If there is no objection, the meetings are authorised.

by leave—I move a motion relating to Kumanjayi Little Baby, as circulated:

Omit all words after "That the Senate" and insert:

(a) mourns the tragic death of 5-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby;

(b) extends its deepest sympathies to her family, her communities in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, the Warlpiri and Gurindji families of Kalkarindji, and all Australians who grieve her loss;

(c) recognises that this child's death is not an isolated tragedy but a consequence of ongoing community dysfunction that governments have failed to address honestly or effectively;

(d) commends the volunteers, community members, police and emergency service workers who searched tirelessly for Kumanjayi Little Baby, especially the NT Police;

(e) calls on the Federal and Territory Governments to take immediate, concrete action to address the conditions including family violence, inadequate policing resources, and child protection failures that put children at risk in remote communities;

(f) demands that governments be held accountable for delivering measurable outcomes, and that community safety in remote Australia be treated with the same urgency afforded to any other Australian community;

(g) affirms that every child in this country deserves protection regardless of where they live, and that real respect for this community means action and accountability; and

(h) affirms that the safety and wellbeing of Indigenous children must always come first.

Before I call you, Senator McCarthy, and before we begin, I inform senators that, at the family's request, 'Kumanjayi Little Baby' should be used as the culturally appropriate form of reference. I also remind senators that the family has requested that her short life not be used by parliamentarians for reasons that do not honour and respect her.

I thank the Senate today for this opportunity on behalf of the families, the Warlpiri families and the Gurindji families, and I acknowledge the deep loss for a fellow senator, Senator Nampijinpa Price, and her families.

As a Yanyuwa Garrwa woman, as senator for the Northern Territory and as Minister for Indigenous Australians, I rise today to share my heartbreak and extend my deepest condolences to Kumanjayi Little Baby's mum, brother and family, who loved this little girl so much. I reach out to the people of Alice Springs and to every single person involved in the search. Hundreds and hundreds of people from right around came together from all walks of life, and to each and every one of you involved: thank you for the days and the hours that you put into looking for this little baby girl. I reach out to my constituents in Alice Springs/Mparntwe and across the Northern Territory, who are devastated that this could happen in their community; to First Nations people across the country, who feel this loss so intensely; and to the whole Australian community, who have been shattered by news of the loss.

This nationwide sorrow was demonstrated by the sea of pink that swept the country on Thursday night—gatherings of reflection and remembrance for the loss of this little girl. It was heartening to see hundreds of Australians take part in these vigils, standing together and supporting each other. It has enabled the families who have come together to know that they are not alone, whether it be in the Centre or where Special Envoy Scrymgour, Senator Price and the member for Berowra were in Alice Springs; whether it was in Perth, in the west where I know you, President, Senator Cox and the member for Perth gathered with the community; whether it was in Melbourne in the south-east, where I know Senator Stewart was with the member for Cooper, Assistant Minister Kearney; or whether it was in the desert in Yuendumu, where Warlpiri families put together a beautiful pink shrine to this beautiful girl. In Darwin an enormous crowd gathered on the grounds outside parliament in quiet reflection. I attended with my girls, who are only a few years older than Kumanjayi Little Baby was, bringing the loss of this young life into gut-wrenching reality.

In this grief it's also heartening to remember the search and, as I said, the community of volunteers. Right across Australia people reached out. I thank all those Australians who reached out both to my office and to that of Marion Scrymgour. I pay tribute to them—hundreds of people, volunteers and police and people from all walks of life. The search ended in heartbreak, but it does not diminish the determination of those who dropped everything to assist in the search. I want to use this opportunity to thank them again.

That community effort helps us all to remember that this little baby girl isn't just a headline or a statistic. She was a little girl, as important as any other, and she was so loved. In the words of her mum, whom I spent time with and whose words were read at the vigil in Alice: 'I want you all to know that my heart is broken into a million pieces and I want you to know that I'm having trouble knowing how I can repair it and how I can live without my baby girl. She loved cuddling puppies. She loved watching Blueyand Masha and the Bear. She was my little princess—my princess who loved the colour pink. She also loved the colours of the rainbow. For all these reasons, I ask that her short life not be used by any politician for reasons that do not honour and respect my baby girl.'

These are difficult days, but I do thank the Senate. I thank my colleagues who've reached out. We all send our strength to the families in Central Australia, and we all know that we have work in front of us.

by leave—I move:

Omit all words after "That the Senate" and insert:

(a) mourns the tragic death of 5-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby;

(b) extends its deepest sympathies to her family, her communities in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, the Warlpiri and Gurindji families of Kalkarindji, and all Australians who grieve her loss;

(c) recognises that this child's death is not an isolated tragedy but a consequence of ongoing community dysfunction that governments have failed to address honestly or effectively;

(d) commends the volunteers, community members, police and emergency service workers who searched tirelessly for Kumanjayi Little Baby, especially the NT Police;

(e) calls on the Federal and Territory Governments to take immediate, concrete action to address the conditions including family violence, inadequate policing resources, and child protection failures that put children at risk in remote communities;

(f) demands that governments be held accountable for delivering measurable outcomes, and that community safety in remote Australia be treated with the same urgency afforded to any other Australian community;

(g) affirms that every child in this country deserves protection regardless of where they live, and that real respect for this community means action and accountability; and

(h) affirms that the safety and wellbeing of Indigenous children must always come first.

I don't want to be here right now—to have to stand in this chamber to deliver a condolence speech for a little girl in my family, Sharon Napanangka Granites. I read her name into the history books today in her honour. She was five years old. She was loved. She should still be here. I think about my late brother, Leonard, who passed away too young, before he had a chance to grow into adulthood. In our culture he would have been one of her other fathers. I find myself wondering whether things might have been different if he had lived, whether he would have been able to protect her. The only comfort I can take from these circumstances is in believing that she is now with him and so many of our family who have been taken from us too soon. The only comfort I can take is that they are with our heavenly father now.

But there is no escaping the reality of what happened. My niece's life was taken senselessly, selfishly and horrifically. The hardest truth of all is that for many in my home town none of this came as a surprise. The truth is that people do not want to speak this out loud. For too long in this country, there has been silence around what is happening in too many town camps and remote communities. It's a silence driven by fear—a fear of causing offence, a fear of being labelled racist and fear of speaking honestly about the conditions of dysfunction, violence, alcohol abuse and neglect vulnerable children are growing up in. That silence is killing our babies.

When I say our babies, our people, I mean Australians. My niece was a little Australian girl, yet there is an ideology in this country that has deliberately encouraged people to treat children like her differently because of her racial heritage. It is that same ideology that has created a hands-off culture within parts of the child-protection system—an ideology that too often places cultural sensitivities and political correctness ahead of the safety of children, the same ideology that reveres organisations, bureaucracies and so-called 'leadership structures' while vulnerable women and children continue to suffer behind closed doors. It is the same ideology that teaches people to stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, because speaking honestly might offend somebody. Well, I am no longer interested in protecting adults who feel uncomfortable about truths while children are being buried.

As more details have emerged around my niece's death, Australians have learnt that multiple warnings were reported, made in regard to her safety, and these warnings were not acted upon adequately. They should horrify every single one of us in this chamber and across this country. Let me say clearly that this is not an isolated case. For years I have raised concerns about the failures within child protection. I have spoken to foster carers who have raised loved ones, Aboriginal children, from infancy, who have seen them placed back into dangerous and dysfunctional circumstances. I have spoken to police officers, social workers, paediatricians and frontline workers who have watched children be retraumatised over and over again in a system that's supposed to protect them. Every time these concerns are raised, those who attempt to shut down the conversation say, 'Now is not the time.' They say, 'We should not politicise tragedy,' but, as my niece's aunt, I have an obligation to fight for justice in her honour. As a parliamentarian, the very reason I chose to come to this place—I have an obligation to fight for change so that fewer families endure what my family is enduring right now.

Condolences become empty when they are accompanied by excuses for inaction. Condolences become hollow when difficult conversations are avoided in the name of cultural sensitivity while vulnerable children are exposed to violence, abuse and neglect. I'm tired of the excuses. I'm tired of governments announcing billions of dollars in spending while conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate. I'm tired of hearing about symbolism, acknowledgements and gestures while children continue to grow up in unsafe environments. Housing matters, but housing alone is not going to solve this crisis. Building another house means nothing if violence, alcoholism, abuse and neglect continue unchecked inside these homes. We've got to be honest. We've got to admit this. And town camps, which many people romanticise, have become places of entrenched dysfunction; places where alcohol restrictions exist on paper but are routinely ignored; places where overcrowding, violence and criminal behaviour have become normalised; places where vulnerable women and children are too often left unprotected.

While billions continue to flow through Indigenous programs, organisations and bureaucracies, Australians are entitled to ask a simple question: where are the outcomes? Right now, the outcomes are not there. We cannot continue hiding behind race. We cannot continue pretending that lowering expectations for Aboriginal children is compassion. It is not compassion; it's neglect. It's the racism of low expectations. It's become deeply embedded in parts of our institutions. Aboriginal children are treated as though they should tolerate conditions that would never be accepted in any other child's life in this country, and this must end.

Children deserve safety before ideology. They deserve protection before symbolism. Children deserve love, stability and educational opportunity before political sensitivities—and, yes, culture matters, but no child should be sacrificed on the altar of culture or political correctness. No child should be left in danger because adults are too afraid to intervene. No child should lose their life because governments lack the courage to act.

We need, at the very least, a serious inquiry into the failures that continue to place vulnerable Indigenous children at risk. We need scrutiny of how this money is being spent. We need stronger accountability across organisations responsible for town camps and service delivery. We need child protection systems that prioritise safety above ideology, and we need leadership that's prepared to speak honestly about these realities. Most of all, we need courage—courage to stop pretending, courage to stop hiding behind slogans, courage to stop treating honesty as racism, because the cost of silence is now measured in the life of my five-year-old niece.

She was not a statistic. She was a child. She was part of my family. She was part of this nation. She deserved the same safety, dignity and opportunities every Australian child deserves, and, if her death does not confirm the need to confront the truth, then I fear we will continue failing the next little girl—and the next one, the next one and then the next one. I don't want another family to stand where mine stands today. I don't want my family to continue to stand where my family stands today. I don't want to bury another child from my own family.

I don't want this parliament to offer condolences while refusing to confront the conditions that make those condolences necessary in the first place. I want the parliament to put aside our political differences and stand up for what's right for our children. This is what we're here for. This should be the most important thing that every single one of us is here for—to put aside our differences and to put our children first. That is what we need to do, and that is all I ask.

On behalf of the Australian Greens, I rise to offer my deepest condolences to the family, including Senator Price, and community of Kumanjayi Little Baby. My heart aches for them, as I'm sure all of our hearts do. Words will never be enough to express the pain and the grief that the loss of this beautiful little girl has caused. A five-year-old with a cheeky smile, she was loved dearly by her mother and her family. Her future was stolen from her.

The pain is felt not just in Kumanjayi Little Baby's community, not just in Mparntwe/Alice Springs; it is felt throughout Australia. Thank you deeply to everyone who helped with the search for Kumanjayi Little Baby. Mparntwe/Alice Springs demonstrated what a united and supportive community looks like. Hundreds of residents, first responders, Aboriginal organisations, people who had never even met Kumanjayi Little Baby, gave everything to try and bring her home. When her family's worst fears were realised, the community came together again. The sea of pink at community led vigils around the country last Thursday was a show of support, of solidarity and of love. Thank you to everyone who will hold Kumanjayi Little Baby's family close in this sorry time. Thank you to the staff of 13YARN, who have been supporting so many First Nations people affected by this tragedy. While sorry business is ongoing, we must give Kumanjayi Little Baby's family space, respect and time to mourn and grieve in accordance with cultural practices.

This motion is a condolence motion. This motion is not calling for action, but those calls will come, and they must. The Greens condemn the epidemic of violence against First Nations women and children. We must work collectively to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. There is a criminal case underway. There will be a coronial inquest. The Northern Territory government has announced an inquiry into its child protection system. These processes will interrogate what has happened and what needs to happen. There will be complex questions and uncomfortable answers. Weaponisation and politicisation will not help us find solutions. Kneejerk intervention in First Nations communities historically has at best failed to deliver lasting change and at worst been harmful to those communities.

Top-down political responses do not work. Responses must be evidence based. They must be holistic and look beyond this case to the underlying drivers of harm. Most importantly, any response must be led by Aboriginal women and their communities. Aboriginal self-determination and leadership and the collective wisdom of First Nations women must light the way. Their voices are strong, and we must listen. The staunch Aboriginal leadership in Central Australia has held community together over an extremely difficult time. They will lead on critical next steps. Passionate statements of new National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People, Sue-Anne Hunter, and the Northern Territory Commissioner for Children, Shahleena Musk, demand that the rights and safety of children guide our actions.

The minister has spoken about Our Ways—Strong Ways—Our Voices, the standalone national plan launched in March after many years of dedicated advocacy by First Nations women. That plan emphasises community controlled responses and the addressing of systemic factors. The plan recognises that the safety and wellbeing of children and women is not just about a justice response. It's about supporting families to thrive. It's about actively facilitating culture, community and connection to country. It's about tackling unmet needs and the chronic underfunding that keeps too many First Nations people from accessing services.

I acknowledge again the profound grief felt by Kumanjayi Little Baby's family, her community and affected First Nations people, and all people across the country. We owe it to Kumanjayi Little Baby and to those grieving her to do better.

My heart goes out to the family of this poor little girl. You'd think there could be nothing worse for a family than to experience the abduction and murder of an innocent five-year-old. However, there are things that make it worse. This was a tragedy that could have been prevented and was not unprecedented. The appalling setting in which it happened is a national disgrace that shames Australia. It should disgust us all that any Australian child is forced to live in such squalid and dangerous conditions in an obviously dysfunctional community.

It's been almost 20 years since the Little children are sacred report, and it's evident that children in these Northern Territory communities are no safer today than they were back then. Justice for this tragedy will be fully served only when children in these communities are no less safe than children anywhere else in Australia. Justice will be completely served only when those who are responsible for the ongoing dysfunction of these communities are held to account. Justice will be achieved only when the Indigenous corporations, which receive huge amounts of taxpayers money to close the gaps, are held accountable for their failures and their rampant corruption and nepotism.

For years now I have spoken out about what is happening in our Aboriginal communities, these Aboriginal industries—corporations—and the waste of money. It is not about lack of money; it is about lack of ability or will to do something about it. How many times over the years have we spoken about this, time and time again? And nothing happens. How often have we spoken about Closing the Gap? And it's only got worse.

We have to get rid of the racial division that's happening in this nation and pull together as leaders, to listen to the people in these communities, to read one report from a resident in this town saying: 'I've been complaining about the conditions of the house. I can't get a lock on my door. The stove doesn't work.' It's not through a lack of money, because millions of dollars have gone to that community, run by the same council leaders that have done it for years because there's corruption and nepotism. How many times have I asked for reports to be done, audits to be done, but you shut your ears to it; you're not interested. What's happened is disgraceful, and I've spoken about it before.

I've been to Doomadgee. I've seen the children on the streets there. You know why? Because they're frightened to go home because of dysfunctional homes and because of the abuse, the domestic violence, the alcohol, the drugs that are taken—even the sexual abuse of these children. But we turn a blind eye to it. You can't say anything about it, because you're called a racist. It's disgraceful. I feel for these poor children. I feel for the communities where there is domestic violence. Until you really face facts about what is happening in these communities and speak up and be truthful about the matter—go and find out where the billions of dollars are going. Why hasn't it been spent to improve these lives? Why do these people and these children live in squalor? They don't have the right education. You can't intervene, because you're called a racist. Call it out for what it is. Look past that.

We have an obligation to every child in this nation—every child. It doesn't matter what colour their skin is. If they're living in these conditions, then you take them out of those conditions and put them where they are going to be loved and cared for. But this man who allegedly committed this offence—that has to stop, too. And this is not the first child. I have heard that this has been happening to other children, children as young as two. The sexual abuse that happens in these communities has to stop. We have to intervene. We have to do something about it. For God's sake, we're all Australians. Get past what colour our skins are, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous. Look after our future generations.

There is a specific kind of silence that fills a space when a community carries their collective heartache. I rise to speak about a five-year-old girl. Her name was Kumanjayi Little Baby. She was a Warlpiri girl living at Old Timers, just outside Alice Springs. She loved the colour pink, and, just like so many of our families who love their children, she was loved, very loved, by her family. Grief does not stop at community boundaries, and so today this Senate extends its sympathies to her family, to her communities in Alice Springs and across Central Australia, and to the Warlpiri families and to the Gurindji families for whom this loss is just as real and just as close. While many questions remain, Kumanjayi Little Baby's family have asked for this moment not to be politicised.

Last week, Australians held vigils across the nation, wearing her favourite colour, pink. In Melbourne we gathered at the Aborigines Advancement League in Thornbury. At the league we had a smoking ceremony, dances and a poem. We held candles. But, importantly, we stood together, and within that quiet reflection lies a profound moral necessity—the refusal to look away. I carry that night into the chamber with me today. This Senate joins Kumanjayi Little Baby's family, First Nations leaders and community leaders in calling for calm and for respect, for the whole community to come together for sorry business.

Children are our most sacred gifts. They are the living breath of our ancestors and our future. The loss of Kumanjayi Little Baby isn't just a tragedy; it is a deep, spiritual ache that resonates through every one of us. We must hold space for this grief together, acknowledging the preciousness of a life lost and a heartache that remains. This cannot be another moment we grieve and forget. To her family and community, this chamber holds you, and your loss is witnessed here. To Kumanjayi Little Baby, this nation mourns you. Rest in the Dreaming, little one; you are carried in the hearts of many.

I too rise on behalf of the coalition to speak on behalf of this motion but more particularly to support the amendment that has been moved by Kumanjayi Little Baby's aunt Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. The reason that Jacinta has moved the amendment is that, as she expressed to all of us about her niece's life, the words that we pass in this chamber must be worthy of the life that we are today honouring. To be worthy of Kumanjayi Little Baby's life, we must be honest. We owe it not just to Kumanjayi Little Baby, who was just five years old; we owe the truth to her family, but, more than that, we owe the truth to all Australians.

There's a song that says: 'We believe the children are our future. Teach them well. Let them lead the way.' As we stand today here in this chamber, we have failed yet again. We have failed another Indigenous child. Jacinta, that was one of the most powerful speeches, I think, ever given in this chamber. Why? Because today you are the face, you are the reality, of what so many Indigenous parents, what so many Indigenous families, go through—the burying of a child. Worse than that, it's the burying of a child when we all know there was red flag after red flag.

As we've heard, Kumanjayi Little Baby was just five years old. She had her life ahead of her. She loved the colour pink. Just like all other children, she loved Bluey and she loved Cocomelon. She had brothers. She loved playing Minecraft with her older brother. This is her reality. This is the reality of a system that has failed, time and time again, despite the billions and billions of dollars that flow out of this place every single year. As Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said, we don't ever ask: what is actually the outcome of those billions of dollars that flow out of this place every single year? This is her reality. A little five-year-old was put to bed in a house in the Old Timers camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs. It was on Anzac Day this year. She was taken by a monster and she was killed in the most horrific manner. She had a name. She had a family. We have heard the raw emotion from her aunt today in the Senate about the impact that her death has had not just on the family but on the community. A five-year-old, despite the red flags, despite the billions and billions of dollars, the rivers of gold that flow out of this place every single year, has had a future taken from her.

That is why we have moved the amendment to the motion. It's because what we do not want in passing this motion today is to allow her death to become just another statistic. We stand here, we give words of condolence and we pat ourselves on the back that we've said the right thing and that the good news is another billion dollars will flow out the door. We don't want her death to become words that fade before they become action. As Jacinta has so eloquently put it, we must today go further than condolence. We must go further than sympathy, and we must—all of us. It doesn't matter what political party we are from. We all have collective responsibility here for a system that, under government after government after government, has failed our most vulnerable. We must start demanding accountability. Jacinta, on behalf of all of us, I can't begin to imagine what your family is going through, but we need to demand accountability on your behalf.

On Thursday, across the nation, by candlelight and wearing pink, people stood in strength and love with the family of Kumanjayi Little Baby, who we honour again today. Her mother said she loved cuddling puppies, watching Bluey, listening to Bruno Mars and playing Minecraft with her big brother—the simple joys of childhood so many families would recognise. Her mother asked for her to be remembered as a beautiful little girl in pink deeply loved by her family.

Over the past few weeks, we have seen the best of this country as thousands of us come together, setting differences aside to stand with this family in shared humanity and healing. As we work through the need for change, we must hold onto that. The family asked for their child not to be made a political football. Not everyone has respected those wishes. We have seen damaging commentary and calls for reforms that would further harm our people. I will address those debates directly at another time—believe me—because this is a time of deep grief and sorry business for our people. We must respect the family as any of us would expect for our own families.

Sunday was Mother's Day. As Aboriginal mothers, we hold in common a deep and unique love for our children, an understanding that they are sacred, because our children carry our old people and our future. They carry the promise that, despite everything done to our people, we will continue on. But, as black mothers, we also share a common fear: a fear that our children will be taken, targeted or imprisoned by the state or lost to violence. This fear is passed from grandmother to mother to daughter because so many before us have lost children. So, when a mother loses a child, together, we feel it deeply and we grieve together. We know this moment, the loss of this beautiful child, will be a turning point, but many of us fear it will mean more harm against our families. We must not let that happen.

We do need a national conversation that addresses the systemic failings that contributed to this tragedy and so many others like it, but this must be led by our people. We must not return to the assimilationist approaches of the past based on false assumptions about us. We must reject the idea that safety means severing children from their culture, kin and country. Our children's identity must be central. Blood line, culture, language and country—knowing where you come from is the absolute foundation of a strong person. This nation must not rob our children of that birthright.

The real issue is that our communities face deep poverty and a lack of basic services, and incarceration and child removals are doing enormous harm to our families. We need systems that afford our communities the authority and resources to drive our own solutions, because our families are tapestries of love, obligation and care that have carried our people through so much violence done to us, through so much pain, and yet we are still here. For thousands of years our people have understood that a village raises a child: mothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins and elders together. Our babies are held by kinship, language and country. This foundation must be upheld. Our cultures are our strength and our mothers and grandmothers hold the solutions. And so we honour Kumanjayi Little Baby, the pretty girl in pink, deeply loved by her family. In our grief we must choose healing over harm and ensure every child in this nation is held and loved, safe in kin and safe on country.

I rise today with a very heavy heart to offer my deepest condolences on the death of Kumanjayi Little Baby. I begin by acknowledging her mother, her brother, Ramsiah, her family, her kin, her elders and all those across Alice Springs, Central Australia and beyond who are carrying this unbearable grief.

Kumanjayi Little Baby was five years old. At five years old, most children are learning to tie their shoes. They are learning songs and they are asking questions about the world. They are running, they are laughing, they are playing and they are beginning to show the little personality that they are becoming. When you are five years old, the safest place in the world should be wherever your mum tucks you in bed. Kumanjayi Little Baby should still be with her family. There are moments when words feel too small for the sorrow that they are asked to hold, and this is one of those moments. A little girl has been taken from her family. A mother is burying her baby. A community that searched, hoped and prayed has been left with the most devastating grief. For her family, this grief is an empty space where a child should be. It is a future that has been taken. It is the deep pain of every parent, grandparent, aunty, uncle, cousin and loved one who knows that a young life should be protected, nurtured and allowed to grow. To Kumanjayi Little Baby's mother, this parliament cannot carry that pain for you, but today we stand beside you. We say clearly that your little girl mattered, and your baby, who loved watching Bluey, playing Minecraft with her brother, and going to kindy, and who loved the colour pink, mattered. Her life mattered, her name matters and her family matters.

Kumanjayi Little Baby's mother has thanked the police, first responders, Aboriginal liaison officers, volunteers and organisations who searched that day and night for her baby girl. That outpouring of support should be remembered. In the middle of horror, it showed that love existed in Alice Springs, and the strength of community who did not wait to be asked before they stepped forward. Hundreds gave their time, their care and their hope, because a child was missing and every single child deserves to be found. They searched because, in moments like this, community means showing up. But now the search has ended in grief, and that grief must be treated with respect. This is not a time for division. It is not a time for people to use the family's trauma for political point-scoring. It is not a time for anyone to inflict pain on a community already carrying too much. There will be time for those difficult conversations, there will be time when we ask what must change, but first there is a family that is burying a child. First, there is a mother who needs love around her. First, there is a community in trauma that needs calm, care and culturally safe support.

This grief does not stop at the boundaries of Alice Springs. First Nations people are grieving deeply, but they are not grieving alone. Across the Territory and Western Australia, President, you and I and the member for Perth, Patrick Gorman, stood together alongside my three nieces, who are also Gurindji, at vigils across this country in a pink wave for Kumanjayi Little Baby and her family. We lit candles, and shared poetry and silence to honour a little girl whom most of us have never met but whose death still haunts us. In that grief we must be mindful of one another and the toll that it takes. Respect for Kumanjayi Little Baby means respect for her family. It means allowing them the space to mourn and not adding to that burden. Today, I want this chamber to sit with the simple truth at the centre of all of this—a little girl has died. Kumanjayi Little Baby was five years old and she will be forever five. She should still be learning, laughing, playing and growing. She should still be held in the arms of the people who loved her and loved her deeply.

Today, we hold her name in this chamber. We hold her family in our hearts. May Kumanjayi Little Baby be remembered with love, may her family be surrounded with strength, may we look at the night sky as her mother asked and think of the brightest star, and may we honour her life with the responsibility that this grief asks of all of us.

I rise and join with my colleagues today with a very heavy heart following the tragic death of Kumanjayi Little Baby in Alice Springs. As we know, this girl was just five years of age. Our deepest condolences go to her family, to those who loved her, to her community, and to all those carrying this unbearable grief of losing a child in such horrific circumstances. I particularly stand alongside my colleague Senator Nampijinpa Price—Kumanjayi Little Baby's aunt—who delivered the most powerful speech just earlier. Of course, the grief that she is feeling, I stand alongside her in full support.

No child should suffer what this little girl suffered, no family should endure this pain, and no Australian should look at the details emerging from this case without asking the hard questions about how our systems have failed to protect a vulnerable child. There are rightly discussions about the broader social conditions that exist in many remote communities including around the housing shortages, the poverty, the trauma, the crime, the domestic violence, the low school attendance, the gambling and the failed investments by governments who have not solved social problems with more money. Now, these are real issues and they cannot be ignored. But no matter how complex the underlying social or cultural circumstances may be, the safety and the wellbeing of children must always remain the first priority.

The child protection system exists to intervene when there is a risk of serious harm, and, when there are credible concerns about abuse or neglect, the safety of the child must always be paramount. This is why I believe that there should be a very honest and full examination of the operation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle and how it is being applied in practice. Let me be clear: this principle exists for important reasons. Connection to family, culture, language and community matters deeply for Indigenous children. The history of forced removals in this country means these issues must always be approached with humility and care, but no principle, no framework, no policy setting can ever result in a child's safety being compromised. If there is any hesitation in acting because officials fear cultural criticism, bureaucratic process, reputational risk or ideological pressure then we have a very serious problem.

The question Australians are asking is not whether cultural connection matters, because it does—of course it does; the question in this case was whether the system acted decisively enough where concerns were raised. Were the warnings missed? Were interventions delayed? Did policy settings create hesitation where urgent action was needed? These are difficult questions but they are necessary questions, because every child protection framework must ultimately be judged by a single standard: did it keep the child safe? We must resist the temptation to reduce these tragedies to slogans or simplistic political answers. The issue is far more serious than that. We can acknowledge the importance of housing and social investment while also demanding accountability from child protection systems. We can support cultural connection while also insisting that immediate safety must always come first. These are not contradictory positions; in fact, they should work together. A child who is safe and protected should also be connected to culture, to family and community wherever possible, but safety must be the very first threshold, not the second, not one consideration among many—the first.

The death of this beautiful little girl must not simply become another tragic headline that briefly shocks the nation before attention moves on. It should force us to examine whether the systems designed to protect vulnerable children are operating with clarity, confidence and unwavering focus on the welfare of the child. Because, when a child dies after repeated interactions with authorities, Australians expect more than explanations. They expect accountability and, above all, they expect change. We owe it to Kumanjayi Little Baby and to every vulnerable child growing up in these communities to learn from this tragedy and to ensure that, when warning signs are raised, systems respond with urgency, care and accountability. May little Kumanjayi Little Baby rest in peace.

Well, my thoughts and prayers are with Kumanjayi's family, her local community, residents of Alice Springs, police, those people who I know searched and searched and searched hoping for a better outcome. It's quite incredible, getting messages of where people were walking, hoping for a better outcome.

You know, I recognise and acknowledge the vigils that were held throughout the country—in Alice Springs, in other places, in places where they have probably never, ever been to a town camp. Well, I've got an interesting lens on this one, because I also, along with Senator Nampijinpa Price, grew up in Alice Springs. I've got family in town camps. I'm a regular visitor to town camps. I've got friends there. I was also the shadow minister for child protection, the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, the shadow minister for prevention of family violence and the shadow minister for social services. You know, it was just devastating, like all Australians, to watch this play out. You didn't actually have to be there, though, to know what was happening, to read between the lines of the images. But it didn't matter, because, even if you were living in the inner suburbs of Sydney, you were devastated by what you were seeing, hearing and reading.

People should be able to protect their children. There is a consequence, a tragic consequence, when somebody dies from violence. As a person who has lost a sibling to that kind of violence, that pain stays with you forever. It doesn't disappear. It has a long, ongoing, forever harm. What's harder is when people know that they're at risk and they spend their lives trying to work out how to keep people safe. There's a trauma attached to that. There's a trauma in seeking help, worrying whether just the simple act of seeking help is actually going to draw attention to you, whether that help is going to come, and wondering whether you'll have to do it all again tomorrow.

We need to intervene to make sure that people don't have to keep calling, they don't have to keep looking, they don't have to keep searching, and we need to be courageous about doing that. Nothing about doing this condolence motion today is good—none of it—and none of it will make it better for anyone unless we're courageous in here. We are legislators. We hold the policies that demand accountability. It is our job in this place not to simply put a condolence message together but to actually say, 'We're going to put the things in place that are going to make a difference, and we're going to follow the trickle-down of that right to the very end.'

In a town camp, you walk into it. You know, it's like a gated community only the gate is open. White people aren't welcome. There's a single provider of services to that community. I call that a monopoly. I don't like that. The doors haven't even got handles on them, let alone a lock. The ridiculous thing about this is that some of those houses have walls but inside those walls there's no sink, no stove and no working toilet. We have to get real. Building more houses—building more walls to hide that—is not the answer. We need to make sure that children are going to school, that people are going to work and that people get the opportunity to do the things that they aspire to, like every other Australian. That's what's important. That's what facilitates change, not sitting around, going from a cradle to a coffin and being sad about that. We have to be courageous enough to intervene. Whether it is a five-year-old little girl or little boy, or a 50-year-old person who is dealing with the consequences of violence every day, we have to be brave enough in here to intervene. We have to demand greater accountability—and there is nothing political about that. That is our job.

I wish to associate myself with the words of my colleague Senator Waters. For all of those senators who have spoken today about the death of Kumanjayi Little Baby—and this is a condolence motion—hearing the collective grief that unites us as individuals, feeling that grief reach across the country, thinking about Kumanjayi's family, her mum and her extended community, and spending a moment, even ever so brief, to recognise our collective humanity isn't a hollow moment. That's what the families have asked for. Senior Warlpiri Elder Robin Japanangka Granites, who's a spokesperson for the family, called for calm and asked for all of those who are grieving Kumanjayi Little Baby to honour sorry business. He said:

It is time now for sorry business, to show respect for our family and have space for grieving and remembering.

…   …   …

This man has been caught, thanks to community action, and we must now let justice take its course while we take the time to mourn Kumanjayi Little Baby and support our family.

We need to hear that and we need to give that space. The family has asked that the focus remains on their little baby and the grief and the healing of the community.

I, with some other colleagues, was in the NT as the search was happening, and I spoke to colleagues and friends in Alice Springs, Mparntwe. In that moment, when the whole community came out and looked for this little girl—when Aboriginal controlled organisations, the council and people from across the town and across the community reached out and went searching for this little girl, because it was their shared little girl—that was a moment, wasn't it, in this appalling grief and loss. Everyone was coming together with a focus on this little girl and on supporting her family. We saw it in the candlelight vigils. We've heard about this little girl, Kumanjayi Little Baby, and her love for Bluey and her love for pink. She was a little girl like so many little girls we know in our daily lives—our little nieces, our friends' kids. That's what we should be reaching for. We should be recognising the strength of the community that came out and searched for a little girl because they loved the little girl, like her mum loved her little girl and like her family loved their little girl. They've asked us not to put politics into this. They have asked to have that shared moment of grief and shared collective love.

Catherine Liddle, the CEO of SNAICC and an Arrernte and Luritja woman from Central Australia, said when reflecting on pink, Kumanjayi Little Baby's favourite colour:

It is the colour of compassion. It is the colour of kindness. It is the colour of care. But it's also the colour of hope.

Catherine spoke to ABC News. She said she woke up in the morning and saw the sun rise over Mparntwe, and she said: 'This morning the other thing I saw that really rooted me into where we need to be—and that is our hearts with Kumanjayi Little Baby—was the pink sunrise.'

I hear the discussion here about rivers of gold going to First Nations communities. I don't know about you, but that doesn't reflect my understanding of the First Nations economic position in this country—living in endemic poverty, living in housing that we couldn't possibly support for others and the poverty we heard from Senator Liddle about the town camps. That doesn't say to me 'rivers of gold'. That says to me that First Nations people are living on country that was stolen and they have had wealth stolen from them. We should reflect upon that, this trope of 'rivers of gold'—reflect upon the reality of First Nations people's endemic poverty and the circumstances in which Kumanjayi Little Baby was being raised.

I hear calls about removing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, and I want to honour and respect Senator Thorpe's words in relation to that. Who knows how to best raise First Nations kids? They've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. It's First Nations families—mums, dads, uncles, aunties and grandparents. We need to lean into that and support that. But, right now, as Robin said, it's time for sorry business.

I seek leave for a minute to respond.

Leave granted.

With the deepest of respect to Senator Nampijinpa Price, we won't be supporting the amendment. We've put forward this condolence motion with both the Warlpiri families—Mr Granites and family—and the Gurindji families and Roy families. We've brought this motion to the Senate in work and partnership with them.

The question is that the amendment as moved by Senator Nampijinpa Price be agreed to.

(In division) Keep the crimes going in the camps. Keep the crimes going.

Order! Senator Nampijinpa Price, come to order.

(In division) Senator Henderson, show some respect.

I am respecting—

No. You are not in a debate with me. I've asked you to come to order.

I have enormous respect—

Senator Henderson!

I seek leave to amend government business notice of motion No. 1.

Leave granted.

I move the motion as amended:

Omit paragraphs (2)(c)(ii) and (iii), substitute:

(ii) adjournment without debate.

Question agreed to.

The only thing worse than being misled is being lied to, and this government told Australians that they would be better off under them. Four years ago they made that commitment, and, at the last budget, they again committed to making Australians' lives better off under Labor. Australians were promised relief and honesty, and instead what they got was higher costs and broken promises. Inflation is up higher than the rest of the OECD countries thanks to reckless spending under this government. Interest rates continue to increase, putting pressure on Australians right across the country. Real wages are back to 2011 levels under this government. Australians are working harder than ever before but falling further and further behind.

Everyday prices are surging under Labor. Coffee is up 26 per cent; the cost of bread, 22 per cent; and confectionary, 29 per cent. Domestic travel is up 27 per cent. Biscuits are up 22 per cent. Gas prices are up 42 per cent. Australia is out of step with economies that have been able to manage their own inflation and interest rates. This is a government whose reckless spending, whose wasteful ways are making Australians' lives harder in every way. We see more taxes and more spending because that is all that Labor knows how to do. Since August of 2025, New Zealand has cut its rates by 75 basis points. The United States has cut its rates by 75 basis points and Canada by 50 basis points. Even the United Kingdom has managed to cut its interests rates by 25 basis points. And yet Australia flies in the face of that sort of economic management, with interest rates up 75 basis points. Australia is the last country that still has rising rates.

Labor promised that power bills would fall by $275. Instead, electricity prices have surged by 32 per cent. Australians are being treated like an ATM by this government. Taxes are up, spending is up, interest rates are up. Labor claims to stand for workers, while ensuring that private-enterprise jobs are disappearing. Small businesses are under attack. We have seen small businesses failing at a greater rate than since we have started keeping records on this data. And remember that every small business that fails has behind it a mortgage, a family, somebody keen to take the initiative of making their own way, taking advantage of the opportunities of this country. Power costs, taxes, red tape and militant union deals are crushing confidence for small businesses, for families and, indeed, now for big businesses in this country. It's too hard to start a small business here. It's too hard to maintain a small business. Increasingly, the jobs in Australia are being funded by taxpayers. It's not growth, it's not growing an economy; it is taking the money out of the pockets of Australians and then putting it back through the other side. A healthy economy cannot survive on that kind of economic practice.

The Prime Minister promised integrity and accountability, but Australians now see spin, excuses and avoidance. The Prime Minister said he would never go missing in action, that he would always step up when Australians needed leadership, but instead he was nowhere to be seen on the weekend. A by-election in one of 150 electorates across the country, and the Prime Minister was completely invisible.

The policies designed in Canberra by Labor make it harder for regional Australians to operate. We are seeing just one-third of the amount of dollars spent on Medicare and medical expenditure on each Australian in the cities. The Prime Minister likes to flash around his Medicare card, but that is not worth very much once you leave the metropolitan places. The Prime Minister announces more childcare centres in places that don't have childcare centres. The Prime Minister talks about more housing in places that can't get access to trades. The Prime Minister says that he will grow Australia, and he absolutely is, with unfettered immigration—immigration that means that young Australians can't get into a home.

The Prime Minister promised that he would make it easier for Australians, and that is exactly the opposite to what every Australian is experiencing right now. Every Australian will tell you how much harder their life is under Albanese and this government. In the north, biosecurity is a mess. Border Force funding has been cut. There are fewer oversight flights. Illegal fishing boats are making landfall in Northern Australia. Biosecurity and national security are being ignored at our peril right across the country. Farmland is being lost under this government's crazy and ideological emissions campaigns. Eighty-two per cent renewables by 2030 means that millions of hectares of prime agricultural land are being lost to wind towers and solar farms. ABARES have warned of an additional 18 million hectares of land that will be lost to climate offsets.

Australia should have some of the cheapest energy in this country, but instead, taxes like the safeguards mechanism, like anti-coal, oil and gas legislation, mean that instead of Australians being blessed with cheap energy we have some of the most expensive energy on the planet. What does that mean? It means not only that Australians being the most on energy costs but also that we are losing more Australian manufacturing jobs in places like Victoria, where that government won't drill for gas onshore. The gas shortage in that place means that jobs are being offshored and lost to Victoria and lost to Australia.

Mining and resource projects are stalling. Australia used to enjoy 40 per cent of the world's LNG investment right here, but that has fallen to 15 per cent at a time when the world so desperately needs more investment and more gas. Australia should be the beneficiary of those investments, but, instead, approvals are getting harder. The government is funding organisations like the Environmental Defenders Office, an organisation that confected evidence and manufactured cultural heritage in order to try and stop the Barossa project off the coast of the Northern Territory. This government is making it harder for Australia to access and develop its wonderful and abundant resources, thanks to ideological targets and aims. We have insecure food. We have insecure energy. We have skyrocketing prices. We have a government whose taxation is being wasted on wasteful, reckless spending.

The coalition offers an alternative. We offer lower taxes and relief from bracket creep. We promise to reduce red tape, boost the housing supply, restore affordable energy and, importantly, increase gas supply and production. These are costs under Labor that Australians cannot continue to bear. Instead of being one of the world's wealthiest, most prosperous and free societies, Australians are labouring under Labor. Australians expect honesty. Millions of people are asking whether they are better off today than they were four years ago, when Labor was elected, because they are finding it very difficult to find the positives.

The coalition is focused on restoring our standard of living, protecting our way of life, rewarding hard work and being economically responsible instead of recklessly spending Australians' hard earned money. It is extraordinary, after four years, how much worse Australians are under this government than they were previously.

As many Australians feeling the weight of the cost of living look to tonight's budget, we know one thing that won't be in the budget: ensuring Australians get a fair return from the export of our gas. Multinational gas companies will look at tonight's budget, have a sigh of relief and probably crack a bottle of champagne at the fact that they will continue to make extraordinary amounts of profit and not have to pay Australians a fair share for the export of our gas. This is a deliberate choice by the Albanese Labor government, and it is a choice that Australians are paying for every single week.

When we see what isn't and what is in the budget, we need to remember that a 25 per cent gas export tax would bring in $350 million every single week in a normal year—probably a lot more with the money that gas companies are making due to the war in Iran—and that's $17 billion a year. We hear so much about being fiscally responsible and about what's in the national interest. Getting a fair return for our resources is all of those things, and it is something the vast majority of Australians want to happen, and they want to see it happen tonight, in the budget.

We're told by politicians from both sides: 'Don't worry about paying for the actual gas. These companies pay corporate tax. Aren't they good corporate citizens? They pay corporate tax on their profits, and we should just be grateful for that.' If you look at what some of the industry players actually pay, Santos has paid $33 million in Australian income tax on more than $41 billion in sales over the past decade—$33 million on $41 billion. That's not a fair return. INPEX, which exports more gas each year than New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia put together consume, paid no royalties, no petroleum resource rent tax and just $484 million in company tax on $81 billion in income.

Australians see this, and they know we're getting fleeced. They look at the major parties and then they look at the gas companies, and they say, 'How come you're all saying the same thing? How can we have elected representatives and multinational gas companies saying the exact same thing to us? That's our gas. We just want to get paid for our gas. And then, sure, when you make a profit, you can pay some corporate tax as well.'

This is a tax system that's not working for Australians, and we are selling off the inheritance of young Australians. The longer we delay, the less we will get, because the window to act is closing as the world moves away from gas. Pakistan has cancelled 45 LNG cargoes for 2026 alone. Vietnam has walked away from imports. The government's own modelling expects LNG production to fall 27 per cent by 2035.

We only get to sell this gas once. We should demand a fair return from the export of our gas, because every cargo that leaves Australia untaxed is revenue that we will never see again. These big multinationals who turn up to the Senate inquiry want to tell us all the costs of their investment—how much corporate tax they've paid, how much payroll tax they've paid—and when you say to them, 'Thank you for your contribution. What was your revenue last year?' they're stunned. They are stunned. 'Oh, oh, I can't remember. I can't remember how much gas we sold. But I'll tell you all the costs. I'll tell you how much tax we paid, but I can't tell you revenue and I can't tell you the volume of gas that we exported.'

Australians have had enough. They are sick and tired of multinationals taking advantage of us and that being enabled by the major parties—and it's no wonder that Australians across the country are looking for alternatives. We have to make sure that we actually get a return on the export of a resource that belongs to all of us.

We've seen the gas industry with $10 million odd for a campaign to stop Australians getting a fair return for our gas. Thankfully, a lot of Australians are seeing through the propaganda. They're seeing through the flood of ads on social media, when they read the news, at the airport—all over the place—with the gas industry saying, 'Hey, hey. Don't you dare touch this system that works very well for us.' You've got Japan, profiting more from our gas than we get in petroleum resource rent tax, also saying, 'Don't tweak the system. We're doing very well out of it, thank you very much.'

So we have to continue to fight on this. We have to continue to call out the lobbying that happens in this place, the total lack of transparency when it comes to who has sponsored passes and, I would say, the arrogance of some of the answers we received back in the recent inquiry—a refusal to say who has a sponsored pass and who gave one to that representative. This is the people's house. Australians deserve to know who has privileged access to this place. In the absence of transparency, Australians will make up their own minds as to why we have two major parties who think that it is totally cool and normal to export a resource and not demand a fair return—or payment at least—for that resource.

I'd like to also speak about something that every parent in Canberra is terrified about—whether their child will be able to get the care that they need here in Canberra. Yesterday, we saw the news of yet another Canberra mother begging the ACT government to establish a paediatric oncology and haematology unit in Canberra. This is not a new call. There have been families over many, many years telling their stories of travelling to Sydney for treatment time and time again. The cost of that, the challenges in terms of schooling and family—

Order! Sorry, Senator Pocock, we are going to now move to two-minute statements.

Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese and Labor treasurer Jim Chalmers say that governments are allowed to change their minds. My message to the Labor government is simple: voters are free to change their minds as well. Tonight's budget of broken promises and higher taxes is an unfair budget. Why is it unfair? It's unfair because Australians and small businesses are working harder than they ever have before and feeling poorer for it. Let me share four important budget facts. Fact 1 is that Australians have experienced the sharpest decline in living standards in the developed world. Fact 2 is that inflation is now higher in Australia than in any other major advanced economy. Fact 4 is that the government is spending at a rate higher than in the previous 40 years, even during recessions. What we know about government spending is that, when government spending is high, inflation is high and interest rates are pushed up. When inflation stays high, interest rates stay high, and that is why mortgage holders across the country are feeling the pain.

So who pays for Labor's failed economic management? You pay. Families are paying the price, paying around $29,000 more a year on a typical mortgage. Debt is now racing to $1 trillion, with Australians paying around $50,000 a minute just to service that debt. Labor— (Time expired)

Good to see you, Acting Deputy President! Today I wanted to recognise the outstanding success of the 2026 Warrnambool May Racing Carnival. It is one of Australia's greatest regional sporting traditions and a defining feature of south-west Victoria. The carnival delivered three days of exceptional racing and a very powerful demonstration of how regional races bring communities together, with around 30,000 spectators attending. This year's Warrnambool Cup winner, Any Luck, ridden by Kate Walters and trained by her father, Wayne, added another chapter to the carnival's fantastic history. Global reach was also on display with Stephen Power, the global racing blogger, attending. With a global audience, his coverage certainly introduced the carnival to fans right across the world.

As the senator very lucky enough to represent that fantastic region, I want to also acknowledge the significant contribution that this event makes to south-west Victoria. The carnival generates $14.3 million for the local economy, with 80 per cent of visitors travelling from outside the region, benefiting hospitality, tourism and many, many small businesses, including those pubs. More broadly, regional racing contributes $1.17 billion annually to Victoria's economy and supports more than 9,000 jobs—that's right, 9,000 equivalent jobs.

While regional communities south of the Murray were celebrating, I did note that the Liberals and Nationals were busy falling at every jump across the Murray, north in Farrer. In a seat that the Liberals have held for over 25 years, they finished so far back the returning officer couldn't even find them on the map. The Nationals, not to be outdone, turned up with a swag and didn't even finish. (Time expired)

Yesterday, bulldozers and chainsaws rolled into Possum Park in Adelaide's beautiful national heritage-listed parklands in my home state of South Australia. More than 585 trees are set to be destroyed along with the habitats of native wildlife that call these parklands home. Over 100 animal species live in this area, including grey-headed flying foxes and brush tail possums. These trees and this parkland are precious ecosystems for our native animals. They are the shelter, the food and the safety for wildlife, and they are now under pressure. Reports from locals on the ground say that animals have already been injured, and this destruction only began yesterday. Wildlife rescuers have been reportedly denied access to help injured wildlife.

South Australians don't want this destruction and they don't want this destruction with the $45 million price tag. In fact, 35,000 people have signed a petition opposing the destruction of our precious parklands. Under Peter Malinauskas, the Premier of South Australia, more parkland trees are facing the chop than at any time since the first settlers cleared the area in the 1840s, and for what? For a $45 million project tied to a golf tournament that's future is in question and sure to collapse. Imagine what $45 million could do for South Australians struggling right now, with the cost of living. It could help families waiting for public housing, it could strengthen our overwhelmed health system or it could be used to invest in our communities instead of tearing them apart.

Once these trees are gone, they are gone for generations. South Australians deserve better than this hefty price tag for destruction right in the heart of our beautiful city. It is time it stopped.

Labor's Minister for Women's recent comments that the sooner you get a child into early education or care, the better prepared they are clearly wrong and fundamentally misunderstand the needs of modern families. Perhaps the minister is recalling an earlier time where the model of care was different and may not be reflective of the current economic environment or regulation-intensive services offered today.

Parents across the country are balancing work and family responsibilities that have only increased in the wake of Labor's fiscal management, with more bad news and more Labor broken promises at tonight's budget. This means families have to work harder and longer hours just to make ends meet. Putting children into care as early as possible is not always parental preference. Mothers in particular can feel a deep disconnection when forced back to work for economic reasons, not for the good of their families.

Two of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes in children are engaged parenting and maternal wellbeing. Arguably, sending children into care at the earliest possible moment risks both of these outcomes. In only recognising union-dominated, centre based care, the government ignores the needs of real working families that have different responsibilities and require choice. These are our police, our ambulance officers, doctors and professionals who work long hours to serve the community. Flexibility and choice on when and who cares for their children are not a 'nice to have' in these professions; they are essential. These comments from the minister are tone deaf and expose the true intentions of Labor. They believe that the state is best-placed to decide what is best for children, not their own family. The coalition takes a different view. We think that families should have that choice.

I rise to speak about the result in the Farrer by-election. Let's not dress this one up; it was a political disaster for the Liberal Party. Farrer is not some inner city seat that the Liberals were never going to win; it was not a once-in-a-generation fluke. This is a seat that the Liberal Party held for 60 of the 86 years it has existed. It was Sussan Ley's seat for 25 years. After the Liberal Party removed its first-ever female leader, even before she had the chance to deliver a budget-in-reply speech, voters in her old seat delivered Angus Young a humiliating verdict. They looked at the new Liberal leadership and said 'absolutely no thanks'. That is how badly the Liberals have lost their way. They dumped Sussan Ley, they lurched further to the right, they chased One Nation votes, they copied One Nation policies and they handed One Nation their preferences. What was the result? They did not win back their conservative voters. They delivered One Nation its first-ever elected member of the House of Representatives. That is not a strategy; that is surrender.

The Liberal Party used to claim it was a party of government; now it can't even hold one of its safest historic seats without helping One Nation through the door. Already, the Liberals, One Nation and the Nationals are openly discussing how they might work together as the new right-wing coalition and try to win the next election. Australians should be paying attention to that, because One Nation doesn't stand up for working people. When energy bill relief came before the parliament, they voted 'no'. When Help to Buy came before the parliament, they voted 'no'. When Labor moved to close loopholes to criminalise wage theft and protect workers, they voted 'no'. They talk about cost-of-living relief, but they voted against that relief. They talk about ordinary Australians, but they always vote with the Liberals.

Today, Labor is absolutely going to deliver a responsible budget focused on reform and resilience. (Time expired)

On Sunday I joined the Oguns family and hundreds of Canberrans for the launch of the Josh4Hearts foundation. Josh Oguns was an exceptional young man, a gifted athlete with a passion for football. In July last year, at just 14 years old, Josh Oguns suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while playing sport.

Following the loss of their son, Taiye and Joe Oguns, both doctors here in Canberra, have established the Josh4Hearts Foundation. The foundation encourages sporting clubs to refer their young players for cardiac screening, and supports local communities to respond to cardiac arrest during games. Through this work, Josh's life continues to make a difference. He will live on through every young player screened, every coach trained, every community better prepared and every life saved through this work.

Josh4Hearts is also raising awareness, with the key message that if someone collapses at sport without a head knock, you should assume that it is a sudden cardiac arrest. You should immediately dial triple zero and start CPR immediately, aiming for 100-120 compressions per minute, and get someone to find the closest automated external defibrillator and use it immediately. This information is something that everyone in and around a sporting club should know. The foundation encourages teams to have a plan if this happens to someone on the court or on the field. It could and probably will save someone's life.

Things stick with you in this job, things that you see many years before. They come back to you. I remember very vividly going to the Carmel School in Perth, a Jewish school, many years before October 7, many years before 14 December. The thing that struck me about that visit, along with that most remarkable performance of the Righteous Among the Nations ceremony, where they honour a non-Jew for saving Jews during the Holocaust, was that out the front of that school there were security and police cars. I asked if they were there because of the event on that day and I was told, 'No; they were there as a matter of course to protect the children, to protect the staff.'

Over the last days, as we listened to the testimony at the royal commission into antisemitism, memory of that event came flooding back to me. We heard of the fears of children presented to that royal commission, fears that the events at Bondi on 14 December will happen again. We heard about the bullying in the schools, bullying that is not just verbal but that extends to physical violence—physical violence, for example, against a 13-year-old boy.

Shame!

We've heard of the antisemitism on playing fields, a place of unity and joy, where Australians all get together. This is not Australia.

In the Labor government, we're going to get on with the job of delivering for the nation. But seated across from us, this rapidly diminishing opposition struggles to maintain any relevance. After removing their first-ever female leader, Sussan Ley, and then directing their preferences to One Nation, the Liberals have been sent a clear message by the voters in Farrer. Voters who have returned conservative members to this place for more than 70 years have shown their contempt for the party they once supported and defended.

The people of Farrer have no regard for Angus Taylor. They have no regard for the Liberal Party. They have no regard for the coalition. The coalition, in a funk of existential despair, is already openly discussing forming a new right-wing coalition to try to win the next election. Can you imagine it? The One Nation, Liberal Party, National Party 'no-alition'. That's right; the coalition are readying themselves to coalesce with One Nation, the very same party that voted no to combating antisemitism, hate and extremism. This year, they voted against that, yet they purport to be the defender of the strength of the nation of Australia. That's the party that the Liberal and National parties and the 'no-alition' want to join up with, the party whose senators recently equivocated on whether the massacre on our shores in December was a false flag event.

That is the party that Liberal Party and the National Party want to agree with. While the coalition is now considering a party that is all about conspiracy and division, we here in the Labor government remain focused on delivering real solutions for all Australians.

As we burn more coal and gas, our oceans warm and our climate changes. The science is unequivocal. The Pacific Ocean, in particular, is a giant cauldron for this planet's weather and climate. Right now, scientific models all around the planet are predicting an El Nino event in the second half of this year.

When the Pacific Ocean warms by half a degree, an El Nino is considered to be underway. A super El Nino is when the Pacific Ocean warms by more than two degrees Celsius. Right now, climate models are predicting a three degrees Celsius rise in the Pacific Ocean. The last two times this planet saw super El Ninos were in 1982 and 1983, and 1997 and 1998. Both those events led to trillions of dollars' worth of economic damage and disruption.

It seems that our weather system is at a historic breaking point. If this El Nino eventuates, as the models are forecasting, it will very likely make 2027 the hottest year on record. With climate change and with more energy in the system, we will see more severe flooding, more intense heatwaves and more extreme weather events. This means higher insurance rates, higher food prices, higher healthcare costs, higher power bills, and more illnesses and deaths, not to mention more mass coral bleaching on our precious coral reefs and a loss of biodiversity. This is all because we continue to burn fossil fuels. Now is not the time to be sacking CSIRO jobs in the environment and research unit that studies the changes in our climate and our oceans. Now is not the time to be ignoring calls for climate action, for the phasing out of fossil fuels and for a transition to clean energy. It couldn't be more serious. (Time expired)

What defines this Labor government more than anything else is its total and abject lack of ambition. Every policy is triangulated. Every so-called reform is watered down to the bare minimum. Every decision is designed to achieve one goal and one goal only: to keep Labor in power for as long as possible. There's no vision for the country. There's no appetite for real reform. There's no willingness to take on the top end of town, the vested interests, the big corporations that are making life so difficult for so many millions of everyday Australians.

Labor is such a small target that it is disappearing into nothingness, and Australians are responding, as we've seen in the Farrer by-election, by leaving the major parties in droves, because our political system is not responding to the great challenges of our time. Housing is unaffordable, whether you're a mortgagee or a renter. Grocery prices are soaring. Wages are stagnant in real terms. People are working harder and harder and falling further and further behind. Our tax system is rigged in favour of the one per cent and against working people.

But things are not tough for everyone in this country. The top one per cent are doing just fine. Big corporations are doing just fine. And Labor won't take them on, because those people, those corporations, are Labor's constituency. The point of politics, folks, is supposed to be improving people's lives, responding to the great challenges of our times, not acting in your own political self-interest. That is the lesson Labor needs to learn.

I rise to record the very remarkable life of Bill Grayden AM, who passed away in Perth on 28 April at the age of 105. Born in Bickley, Western Australia in 1920, Bill was determined to serve his country. When the Second World War broke out, he was rejected for being underage. Undeterred, he tried again the following year, changing his name and age to enlist in 1940 with the 2/16th Battalion, continuing a proud family tradition, as his father had served at Gallipoli. During the war Bill served in the Middle East and New Guinea, including along the Kokoda Track and at the Battle of Buna-Gona, and later in Borneo at the Balikpapan landings in 1945. He finished the war with the rank of captain and returned home in 1946.

In 1947, at age 27, he entered state politics as the member for Middle Swan, winning by just 51 votes. In 1949 he was elected the federal member for Swan as part of the Robert Menzies landslide before returning to state politics in 1956 as the member for South Perth. Over nearly four decades Bill served with distinction, including as a minister in the Court government, before retiring in 1993. Bill Grayden lived a remarkable life of service and was part of the greatest generation, who endured hardship and, through quiet determination and sacrifice, gave so much to the nation they loved. To Bill's family and to all those who survive him: my deepest condolences. May he rest in peace.

You can feel the panic from the Albanese Labor government as their green energy transition obsession starts to fall apart. Where is this planet coming from? There was a piece published this morning in a renewable advocacy newsletter under the headline, 'One Nation now represents two of Australia's best wind and solar regions, and they think it's a scam'. That's correct. One Nation has consistently said net zero is a scam, and we have said regional communities are being forced to carry the cost. We have said productive farmland should not be sacrificed for industrial-scale solar factories, wind projects and transmission corridors.

And here is the part Labor cannot bring itself to understand: One Nation was listening to the people of Farrer. They have not been duped. They have been decisive in rejecting the Albanese government's destructive net zero obsession, and maybe if you'd run a candidate you would have heard them. Farrer is not some theoretical line on a bureaucrat's map. It takes in the South West Renewable Energy Zone. It is affected by Project EnergyConnect and the proposed VNI West transmission corridor. According to the industry's own reporting, it contains more than 200 wind, solar and battery projects in various stages of development. That means that, in one of the most Labor renewable-saturated electorates in the country, One Nation's opposition to net zero was not a barrier; it was decisive in our success.

Across Australia, support for net zero looks a lot less impressive once the people who live next to it are asked to pay for it, host it and live beside it. Australians' land, communities and power bills should not be sacrificed for a target that keeps pushing the price of electricity up. Their lives get more expensive, government becomes more intrusive and the words they hear from government become less honest. Labor see regional Australia as a dumping ground for their climate ideology. One Nation sees farmers, families, small businesses and communities who deserve affordable, cheap energy and the right to say no to Labor's net zero obsession, which is what they did on the weekend.

WA's housing crisis is cooked. People are sleeping in their cars. Young people are locked out of homeownership. Meanwhile, property investors, billionaires and the big corporations are doing just fine. They benefit from a system of rules that makes the rich richer, and everybody else just has to struggle in this rigged system. People are sick of it. They are sick of having to struggle day to day to get by. We have a system in this moment that rewards the hoarding of wealth while ordinary people struggle to put a roof over their heads. It's disgusting.

Ahead of tonight's federal budget, we are going to hear a lot about NDIS cuts and a lot about how the government can't put dental care into Medicare because there just isn't enough to go around. But what's frustrating me is we are not hearing them talk about actually making the gas companies, those exporters that are making so much money, or the ultrawealthy one per cent pay their fair share. They will get off scot-free.

Why is this government making these choices? It really does make you think. Why would they fail in this moment to support people day to day while billionaires are seeing their wealth increase every single day by $600,000? Australians are sick of this system. We know that it is rigged. The budget is an opportunity to choose the 99 per cent, to put the 99 per cent first rather than the one per cent. It's an opportunity to finally tax wealth, not work. Will Labor take it? (Time expired)

By a small town on a beautiful river lies a cornerstone of Australian manufacturing, Liberty Bell Bay. It's the only manganese smelter in the country, run by a dedicated team in the clean, green state of Tasmania, and yet it is being strung along in the dark. The federal government and Tasmanian state government worked together to cover the workers' wages for three weeks, and I was really glad to see that. But three weeks isn't a promise. Three weeks gives no certainty. And that three weeks runs out this Friday. It may all be okay. A buyer could be announced or further funding procured—who knows? But what I do know, what we all know, is that these workers are being told nothing. They're waiting on a surprise announcement and living on a whisper of hope. Some of them don't even have that. Almost a fifth of the staff have already left. Liberty Bell Bay is being slowly gutted as the cracks deepen and repair becomes harder. If it cracks further and is left to crumble, we won't just lose a business; families will lose their incomes and livelihoods, Tasmania will lose a source of pride in our manufacturing sector and Australia will lose its only remaining manganese smelter, damaging the government's goal of a future made in Australia.

Liberty Bell Bay workers are asking for just 10 more weeks of wage cover to tide them over until a buyer is found. And $8 million is a no-brainer when choosing between losing a key piece of Australian manufacturing and saving it, its workers and the George Town community. The workers just want to go back to work. Let's help them do that next week, the week after that and well into the future. I stand with Liberty Bell Bay.

The result in Saturday's by-election in Farrer was not just a bad night for the Liberal Party; it was a catastrophic judgement on the Leader of the Opposition and a damning warning about where the conservative movement is heading. It's a seat the Liberal Party have held for most of its existence and yet one of their worst results we have seen anywhere in the country, probably only beaten by their terrible results in my home state of Western Australia in recent elections. It's sending the opposition leader a message that the Liberal Party is no better. But the most telling part is not just that they lost; it's how they lost—doing preference deals with One Nation and stealing their talking points. They're 'One Nation light', and it is an absolute disgrace. Our country deserves better than that.

We shall now move to question time.

I advise changes to ministerial arrangements. Senator Gallagher, as is usually the case for the budget, is absent from question time today due to—it says ministerial business, but it's the budget. In her absence, ministers will represent portfolios at question time in accordance with the letter circulated to the President, party leaders and Independent senators.

by leave—Before we proceed to questions, I wish to acknowledge, on behalf of the government, a tragic loss for the Australian Defence Force and for our nation. Warrant Officer Lachlan Muddle died in a parachuting accident at the ADF's parachute school at Jervis Bay. Warrant Officer Muddle was involved in a midair collision with another parachutist during an advanced training exercise. The second parachutist has received treatment for minor injuries.

Warrant Officer Muddle was an experienced soldier and an experienced parachutist. He joined the Army in 1994 and later served with the SAS. Over the course of his distinguished career, he deployed on five separate occasions, including to Afghanistan. He was a highly skilled special-forces operator, an expert sniper and a leader remembered for his humour and commitment to service. As a result of this tragic accident, there will now be a series of investigations, both within the Defence Force and more broadly, and, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, we are committed to those being as thorough as possible so that every necessary lesson is learnt.

I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say those who serve our country put their lives on the line for all of us, and we think of those risks often in the context of deployment and combat, but Defence Force training is dangerous and demanding. Warrant Officer Muddle's service and sacrifice for Australia will not be forgotten. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones and the wider defence community, who will feel this loss deeply. We honour all those who serve us and continue to serve to keep Australians safe. I am sure all senators would join me in extending our deepest condolences.

by leave—I rise, on behalf of the opposition, to associate us with the statement made by the Leader of the Government in the Senate for Warrant Officer Lachlan Muddle. Our ADF personnel accept that there are risks in their line of service, but none of them should die in circumstances like this. We express our heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the warrant officer, who served our country with distinction for decades in uniform.

We of course offer our bipartisan support for all the appropriate investigations and processes that now need to be undertaken to understand how this accident occurred and to ensure that, in the future, ADF personnel and their families do not have to suffer the loss that Warrant Officer Muddle's family are now experiencing today.

We will now move to question time.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Last year the Prime Minister stood before the Australian people and declared:

The only tax policy we're implementing is the one we took to the election.

Now Labor's leaked cheat sheet for broken promises says the government needs to use 'every lever' it can on housing. Minister, is 'every lever' in Labor's leaked cheat sheet for tonight's broken promises just Labor code for breaking election promises and slugging Australians with higher taxes?

Senator—through you, President—the budget will be delivered tonight, and I'm sure you will have plenty of opportunity to consider the excellent budget that the Treasurer has prepared, a budget which is about resilience and reform, a budget which is built—

How many broken promises?

Senator Cash! Senator Wong, did you wish to continue?

Senator McKenzie, I've just called the Senate to order.

If it sounds focus grouped, it is focus grouped.

Senator Canavan!

Senator Watt! Senators, we have barely started question time, and I've had to stand up to regain order. I've called the Senate to order; that is what I expect, not having to call out senators like it's the school roll. Minister Wong, please continue.

Our budget will be true to Australian values: fairness, aspiration, opportunity for all and an economy that works for people, not the other way around—an economy that is more resilient and more self-reliant and an economy in which young Australians can get a fair crack at a good job and a good home for themselves. I've made this point about those opposite. I know that those opposite never believed that it was the job of government to try and ensure there was more housing supply. I am sure those opposite never believed that it was the job of government to make sure there was more fuel security in Australia. I am sure those opposite never believed that fair wages and conditions were actually part of government's job. But, you see, Labor governments believe in these things. We believe in decent wages and conditions. We believe Australians should get the opportunity to get a good job and to own a house. We think governments have a role in ensuring an economy and a community in which young people have that opportunity. In the aftermath of the Farrer by-election—

That you didn't run for. Where were you?

we again see it demonstrated that those opposite clearly have no vision for the country other than teaming up with Senator Pauline Hanson. That is the sum total of your vision for this country.

Cooee!

Order! I'm not sure who it was.

Senator McKenzie, I didn't hear what you said. You are to simply withdraw it, not make a statement.

I withdraw saying 'cooee'.

Senator Sterle, you will also withdraw.

Most certainly, President. I withdraw.

I would now ask that the chamber come to order. We just had the first question, and the place is like a football field. Senator Cash, first supplementary?

Before the last election, the Prime Minister looked the Australian people in the eye and made them a promise: changes to negative gearing were 'off the table'—not under review or being considered but 'off the table'. That wasn't a suggestion. That was not a 'maybe'. It was a contract with the Australian people, and every home owner, investor, and family planning their future took him at his word. So why is Labor's own leaked cheat sheet for broken promises already rehearsing the excuses for the breaking of the promise tonight?

As I said in my earlier answer, the budgets are ultimately about priorities and values. One of our values, one of our beliefs, is that young people should get a fair go. Young people should get a fair go. I know those opposite—led by various leaders', and certainly by Senator Bragg's, views on housing—have consistently opposed everything this government has done on housing supply since we were elected. You have consistently opposed it because you don't actually believe that government has a role in ensuring that the next generation of Australians have access to the same opportunities that all of you have had access to. Our generation had the opportunity to own our own homes. We actually think that should be the legacy to pass down to every generation of Australians. This is a government who actually wants to do something about it. For four years, you have consistently broken your position on— (Time expired)

Senator Cash, second supplementary?

How many promises that the Prime Minister took to the last election will be broken tonight?

This government will always be true to Labor values and to Australian values. That's what this government will do. That's what this budget will do, and that's what this prime minister will do. If I may say, for the party that got 12 per cent in the Farrer by-election, I think you better have a think about whether or not—I know that standing for something might be an alien concept to those opposite. I know standing up for your values might be an alien concept—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order! I think I had to try and shout louder than all of you, which is quite an achievement, at least four times. I've asked you to come to order. That is what I expect.

I know that it may be alien to those opposite to actually have values that you stand by and you implement through policy, because we've seen so little of that in the opposition over there, who are still—

We ran. Where were you?

I will take the deputy leader's interjection. The senator who wants to be part of a coalition with One Nation—

Minister Wong, resume your seat.

Senator Canavan, if you care to look up, you will see your leader is on her feet. Senator Cash?

It's on direct relevance. The question was merely asking for a numerical response: how many promises will be broken tonight—one, five, 10, 20 or all of them?

Thank you, Senator Cash. The minister is being relevant.

And how many voters have walked away from you? That would be the question. How many voters? Senator Hume was a prime example with that extraordinary performance on the 7.30 program, which all of you know was a train wreck, where she left open a coalition with One Nation. What sort of deputy— (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer and Minister for Finance, Senator Wong. The conflict in the Middle East is disrupting global oil supplies and contributing to higher inflation, slower growth and economic uncertainty. While we'll have to wait until tonight for the budget detail, the Treasurer has talked about a budget focused on fuel security, the cost of living and housing, productivity, tax reform and a substantial savings package. Can the minister outline why the priorities of the Albanese Labor government are to strengthen fuel security, ease pressure and build a stronger, fairer and more productive economy?

I thank Senator Whiteaker for her question—and thank you for struggling on despite having a bit of a cold. I know that Senator Whiteaker is here because she cares deeply about what happens not only in this budget but for the generation that she represents, and that is something the government is very focused on.

Tonight's budget will be an ambitious budget. It will be a responsible budget. It's a budget focused on resilience, reform and a plan to help Australians through the worst of the global economic uncertainty and to come out even stronger. We are a government that want aspiration and opportunity for more people in this country.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Unlike you, we understand that the status quo in the housing market and the tax system is not working for many Australians. We understand that the conflict in the Middle East is making it harder; people are seeing this at the petrol pump, and business is seeing it in higher costs. Farmers, transport operators and regional communities know how important secure and reliable fuel supply is to the whole economy. That's why the major packages in tonight's budget will be on fuel security, the cost of living and housing, productivity, tax reform and savings. It will include additional investment in our fuel security and resilience, including stronger reserves and supports to strengthen our fuel security and our fertiliser supply. We will continue to strengthen Medicare.

But you've got a list of broken promises!

You should listen about Medicare, Senator Henderson, because, as I recall, it's something that you were not hugely supportive of. We support Medicare. There will be commitments to strengthen Medicare in tonight's budget. I know you don't like it, Senator Henderson. New drugs on the PBS—I know you don't like it. An additional $25 billion for public hospitals—I know you don't like it. You don't like any of it, do you? You don't like investment— (Time expired)

Senator Henderson, I called you twice during the time the minister was answering. Please listen respectfully in silence or leave the chamber. Senator Whiteaker, first supplementary?

The Prime Minister, Treasurer and Minister for Finance have all been clear that tonight's budget will be responsible and sustainable and that the budget bottom line will be stronger because of the government's decisions. Can the minister outline how responsible budgeting—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator Whiteaker, I'm very sorry. Senator Whiteaker has the right to ask her question in silence.

The comedy festival's next month!

After requesting silence, Senator McKenzie, you always have to have the last word. I invite you to listen in silence or leave the chamber.

Can the minister outline how responsible budgeting is helping fund the services Australians rely on while strengthening the budget?

Thank you, Senator Whiteaker. Australians will see that under this government debt is lower, deficits are small and the budget bottom line is stronger. The bottom line will be $44.9 billion stronger than forecast at MYEFO, more than a quarter of a trillion dollars better off than what we inherited in 2022 from those opposite. The senator speaks about why it is we need a stronger budget, and it is, of course, to secure our future and to be able to fund the services Australians rely on today and beyond.

As I was saying before, this budget will also ensure we see strengthened Medicare, new drugs on the PBS, an additional $25 billion in funding for public hospitals and $3 billion for better aged care as well as additional funding to deliver a further defence capability. So it is a budget that is about making sure we are stronger today and, as importantly, strong in the future.

Senator Whiteaker, second supplementary.

Tonight's budget will be a responsible Labor budget which delivers relief, reform and stronger fuel security in a period of global uncertainty. Why are these priorities so important, and how do they deliver for the Australian people?

This is a budget with aspiration and fairness at its core, a budget which focuses on helping with the cost of living and a budget which recognises that we have a responsibility to strengthen Australia's resilience for these times. We can do this whilst placing a premium on responsible savings, on reprioritisation and on restraint. The budget will include a larger-than-usual gross savings figure, with $64 billion in savings and reprioritisations. These savings are helping to pay down the trillion dollars of Liberal debt the government has inherited. Let's remind those—I know Senator Henderson is very chatty today in an attempt to try to perhaps distract attention from the dreadful result that they had on Saturday. She might be interested in knowing that your last budget in government did not include a single expenditure savings measure. Of course, the reality is that what we know is those opposite— (Time expired)

My question is for the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Last week Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock stated, 'The extent to which government makes up the shortfalls for households by giving them more money makes it harder to dampen demand.' Now Labor's leaked cheat sheet for broken promises says the government wants to use every lever it can. Minister, why is government using every lever to make the Reserve Bank governor's job harder with reckless spending and increased taxes?

We will do all we can to support Australians with the cost of living. I know you, your party and the other party that's part of the coalition—that is the Liberal Party at this stage—

An honourable senator interjecting

'currently' part of the coalition—thank you for the interjection.

We've got the broken promises right here.

Yes, I'll take that interjection from Senator Cash as well. Those opposite are opposed to cost-of-living measures. We on this side listen to the Australians who we engage with, talk to and work with, and we know that families are doing it tough. So, Senator, if you have an issue with a government making sure that we address cost-of-living pressures for Australian families, I suggest you go and talk to voters because—let me tell you—I think most Australians recognise that things are difficult, that cost-of-living pressures are hard and that the government have a responsibility to do all that we can responsibly to ensure that we deal with cost-of-living pressures that families are facing.

We have a difference of political view, a difference of philosophy. We think that we should ensure that the cost of living is front and centre in our budget. We will do that responsibly.

On a point of order of direct relevance, Madam President, I was asking the minister to respond to the Reserve Bank governor's—

Thank you, Senator McKenzie. I've asked you before to simply make your point about a point of order without giving a statement. The minister is being relevant, and I would suggest that, if you want relevancy, you ask all of the senators around you to listen in silence, because, as you know, the minister is entitled to take interjections, be they yours or someone else's.

I make this point: (1) we make no apology for dealing with the cost of living as best as we are able, and (2), as I have already outlined and as the Treasurer will outline in much more detail tonight, this is a responsible budget, a budget which contains many more savings than were ever demonstrated by you in government.

 It's stolen wealth. It's all stolen.

Senator Thorpe, come to order! Minister Wong, did you wish to continue? Okay. Senator McKenzie, first supplementary?

Last week, the Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, stated:

… it doesn't take much additional spending to make the job of returning inflation to target more challenging.

Why is this government spending at a 40-year high, outside of a recession, while preparing even more interventions that risk keeping inflation and therefore interest rates higher for longer?

Senator, I again say to you that we will make responsible decisions in this budget. It's a budget framed by difficult global circumstances, and we know that the inflation challenge that is being driven by what is occurring in the Middle East and its impact on global energy markets and, consequently, on supply chains is substantial. We understand that. So what you will have—

Senator McKenzie?

On direct relevance and the Reserve Bank governor's comments.

Thank you, Senator McKenzie. The minister is being relevant.

That interjection just demonstrates the lack of any understanding on that side about the circumstances that the government and the country face. My discussion about how inflation is being driven by the global circumstances—this shadow minister pretends that's not relevant! How do you even deal with something when you are in denial about what is driving it? It's a bit like what is happening on your party's side. You are in denial about the fact that voters have walked away from you in droves, and you refuse to look in the mirror— (Time expired)

Senator McKenzie, second supplementary?

Let's see if we can get the minister to respond to the Reserve Bank governor's concerns. Minister, last week, the Reserve Bank governor stated:

Fiscal policy has many more things that it can do. But it has to be careful… It can't… just go out there and just add to demand.

Why is your government ignoring that warning and using every lever to add more pressure to our economy?

The senator refers to the RBA governor. This is what the RBA governor said in March:

…if you look at what's happened to interest rate expectations for those other central banks, they're on holds. They were cuts.

She went on to say:

… the whole Middle Eastern situation has resulted in obviously concerns about inflation and as a result a lift in expectations for central bank interest rates.

Senator McKenzie, on a point of order?

On direct relevance, that is a March comment. There have been two interest rates increases since then.

Senator McKenzie, resume your seat. You are not in a debate with the minister, and when I call you to order I expect you to sit down.

Senator Watt, come to order. Minister Wong, please continue.

I am simply trying to explain to you that it is entirely relevant to talk about the Middle East and its consequence for inflation in our country and in the global economy. That is entirely relevant. I know you might not think it is relevant but that is what we are seized of. We understand what is driving the inflation challenge. We understand the need to be responsible in our budget—and we have been, and we will be. We understand the need to responsibly provide cost-of-living support and assistance to Australians, and this budget will. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Senator McAllister. Your government is expected to remove billions of dollars from the NDIS tonight. This is huge. It is reported that 160,000 disabled people will be removed from the scheme, more will be blocked from getting on in the first place, and it is also reported to be the biggest budget cut from a single policy decision in over a century. The disability community is deeply anxious about these changes and the lack of transparency surrounding them. Can you tell the Senate today which cohorts of disabled people will make up the 160,000 people that your government intends to remove from the NDIS?

I thank Senator Steele-John for his question. It is correct to say that this is a significant change, it is an important one, and it is a change we recognise is of significance to the disability community. It is why I have spent some time since the announcement was made speaking with representatives of that community and why the minister, Mr Butler, made clear in his remarks to the National Press Club that our intention is to proceed in consultation, in deep engagement, with the disability community about the policy changes that were foreshadowed in that speech.

The reason why this issue is so consequential is because the NDIS is one of Australia's great human rights achievements, and that achievement belongs to all of us but it particularly belongs to the disability movement that campaigned for this scheme. It is a big part of Australia's social policy legacy, it is one that Labor is proud of, and it needs to be sustainable. These things are not intentioned, but the scheme is still growing too fast. The scheme costs much more than was ever anticipated, and it is distorting other parts of the care economy.

Minister, please resume your seat. Senator Steele-John, on a point of order?

It is on relevance. I would ask the minister please to answer the substantive question: Which cohorts of disabled people will be removed from the scheme? Which cohort within the 160,000 people do you intend to remove?

Senator Steele-John, you don't need to repeat the question—there was a lot in that question—and the minister is being relevant. Minister McAllister, please continue.

The scheme is growing too fast, it is distorting other parts of the care economy, there is too much fraud, and many aspects of the way the scheme is designed make it difficult to get this under control. It is on that basis we have announced reforms that we intend to progress with the disability community.

Amongst those other changes to eligibility that your question refers to, the NDIS review found the approach to accessing this scheme is inconsistent and inequitable. The change that we propose focuses on a fairer and more consistent access decision to return the scheme to its original intent. (Time expired)

Senator Steele-John, a first supplementary?

On Sunrise last week, you claimed that eight per cent of NDIS funding is being lost to fraud. However, at the Senate enquiry into the NDIS fraud dynamic, the agency claimed, and indeed confirmed, that the eight per cent figure isn't just provider fraud; it includes accidental errors. Why are you fear mongering and presenting inaccurate figures to the public about provider fraud in the NDIS?

I think it's been important to be upfront with the community about the scale of fraud and of leakage in the system. This has been the subject of many discussions during estimates. The point I'll also make is that, for the most part, the providers that work in the NDIS get up every day and try and do the right thing, and they are mortified by the presence of providers who are doing the wrong thing. Where we see fraud, we very, very commonly see examples of harm and exploitation of people with disability. That is not consistent with the human rights objectives of the scheme, it is not consistent with the intentions of the scheme and it's certainly incompatible with delivering for the community that the scheme is designed to assist. We're determined to stamp it out.

I should say, as I think I've made clear in a number of media interviews, these measures around fraud are not primarily designed at sustainability and, for a range of reasons, there are other measures— (Time expired)

Senator Steele-John, second supplementary?

Minister, budgets are about choices. Your government is choosing to cut an estimated $35 billion from the NDIS. Why is your government choosing to cut support for disabled people and our families instead of making billionaires and multinational gas corporations pay more tax?

This scheme needs to be sustainable. I want this scheme to be here in a decade's time and two decades time. In 10 years time, there will be a little boy or a little girl born with a significant impairment and disability, and I want that child and their family to know that this scheme will be there for them. Minister Butler has made clear publicly that the measures we are bringing forward are measures we would have brought forward in any case, irrespective of the budget context, to return this scheme to its original intent, which is to provide support to people with significant and permanent disability and to ensure that, for those people for whom this scheme is not going to be their primary means of getting support, there are other supports. We have worked with the states and territories on Thriving Kids and we will continue to work with them on foundational supports with the $10 billion provisioned in— (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Ayres. Global energy markets and supply chains have been disrupted by the war in the Middle East. In response, a key focus for the Albanese Labor government has been strengthening Australia's energy sovereignty and protecting our energy interests. Minister, what is the government doing to secure Australia's fuel and supply chains?

Thanks, Senator Ghosh, for that question. One of the most important responsibilities for any Australian government is securing Australia's energy sovereignty. That's why the Albanese Labor government announced $10 billion for Australia's near-term fuel and fertiliser security. That includes a $7.5 billion fuel and fertiliser security facility that gives Export Finance Australia the power to derisk additional shipments of fuel and fertiliser that are otherwise too risky to order without firm contracts. EFA loans, equity, guarantees, insurance and price support are delivering more fuel and more fertiliser for Australians and Australian supply chains just when we need it. It has kept the domestic market for fuels and fertilisers well supplied and flexible.

There's no complacency from this government, with action to make sure that we're securing the near-term fuel and fertiliser supplies for Australians. That's why we announced the $3.2 billion Australian fuel security reserve—around a billion litres for long-term diesel and aviation fuel security focused on regional stockout and essential users in the event of a future energy supply crisis. That's why we've announced an increase to the minimum stockholding obligation, to increase Australia's critical fuel reserves to 50 days. National energy sovereignty is in the first round of the Albanese government's priorities, and that's why we've acted decisively to secure that for Australia.

Senator Ghosh, first supplementary.

The Albanese government's work strengthening Australia's energy sovereignty also extends to the gas market. Last week the government announced that LNG exporters will be required to reserve production equivalent to 20 per cent of their exports for the domestic market from 1 July 2027. Minister, how will the gas reservation benefit Australian households and businesses while also protecting Australia's reputation as a reliable energy partner?

I thank Senator Ghosh for that question. This is a landmark Labor reform, delivering cheaper gas for Australians and shielding the economy from global shocks. It gives our manufacturers and industry the confidence they need to invest in industrial capability, and it respects export contracts with our trading partners, preserving the trading relationships that are essential for our fuel security. This is the key to Australia's energy sovereignty. Look at what the similar Western Australian gas reservation has delivered: more gas at lower prices, higher manufacturing investment, and good blue-collar jobs in Perth's outer regions and the industrial suburbs. That is what our reservation strategy will deliver for Australia and Australians.

Senator Ghosh, second supplementary.

The Albanese Labor government is protecting Australia's energy interests because it is vital for our national resilience. What are the economic and social risks if Australia does not strengthen its energy sovereignty?

Thank you, Senator Ghosh. We've seen the risks from not securing Australian energy sovereignty, because that was the position Australia was left in when those opposite left office: a decrepit, broken-down, clapped-out electricity system—four gigawatts out, only one gigawatt in—over the tawdry decade that they mismanaged the nation's energy system; our fuel reserves in Texas—Texas in the United States, not Texas, Queensland; four out of six petrol refineries closing on their watch, maladministered by the man who claims to lead the modern Liberal Party; and their crowning failure, the price of gas at almost $32 a gigajoule when they left office. That was their record in terms of energy security. It could not have been worse, and the problem for them is that Australians remember.

I advise the chamber that Senator Lambie has given her question to Senator Thorpe.

My question is for the Minister representing the Attorney-General. Does your government accept that it is a federal responsibility to uphold international agreements that this country ratifies?

I thank Senator Thorpe for her question. The answer is: yes.

Senator Thorpe, first supplementary.

Well, last week a UN committee highlighted the horrific treatment of children in this country's prisons, which goes against our international commitments. Your government always handballs these matters to states and territories. Given that it's a federal responsibility to uphold international commitments, what are you doing to stop the racist jailing and torture of our children, Minister?

I thank Senator Thorpe for her first supplementary question. This obviously is not an area that I'm directly responsible for, but I shall raise this issue with the Attorney-General and come back—

You never get back to me on any other matter.

Senator Thorpe, come to order.

So don't talk—

Senator Thorpe!

When it comes to—

Senator Thorpe, I've called you to order.

He never gets back to me.

Senator Thorpe, come to order! You're not in a debate with me!

Be honest!

Senator Thorpe! I will call that you no longer be heard. Minister, had you finished your answer, or do you wish to continue?

Yes, I will continue. I reject your suggestion that I don't get back to you, Senator Thorpe. On every occasion that you make a request to me, I respond.

You do not. You're a liar. He's lying; I can prove it.

Senator Thorpe, withdraw that comment.

I'll withdraw.

Senator Thorpe, you stand and you withdraw.

Oh, this colony is so painful.

Senator Thorpe!

I withdraw, President.

Thank you. Minister Farrell, please continue.

I've undertaken to raise the issue with the Attorney-General, but the government continues to be concerned about the number of First Nations adults and juveniles in custody across the country, and this government is committed to reducing First Nations incarceration rates. We're focused on community led solutions that work at the local level. The— (Time expired)

Senator Thorpe, second supplementary?

Why do we bother signing international agreements if the government is not willing to do anything to implement these commitments? Does your government just like the photo ops and the overseas holidays or just building more children's prisons?

I thank Senator Thorpe for her second supplementary question—none of those, Senator Thorpe. Can I outline some of the things that the Australian government is doing—and, of course, the Attorney-General is very much responsible for this. Firstly, delivering record funding for justice reinvestment, with 69—

It's not working—not working.

With due respect, Senator Thorpe—

It's been corrupted.

Senator Thorpe!

I listened to you in silence while you asked the question; I just ask for the same respect while I'm answering the question. We've delivered record funding for justice reinvestment, with $69 million to support initiatives nationally. We've invested $3.9 billion through the National Access to Justice Partnership towards vital community legal assistance, including $800 million for the legal assistance sector for frontline legal assistance for First Nations people. (Time expired)

Tough act to follow!

I'll see what I can do, Matt. My question is to the Minister for Industry and Innovation and the Minister for Science, Minister Ayres. Minister, the Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia is warning that AI driven job losses are likely to exceed 600,000 Australians. Assistant Minister Leigh said in a recent opinion piece that any gains in productivity may be captured by tech companies and will not necessarily reduce inequality. What modelling has the government commissioned of AI's fiscal and labour market impacts, and when will it be made public?

Thanks, Senator Pocock. In terms of the labour market impact, I think there is a report from Jobs and Skills Australia that goes, in fact, squarely to those issues. I don't have it at hand, but it's been publicly released and has been the subject of discussion with all of the stakeholders in the labour market, the business community, trade unions and the tech sector itself—principally, the Australian tech sector. You'll have seen that, in addition to the National AI Plan that was released at the end of the year—that is about making sure that we capture the opportunities of this technology in Australia, that we spread the benefits through our suburbs and regions, not just our CBDs and inner cities, and that we keep Australia safe—we announced our data centre expectations earlier this year. That has been matched with a series of commitments from some data centre proponents that go, in particular, to energy additionality, and I'm very pleased with the progress that Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, is making with his state counterparts on those questions to make sure that new development in this area is driving additional electricity generation and transmission to drive costs down for Australians, rather than what we're seeing in some of the other jurisdictions around the world, where it's putting pressure on energy and water systems.

So we are focused on the interests of Australians here and on making sure that this works for Australia. (Time expired)

Senator Pocock, first supplementary?

The government recently signed a $25 billion MOU with Microsoft. On the most recent ATO figures, Microsoft pays two per cent tax on Australian revenue. Can the government commit to taxing tech companies to allow the government to address the risk of mass unemployment, or are we likely to see Australian workers bear the cost while foreign tech firms bank the upside?

Indeed, there's a series of memorandums of understanding with Anthropic and Microsoft that go to the issues that I referred to in my first answer, which is making sure that, in energy terms, in terms of water security, operationalised through the states, through their development approval processes, we are delivering an approach where, yes, we secure much of the technology stack here in Australia to make sure that Australia has agency and capacity here, that we have sovereign artificial intelligence capacity and that we are not just customers at the end of other people's supply chains. That is the objective, and the counterfactual is that the government doesn't engage and that investment happens somewhere else and that Australia goes backwards in technological terms. (Time expired)

Senator Pocock, second supplementary?

Minister, my concern is that having some data centres will be cold comfort to 600,000 Australians who no longer have a job. So I'm interested in whether Treasury has done the work of actually modelling the projected reduction in income tax from the impacts of artificial intelligence, and if not, why not?

That is the first time I've heard a figure like that, Senator Pocock. I don't know where on earth you've got that figure from. What I would say about technological change and Australia's position as a middle power, in strategic terms and in economic terms, is that it is in Australia's interest and in the interest of Australian workers that we make sure that we secure the best position for Australia, where adoption of this technology will determine, in many cases, our future competitiveness. It will determine the future quality of our jobs. It will determine the capacity of Australians to grab hold of opportunity, and it is our job, as a government, to make sure not just that we capture that opportunity for Australians but that we spread it right throughout the whole economy. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer: I asked in November whether the Labor government had done any modelling on the default rates for young people accessing the five per cent deposit scheme in the event of two rate rises. I didn't get an answer to that question. Here we are, after three rate rises, with the markets telling us that there's more to come. What is the total contingent liability for home loan defaults under the five per cent scheme?

I thank Senator Whitten for the question. I assume that some of those figures, in terms of any contingent liabilities, will be updated in the budget in the usual way. But, if I can get any further information to you after tonight's budget, I'm happy to do that. If you are concerned about young people owning their own houses, I would remind you that your party did not support the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill and, in fact, voted with the Liberals against the Help to Buy Bill in 2023. I make the point that, if One Nation does say to young Australians, 'We do care about you owning your own home,' your voting record does not demonstrate that.

Senator Whitten, first supplementary?

Labor have told us that they will be abolishing negative gearing on existing homes. This is not the first time this has happened. Bob Hawke abolished negative gearing in 1985, only to bring it back two years later. Why? Because it killed investment in rental properties and caused rental prices to spike. You're always yelling that we don't support your housing policies. It's because they're rubbish. Why is the government introducing policies that will kill rental supply while we are in a rental crisis?

I think if you go and talk to a lot of young Australians the fact that the government is trying to ensure that more housing supply comes on to the market is something that they understand the merit of. I understand that One Nation is effectively part of the anti-Labor coalition. You've demonstrated your willingness to not be independent but basically to vote with the Liberals and the National Party. That's the political—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order across the chamber! Minister, had you finished?

No.

Please continue.

The fact is that we believe that the Australian aspiration to own your own home is important. We believe that aspiration is the right of younger generations of Australians. We make no apology for putting in place policies— (Time expired)

Senator Whitten, second supplementary?

The government has made a complete mess of housing. Young people have taken out loans they can't afford. This government's spending is driving up inflation and interest rates. You are fuelling demand with mass immigration, and now you're killing housing supply with massive tax increases. We cannot support these measures, because they won't deliver affordable housing to Australians. When will Labor face the music and actually address this housing crisis by cutting mass immigration?

It says something that you are already declaring One Nation's opposition to measures you haven't seen. Really, that says everything we need to know about One Nation's position. In every way that matters, One Nation and the Liberals are already in coalition. You're lining up, and have lined up consistently since we were elected, to oppose all aspects of the policies the government have sought to put in place to ensure that more Australians have access to a home. You can dress it up any way you like, but those are the facts. You have been opposed to everything that we have put in place to try and deliver more homes for more Australians, and you have just indicated you'll continue to do that.

My question is to the Minister for the NDIS, Senator McAllister. Labor created the NDIS and it's a big part of Labor's social policy legacy. We want to make sure it's sustainable for future generations. Why is the Albanese Labor government taking the necessary steps to reform the NDIS, and how will it contribute to a responsible budget that sets Australia up for the future?

Thank you, Senator Cox. We are taking action to return the NDIS to its original purpose. We're doing this because it is a life-changing piece of policy. It is an enormous human rights achievement. It provides people with disability with genuine choice and control over their own lives. It is not just worth saving; we must save it. Right now, it costs more than anticipated, it is growing too fast and there is too much fraud. The fundamental barrier we face is the design of the scheme itself. There are structural flaws that mean that measures that we have introduced to control spending are not working as intended. The scheme actuary has recently advised the government that spending has blown out by $13 billion over the next four years. This would mean that it would not achieve the eight per cent growth target until the end of the decade instead of this year. Decisions in the courts and the Administrative Review Tribunal have also restricted the NDIA's ability to implement reforms to ensure that the NDIS operates in the way that it was meant to.

So we are going to secure the future of the NDIS by fighting fraud and stopping rorts, by slowing rapid cost increases, by instituting clearer eligibility requirements and by delivering quality services and supports to participants. Under this plan, the NDIS will continue to grow every year. But, instead of costing the budget $70 billion in 2030, taxpayers will spend $55 billion. Over the forward estimates, spending will grow at two per cent on average before returning to five per cent growth from 2030-31. It will still be the largest social program in Australia outside of the age pension, the most comprehensive suite of supports for people with disability anywhere in the world. That is something worth saving. (Time expired)

Senator Cox, first supplementary?

Minister, what steps is the Albanese Labor government taking to implement these reforms which will restore the NDIS to its original intent and to ensure it supports people with permanent and significant disability now and into the future?

We are going to bring forward new laws that will put an end to the cost blowouts and plan inflation that are leading to unsustainable spending growth. We will reset the total cost of social and community participation, because, right now, just that aspect of the scheme alone is costing $12 billion a year and that is equivalent to the amount that we are presently spending on the PBS nationally. We will set up an inclusive community fund so people have new options to genuinely participate in their local community. We'll reduce spending on intermediaries, those who are clipping the ticket. We'll reduce by 30 per cent spending on commission plan managers. We'll introduce new measures to crack down on NDIS fraud, including a new digital payment system to see evidence from every single provider and ensure payments are paid directly. We'll be seeking passage of these immediate controls in the budget session and we'll be asking for support for this from across the parliament. (Time expired)

Senator Cox, second supplementary?

The Albanese Labor government's NDIS reforms are part of a broader commitment to responsible budget management. Why has the government chosen this approach?

We have chosen this approach because we saw the alternative on offer. What did that look like? It looked like 22 per cent growth per annum in the NDIS. No social program can be sustainable with that level of spending growth. We have reduced that now to 10 per cent per annum. The growth is now half of what it was under those opposite. But the ANAO said that the system those opposite set up lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and noncompliance. It lacked basic controls. To give you just one example, there are now more NDIS claims reviewed in a single day than were reviewed in a year under those opposite. This is about much more than budget savings; this is about the future of this scheme and the social licence of this scheme. We are determined to secure that future and that social licence so people with disability continue to get the support that they require.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Labor's leaked cheat sheet of broken promises admits the government has 'focused on housing supply' and now needs to use every lever to get Australians into houses and meet its target of 1.2 million new houses. Minister, how will new high taxes on houses build more houses and address Australia's national housing crisis?

You'll have to wait until the budget to get the detail of what the Treasurer will announce tonight, but what the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and members of the government have said very clearly is that this will be a budget that is true to Australia's values, and Labor's values, of fairness and aspiration as we go forward. You know, Senator, that you have opposed all of the housing supply measures that the government has brought in in the last term, although you might have shifted—no, that was the Greens that shifted. You also know that making sure we do all we can to enable the next generation of Australians to fulfil their—

Senator Bragg?

A point of order on relevance. The question was: 'How will more taxes make more houses?'

The minister is being relevant, and I'll continue to listen carefully. Minister Wong?

Senator, I again say to you that, as a matter of principle, this is a government that is focused on ensuring that the next generation of Australians are able to fulfil the aspiration that you and others have, which is to own your own home. I know you don't think governments have a role in that; we do, and the budget will reflect that imperative as well as other imperatives.

Well, I'm happy to take questions tomorrow. I'm sure you'll ask many questions tomorrow, Senators Cash and Bragg, on these issues and many other issues.

We won't get any answers no matter how many questions we ask.

I look forward to answering your questions about what a fantastic budget the Treasurer has delivered tonight. As I said, it will be a budget that is true to both aspiration and fairness.

Senator Bragg, first supplementary?

Your government has previously admitted that higher housing taxes will not deliver additional houses. If Labor's own leaked cheat sheet for broken promises says the focus must be on housing supply, isn't this housing tax just another cash grab from a desperate government addicted to more taxes?

The answer is no.

Senator Bragg, second supplementary?

Labor's own leaked cheat sheet for broken promises says that young Australians, their parents and their grandparents are all worried that they will never own their own home and that the answer is to lift housing supply. So why is Labor more than 200,000 houses short of its own housing supply target based on its own estimates while attacking the very investment needed to build more houses?

The fundamental difference is that you do not believe—and I think you've made it clear in this chamber—that federal government has a role in facilitating additional housing supply, end of story. You don't think government has a role in that. We on this side do because we want more Australians to have the opportunity to own their own home.

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water, Minister Watt. Last year, the government passed historic reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to better protect the environment and to improve productivity. A key part of that was speeding up approvals in areas of national priority like housing and renewable energy. Can the minister please explain how the government is supporting these law changes.

I thank Senator Darmanin, who I know is a strong supporter of those environmental laws that we passed last year despite the opposition of those opposite. For the past 25 years, Australia's environmental laws were broken. For the whole 10 years of the former coalition government, those laws were stifling approvals for key projects in areas of national priority. Importantly, they also weren't protecting the environment. We knew that major legislative change was required to deal with the substance of this issue. In November, last year we did just that. We did what the coalition couldn't do and passed a set of laws that got the balance right.

Our laws are designed to better protect the environment and unlock investment by speeding up approvals. Yesterday, we announced that new funding will be included in tonight's budget to put these laws to work. We will invest more than $500 million to streamline environmental approvals, unlocking more housing, more renewables and more minerals projects and helping proponents get a faster yes or a faster no. That's a win-win for our economy and our precious natural environment. It includes more than $250 million over two years, plus ongoing funding, to stand up and support the operation of Australia's first-ever national EPA and independent environmental regulator from 1 July. (Time expired)

Senator Darmanin, first supplementary?

Housing was also a big focus of last year's economic roundtable and clearly remains a big focus of government to this day. During the roundtable, it was announced that a new strike team would be established to clear the backlog of housing approvals in the system and to fast-track new assessments. Can the minister update the Senate on the progress the strike team has made since the roundtable?

I know Senator Wong is a very big supporter of the housing strike team, and that is paving the way for the development of thousands of new homes for Australian families. Since being announced in late August last year, the strike team has ticked off more than 20,000 homes under national environmental law. In total, that team has given the green light to 28 projects for housing across the country, including 17 metropolitan developments and 11 regional developments. We're on track to deliver on our goal of assessing 26,000 new homes by July this year.

The only strike team that we know exists on the other side of this chamber, though, is the one aimed at each other after the catastrophic result for the coalition in the Farrer by-election. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, housing spokesman Senator Andrew Bragg said the Liberal Party 'deserved to be' in its position because it had done 'no serious policy work for about a decade', and he suggested that Tony Abbott's likely installation as party president would hurt the coalition with younger voters. There are a lot more quotes to go, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow for a few more of them to come out.

Senator Darmanin, second supplementary?

The changes to the EPBC Act, including the speeding up of assessments and approvals, is certainly of particular interest to both the business sector and environmental groups. Can the minister provide an update on the level of support for the law changes since they were passed?

It would be my pleasure, Senator Darmanin. Yesterday's announcement of the new funding for faster approvals was welcomed by everyone, from the housing institute of Australia to the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation—but not a peep from the coalition or its shadow housing and environment spokesperson, Senator Bragg. That's probably because he's still trying to work out whether he supports a coalition with One Nation or not. But he isn't without ideas, even ones from 30 years ago. Not content with losing the last election and suffering a humiliating loss in the Farrer by-election, Senator Bragg wants to reheat the Liberals' losing Fightback! document from the early 1990s. That was the one that wanted to cut Medicare and cut social services but didn't know if it wanted to cut up a cake or not. Last week, on Radio National, Senator Bragg said:

… I think we need to have a document that looks in some way like Fightback! did …

The interviewer, Sally Sara, said:

You were talking about Fightback! briefly, is that a document that you think still has some value?

Senator Bragg said:

Well I mean something like that is going to be needed because otherwise what's the point?

So the only ideas he's got are from 30 years ago. They lost then, and they will lose again.

I ask that further questions be placed on notice.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Wasn't it very interesting today, hearing from the Labor government about exactly what we're going to see tonight? And it wasn't us; it was them, with their talking points that were leaked today. Broken promises are what you're going to hear tonight in this budget. Higher taxes are what you're going to hear about tonight in this budget. They will tell you that they are there to help struggling families, but all they're going to do is cover up their lies.

Let's just talk through a few of these little talking points that they've prepared about the broken promises—the excuses, ladies and gentlemen. They said, 'We have focused on housing supply, but it has become increasingly clear that we need to use every lever we can to get Australians into homes, to meet our 1.2 million new homes target.' Well, we know they are 200,000 homes below their target, and we know they're going to introduce a housing tax tonight. So you tell me how they plan to increase supply, when they're just going to put more taxes on our houses.

We also heard today from the government that debt is lower under the Labor government, while we are at $1 trillion and are only heading up, by $50,000 every minute. They talk about intergenerational equity, but $50,000 every minute, and guess who pays that bill: Australians, and our children. They don't care about that. This is a desperate government that is addicted to spending. And when they run out of money they come after yours, and you will see that tonight, but they will cover it up. We asked today: how will this government use higher taxes to increase supply? They've lost control of the borders. They've lost control of immigration. They've lost control of the budget. Yet their answer, for all those hundreds of thousands of people moving to Australia, is to put a housing tax on.

Last year the Prime Minister stood before the Australian people and said, 'The only tax policy we are implementing is the one we took to the election.' Now we are hearing, as I said, in the talking points today that they've shared around with their colleagues that they will use every lever. And they will be slugging Australians with higher taxes. We heard from the Treasurer that this will do nothing for supply. But they have broken the contract with the Australian people. They said changes to negative gearing were off the table. They broke that contract. The Prime Minister said, 'I rule out any changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.' He broke that contract with the Australian people.

How do you think the RBA—Governor Michele Bullock—is going to feel about the budget handed down tonight? Her job will be significantly harder. She has said that giving households more money makes it harder to dampen demand. That means that more money for households handed out through the budget is going to push up inflation. Now, we heard from government today that the— (Time expired)

This is a government that is committed to looking after our future generations. That has been evident in the work we have been doing so far. The opposition loves a good old scare campaign before they've even seen the facts. The opposition has been consistent in opposing our housing measures, but now they're all concerned about housing. Will the Real Slim Shady please stand up!

The budget will be unveiled tonight, and details will come in due course. This will be a big reform budget. This will be a responsible budget. But we need to acknowledge the impact that the situation in the Middle East has had on our nation. We need to continue to help Australians with the cost of living. That is why we are looking at all levers available. That is the responsibility of our government. We have always been up-front that we are looking into ways to make our tax system fairer and simpler and to ensure that it works in the interests of all Australians, businesses and future generations. This is a budget that will look after workers, first home buyers and small businesses. Responsibility is at the core of this budget. It's about making our economy more productive. That's why our budget will include $63.8 billion in savings and reprioritisation. That will bring it to a total of $177.9 billion since we were elected in 2022.

Our government is committed to doing the hard things, to making tough calls, to doing what is right and looking after our future generations. That starts with housing. For too long, it has been hard for young people to break into the housing market and get their foot in the door. That is why we are looking at all levers available. This budget will restore ambition for all Australians, and especially for younger people, in the area of home ownership. For too long, young people have been locked out of the housing market. This budget is about tackling this. Getting first home buyers into homes is enabled by making our tax system fairer. For too long this has been a systemic barrier to entering the housing market.

Good economic management is not about chasing headlines. It's about making responsible decisions that help people feel secure about their future. The opposition seems to be having a hard time conceptualising the difficulties that the situation in the Middle East is presenting to the world, including Australia. The Albanese Labor government has been working tirelessly to ensure our oil supply chains remain strong and resilient. I find it interesting that petrol prices are no longer dominating the headlines, thanks in large part to the Labor government's efforts. There hasn't been a peep from the coalition on this topic.

But the conflict in the Middle East doesn't just impact our oil and fuel supplies; it affects the global financial order as well. Nearly every country in the world is grappling with these ramifications, with inflation rising in basically every OECD country. Michele Bullock of the RBA said:

Australians are poorer because of this shock to oil prices and energy prices …

That's what this has done—this war on the other side of the world. That is the reality of the situation we all find ourselves in, and the Albanese Labor government is taking considered, measured steps to respond appropriately. We have invested more than $10 billion in the Australian fuel security and resilience package. We have brought forward $6.15 billion in capital for businesses, which we know have been doing so hard during this fuel crisis. We have halved the fuel excise for three months. These measures are helping Australians through this challenging time, and we'll be announcing more forward-thinking agendas this evening through the budget.

Goodness me! That's going to take me a moment to recover. In any event, what are we talking about? We are rising to talk about all things to do with the budget, apart from anything else, and that was a nice interlude. I was taken earlier on, and I think Senator Collins referred to it—it would take a special type of hubris in this place to walk back from a statement as far as this Prime Minister has. It's worth reading out again, because an extraordinary statement was made this time last year by this Prime Minister. Did I say 'president'? Prime Minister, I meant. He acts like the President. He said, 'The only tax policy that we are implementing is the one we took to the election.'

When you think about it, the question is whether you believed that when you were saying it or whether it's more of the talking points you read out loud. We know that—it's very clear now, even though we're told that we haven't seen the budget yet. Yes, we have. We've seen bits of it. There it is. There are bits of it there. The font is excellent, by the way—whoever has done that. It's almost like a stigmatism.

This is actually more than simply just what is looming to be a disgracefully irresponsible budget. I think we are on the cusp now of a generational shift in this country. The political party on the other side of the chamber has now held the reins on this economy for four years. They spent the better part of the first three blaming us. In fact, even today in question time, Senator Ayres skilfully negotiated through the wires—he is very articulate—in a final way to somehow link it back to us three to four years later. But this Australian economy is cratering under this government, under its reckless spending, under the pretence of inflation, which is now predicted to reach something like seven per cent at the end of the year. I suspect that's probably under. If you went to the real inflation rate at the moment, it would be more like 10 per cent by the end of the year.

I was reminded of the words of an actually good prime minister. Margaret Thatcher once famously said:

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.

We're living that tonight. We're going to see it. We're going to see it play out in real time. Tonight this government is no longer spending money it doesn't have; it's coming after yours. It's going to come after yours and that of your children.

This economy is not sinking anymore; it's in total freefall. You can see it through every aspect of the economy. Construction costs are rising. Productivity has stalled. A 30-year-old now has seen something like 0.7 per cent productivity over the course of his or her working life. Unemployment forecasts are up. In fact, we have had zero productivity growth since this government came to power. It's trying to sell this as a fair budget, but fair to who? Who is this fair to? It's not fair to the next generation. Ultimately, this government tonight is going to spend money trying to take it from the next generation and then lumber them with an ever-increasing debt. By some measures of economic complexity, we're now ranking below Botswana and Zambia. We're an economy now almost entirely dependent on commodities—which we constantly are hearing demonised in this place—on housing and on basic conspicuous consumption. That's not an economy; it's a banana republic. That's where we're up to. This is going to do nothing to alleviate that. This government has allowed Australia to borrow, spend and import its way into a corner, and they have no plan to get us out of it. (Time expired)

I appreciate the motion that's before this chamber at the moment. The Albanese government makes no apologies for using every single tool at its disposal to improve the lives of very hardworking men and women of this country and making sure that their families can also prosper. What we do know is that, predominantly, many young Australians are doing the right thing. They are gaining skills. They're undertaking further education. They are working bloody hard. Yet we know that they also face a monumental challenge when it comes to saving for a deposit to buy their own home. In response to this significant national challenge, those opposite, unfortunately, have done absolutely nothing in this place since we've come to government. They have simply voted against every single measure that this government has proposed that would help increase housing supply. At the moment, we have a housing supply issue and we need to drive up construction of homes in order to drop the price of housing and have many more homes available for people to buy. It is just pure economics: demand and supply are what is causing a lot of issues when it comes to housing prices right now.

Those opposite also oppose the direct construction of new homes when it comes to the Housing Australia Future Fund. They even oppose cheaper deposits for Australians trying to purchase their first home. Now, we know that housing supply is also just one side of the equation, so of course the government is trying to use every single tool at its disposal to help address what is one of the biggest issues facing Australians. Without commenting on the budget, because, quite frankly, I have to wait, like many of us, until 7.30, when the Treasurer delivers his budget speech tonight in the other place, but what I will say about the budget is that the Labor government makes no apologies for and does not shy away from any reforms boldly made in the traditional Labor way. We want to make sure that working people are looked after and we want to help working people and their families prosper and share in that prosperity like every single Australian should in this place. When circumstances change, as we are seeing right around the world at the moment—when crises emerge, our government, whoever is in the seat, must make whatever change is necessary to protect our standard of living and the way that we live. This is a great country, and we need to protect it.

Unfortunately, those opposite take a very different approach. Despite cost-of-living pressures, housing unaffordability and global instability, they remain committed to the same tired policies—or should I say maybe no policies at all—and oppose every sensible measure put forward by this government. That's why the Australian people are fed up. They have sent a very clear message—a message they should have learnt last year and they should have learnt over the weekend. The coalition now have been reduced to 43 seats in the House of Representatives. That is why over the weekend the people of Farrer—I acknowledge the shirt that was worn by one of our fellow senators who is in the chamber at the moment, but it is a message that the Australian people have sent clearly to the Liberals and the Nationals with a primary of just 12 per cent for the Liberal Party and the Nationals getting just under 10 per cent. That's around 22 per cent. If you look around the room, I bet you there are eight senators right now in the coalition who are very nervous because they're No. 2 on their ticket. Quite frankly, they won't be returned should there be a general election here— (Time expired)

We heard from those opposite today that tonight's budget is going to do all it can to help Australians with the cost of living, but what has the government been doing for these past four years? We have inflation at a record high—4.6 per cent and accelerating. How is high inflation helping Australians with the cost of living? We have Australians now paying $2,200 a year more on average in groceries for the average Australian household because the price of groceries has gone up about 15 per cent since this government came to office. We've got Australian households paying $1,800 more a year on average in power bills since this government came to office. How is high inflation helping Australians with the cost of living? We have now had, under this government, 15 interest rate rises. That's a cumulative increase of four percentage points. If you're an average mortgage holder, you're now paying $30,000 extra a year in interest, $2,500 a month. How are high interest rates helping Australians with the cost of living?

Since this government came to office, income tax receipts have grown by $83 billion. That is about $6,000 per taxpayer. Through bracket creep, the government is taking $6,000 more from every taxpayer in growing income taxes. How are higher taxes helping Australians with the cost of living? We've had government debt grow by $140 billion under this government's watch. Government debt today is almost $1 trillion. That's costing the average Australian $1,000 a year in interest repayments. How are extra interest repayments on government debt and government borrowing helping Australians with the cost of living? In the Australian economy we have real wages lower than they were in June 2022. How are lower real wages helping Australians with the cost of living?

That is this government's record through four budgets as we approach a fifth budget tonight. That Australians' cost of living has steadily deteriorated under their watch. In fact, if you look at the OECD measure, real household disposal income is down about seven per cent in Australia since mid-2022. In the rest of the OECD and other advanced economies, it has increased. We had the Reserve Bank of Australia say just last week that they do not see inflation returning to the target band until the end of 2027, that they do not envisage real wages starting to grow again until the middle of 2027, that they envisage at least another four interest rate rises. This was in the modelling that accompanied their decision to yet again increase interest rates.

This is Labor's economic plan in action. We have had four years of deteriorating living standards. We've had four years of Australians paying higher interest rates, paying more taxes, paying more for groceries, for fuel and for electricity, and seeing their living standards steadily fall backwards, and the Reserve Bank expects that to continue until at least for another 18 months. We have heard from those opposite—and I'm sure we'll hear it a lot tonight—that the war in the Middle East is causing this problem in Australia. Well, in Australia, the Reserve Bank has increased interest rates for the past three consecutive months. Every other central bank has kept interest rates on hold for the past three consecutive months. Why is that? Why are other economies able to absorb the shock of the Middle East oil price rise but Australia is not? It's because, as the Reserve Bank Governor said just last week, inflation in Australia was already out of control. The government did not use good economic times to repair our balance sheet or to take pressure off monetary policy, and as a result Australians are once again going to pay the price.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Senator McAllister) to questions without notice asked today.

In my question to the government, I really tried to keep it very, very clear as to what I was asking during my three questions today. These questions are ones I put to the government on behalf of the disability community and of our families; questions that they are asking in the aftermath of your announcements. Your announcements about NDIS cuts and restrictions are striking fear in the hearts of so many Australians tonight.

One of the easiest questions for the minister to answer should have been, 'Who are the people you are planning to kick off the NDIS?' because the government came out and said at the National Press Club that they would remove 160,000 people from the NDIS—gone! That is an outrageous and disgusting target to set yourself. It's a violation of everything you went to the election on, and it makes a mockery of anything that could be called traditional Labor values. Let's just be honest with people. Who is in your sights? Who are you intending to remove? You could not answer that simple question.

Every NDIS participant and their family members deserve an answer to that question, just as they deserve an answer to the question, 'How will every person on this scheme be reassessed?' because that is also what you're intending to do. You intend to have every person reassessed, regardless of whether they've just spent thousands of dollars on a specialist report to be provided to the government and to the agency to prove their eligibility. How will that work? There are no answers from this government, just a lot of spin about rorts and fraud. Let me be very clear: disabled people and our families care about rorts. They care about provider fraud more than anyone else because when it occurs it is us who lose the services.

You have so recklessly taken control of this conversation and misused it, this vital issue of NDIS fraud—which disabled people have been raising with this government since the beginning of the scheme—that you have co-opted it as part of your smokescreen to disguise the $35 billion of cuts which you intend. Disabled people across the country are now being screamed at in the street by community members who believe they are rorting the scheme because of the way you have done this and because of the way you are talking about the NDIS. A friend of mine posted a video on Instagram yesterday. She was moving along a sidewalk in her community and a man stopped and screamed in her face, 'The NDIS is a rort!' That's what she had to experience because of the way that you are trying to distract the community from the reality of the cuts that you are preparing for the NDIS.

Budgets are about choices, and it is revolting that you are choosing to cut the NDIS and choosing to remove the supports and services that disabled people need to live our lives, to go out in the sun and to have a shower a couple of times a week. You are making those cuts rather than making the billionaires pay or taxing the gas exporters. It is a disgrace and we will oppose you every step of the way. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Industry and Innovation (Senator Ayres) to a question without notice I asked today relating to artificial intelligence.

I'm really concerned about this Albanese Labor government's lack of a plan when it comes to artificial intelligence. We are living in a time when we have this technology improving at an exponential rate. We have experts around the world and here in Australia raising concerns about what artificial intelligence means not just for our economy but for us as a species. Yet we have a government that seems to just give us the lines from the big tech companies who are seeking to profit from this technology. I don't think that is putting Australians first. I don't think that is actually looking at the long term and saying, 'What will be good for Australians?' I find it really hard to cop the argument of 'we will have some data centres, so don't worry about the job losses' and Senator Ayres saying, 'I don't understand where you got those figures from,' when it's Jobs and Skills Australia who are saying that 600,000 Australians will likely lose their jobs.

If you listen to people like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio and others, and you should, we have to do more. This should be an urgent priority of this government. They should have safeguards in place, when it comes to the development of this technology and the deployment of this technology, and, then, be planning for the economic disruption. Because nothing gives Australians confidence. You go to the supermarket, and you're doing your own check-out; you go to the airline, and you're doing your own check-in. Of course, they are going to allow mass displacement of jobs, and all these big companies will be making an absolute fortune.

Question agreed to.

Apologies for the changing of the time mid-speech, Senator Pocock. I will remind the chamber that we are working on times agreed by the whips. We will try and smooth the process to the clerks to make sure they are aware of those times as well.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to housing.

The government's housing policy is the definition of insanity—trying to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We have families living in cars and young people with nowhere to go and no hope of getting a foot on the ladder. Yet this Labor government keeps doing what it has always done—spend big and drive mass immigration. The government even brags that they have brought immigration numbers down. It is down to the third-highest figure of all time. They hold first and second place, by the way.

Every policy this government has brought into this place to address this crisis has made matters worse. That's what we've had against them—driving demand, killing supply. Labor has no mandate from the Australian people for their latest round of changes in tonight's budget. It came to this election promising no changes to taxes. You have misled the Australian people, and you will deserve all the backlash that you get.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I table a non-conforming petition.

Leave granted.

I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026, allowing it to be considered during this period of sittings.

I also table a statement of reasons justifying the need for this bill to be considered during these sittings and seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The document read as follows—

STATEMENT OF REASONS FOR INTRODUCTION AND PASSAGE IN THE 2026 WINTER SITTINGS

COMPETITION AND CONSUMER AMENDMENT (RESPONDING TO EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES) BILL 2026

Purpose of the Bill

The purpose of the Bill is to establish new, streamlined powers for both the Treasurer and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to permit coordinated action during a crisis to enable a prompt response to challenging situations Australia may face during exceptional global or domestic circumstances. These powers would be used in the case of an emergency or exceptional circumstances to allow for industry to support government responses with protection from the competition prohibitions in the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Reasons for Urgency

Passage in the 2026 Winter sitting is essential to support the Government's response to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East which is impacting fuel prices and affecting Australian businesses and consumers.

Passage of the Bill provides the Government with the ability to use these new powers to prevent any further deterioration of the fuel situation.

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 26 April 2026, of the Hon. Peter Frederick Morris OAM, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Shortland, New South Wales, from 1972 to 1978.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its sadness at the death, on 26 April 2026, of the Honourable Peter Frederick Morris OAM, former Minister for Transport, Minister for Aviation, Minister for Resources, Minister for Housing and Aged Care, Minister for Transport, Minister for Industrial Relations and member for Shortland, places on record its gratitude for his service to the parliament and the nation, and tenders its sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

The Hunter Valley has produced some of Australian Labor's finest sons and daughters, and Peter Morris was one of those. He and his seven siblings were born to a family proud of its Greek heritage and deeply dedicated to Newcastle. Though study and work periodically took Peter further afield, he always made his way back to the Hunter.

Unsurprisingly for a man so deeply invested in his community, Peter was drawn to Labor politics. In his mid-30s, he became an alderman on the Newcastle city council, and in 1972 Peter came into parliament on the wave of excitement that brought the Whitlam government to office. Like Whitlam, Peter believed firmly in Labor's ability and mission to make life better for Australians in the outer suburbs and regions. As a backbencher, Peter had a ringside seat to the heady days of the Whitlam government, its ambition and its frenetic pace, and he was there, actually on the steps of parliament with Gough, on 11 November 1975.

Those experiences of reform and conflict in our parliament shaped the kind of minister he would later become. Peter Morris was not a fairweather friend. In the aftermath of the Dismissal, as federal Labor entered some of its darkest days, he rolled up his sleeves and he got to work, holding the Fraser government to account and simultaneously laying policy foundations for the Hawke government's later success.

Peter represented the people of Shortland during pivotal and occasionally tragic times, such as the 1989 earthquake, which killed 13 and injured so many others, including at the Hunter Valley's Newcastle Workers Club, and the closure of the BHP steelworks, right at the end of his 26 years in parliament. Throughout all of that turmoil, Peter Morris was there. He wasn't a flashy politician, but he was active in so many of the Hawke government's reforms in the 1980s, such as the modernisation of telecommunications and an enterprise bargaining system where blue-collar workers would reap the rewards of their own productivity.

He made his true mark in transport and aviation policy. He worked to make Australia's roads, airports and wharves more productive. His mission was about fairness, safety and decency, especially for wage earners who bore unfair commuting burdens and assumed large occupational risks in those sectors. And his achievements are foundational for Australia and, in particular, for the Hunter Valley. They include the M1 Motorway, Newcastle Airport, the foundations of Western Sydney International Airport, the end of the duopoly in our skies, and the 1992 Ships of shame report, which drew international attention to bad ships where work was dangerous and exploitative for seafarers and destructive to our marine environment. Those are just some of the monuments to Peter Morris.

When Bob Hawke wanted to sense-check his government's standing in the Hunter, he would turn to Peter Morris. Bob Hawke knew, and Peter knew, and Hawke said famously that if they loved Newcastle properly it would love them back.

He inspired great loyalty in his staff. To work for Peter, I'm told, was to join something like a family.

By the time he received his Medal of the Order of Australia in 2012, he could have been enjoying a well-deserved retirement. Instead, he was still advocating for Newcastle's future, its economic vibrancy and its civic richness. The legacies of that work include the Fighter World RAAF museum, Newcastle Maritime Museum and the locally adored William the Fourth steamship. We in New South Wales, in the Hunter Valley and in Australia owe much to Australians like Peter—Australians who might not be from the nicer parts of our capital cities, but who step up to advocate for their communities in Canberra, Sydney and wherever else people like them are often forgotten.

Peter and his wife, Florence, were loving parents of four children, including the late Matthew Morris. Matthew's eight years of service in the New South Wales parliament made a real difference to the quality of public services in Charlestown. What greater example—what greater tribute, I should say, to the power of Peter's example could there be? Peter, Florence and Matthew are survived by Michael, Paul and John Morris along with Peter's remaining siblings, including former member for Newcastle Allan Morris, who I spoke with earlier today. I know that the Morris family is watching these proceedings now with great sadness but also with great pride in the achievements of Peter and the Morris family in that wonderful Hunter community in New South Wales. On behalf of the Australian government, I pay tribute to a great Australian.

I rise on behalf of the coalition to pay tribute to the honourable Peter Morris OAM, the former member for Shortland who passed away last month, and he was a young 93 years of age. Peter Morris served in this parliament for almost 26 years—a huge achievement—from 1972 to 1998, representing the electorate of Shortland in New South Wales for the Australian Labor Party. Peter Morris was born in Sydney on 29 July 1932. As we have heard, he was elected to the House of Representatives with the Labor wave of 1972, and he held the seat of Shortland until he retired at the 1998 election.

Politics, it seems, ran in the family. His brother, Allan, went on to serve as the federal member for Newcastle between 1983 and 2001, and his younger son, Matthew, served as a state MP for Charlestown. Three members of parliament in one family—that is a remarkable contribution to public life by any measure. In opposition, Mr Morris was appointed the ALP spokesman on transport in 1976, a role he held under opposition leaders Gough Whitlam, Bill Hayden and Bob Hawke. He was renowned as being a diligent parliamentary operator, tabling nearly twice as many questions on notice as any other Labor MP during the 1977 to 1980 parliamentary term. That kind of sustained effort in opposition, holding government to account through proper parliamentary process, is the work of a committed member.

Transport remain a driving passion throughout Mr Morris's career. He was appointed the Minister for Transport in the first Hawke ministry in March 1983, and, in December 1984, he assumed the additional portfolio of aviation. Those were without a doubt significant portfolios, and he approached them with evident seriousness. During his time as minister, he helped secure original funding for Badgerys Creek. He opened the M1 motorway between Newcastle and Sydney with Prime Minister Hawke, and he was instrumental in the establishment of the Newcastle airport. These are tangible, lasting contributions to the infrastructure of New South Wales and our great nation, and they stand as a real record of his achievement.

After the 1990 election, he was not returned to the ministry, and he subsequently served as chairman of the House Standing Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure from 1990 to 1996. In 1992, that committee produced what became known as the Ships of shame report—a significant inquiry that concluded that substandard shipping practices were widespread and recommended increased government regulation of the industry at both national and international levels. It was serious, consequential policy work, and it had a lasting impact on maritime safety standards both here and abroad.

After leaving parliament, Mr Morris was appointed chair of the International Commission on Shipping, a body established by the International Transport Workers' Federation to inquire into international shipping standards. His expertise and commitment to the sector did not end with his parliamentary career. Beyond his formal roles, Mr Morris served as president of the Newcastle maritime museum and was instrumental in securing funding for the William the Fourth paddle-steamer. These community contributions reflect a man who remained engaged with the people and the region he had represented long after leaving office.

Mr Morris's wife, Florence, passed away in 2019. He is survived by his sons Michael, Paul, and John. His son Matthew passed away from a brain tumour in 2020. The family has endured significant loss in recent years, and our thoughts are with them at this time. On behalf of the coalition, I extend our sincere condolences to the Morris family, and I acknowledge with respect the contribution Peter Morris made to this parliament and to this nation. May he rest in peace.

I ask senators to join in a moment of silence to signify assent to the motion.

Question agreed to, honourable senators joining in a moment of silence.

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 28 April 2026, of the Hon. William Leonard Grayden AM, a member of the House of Representatives for the division of Swan in Western Australia from 1949 to 1954.

I move:

That private senators' bills be considered this week as follows:

a) Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025 on Wednesday 13 May 2026; and

b) Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2026 on Thursday 14 May 2026.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to the following senators:

(a) Senator Scarr from 12 to 14 May 2026, for personal reasons,

(b) Senator McGrath for 14 May 2026, for personal reasons; and

(b) Senator McLachlan for 14 May 2026, for personal reasons.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the decision by the Government on Tuesday, 10 March 2026, to deploy the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in a military operation as a party to an armed conflict,

(ii) that the Memorandum on Government Conventions Relating to Overseas Armed Conflict Decision Making (the memorandum) requires the Government to take a number of actions within 30 days when deploying the ADF overseas, including that:

(A) the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Government in the Senate deliver a ministerial statement and provide an unclassified written statement to both houses of the Parliament outlining the objectives of the deployment in question, the orders made and its legal basis, and

(B) if Parliament is scheduled to sit within 30 days of the deployment, then the first appropriate day of the scheduled sitting period be set aside for the consideration of the ministerial statement and consideration of the statement have precedence over all other business until concluded, and

(iii) that the Government has not complied with the memorandum, despite the 30 days identified in the memorandum expiring on Thursday, 9 April 2026; and

(b) requires the Leader of the Government in the Senate to attend the Senate after question time on Wednesday, 13 May 2026, to table an unclassified written statement outlining the objectives of the deployment of the ADF to the UAE, a copy of the orders made and any advice received setting out its legal basis, and that:

(i) any senator may move to take note of the documents, and

(ii) any such motion may be debated and shall have precedence over all business until determined, and senators may speak to the motion for not more than 5 minutes each.

The question is that general business motion No. 478 standing in the name of Senator Shoebridge be agreed to.

The question is that the urgency motion moved by Senator Faruqi on 1 April 2026 be agreed to.

Senator Hanson has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 16 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"Labor reckless spending budget disaster is driving inflation, making mortgages more expensive and stealing from younger generations by making them compete with foreign owners for a home and forcing them to pay back the $l trillion debt in the future."

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

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

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Labor's reckless spending is far beyond the means of the Australian taxpayer, and this year's budget will be no different. Labor's reckless spending and terrible policies actively work to make Australians poorer. Under Labor's irresponsible spending and mass migration policies, our living standards have gone backwards. The record since Labor's election in 2022 is telling. Typical full-time workers now pay between 40 and 50 per cent of their earnings on their mortgages, up from 32 per cent in 2022. Average rent prices have increased more than 42 per cent in the past five years, with the average renter now having to spend more than a third of their income. Labor has committed many billions of dollars to improving housing supply without actually increasing it but refuses to do anything about demand by slashing immigration. Record numbers have arrived in the past year despite Labor's promises to reduce immigration.

Since 2022, Australia has experienced an eight per cent decline in disposable income, the biggest decline in the developed world. Real net disposable income has declined by almost $1,000 per household. More Australians than ever before—around seven per cent of the workforce—are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

Australians are paying more tax too. From 2022 to 2024, under the Albanese Labor government, tax revenue per capita increased by more than $2,700. This is due to factors like inflation from government spending, bracket creep and additional GST from rising prices of goods and services. Gross debt per capita is now more than $36,000, up from just over $33,000 in 2023. Gross debt reached an unwelcome milestone this year, tipping over $1 trillion. Government spending is around 27 per cent of GDP, even higher than during the pandemic. Don't even get me started on the net zero disaster, which has resulted in power prices rising around 40 per cent or more since 2022 and costing taxpayers many billions a year, much of it hidden from public view.

This is not sustainable. This cannot continue. Labor has been dangling the notion of a big reform budget addressing intergenerational inequity. The hypocrisy of it is breathtaking. For the past four years, Labor has been robbing young Australians of their future. Labor is also now robbing retirees and pensioners of their health rebates and breaking its promise to leave capital gains tax and negative gearing alone. The exodus of investors from housing is just going to increase rents even more.

Australia can do much better. One Nation has already shown the way, and this has been reinforced by the good voters of Farrer, who elected our candidate, David Farley, on the weekend. We've identified more than $90 billion that could be easily cut from government spending. We would put $40 billion back into Australians' pockets and pay down our crippling debt instead of bequeathing it to future generations. We will scrap net zero. This will reduce the cost of living and remove the straightjacket from our economic growth and development. We will slash immigration to reduce housing demand and ban foreign ownership to increase housing supply. Younger Australians can then look forward to a future in which they will own a home.

The 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson famously said:

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

What I've raised today is about the debt this government has put us in—the whole country—their overspend. And they keep saying to me, 'You don't support our policies.' I don't support your policies on housing because they have not worked. You put the money into a fund, and guess what? The houses haven't been built. You've got mass migration coming into the country—supply and demand. Wake up to yourselves. If you put good policies out there for the Australian people, you will get support from One Nation, but I haven't seen it yet.

We'll hear a lot about the Australian dream tonight, and I have to say, this government has done more to destroy the Australian dream than any other government in our history, and over the course of these four years they've had three housing gimmicks. The first housing gimmick was the Housing Future Fund, which has 10 billion bucks, and it built virtually no houses. It's been going around buying houses that other Australians could actually live in. The second gimmick was five per cent deposits. This is a grotesque scheme which has pump-primed house prices at the bottom end for younger Australians. The Prime Minister said there would be a 0.6 per cent increase in house prices over six years; we got a six per cent increase in six months. So this guy can't count. That's been a disaster. Now the third gimmick is going to be the big lie that fiddling around with taxes is going to fix the housing system.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer must be honest tonight and say they believe that these tax increases will fix the housing crisis or materially change it. If they do not, why on Earth would they be lumping more taxes onto housing? Fifty per cent of the cost of a new house goes in government charges, fees and taxes. This is the last thing we need to see more taxes on. It's pretty simple: more tax equals fewer houses.

So those are the three gimmicks we've seen so far. Then we've seen a criminal failure to follow through on their promises, including red tape reduction, the National Construction Code—they've made that more convoluted and complex, not easier—and the EPBC Act, which they've also made more complex and convoluted. And Minister Watt has given himself God-like powers, where he sets the rules, he makes the laws of the land, rather than the parliament, and he's done no bilateral deals with the states. He's made none of the regulations. Instead of there being 26,000 houses ensnarled in EPBC, there are now 100,000 houses. So, as for the economic summit that we had last year, where Mr Chalmers or Dr Chalmers—whatever he calls himself now—had a talkfest in the cabinet room here, there's been no follow-through. So when we hear tonight these promises about how 'we're going to fix the housing system'—I mean, give me a break.

They promised they were going to get 75,000 more people into housing over 10 years, but that wouldn't even make up for the 120,000 deficit in supply that they have given the Australian people over these last four years. At the end of the day, they've been in government for four years. They've wasted almost $80 billion on housing to build 30,000 fewer houses a year. Who could believe that the government could be so inept as to commit $80 billion of taxpayer funds to build fewer houses than the last government?

Meanwhile, they have allowed 1.4 million people to migrate to Australia and have built only 600,000 houses at the same time. So they don't even model the impact of not building houses but allowing a lot of people in. When we have asked these questions at Senate estimates, Minister Gallagher has laughed and snarled at me for even suggesting that maybe it's a good idea to get the Treasury guys to say, 'Let's model the impact of having 1.4 million people come in and only building half a million houses.' Apparently I'm an idiot for asking for that modelling. Well, I don't think that's an unreasonable request, frankly.

At the end of the day, we all want the government to be the best government they can be. The problem is that we don't see any signs that they are learning from these failures. They haven't learnt that building bureaucracies and all this garbage in Canberra doesn't actually build houses. What you need to do is work out exactly what red tape you can get rid of and exactly which taxes you can cut, streamline or reduce. Instead, what we are going to hear tonight is, 'We've got a magic plan to impose more taxes on housing, which is going to magically create more houses.' When you look at the scoreboard, it's just not believable that these guys are ever going to have a plan that's going to get the country where it needs to be, which is at a quarter of a million houses a year. A quarter of a million houses a year is what we need. We used to get 200,000 houses a year under the last coalition government. Now, we get 170,000 houses a year under this government. That is ultimately going to be the metric upon which this government is measured, because on all the other metrics they have put out there they have failed.

If the government want to break their promises they have made, they will increase taxes. That's a political thing they have to live with. But the real impact is going to be on the people that aren't going to have a house because this government is so incompetent and hopeless.

I also rise to speak on this motion. I am pleased to have another opportunity to contribute to the debate that we have had over many years in this chamber on housing. Over many years our government has brought in attempt after attempt to try to increase supply and make a meaningful difference to the housing situation in this country. Over years and years, we have had the opposition, working in partnership with the Greens political party, block those attempts. But no-one can say we haven't been trying to come in here with a full agenda to make a meaningful difference on housing in this country.

We do that because, in our communities, we are seeing and feeling the experience of this housing crisis every single day. I know for members of my community in Adelaide that the increase in the cost of houses and the lack of supply in housing has had a material impact on the quality of life that they've been able to provide for themselves and their families. For young Australians, in particular, this is a question of intergenerational inequity. It's a question of being able to see what their parents and grandparents were able to achieve and looking at the kind of lifestyle and opportunity they can provide their own children and not being able to deliver that. That hurts. It's extremely painful for a family and a parent to not be able to provide that same level of opportunity or, indeed, a greater standard of opportunity and a greater standard of living than their parents or grandparents were able to provide. These are real emotions driven by a real problem, and it's a real problem that we are trying to fix.

This budget tonight, I know, will be focused on housing, focused on supply and, as we have been over the entire course of our government, focused on what we can do to make a meaningful difference on housing. For my generation and for Senator Walker's generation, this is the issue which is defining us. It is defining my peers. It is defining opportunity. It is defining family life. We need to do something about it.

But our government has been the only party in this chamber over the years that has consistently brought in a plan to do something about it and has consistently focused on supply. The opposition let this sit idle for almost a decade. They didn't even have a housing minister for most of their time in government. And One Nation bring motions like this, but they actually didn't turn up to this chamber when there were plans, policies and legislation on the table which would have had a meaningful impact on housing supply in this country. They either voted against it or did not show up. It's not okay for them to come into this chamber and seek to rewrite history on legislation for housing and on the government's plan for housing and what we have actually considered and had before us in this chamber over the years which would have made a difference and which would have made a difference sooner. It's what we see from One Nation, time and time again. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the facts. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the history and the contribution of migrants. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the facts, like the kind of nonsense we have in here around foreign ownership and the competition for housing which just isn't resembled in the facts we have. They try to sketch out a version of our country, they try to sketch out a version of policy which belongs in the non-fiction section, and then they try to sketch in ideas and falsehoods which are just not true. The thing about this place is it keeps its receipts, because how you vote in this place is reflected on the record.

I urge those people who are supporting One Nation at the moment to go and look at their voting record. Go look at when they turned up in this chamber when we were debating serious legislation that had serious money on the table and when we had serious plans to fix the challenges we have in housing. Check if they were there and check how they voted.

One Nation sketch in falsehoods. They sketch out the real truth and history of our country, and they sketch out the real contribution so many people, especially migrants, are making in our country. They sketch out the facts on housing. They sketch out their participation in what has happened in housing over the last years, and their lack of engagement on the serious policy, their lack of engagement in the serious legislation. They sketch themselves in as people who have a solution yet offer no detail, no meaningful reform, and actually aren't at the table as serious players when it comes to public policy in this place.

Our budget will address intergenerational inequity, something I have been talking about since I was elected to this parliament. It is something many of us in this chamber care very, very deeply about. I have seen it experienced in my generation as my peers are having family and are unable to provide that backyard, that certainty of housing. Senator Walker's generation is experiencing it on a whole new level, feeling completely locked out. Our government is working to change it, and we are working to change it through legislation, policy and the budget tonight.

Listening to One Nation lecture this chamber about young Australians and housing affordability is pretty chopped. This is a party that has built an entire business model around keeping people angry while voting against the very reforms that would actually help them. Now, suddenly they're screaming, crying, throwing up on behalf of young people struggling with rent and mortgages—okay—because when housing reform comes before this parliament, One Nation's instinct is almost always the same: vote no, complain loudly then blame migrants for the consequences. That's the entire cycle. They are offering no solutions to younger Australians; they are offering scapegoats. It is incredibly telling that every complex economic issue somehow ends up in their worldview being the fault of immigrants, international students or foreigners. A fun fact for Senator Hanson: foreign buyers make up just 0.8 per cent of all buyers in Australia's housing market, and foreign purchases of existing homes have been banned.

Historically, Australia has underbuilt housing for years, construction costs have exploded globally, supply chains have been disrupted, wages have stagnated relative to housing costs, and governments everywhere have struggled with planning, bottlenecks and infrastructure lag. Those are the actual structural problems. But structural problems require serious policy work and One Nation is not a serious political party; it's a rage-bait machine. And the irony is unbelievable when they try to frame themselves as anti-elite outsiders while seeming pretty happy to take support from extremely wealthy interests and billionaires who benefit from keeping the status quo exactly as it is. Because let's be real here, the billionaires funding right-wing grievance politics are not lying awake at night worrying about a 25-year-old renter trying to save for a deposit in Adelaide; they are doing just fine.

The people hurt most by culture war politics are ordinary Australians who get fed anger instead of outcomes, and younger Australians are getting increasingly tired of it. They are tired of politicians treating their economic future like a comment section on Facebook. They are tired of hearing simplistic nonsense dressed up as economic analysis, and they're tired of being used as props by people who have absolutely no interest in delivering the reforms required to actually make housing more affordable. Because if One Nation genuinely cared about younger Australians, they would support increasing housing supply. They would support social and affordable housing. They would support practical medium-density development in our cities. They would support policies that help renters instead of just yelling into microphones about the system. Instead, they vote against reform and act shocked as the crisis continues. That is not leadership; that is their performance art.

While we're on the topic of younger Australians, it's interesting that Senator Hanson suddenly seems deeply concerned about us when, in her most recent instalment of 'please explain', she was perfectly happy to depict me as a child defecating and needing a nappy. For the record, I am 22 years old and have been out of nappies for about 20 years. Apparently young Australians are old enough to inherit climate instability, unaffordable housing, insecure work and economic pressures they did not create, but, if we step forward and participate in our democracy, we are ridiculed for our age. That attitude is part of why so many young Australians are disillusioned with politics in the first place.

I think my generation represents something One Nation clearly finds threatening—younger people entering public life who are informed, engaged and not interested in recycling the same tired fear campaigns from the nineties, because younger Australians are not stupid, and younger Australians aren't scared to question or get into the nitty-gritty, and that is intimidating to Senator Hanson. Young people like me turn up to parliament when required—not be off taking naps during question time just so you're fresh for your tough interviews on 'Sky after dark'. Senator Hanson likes to mock young people, yet she's terrified of the ABC and sitting next to the public on a plane, and she spends a large portion of her time worrying about how long her new MP will last in her shambles of a party.

Young Australians understand that migration has always been a part of Australia's economic story. We understand migrants are workers: nurses, teachers, tradies, researchers and small-business owners. We understand that you cannot build a stronger economy by permanently turning Australians against one another.

So let me get this straight. Senator Pauline Hanson thinks that the Labor Party is forcing young people to compete with foreign owners for a home. Alright, that's a great Sky News headline, but is it a valid, factual statement? Senator Hanson is so used to being a panellist on TV she forgets her actual job, paid by the taxpayer, is to represent Australians. It's to use all the facts available to create the best outcomes for ordinary people.

So let's look at the facts. Are Australian first home buyers missing out on owning a home because of foreign owners? From a very quick google you'll learn than less than two per cent of houses have foreign owners—less than two per cent. Senator Hanson, do you really think that is the key problem stopping first home buyers from getting into the housing market? Wake up, Senator. Did you know that Google is free? Foreign owners account for less than two per cent, which is about 44,000 dwellings. They tend to own just one house, and that is more often for new builds, not existing homes.

Let's compare that to the Australian property investors who own more than 10 properties each—yes, 10 each. That's a lot—far more than the average person. There are around 2½ thousand Australians who own or part own 10 or more rental properties. These investors control more than 33,200 rentals, which is equal to more than half of all the rentals in Tasmania. We also have ABS data that tells us that these property moguls are barely helping build supply. Only about 23 per cent of investor loans are for new housing. If we take racism out of it, what do we think is harming first home buyers by crowding out the market—someone owning one property or someone owning 10 existing homes?

Yeah, we need strong limits on foreign ownership in Australia! That's especially of our existing homes—wait! Once again, Senator Hanson didn't know Google is free. Foreign owners have been banned from buying established dwellings since mid last year. How are foreign owners taking homes away from Australians if they aren't even allowed to buy them anymore? As Senator Walker said, if Senator Hanson were here more often, she might actually know that. Senator Pauline Hanson, please explain; make that make sense.

We already have strong restrictions on foreign owners in the housing market, but we don't have strong restrictions on the people buying up a ridiculous number of houses and generally crowding out first home buyers from the market. Senator Hanson, just go and ask Gina Rinehart how many properties she's taken away from first home buyers. I'll give you a hint; it's many, many more than 10. This motion isn't trying to help people. It's based on racism and fake news.

I recall in November last year being here in the Senate and doing my job, and I recall other senators being in here doing their job. We were talking about housing and tax breaks for billionaires. But I can't remember if Senator Hanson was here during that. That's right; she was off on some junket with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago during a two-week sitting period, schmoozing with billionaires and no doubt talking about all of Trump's talking points and how wonderful it would be, while the rest of us were actually doing our job. Then, One Nation comes in here and starts putting on this kind of motion saying, 'Inflation is a result of government spending,' conveniently forgetting that President Trump—who your leader, Senator Hanson, was schmoozing with on a paid billionaire junket in Mar-a-Lago in November of last year—started a bloody war which has driven inflation through the roof.

I remember One Nation, at the start of this war, in February, coming out and cheering it on. There were images of Senator Hanson, images of Donald Trump and images of Gina Rinehart. I remember all the images and how you loved the war. It was great and terrific—because it fed into One Nation's racist attacks on Muslims and Islamophobia. That's what they did. They were feeding that trope, and they thought they had great images of Senator Hanson—not working here in the Senate, which she's paid to do by the Australian public, but schmoozing off in Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump. They had, no doubt, some lovely little images of Senator Hanson and Gina Rinehart, and no doubt they were negotiating the gift of the next expensive plane from Gina Rinehart, because you got sick. I understand Gina Rinehart doesn't like always travelling with Senator Hanson in her plane; I get that. I wouldn't want to be travelling around the country with Senator Hanson in my plane if I had one. So Gina Rinehart, instead of bringing Senator Hanson on her plane, buys her a plane!

The billionaire class absolutely owns One Nation, and then you come here and say that the reason Australians can't afford things is reckless government spending. Well, maybe it's because of the investor tax breaks that One Nation votes to keep every single time they're on. Maybe there's not enough money to build public housing because you refuse to tax fossil fuel profits. Maybe there's not enough money for public housing and to build the houses Australia needs because One Nation opposes ever putting any impost on the resources industry.

I've been watching One Nation come in here every day to defend Gina Rinehart, defend the minerals industry's 'get out of jail free' cards and defend fossil fuel profits, and it turns out that Gina's been watching it too—she bought you a plane! I don't think it's just because she doesn't want to have Senator Hanson in her plane; I think it's because Gina Rinehart, the billionaire class, own One Nation. They absolutely own One Nation.

We've been watching One Nation play distraction politics. Senator Hanson was off at Trump's Mar-a-Lago in November last year learning about distraction politics and how you can weaponise migration and weaponise attacks on migration to avoid taking on the one per cent and the billionaire class. That's the lesson Senator Hanson was getting at her CPAC trip with Donald Trump last year. She was learning how to weaponise migration and make us hate each other and fight amongst each other for tiny little scraps out of the system while the one per cent and billionaire class absolutely cream it in and steal from us—steal from the public purse, steal from public resources. That's what Senator Hanson was doing for two weeks in November of last year, not the job she is paid to do—to come here and be a senator for the public. She accepted this billionaire's gift, as One Nation always does, because that's who owns One Nation.

When we hear you talk about ordinary Australians and working Australians—from 10,000 feet above, in Gina Rinehart's jet—as though that's who you're fighting for, we see you. We see you in the corporate jets. We see you at Trump's mansion. We see you at these far-right billionaire funded conferences. And, increasingly, the Australian public is going to see you for what you are because you don't give a rat's about people who can't afford a mortgage. You want to create division and divide Australians against each other. You're playing by Trump's rulebook, and that rulebook is looking increasingly crap.

I remind senators about language use in the Senate. The time for the discussion has expired.

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator Ruston, which is also shown at item 16 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"The Albanese Government promised cost-of-living relief but is now slugging around 3 million older Australians with higher private health insurance costs, leaving hundreds of thousands of pensioners to either pay more in a cost-of-living crisis or abandon private cover altogether, while shifting even more pressure onto our already overburdened public hospitals and leaving working age taxpayers to foot the bill."

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

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

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

I stand up today to condemn the Commonwealth government, the Albanese Labor government, for a decision to punish older Australians with a higher tax—that is, by removing the additional support they get to maintain their private health insurance over the age of 65. These are older Australians who have paid their private health insurance all of their lives, and this is the time when they need it most. Many of these people are pensioners, and the only thing they are spending any discretionary income on is the maintenance of their private health insurance, because that allows them to sleep at night and allows them to know, if something happens to them—we know that the older you get the more likely you are going to be dependent on the healthcare system to look after you. At this very time, this government, through its own budget failures, is seeking to use the money and peace of mind of older Australians to fix up its budget mess. This government should be absolutely ashamed.

What is even worse is that this is a complete and utter con. The government will tell you tonight they're supposedly going to save $3 billion for taxpayers over the four years of the forward estimates, but we know that's not true. This has got to be the mother of all cost shifts that I have ever seen. By taking people out of the private system, where they're paying for their own health care, and putting them into public system, you are just shifting the budget bottom line from the federal budget to the states and territories.

What makes it even worse is that the independent Finity report that the government received said this measure would actually be a net cost to taxpayers. It is going to cost taxpayers more to shift Australians out of the private system and into the public system than what the government is currently spending on the little bit of support it gives to older Australians to encourage them to keep their private health insurance. It is a complete and utter con, and Mark Butler, the Minister for Health and Ageing, knows this, because on Friday a week ago he told ABC radio that, for every dollar an older Australian invests in their health care over the age of 65, they get a $3 return on the private health that they receive in return. That means, for every older Australian who drops their private health insurance and the $1 they are investing, the $3 that's currently paid by the private health insurer will be picked up by the taxpayer.

The other piece of rubbish that this government is going on with is this idea that somehow this is redefining intergenerational equity. It's pitting one generation of Australians against another, but the worst of it is it is completely false. You're pushing older Australians who are currently paying for their own private health insurance into the public system, and the people who pay for the public system are working-age taxpayers. They are, by their very definition, younger Australians.

This government knows that this measure is false on both accounts. It will not save taxpayers money; it will cost taxpayers money. It is not some sort of intergenerational-equity smoothing; it is actually forcing younger Australians to pick up the healthcare costs of older Australians who will no longer be able to afford to pay for their health care. They will basically be taxed more by this government's decision that will be in its budget tonight and was announced by Minister Butler at the Press Club a couple of weeks ago. This is blatantly the federal government using older Australians to somehow take the blame and fix the mess of its budget failures. It has to be the worst piece of policy I have ever seen. It's the biggest public policy con that we have seen in this country for a very long time.

To make it worse—but pretty typical of these guys—there was no consultation whatsoever with anybody at all. Nobody knew this was coming until Mark Butler stood up and made the announcement. This is what this government has an incredible track record of—making great big headline announcements with no substance underneath them, no definition about how they will deliver them, and no consultation with anybody who will be impacted by them. In this instance, the peace of mind of older Australians and the security of their health care as they get older is the price the government is willing to have them pay for its budget failure.

An emerging theme in the lead-up to this budget has been the issue of intergenerational fairness. I thank Senator Ruston for her contribution, for her long service and for her commitment to health reform in this country. But this issue of intergenerational fairness must be addressed. Right now, if you are 70 years or older, you will get 32 per cent back on your private health insurance. However, if you are a 25-year-old or a 30-year-old or a 50-year-old, you will only get 24 per cent back. We on this side don't believe it is fair to divide Australians based on age. What we are doing is repealing this benefit first introduced by the Howard government off the back of the mining boom 22 years ago. As someone who has practised in health care in public hospitals I can tell you that I did not see with the introduction of this policy any reduction in pressures on public hospitals. There was no reduction. Public hospitals emergency department pressures have only increased as has throughput over the period of time this policy has been in place.

There is an interesting report from the National Rural Health Alliance from their snapshot in 2025. It lays out starkly the spend we make on public hospitals. From 2022 and 2023, we spent around $85 billion in public hospitals—state and Commonwealth. In contrast, in community care and public health, we spent around $20 billion; general practice, $15 billion. This is all back to front. This hospital-centric model of health funding has led to the issues that we currently see. We as a Labor government are now trying to redirect funding and skew it towards community care. That happens by strengthening Medicare. The foundation of our health system is not hospitals. Hospitals are reactive places that react to emergencies. But if you start mending the fence at the top of the cliff, you start to see a completely different picture emerge, where we reduce the pressures on public hospitals. A fine example of that is our urgent care clinics.

In our first term of government, we brought in this new model of care called the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. We currently have 137 around the country as we gun towards over 150. These have been visited by three million Australians, a third of them children. They are open from early until late. They see a range of patients. You can have diagnostics done—bloods. You can have imaging done and it is all bulk-billed. We have seen from our own evaluation a 10 per cent reduction in emergency department presentations. That is how you reduce pressure on public hospitals. That is how you do it.

In addition to that, we have invested a historic amount—$8.5 billion—back into bulk-billing. This kicked off on 1 November last year, and what did we see? Like magic, this is working, exceeding our expectations. We have seen now over 3,700 general practices around the country adopt bulk-billing. We now have a metric where 97 per cent of the population live within a 20-minute drive of a bulk-billing doctor. When we came in, bulk-billing was in freefall—about 75 per cent. 'Freefall' was the language used by college of general practitioners—not by us but by them. We have now seen an uplift to 81 per cent in the first quarter of this year, the highest it has been in 20 years. This is how you reduce the burden of chronic disease, by making it easier for older Australians who carry that disease burden to see their doctor. The backbone of the health system is not your hospitals. The backbone of the health system is general practice.

We are also strengthening Medicare by boosting the number of early-career doctors who are entering general practice. For the first time this year we will see more than 2,000 junior doctors enter general practice training. Half of those doctors will be training in rural and regional Australia. That is how you fix our health system.

I thank Senator Ruston for this motion, which One Nation supports. Currently, all Australians get a rebate on their contributions to private health insurance. For the people under 65, it is 24.1 per cent, for those 65-69 years of age it is 28.1 per cent and for those over 70 it is 32.2 per cent. These are adjusted for income. Minister Butler described the system as 'not fair between generations'. The government has announced the additional amount paid to our elderly will be removed, making everyone equal. How very communist and how self-defeating. The rebate is higher the older you get, because the cost to the taxpayer of a person moving from private to public care is higher the older they get. The extra payment encourages older Australians to stay in the private health system and save the taxpayers from having to carry the full cost of their health care.

Across forward estimates, this measure will cost taxpayers—including young people—billions more than it saves, and it will put more pressure on public hospitals already dealing with bed block and long waiting times. Our young people will not always be young. A measure that helps more than three million older Australians today will help younger Australians tomorrow.

The Albanese government is promoting division in order to set one age group against another. How dishonest! Classic communism! This is the politics of envy, designed to cover up the real reasons young people are struggling, which are immigration, net zero, grocery prices, energy prices, inflation—destroying industry, making lives harder and robbing our young of the opportunity to own their own homes, to enjoy the life that my generation enjoys. To pitch to younger voters, start there. Introduce negative immigration until housing and infrastructure catches up, reducing house prices. Terminate this net zero madness and let business get on with creating breadwinner jobs that provide a future for our young.

Intergenerational wealth transfer is a term that is a furphy, a lie, a dishonest diversion. Labor is crippling the young. In reality, this is an excuse from Labor to increase taxes on people with assets who, after a lifetime of work, are the older generations. Remember, today's young adults are the future older people. This aims to hit all Australians, including the young. You will eventually get hit. This is a lie that is masquerading to steal more taxes. One Nation will unwind this petty, dishonest, counterproductive measure. We are one nation, one community and One Nation will not set one Australian against another.

Sadly, the reality for the Australians after four years of the Albanese government is that they're doing it tougher than ever before—not because of bad luck, not because of global forces beyond anyone's control, but, sadly, because of choices, deliberate choices made by the Albanese government in Canberra. Australians are now living with those consequences each and every day.

But what do those consequences look like in real life? What has this government actually done to Australians? In the first instance, you wouldn't want to be a mortgage holder in this country under the Albanese government. You are now paying $29,000 more on your mortgage. That is right—the average family under Mr Albanese is paying $29,000 more per year on their home loan than when Labor was elected. There have been 15 interest rate rises under the Albanese government. The Reserve Bank has been very clear: our inflation is being driven by decisions of the Albanese government.

Then, of course, there was the promise on energy bills. What did they say when they were trying to buy the votes of Australians? 'We will reduce your energy bills by $275.' The bad news for Australians is this: they have risen by 32 per cent. That promise never materialised and is long gone. Insurance costs are up by 42 per cent. In Australia we have experienced the highest and the biggest fall in living standards of any developed nation on Earth—not in our region but in the world. And the debt count is heading towards $1 trillion of debt for our kids. That is $50,000 a minute that we are paying just in interest under the Albanese government.

Then tonight they're about to slug millions of Australians even more. In other words, the pain you are already feeling is going to get a hell of a lot worse tonight, when the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, opens his mouth. On top of everything, on top of all that pain, tonight the Albanese government is going to cut the private health insurance rebate for every Australian over the age of 65. Australians need to think about that. Who is the face of that? Well, it could be your mum and dad, or it could be your grandparents—people who have worked diligently all their lives, who have paid their taxes, who have been responsible and taken out private health cover. Why? Because they did not want to burden anyone else. They have been paying their premiums year after year after year, decade after decade after decade. I thought we'd be thanking those people. Yet tonight, because the Albanese government wouldn't know how to manage an economy if it fell over it, those people are going to be punished for that responsible decision. This happens to be the reality.

Up to 3.2 million older Australians will be affected by the decision tonight to cut the private health insurance rebate. And 400,000 pensioners are going to be directly hit tonight. That could be an additional $1,614 for a couple on gold cover every single year. That's what you will now pay. It will be $807 extra in costs for an individual each year, a 21.3 per cent premium increase—the biggest rise on record. We're in the middle of the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, and tonight this government will smash our pensioners and ask them to find an additional $807 if they're single or up to $1,614 for couples. That is the biggest premium increase on record. The reality for those people is that they're going to drop their private health cover, thanks to the Albanese government. And do you know what then happens? They move into the public hospital system. And then what happens? Elective surgery waitlists get longer. Then what happens? Working-age Australians and taxpayers foot the bill. This is complete madness. Quite frankly, the pensioners of Australia deserve better.

I rise to contribute to this debate on Senator Ruston's motion, and I'd like to start off by echoing the words of my colleague Senator Ananda-Rajah and thank her for her very intelligent and considered approach and her expertise in this field. It goes to show that on this side we have a caucus with people of all walks, who have all sorts of information from their backgrounds, and from the medical profession we've got an absolute gem with us.

We know that as people get older their needs change and trips to the doctor become more frequent, medicines become part of their daily life, and the healthcare system becomes something they rely on even more. For older Australians in particular, that reliance comes down to one simple question: can I access the care when I need it? The truth is, not long ago, too many Australians were asking exactly that. When we came to government in 2022 it had never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor. Bulk-billing was in freefall after a decade of cuts and neglect of Medicare. For pensioners and retirees in particular, that mattered.

That's why the Albanese Labor government has been investing in Medicare, because Medicare is built on that simple principle: health care should be accessible, regardless of your income, your age or where you live—and that matters more, not less, as Australians get older. That's why strengthening Medicare has been the Albanese Labor government's priority. We're not just maintaining a system; we're rebuilding it, we're strengthening it and we're making sure it works for everybody, especially those who rely on it the most.

In our first term, we got to work. We delivered more bulk-billing, more doctors and cheaper medicines. We opened 87 Medicare urgent care clinics across the country. For older Australians, that has meant something practical. It means being able to see a doctor without worrying about the cost. It means having somewhere to go for urgent care without sitting for hours in a hospital emergency department. It means knowing the system is there when you need it. But we do know that there's more to do. That's why we've been making the largest investments in Medicare in over 40 years. We've put in over $8.5 billion to rebuild access to care. We've restored bulk-billing to ensure Australians and older Australians can see a doctor when they need to.

Again, I'll echo the words of my colleague, Senator Ananda-Rajah: keeping people out of hospital and preventing the need to go to hospital matters—having care where people can access it and where they need it at an affordable level with just their Medicare card. We're already seeing more practices move to fully bulk-billing. Who would have thought? These things don't just happen by accident; they happen because Labor governments implement the policies to give people access to the essential services that they need. We are investing in the GP workforce that supports that care. We're training more GPs, and we're bringing more doctors into the healthcare systems because access isn't just about affordability; it's making sure that healthcare providers are available for every Australian.

Our Medicare urgent care clinics are also making a real difference. In Tassie, we have got fantastic clinics across Burnie, Devonport and Launceston and around the greater Hobart area. They are making a difference. They are accessible. People can get to them within 20 minutes. It's incredible. Medicare urgent care clinics have been taking the pressure off the hospital system. They've been reducing the demand on emergency departments so hospitals can focus on that critical care. At urgent care clinics, people can go in and get that care that they need, whether they've fallen off their bike and they need to get patched up or they've been bitten by an insect and had a reaction. Urgent care clinics are there for you. They have extended hours, and you can just walk in.

And then there's medicine, and older Australians know a lot about having medicines. My nan in particular used to have quite a lot. Under the PBS, scripts are frozen at $25. But, for seniors and concession card holders, that's $7.70 until the end of the decade. Australians have saved more than $2.6 billion on the costs of their scripts thanks to Labor and our commitment to making medicines cheaper. That makes a difference, and it means that people aren't forced to choose between paying a bill and filling a script. It means that they can stick to the treatment plans and achieve better health. Labor is taking action to keep people healthy and have the care that they need.

People across the country are struggling to get basic health care. Some are stuck on waiting lists. Others are living in pain, racked with the worry of what happens if things get worse. Right now, people are putting off going to the doctor or to the dentist because they simply cannot afford it. Parents are skipping their own appointments so that their kids can get dental care. Pensioners are living with chronic pain. Young people are ending up in emergency departments with preventable dental infections. And this is happening in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Public waiting lists are getting longer while private health care becomes even more expensive. It shouldn't be the size of your bank account that decides what health care you can access. For years, governments have ignored the growing crisis in public health funding. Public hospitals are overcrowded. Mental health care services are pushed beyond breaking point. Finding a bulk-billing GP can feel impossible. Community health organisations are underfunded, and dental care is still excluded from Medicare. Dental care is health care. It is not a luxury, yet this government continues to treat it like one. While ordinary people put off seeing the dentist because of cost, the federal government keeps handing out corporate giveaways and refusing to make the wealthiest one per cent pay their fair share of tax. The priorities are completely wrong. We should be investing in bulk-billing, in public hospitals and in mental health care and we should finally bring dental care into Medicare. No-one should have to choose between paying rent and fixing a tooth.

With grave concern about what will be contained in tonight's budget, I rise to speak on the coalition motion. From leaked documents and media reporting, it can only be assumed that Australians are facing yet more broken promises, along with more and higher taxes. One of these is the reckless decision, pre-emptively announced by the Minister for Health and Ageing several weeks ago, that the Albanese Labor government intends to reduce the private health insurance rebate for policyholders aged over 65.

For many older Australians, including many in my home state of Tasmania, holding private health insurance is not a luxury. It is how they access timely and affordable care when they need it most. This change, which those opposite are attempting to frame as an issue of intergenerational equity, ignores the context and reasons the rebate was higher for this cohort in the first place: older Australians access the health system more frequently and generally have lower incomes.

This decision will hit Australians in the hip pocket—Australians who deserve our respect, after spending years and, in many cases, decades paying for private health insurance, in line with government policy at the time, only to now see that support ripped away. Analysis by Private Healthcare Australia has laid bare the damaging consequences of cutting the private health rebate for over-65s. The decision will harm around 3.2 million older Australians, including hundreds of thousands of pensioners living on fixed incomes. That analysis shows couples aged over 65 with gold cover could face additional costs of up to $1,614 a year. This would represent the largest increase in private health insurance costs on record, right in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. It is effectively a new tax on older Australians.

This issue is particularly acute in Tasmania, where the population is older than the national average and many seniors live on low fixed incomes. Tasmanian health insurer St Lukes found that, among affected members, one in four has an income of less than $30,000 and three in four have an income of less than $55,000. This puts into sharp context the claims from those opposite that this is merely about fairness. In reality, it will disproportionately impact older Australians with lower levels of disposable income. The Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing in Tasmania, Bridget Archer, has stated that this decision was deeply concerning and would force many older Tasmanians to downgrade or to leave private health insurance altogether, forcing them into the Tasmanian public health system. She has also claimed that, much like we're seeing with Tasmanians stranded in our hospitals and GP access, this is yet another cost shift from the Commonwealth government to the states, with Tasmanians to suffer as a result.

Framing this decision is one of intergenerational equity is a slap in the face to older Australians—and their families—who have worked hard throughout their lives and made significant contributions to our economy. Families caring for older parents and grandparents want and need their loved ones to receive timely and affordable care. If private health insurance helps deliver that care, they should be supported, not blamed for this government's failure to properly invest in aged care. Older Australians are not responsible for government's shortfall in aged-care infrastructure. That responsibility rests squarely with the government itself. Knee-jerk bandaid measures such as cutting the rebate, introducing new aged-care co-payments and rolling out AI driven assessments will not deliver the reform the aged-care system needs. Instead, they will further disadvantage older Australians who are already struggling to make ends meet.

Labor's treatment of older Australians could not be clearer. Indeed, Minister Butler attempted to bury this announcement beneath a National Press Club speech on the NDIS, seemingly in the hope that no-one would notice. You do not hide good policy. The reality is that older Australians' health will pay the price for this decision. It is no exaggeration to say that many will be forced onto public waiting lists because they cannot absorb the increased costs of private health insurance. Yet public hospitals across the country are already overstretched and overburdened. This shift will lead to longer elective surgery waitlists, more ambulance ramping and poorer health outcomes.

For older Australians, timely and affordable access to care can quite literally mean the difference between life and death. Medical treatment can be life saving and life extending for many. For Labor to frame this decision solely around intergenerational equity is misleading and fails to recognise its real-world consequences. This is not just about numbers; it's about people's health. This is yet another broken promise from a Labor government that claimed it would ease the pressure on public hospitals. Australians do not deserve a budget of broken promises and high taxes tonight.

I now move to attendance by a minister.

The motion agreed to by the Senate on April Fools' Day seeks explanations on two separate orders: OPD 119 and OPD 27. It might be useful to remind Senator Bragg of what his motions were, given there have been so many of them. I'm very pleased to see that Senator Bragg has clearly had a good six-week break. I don't want to reflect on a senator's appearance, but he's clearly had some vitamin D therapy. Suntanned in here—I don't know whether he picked up the tan doorknocking in Deniliquin, greeting voters in Griffith, arguing with voters in Albury—on Dean Street there—or lingering in Leeton. I faintly suspect that none of those places were the source of the additional melatonin produced by sunshine for the old humble Bragg. I suspect it was there at Coota Beach—or skiing, perhaps.

Order 119 sought documents 'regarding the contingent liability taxpayers are being exposed to' from the Home Guarantee Scheme. That's in Senator Bragg's own words. Two documents were tabled in response to that order: firstly, an Excel spreadsheet of the modelling conducted by the Australian Government Actuary on the contingent liability of this scheme and, secondly, the papers that accompany that Excel spreadsheet and explain and provide a summary of the result. The order was for contingent liability modelling. We provided him with that contingent liability modelling in a spreadsheet with an explanation. The government has complied with this motion, and we've given Senator Bragg precisely what the motion sought. Minister O'Neil has explained this to Senator Bragg in a letter directly addressed to him, Minister Gallagher has explained this to him in a statement, Minister Farrell has explained this to him in the Senate and I'm back here for round 2 to see if I can get it through that this order has been entirely complied with.

Maybe one of his colleagues could assist him—maybe by sorting the piles of paper on his desk—to figure this out. He even told the chamber that the contingent liability has nothing to do with the Home Guarantee Scheme. This is his own motion that he's clearly very, very confused about. I'm happy to assist him by tabling it. We can nail it on his door—whatever he likes. It's job done in terms of order 119.

In relation to order 27, which related to the Home Guarantee Scheme and to our plan to build 100,000 new homes for first home buyers, the government has provided documents too. Following long-standard practice, redactions have been applied to remove names and contact details of non-executive staff. That's the normal process. As is appropriate, documents which would disclose the deliberation of cabinet are not released, but that is not a new approach from this government. It is a well-established process that has a very strong rationale and backing from this institution in order to protect cabinet deliberations. I'm not sure whether or not it really is that Senator Bragg has just lost track of what's going on here, but it does tell you a bit about the carping negativity and process focus—a complete lack of focus on the things that ordinary Australians want, which is a government that's backing them and backing their work to secure a home for them and their families.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

Well, thank you very much for that! Moving to take note of the minister's explanation would be rather generous because it wasn't an explanation, because the minister has engaged in obfuscation here, as has the government. Going back to July last year, after the election, when OPD No. 27 was initially moved and agreed to by the Senate, we were seeking the modelling that was to underpin the five per cent deposit scheme. The idea that I have lost my mind—whilst maybe on some level funny and it may possibly be true—in this case is not true.

Since July we have been seeking access to the modelling which underpinned the Prime Minister's assertion that the Home Guarantee Scheme's expansion to anyone, effectively, would only result in a 0.6 per cent increase in house prices. The lived experience here has been a six per cent increase in house prices in six months under the Home Guarantee Scheme. We went from 0.6 per cent over six years to six per cent in just six months.

Clearly the government have no idea what they're doing. The modelling done for them was completely wrong. The government knows that this housing gimmick, its five per cent deposit scheme, was deployed into a market which was constrained by a huge collapse in supply, from 200,000 houses a year on average down to 170,000 houses a year on average, and the fact that this policy was pushed into the market at that time—it was always likely to have a price impact, which is why the government went to great lengths to get it modelled.

Of course, the modelling was only done after the policy was announced. The policy was announced during the election campaign as a giveaway, and then the modelling was produced by the Treasury. But everything is redacted. When we see the pieces of paper we get back from the government—OPDs, FOIs, whatever they are—everything is covered up. So we can't actually see the basis point on which the modelling was done.

The lack of transparency and the attempts to smear the opposition as being of unsound mind do not go very far in providing the sort of transparency and integrity this government promised it would deliver for Australians when it was elected some four years ago. Given we are here on the day of the 2026-27 budget, in which the government is proposing to break all promises made about not increasing taxes, maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

At the most basic level, I want to acknowledge the Senate's desire, as evidenced by its repeated voting pattern, to have the documents provided for public inspection. It's not good enough for the government to say, 'In relation to factoring in the supply response,' which is what the modelling has taken into account, 'we're just going to redact that whole section.' The idea that we can't see how the modelling for the government was done makes a mockery of this chamber and makes a mockery of the people who sent us to do this work. All we're seeking to do is to get to the bottom of how the modelling was done and on what basis it was done, because, clearly, the lived experience has shown the modelling was wrong. Given the government tonight are apparently going to promise that 75,000 people are now going to have access to a first home, you won't be surprised to hear that we're sceptical of their modelling efforts, given the last one was so wrong.

So we've seen no further information from the minister this afternoon. And it's not just OPD Nos 27 and 119. There's also Senator Payman's OPD No. 208. Senator Payman has sought to get access to information, and she has received the same blanked-out, redacted pieces of paper. We have three OPDs on foot, but we have not been able to get to the bottom of the modelling underpinning the five per cent deposit scheme. At this rate, the minister will be coming in and having to do a lot more explanations where he accuses other people of being of unsound mind, which may be funny but ultimately does not advance the policy interest of the nation. This covering up doesn't help us get to the bottom of things, and it therefore doesn't give the government an opportunity to course-correct with their future policy intervention.

I'll call on the senator again to at least get the minister back to explain. I'm wondering what the value of that is. We need to seriously consider more coercive measures on the government ministers if they're going to treat this chamber in this way. Honestly, what's the point? We really need to consider whether we restrict the minister's ability to engage in this chamber in some form.

Housing has become one of those topics where every Australian seems to have a story. You hear it at pub dinners, at school pick-up, in group chats and in awkward conversations between parents and adult kids who still can't afford to move out. People are exhausted. They're Australians doing everything right, yet they feel like homeownership is drifting further away every single year. Young people are battling each other for rental properties like it's The Hunger Games. Families who absolutely would have owned a home a generation ago cannot get a foothold in the market. Renters are watching prices jump again and again while their wages do not. Homelessness is becoming more visible in suburbs and regional towns, where people never used to see it before. People know something is broken.

I think what frustrates Australians most is that housing has become so politicised that sometimes it feels harder to get an honest conversation than it is to get a rental application approved. This crisis did not appear overnight. For a long time, the Commonwealth stepped back from housing and left most of the heavy lifting to the states. During most of the coalition's nine years in government, they did not even have a housing minister. That still blows my mind. Imagine looking at the scale of this crisis years ago and going, 'She'll be right.' Meanwhile, Australia underbuilt homes for years while our population grew, our cities expanded and construction became slower, harder and more expensive. So, no, this is not a crisis that can be fixed with one announcement or even one budget. What matters is whether governments are willing to genuinely engage with the problem, and this government is.

Under Prime Minister Albanese, the Commonwealth stopped being a bystander and started acting like housing is a national priority again. That means tackling the crisis from multiple angles at once: building more homes, backing renters, helping first home buyers and actually trying to increase supply instead of just yelling at each other on television panels. There has been real progress already. Since coming to government, more than 240,000 Australians have bought their first home with a five per cent deposit. More than one million households have been supported through increases to rent assistance. We now have more than 24,000 social and affordable homes either planned or under construction, with thousands already completed. That matters because behind every housing statistic is somebody trying to build a life, somebody trying to raise kids somewhere stable, somebody trying to stay close to work, family or community instead of being pushed further and further out.

I think younger Australians are particularly tired of hearing housing discussed like it is some abstract economic concept instead of the thing shaping almost every major life decision they make. People are delaying relationships, delaying kids, moving back home, living with five housemates at 30, spending absurd percentages of their income on rent and then being told they just need to budget better by people who bought houses when a deposit cost roughly the same as a medium-sized iced latte now. Australians don't expect miracles from government, but they do want seriousness. They want homes built faster. They want more medium-density housing near transport and jobs. They want less pointless red tape. They want renters to be treated fairly. They want governments willing to admit this crisis is structural and requires long-term effort, because there is no silver bullet here.

The answer is not blame; it's building—building social housing, building affordable housing, building homes for first home buyers, building infrastructure so communities can grow sustainably and building enough confidence back into the system so younger Australians can imagine a future where stable housing is not treated like some impossible luxury. Housing should not feel unattainable in a country like Australia. Whilst there is still a long way to go, this government is at least willing to roll up its sleeves and actually do the work.

I rise to take note of the minister's lack of a response to this order for the production of documents, and this is a pattern that we are seeing regularly from this Labor government, in showing contempt for this chamber by not providing it with the information that we are entitled to see.

I think it is fair to say that, if the government believed this program was a good one, then they would be showing us the modelling and they'd be very happy to do so. But what we know is that this is a program that has failed, just like their HAFF has failed. Hardly any houses have been built. Now we see a five per cent deposit scheme has pushed up the price of houses. Whilst, as Senator Walker says, 240,000 people have availed themselves of that five per cent deposit scheme, the average price of a house is now around a million dollars. So the government has helped people to acquire a roughly $950,000 debt, and, on top of that, interest rates have now gone up. All they're doing is pushing up house prices and saddling people with massive amounts of debt. Meanwhile, the banks are absolutely making massive profits—

An honourable senator: Making bank!

making bank, off the interest of these loans. How about we tax the banks and then build some public housing? That would fix the housing crisis.

Senator Walker talked about a whole range of impacts that this housing crisis is having, and I agree with her on that. But what I don't agree with her on is that Labor has risen to the occasion to actually tackle the scale of this crisis, and it is a crisis. Labor have now been in government for four years, and they are about to hand down their fifth budget. Every measure that they have taken in the last four years has been tinkering around the edges rather than tackling the actual problems. We need a massive build of public housing in this country. That is the way that we will tackle the housing crisis.

Senator Walker talked about the fact that the government's made some increases to rent assistance. The government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee says, in its most recent report, that all of those gains have now been lost; they've been negated because now rents have gone up and the cost of housing has gone up. Labor might as well have not made that increase to rent assistance, because, by making the problem worse, they've just neutralised the gains.

If this government had the courage to stand up to the big end of town, it would be taxing the one per cent, it would be making sure that the banks were paying their fair share of tax, it would be making sure that gas corporations were paying at least 25 per cent on their gas exports, it would be making sure that the billionaires in this country were paying their fair share and it would be making sure that corporations in this country—every corporation—were prevented from price gouging people. There's the revenue they could generate from really tackling capital gains tax and negative gearing, not just tinkering around the edges like we're hearing, and actually taxing the gas corporations and stopping fossil fuel subsidies. And maybe don't pay for those submarines that we'll never see from a country that has a leader that is tanking his own economy.

If they actually had the courage to do these things—to stand up to their corporate mates and the big end of town—we'd have the money we need to tackle the housing crisis, to build hundreds of thousands of public homes to make sure that people have a roof over their head and to raise income support so that people on the lowest incomes in this country can afford to live. The fact that they won't release the documentation tells us everything that we need to know. They are embarrassed by this policy, and it's not working.

This government has failed on housing. This government has also failed on transparency, which is why we are here speaking on this topic. This government refuses to provide information that has been requested by a senator in this chamber. Instead of explaining why or providing that information, they choose to mock that senator for seeking the information. That is the hallmark of this government. They provide what they want to, when they want to, how they want to and if they want to. That's not how democracy works.

Senator Walker made a comment, as she finished speaking, that housing should not be unattainable in a country like Australia. She's right. Guess what? It is unattainable in this country. Guess what else? It's become even more unattainable over the last four years under the Albanese Labor government. Throw whatever rocks you will at others around this chamber, but it is those opposite, those sitting on the government benches, who are accountable for where we find ourselves today. I am tired of it. It should not be impossible for a young person to buy a home. It should not be impossible for a woman restarting her life after she's been impacted by domestic violence to buy a home. It should not be impossible for any person in this country to buy a home. It should be something that they are able to do without question.

The policies of this government have made it harder for Australians to access housing. Regarding the five per cent deposit guarantee scheme that Senator Bragg has been speaking about, the Prime Minister said that their modelling suggested—and I'll read it to make sure that I don't get it wrong—that it would push up house prices by only 0.6 per cent in six years. Their reckless policy has actually pushed up prices of entry level homes by 3.6 per cent in the December 2025 quarter alone. In this chamber, we told them that that would happen. We told the same people who have spoken this evening, and they would not listen to us because, as always, they knew best. Guess what? You don't know best. You have made it worse. You have tanked our economy. You have mismanaged it in the most appalling way, and Australians are paying the price for it; moreover, young Australians are paying the price for it.

Now they're championing that they have created change and intergenerational equity, and that will be announced tonight in their budget. Explain to me how that happens when now it's just young Australians, who don't own their own home, who won't be able to negative gear. They can't afford to buy a home where they have grown up or where they work. If you had an idea about maybe rentvesting, or purchasing a home somewhere else where it's cheaper, to get your foot onto the property ladder, you can't do that because that wouldn't be fair. Explain that to me, because I don't get it.

Tonight, this government is planning to pull the ladder up so that young Australians can't get on the property ladder, based on what they themselves have leaked to the media about what they're doing in the budget. They should be ashamed of pretending that what they are doing tonight in the budget is about intergenerational fairness when all it is about is plugging their own spending holes. They are taxing Australians more because they have spent far too much and they do not know how to manage that. And they dare to lecture us about asking them to be accountable in this place. They dare to lecture us about wasting their time by making them be transparent. I suggest to them that they should be doing that. This government needs to step up and lead, which it has not yet done in the past four years.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is the response from the Auditor-General to the request from the Senate—I think it ended up in unanimous resolution of the Senate—to reinstate the Major projects report in Defence. What we saw earlier this year was really out of the blue for much of the public and for those who were observing this space. It was a decision that seemed to be supported by the Audit Office as well as by the joint standing committee that oversights the Audit Office. The decision made was to cancel the Major projects review. The Major projects review is one of the few moments in the annual calendar where you really get to hold Defence to account. You can see the slippage in the delivery of all of their major projects. You see the cost blowouts. The Major projects review compares Defence project costs not just to the most recent amended project cost—normally the 50th or 60th variation on that—but also to the cost of the second pass, when it has gone through the cabinet and been formally adopted as a capability. It compares the budget to that second-pass budget and also what the projected timeframe for delivery is at the second pass. What we saw, year after year, was that Defence wasn't a few years behind cumulatively; Defence is decades and decades behind with the production of major projects. We are only talking about 20 or so major projects, not all of them. What they also showed was massive cost blowouts and radical reductions often in the capability. Defence was failing on every count.

The second-pass approval said that for a certain price in a certain time a certain capability would be delivered, and what we found time after time in the Major Projects Report—and you can track it back over years—was that capabilities were being reduced, timeframes were being massively blown out and in budgets were being massively blown out. Defence, probably uniquely in the federal government, fails to meet or to even come close to meeting any of its key performance indicators. The Major Projects Report, year after year after year, would identify that.

What did Defence do? The Empire started fighting back. Defence hated the scrutiny that was happening in the major projects review. So they gathered together in their little Death Star, somewhere over there on the other side of the Parliamentary Triangle, and they worked out how they could undermine the major projects review. They decided they would start doing this 'not for publication'. They would give data to the Audit Office, but they would say to the Audit Office, 'You can't include this data in your final report to the parliament and the public because it would degrade Australia's national security.' If you pointed out the obscene delay in producing capability X or the budget blowout or the reduction in capabilities achieved, that would somehow erode the defence capacity of Australia and erode our national security. If we learned the truth about Defence's failures, that would somehow attack the national interest.

I have to tell you this. Not finding out the truth out about Defence's repeated institutional failures on procurement is a far bigger risk to national security. Handing over $50 billion, $60 billion, up to $70 billion a year to an organisation that has almost zero accountability and a track record of blowing that money is a major risk to national security. Rather than pushing back against this, we get meek little notes from the Audit Office year after year that say, 'I want to draw your attention to the fact that these numbers aren't being produced.' It got the point last year that so much data was withheld from Defence that the Audit Office thought the Major Projects Report wasn't worth the paper it was written on. We couldn't trust it to hold the government to account because a whole chunk of the key data wasn't there.

What has the Audit Office said now? The Audit Office, which is facing a major budget crunch from this government, has said that it can no longer afford to keep doing the Major Projects Report. Defence wins. Defence has won. By hiding information year after year, they've won the fight and killed off the Major Projects Report. That is an appalling outcome for the public, but no doubt cheered on— (Time expired)

Leave granted to continue remarks later; debate adjourned.

I present additional information received by the Community Affairs Legislation Committee relating to estimates.

The information was unavailable at the time of publishing.

On behalf of the Chair of Human Rights Joint Committee, I present the human rights scrutiny reports 4 and 5 of 2026.

On behalf of the Chair of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Joint Committee, I present two reports on the examination of annual reports for 2024-25.

On behalf of the Chair of the Treaties Joint Committee, I present its 232nd report, Papua New GuineaAustralia Mutual Defence Treaty (the Pukpuk treaty).

I present six government responses to committee reports as listed at item 19 on today's Order of Business. In accordance with the usual practice, I seek leave to incorporate the documents into Hansard.

Leave granted.

The documents read as follows

The document wa s unavailable at time of publishing.

_____

Australian Government response to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee report:

Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 [Provisions]

May 2026

Overview

The international education sector is important to Australia, and the Australian Government remains committed to ensuring its quality and integrity.

The Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment's final report on the inquiry into the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 (ESOS Bill) made 8 recommendations.

The Australian Greens provided a dissenting report with 4 recommendations. Senator David Pocock provided additional comments with 18 recommendations.

Following the Senate Inquiry, the ESOS Bill lapsed on 28 March 2025 when Parliament was prorogued.

Government response

The Australian Government considered the recommendations contained in the Committee's report and on 9 October 2025, the Minister for Education, the Hon Jason Clare MP, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 (ELA Bill). The ELA Bill featured many of the same measures as the ESOS Bill. Recommendations contained in the Committee's report informed the drafting of the Bill, which was passed by Parliament on 28 November 2025. The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025 (ELA Act) received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025.

While it is not a requirement to respond to recommendations to pass, not pass, or amend a Bill, the Australian Government has responded to all recommendations.

Recommendations of the Committee

Recommendation 1

The committee recommends that the bill be passed.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation, further noting that the ESOS Bill lapsed on 28 March 2025.

Recommendations 2-6 (relating to Part 7—Enrolment limits)

2. The committee recommends that the bill be amended to remove the ability for the Minister to set course-level limits for Table A and B universities and TAFE providers.

3. The committee recommends that the bill be amended to exempt specific classes of students, including by citizenship, from enrolment limits in instruments and notices.

4. The committee recommends that the bill be amended to require the Minister to consult ESOS agencies and Immigration Minister before setting limits.

5. The committee recommends that the bill be amended to require the Minister to consult providers before setting future limits. The Minister should only be required to consult with providers on the initial setting of enrolment limits each year, without the process being duplicated in the event there is a reallocation of student places throughout the year.

6. The committee recommends that Part 7 of the bill be amended to change 'notices' to 'notifiable instruments.'

7. The deadline for instruments made under the Bill should be changed from 1 September of the year before the first year to which the instrument applies, to the 1 July of the year before the first year to which the instrument applies.

The Australian Government notes these recommendations.

These recommendations have been acquitted on the basis that they are proposed amendments to the legislation.

Following the lapse of the ESOS Bill on 28 March 2025, the Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025. Part 7 (Enrolment limits) of the ESOS Bill 2024 was not included in the ELA Bill.

Recommendation 8

The committee recommends that Ministerial Direction 107 be removed upon royal assent to the legislative amendments.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

As announced on the Department of Home Affairs website, Ministerial Direction 107 (MD107) was revoked on 18 December 2024. It was replaced with Ministerial Direction 111 (MD111), which commenced on 19 December 2024. Subsequently, MD111

was replaced by Ministerial Direction 115 (MD115) with effect from 14 November 2025.

Recommendations of the Australian Greens

Recommendation 1

That this Bill not be passed unless Part 7 and 8 of the Bill are removed.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation, further noting that the ESOS Bill 2024 lapsed on 28 March 2025.

The Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025. Part 7 (Enrolment limits) of the ESOS Bill 2024 was not included in the ELA Bill.

Recommendation 2

That Ministerial Direction 107 be revoked immediately and not be contingent on the passage of the government's legislation to cap international student numbers.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

As outlined in the response to Committee Recommendation 8, Ministerial Direction 107 (MD107) was revoked on 18 December 2024 and replaced by subsequent Ministerial Directions.

Recommendation 3

That the government withdraw this Bill, go back to the drawing board and properly consult with the tertiary education sector to develop a plan which is sustainable rather than a rushed reckless migration policy.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

Following the lapse of the 2024 ESOS Bill on 28 March 2025, the Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025.

Recommendation 4

That university funding be increased to fully and properly funded learning, teaching and research.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

Recommendation 40 of the Australian Universities Accord's Final Report proposed the introduction of a new funding system to be planned and managed by an Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).

The Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 establishing the ATEC passed Parliament on 31 March 2026.

Recommendations of Senator David Pocock

Recommendations 1-12 and 14-15 (relating to Part 7—Enrolment limits)

1. Delay commencement of Parts 7 & 8 of the Bill to 1 January 2026 to enable an orderly transition without further damaging Australia's international reputation and the longevity of our international education sector.

2. Include 'sunset provisions' in relation to the Minister's powers so that they sunset at the sooner of two years, or when a relevant Mission Based Compact entered into.

3. Amend the Bill to require the use of formulas and rules in the legislative instrument and remove the power to cap providers or vary legislative instruments independently of the Parliament. Establish legislated criteria for setting caps and require the Minister to provide and publish a statement of reasons for each cap.

4. Insert a provision creating an independent process for providers to challenge and/or request a formal review of any cap they are given.

5. Set a floor on the annual international student caps to give providers a minimum level of certainty to plan their budgets. The floor is proposed to be a cap that is not more than 15% lower than the previous year's cap or the average of the previous three calendar years, whichever is higher.

6. Amend the breach provisions, so that they are more proportionate, and so that suspensions are not automatically triggered for minor breaches. Include a range in the international student cap allocations to each institution to provide flexibility and minimise unintentional breaches of the cap. Include at least one warning of potential breaches prior to penalties being enforced.

7. Insert a provision that annual international student cap limits must be provided no later than 1 July of the preceding year and be publicly notified.

8. Require the formula for setting caps to take into account the provision of existing student accommodation, including any arrangements through third party providers.

9. Remove the Minister's power to set caps at a course level.

10. Provide clarity to providers around the priority categories of students to be excluded from the caps including postgraduate research students, exchange/study abroad/mobility students, and students in transnational education (TNE) programs.

11. Require the Minister to consult with a registered provider before determining a limit for that provider.

12. Insert a new provision requiring the government to maintain a public register of all notifications provided. Notifications to providers should be directed to be immediately included in the register.

14. Better define enrolment for the purposes of setting annual international student caps.

15. In consultation with stakeholders, develop and legislate a workable system for reallocating unused places.

The Australian Government notes these recommendations.

These recommendations have been acquitted on the basis that they are proposed amendments to the legislation.

Following the lapse of the ESOS Bill on 28 March 2025, the Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025. Part 7 (Enrolment limits) of the ESOS Bill 2024 was not included in the ELA Bill.

Recommendation 13

Amend the definition of education agent to make it clear that an agent is an entity that engages in the specified activities in relation to a provider in exchange for a commission, and that is listed in the PRISMS system.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

This recommendation has been acquitted on the basis that it is a proposed amendment to the legislation. The proposed definition of 'education agent' in the ESOS Bill was carried forward as a measure in the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025.

The new definition supports transparency of provider-education agent relationships and integrity in the international education sector by giving a clearer and more comprehensive definition of 'education agent'.

Basing the definition of education agent on the activities performed in relation to a provider more accurately reflects the interactions, including financial, between providers and education agents.

Recommendation 16

Narrow the reasons why the Minister can suspend or cancel a course to those with systemic integrity issues.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

This recommendation has been acquitted on the basis that it is a proposed amendment to the legislation. The measure to give the Minister the power to suspend and cancel courses, as per Part 8 of the ESOS Bill, was carried forward in the ELA Bill. This measure will help remove courses where there is a demonstrated poor or low quality of delivery or where the courses are being used to subvert student visa conditions.

Recommendation 17

Ensure the legislation allows new independent higher education providers to enter the market with appropriate quality and integrity safeguards.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

This recommendation has been acquitted on the basis that it is a proposed amendment to the legislation.

Following the lapse of the ESOS Bill on 28 March 2025, the Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education, introduced an amended omnibus Bill, the ELA Bill, which was passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2025. The ELA Bill includes a range of measures to strengthen the quality, integrity and sustainability of the delivery of education in Australia.

Recommendation 18

The government should develop a national plan for population and immigration that sets specific targets through consultation with Australians and consideration of impacts on housing accessibility and affordability, infrastructure, the environment and water, and our priority work skills needed.

The Australian Government notes this recommendation.

On 11 December 2023, the Australian Government released its Migration Strategy.

The Migration Strategy was informed by extensive consultation with business, unions and other stakeholders, and more than 450 submissions received as part of the 2023 Review of the Migration System.

_____

The document wa s unavailable at time of publishing.

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The document wa s unavailable at time of publishing.

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Australian Government response to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works report:

Report 6/2021

Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment Scientific Research Station Modernisation, Macquarie Island

MAY 2026

Recommendation 3

The Committee recommends that the Department provide a detailed breakdown of the costs related to preliminary expenditure.

Response

The Government notes this recommendation. However, given the passage of time since this report was tabled, a substantive Government response is no longer appropriate.

I present the 189th report of the Privileges Committee, regarding the handling of documents and communications by the Department of Parliamentary Services, together with accompanying documents. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This inquiry related to searches of data held on the parliamentary computer network. The searches were undertaken to support an independent investigation by Dr Fiona Roughley into an incentive-to-retire payment made to a former deputy secretary of DPS. Three data searches were undertaken in support of the Roughley investigation: two by DPS officers and a third by a contractor, TransPerfect Legal. TransPerfect had been engaged by the law firm which was acting for DPS.

The extracted data of eight DPS staff from the parliamentary network consisted of emails and Microsoft 365 logs from a 10-month period in 2023. This data was then filtered against search criteria designed to target information relevant to the investigation. Before the search results were provided to Dr Roughley, the metadata of that material was examined by the law firm for data connected to parliamentarians, their staff or the operations of parliament. The evidence of the law firm to the committee was that no material of that nature was identified.

At its heart, this inquiry related to the issue of how to protect the privileges of the parliament while ensuring that appropriate action can be taken to investigate allegations of illegal activity or maladministration.

As detailed in our report, it was not necessary or appropriate for the committee to form a concluded view on whether misconduct of any kind occurred in relation to the incentive-to-retire payment. The committee accepts that matters have been raised with the current secretary of DPS which she was bound to address and which she ultimately considered met the statutory threshold for referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. The committee accepts the evidence provided by DPS that it believes that no data related to parliamentarians or their staff was examined by the law firm or provided to Dr Roughley. However, this does not eliminate the possibility that the bulk data which was filtered using the TransPerfect search software included such material. The committee is concerned with the provision of such material to a third party. We are particularly concerned by the decision to do so not under the compulsion of a legal requirement to produce that information but in circumstances where DPS was determining how to proceed with an administrative investigation.

It is important to recognise that not all information of parliamentarians is connected to parliamentary proceedings. There is much material on parliamentary systems which is not therefore protected by parliamentary privilege. However, as parliamentarians, we have a legitimate expectation that information held on the Parliamentary Computing Network on our behalf will be held confidentially. The committee accepts that the Roughley inquiry related to matters which had no intersection with parliamentary proceedings. The matters under investigation related solely to an administrative decision by the former secretary of DPS. Furthermore, the roles of the DPS officers concerned did not involve providing advice or research to members and senators to support them performing their parliamentary functions. There was, therefore, limited risk that the electronic records filtered by TransPerfect would contain any records subject to parliamentary privilege.

Nevertheless, the committee welcomes the DPS secretary's acknowledgement that it would have been better for her to seek the advice of the clerks to ensure the investigation did not improperly interfere with parliamentary proceedings. The clerks are the acknowledged experts on parliamentary privilege. Seeking their guidance on any implications of investigative action is an important element in ensuring the parliament that appropriate regard has been given to privilege. The importance of seeking this advice is illustrated by the narrow interpretation of 'parliamentary privilege' which persists in the evidence provided by DPS and the Attorney-General's Department. Both departments gave evidence which asserted that the immunity of proceedings in parliament only applied to the use of those proceedings in a court or tribunal. This position has been explicitly rejected by the Senate. The Senate has consistently asserted that the immunity also protects privileged material against incursion by the executive and executive agencies. It is important that DPS and others proceed on the basis of the Senate's firm view with respect to the scope of parliamentary privilege. Any action taken on the basis of a narrower interpretation may draw the intense scrutiny of this committee and the Senate.

The committee acknowledges the steps DPS has taken to improve its procedure in relation to the quest to provide DPS employee data. However, there is a broader question about ensuring that the procedures DPS follows embeds principles which reflect that data held on the parliamentary system is held on behalf of the parliament and subject to the constraints imposed by parliamentary privilege. In other words, the default position in relation to electronic systems which capture sensitive information about the activities of parliamentarians is that they should be used only in the manner and for the purposes authorised. It would support more consistency in this regard for an overarching set of principles to be developed which can be applied to new systems or scenarios and which provide context for the purpose of more detailed codes and policies.

To address this, the committee has recommended that DPS, in consultation with the clerks, draft a statement of principles regarding the handling of data held on the electronic systems managed on behalf of the parliament. The committee proposes to consider and approve those principles and recommends than they should only be amended in future with the approval of the committee.

Perhaps as critical as the specific policies which regulate the handling of information in the parliamentary environment is fostering a culture among parliamentary service officers that places the institutional integrity of the parliament at the centre of decision-making. To support the consistent application of the principles for handling parliamentary data, we have recommended that induction processes for staff of DPS should ensure officers understand the distinct features of parliamentary service, including the implications of parliamentary privilege for their work.

The committee places on record its appreciation to those who gave evidence to the inquiry and particularly acknowledges the difficult personal circumstances in which some submitters and witnesses provided evidence. Finally, I'd like to thank my colleagues on the committee for their considered and collegiate approach to this matter. I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I note the final report of the Select Committee on the Taxation of Gas Resources. Our inquiry heard loud and clear from Australians that they are not getting a fair share for their gas resources while multinational corporations rake in enormous profits. I think Ken Henry said it best when he said, 'Cut the crap and just do it.' That became the defining message to this inquiry from the public.

During the global energy crisis, gas companies made an estimated $112 billion in windfall profits, yet the petroleum resource rent tax actually fell during that period. It's a rip-off. Australia's gas tax is dramatically lower than that of other countries like Norway, Qatar, the UK and Canada. We heard from witness after witness that PRRT is fundamentally broken and that it is riddled with holes and deductions that let gas corporations minimise what they pay. It is a broken system.

We also heard from gas company after gas company, which, I might add, refused to send their CEOs. They were too weak to send their CEOs. This was a national inquiry into an issue that is of probably the most significant public importance in recent time, and the CEOs of those big gas exporters didn't even have the guts or the courage to show up. Then, when we heard from their lower executives who turned up, they parroted gas industry talking point after gas industry talking point. These are the talking points that even the Prime Minister himself started parroting. We had the ludicrous scenario of the Prime Minister quoting the gas lobby talking points and vice versa ad nauseam.

The capture is stark. The revolving door is spinning faster than ever, with nearly every single resources minister going on to work in the fossil fuel lobby. And those political donations that continue to roll in certainly seem to pay dividends when policy is being written by this government. It is disgraceful and the Australian people are absolutely appalled.

These are the key findings of our report, and I think that what's not in the final report is more telling than what is in there. We heard an explosive analysis indicating that the Japanese government collects more tax from Australian gas than Australia does. Well done, Japan! You are acting in the interests of your people, as the Australian people are demanding this government do. But it is failing to do so, with all these faux excuses that were dismantled by witness after witness in our inquiry.

Evidence to the inquiry showed that a minimum 25 per cent gas export tax could raise up to $17 billion per year to go towards things like electrifying our country and helping people through this really tough cost-of-living crisis that they are experiencing. We heard that really the government needs to stare down 10 gas export projects—that's it—to raise $17 billion worth of revenue. And evidence from Treasury, from economists, and even from gas companies themselves contradicted the claims of the Prime Minister and industry that an export tax would impact trade relationships and would drive up prices overseas. This was rebutted by Treasury, it was rebutted by the gas industry and it was rebutted by Ken Henry.

We heard that the burden of any export tax would overwhelmingly fall on multinational gas shareholders, not international customers, because prices are set largely through global markets and long-term contracts. So every time we saw the Prime Minister get up and say, 'Now's not the time,' we called nonsense, based on the evidence our inquiry heard. It is the profits of those gas exporters that are at stake, and that is exactly who the Prime Minister is going in to bat for. Evidence showed that most Australian gas project would remain highly profitable, even with a 25 per cent gas export tax. Taxpayers already subsidise the gas industry, through infrastructure, public support and fossil fuel subsidies, yet we receive barely anything in return.

We heard witnesses saying, 'We're not like Norway; they have a stake in their fossil fuel industry and they take on the risk and take on the reward.' Well, we're the mugs; we just take on the risk, by investing in the infrastructure. We don't take on the reward. We don't tax these guys. We heard that Shell, a company that has announced double profits through this illegal war that's happening, paid no PRRT in more than 10 years. In over a decade, they paid not a cent of petroleum resource rent tax. INPEX, who are plundering the Northern Territory, fall into that category as well.

Importantly, witnesses stressed that the window to secure public revenue for gas exports is closing as the global transition away from fossil fuels accelerates. When the Prime Minister says, 'Now is not the time,' again, we all rubbish on now not being the time. These corporations are set to make obscene windfall profits through this illegal war—blood soaked illegal profits—and now is exactly the time that the Australian public expect them to pay what they owe.

Despite all this overwhelming evidence, the committee did not support actual recommendations for reform. As I said, what's missing from the report is incredibly telling, and I'll let the public join the dots as to why we didn't get those recommendations. But the Greens have been on the record for a very long time saying that we must tax our gas exports, and Australians deserve and expect it of us. Labor is trying to kick the can down the road rather than confront the reality that Australians are being ripped off and that the great tax rip-off continues under its watch.

We see the Prime Minister continue to repeat and echo those gas talking points. On the same day, hours before this report was due to be published, they said, 'Look over here at our gas reservation policy written by industry'—nothing to see over there. How cynical can you get? People see through it. They see the smoke and mirrors and the distraction from the real issue, and they call BS.

This government is literally taking the Australian public for fools, and it's simply not working. We've seen polling reflecting that the vast majority of Australians want to tax our gas and want a fair share of our resources—and not unreasonably. Labor knows that the system is broken, but they are too timid, too weak and too captured to challenge the gas lobby. What other industry gets their inputs for free? Farmers don't get free seed or fertiliser. Bakers don't get free flour. Why does the gas industry get gifted our gas? Chevron was gifted to the tune of $300 billion worth of our gas for their Gorgon project—money that then flowed into Trump's inauguration fund. What a disgrace. This budget could be an opportunity for real reform, to stare down the gas cartel and get some money back for Australians instead of cutting essential public services. But I fear that the cowards in Labor will not do that.

If Labor thinks the book is closed and that, if we don't get a gas tax in the budget tonight, that's the end of it, then it has got another thing coming, because I warn you that this campaign is just getting started. We have seen and heard firsthand the fury of this community campaign of everyday Australians saying, 'Enough is enough.' 'We want our fair share,' they say. They look to countries like Norway, with multiple trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds, and they imagine what Australia could be paying for—not begging for scraps and cutting 160,000 people off the NDIS. We could be funding free, high-quality universal child care. We could get dental care into Medicare. There is so much we could do with this money, and all it would take is for this government to stare down its gas industry donors.

The Greens will not rest until we scrap the broken PRRT; until we introduce, at least, a 25 per cent gas export tax on our resources; and until we use that money to pay for things that Australians need and Australians deserve. Let's cut the crap and get it done.

I'm privileged to make a slightly calmer and more rational contribution to the very important issue contained in this report. The Australian Greens and Independents have sought to hijack what is a genuine sentiment in our country. That genuine sentiment is for a fairer return for Australians from the extraction of our natural resources. Indeed, in my home state of Western Australia this is a growing sentiment. It's been hijacked by the Australian Greens and Independent senators because they want to use it as camouflage for their desire to end fossil fuels. Contrary to the contribution of the senator before me, the enthusiasm for the campaign is running out of steam—excuse the pun.

This report confirms what the coalition has said from the outset: Australia does not need a reckless new gas tax, and Australia needs more gas supply, more investment and more energy security. The Greens and Senator Pocock came to this inquiry with a prewritten answer to tax gas harder, punish investment and dress up an antigas campaign as tax reform. The coalition's position has been clear and consistent: no arbitrary windfall levy, no retrospective tax grab and no policy that risks jobs, investment, regional communities or Australia's reputation as a reliable energy supplier, especially not at this critical geopolitical time.

The PRRT is working. It was consciously designed to tax profits once major high-risk projects recover their enormous upfront costs. That is exactly what is happening. The industry is already paying its required tax. Australian Energy Producers has confirmed that the oil and gas industry contributed $21.9 billion last year and remains the second-highest corporate taxpayer in Australia. The Australian Taxation Office evidence also corrected the false claim made by the Greens and Independent senators that gas companies are not paying tax. Corporate tax paid by oil and gas reached $10.4 billion in 2023-24. The Prime Minister himself rejected the dishonest claim that gas is being exported tax free. Labor has not backed the Greens position, because even Labor knows the numbers do not support it. But let's wait and see exactly what Labor might do in coming months or the next year.

This is the political reality. The Greens and Senator Pocock are isolated, and their campaign has more to do with shutting down gas than with improving the tax system. A 25 per cent export levy would not be modest. Wood Mackenzie's analysis found it could push effective tax rates above 80 per cent, reduce project value by up to 94 per cent and put future production and revenue at risk. You do not increase tax revenue by making projects 'uninvestable'. You increase revenue by getting projects approved, attracting capital, producing more gas and keeping Australia competitive.

Woodside, Chevron, INPEX and Santos all made the same basic point. Investors made multibillion dollar decisions in good faith under existing rules, and changing those rules again so soon after the 2023 PRRT reforms would damage Australia's reputation. INPEX described the 2023 reforms as a handshake that meant pens down on the PRRT. Instead, only a few years later, the industry has been dragged back into a politically driven tax debate. Chevron warned that frequent tax reviews create fiscal instability. Woodside said the PRRT does work. Santos said retrospective changes should not be supported. That spells danger for gas exploration, gas production and jobs in the gas industry in Australia.

We have heard the Greens and others talk about Norway but they ignore the basic difference. Norway coinvests with industry and shares the risk. Australia relies on private capital. You cannot copy Norway's tax rate while refusing to copy Norway's investment model. This inquiry has also exposed the activist agenda behind the campaign. Some submitters were not arguing for better tax design; they were arguing to stop new gas projects altogether.

Yes.

Yes, says Senator Faruqi—sprung! That matters because gas is not another industry; it underpins manufacturing, jobs, exports, household energy reliability and the energy security of key partners including Japan and Korea. Japan's warning should be taken seriously. Australia's LNG reputation has been built over decades. Surprise retrospective taxes would send exactly the wrong message to our closest trading partners. Regional communities know what the activists ignore. In places like Onslow, in my home state of Western Australia, the gas sector delivered jobs, infrastructure, local business opportunities and long-term community investment.

The coalition's recommendation is simple and responsible: there should be no arbitrary windfall levy on gas exports. Australia needs an increased tax take, not an increased tax rate. That means encouraging investment, approving projects faster, reducing duplication, and backing the sector that helps pay for the services Australians rely on. The Greens and Senator Pocock have a different ambition. Their ambition is not tax reform; their ambition is to punish the industry. The coalition wants the industry to keep investing, keep employing, keep exporting and keep paying tax in Australia.

If I might just go back to where I started, there is in this country and in my own home state of Western Australia genuine sentiment that people want to see more of the value return to their local communities. That is a national interest. The question will soon become: what is the best way to do that that does not imperil future investment, that does not imperil our trading relationships, that does not imperil the future investment in local community?

The planet deserves better; people deserve better. While the Labor government cries poor, it has been another really good week for the boss of your lobbyists, who walk away with a smile and another year's freedom to destroy the planet without worrying at all about paying tax on enormous profits. That this pantomime is so familiar makes it no less depressing. If you earn a wage, you pay tax. If you don't earn a wage and you receive income support, you probably still pay tax. If you purchase goods and services, you pay tax. If you access health care, you pay tax. If you contribute to your super, you pay tax. If you take out home insurance, you pay tax. If you pop down to the pub for a schooner—or in my case, a cheeky mocktail—you pay tax.

But if you are a multibillion dollar company extracting and exporting Australian gas, chances are you pay no tax or next to no tax. Nurses in Australia pay more personal income tax than oil and gas companies. Teachers pay double the tax paid by oil and gas companies. The Labor government even collects more each year from student debt repayments than it does from companies who dig up and ship out our natural resources. The truth is companies like Chevron and Santos are massively ripping us off. There is zero tax paid on over half of all gas exported from our country. While the major gas companies rake in billions, loopholes and write-offs mean they are paying negligible amounts of company tax or the failed petroleum resource rent tax.

The Albanese government is making bad budget choices yet again. They refuse to tax their big donors and make them pay their fair share, but they'll kick disabled people off the NDIS while finding hundreds of billions of dollars of public money for non-existent nuclear subs. They'll tinker with the housing policy in a performative act of so-called intergenerational equity and boast about their bottom line, but they won't scrap the punitive, disastrous fee hikes and funding cuts of the job-ready graduates scheme. By taxing gas exports at 25 per cent, we can collect $17 billion a year to pay for the things people need to live a good life. It shouldn't be a big ask. It is not a big ask. It is just about fairness.

Yes, the Greens do want to make the top end of town pay their fair share, because it is way past time. We want to invest in quality public services, to provide care for those who need it, to provide free education, to make sure housing is affordable and accessible to everyone, and to transition to clean energy and a fossil-free future. We are proud of that. I want to congratulate my colleague Senator Hodgins-May on her incredibly hard work on this inquiry. Under her leadership, the committee has produced an undeniable and overwhelming body of evidence to support a gas tax. We know that this is really popular policy. People know what is fair and what is unfair.

My heart and hopes have been lifted by the community's loud and vocal support for the Greens plan to legislate a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports to fund urgent cost-of-living relief. The Albanese government knows this too. They know it very well. They have heard it from hundreds of people and hundreds of experts. The ball is now in their court. They can be cowardly and side with war-profiteering multinational gas corporations, or they can stand with the people of this country.

I don't know that I've ever been more distressed by a populist, un-Australian agenda than I am by this one. I came to this parliament because I believe in Australia. I love that we are one of the First World countries of the world, that we are prosperous, that we can afford fantastic health care and education, and that we have roads, schools and hospitals. We will debate in here about where they should be and how much we should spend on them, but at the end of the day we have choices. We have choices because Australia is one of the most blessed countries on the planet. We have coal, oil and gas. We have uranium, critical minerals, rare earths and all the base metals that we need to trade. It is mining that pays the bills in Australia. The first, second and third biggest taxpayers in this country are from those industries, and we are blessed to receive foreign investment to allow us to unlock that potential.

But we tinker around with our settings and our trade relationships at our peril, and I can tell you why it's at our peril because other countries have gone down this road. Let me tell you the story of another country similarly blessed with minerals, resources and agricultural produce. In the 1980s, they too decided to become a socialist country. They too decided to change their settings on foreign investment and exports, and they absolutely cruelled their gas and beef industries. I speak of Argentina, which now seeks to reposition itself with highly competitive, aggressive, assertive trade settings to attract gas investment back to that country. We don't have to do that. Australia has enjoyed 40 per cent of the world's LNG investment into this country. That has fuelled small businesses and big businesses. It has fuelled royalty payments and PRRT payments and, of course, the employment of hundreds of thousands of Australians, who have enjoyed jobs that are more than double—sometimes four or five times—the average salary. These are the people who live in Australia and do the hard work in order to access these resources.

We speak specifically about gas. Gas is not just for energy. Gas is used for fertiliser that allows us to only use a fraction of the surface of the planet in order to grow the amount of food that we need for our nations—for our population. Gas is used for polythene pipe. Gas is used to make all sorts of fuels and the little tubes that you're hooked up to in hospital. They're used for the gas that keeps food safe. It is used for so many reasons.

And Australian gas is important. It's important because, when we mine it here, when we access it here, it's not only important geopolitically—it's important right now for our trade arrangements for liquid fuels. It is important for Australia's prosperity, and, if you care about emissions, well, Australians emissions are lower than in some of the other countries that would be accessing their gas. They're three reasons why we should be extracting gas here.

But we will not continue to extract gas here if we scare off investors. I've already talked about the slide from 40 per cent to 15 per cent, and, if we go with this ridiculous, crazy, socialist plan of increasing gas taxes when we have a very well researched and substantive arrangement for offshore gas, the PRRT—onshore gas is captured by state royalty plans—if we go down this road, we risk losing that investment. That is an investment that does pay the bills.

Let me run through some of the absolute lies that have been peddled by the anti-fossil-fuel activists around this. The first one is that we pay more for gas that we import than we export—lie. We don't import any gas at all.

The second is that nurses and teachers pay more tax than is paid in PRRT. As an ex-economist, they're lies, lies and damn statistics. If you take a 10-year period and you average wages for or tax paid by nurses and teachers and you do it over the same period that these projects are coming online and not yet producing—or, if they are producing, have not yet been able to deduct their capital costs, which is the arrangement under the PRRT—you can make the numbers say anything at all. That is another lie—to say that nurses and teachers pay more tax and then pick a specific period to skew the numbers.

Another is that beer pays more tax than the PRRT, again picking numbers and periods of time over these huge projects. There has been $440 billion spent in Australia to develop our gas reserves over the last 15 years—extraordinary numbers. Beer does not produce more income and tax for Australia than gas does.

The ATO is constantly misquoted as saying that gas companies are tax avoiders. They have corrected the record in this regard in person and in writing, over and over, and yet the lie's still repeated.

The next one is that Japan receives more tax on Australian gas than Australia does—another outrageous lie that has been absolutely put to bed by the Australia Institute's report itself. The Australia Institute claims that energy import tax produces A$8 billion per year for the Japanese government. It excludes the fact that that is on coal and oil as well as gas. The Australia Institute then says $1.8 billion of that energy import tax comes from gas; however, Australian gas only accounts for 40 per cent of that. So we're now down to $720 million. These are the Australia Institute's own numbers. They don't want to clarify their references.

It is dangerous if we seek to fiddle with the investment settings that provide so much income to Australia in payroll tax, in company tax, in state royalties and, yes, in PRRT. It's like a hockey stick, the amount of income that we will receive from that as the capital expenditure is expensed and the superprofits of 40 per cent are paid to Australia over the coming years. This is a dangerous agenda, and guess who is funding it. It is people who have a clear agenda to shut down fossil fuels in Australia—the things that produce our energy, that produce our fertiliser and that could, in future, provide our liquid fuels and our fuel security right here in this country. They won't tell you that the 25 per cent gas tax—that policy, that regime—is being pushed by organisations like the Sunrise Project and the KR Foundation. When this same agenda, the anti-gas agenda, was run in England, it was later found by NATO to have been run by Russia seeking to undermine the UK's energy and economic sovereignty. Do you not think the same thing is happening here in Australia?

We should be angry, because this populist agenda run by people who seek to shut down investment in oil and gas and coal in Australia is run by people who do not want us to be successful. They will dangle baubles like 'You will get more tax' and 'We will spend it on things that do not make us money into the future and that will leave Australia broke and poor in the future'. This is an anti-Australian agenda. I plead. I beg. If you have any interest in Australia and Australia continuing to be a First World country, ask some more questions. Ask who is funding these organisations—who is funding the Australia Institute, who is funding IEEFA, who is funding Punters Politics, who is funding senators in this place's private foundations and the KR Foundation. These organisations are receiving millions and millions of dollars that put any gas industry contributions to shame. In fact, I only wish they would fund us in the same way that this dark money that seeks to shut down Australia's prosperity is flooding into this country and is funding this outrageous campaign that will damage us. The government's move for the reservations policy will seek to do the same. I beg you: ask the better questions.

I don't think there's anything more Australian than a fair go—than wanting a fair go. It's fine for the National Party to care about a fair go for big, multinational tax avoiders. It's not fine for them to stand up for the average Australian who would actually like to see the big, foreign owned, multinational companies pay their fair share of tax and royalties. From the good senator from the National Party, Senator McDonald, it's quite fascinating to hear the turning of the tables on the dark money coming from the green sector when she's been part of a political party that has been quite happy to campaign against renewable energy alongside massive misinformation and disinformation campaigns funded by the fossil fuel industry, including mostly foreign fossil fuel interests. It's interesting to hear the tables being turned there.

I want to make a few comments because I did participate in one of the hearings. I want to congratulate Senator Hodgins-May for her work chairing this committee. It was a very intense three days of hearings in Canberra and Western Australia. Other senators were there.

When Senator McDonald talks about this un-Australian campaign against a gas tax, or against the PRRT, I want to remind senators that it has been a long, long road to try and get these big, multinational companies to pay their fair share of tax. We had nearly three years of inquiries, from 2017, 2018 and 2019, into companies like Chevron who were avoiding tax through profit shifting and managed to, through the ATO, get some revenue for the Australian people—in fact, many billions of dollars of revenue for the Australian people. We had an inquiry specifically into the PRRT where we did also go to Western Australia in 2018 and 2019, and the government, to try and undercut the Senate inquiry, released the Callaghan review, which recommended some changes to the PRRT system. Even a Liberal-National government, as the government was at the time, realised it was a completely unfair tax system designed for another era. The PRRT—and this came from Craig Emerson himself, who appeared before the inquiry at the time—was designed for Bass Strait oil and gas exploration in the eighties, not for large, value-added LNG projects. That's not what the PRRT was designed for. It was completely not fit for purpose. The government tweaked the edges. We had some changes to uplift rates. But there was no substantial reform.

I say to the Liberal Party and the Labor Party: this issue's not going to go away. Australians have a pretty good idea about a fair go, and they know when they are being conned. And they are being conned. One thing that really struck me from the hearings in Perth, listening to the executives that did turn up from the big oil and gas giants, was that it was really obvious that they felt like they were doing us a favour. They more or less said: 'We are doing you a favour. If it weren't for us, none of your resources would be exploited. None of this gas that we are basically profiting from and sending overseas and paying very little tax on would happen without us. So you have us to thank for opening up your resources.' Well, I pointed out to them that the taxpayer actually does deleverage a lot of their risk and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in doing so over the years. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it because they make significant profit out of this, as they do all around the world. You could say the same thing of any company that's saying: 'We see a business opportunity. We're going ahead. We're going to invest in it. We don't want to pay any tax because we are doing you a favour by employing people.' Hello! That's not how the world works. The sheer arrogance of these answers was like, 'You owe us! You, the Australian people, owe us for coming in and making billions of dollars of profits out of your resources which you, by the way, own. They'd be sitting out there in the ocean and nothing would be happening to them at all if it weren't for us. You owe us, so how dare you ask for us to pay a fair share on the export of your resources overseas.' Really? It was that simple to me. I was absolutely dumbfounded by the attitude of some of these big companies.

It's time for that to change. It's time for the Australian government to say to these companies: 'Now you need to pay a fair return to the Australian people, who own these resources.' If they don't, then too bad. Don't exploit these resources. Kick them out. We don't need more fossil fuels. We don't need new developments like the Browse project off the North West Shelf. What we need to do is transition to renewable energy. Of course, Senator McDonald deliberately ignored the fact that Australia has an abundance of sunshine and wind power. We have geothermal and hydro. We have so much renewable energy. Renewable energy is already producing 50 per cent of our wholesale power, and it's only going to increase into the future. We don't need more fossil fuel projects. We need the ones that are here now to pay a fair return to the Australian people. Here's an idea. If they did pay a fair return, there are plenty of things we could do with that money. We might start by compensating communities for the damage that their fossil fuel emissions are doing to our climate and environment. That might be a good place to park that money. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

I table the following documents:

The Budget 2026-27—Statement by the Treasurer (Dr Chalmers), dated 12 May 2026.

Budget papers—

No. 1—Budget strategy and outlook.

No. 2—Budget measures.

No. 3—Federal financial relations.

No. 4—Agency resourcing.

Ministerial statements—

Regional ministerial budget statement 2025-26: Investing in Australia's regional growth and prosperity—Statement by Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government (Ms C King) and Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories; Minister for Emergency Management (Ms McBain), dated 12 May 2026.

Women's budget statement 2025-26—Statement by the Minister for Finance; Minister for Women; Minister for the Public Service and Minister for Government Services (Senator Gallagher) and the Treasurer (Dr Chalmers), dated 12 May 2026.

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the documents.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement and documents.

Debate adjourned.

I table the following documents:

Particulars of proposed expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 2027.

Particulars of certain proposed expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 2027.

Particulars of proposed expenditure in relation to the parliamentary departments in respect of the year ending on 30 June 2027.

Particulars of proposed additional expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 2026 [Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2025-2026].

Particulars of certain proposed additional expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 2026 [Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2025-2026].

I seek leave to move a motion to refer the documents to legislation committees.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the documents be referred to legislation committees for the consideration of the estimates.

Question agreed to.

I table portfolio budget statements for 2025-26 for the Department of the Senate, the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Department of Parliamentary Services.

I table portfolio budget statements for portfolios and executive departments as follows:

Estimates of proposed expenditure for 2026-27—Portfolio budget statements—Portfolios and executive departments—

Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry portfolio.

Attorney-General's portfolio.

Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water portfolio.

Defence portfolio.

Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Education portfolio.

Employment and Workplace Relations portfolio.

Finance portfolio.

Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio.

Health, Disability and Ageing portfolio.

Home Affairs portfolio.

Industry, Science and Resources portfolio.

Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sports and the Arts portfolio.

Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio.

Social Services portfolio.

Treasury portfolio.

Estimates of proposed supplementary expenditure for 2025-26—Portfolio supplementary additional estimates statements—

Attorney-General's portfolio.

Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water portfolio.

Defence portfolio.

Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Education portfolio.

Employment and Workplace Relations portfolio.

Finance portfolio.

Health, Disability and Ageing portfolio.

Home Affairs portfolio.

Industry, Science and Resources.

Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts portfolio.

Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio.

Social Services portfolio.

Treasury portfolio.

Senate adjourned at 20:31