kingsberry about the sharp drop in investors entering the Townsville market at a time when vacancy rates are already at record lows. It's a serious concern that still, during question time today, hasn't been addressed. When investment declines, supply tightens. When supply tightens, it drives up rents and makes it harder for local families to find a place to live.

This isn't something we just see in the cities. We see it around the country. If you're doing it tough in a capital city, times it by 100—that's what it feels like in the regions. There are real consequences for poor policy on people and livelihoods. Livelihoods get put in the bin. People can't operate. It really crushes the community. Instead of easing cost-of-living pressures, many businesses feel like these government policies are adding to them. Instead of encouraging investment, it's creating uncertainty, and that's the risk we're facing today.

Small businesses need confidence, they need action and they need a government that stands up for them, not stands in the way of them.

The World Cup is a festival of football, and I'm proud of our government's backing through the Urban Precincts and Partnerships Program, which helped bring the world game to the big screens at Town Hall Broadmeadows, alongside our local partners. Across 13 live matches, two big screens, movies, food trucks, music and activities for the whole family helped bring people together, spend time with family and friends and share in one of the world's great sporting events. That's the great capacity found in sport.

Our community is one of Australia's most culturally diverse, so, when we look at the Socceroos, we see something familiar. We see a reflection of our community. We see a reflection of modern Australia. We see multicultural Australia. We see it in the players, one of which in particular stands out to us. Aziz Behich grew up locally. I happened to graduate from the same school as Aziz and members of his family, and shared a university class with one of his siblings. Some of his earlier moments in the football journey were at one of our local clubs, Hume City, before going on to represent Australia on the world stage as a Socceroo. His story is the story of communities like mine. It says something special about Australia that a young person can grow up, proudly carry both their family heritage and their Australian identity, and represent our country with distinction and pride. That's something we're proud of because it's something we see every day.

We know Australia for what it is—a nation built by people who have come from every corner of the world seeking opportunity, working hard, raising families and helping build a better life for themselves and in turn helping build Australia. The Socceroos reflect the Australia we see every day in communities like ours beyond the headlines, an Australia that's diverse, an Australia that's confident and an Australia that's comfortable in its identity. It shows us that Australia exists beyond the culture wars.

Growing up as a kid in suburban Melbourne, monos were things you did on pushbikes. They weren't political philosophies of a monoculture that the three-ring right-wing spectacle that those opposite are putting forward. We believe in an Australia that's confident in its diversity and strengthened by the contributions of people from every corner of the world who have chosen to make this country home. That's the Australia we back in because it's the country communities like ours have helped build, an Australia that will always be stronger than those who seek to divide Australians for political gain and the pursuit of political relevance.

The Gold Coast is often recognised for our beautiful beaches and lifestyle, member for McPherson, but if you ask me what truly makes our community so special, it is of course our people. We never miss an opportunity to come together to celebrate and support one another. Recently I had the great privilege of attending the GOPIO Gold Coast community wellness event at the Broadwater Parklands in Southport, organised by founder Pushpinder Oberoi—thanks, Push—and the dedicated team at GOPIO Gold Coast. The event brought together families, community leaders and local organisations to celebrate health, wellbeing and a connection as part of International Yoga Day. While my older body may still be recovering from the yoga mat, it was wonderful to see people of all ages and backgrounds participating in this special day of mindfulness activities and wellness programs, while sharing in the vibrant culture of our local Indian community.

Moncrieff is home to people from every corner of the world, and events like this remind us that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. They provide an opportunity to learn from one another, build friendships across cultures, and celebrate the traditions that enrich our community. I thank Pushpinder and everyone involved for their tireless work in bringing this event together and for the contribution they continue to make to the Gold Coast.

Recently I also joined fellow Gold Coast community leaders at the Vinnies CEO Sleepout at Cbus Super Stadium, the home of the mighty Gold Coast Titans. While spending one night sleeping rough can never truly replicate the experience of homelessness, it served as a powerful reminder of the challenges faced by far too many Australians every single day and in my community.

The evening brought together leaders from business, local government and the wider community with a shared goal: raising funds to support the work of the St Vincent de Paul Society and initiatives like the 500 Homes Project, helping Queenslanders move from homelessness into safe and secure housing, including the 60 apartments that we're building in conjunction with the Queensland government at Nerang. Over 2½ thousand people experience homelessness on the Gold Coast on any given night, and the money raised from this event will go directly to supporting those locals getting back on their feet.

I want to thank everyone who donated so generously to the CEO Sleepout. I want to thank Colin Wheeler, who stepped down this year, for his service, as well as Karen Phillips OAM and the team of ambassadors for all of your efforts for homelessness on the Gold Coast. It's initiatives like these that go to the heart of who we are as Gold Coasters: a community that supports one another, celebrates one another and never hesitates to lend a helping hand when needed. It's a privilege to represent the good people of Moncrieff, and I thank every volunteer, organiser and participant whose efforts continue to make our community stronger and safer.

Well, believe it or not, this week it is coming up to 10 years since I was given the honour of being elected as the member for Cowan—a decade of serving the Cowan community. Over that decade, I must say, my boundaries have changed a lot more than I would have liked, but my commitment remains the same. I want to take a moment to reflect on that past decade and share some of the things that I've achieved together with the community of Cowan for the community of Cowan.

Most recently, we had our urgent care clinic open in Nollamara. That's going gangbusters. We've also got the Mirrabooka Medicare Mental Health Centre. Along with the state government, we've built a new train station in Ballajura. We've also worked on some black spots—most significantly, those on Malaga Drive, the Mirrabooka and Montrose Avenue project and the Hepburn Avenue project.

I'm really, really humbled by the myriad community groups throughout Cowan that I've gotten to know over the last 10 years, as well as the work we've been able to achieve together and the support that I've been able to give them. I'm going to go through a few of them. Obviously there's a lot to go through, but I'm going to try and get through as many as I can. I just want to give a shout-out to these groups: the Greenwood Street Pantry; the Lions Club of Wanneroo; Fostering Hope; No Limits; the various men's sheds, which I know everybody has in their electorates; 12 Buckets, who do amazing work with young people; the Marangaroo Family Centre; our Vietnamese Seniors Association; Wheelchairs for Kids and renowned Brother Olly for all his dedication and the work that he and I have done together over the years; Grandcarers WA; Ngala Djooken Healing Centre; ISHAR, which is a multicultural women's health centre; Youth Futures; St Vincent de Paul; and Community Connecting Youth, with their wonderful community garden that they've developed out there in Ballajura.

There's our multicultural communities in Cowan, as well: the Macedonian community, our Vaishnav Sangh, Mirrabooka mosque, Perth North Tamil School, the Multicultural Services Centre, Malaga Multicultural Alliance, the Organisation of African Communities, Sacred India Gallery, the New Life Christian Centre and the Kenyan Community in WA. These are all community groups that I've had the pleasure of working with.

Then there are our sporting groups right across Cowan: Balga Football Club; Kingsway Regional Sporting Complex, with the various football clubs as well as baseball, netball and soccer—everything you can imagine; Stirling Adriatic Centre and Bowling Club; West Coast Gymnasts; and, of course, all our local sporting heroes and all those young people in diverse sports from soccer to speed skating to hurling. A huge thankyou to all the people of Cowan for giving me the honour of serving you for 10 years. I will continue to work my utmost to represent you here each and every day.

My electorate is predominantly agriculture; the largest contributor to GDP is agriculture. I live in an electorate where men and women who work on farms often get up before the sun gets up. Their faces are tanned, and their hands are cracked and blackened with earth and soil. But they live by certain principles: honour, integrity and loyalty to their friends. They still believe in the principle that when you shake a man's hand the deal is done—that 'my word is my bond'. So they took particular umbrage when the Prime Minister said to the nation that his word was his bond and then backtracked on that.

My electorate is changing. It's evolving. It's a regional-rural electorate, but I'm getting more and more urban encroachment in communities like Greenbank, Plainland, Jimboomba and Yarrabilba. We proudly welcome every one of those families that choose to relocate to Wright purely because of the level of representation at federal government. There can be no other reason. As a result of the impasse or people coming to the electorate, I now find myself with an electorate constituency base of around 150,000, and it is incumbent on me to be the voice for them here in Canberra, and I do that proudly.

In the last 12 months, I have conducted no less than roughly 20 mobile offices around the electorate to ensure that these new people and personnel coming to my electorate have a voice. I engage with them in a way where—at that shows or agriculture shows or my mobile booths, I'll ask them to put a sticker next to hot topic issues so I can get a visual snapshot of what's important to them. It would not surprise anyone within these rooms that, when I take a snapshot of these boards and bring them to the House, the cost of living is far and away the most predominant. I did, however, change my lists of issues that they could raise with me. Cost of living, housing affordability, crime and anti-social behaviour, roads and highways, defence and national security, immigration and population—that always gets a good run. They do have great concerns about immigration and the population base. But I put a new category in there: politicians telling the truth. I was surprised how high it is on their list of priorities. Maybe this side of government should start telling the truth. My people deserve better.

A number of locals in the seat of Banks were recognised as part of the King's Birthday Honours, and I want to acknowledge them here. Mark Connell of Oatley was awarded an OAM for services to youth through scouting, and, as an integral part of the 1st Oatley Bay Sea Scouts, he has contributed to the outdoor skills and confidence of countless young people in our community. Major Craig Fairweather was awarded an OAM in the Military Division for his outstanding contributions to military engineering for the Australian Army. Kathy Powzun of Mortdale was awarded a Public Service Medal for services to education. Justice Murray Aldridge was awarded an OAM not just for his contribution to our legal system as a barrister and a King's Counsel but also for services to conservation and orchid growing. Lastly, the former premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, was made an AO in recognition of his career in public service as well as his contributions to community sport and the not-for-profit sector more broadly. Congratulations to all the wonderful recipients. Perhaps more importantly though, thank you for your service to our communities and our country.

On 19 June, we marked the Dragon Boat Festival, an important occasion in the calendar for many Chinese Australians, including my own family. It was my pleasure to bring together local community leaders from across the electorate of Banks for an afternoon tea at the iconic Canton Noodle House in Riverwood alongside Georges River councillor Elaina Anzellotti and the member for East Hills, Kylie Wilkinson. It was great to see the representatives of so many organisations who contribute to the welfare of our community in many different ways. Thank you also to the Canton Noodle House for their incredible hospitality and, of course, their wonderful food.

Finally, on 5 June, we turned the first sod on a new development in Padstow, funded by the Housing Australia Future Fund. The block has been vacant for some time, but it will soon be 113 homes, with parking, for local families, bringing the total number of social and affordable homes delivered in my electorate of Banks by this government to 214. This project is the latest demonstration of this government's commitment to deliver more homes for Australians through the Housing Australia Future Fund. We're working in partnership with the state government to ensure our community, our people, have places to live in an affordable and wonderful place like the electorate of Banks.

Over recent weeks, I've been listening to people across my electorate of Fisher through community forums, roundtable discussions and local conversations. Three engagements in particular have stood out: a budget forum with residents, a roundtable with financial planners and a small-business forum with local business owners. Despite their different backgrounds, constituents delivered remarkably similar messages. They feel they are working harder, paying more and getting less under this Labor government.

People in my electorate of Fisher feel the rules changed after they made decisions based on promises by governments over many years, and they are increasingly concerned about the direction of our country. In a recent survey I did, 70 per cent of respondents felt that this country was heading in the wrong direction.

At my Fisher budget forum, residents questioned whether government would still honour its side of the bargain if Australians do the right thing—save, invest, work hard and plan for the future. That concern was particularly strong among retirees. Many had spent decades making responsible financial decisions so they would not become dependent on the government. Now they see private health insurance rebates being cut, new taxes on investments and retirement plans thrown into uncertainty. These are real people, and many have lost all trust in this government. More than 8½ thousand people have signed my petition about the government's private health insurance rebate cuts. That's how angry they are about this.

I then met with local financial planning professionals. Their assessment was sobering. They described clients who believed that they'd done everything asked of them only to have the goalposts not just moved but put into another suburb. One adviser shared the remarks from one of his clients. The client said, 'I left communist China to get away from this.' This view speaks to how many Australians fear government is increasingly willing to tax aspiration, savings and success.

At the small-business forum I heard similar concerns. These hardworking mums and dads are not asking for special treatment; they're asking for breathing space, for government to get out of their way and let them do what they do best—and that's run their business with some degree of certainty. But, at the moment, this government is offering nothing but uncertainty.

Over these past few weeks I've had an increasing number of conversations about the state of democracy in Australia. At the Langwarrin probus club I was asked what I thought about democracy and the current state of politics. More recently, I listened to students at the Committee for Frankston & Mornington Peninsula youth forum, who spoke candidly about their concerns for the future. They are worried about rising polarisation, growing anger and the tone of public debate in Australia.

Australia is the lucky country. We are fortunate to live in one of the world's strongest democracies, but I fear that our good fortune has made us complacent about engaging with and understanding politics and about the value of our vote. That complacency is becoming dangerous. For me, this shift became clear when I was confronted and intimidated by a group of 12 men, from a fringe organisation, intent on preventing me from speaking openly with members of the community, a mother and her daughter. It was a stark reminder that the tone of politics in our country is changing and changing quickly. Since then, that same hostility has amplified online, with hate and division spreading at an alarming rate. The erosion of respectful debate threatens social cohesion and raises serious concerns about the integrity of our public discourse. Freedom of speech is fundamental to our democracy, but it is not a licence for hate speech. With freedom comes responsibility. The tone of our national conversation matters. It shapes how we treat one another, how we solve problems and how we participate in and sustain our democracy.

Democracy depends on engagement. It requires people to ask questions, to listen carefully and to disagree without being disagreeable. It is strongest not when everyone agrees, but when everyone believes they have a place in the conversation. The young people I met reminded me that engagement is not the problem—disconnection is. They care deeply about fairness, about truth and about the future they will inherit. Across Dunkley people are telling me the same thing: they want respectful, grounded politics focused on what matters. This is a moment to reject complacency, to engage with one another in good faith and to strengthen respectful debate, because being the lucky country is not guaranteed—it is something we must actively protect, together and always.

Quambatook is a small, you might say teeny-tiny, town in Mallee. Two hundred people live there. It's known as 'Quamby' to the locals and deserves special treatment after the horrific and tragic death of Merril Kelly, a pillar of that community last January 2025. I was disturbed recently to learn that the Quamby local post office has temporarily closed as the recent and current licensee is unable to continue. You might say, why is that even connected? Well, it is connected.

For those who were paying attention in Senate estimates, Australia Post gave responses to Senator Henderson regarding the future of licensed post offices, and they have since discovered a secret document—a leaked document—that says that the future might not be exactly what the CEO said in the Senate estimates. Why is this important? Because licensed Post Offices in small towns like Quambatook matter. Chelle Espagne, who is a community minded person like they all are there, was the previous LPO manager, and she said today that when she was running the LPO two people's lives were saved. You see, Quamby doesn't have letterboxes and roadside delivery; only the post office boxes at her Quamby general store. Residents tell the LPO when they'll be out of town, and so Chelle knew when two people hadn't come to collect their post that maybe something was wrong. Owing to Chelle's care, she went around to check in on them and that is the reason they are alive today. It's not a small thing.

As Chelle says, LPOs are more than just a banking and mail service—they can be kind of a safety net, and we need safety nets in regional Australia. Quamby's nearest Australia Post outlet is in Kerang, which happens to be an 85-kilometre round-trip away. That means local residents have to drive with significant inconvenience and expense on dangerous roads just to pick up their mail. That is not a solution. They have been let down by the current system, and Chelle is doing that round-trip at present off her own back without remuneration, just to keep the mail coming to her general store.

I respect that Australia Post has processes to follow, and I've reached out to them for a very swift resolution of the— (Time expired)

I rise today to recognise Dr Jodi Edwards, a Yuin Dharawal custodian who has dedicated her life to community, culture, education and language across New South Wales, including in the Southern Illawarra region within my electorate of Whitlam. Jodi left school in year 10 to support her family after her father was injured in a workplace accident. She returned to high school at the age of 26 to complete her HSC, the first in her family to do so. Jodi was awarded her PhD from Macquarie University in 2021. At the University of Wollongong, she is the Vice-Chancellor's Senior Indigenous Research Fellow with the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.

Two years ago, the Albanese Labor government invested in the University of Wollongong's Unbroken Whispers project led by Dr Jodi Edwards. Blending Indigenous research and modern science, Jodi and her team are tracking southern right whales, humpback whales, orcas and dolphins along Australia's east coast. Jodi's project draws on stories and knowledge from the world's oldest living culture to better safeguard our incredible ocean environment. In 2022, Jody was named Shellharbour Woman of the Year and Illawarra Regional NAIDOC Aboriginal Community Person of the Year for her enormous contribution to many organisations and initiatives within our community, and in 2023 she was nominated for the New South Wales Aboriginal Woman of the Year award. I thank Jodi Edwards for her absolutely extraordinary contribution to our community.

I rise today to recognise Leanne Gordon, an extraordinary woman who has devoted the past 15 years of her life to the not-for-profit organisation True Hearts Community, which provides invaluable services to people in need in my electorate of Whitlam. True Hearts Community prepares and distributes approximately 500 food hampers each month from a community centre in Warilla. These hampers are distributed three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and include fruit, vegetables and bakery items, as well as pantry items and meat when it's available. The hampers assist vulnerable individuals and families who are facing hardship due to financial insecurity and domestic violence. Leanne is a survivor of domestic violence herself, and she is particularly committed to helping women and children escaping domestic violence. In addition to the hampers, True Hearts Community provides a safe place where people can come for a chat over a cup of tea. I was delighted to visit Leanne and her team of volunteers in Warilla and saw for myself how they put together the hampers and provide comfort to so many families in the community. Leanne Gordon is a beacon of kindness and generosity, and I thank her sincerely on behalf of our community for the selfless and outstanding contribution that she's made over the past 15 years and that she still continues to make today.

In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.

I rise to support the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. We'll do the legislative stuff first. This bill modernises the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014 to ensure it remains fit for purpose. It introduces a flexible, rule based framework to support future events, reduces the need for repeated legislative amendments and supports Australia's commitments to major international sporting events. It enables protections for the Rugby Union World Cup in 2027 and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games; protects sponsors and commercial partners from ambush marketing; and maintains appropriate safeguards, including clear statutory criteria for ministerial declarations, parliamentary oversight and exemptions for legitimate use. It's protecting IP.

This is not going to come as a surprise to anybody, but I love sport and I love these—

You're good at sport.

I used to be. Thank you. I thank the member for Riverina. I take the interjection. I was really good—no! I love these major events—not for the tourism and not for the economic development, but because they bring so many people together, with the opportunity. So many memories are created with parents at sporting games, holding the hands of their little one, introducing them to the team that they love and feeling that emotion from the crowd. It's something that is an integral part of the Australian culture.

My favourite sport these days is not going to the NBL or the AFL or watching the Socceroos, as great as they are, on TV. It's local sport. It's going to watch kids playing for the first time, experiencing the rush of doing well and learning through the wins and, sometimes more importantly, the losses about what it means to be a good sport, what it means to be a teammate and what it means to be together in a moment. It is such an integral part of the development of young people. Watching my daughters play netball and AFL and go to gymnastics, and watching them experience and experiment with what they can do physically, as well as the mental aspect of the game, are some of the great joys of a parent or a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt, and it is something that is inspired by these events. My daughters weren't into gymnastics until the Olympics were on, and we were able to put it on in the house and go: 'Look, this is what you can do. You can learn to tumble, learn to flip and do all these really great things.' That's how they got their interest in it.

These events are more than just the big shiny lights. They're more than the elite athletes. It's more than the cold professionalism that you sometimes find in professional sport. Playing in the United States, I was exposed to how ruthless, brutal and cold sport can be. Coming back to Australia after my professional career ended and getting back into grassroots sport, I was reminded of what community sport is like, what community participation is like and what events like the big ones—the Olympics, the rugby union World Cup—do to really lift people up. They get people excited to play again, to get out and kick the footy with their friends, to be the next Kieren Perkins—I'm showing my age here—or Cathy Freeman, to wear that gold medal and to feel what it must feel like to have a crowd behind you like that, and everybody does it. Everyone's in the backyard, and they play it through their heads. They've got their imagination running wild. The amount of kids who say the name of their favourite player as they shoot a basket or as they put the Sherrin off the foot or tuck it under their arm and cross over for the tryline. It's a part of growing up, and it's a part of being something bigger than yourself.

At the last big footy game I went to, I took my daughters and my fiancee to watch Geelong versus Brisbane, and being a part of that big crowd and feeling that wave of emotion—Renee, my fiancee, is a Kiwi. Her ways are not our ways! She very much appreciates the All Blacks. The All Blacks aren't really my thing. She came to her first AFL game and was just taken aback by the community that came with it, walking in to the MCG with 100,000 other people dressed to the nines in their Geelong gear. There weren't as many Lions supporters that day, but it's Melbourne. We can't hold it against them. We were there to witness the mighty Lions beat Geelong and then go on to win the AFL grand final. It'll be a core memory for my daughters, and it was a great time to spend with my fiancee. It was a great bonding experience to have that together. I look at those photos fondly, and my daughters speak about it fondly. That's the power of these sporting events. It's bringing those families together. It's giving them those memories together.

One of the earliest memories I have is my father and grandfather taking me to watch the Ashes with Allan Border, Dean Jones and Big Merv and to sing the songs in Bay 13. That meant a lot to me, it meant a lot to my grandfather, and it meant a lot to my father to have these moments. They're not much, and maybe they didn't mean as much to my father and grandfather at the time, but those little moments that mean the world to a kid meant the world to me. My father doesn't like cricket very much, but he took me because it was important to me, and that's something that sticks with me. I've still got the little fake autographed cricket bat in my parents house. I don't display that. At the time I thought it was real. I was very excited to have both the Walls, Peter Taylor and everybody. It means so much.

This piece of legislation protects these games, allows the organisations that deliver them the surety that they need because, they do need to make their money back. These things cost millions and millions of dollars to put on. Turning the lights on at the MCG is a lot of power. Making sure that they've got all of the food, all of the vendors and everything that they need to actually put something like this on and everything surrounding it, the people who are running it need to understand and know that they're going to get their return on investment and that they're going to be protected. That's what this does. It clears the way. We don't have to go through legislation every time we get a major sporting event. I hope we get many major sporting events, because, despite saying that I wasn't really that into it, it is an economic benefit. It's massive. At the 2032 Olympics, there are going to be some sports held in Cairns. The hero shot from Rio de Janeiro coming off from Christ the Redeemer down over Ipanema was awesome. I'd never wanted to go to Brazil, but, after seeing that, I said: 'You know what? I should probably go to Brazil.' I did not go to Brazil, but I thought about it. We're going to show Cairns in that way—coming down over the range, the World Heritage rainforest and looking out over the beautiful Coral Sea. People can play a bit of football, the most popular sport on the planet. Millions of people will look at that. Millions of people will see what my city has to offer and what my region has to offer and maybe they'll think: 'I'm going to swing up to Cairns, spend a bit of time and watch my football team play there. They seem to have a good time. They beat whoever.' That's what we want. We want that knock-on effect, those economic drivers that will also come along with an event such as this.

It is superb to me that moment with your parents in the stands or an uncle, older brother or older sister cheering on your team, learning what that tribalism means, to feel like you're a part of it. How many people talk about their favourite sporting club as 'we'? They'll say, 'We won on the weekend!' I say it about the Hawthorn Hawks.

I haven't kicked a football in anger for years. The last time I did, it went really, really badly. We identify with these sporting greats. We see ourselves in them because that's who we imagined we were when we were young. That's who we thought we could be. It shows the best part of ourselves. Playing sports and growing up that way, you learn to win, to lose and to understand that it means that sometimes you've just got to do your best and, if you're not there on the day, what that means moving forward. That's because not every day is a good day, and sport can help you learn that. These events can help people get into sport and have those experiences.

Not everyone is going to be the member for Hunter, with five Olympics and multiple Commonwealth Games under his belt, as he reminds me on an almost daily basis! Not everyone can be Johnathan Thurston. Not everyone can be Kobe Bryant. But you can play with your friends, you can have that moment with your children and you can enjoy all that sport has to offer. So many sporting careers, be they of Olympians or backyard warriors, have started because of these major sporting events, because someone's seen something on TV and thought: 'I can be a part of it. I can emulate this. I too can be the hero that I see on TV, even if it is just for a moment.' So I commend this bill to the House.

It actually is very good to follow on from the member for Leichhardt, who might have been a little bit humble there, because not only was he a very, very good basketballer in the National Basketball League, which is the top competition for clubs in Australia but, indeed, he played a lot of regional basketball at a very high level, including in Albury-Wodonga, near my electorate. It's good that top-line players can get out into the country and show their wares too. I commend him for his basketball career.

I well recall from when I was a basketball writer a very good basketballer by the name of Greg Hubbard. The member opposite would remember, having been a Wollongong Hawks player, Greg Hubbard's exploits not only with the Wollongong team but also as a national player.

Indeed! I always do my research. I've also got a very good memory for sport. It's one of my favourite pastimes. But I was a sportswriter. My very first job, in fact, was as the ground announcer at Eric Weissel Oval, the rugby league oval in Wagga Wagga. As a 16-year-old, I would, with a booming voice, kick the kids off the ground at half-time. Most of the kids I was kicking off the ground and preventing from stealing the corner posts I was actually younger than. But, anyway, I digress. I'll move on.

I'm supposed to be talking about the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. The member for Leichhardt is right when he says that sport galvanises Australia like nothing else. It truly does. At the moment we're all cheering on the Socceroos. This legislation is important because it will protect the logos and images used in future sporting competitions.

It was interesting to attend the Wagga Tigers Football and Netball Club two Saturdays ago when they had their ladies day. Interestingly, Narrandera Sportsground had its ladies day on Saturday last. A number of women attended, some of them very frocked up. Some dressed up with interesting pink hair for the special occasion and others just came as they normally would to the football. But having followed my youngest son Nicholas, who played for Inner West Magpies for a number of years in the Sydney Premier Division, the difference in the crowds that suburban competitions attract and country leagues attract is chalk and cheese.

It was interesting that Joe Heaney, who organised the Wagga Tigers ladies day, actually said at the end of the day when she was thanking people for coming along, 'This is what country communities are all about,' because there was camaraderie. Both teams, Turvey Park and Wagga Tigers, went back into the clubrooms at the end of the game, mixing with one another, mingling, and there were hundreds of people there. I can well recall going to a game between inner West Magpies and Manly-Warringah in the Sydney AFL, where there were three supporters at the ground—myself and two from Manly. Not rubbishing the competition—the standard of football is probably second to none—but it just doesn't have the support because, these days in the big cities, if people are going to go to the football, they go to the big competitions. They'll go and watch the Sydney Swans or the Greater Western Sydney Giants play. But out in the country, it's not uncommon to have a football oval, be it Australian Rules or Rugby League or indeed rugby or soccer, ringed with cars not once, not twice but three times.

Deputy Speaker Aldred, just yesterday you spoke about the funding that the Sandy Creek ground received, and rightly so. I remember many times as a teenage football reporter going to Sandy Creek for the Tallangatta and District Football League grand finals. Wasn't that a day when the Mountaineers came down to cheer on Kiewa-Sandy Creek against whoever they were playing in the Tallangatta league—great memories, great days.

Sport is important. It's important that we protect sport. It's also important that major sports are protected. These days, given the amount of AI, the amount of technology, the number of nefarious activities that do happen on a commercial basis, it's important that we protect sport, sporting competitions and clubs at an elite level from illegal knock-offs and from misuse on trademarks, logos and the like, because it does happen. The companies doing it know they're doing it.

I don't think there was a lot of consultation. There could be an argument that the bill does reduce legislative transparency and concentrates powers to the executive because members of parliament will only see decisions about proposed changes to legislation and inefficiencies et cetera once they are in law. But look, the legislation change has been initiated from the minister, not stakeholders, and there's no time imperative on this change. But that said, as the member for Leichhardt quite correctly pointed out, these sorts of amendments, this sort of legislation, are there for a purpose. Sometimes it would be nice if the government did a little bit more consultation, and I say that with all due deference. I appreciate we've got a lot of sport going on at the moment too with the FIFA World Cup. This also will protect important major sporting events such as the International Cricket Council's T20 World Cup in the future world cup. I appreciate that it has protected previous world cups in cricket, the Twenty20 series. The 2027 Rugby World Cup is coming along. I know the member for Leichhardt mentioned the 'world game'. The Rugby World Cup is a massive event. I appreciate that he mentioned his fiance and the All Blacks. What a powerful organisation that team is. I say 'organisation' because it's almost an industry rather than a sport. We've also got a lot of Twenty20 cricket being played at an international level in the 2028 season.

We've always got touring teams coming to Australia. Most importantly, perhaps, are the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics. I shouldn't say Brisbane, because it's going to be far wider than just Brisbane. Whilst I appreciate that the Queensland capital is going to enjoy the benefits of hosting most of the big events, I'm particularly pleased that regional Queensland is going to be hosting some of those events, including, as I understand, rowing at Rockhampton. That always runs off the tongue in a very nice way. I appreciate the efforts of the current Leader of the Nationals. I say 'current' because he had a lot to do with it when he wasn't the leader, but he is the leader now. There's nothing going on with the Nationals that anybody needs to chip me about. The member for Capricornia also had a lot to do with getting those rowing events and making sure that regional Queensland had a part to play in what is going to be something that will unite the whole nation. We will all get behind our Olympians and our Paralympians.

It was also great to have Scott Reardon and his wonderful wife in Temora recently. They are both gold medallists in the Paralympics. Their speech to the young crowd was just outstanding.

The Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act came about in 2014. There have been a few amendments along the way, with World Cup events in cricket and the Women's World Cup. The legislation protects indicia and images to ensure that there aren't illegal activities. However, I would just caution you. I know that, as a former newspaper editor, country newspapers often picked up logos and ran them on the scores to differentiate them from the rest of the regional scores. Whether or not there are going to be any regional newspapers left by the time 2032 comes around, I'm not quite sure, given the way they're, unfortunately, going. The printed editions are not faring that well. I know there was a bit of pushback to use the Commonwealth logo when I was the editor of the paper at Wagga Wagga. At the time, there was no legislation protecting such usage in the Commonwealth. It was one of those things where the actual logo of the rings was considered to be the Olympics. There was some interesting legal activity and letters written in relation to that. I think we have to be a little bit sensible about what the law comes down heavily on and what it doesn't.

The Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026 before the House relates to the process by which a major sporting event will be recognised via a delegated instrument, moving power from the parliament—and this is the point I was making before—from primary legislation to the executive, into delegated legislation. I hope this won't take power away from the Minister for Sport. I stand corrected on that. We don't want to see any more usurping of power from ministerial control to the bureaucracy down the hill.

I appreciate there are a number of people sitting behind Labor members. I'm not quite sure whether they're the people from down the hill I've just mentioned. I haven't besmirched you. But I do have a long-held belief that ministers are ministers for a reason. It's because they have delegated power. They have appropriate power. At the end of the day, they are the ones who will ultimately wear the criticism or otherwise of decisions made. It's not the bureaucrats. It's not the Public Service. I've got a high regard for the Public Service. The member for Sturt will have heard me say many times that I do think there is a concern that we are giving up too many powers to people who are not elected officials. That does not sit entirely well with me.

The Albanese government claims that this bill modernises legislation to recognise a future major sporting event via a disallowable legislative instrument, making the process more efficient. I hope that piece is correct and right because I realise that, currently, to recognise a major sporting event, an amendment is required to primary legislation. We have a motion before the House to ensure that logos and trademarks and sporting events are protected. Let's not be overly bureaucratic about this. Whilst I realise that we can't have clothing companies and major media organisations pinching logos and the like to use commercially to make money out of, there has to be some common sense at the appropriate level.

There is sufficient lead time for a major sporting event of international significance—that is, world cups and the like, major test matches et cetera—to be recognised and protected under the current legislation. Whilst I get that there are long lead times for international sporting events a la the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics and while I realise also that stakeholders are not calling for this change, the government has seen fit and the government feels the need that this is important and that it needs to happen now, and, indeed, I don't believe that the coalition will be standing in the way to seeing a blocking of this particular bill.

I rise today to speak in support of the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. I have to say I was very excited when I walked into the Federation Chamber this afternoon and the first thing I heard was the member for Leichhardt talking about Australian legend Kieren Perkins. He is a hero of mine, and I have actually devoted a portion of my remarks this afternoon to talking about his achievements.

I was a reasonably sporty kid. I loved to train hard and compete. I love to win, and swimming was my sport. I still love to think I got close-ish to making the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games for the 400-metre freestyle, if you think me almost halfway down a 50-metre lap and Australian legend Hayley Lewis down the other, cap and goggles removed, breathing comfortably, is close, but we can only dream. One of my fondest memories and what I think was the trigger for me becoming a true sports lover and Olympic nut was the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games and Kieren Perkins's magnificent victory in the men's 1,500-metre freestyle final. I had to watch the replay because I was at school when the race was swum, but I was truly inspired by his world record time—14 minutes, 43.48 seconds. Even better was the way another Australian legend, Glen Housman, raced to finish second and give Australia a one-two finish.

Kieren Perkins became my second sporting idol after Hayley Lewis, who won a silver in the 800-metre freestyle and bronze in the 400-metre freestyle—my event—at the same Olympic Games. I was inspired by these efforts to train harder than ever and to push myself to see how far I could go. I was even more inspired four years later when Kieren Perkins beat almost every single odd to go back to back in the 1,500-metre final at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He used every single ounce of resolve, energy and mental resilience and willpower, and he touched the wall first in 14 minutes, 56 seconds. It was a brilliant call by another Australian legend, Dennis Cometti, and a truly incredible moment. As Dennis said at the end of the call, this is rare gold, the best kind of gold—an athlete basically written off by the media and his competitors was the champion again, a back to back Olympic champion at the tender age of 22, which is incredible. Australians love moments like these. Whether it is Kieren Perkins or Hayley Lewis or Cathy Freeman, the Australian Diamonds, the Matildas or the Socceroos, we love our sporting champions and we love these great moments, but we also love and are in awe of all of our athletes who compete in the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games and at world cups.

My good friend Lisa, who will be in Parliament House tomorrow, told me a story of when she was watching the diving at the Paris Olympics. An Australian diver finished eighth or ninth—not a medal winner—and one of Lisa's beautiful kids remarked that that 'wasn't too good, eighth or ninth,' and Lisa quite rightly corrected that assertion and reinforced that it was, in fact, incredibly good. It was amazing. To make the Olympics and finish eighth or ninth in the world is a truly outstanding achievement.

To all the athletes who are heading to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow: we are proud of you, no matter what happens. And to all the athletes who are currently training in an effort to maybe qualify for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles or the 2032 Games in Brisbane: we are proud of you, and this Albanese Labor government supports you. This is indicated by the $513 million commitment that the government made on 17 June 2026. This $513 million package will be delivered by the Australian Sports Commission over the next two years. It includes funding for 68 sporting programs and a record $42.8 million to assist athletes with daily living and training expenses. For some athletes, this will mean that they will have a real shot at qualifying for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games, which will be an incredible major sporting event for Australia—1956 Melbourne, 2000 Sydney, 2032 Brisbane.

The Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026 operates to amend the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014 to modernise the legislative framework for protecting the commercial rights associated with major sporting events in Australia. The act aims to prevent unauthorised commercial use, including ambush marketing of protected indicia and images associated with major sporting events. Under the act, every time a major sporting event is to be held in Australia, a bill needs to be introduced into parliament to add the event to a schedule to the bill and make associated rules.

The amendments made by this bill will see the existing schedule based model replaced, thus removing the need for repeated primary legislation amendments every time there is a major sporting event and allowing for the more timely recognition of those events. This means that major sporting events and associated matters can be prescribed and then repealed when the event is over by a legislative instrument.

The bill will also introduce criteria that must be satisfied before a major sporting event may be prescribed and on the length of the protection period. These criteria ensure that protections are applied only to events of international significance and that the exercise of the power remains targeted and proportionate. Following the enactment of the amendments, rules are intended to be developed to support upcoming events, including the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

What is behind this? We know that, traditionally, event owners rely on sponsorship revenue to stage their events, reducing the reliance on government financial support. In return for their event sponsorship, sponsors can publicise their support by using event indicia and images. But what we see is businesses that do not sponsor the events seeking to capitalise on the event by using event indicia or images, suggesting a sponsorship arrangement with that event where none exists. This is what is known as 'ambush marketing by association'. Such behaviour can cause confusion for the general public as to who the actual event sponsor is, thus reducing the commercial return on the sponsorship dollar.

If sponsors do not have certainty that they are the only business that can directly benefit from association with major sporting events, they may withdraw their sponsorship or decide not to support that event. And a decrease in sponsorship revenue could then increase the need for financial assistance from other stakeholders, including the federal government and state and territory governments. Corporate partnerships that are supported by a framework that keeps the integrity of that partnership intact are crucial for the success of major sporting events. Corporate sponsorship is also critical for sport in general—for events and competitions that might not be internationally significant but are still important to our national social fabric, like the AFLW, the WBBL and—most important of all—the Suncorp Super League Netball Competition. The grand final is this weekend. Go Adelaide Thunderbirds! I wish you well as you seek to win what will be your third flag in five years. We don't have these competitions without government and corporate support, and, if we don't have these competitions, we lose pathways for young athletes. If there are no pathways, people stop playing sport. We know that sport for young people and community sport for people of all ages—including Masters-grade netballers like me—promotes the physical and mental health that we need to keep communities across this country strong.

We also know that we don't have sport for young people, or community sport, without umpires. If there are no umpires—who are often volunteers or paid very small stipends—then there are no games. This is why it was so disappointing to learn that a local netball club in my electorate of Sturt, the Glenunga Netball Club, has recently had to consider banning spectators because of the level of abuse being directed at umpires, who are often teenagers. The abuse is coming from parents, who are adults, and is being directed at umpires, who are kids—spectators who are angry at decisions being made by junior umpires at junior netball games, hurling abuse at the umpires to a point where the game is being ruined and the confidence of umpires is being completely shattered.

Now, I was a teenage netball umpire myself back in the 1990s, and I recall how intimidating it was and how often people would yell from the sidelines that I was an idiot or didn't know what I was doing—never willing, of course, to pick up a whistle themselves. I thought that, decades on, we would be doing better. I thought we would have learned how valuable kids' and community sport is and be doing everything we can to support young people who volunteer to umpire so that others can play a game. If we don't have umpires, we don't have a game, and there is nothing more important than physical activity for young people—nothing more important than providing kids with opportunities to play sport so they stay off screens and get outside. If kids who are umpiring are getting abused, they won't do it, and, for players who are witnessing this abuse, their enjoyment of the game will be diminished and maybe they'll stop playing too. It's not fun. If there's no game, there's no pathway to the highest levels of competition or to elite sport. There is less physical and mental health in the community.

So, if you are one of those people who hurl abuse at junior umpires, please have a look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you would like to see the end of community sport, or if you'd like the competition your child plays in to be wound up because no-one will umpire. Then ask yourself if you're willing to put your own hand up and step in. If the answer to any of those questions is remotely no, then perhaps it's time you retire as a spectator.

We Aussies love our sport—of all levels. We love seeing people have a go. Having a go leads to improvement, to a love of physical fitness, to a determination to succeed, to a love of hard work on the training track, to a love of competition and to a lifelong love of health and fitness. Let's foster this to make sure that the next generation continues to play sport and can maybe one day represent Australia at the highest level possible: the Olympic Games. I commend the bill to the Chamber.

Last week, many of us had the privilege of meeting some remarkable young Australians here in Parliament House: athletes preparing to represent our nation at the upcoming Commonwealth Games. It was a powerful reminder of what Australian sport means to this country. These young men and women have dedicated years of their lives to chasing excellence. They have spent countless early mornings at training, countless afternoons travelling to competitions and countless weekends making sacrifices, while their friends enjoyed the freedoms of adolescent life. They've quietly pursued a dream that one day they might wear the green and gold on the world stage.

That dream begins long before an athlete steps onto an Olympic track or into a World Cup stadium. It begins on the ovals, country football grounds, regional netball courts and local swimming pools. It begins with children lacing up their boots for the very first time. It begins with families volunteering at local sporting clubs and regional clubs. Clubs run on volunteers, and I'd like to thank all of those volunteers. It begins with communities investing in sporting facilities that give young Australians somewhere to train, somewhere to belong and somewhere to dream.

In my electorate of Grey, I see that every single week in the most regional and remote areas of the country. In the regions, local sporting clubs are far more than places to play sport; they are the beating heart of our towns. Even up in the APY Lands, in the remote parts of central Australia, local Indigenous boys and girls drive hours and hours just to play a game of footy. It is truly an incredible sight. Local sporting clubs are where our young people develop confidence, resilience, teamwork and leadership. They are where lifelong friendships are formed and where communities come together.

Whether it's footy, cricket, baseball, netball, hockey or athletics, regional South Australians know the enormous value that sport brings to our communities. Every time Australia competes on the international stage, another generation of young Australians is inspired. When the Socceroos take to the field, children across Australia pull on the green and gold jerseys and imagine that one day that could be them. When our cricketers compete against England in the Ashes test, thousands of young boys and girls head into their own backyards pretending they are batting for Australia. When our Olympians and Paralympians stand proudly on the podium, they inspire countless young Australians to believe that anything is possible through hard work and determination. That inspiration matters.

It is why protecting the integrity of major sporting events matters. It why protecting our official merchandise and intellectual property matters. It's why the parliament established the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act back in 2014 under a coalition government. This legislation serves a purpose. It protects the commercial rights associated with major sporting events by preventing the unauthorised production of official material—in simple terms, it helps stop counterfeit merchandise. It protects the legitimate commercial arrangements that underpin these major international sporting events. The coalition supports that objective. Indeed, there is broad bipartisan agreement that these protections are necessary and appropriate.

The question before the House today is not whether those protections should exist—they already do. The real question before the parliament is much narrower. It is about how future sporting events are recognised under the act. Since 2014, every major sporting event covered by this legislation has been recognised through amendments to primary legislation. However, this bill proposes something different. Rather than parliament determining which events receive protection through legislation debated and passed in this place, those decisions would instead be made by the relevant minister through delegated legislation. The government says this will modernise the process. The government says it will create efficiencies, but efficiency alone is not sufficient justification for transferring legislative authority away from the parliament.

Good lawmaking has never been solely about convenience. It has always been about accountability, transparency and ensuring that decisions affecting Australian people receive proper parliamentary scrutiny. The philosophy underpinning our legislative system is straightforward. Matters that establish rights, obligations and legal protections should be contained in primary legislation unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Delegated legislation certainly has an important role to play. It allows technical matters to be updated efficiently. It provides flexibility where circumstances generally—

Order! The Federation Chamber is suspended due to lack of a quorum. We will reconvene as soon as a quorum is achieved.

Sitting suspended from 17:45 to 17:48

(Quorum formed)

It provides flexibility where circumstances generally require it, but it should never become the default simply because it is administratively easier. In this case, the government has not demonstrated why such a significant change in legislative process is necessary. It seems just to be driven by the minister and not by stakeholder or community demand. It was not responding to an identified problem within the existing legislation, nor was there any pressing time imperative requiring this change. That raises an obvious question. If nobody was asking for this change, if the existing system is functioning effectively and if there's no urgency, why are we changing what appears to be a functioning legislative process?

The reality is that major international sporting events are announced years in advance. There is ample time for parliament to legislate. History demonstrates exactly that. The ICC T20 World Cup in 2020 was recognised through legislation passed in 2019. The ICC Men's T20 World Cup in 2022 received recognition through the same legislative process. The FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023 was also recognised through amendments to primary legislation well before the tournament commenced. This is a system that works. Looking ahead, we already know what the major events will be, including the 2027 Rugby World Cup, the 2028 Cricket World Cup and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. They'll have similar protections. There is absolutely no doubt that there is sufficient time for parliament to consider those matters through legislation prior to these events taking place. No compelling case has been made for abandoning that process.

The government argues that, because delegated legislation is disallowable, parliamentary oversight still exists. Technically that is true, but there is an important distinction. To enact primary legislation, parliament debates the proposed law before it takes effect. Under delegated legislation, parliament is presented with a decision after it has already become law. That represents a shift in where legislative authority sits. It concentrates greater power with the relevant minister's office and it takes away from this very parliament. This is not something this parliament should endorse lightly.

While we are discussing sport, it is worth reflecting on this government's record. While the Labor Party frequently speaks about supporting Australian sport, its actions tell a different story. Earlier this year around 2,000 Australian athletes were left facing uncertainty over whether their scholarships and direct support would continue beyond 30 June. That uncertainty was confirmed during Senate estimates. Australian Sports Commission Chief Executive Kieren Perkins advised that approximately 2,000 athletes depended upon this support and had no certainty about future funding. National sporting organisations similarly faced uncertainty. Government officials confirmed that around 60 per cent of cash grants to national sporting organisations relied upon terminating budget measures. That meant that Australia's high-performance sporting system faced a funding cliff.

Imagine asking elite athletes preparing for Brisbane 2032 to make education, employment and training decisions without knowing whether their support would continue. Imagine asking coaches to prepare four-year Olympic campaigns without knowing whether funding existed beyond the next financial year. That is not long-term planning. That is uncertainty. Australia is preparing to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. Our international competitors plan across multiple Olympic cycles. Yet our own athletes have been left wondering whether funding will continue beyond the coming months, and that is simply not good enough.

Equally concerning has been the government's much publicised Major Sporting Events Legacy Framework. The title sounds impressive. But, unfortunately, the substance is considerably less so. During Senate estimates it became apparent that there is no dedicated funding pool underpinning the framework, there are no published grant guidelines, there are no transparent assessment criteria and there is no competitive grants process. Instead, approximately $130 million has been allocated by the minister on a case-by-case basis. What we have is not a genuine framework. It is a minister with a whole lot of discretion and very little transparency. That should concern every member of this parliament, because transparency matters, consistency matters and accountability matters.

Those same principles are precisely why the coalition is questioning the process proposed by this bill. If the government is prepared to remove transparency from sporting grants, we should not be surprised that it now asks parliament to surrender greater oversight over legislative decisions as well. That is not all. Grassroots sport has also suffered under this government. Evidence presented during Senate estimates revealed that participation programs, including Sporting Schools, Play Well, Local Para Champions and Local Sporting Champions, now face uncertainty beyond the next 12 months.

Kieren Perkins warned that Sporting Schools alone provides opportunities for almost two million Australian children to participate in free after-school sport. These are the very programs that introduce children to sport. These are the programs that identify future Olympians. These are the programs that encourage healthy lifestyles and strengthen communities, yet ongoing funding has not been guaranteed. Instead, the sporting grants budget is projected to fall significantly over coming years. At a time when families are facing increasing cost-of-living pressures, community sport has never been more important. Sport teaches discipline. Sport builds resilience. Sport strengthens communities. It deserves certainty, not uncertainty.

Returning to the legislation before us today, the bill is ultimately not about whether official merchandise deserves protection. The coalition supports those protections. The issue before us is whether parliament should voluntarily surrender a measure of transparency when no compelling justification has been provided. Good legislation should seek the appropriate balance between efficiency and accountability. In this instance, the government has demonstrated the former but failed to justify sacrificing the latter. I note the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills will shortly consider this legislation. And I look forward to its assessment.

I finally return to where I began and say that this debate is ultimately about more than legislative drafting; it is about preserving the integrity of the events that inspire young Australians. When our athletes walk into an Olympic stadium wearing the Australian green and gold, they carry the hopes of an entire nation. When children wear official jerseys, wave scarves or collect memorabilia from a World Cup or Commonwealth Games, they are connecting with something much larger than the merchandise; they are connecting with aspiration. They are connecting with national pride. They are imagining what their own future might behold.

Every major sporting event we successfully host and protect inspires another generation to believe that they too could one day represent Australia. As we look towards the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, we should absolutely continue to protect the integrity of these events. But in doing so we should also continue protecting the role of this very parliament. Administrative convenience should never become an excuse for reducing parliamentary oversight. Transparency remains one of the cornerstones of good government. For those reasons, while supporting the ongoing protections of major sporting events and protecting major sporting event merchandise, the coalition remains concerned that this bill unnecessarily transfers authority away from the parliament without sufficient justification.

The major sporting events here in Australia are woven into the fabric of our Australian identity whether it be the AFL that we all love, tennis, cricket, the wonderful round ball football that we're watching Australia compete in or whether it be motor motorcycle events like the MotoGP, which is currently held in Melbourne but will be held in Adelaide in 2027. It will be a magnificent event with it being the first time on a street circuit, so we're really looking forward to it. All these events inspire our nation and create lifelong memories. When we host these event, they showcase the very best of our Australian teams, our Australian participants, to the world. Whether it's a packed stadium as a young child seeing their sporting heroes for the first time or communities proudly welcoming visitors from across the globe, these events have a legacy that extends far beyond the final whistle. Their significance extends far beyond sport itself.

Major sporting events are about more than just the actual sport itself. They are a very powerful driver of economic growth, tourism, employment and international engagement—soft diplomacy. They attract investment. They strengthen local businesses. They showcase our cities and regions. They encourage participation in sport across every corner of our community.

You only have to look at, for example, in South Australia the Gather Round and how the entire nation converges for one weekend on Adelaide and the excitement from the fans, the atmosphere in Adelaide at the restaurants and cafes. Everywhere, there's excitement. They're wonderful events. I've seen it firsthand in South Australia. I've seen in my own home state and in the city that I represent, Adelaide, the incredible impact that these events can have. I've seen the success, as I said, of the Gather Round, LIV Golf and the Tour Down Under in Adelaide. These are just some events that demonstrate what is possible when world-class sporting events are brought to local communities. As I said, I'm looking forward to next year and the MotoGP, which will be in Adelaide for the first time. For the first time anywhere in the world it will be on a street track.

All these events have generated enormous economic activity. They've filled hotels, supported small businesses, attracted interstate and international visitors and showcased South Australia to audiences around the world. Beyond the economic benefits, they've created an atmosphere of excitement and national and civic pride. They bring communities together and inspire people. Those events in Adelaide that I've seen firsthand have reinforced Adelaide's reputation as a destination capable of delivering major international events. These are the kinds of opportunities that major sporting events create.

The opportunity before Australia over the coming decades is extraordinary. We have the Rugby World Cup in 2027, and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games will place our nation firmly on the global stage. They'll attract millions of viewers, thousands of athletes and countless visitors from every corner of the world. These events represent an unparalleled opportunity to strengthen Australia's international reputation, generate economic activity, as I said, create jobs and inspire Australians to participate in their sports.

But hosting events of the scale and magnitude of the Olympics and the Rugby World Cup requires more than world-class venues and passionate supporters. Yes, the world-class venues help and the passionate supporters help, but it requires confidence. It requires confidence from the event owners, the investors and the sponsors and commercial partners, whose contributions are absolutely essential in delivering these events. So a critical part of securing and successfully hosting these international sporting events is ensuring that our event owners and their partners can protect their intellectual property rights. Major events rely heavily on sponsorship and commercial investment. Businesses commit significant resources because they know their brands, trademarks and commercial partnerships will be respected and protected. They need that security and that guarantee. If they're putting millions of dollars into a particular world-class event that's being held in Australia, they also want to know that their brands and products will be protected and that commercial partnerships will be absolutely guaranteed, respected and protected. Without those protections, the value of sponsorship diminishes and, when sponsorship is undermined, the ability to secure and successfully deliver these major sporting events or world events becomes more difficult.

That's why this legislation is so important. The bill before the House, the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026, modernises the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act. It does so to ensure that it remains fit for purpose in a rapidly changing environment. Rather than requiring governments to return to parliament and amend legislation every time Australia secures a major event, this bill establishes a modern, flexible, rules based framework that can be adopted to support future events. It's a practical reform but an important one. It reduces the unnecessary legislative duplication while providing certainty for event organisers, investors, sponsors and the broader sporting community. Most importantly, it ensures that Australia can continue to meet its obligations when hosting significant international events.

The bill will enable protections to be applied to events like the Rugby World Cup 2027, for example, and, of course, the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It also protects sponsors and commercial partners from ambush marketing, where organisations attempt to gain commercial benefit from an event without actually making those investments, whether they be in sponsorship, advertising et cetera. We want to make sure that those people who do sponsor these major events, who give us the opportunity to host these events here in Australia, have absolute security and that their investment—their products and, commercially, their brands—are protected.

Those who contribute to the success of major events deserve confidence that their investment cannot be undermined by those seeking to profit from an association that they have not earned by having supported, sponsored, put money in et cetera. It's very important to protect the sponsors, as that then protects the integrity of the events themselves. At the same time, the legislation strikes an appropriate balance. It includes clear statutory criteria before protections can be declared. It maintains parliamentary oversight. It contains safeguards to ensure legitimate activities and users remain protected. This is a sensible framework that promotes accountability, transparency and confidence, as I said earlier.

As Australia prepares to host some of the biggest events in the world, it's also important that we protect the Australian consumer. Major events generate excitement and enthusiasm, but, unfortunately, they can also attract misleading conduct and scams. We have seen many scams that revolved around sporting events in the past. As an Aussie, you should be able to purchase your ticket to a world event being held here in Australia, your merchandise, your travel packages and your event experiences with confidence, knowing that the products you're receiving are exactly what you've paid for and that you're dealing with legitimate providers who are offering these products.

This reform will also help prevent consumers from being misled by businesses falsely claiming an association with an event. It'll help protect families from spending their hard-earned money on products or experiences that are not the genuine thing. It will ensure that the official partners whose investment makes these events possible receive the protection that they deserve, because, after all, they're the ones that have invested for us to be able to host whatever particular world event it is.

Ultimately, the bill reflects a broader vision of Australia as a confident host nation, a nation that welcomes the world, a nation that embraces opportunity and a nation that understands that major sporting events are about far more than just the competition. They're about community. They're about economic growth. They're about participation. They are also about creating memories that last a lifetime and legacies that endure for generations.

On that point, I'm thinking of the number of Australians who are over in the US, Canada and Mexico and the memories that will remain with them forever. Imagine, if we were hosting the World Cup here, how wonderful and magnificent it would be for kids who see our Socceroos as their heroes. At the same time, we want to ensure that the merchandise that's being sold, the tickets that are being sold and the people associating themselves with a particular event like that are the genuine thing so that the experiences that we all get become the real thing as well.

Another great event that's going to be hosted in 2027, the Rugby World Cup—and, of course, the Brisbane 2032 Olympics—is an even greater opportunity for investment and for kids to see their heroes and to be able to participate. These events will remain with them forever and a day. It's also an opportunity to showcase Australia to the world, to inspire future generations and to strengthen our economy and our communities for years to come.

Major sporting events leave memories that last a lifetime. This legislation ensures that those memories are built on trust, integrity and fairness, protecting consumers, supporting those that invest and helping Australia continue to host the world's greatest sporting moments. The successes of events like, as I said, Gather Round in South Australia and LIV Golf have shown what happens when Australia gets it right. We see in my electorate that, when these events are being held, the pubs are absolutely filled. At local restaurants, cafes and other businesses, there are jobs that are created, and communities come together in a celebration that extends far beyond the sporting arena. We see people inspired and local economies strengthened, and our cities are showcased to the world. The Rugby World Cup and the Olympic and Paralympic Games present an even greater opportunity. As I said, they're going to offer Australia the chance to welcome the world, to demonstrate our hospitality and sporting excellence and to leave a legacy that will be felt long after the medals and awards have been presented and the crowds have gone home.

But the legacy depends on trust. It depends on ensuring that those who invest have those rights that they have agreed to and that those people who are purchasing products know that they are genuine products. Trust from the sponsors and investors for their contributions will be protected with this bill, as will trust from everyday Australians that, when they attend, participate in or support these events, they'll be treated fairly and protected from misleading and deceptive conduct. That is exactly what this legislation delivers. It strengthens the integrity of the events that we host, it protects the consumers, it supports the investment and it ensures that Australia remains one of the world's most attractive destinations for major international sporting events. We just have to get the Mondial World Cup here at some stage in the future, and I'm sure that will happen in the future—maybe not in my time, but it'll be wonderful to host the soccer World Cup, or football World Cup, here. When the world turns its attention to Australia, we want it to see a nation that's confident, capable, innovative and ready to seize every opportunity.

So the bill is about more than protecting logos and trademarks; it's about protecting Australia's reputation, safeguarding the economic benefits and ensuring that future generations inherit a legacy of opportunity, pride and success. A nation that delivers sporting events with integrity, excellence and a vision for the future—that's what this bill is all about

I rise to speak on the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. The one thing that unites Australians—and even more so here in Parliament House—is sport. Whether it be AFL, rugby, basketball, cricket or soccer, Australians certainly know how to unite and to barrack for their team. The current FIFA World Cup has shown this. Whether you were in Fed Square in Melbourne, at the local tavern in a regional community or in the office last Friday at lunchtime, Australians everywhere united behind the Socceroos to get them through to the next round, the round of 32. The celebrations of the players when the full-time whistle was blown were inspiring and proved that we are at our best when we are united. Whilst there was plenty of joy and excitement in those celebrations, I sensed that there was also relief—relief that after all those years of training, using every spare hour to pursue the dream of representing Australia at the World Cup, the dream finally became a reality. No matter where the players are from, their backgrounds or their beliefs, they were proud to be wearing the green and gold on the world stage, and we were, and continue to be, proud of them.

Young Australians right across Australia are dreaming of their own moment of sporting glory. Little do they know that among them is the next Nat Fyfe or Ariarne Titmus or Pat Cummins, or even the next Cathy Freeman or Ash Barty. That dream is born out of the pride they have in watching their current sporting heroes on the national and international stage created by major sporting events.

I turn now to the legislation before us, the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014. This act protects the commercial rights associated with major sporting events in Australia, protecting against fake merchandising. This bill amends the act by changing the process by which a major sporting event will be recognised. It does so by proposing that events are recognised by a delegated instrument, moving power from the parliament and instead giving power to the executive. The government claims this bill modernises legislation to recognise a future major sporting event via a disallowable legislative instrument, making the process more efficient. However, whilst some may claim that it might create efficiencies, it does so by trading off on transparency.

Members of parliament will only see the decisions once they are law. This debate is not whether indicia or images should be protected or not, because they already are, and, of course, we all agree they should be protected. The debate is on the philosophy of legislating. The key theme of legislating is that all laws should be placed in primary legislation, in the power of the legislature, unless it is critical to do otherwise. There has been no argument made by the government as to why it is critical to change the legislative process within this amendment bill.

Under this current act, Australia has hosted numerous major sporting events that have been legislated under this act. These include the 2020 Women's T20 World Cup, the 2022 Men's T20 World Cup and the record-breaking 2023 Women's World Cup. There are also other major events in the future to be recognised by this act, such as the 2027 Rugby World Cup, the 2028 Men's T20 World Cup and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. I am sure many Australians are counting down for these events, as am I—events that will unite our great nation once again.

Australians—well, we all know they love their sport, but they love their sporting stars even more. Australians expect their government to do all it can to help our sporting stars to reach their potential. Sadly, the Albanese government has a poor track record when it comes to supporting our sporting stars, often leaving them in the lurch. In Senate estimates, Australian Sports Commission CEO, Kieren Perkins—another superstar—confirmed that circa 2,000 athletes currently receive direct athlete support. However, they have no certainty that their scholarships will continue beyond today. These are athletes who have been asked to make major career and education decisions with no idea if they will continue to be supported by their government. With the next Olympics just two years away and Brisbane on the horizon, this is disgraceful, and we should do better.

In contrast, the US and China both operate on multi-year funding cycles to give their coaches and athletes genuine long-term certainty. Adding further weight to this, the government has dealt a $182 million blow to grassroots sport. Programs such as Sporting Schools, Play Well, Local Para Champions and Local Sporting Champions are all facing uncertainty beyond the next 12 months. The Sporting School program has two million children participating in free after-school sport this year alone. The government wants to strip the ongoing funding for these programs, slashing the sporting grants budget from $330 million in 2025-26 to $151 million in 2029-30, by almost half. These programs help millions, particularly young Australians, stay active, connected and involved in sport. By cutting support for community, school and disability sport programs, families and local clubs across regional Western Australia will be hit particularly hard.

Instead of backing grassroots sport, Labor is more interested in protecting their bottom line and creating more uncertainty for the organisations delivering these programs. The coalition supports the protection of indicia and images for major sporting events. The government has not made a clear case as to why the parliament should lose transparency and concentrate powers into the executive and the minister of the day. I note that the scrutiny of bills committee will convene tomorrow to consider this bill, and I will be monitoring the progress with interest.

This is about more than just legislation; this is about protecting the integrity of events that inspire our young Australians to dream about playing on the MCG or at Wimbledon. When our athletes wear the green and gold, they carry millions of Australians with them literally on their back. The merchandise worn in stadiums, around the world and in schoolyards are symbols of aspiration and of national pride. The fabulous international sporting events that Australia has hosted and will be hosting in the future must be protected to continue to inspire the next generation of sporting stars. While the debate here this evening in this chamber is about process and legislative structure, the impacts will be felt beyond parliament. It will be felt in backyards, on school ovals and by every Australian who dreams of representing Australia.

I'd like to close by taking this opportunity to wish the Socceroos all the very best against Egypt this Saturday. We will be watching very early from Western Australia, and I know that the Socceroos will give it everything. They will give it all and make Australia proud. Come on Socceroos. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!

Oi! Oi! Oi!

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 18:23