The SPEAKER ( Hon. Tony Smith ) took the chair at 10:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.
COMMITTEES
Petitions Committee
Report
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (10:01): Today, I present the ninth report of the Petitions Committee for the 45th Parliament.
PETITIONS
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (10:01): I present two petitions:
Kangaroo Island: tax arrangements
To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives: This petition of request for Kangaroo Island to be added to the special area list zone B For Tax purposes Draws to the attention of the House: That all other Islands mentioned in the supporting letter in Australia are classified as remote, and Kangaroo Island which is less fortunate than these Islands and more remote has not yet been added.
Request: We therefore ask the House to: please consider the huge cost of travelling on and off Kangaroo Island, along with the limited choices residents have in the way of goods and services.
from 330 citizens
Belmont: Internet Services
To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives: This petition of the people of Belmont whose internet services are supplied through the Ascot Exchange draws to the attention of the House the ongoing impact of substandard internet services to residents and business owners. Living and working so close to the CBD is frustrating that slow unreliable internet or fast reliable internet that is prohibitively expensive are all we have. The upgrade of the Ascot Exchange has been raised by both sides of Parliament since 2007 and, after being advised works would start in the first quarter of 2017, we now face even further delays.
Request: We therefore ask the House to act to bring forward the NBN rollout for the Ascot Exchange so that houses in the area can access the NBN before the end of 2017.
from 51 citizens
Petitions received.
PETITIONS
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (10:01): I present eight ministerial responses to petitions previously presented:
Responses
Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter to me of 12 October 2016 regarding a petition calling for ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT).
As foreshadowed in the correspondence from my Chie f of Staff, Mr James Lambie, on 22 November 2016, I write to respond to that petition, and apologise for the delay in doing so.
On 9 February 2017, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, and I announced the Turnbull Government's intention to ratify OPCAT by December 2017.
The ratification of OPCAT will be another significant human rights achievement for the Turnbull Government. It will improve the oversight of places of detention under Australia's jurisdiction and control, and reflects the Government's commitment to preventing torture and mistreatment.
The Government respects the role each state and territory plays in managing detention facilities, and will work with them to ratify the OPCAT by December 2017.
The transcript of my speech from 9 February 2017, in which I announce the Government's intention to ratify OPCAT, is available at www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/Pages/Newsroom.aspx
Thank you again for writing on this matter.
Yours faithfully
from the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis
Fee and Dividend policy on Carbon Fuels
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter dated 12 October 2016 concerning the terms for the Fee and Dividend policy on Carbon Fuels petition submitted for consideration before the Standing Committee of Petitions.
The proposal to impose a fee on carbon based fuels would be similar to a carbon tax. The Government does not support a carbon tax and considers that Australia can effectively address climate change without one.
The Government is committed to addressing climate change without imposing a burden on consumers and businesses through its Direct Action Plan. This plan includes a $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund to support Australian businesses and households to take practical, direct action to reduce emissions and improve the environment. This has already resulted in 143 million tonnes of emissions reduction.
In addition, the Government has committed to a 23.5 per cent Renewable Energy Target which includes measures that will provide certainty to industry, encourage further investment in renewable energy and better reflect market conditions. The Government has also made substantial commitments in clean energy innovation through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the CSIRO and Australia's universities.
With this package, Australia is already on track to meeting its international commitments to reduce Australia's emissions by 13 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.
In response to concerns surrounding Australia's role in promoting international engagement to address climate change, you may be aware that the nations of the world finalised a new global climate change agreement (the Paris Agreement), to apply from 2020, at the 2015 Paris climate change conference.
The Paris Agreement is significant as for the first time, developed and developing countries, agreed to significantly reduce emissions from business as usual levels. Across a number of metrics, Australia's contributions to the Paris Agreement - to reduce our emissions by 26-28% by 2030 - compare favourably to other similar developed economies.
I trust this information will be of assistance to you.
Yours sincerely
from the Treasurer, Mr Morrison
Health Care Card
Dear Mr Vasta
I refer to your correspondence of 12 October 2016 to the Minister for Human Services, the Hon Alan Tudge MP, regarding petition PN0006 for a Health Care Card for chronically ill Australians. Your correspondence has been referred to me as the Minister for Health. I regret the delay in responding.
Medicare is an integral component of Australia's successful healthcare system. The Australian Government has a commitment to ensuring that Medicare continues to play an important part in our health system for all Australians, including those who need additional support due to chronic illness.
The Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) subsidises a range of medical services which have been designed to assist patients with chronic diseases. There are also a range of other protections available to assist patients with their out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. These include the MBS safety nets for medical expenses, and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme safety net for pharmaceuticals expenses.
The Government has recently reviewed the funding arrangements for the care of patients with chronic and complex conditions. On 31 March 2016 the Government announced it would commence the staged implementation of a new way of delivering and funding care for patients with chronic and complex conditions. Eligible patients will be able to enrol with a participating medical practice known as a Health Care Home. The Health Care Home will receive funding for the annual costs of caring for a patient, rather than using the existing fee-for-service model. Further information on Health Care Homes can be found on my Department's website at www.health.gov.au/healthietmedicare.
Thank you for writing on this matter.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Health, Mr Hunt
Asylum Seekers
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your correspondence of 13 February 2017 enclosing Petition PN0040, concerning the Australian Government's regional processing and settlement arrangements.
As a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol (the Refugees Convention), Australia takes its international obligations seriously. Australia is committed to providing protection to refugees consistent with the obligations set out in the Refugees Convention and other relevant international treaties to which Australia is a party.
With the establishment of Operation Sovereign Borders on 18 September 2013, the Government has focused on disrupting and deterring people smugglers, detecting and intercepting illegal maritime arrivals (IMAs), and supporting regional processing and resettlement of refugees, as well as returns of those transferees not found to be owed protection. Anyone who comes to Australia illegally by boat will be subject to regional processing arrangements and will not be eligible for permanent residency in Australia.
Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) are both signatories to the Refugees Convention.
On 17 August 2016, the Governments of PNG and Australia announced that the Manus Regional Processing Centre (RPC) will close. There is no detention on Nauru. The Nauru RPC operates as an open centre and transferees are free to come and go at any time without restriction. Transport is provided to assist transferees to move around Nauru.
The Governments of Nauru and PNG continue to progress refugee status determinations for people transferred to those countries under the regional processing arrangements. People found to be refugees in Nauru can settle there temporarily or resettle permanently in Cambodia. People found to be refugees in PNG can settle there permanently.
Australia assists Nauru, PNG and Cambodia to provide refugees with settlement support services to assist with integration. Services are delivered through a needs-based case management model and may include cultural and language orientation, employment, education and health linking, income support, and accommodation assistance. Services focus on building independence and self-sufficiency.
In addition to these existing arrangements, the United States (US) has agreed to consider resettlement of those refugees in Nauru and PNG endorsed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for referral to the US Refugee Admissions Program. US authorities will apply their own rigorous assessment and vetting processes to determine which refugees are eligible for resettlement in the US. Resettlement in the US will not be available to any future IMAs in Australia. Information about this arrangement is available at: http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/Refugee¬resettlement-from-Regional-Process-Centres.aspx.
The orderly resettlement of refugees will take time and will not be rushed. Transferees found not to be refugees are expected to return home. For people choosing to return home voluntarily, assistance is available to help them to re-establish their lives in their home countries.
The Government's Operation Sovereign Borders policies are designed to safeguard vulnerable people from exploitation by people smugglers, prevent the loss of life at sea and restore the integrity of Australia's borders. Restoration of Australia's border integrity has enabled the Government to increase the annual refugee intake. As a result, the Humanitarian Programme will increase from 13,750 to 18,750 by 2018-19. Focusing on persecuted minorities, Australia is also welcoming 12,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict zone. The ongoing success of these strong border control policies is enabling the closure of 17 immigration detention facilities.
People transferred to a regional processing country will not be resettled in Australia and the Government remains committed to regional processing and resettlement.
Thank you for bringing this petition to my attention.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Mr Dutton
Mobile Black Spot Program
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter of 16 December 2016 regarding a petition (PN0042) asking the Government to prioritise Haynes, Hilbert and surrounding suburbs in Western Australia for funding in the next round of the Mobile Black Spot Program to improve mobile coverage.
I note the concerns of the Haynes and Hilbert communities regarding mobile phone reception. While mobile carriers claim to provide coverage to 99 per cent of Australia's population, there are still many parts of Australia where there is no coverage, particularly in regional and remote locations. Mobile carriers continue to heavily invest in expanding their networks to improve mobile coverage across Australia.
Expanding mobile coverage has clear economic and social benefits, as well as public safety benefits for people living, working and travelling in regional and remote areas of Australia. This is why the Australian Government has committed $220 million through the Mobile Black Spot Program to invest in telecommunications infrastructure to address mobile black spots along major regional transport routes, in small communities and in locations prone to experiencing natural disasters.
The successful locations receiving base stations under rounds 1 and 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Program have been announced and unfortunately Haynes and Hilbert will not receive a base station or improved mobile coverage under either round. At this point, there are no further rounds under which funding can be sought for mobile infrastructure in the areas of Haynes and Hilbert.
Factors that can impact mobile reception
There are a number of factors that can interfere with mobile reception and therefore impact a user's ability to obtain or maintain a mobile phone signal at any given time or place.
These factors include hilly terrain, buildings or other physical obstacles such as trees interrupting the line-of-sight from the mobile base station. The type of handset being used can also be a factor in contributing to a lack of mobile reception.
The predictive coverage maps published by each of the major carriers (Telstra, Optus and Vodafone) indicate that the suburbs of Haynes and Hilbert should be receiving very good mobile coverage. I would encourage people living in these communities, if they have not already done so, to contact the carriers or visit their local mobile phone store to make their mobile coverage issues known, identify ways of maximising their mobile reception and check whether their mobile phone handset is contributing to their reception difficulties.
A fact sheet has been developed by the telecommunications industry which provides information about the key factors to consider when selecting a mobile device and plan. The fact sheet is available on the Communications Alliance website at www.commsalliance.com.au
Communications in an emergency
I note in particular the concern raised about an increased risk to safety in
bushfire-prone areas, where mobile phone communications are relied upon. As part of effective emergency preparation and planning, it is strongly recommended that people do not rely on a single form of communication or source of information during an emergency. Even in areas where mobile coverage is available, despite best planning and preparation, any communication system can be temporarily affected by adverse conditions.
During an emergency situation, people should use a range of information sources to stay aware of local conditions. These information sources include local radio, television and state and territory emergency service websites. For example, during emergency situations people can listen to ABC Local Radio to receive up-to-date warnings. A portable transistor radio with a spare set of batteries can provide a valuable backup in the event there is a loss of mains power.
Further information about the Mobile Black Spot Program is available on the Department's website at www.communications.gov.au/mobile coverage.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Regional Communications, Senator Nash
Syria
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter of 13 February 2017 regarding Petition Number PN0044 on Australian military operations in Syria.
Australia is undertaking air operations targeting Daesh in Syria, following Iraq's request for international assistance to strike Daesh bases and strongholds. The legal basis for Australia's military operations in Syria is the collective self-defence of Iraq, which is permitted under international law.
The inherent right to self-defence is one of three universally accepted exceptions on the prohibition on the use of force in international law. Under international law, States have a right to exercise self-defence against imminent or actual armed attacks carried out by non-State actors operating from the territory of a third State without that State's consent in certain defined circumstances. In this case, the Australian Government is satisfied that the prerequisites for an exercise of self-defence on behalf of Iraq have been satisfied, because Syria is unwilling and unable to effectively prevent Daesh from attacking Iraq. Daesh's activities and operations in Syria continue to pose a threat to Iraq's self-defence.
The Government has expressed regret about the unfortunate 17 September 2016 strike against what was thought to be a Daesh position near Deir ez-Zour. An investigation found that this identification was reasonable based on the information available at the time.
I trust this information is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Bishop
Falun Gong
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter of 13 February 2017 regarding petition PN0050, which calls for a response to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and allegations of forced organ harvesting in China.
The Government has long held concerns about the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners in China. While we take no position on Falun Gong's beliefs, we consider China's ban on Falun Gong and treatment of practitioners to breach international human rights standards. We regularly raise our concerns with China.
We are aware of claims of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. Those claims, if true, would be deeply disturbing. However, we assess there is insufficient credible evidence to support allegations Falun Gong practitioners are specifically targeted.
There is little doubt organs have been harvested from executed prisoners in China for use in medical transplants. Australia strongly opposes this practice and we have raised our concerns directly with China. In 2015, the head of China's organ donation committee announced only voluntarily donated organs from civilians would be used in transplants. We will continue to urge China to ensure these regulations are fully implemented at all levels.
I trust this information is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Bishop
Timor Sea
Dear Mr Vasta
Thank you for your letter of 13 February 2017 regarding petition number EN0063 on the maritime boundaries between Australia and Timor-Leste in the Timor Sea.
Australia is working constructively to settle our boundary differences with Timor-Leste, with the assistance of a Conciliation Commission (the Commission) established pursuant to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The rules of the Commission are such that discussions will remain confidential to facilitate the process.
Australia's position has been and will continue to be consistent with international law. Contrary to some suggestions, a median line boundary would not put all of the Greater Sunrise resource in Timor-Leste jurisdiction.
I have enclosed copies of two recent joint statements issued on 9 January 2017 and 24 January 2017 that outline the latest developments in relation to the Commission. The Governments of Australia and Timor-Leste have each confirmed to the other their commitment to negotiate permanent maritime boundaries under the auspices of the Commission. Australia and Timor-Leste have also reaffirmed their commitment to our close bilateral relationship.
I trust this information is of assistance.
Yours sincerely
from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Bishop
PETITIONS
Statements
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (10:01): It is encouraging to see so many petitions being responded to, which helps to foster citizen engagement in the petitioning system and in parliament more broadly.
I will continue to update the House on the work of the Petitions Committee, and the opportunities it does provide for citizen engagement.
COMMITTEES
Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources
Report
Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (10:02): On behalf of the Standing Committee for Agriculture and Water Resources, I present the committee's report entitled Safekeeping: inquiry into the biosecurity of Australian honey beestogether with minutes of proceedings.
Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).
Mr RICK WILSON: Honey bees provide critical environmental and economic benefits to Australia, particularly to the agricultural industry.
The economic value of honey and other hive products produced by managed honey bees in Australia is estimated at $100 million per year, but the pollination services they provide to the agricultural industry are estimated to be worth $4 billion per year.
However, the honey bee industry is facing increasing threat from invasive pests and diseases arriving into Australia from overseas. Historically, Australia's physical isolation has enabled it to remain free of many pests and diseases. With growing trade links and international travel, the risk of pests and diseases has increased. The Australian honey bee industry is not immune to these risks and faces a range of biosecurity threats.
In view of this, the committee conducted a roundtable to understand the biosecurity threats facing the Australian beekeeping industry, and assess government risk management and response strategies. The roundtable was attended by the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, CSIRO, the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council and Plant Health Australia.
The committee found that the varroa mites are of particular threat to honey bees and have spread to every beekeeping country in the world except Australia. An infestation of varroa mites, particularly Varroa destructor, can have catastrophic consequences on honey bees, culminating in colony breakdown and collapse of hives. The committee praises the collaborative approach being undertaken against the threat of varroa mites.
However, the committee found that, while Australian biosecurity controls have so far been successful, there are ongoing risks. It is essential that early detection and response capabilities be increased to prevent a potentially devastating impact on the Australian economy. Therefore, the committee makes six recommendations aimed at improving early threat detection and response strategies.
The National Bee Pest Surveillance Program is considered to be the first line of defence against bee pests and diseases arriving into Australia. The program operates at key entry points around the country and provides a risk-based early warning system for the entry of bee pests and pest bees. The initial program, Model 1, was established in 2013, and at an annual cost of approximately $669,000. It allowed for the coverage of 39 ports, 167 sentinel hives, 129 standard catch boxes, 20 remote catch boxes and 11 floral sweeping locations.
Model 1 was superseded by the Model 2 program in December last year, at an annual cost of approximately $920,000, and will continue until 2021. Model 2 sees a substantial increase in efforts to monitor the entry of pest bees, covering 14 high-risk ports. These ports account for 95 per cent of the total trade imports into Australia.
However, the proposed Model 3 program would see a significant increase in effective coverage across the country. It would effectively double the funding for the program and substantially increase port coverage from 32 to 54. The number of sentinel hives would increase from 174 to 278. The number of standard catch boxes would be slightly reduced; however, the number of remote catch boxes would be increased considerably from 40 to 210. The Asian honey bee catch boxes would increase by 30 per cent, and floral sweeping efforts would be doubled. The annual cost would be approximately $1.9 million. The cost is comparatively small, given its protection of a $100 million beekeeping industry and the pollination services provided to a $4 billion agricultural industry. The value of this cannot be underestimated. Therefore, the committee recommends that the proposed Model 3 program be implemented by 30 June 2017. The committee further recommends: investigating the use of technology to greater enable public involvement in detection programs; analysing pest bee risk ratings at all Australian ports; commencing an analysis of bee smuggling into Australia; and undertaking research and development into selective breeding of honey bees for resistance against Varroa mite and diseases.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all who have contributed their valuable time and wisdom to this inquiry. My special thanks go to committee secretary Dr Anna Dacre, inquiry secretary Anthony Overs and researcher Peter Pullen. Their professionalism and attention to detail are highly valued by myself and, I know, the deputy chair, who is here today. Their work provides great assistance to me as the chair and to all committee members. Thank you.
Ms SWANSON (Paterson) (10:08): I rise to speak on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources' report into biosecurity of Australian honey bees, which has just been presented by our committee chair, the member for O'Connor. I thank him for his remarks and for his level of cooperation and support given to this report. As deputy chair of the committee, I would also like to thank the individuals and organisations who provided essential information for this report and participated in the roundtable for the inquiry. I, too, would like to second the thanks offered by the chair to Dr Anna Dacre, Anthony Overs, Peter Pullen, Louise Milligan and Jessica Hargreaves.
As deputy chair, it was a learning experience and, indeed, an incredible experience to learn that the Australian honey bee is so important to Australia. The value of honey and other hive products produced by managed honey bees in Australia is comparatively small at an estimated $100 million a year. But honey bees make an enormous indirect contribution to our economy through the pollination services that they provide. Many fruit, nut, vegetable, legume and seed crops cannot bear fruit or seeds without being pollinated. And although we do have a range of insects doing the job of pollinating the plants, the honey bee plays the most important role. Therefore, we must protect it. Honey bees pollinate many horticultural crops, as well, and boost the grazing industry by improving yield of common fodder crops like clover and lucerne. So the real value of the honey bee to Australia is estimated to be $4 billion. They are busy little bees indeed!
We are fortunate in Australia that our honey bees remain healthy, and this is due in part to our isolation—that is true.
Mr Katter interjecting—
Ms SWANSON: That was not our remit, the member for Kennedy might like to know. But we, perhaps, can look at that in the future. It is also due to the vigilance of our biosecurity measures, which have proved both important and successful to date. However, the risk of invasive pests or diseases arriving in Australia has increased because of growing trade links with the rest of the world and increasing international travel.
There are risks to the honey bee from invasive species such as the Asian honey bee, which has become established in northern Queensland, and a range of pest. But the biggest risk comes from the Varroa mite. The aptly named Verroa destructor species has spread to every beekeeping country in the world except Australia, and we must remain vigilant to keep it at bay. If the destructor mite does make it to Australia, it will be a serious threat not just to beekeeping and honey production but to horticultural and agricultural industries, as well. It would likely would likely wipe out entirely our feral honey bee population and make it much harder to safely operate managed hives.
The risk of the Varroa destructor mite making it to Australia is deemed as high, with three to four pest bees found at our borders each year. While our biosecurity controls are focused on our borders, there is an additional risk that the mite could arrive on bees that have been smuggled into Australia. There have been two cases prosecuted in Australia for smuggling of bees, so it is not unheard of. Australia does have in place a strong suite of biosecurity protections based on a risk-based framework, meaning that resources and efforts are concentrated at points where risks are considered to be the greatest. All vessels and cargo imported must be reported and profiled for risk. Vessels of concern may be inspected and sent for mandatory treatment.
The National Bee Pest Surveillance Program is targeted at ports of entry, with sentinel hives, lures and traps. Information is shared between government and industry, and the public has a role to play, as well. Sentinel hives and catchboxes are placed at high-risk locations at ports and monitored for invasive species and bee pests. This collaborative approach is vitally important.
I am pleased to see that the committee has accepted my recommendation that the government investigate the development of an easy-to-use smartphone app which may help members of the public to more easily contribute to the eradication program. The committee also recommends the government complete the analysis of pest bee risk ratings for ports where it is not complete, and that assessment should include airports and pre-embarkation inspections. Also, a detailed analysis must be undertaken of the smuggling of bees into Australia.
This report is aptly named Safe keeping. This committee will keep a very close eye on the health of the Australian honey bee.
The SPEAKER (10:13): The time allotted for statements on this report has expired. Does the honourable member for O'Connor wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a later occasion?
Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (10:13): I move:
That the House take note of the report.
The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 39(c), the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Does the honourable member for O'Connor wish to move a motion to refer the matter to the Federation Chamber?
Reference to Federation Chamber
Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (10:13): I move:
That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate.
Question agreed to.
DELEGATION REPORTS
Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 25th Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum in Fiji
Mr ENTSCH (Leichhardt) (10:14): I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 25th annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum held in Natadola, Fiji, from 15 to 19 January 2017. I was accompanied on the delegation by the member for Paterson, who is across the chamber here, and senators Moore and Williams. The APPF is an assembly of members of national parliaments in the Asia-Pacific region, which has met each year since 1993 to discuss matters of mutual concern. Issues the APPF deal with are mainly strategic, economic, social and cultural in nature. The APPF is important to the Australian parliament as a parliamentary association of members who share Australia's region. Key regional countries with which Australia has strong links send delegations to APPF annual meetings. Such countries include Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Thailand and a number of Pacific island countries, including the host country this year, Fiji.
Each conference is structured around a number of plenary sessions and working groups and a drafting committee that considers a range of resolutions arising from the discussions. Participating countries submit draft resolutions that form the basis for the discussion sessions and subsequent conference resolutions finalised through consensus. The sessions were under the themes of 'political and security matters', 'economic and trade matters' and 'regional cooperation'.
The four draft resolutions forwarded by the Australian delegation reflected the interests of the delegation members. I took responsibility for carriage of the draft resolution on regional and subregional strategies for combating communicable and non-communicable diseases in the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on combating the scourge of tuberculosis. For example, while the rate of TB is dropping in the Cook Islands, it is still 10 times more prevalent than in Australia. Papua New Guinea, our nearest neighbour, is listed by the World Health Organization as a 'high burden' TB country, and therefore it is important that TB is on the agenda at the meeting of health ministers in the Cook Islands in 2018. I note too that last Friday, 24 March, was World TB Day.
The member for Paterson and Senator Moore took carriage of two resolutions: one on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the region, and the other on increasing the participation of women in politics. I have to say that they did an outstanding job in presenting their case and getting the necessary resolutions up. Through several meetings and with active support from the entire Australian delegation, Australia lobbied for an initiative calling for future APPF meetings to include a meeting of women parliamentarians as a standing agenda item. I say congratulations to both of them for the work that they did in that area.
Senator Williams took carriage of a resolution promoting food security in the Asia-Pacific region, arguing strongly for the need to preserve soil quality in order to sustain crop yields and to feed a growing population. In comparison to the numbers in some national delegations, the Australian delegation was relatively small. This meant we had a very busy schedule, contributing to as many of the sessions as possible. The forum provided an excellent opportunity for us to forge links with our parliamentary colleagues in the region and discuss issues of common concern.
On behalf of the delegation I would like to thank the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for assistance with briefing papers for the forum meetings and for the support provided in Fiji by the Australian high commissioner and her colleagues. The Parliamentary Library also provided briefing material which the delegation found very useful. I would also like to put on the record a very big thankyou to delegation secretary, James Catchpole, for his outstanding support during the forum. With a small delegation, we relied very heavily on James's support. Of course, we must also thank our very hospitable hosts, the Parliament of Fiji. Our thanks go in particular to the Speaker of the Fijian parliament, the Hon. Dr Jiko Luveni, and her staff. Our hosts were exceptionally generous in their welcome and hospitality. Hosting the conference was a major undertaking for the Fijian parliament, and the support provided to delegates was of a very high standard.
I commend the report to the House.
BILLS
Banking Amendment (Establishing an Effective Code of Conduct) Bill 2017
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum incorporating a statement of compatibility with human rights presented by Mr Wilkie.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Mr WILKIE (Denison) (10:19): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
At the moment there exists only a voluntary Code of Banking Practice. That code is developed entirely by the Australian Bankers' Association, a body run by and funded by 25 banks, and the latest version is some four years old. While 18 banks (including the big four banks) have signed up to this voluntary code, it is indeed voluntary, and five per cent of the retail banking market in Australia is not even covered by it.
At face value the current code looks pretty good, because it includes provisions on:
the disclosure of fees, charges and other terms and conditions, and changes to these terms;
privacy and confidentiality;
statements;
charge-backs on credit cards;
financial hardship;
debt collection; and
complaints handling.
There is a mechanism, then, for investigating complaints in the Code Compliance Monitoring Committee, or the CCMC.
But, frankly, the CCMC is ineffective, because it is established, run and funded by the industry. Moreover, the CCMC is not an effective method of dealing with complaints from customers directly, because what it can actually investigate or do is very narrow. Indeed, instead of complaints from customers, the CCMC deals mainly with self-reported breaches of the code from the banks.
Customers can take general complaints about banks to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which also covers insurance companies and other financial services. But, again, the Financial Ombudsman Service is run and funded by the industry. In 2015 the ombudsman did receive more than 34,000 complaints, which was an increase of seven per cent, and it does have the power to refer cases of serious misconduct to ASIC, but in 2015-16, out of more than 34,000 complaints, it referred only—wait for it—five to ASIC. You might ask: what about the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority? But APRA, the bank regulator, simply does not deal with individual complaints. So, in short, for customers with complaints about banks there is simply no complaint mechanism that is not run by the industry, and people must resort to private legal action, which, of course, is an impossible proposition for most members of the community.
This bill would fix all of that because it would make the current Code of Banking Practice a legal instrument and it would empower APRA to deal with complaints that banks have breached the code and to issue penalties where appropriate. The bill requires APRA to name and shame banks that breach the code and also requires the minister to update the code every three years and to consult the banks' customers, both individuals and small businesses, when doing so. To summarise, this bill would turn self-regulation into government regulation and would turn voluntary into mandatory. It would finally give banking customers some rights when dealing with their financial institution.
This is in fact the second time I have sought to do this. I tried during the previous Labor government, back in September 2012. It is telling that when I tried to move an identical bill five years ago neither the Labor government nor the Liberal/Nationals opposition expressed any interest in it or any support for it. In fact, the Selection Committee refused to bring it on for a detailed debate and a vote. It simply went to show that when I tried it last time neither major party had any interest then in serious banking reform. This is despite the fact that serious reform is needed. You only have to pick up any newspaper on any day or turn on the news on any night and it seems there is another story about bank misconduct.
There can be no doubt that some of the banks are behaving dreadfully a lot of the time and it is our role in this place to do something about it. Indeed, in my 6½ years in parliament—and I think I can speak for my cross-bench colleagues—in all of our time in the parliament we have received numerous complaints from individuals about the way they have been treated by the banks and the inability they experience in trying to do something about it. Most people do not have pockets deep enough to take on the banks, so we are left powerless. I am sure we on the cross bench have come across many people in that situation, and not just individuals. There is one business group in this country that is being right royally screwed by the banks right now, and that is small business, because small businesses, like individuals, simply do not have the power in that relationship to deal with problems and to deal with being treated poorly by the banks. A small business cannot afford to go to court and take on Westpac, NAB, the Commonwealth Bank or ANZ, because, for a start, they have limited financial resources but also because the banks will throw everything at it to make sure they do not lose in court. I must say that my activism on this issue has been informed and really energised by my dealings with the Tasmanian Small Business Council. I would like to acknowledge the president, Geoff Fader, and the executive officer, Robert Mallett, for the assistance they have given me in understanding this issue and understanding how small businesses are suffering just as much as individual customers when it comes to misconduct by the banks.
More than ever, we need to do something about this. That behaviour of the banks right now is appalling. In the last year, the banks have posted profits of some 30,000 million dollars. Bank profits in this country right now are at about 2.9 per cent of GDP. That is almost an unfathomable thing to get our minds around. The profit of the big four banks is almost 3 per cent of our country's entire gross domestic product—that is just a mind-boggling figure—and it is about three times the profit, as a proportion of GDP, when compared with the banks in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It is unfathomable. And what has happened in the last few weeks? Banks have started jacking up home mortgage rates. Isn't $30 billion enough profit? Do they have to go after not just investors but owner occupiers and say, 'Sorry, Mr and Mrs X, we are not making enough profit. Thirty thousand million dollars—we are on our arse here. We need more money, so we are going to jack up the interest rate on your owner occupied home.' This is unconscionable behaviour.
Is the government doing anything about it? No. The government's refusal to have a royal commission into the conduct of the banks is unconscionable. Although five years ago the Labor Party had no interest in a mandatory code of conduct, at least the Labor Party is red-hot on the issue of a royal commission, and I applaud it. It is simply not good enough for the Prime Minister to have stood up last year and said, 'We'll pull the bank leaders in before the House of Representatives Economics Committee and they can explain themselves once every year or so.' It is simply not good enough. Then, the government wants to give the banks a $7 billion tax cut. So, not only are the banks making $30 billion a year, not only are they jacking up owner occupied interest rates on mum and dad and their families, but the government wants to give them another 7,000 million dollars profit. What is going on with the government? They are totally beholden to the banking industry.
Today is an opportunity for the government, supported by the opposition and my cross-bench colleagues—the numbers seem to be growing at the moment and I am delighted with that—to show that we in this place care about the community and that we are concerned about the conduct of the banks. If nothing else, we will turn an ineffective bank-run voluntary code of conduct into a legislated mandatory code of conduct where the minister has power, where APRA has punitive powers, and we can finally rein in the power of the banks.
The SPEAKER: Just a couple of things: (1) thank you for saying 'good morning' and (2) I caution you on some of the language you used during your contribution. Always bear in mind parliamentary language and the fact that we have school groups in the building. Is the motion seconded?
Ms McGowan: I am very happy to second this motion and reserve my right to speak.
Debate adjourned.
People of Australia's Commission of Inquiry (Banking and Financial Services) Bill 2017
First Reading
Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Katter.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (10:32): I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I am very thankful for the unanimity of this place—the bill obviously would not be going forward without the support of the member for Dawson, who showed immense courage in crossing the floor on the ethanol bill, which is so important to us in the sugar industry—and now, again, on an issue that every Australian agrees with. I doubt whether there would be five per cent of this country who would say that an inquiry into the banks is not needed. Everyone agrees to this, except the Liberal Party. They are the only people who disagree. And their isolation is standing out now like a neon light, and the cowardice of those people who have advocated it yet, when it is put into the parliament, cannot be found; they will be hiding in the toilets. We must note the courage and intellectual integrity of some and the cowardice of others.
The Sunday edition of The Australian the week before last had its entire front page taken up with what is, quite frankly, the imminent collapse of banking in Australia. Nearly a third of Australia's population lives in good old 'NSW': Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong! It is nearly of a third of the Australia population. In Sydney, the average price of a house is over $900,000 and the average for the area is well over $750,000. That means that the repayments are in the order of $35,000, the interest is in the order of $30,000 and the annual charges are about $5,000. That is $70,000 that they have to find if they want to buy a house. Well, the average weekly income is $72,000, or $50,000 after tax. So, even if the husband and wife are working, their situation is perilous.
And what are the banks going to do? They got through the GFC, but not because of the prudential responsibility. Lending people $900,000 for a house is hardly prudentially responsible. It was non-recourse lending. That was the issue. They have recourse lending here in Australia, and they have been able to control this parliament to date. In the United States and most of the rest of the world, if you cannot make the repayments then the bank can take the house. Invariably they will lose some money, and of course the person loses the house. So, they share the responsibility of having made a bad contract. In Australia there is no sharing of responsibility. The bank gets the house and gets you as a debt slave for the rest of your life. You carry that debt for the rest of your days, and you will have no hope of carrying it out. If you cannot keep the repayments up on the house there is no way you are going to be able to repay an outstanding debt of $100,000 or $200,000. When the bank finishes you off they put a whole lot of extra hits in.
I get on well with the Deputy Prime Minister. I have a lot of admiration for him in some ways. But he said there were four farmers in trouble in North Queensland. Well, the Catholic priest in the greater Longreach area said that there were 42 farms being foreclosed on—station properties, families. Charlie Phillott—the now-famous Charlie Phillott, twice on 60 Minutes—named 13 properties in his area of Winton that were being foreclosed on. I knew of eight in the area south of Hughenden and Richmond—the Muttaburra and Aramac area—eight. Well, that is 55, 63, being foreclosed on, in just three areas—there are 48 local government areas, but this is just in three areas alone. Well, he listened to the banks; that is what the banks told him: 'There are only four in trouble.' Can you get a more extraordinary case of lying and deceit?
When they had a pitiful inquiry here, all the bank bosses came up and said, 'Mea culpa! It's my fault! We've done wrong. We will have to fix up our act.' I mean, it was very funny, really, to see them all lining up, one after the other, doing their mea culpas, bowing their heads, and saying, 'We've done wrong. We've got to try harder in the future.'
I know what 'harder' will be! And let me give an example. When the ANZ bank and Westpac were technically insolvent in the late 80s, something had to be done to rescue them. So the interest rates were taken up. I can remember clearly borrowing at 6½ per cent, and I said, 'I'm right for forever because, even if the rate doubled, to 13, the highest interest rate ever recorded in Australian history, I'll still be right'. In the second last year, on St Francis, we were paying 29 per cent, interest rate with charges, and I can assure you, we were not Robinson Crusoe.
So, when the banks get into trouble, what happens? 'We put the whip to the galley slaves, the poor beggars who have borrowed; we'll have to get the money off them.' Did any of the banks get punished? No! In fact, they took their incomes from $790,000 in that period up to over $8 million, on average. What more than 20 or 30 of us could save in an entire lifetime, they make each year. And yet the government says there is no necessity for an inquiry.
On the recourse lending, we are out of step with the rest of the world. We have a pending collapse of the market in Sydney which will do I don't know how much damage to the banking institutions of Australia.
Let me concentrate on the injustice of the system. I will use one quick case from my own area, of a family that had been on the land for five generations. They had borrowed money for this place. The government cut off the live cattle export market, which collapsed the price of cattle—cut it clean in half. They then had a series of dry seasons: the longest series of dry seasons—not the worst drought, but the longest series of dry seasons—in northern Australian history. And the banks hit them. That is all right. The banks can hit them. That is fair. That is right. Right? Except you do not sell the station in November when there is no grass and the cattle are dying. You do not sell it then because you will not get any money for it. And if you have got a $12½ million asset and you cannot find a buyer, you need two years. I interviewed a number of stock and station agents and they said, 'To get a decent price, you need two years; under six months, it is Flashdance prices—you will get nothing.' Well, this was sold in six weeks; a $12½ million asset was sold in six weeks. And instead of getting $12½ million they got $6 million for the sale. The son committed suicide. The father lived in the shed; he would not go near the house where his son had committed suicide. The mother could not talk; for three months she was unable to speak at all. He was asked to sign a document—and please God we can get this into the courts. He was told, 'Sign this document because we don't want to throw your wife and kids out into the street.' They were living in Charters Towers. 'Your poor little kids thrown out in the street—we don't want to do that. But you've got to sign this document or otherwise there's nothing we can do about it; we just foreclose on your house in Charters Towers and your wife and kids get thrown out on the street.' So he rang me on the Friday, agonising about it. He rang me again on the Sunday, agonising about it. But what this is is proof of duress! The legislation is quite clear: if you are a powerful figure and the other party to the contract is a weak party to the contract, then you must act as if you do not have that power. Well of course the bank just got them to sign a document saying, 'We can do anything at all to you, and you're not allowed to talk to anyone or say anything'—absolute proof of duress! We cannot get a case before the courts because these people are bankrupt; they have got no money. And there is no necessity for— (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr Wilkie: I second the motion moved by the indefatigable member for Kennedy and reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member for Denison. The question is that the bill be now read a second time. The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.
Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (Gorton) (10:43): The Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017 would have two effects: firstly, it would stop retail and hospitality workers' wages being cut as a result of the decision handed down by the Fair Work Commission last month, and, secondly, it would stop the Fair Work Commission cutting award wages and penalty rates in other industries, by constraining the discretion of the commission. That is why this bill is so important.
This is a time when wage growth in this country is at an all-time low, at least since records began in 1998—at least that long. It is also a time when more Australians are feeling cost-of-living pressures: the difficulty in making ends meet; the difficulty in paying bills and in paying the mortgage, in paying the rent and in putting food on the table and petrol in the car. These are real life experiences happening now to thousands and thousands of Australians, and they will be made worse if we allow the effects of the Fair Work decision to occur.
Of course it is also a time when the Prime Minister and the government want to give corporate tax cuts to big business and to banks. We have this most bizarre contrast in this place where, on the one hand, you have a Prime Minister wanting to see a pay cut of up to $77 a week for retail and hospitality workers and workers in pharmacies and, at the same time, allowing for a $17,000 tax cut on 1 July. We have a situation where we will see real cuts that will cause real damage to the social fabric of this country by cutting workers' wages and yet we have a government that wants to give a $50 billion tax giveaway to big businesses. It is an absolute shame, and the government must consider a different view. We have invited the Prime Minister to join Labor and support this bill, the effect of which would mean that the decision would not hurt so many Australians.
There are other issues, too, that have not been fully aired in this discussion, and it is such an important discussion. Firstly, today, there was the revelation from the Australia Institute that hundreds of millions of dollars will be lost in revenue as a result of the Fair Work Commission decision. How that would happen is that people's wages will fall—people who currently have some social benefit, which may well be a family tax benefit, paid to them as a result of the level of their income—and, if you cut the level of their income, you will see increased reliance on social welfare payments. These hardworking Australians in this country have to suffer the indignity of their Prime Minister and this government wanting to cut their wages, making them rely more on social welfare. At the same time, there is going to be a hit to revenue for this government, which of course begs the questions: why is it that Treasury made no modelling in relation to the effects on employment? We have to rely on the spurious claims from those who say it is going to be a great boon to employment. And why is it that, in estimates, Treasury could not indicate the loss to revenue as a result of the intersection of the wages that these workers are reliant upon with some of the social welfare payments they receive? This is an important bill. It will help redress inequality in this country, which is at a 75-year high. It seeks to redress the difficulties people are confronting every day when dealing with cost-of-living pressures.
I also want to touch on one other matter. Labor made clear when the decision was handed down that this would be the thin edge of the wedge, that this would be the beginning of an assault on workers' wages. The Prime Minister said that was an absurd proposition. In fact, he called it a lie. Well, what we have seen as result of the decision is that three further awards will now be subject to potential arbitration and further cuts. Hairdressers and beauticians, those who work in clubs and hotels and those who work in restaurants will now also be subject to consideration as to whether their penalty rates will be cut, and they may well join retail workers and hospitality workers in losing real income. This is a very important bill. We would expect Malcolm Turnbull, if he had any concern for Australians, if he were not so out of touch, to support this bill today and look after these workers in this country.
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (10:48): Here we go again, with another typical Labor scare campaign. It is threatening and it is making workers out there who are doing a good job scared for their penalty rates. People need to be scared for their penalty rates because of what the unions have done to them. Let us have a quick look here. We heard the opposition leader in his speech say, 'When you negotiate on behalf of workers, it's about making them better off overall.' Really? Let us see what the Fair Work Commission had to say about that in a decision last year, on 31 May 2016, in Hart v Coles Supermarkets Australia. At paragraph 33 of that decision the Fair Work Commission—Vice President Watson, Deputy President Kovacic and Commissioner Roe—said, about the idea that unions make people better off overall:
Taking into account all of these matters we are not satisfied that the Agreement passes the BOOT—
the better off overall test—
For some employees, particularly those who work primarily at times which attract lower penalty rates under the Agreement when compared to the Award, the loss in monetary terms is potentially significant. The potential loss is likely to be of significance for part-time and casual employees. We have considered whether or not the other benefits of the Agreement when compared to the Award can make up for this deficit. We are not satisfied that a consideration of all benefits and detriments under the Agreement results in each employee and each prospective employee being better off overall under the Agreement compared to the Award. It follows that we are not satisfied that the Agreement passes the BOOT.
That is not the Liberal Party; that is the Fair Work Commission, stacked with Labor Party commissioners, saying that workers are worse off under a union agreement. Why are they worse off? Because they have been sold out for union memberships and union fees. That is the simple reason.
You only have to look at the EBA for those poor old KFC workers who get zero penalty rates on the weekend under a union agreement. Their union agreement says, at clause 40.2:
… the employer undertakes to positively promote union membership by recommending that all employees join—
the union—
… All employees, including new employees at the point of recruitment, shall be given an application form to join the Union together with a statement of the employer's policy.
What young kid, 15 or 16 years of age, going to their first job, when told their employer 'positively promotes the union' and 'recommends they join' and given a form to sign, before they actually get the job and before they earn a dollar, is going to say no? Not one. What does that allow the unions to do? It allows them to get a money trail into their pay packet, where these young workers have money ripped off out of their pay to go straight into the union coffers. For the privilege of that union fee, they are not even getting a single cent of penalty rates, and you mob over there say nothing. You are silent, dead silent.
The other issue with this penalty rate decision is that it is not compulsory. Many small businesses have already decided they will pay the higher rate of pay. There is no reason that they will cut rates of pay just because of the Fair Work Commission decision. Many companies have come out and said exactly that. The retailer Lush, with close to 600 employees, have said that they are happy with their workforce, that they are happy with the rates of pay they are giving them and that they are not going to make any cuts, because they value their employees. I say that this decision of the retailer Lush—and we give them credit for it—will be repeated by company after company, by small business after small business.
Ultimately, this decision is about having a level playing field for both small business and large business. The other side like to talk about inequality. The greatest inequality is when a small business is forced to pay 50 per cent more in salaries than a large business. That is the greatest inequality. It stops many young workers from actually getting— (Time expired)
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (10:53): I rise today to urge those opposite to support this private member's bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017. As we know, the Fair Work Commission decision has slashed Sunday and public holiday rates for around 700,000 workers in the hospitality, hotel, retail, fast-food and pharmacy industries. Many of those workers—most of them—are women, and many of them have lost up to $77 a week. The bill that is before us at the moment would prevent those losses occurring.
I have heard so many stories in recent weeks about the effect that this will have on the budgets of ordinary Australians. I heard from one woman in particular: Lititia Richardson, who works as a food and beverage attendant. She said:
It's the difference between fresh vegetables and frozen vegetables. If you take that $20 away—well, I mean I live on a shoestring anyway, I don't know how I'd manage. It's not much to ask to be able to be paid enough to give your family the basic necessities and maybe if you're lucky a little something extra like a dancing lesson.
Those opposite claim that these cuts will result in extra jobs being created. Frankly, this is difficult to believe. Most of us know from our experience, from our time in the workforce, that the most likely outcome of these wages cuts is that people will do the same amount of work for less money. That is it—the same number of hours and the same amount of work, just paid less to do what they used to be paid more to do.
In their latest submission to the Fair Work Commission on Friday, the government should have said that they do not support this change. They should come in here and vote to protect people's pay. Instead of going to the Fair Work Commission and arguing to protect people's penalty rates, they have said, with their hands up in the air: 'There's nothing we can do.' If only someone in a real position of power or authority took an interest in people's pay and conditions! In contrast, Labor put in a submission arguing to protect the penalty rates of not only the workers who have already been affected by these changes but also workers under other awards who will potentially be affected.
I want to particularly draw attention to the gender pay gap and how these changes affect women. Fifty-seven per cent of hospitality workers are women, and 57 per cent of takeaway food workers are women, as are 62 per cent of retail workers and 85 per cent of pharmacy workers. We have shown that a significant majority of people working on Sundays are women. We already have a gender pay gap in this country. The Prime Minister is very fond of saying that women hold up half the sky, but we are doing it for 17 per cent less pay. Changes like this will exacerbate the gender pay gap in Australia. This is just the thin edge of the wedge. We know that up to another 323,000 workers under other awards, including the clubs award, the restaurant and cafe award and the hair and beauty award will potentially be the next cab off the rank when it comes to losing penalty rates.
I have worked in many of these industries. As a uni student, I worked in cafes, in restaurants and in clubs. I know that, for me as a uni student, it would have made a big difference to lose those penalty rates. But I will tell you who it really makes a big difference to. It will make the biggest difference to people who are trying to raise a family on these wages. They are being told that they will be expected to do the same amount of work for less pay. They are supposed to give up their time on Sundays and public holidays, when they should be home with their families, celebrating as families do at these times, having a bit of time off, enjoying each other's company and establishing the relationships that carry you through life. Instead they are giving up that time, they are giving up pay and they are expected to turn up to do the same work. In the next lot of awards that are being examined, 54 per cent of club workers are female, as are 59 per cent of restaurant workers, 86 per cent of hairdressers and 99 per cent of beauticians. If the government do not think this will exacerbate the gender pay gap, they are dreaming.
We are also very concerned about the effect on the economy, the effect on demand and the effect on taxes that have been described in the papers today. The government should back this private member's bill and prevent these pay cuts.
Mr RAMSEY (Grey—Government Whip) (10:58): This bill put forward by the Leader of the Opposition—the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017—is entirely disingenuous. He seems to not remember that he was responsible for setting up the Fair Work Commission, for staffing the Fair Work Commission and for triggering this inquiry. It really is the height of hypocrisy. One could not accuse the Leader of the Opposition of being cursed with a strong memory. In fact, in so many instances he has totally deserted the position that he took as little as 12 months ago. On a number of occasions in this chamber, the Prime Minister has highlighted where the Leader of the Opposition and the union movement have done deals with big business that cut penalty rates—deals with no reward for the workers but rewards for the unions, and a lot of those rewards are monetary. The other one, of course, is access to new workers for the purpose of recruiting them to the union. I am brought back to an occasion where a mother came to me, and her son was commencing work as a 16-year-old with KFC. KFC is one of those companies that has done a deal with the unions on penalty rates. As part of his first day induction, he was met by the union official with a view to signing him up to the union. This union official happened to be an ex-senator, an ex-member of the other place, in his 60s. What kind of power imbalance is that? You have this ex-senator, a man who had great authority in his own community, sitting on the other side of the desk from a 16-year-old and telling him that he must join the union. That is a standover tactic, and that is the deal that the union has done with, in this particular case, a big employer.
Since the announcement by Fair Work Australia that penalty rates for Sunday and Monday would be reduced by a margin—it must be said; if you read some of the emails, you would believe that they were actually getting rid of penalty rates, but that is far from the truth—basically, the only contact I have had complaining about this decision has been the formula emails, the campaign emails, that have come out of groups like GetUp! But I have not actually been contacted by a real-life individual telling me that this is going to be great problem to their existence. But, virtually daily, when I am in my electorate, I am contacted by young people who cannot get a job. They say, 'Mr Ramsey, do know anywhere I can get a job? Can you point me to someone who is taking on people?' When I look around and see some of the establishments that used to operate on Sundays and holiday Mondays that no longer do, I say, 'A few years ago, you could've got a job there.'
It is pretty tough. I remember speaking to a pizza shop owner, for instance, and he told me that on holiday Mondays he had to pay his pizza delivery boy $45 an hour to drop off pizzas. I do not know if any members of the Labor Party have bought a pizza lately. Perhaps you have, Mr Deputy Speaker Mitchell. But I can tell you, you have to sell an awful lot of pizzas to be able to pay someone $45 an hour to deliver them around the community. He said, 'On Sundays and holiday Mondays, my family are my staff.' They do not have any choice about the matter. He said, 'If I need to keep my doors open, and I do because I am a pizza shop, my family all have to work on those days.' So he does not really have the liberty to employ anyone, whether or not it be on penalty rates.
Penalty rates have robbed jobs from other people in the community already. Recently I was talking to a restaurant owner. This man employs around 30 people and he opens 365 days a year. I said to him, 'Chris, do you lose money on those high-operating-expense days?' He said, 'Yes, absolutely. We go backwards.' I said, 'Why do you open?' He said, 'Just so I can say that I open 365 days a year.' The reduction in these penalty rates does not affect the restaurant industry, and he said to me, 'Why aren't we in this as well?' What I can say is that those jobs, those 30 people he employs, are dependent on his pride—so he can say, 'We open 365 days a year.' But if he sells that restaurant, there is no guarantee that the next person will have that pride.
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (11:03): The government members of parliament—the Nationals and the Liberals—just do not get it: 700,000 workers are set to have their pay cut just in retail and hospitality alone, and that is before the employers get their way in beauty, in hairdressing, in restaurants and in pubs and clubs. There will be even more workers who will have their pay cut as a result of this government's failure to stand up for low-paid workers if they do not take action. How much a week is it? It is a straight pay cut—$77 per week. We have heard examples, in this place and in the community, about that impact. We have heard from Kerry, a pharmacist assistant who earns about $30,000 a year. She is a part-time worker, and the cut to the Sunday penalty is worth $1,500 to Kerry. We have also heard from Margarita. Margarita is a room attendant in Melbourne who works in one of the most expensive hotels in Melbourne. She earns about $30,000 a year, and her pay cut will be about $2,000 a year. These are people who work for big companies and small companies, not just the small businesses that that mob over there say that this will help—these are also big businesses.
Just to demonstrate how out of touch the MPs opposite are, the Liberal-National MPs have said that this pay cut is a gift to young people, that this will affect people in the margins and that they are pleased with this decision. We cannot go any further than the Minister for Small Business himself, who last week claimed:
I get a travel allowance, others get penalty rates …
To compare an MP's travel allowance—a claim of about $50,000—to someone's entire wage of $30,000 is just outrageous. It demonstrates how out of touch this mob are. This is also the same person who said, not that long ago, that politicians earn less than people in the private sector, and that they did not deserve as much scrutiny. Politicians earn less than people in the private sector? Perhaps the Minister for Small Business is talking about CEOs, because he is definitely not talking about the people who work for small business, he is definitely not talking about retail workers in the private sector and he is definitely not talking about hospitality workers. I would like to see the people in this place turn up for $30,00 year. I reckon we might be a few MPs short if we had to survive on the wages that people in the private sector working in retail and hospitality try to survive on.
This is a government that is desperately out of touch. They are also trying to spread some very dishonest propaganda about how collective and enterprise bargaining works. We cannot go further than the example of McDonald's. As I said, in this place and in my own electorate, you cannot just talk about the Sunday rate. You have to talk about the Monday to Friday rate, and you have to talk about all the allowances. At McDonald's, a full-time senior weekly wage is up to $70 above the award—$70 a week better off overall—because of enterprise bargaining and union negotiations. The EBA also delivers minimum hourly shifts. It delivers family violence leave, compassionate leave and study leave, and anybody working in McDonald's—and there are a lot of younger people working there—takes advantage of their study leave. There are also older people working there.
As the deputy opposition leader said just a moment ago, the majority of the people working in these sectors are women. Some of them are younger women, some of them are older women. Their wage has become the primary income in their households. They are trying to survive. They are trying to pay their bills. They are trying to support their kids. As one retail assistant told me in Tasmania, this is how she pays for her son's basketball. Another retail worker told me that this is how she pays for her daughter's ballet lessons. This government is saying that they are backing big business and they are not stepping in to protect these workers. Instead, they want to see these children miss out on ballet and basketball lessons.
These pay cuts are a wrong decision by the Fair Work Commission. We are calling upon the government to support Labor's bill to protect low-paid workers and to do it now before it becomes a free-for-all and flows through and affects workers in all these other sectors. As we have heard today in the papers, this penalty rate cut alone will give a massive whack to the budget. If the government wants to stop that happening, then they need to step in now. The government needs to support Labor's private member's bill not just for the workers but for the community and for the economy.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Tuberculosis
Mr ENTSCH (Leichhardt) (11:09): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) 24 March is World Tuberculosis Day, and marks the anniversary of German Nobel Laureate Dr Robert Koch's 1882 discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis;
(b) tuberculosis is contagious and airborne, ranking as the world's leading cause of death from a single infectious agent;
(c) in 2015, 1.8 million people died from tuberculosis worldwide and 10.4 million people became sick with the disease, with over 60 per cent of cases occurring in countries in our region;
(d) Papua New Guinea (PNG) has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis infection in the Pacific, with an estimated 33,000 total cases including 2,000 drug-resistant cases, in 2015; and
(e) tuberculosis is:
(i) the leading cause of death among HIV positive people—HIV weakens the immune system and in combination with tuberculosis is lethal, each contributing to the other's progress; and
(ii) considered a preventable and treatable disease, however many current treatment tools—drugs, diagnostics and vaccines—are outdated and ineffective;
(2) recognises:
(a) the impact of the increased support by Australia to combat tuberculosis in PNG, and the need for continued support for prevention and treatment, as well as development of new tools and strategies to combat tuberculosis, consistent with the World Health Organization's 'The End TB Strategy';
(b) current Australian Government funding of health and medical research is helping to bring new medicines and diagnostic tests to market for tuberculosis and other neglected diseases; and
(c) the ongoing support for research and development of new simple and affordable treatment tools for tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is essential if the goals of 'The End TB Strategy' are to be met;
(3) acknowledges the work of Australia's partners in fighting tuberculosis, including the Burnet Institute and Global Fund, in partnership with the Government of PNG and the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre's 'Treaty Village Resilience Project' in building capacity in villages of the Western Province, to deliver platforms for the delivery of improved health services including tuberculosis prevention and treatment; and
(4) calls on the Australian Government to provide continued funding for tuberculosis prevention and treatment in PNG, and continued funding for the development of improved diagnostics and medications to combat tuberculosis, beyond 2017.
Last week in parliament we commemorated World Tuberculosis Day. There was a great turnout of parliamentary colleagues, diplomats, patient advocates, researchers and the media. I would particularly like to mention Mrs Valda Kereu, a healthcare worker and tuberculosis survivor who travelled a long way to be with us and tell us about the importance of fighting tuberculosis in Papua New Guinea.
Today, as the Australian convenor for the Global TB Caucus and the co-chair of both the Australian Tuberculosis Caucus and the Asia-Pacific Tuberculosis Caucus, I welcome key Australian investment in tuberculosis prevention and treatment in Papua New Guinea and in the development of innovative drugs and diagnostics for tuberculosis and commit to continuing to work towards a TB-free future. The Australian TB Caucus is a cross-party group of 20 parliamentarians focused on securing Australian support for ending TB as a global epidemic. At the most recent count, there were 18 national TB caucuses and a combined membership of 2,300 representatives from 130 countries. That is certainly a powerful potential for global good. I would like to acknowledge my co-chair for the Australian caucus, Matt Thistlethwaite, who is doing a great job. We are working very closely together.
In 2015, tuberculosis killed 1.8 million people, making it the world's greatest infectious disease killer. Tuberculosis has most assuredly not gone away. While we in Australia may have it under control, the Asia-Pacific region bears over 60 per cent of the global burden of tuberculosis. Our nearest northern neighbour, Papua New Guinea, has a high rate of TB infection, and the island of Daru in the Western Province, which borders my electorate, has one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world.
To highlight the situation in Daru, on a delegation to South Africa in 2015 with RESULTS International, I met Dr Jennifer Furin from Doctors Without Borders. She said:
I have been working with TB for over 20 years. I have worked in prisons in Russia, in Siberia, and many other high-burden countries and in the most difficult of circumstances therefore nothing generally shocks me.
However, I was absolutely shocked and felt despair from what I saw in Daru, which was far worse than what I have ever experienced and the TB burden is horrific. Having said that, what is most despairing is the fact that with the right application this situation can be quite easily addressed.
Australia and Papua New Guinea have shared goals for increasing TB detection and for treatment completion rates, and we have backed this commitment with financial support. In 2015, Minister Bishop announced additional funding for TB control in Papua New Guinea, taking Australian assistance in the Western Province and the National Capital District to $60 million over seven years. However, this funding concludes in 2017. In the longer term, Australia's commitment to the development of TB services in the Western Province and in Port Moresby will be bolstered by having a stronger national health system and support for locally driven TB control infrastructure.
Helping to drive this on the ground in the treaty villages of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea is the Building Resilience in Treaty Villages project of the Cairns-based Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. The RRRC established another group, INLOC. This is a very interesting exercise on how we are able to get something done, because the biggest problem in the Western Province was providing a platform for the delivery of services. Some years ago, Doctors Without Borders were withdrawn from the area because they could not offer the security necessary for their doctors to provide the service. The whole infrastructure and everything just did not exist, neither was it a secure place, and unfortunately this has resulted in the problem being exacerbated in that area. This was identified by the RRRC and they recruited a most unlikely source, but it has proven to be incredibly successful. In establishing INLOC, they have recruited a group of SAS trainers that have been rotating out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
You may ask the question: why would you get SAS trainers involved in something like this? You have to look at the training of these individuals. We have spent literally millions of dollars training these are people and building their capacity so they are able to build resilience and address governance issues in the countries in which they operate.
In rotating out of these areas of conflict and in coming into Papua New Guinea to establish a ranger program, they have been extraordinarily successful. They have been able to get 52 rangers, 12 of whom are women, and have trained them up in a whole range of skills to build a platform for delivery. With an investment of $1.8 million from the Australian government in 2014, a pilot project was launched in four of the 13 treaty villages. Fifty-two rangers were trained up, as I said, including 12 women, and since then the rangers have used their skills to install more than 1.5 million litres of reliable, clean freshwater storage; to build eight new reinforced capped-and-sealed groundwater wells; to teach sanitation issues to stop the contamination of groundwater; to provide emergency medical assistance on more than 100 occasions; and to complete a top-down refurbishment of Mabaduan village's hospital outpost. I might add that the women are also doing midwifery and they are the first response for any accidents.
All of this is designed to establish a platform for each of these communities that will see delivery of appropriate health services, allowing us to meet the challenge of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases while also giving ownership of the solution to local communities. The pilot has now been extended under a $400,000 commitment in 2016-2017, and I am excited by the potential of this model and how it can be transported into other areas of high disadvantage. The RRRC also saw the need for a philanthropic arm and the RRRC Connect was established. Through Soroptimists International, my good wife Yolonde and Sea Swift in Cairns, they went on a drive for linen, which is desperately needed in these villages. You might wonder why they would need linen. Well, they do not use linen so much for beds or towels; they use it for birthing mats, shawls for children and the elderly; they make nappies out of them; they use it for bandaging wounds; they even make clothing for the children. They had amazing success: in just five weeks they got six shipping containers delivered into these villages; it will make a huge difference to these people.
The pilot is working very well in building resilience and capacity within these communities to assist them in dealing with this scourge. Since 2012, Australia has supported medical research and development into neglected diseases, including TB. Government backing for R&D has had an enormous impact, as new products developed from Australian-supported TB research show. I will mention a few examples: the Cepheid's GeneXpert machine allows TB infection to be confirmed in less than two hours, rather than weeks; the new GeneXpert Omni machine, a portable diagnostics system that will run for eight hours on a solar-rechargeable battery, is the size of a milkshake maker and so very transportable and can be taken into the remotest area for quick diagnosis and treatment; the BPaMZ tablet, currently being trialled through the TB Alliance for standard and drug-resistant tuberculosis, looks very promising. Patients take only four tablets a day for up to six months, instead of up to 20 tablets a day and injections for three years.
With the current PDP program concluding in 2017, I would like to see the government include a renewed commitment to medical R&D in the 2017-18 budget. An appropriate goal for medical research funding would be to increase R&D support to one per cent of the overall aid program, or $60 million, by 2020-21. Within this total, Australia should make a commitment of $15 million a year to the PDP program for the next three years to increase the prospects for new diagnostics and treatments, as well as allow for additional PDP projects, such as work on development of a TB vaccine. The current vaccine is over 100 years old and is totally ineffective. I would also strongly encourage the government to continue to support the rollout of the RRRC's Building Resilience in Treaty Villages program to ensure it can reach all the treaty villages by 2019-2020. It is an outstanding success and is helping local people to beat this scourge in the long term.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the wonderful support of the key organisations working on tuberculosis like End TB, Results AU, Policy Cures, the TB Alliance, the Burnet Institute, Doctors without Borders, the World Health Organisation and others who have been doing an outstanding job. Most people assume, as I did some years ago, that tuberculosis had been dealt with and was no longer a problem—a bit like polio and other diseases. My mum had tuberculosis when I was a child and spent a year in the hospital, and so I was amazed to realise it was still an issue. It is still an issue and it is something we need to deal with comprehensively. We have an opportunity and we have shown a way forward on this. I certainly commend this motion to the House.
Mr THISTLETHWAITE (Kingsford Smith) (11:20): I am pleased to second this motion and I thank the member for Leichhardt for moving it. I also congratulate him on his excellent work and passion for working in this area of eradicating tuberculosis. Last Friday was World Tuberculosis Day: 24 March each year represents the day on which Robert Koch in 1882 discovered the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. Since that discovery there have been numerous attempts at a cure. Mr Koch's discovery was very important for the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis. World TB Day should be the day that we discover a cure for tuberculosis—the day we eradicate this terrible disease—but it is not. The reason is that we do not have a cure for tuberculosis; we do not have a workable vaccine. A vaccine was developed a century ago, but is it workable? It does not eradicate multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis. As a result, tuberculosis remains the world's deadliest infectious disease. If you want evidence of that, look no further than the front page of today's papers, where the headlines indicate that in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, we have outbreaks and cases of tuberculosis reported just this week. Late last year a University of Sydney student was misdiagnosed. The doctor thought that he may have had lung cancer and referred him to the RPA for tests associated with cancer. As a result, 10 others were infected with TB because of that misdiagnosis.
I suspect that this person was misdiagnosed because most Australians think that we have eradicated TB; that we have got rid of it; that it was an 18th-, 19th- or 20th-century disease that we got rid of and cured in the 20th century. That is simply not the case. It is the world's deadliest infectious disease. 10.4 million people contracted tuberculosis in 2015, and 1.8 million of those people died as a result. It is the leading killer of people with HIV/AIDS, with one in three HIV-positive people ending up dying because of tuberculosis. The burden of TB is heaviest in our backyard, in our region. Sixty-two per cent of the world's TB cases are found in the Asia-Pacific area. The Western Pacific is one of those areas where the concentration is the most per head of population. In particular, at Australia's doorstep, our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, has the highest rate of TB infection in the Pacific, with 33,000 cases in 2015.
In my previous role in government as the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, I travelled to Papua New Guinea, visited the Western Province of Papua New Guinea and opened the Australian-funded tuberculosis clinic in Daru. That was opened in July 2013. It was a $33 million investment by the Australian government in a state-of-the-art, 22-bed isolation clinic and ablutions clinic at the Daru General Hospital. As part of that commitment, we also invested in a sea ambulance. The role of the ambulance was to travel up and down the Fly River to some of the most remote villages in Papua New Guinea to bring people who are suspected of tuberculosis contagion back to the clinic that Labor had funded in the hospital to diagnose them and get them appropriate treatment. I am pleased to say that that clinic is still going. It is still being supported by the Australian government and it is getting results. We have seen a reduction in the number of cases in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea.
Beside the human cost, tuberculosis in general and, in particular, drug-resistant tuberculosis, places an extraordinary economic burden on communities. It traps people in poverty. It is estimated that TB will rob the poorest countries of an estimated $1 trillion to $3 trillion over the next 10 years. The World Bank estimates that that loss of productivity attributed to TB is four to seven per cent of some countries' GDP. A failure to specifically address drug-resistant TB will result in major long-term human and economic costs and may ultimately pose a major threat to regional development and security.
In recent times Australian governments of all persuasions—coalition and Labor governments—have supported ensuring that we are working to roll out drugs, particularly across the Pacific, to reduce the rates of infection. We have done this predominantly through Australia investing in The Global Fund. I am pleased to see that the current coalition government increased the investment in The Global Fund at the last replenishment round by 10 per cent. Australia's commitment will go from $200 million to $220 million. That is because of the work of people like Warren and the TB caucus that we have established here in the parliament, and the fact that 87 members and senators signed the Barcelona Declaration calling for greater action on tuberculosis.
We had a forum last week where we spoke to people who work in this area. Despite the fact that Australia has increased its commitment globally to fighting TB, they did point out that in their view where Australia has fallen down, if you like, in recent years is in our commitment to funding research and to trying to find and develop better drugs and, ultimately, a vaccine to deal with this. Australia's commitment through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade into funding research and development has been patchy. In some years we fund it and in others we do not. If the world is going to be serious about eradicating TB we really need to get onto a path of consistent funding so that the necessary researchers can do their work and develop the drugs that will ultimately lead to a workable vaccine for tuberculosis.
It can be done. When you think about the fact that we have been able to eradicate diseases like smallpox and polio, it has been because governments have said, 'We are going to get serious about this and invest in the research to develop the drugs to do it.' It is amazing, given the number of people that tuberculosis has killed through the centuries and continues to kill today, that we have not worked enough to fund research to develop a vaccine to cure this insidious disease.
I thank all the members and senators who have been involved in the TB caucus. I am pleased to work with the member for Leichhardt on this. Again I thank RESULTS Australia, the Burnet Institute, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Doctors Without Borders for their commitment to eradicating TB.
Mr EVANS (Brisbane) (11:29): I wish to rise in support of this motion by the member for Leichhardt and I also acknowledge the words just then from the member for Kingsford Smith. I have spoken previously in this House about tuberculosis. I mentioned how Australia is a sanctuary in more ways than one, considering the diseases and illnesses wreaking havoc on people and societies much closer than you would think—a mere three-hour flight from my constituency in Brisbane. This motion marks World Tuberculosis Day, which notes the anniversary of German Nobel Laureate Dr Robert Koch's 1882 discovery of the bacterium that causes TB. World TB Day is an opportunity for people to continue to raise awareness of the plight of those suffering. It is an opportunity for us to refocus our efforts and initiatives and to educate others about TB, because, as the member for Leichhardt said in his speech, many Australians would be surprised to hear that tuberculosis is still a major problem in the world, and indeed, right on our doorstep.
Despite generally declining worldwide rates of infections and deaths because of TB, it does remain a stubborn and deadly challenge locally, especially in the Asia-Pacific region right on our doorstep. The previous speaker, the member for Kingsford Smith, mentioned the link between TB and HIV/AIDS. In fact, TB today kills more people than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, because those are diseases on which more significant progress has been made in both prevention and treatment. Worldwide, TB is today taking about 1.5 million lives every year, with a further 10 million new cases of infection every year. Almost all of these are in developing countries, and about half—in fact, probably more than half—are occurring in countries in our region.
Last week, as the member for Kingsford Smith mentioned, members of this parliament met with stakeholders including the executive director of the research group Policy Cures, Dr Mary Moran, to talk about policies addressing TB. She stressed that the best approach requires four equally important aspects: research, development, procurement and on-the-ground delivery.
Over my short time as a member of parliament, I have had a number of meetings with a great organisation called RESULTS International Australia to discuss these very important issues. I have a deep affinity for the people in the Asia-Pacific region as someone who has been fortunate enough to visit most of its countries and most of our nearest neighbours. I have seen the very big difference that targeted Australian aid is making for the benefit of humanity in our region. It is why I am proud to have become a member of the Global TB Caucus. I want to congratulate the member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, for his longstanding leadership in this area, and for helping and encouraging me to become involved. Not only have I joined the Global TB Caucus, I have also signed the Barcelona Declaration. It is the founding document of the Global TB Caucus, designed to raise the profile of this issue amongst world leaders and advocate for action.
I am also very happy to reiterate this government's commitment of $220 million in aid to the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. I thank the previous speaker, the member for Kingsford Smith, for his acknowledgement of our 10 per cent increase in funding in that area. More Australians deserve to know how Australia's funding is one of the global cornerstones in the fight to eradicate TB. It is on top of the approximately $64 million that Australia has contributed specifically in bilateral support to some of our close neighbours in this area, in countries like Papua New Guinea and Kiribati. Australia is playing a leadership role here, and I want to congratulate our foreign minister, Julie Bishop, for delivering compassionate and meaningful foreign aid leadership. Australia has a strong legacy of aid in the Asia-Pacific region and we are continuing to build on that legacy and history today.
But more needs to be done. A greater investment in diagnostics, better drugs and vaccines are our only true hope for eradicating TB. I look forward to working with groups like RESULTS International Australia, the TB Caucus and my colleagues in the chamber today to continue to advocate for more support in this area. I commend the motion to the House.
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (11:33): I would like to congratulate Mr Entsch, the member for Leichhardt, and Mr Thistlethwaite, the member for Kingsford Smith, on their very passionate exposition of what is an extremely important cause and healthcare issue throughout the world. As already mentioned, last Friday was World Tuberculosis Day, a momentous occasion for modern medicine, marking the day that Dr Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Subsequently, this led to the discovery of other related organisms, such as M. bovis, the cause of bovine tuberculosis, and M. leprae, the course of leprosy. The CDC in Atlanta estimates that tuberculosis has infected up to one-third of the world's population and that an estimated 480,000 people worldwide develop multi-drug resistant tuberculosis every year.
Names that tuberculosis has been called in the past include names like consumption, phthisis, scrofula, Pott's disease, the white plague, galloping consumption and wasting pneumonia—all names for one of the most devastating infectious diseases the world has known. Tuberculosis has been present, as far as we can tell, for over 5,000 years. Many well-known people have died from tuberculosis, including Eleanor Roosevelt; Vivien Leigh; Frederic Chopin; Andrew Jackson, the American President; George Orwell; Louis Braille; Jane Austen; Emily Bronte; John Keats and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Nelson Mandela developed tuberculosis during his captivity, but was, thankfully, cured.
There is not a person in this building whose family has not been affected by tuberculosis. It has been a scourge around the world for many years. In my own family, my grandfather lost his hearing because of treatment for tuberculosis with streptomycin. My wife's stepfather had a pneumonectomy to remove half of one lung to treat tuberculosis in the 1930s. My cousin Alex Griffiths moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast for the warmer climate to recover from tuberculosis. He started feeding the birds in his backyard, and this eventually became the Currumbin bird sanctuary that many of us remember from our childhood.
Prior to the Second World War, treatment consisted mainly of bed rest, good nutrition and, sometimes, surgery. Treatment with antibiotics, initially streptomycin, started in 1945, but it soon became obvious that antibiotic resistance was rapidly developing. The advent of triple therapy, using such drugs as isoniazid, cyclocerine, para-aminosalicylic acid and rifampicin, rapidly lead to cures and it seemed that tuberculosis would disappear. I have a textbook in my own library from my days as a medical student entitled Tuberculosis: the end of the scourge. This was written in the 1970s. The Pathology Museum in the old anatomy building at Sydney University was thought to be the last place where we could see pathological examples of tuberculosis. Sadly, the cure has not come. We continue to search for long-term answers for what is an international plague.
BCG immunisation was developed almost 100 years ago. This was thought to be the advent of a cure. Whilst it has had some limited effect, it is by no means a cure. There is some evidence that BCG immunisation can prevent the more severe manifestations of tuberculosis in young children, such as tuberculous meningitis, but it does not cure and, certainly, in terms of population health, it has not had a major significant effect. Many of the millions of people infected with tuberculosis live in Southeast Asia. With the rise in multi-resistant forms of tuberculosis and the advent of HIV, there is an extremely large reservoir of infectious people that have proven difficult to treat. To our near north in Papua New Guinea already we have a conduit for multi-resistant tuberculosis to enter Australia across the Torres Strait. There is an increasing global concern about the risks of this wave of widespread tuberculosis infection to our near north.
I have seen cases and treated cases of tuberculosis in children in my own electorate in my own hospital practice. Whilst these cases are sporadic, it does not require a great leap of thought to consider what a devastating effect more widespread tuberculosis disease could cause. Drug treatment of multiple drugs causes side effects and requires multiple tablets to be taken every day for a number of months. Even in Australia amongst my own patients I have found compliance to be very poor in spite of regular health checks and regular follow-ups at the chest clinic at nearby Liverpool Hospital. Around the world, many people with tuberculosis remain poorly educated, live in poverty and have limited access to health care. Treatment objectives have aimed to develop a regime that requires fewer tablets over shorter periods of time and with fewer side effects. However, the holy grail remains a vaccination that is effective, safe and offers long-term protection.
We are lucky that we have organisations such as Policy Cures, led by the pocket dynamo Dr Mary Moran, that, together with many other organisations, such as MSF, where my daughter works, can lead the way in development of a vaccine. I hope one day to see a time when tuberculosis will only be seen as the specimens in the Pathology Museum and there will been no more active cases of tuberculosis throughout the world. It is very gratifying that, in a bipartisan way, we can work to develop a cure for tuberculosis. This will require funding and a unified approach. As some countries become more isolationist, Australia will need to lead the way in processes to develop an effective vaccine and work to improve it. (Time expired)
Mrs PRENTICE (Ryan—Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services) (11:40): Last Friday, 24 March, was World Tuberculosis Day, as designated by the World Health Organization. This annual event marks the anniversary of the 1882 discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis by German Nobel Laureate Dr Robert Koch. It is an important initiative which acknowledges that a very preventable, treatable disease still claims the lives of up to 1.5 million people every year. I rise to speak on this motion today and to thank the member for Leichhardt for bringing this issue to the attention of the parliament. And I thank my colleagues on both sides of this chamber for their support.
Tuberculosis has been all but eradicated in developed countries. However, it remains a major global health problem in most developing countries. In 2015, more than 10.4 million people worldwide contracted this disease, which was known also as consumption in the early 19th century. The Asia-Pacific region, Australia's local neighbourhood, has more than half of the global tuberculosis cases. Our closest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, experiences one of the highest rates of this highly contagious and airborne disease in the Pacific. In 2015, Papua New Guinea was struck with an estimated 33,000 cases of tuberculosis. To put that into perspective, that is equivalent to the population of Gladstone in Queensland.
Treatment of this disease is not without challenges, especially for those who live in remote regions like Papua New Guinea. The standard short course TB therapy is six months in length. This involves 28 pills each week. However, for patients with drug-resistance TB treatment is considerably longer—20 pills a day plus injections for three years. Currently, more than one-third of the world's population is infected—five to 10 per cent of whom become sick or infectious at some time during their life. The case for early prevention and targeted strategies is very strong, as infectious sufferers, on average, will infect between 10 and 15 others each year, contributing to the pandemic nature of this disease.
We know a person may be infected with TB bacilli in the dormant stage for many years, ultimately having active symptoms when their immune system is weakened. Unfortunately, even with the aid of modern medicines and technology, not all cases can be successfully treated. Two thousand cases of drug resistant TB were recorded for 2015 in Papua New Guinea alone. Only last year there was an outbreak of drug resistant cases on Daru, near the PNG-Australia border. The situation in Daru was so dire that, with 160 reported cases, the TB ward in the island's hospital was at capacity, meaning that some could not be saved. This very concerning position means that there are strains of TB which are resistant to all of the major anti-TB drugs we currently have at our disposal.
The prevalence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis continues to increase worldwide. The World Health Organization's End TB Strategy was endorsed by all member states at the 2014 World Health Assembly. It aims to end the tuberculosis epidemic by 2035, with full elimination by 2050. In 2015, the Australian government announced a $30 million investment over three years that will help bring new diagnostic tests and drugs to market to tackle the threats of TB and malaria. As part of this announcement, the TB Alliance received $10 million over three years to support late-stage clinical trials of new TB treatments. These include the phase 3 trial of a new drug regime which is the first to treat both drug sensitive and multi-drug resistant TB. This new treatment has the potential to shorten and simplify TB therapy and reduce the cost of treating multi-drug resistant TB by up to 90 per cent.
However, there is hope, and I will take this moment to recognise YWAM Medical Ships, which have joined the fight by helping to improve access to diagnosis and treatment in PNG's rural and remote areas. YWAM Medical Ships have continued to provide health services to villagers and health workers in very remote parts of PNG. The Australian government is continuing to work toward combating the challenge of tuberculosis in the region and to work toward the need for discovery, development and rapid uptake of new tools, interventions and strategies to achieve this goal. I would like to place on record my recognition and acknowledgement of the work being undertaken by the likes of the Burnet Institute and the Global Fund, in partnership with the PNG government and the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. To continue the fight against tuberculosis, I call on the Australian government to ensure funding is committed to prevent and treat this insidious disease in Papua New Guinea. I commend this motion to the House.
Ms CLAYDON (Newcastle) (11:45): It is with real pleasure that I rise to speak on the member for Leichhardt's motion on tuberculosis today, noting—as others before me have—that last Friday was in fact World Tuberculosis Day. I thank the member for Leichhardt for bringing this motion forward, because it is vital that we keep this issue absolutely front and centre on our agenda. I am very proud member of the parliamentary TB caucus, which the member for Leichhardt and the Labor member for Kingsford Smith, Matt Thistlethwaite, do an excellent job of co-chairing. The TB caucus aims to play an active role in keeping TB on our agenda, supporting the eradication of this disease in our region and, in doing so, helping secure support and expertise and identifying opportunities for action and engagement. I would also like to recognise up-front the work of the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund and RESULTS International (Australia), who work alongside caucus members from all sides of parliament, and volunteers across the nation.
Domestically we have made some terrific strides in addressing this terrible disease. We heard some of the history of the disease in Australia previously. We now have fewer than one thousand cases per year, I understand, thanks to the improved conditions in both screening and the effective use of antibiotics. But today's news—that we have another 10 new contractions of drug-resistant TB in Australia—means that we must never be complacent, and indeed we have to be forever vigilant. Regretfully, the situation is a lot worse in a whole lot of other countries, and, in fact, despite many medical advances, we know tuberculosis is still claiming 1.8 million lives globally, with an estimated 30,000 new contractions each and every day.
Our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region are especially vulnerable, with people living in very crowded conditions, with low levels of sanitation and high rates of malnutrition. It has been estimated that Asia-Pacific countries comprise more than 60 per cent of the global TB cases. The best outcomes are achieved when patients see their medical practitioner every day. Something like that is very impractical, if not impossible, in many of the regions, where doctors are few and far between. Treatments are long and difficult, with patients needing to take around 700 tablets over a six-month course. Failure to take the correct and full course is often leading to drug-resistant forms of the disease, and the treatment for these forms is even more onerous, requiring daily injections in addition to ever-increasing numbers of tablets.
In the Pacific, Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of infection, with around 33,000 cases in 2015, of which 2,000 were drug resistant. The Australian government is providing funding and support to reduce the health and economic impacts of TB in our region, in many respects achieving some great results, and is to be congratulated for that. In PNG's Daru General Hospital, the support around the purpose-built 22-bed TB ward, vital diagnostic equipment and expert staff that have been provided has meant that the proportion of people staying on for treatment has risen from 40 per cent in 2011 to 97 per cent last year. That is remarkable by anyone's measure. We are now at a critical juncture, with an enormous number of game-changing advances before us or just around the corner.
It is vital that the Australian government reaffirms its commitment to eradicating the disease in our region and continues supporting the World Health Organization's End TB Strategy, which is a blueprint to help countries reduce TB incidence by 80 per cent. Defeating TB means giving patients, practitioners and health systems better and simpler tools. It means investing in new technologies and innovation to deliver shorter, more effective treatments. It means moving from the TB wards, isolation rooms, injections and yearlong treatments to simple, fast, safe and effective means of treatment that can be done at home. It means supporting efforts to develop an effective vaccine. We also need to ensure that there is greater connectivity between those involved in TB research, product development and on-the-ground program delivery. There is no time to waste. I commend this motion to the House.
Mr IRONS (Swan) (11:50): I rise today in support of the motion on tuberculosis put forward by the member for Leichhardt, and acknowledge his long and persistent passion for this particular issue. Friday was World Tuberculosis Day, and the World Health Organization is reporting that last year 10.4 million people fell ill with tuberculosis. 2017 is the second year of a two-year Unite to End TB campaign, and the World Health Organization is placing emphasis on an effort to 'leave no one behind', which will include efforts to address stigma and discrimination.
Closer to home, in WA, the Western Australia Tuberculosis Control Program is housed at the Anita Clayton Centre. This program manages tuberculosis in WA and offers a statewide public health service that operates as a resource centre and clinic. This program provides a range of services as well as the diagnosis, treatment and case management of tuberculosis. The program provides surveillance and prevention of tuberculosis, with active screening of high-risk groups, and diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection. The program also looks after tuberculosis infection control by providing, in healthcare settings, advice and assistance on tuberculosis. The program also looks after the development, implementation and review of policy relevant to tuberculosis management and control, which is important, because tuberculosis is the world's leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. In 2015, 1.8 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis and 10.4 million people became sick with the disease.
The member for Leichhardt's motion makes an interesting point. It says that Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis infection in the Pacific, with an estimated 33,000 total cases, including 2,000 drug-resistant cases in 2015. In 2009 I was on the Committee on Health and Ageing when we did a report on health in the South Pacific. I would like to quickly relate to you a story about that visit. When were in the South Pacific we met a woman from Rockingham in Western Australia who ran the only clinic on Saibai Island. She shared with us some experiences and stories of PNG nationals who had crossed the short stretch of water by canoe to get to the clinic. One such national had been trying for four months to get into the clinic on Saibai Island. Eventually, on the day he had his scheduled visit, he collapsed in the waiting room. They revived him and sent him down to Thursday Island the next day for treatment, where he died. He had been waiting for four months to get in and due to a lack of resources and funding he could not. The causes of his death were HIV and tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is an infection primarily in the lungs caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread from person to person by breathing infected air during close contact. The most common symptoms of tuberculosis are fatigue, fever, weight loss, coughing and night sweats. When the immune system of a patient with dormant tuberculosis is weakened it can become active or reactive and cause infection in the lungs or other parts of the body. As such, people with HIV-AIDS are at a high risk of developing the disease, due to lower immunity, like that man I just spoke about.
Tuberculosis is a leading cause of death worldwide. With the considerable movements of people between the Top End of Australia and the South Pacific, many of which have been part of the culture for many years, this is an area that we must be mindful of and cannot neglect. Another example occurred at the time we were running part of this inquiry in Cairns. A woman who was found to have drug-resistant tuberculosis was put into an isolation ward in Cairns Hospital, where her term of stay was predicted to be two years. Tuberculosis is a global health problem in which Australia has a responsibility and the capacity to make a difference. Australia has been successful in treating it at home. However, Australians are not immune to future outbreaks of tuberculosis and we must have appropriate policies in place to deal with this.
World Tuberculosis Day can also serve as a reminder of the importance of vaccinations. The coalition government bought in the No Jab, No Pay policy where parents whose children were not vaccinated and who did not have a valid medical exemption or were not on a catch-up schedule by a certain date would start incurring a debt for child care payments that they would have to repay. Since the policy was announced in the May budget we have seen a huge lift in immunisation rates across the country. As of November last year a further 187,695 children were up to date with their immunisations. This shows that parents are increasingly recognising the value and importance of immunisation. I commend this motion and again thank the member for Leichhardt and other members in this place who have spoken on this particular issue.
Ms HUSAR (Lindsay) (11:55): I rise to speak on the motion put forward by the member for Leichhardt concerning World Tuberculosis Day, on Friday. I think the member for putting forward this incredibly important and comprehensive motion. As my colleagues the member for Newcastle has already pointed out, tuberculosis continues to be a major cause of illness, death and misery around the world. While TB has largely been well managed and kept at bay in Australia, we exist in a region that continues to struggle with this infectious disease. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all cases of TB diagnosed worldwide in 2015 were in the South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions, so our nearest and dearest neighbours are still very much suffering with this disease.
It is estimated that there are roughly one million people with TB in China and in Indonesia. In our region the total estimate sits at roughly 6,330,000 people affected across South-East Asia and the Western Pacific. As we all know, the disease can be easily managed; however, in poverty-stricken communities diagnosis and treatment can be extremely difficult and the disease's effect debilitating. Once TB has been contracted and if the body's immune system is unable to fight it off it typically attacks the lungs; however, it can affect a person's lymph nodes, bones, kidneys and the brain. TB is most deadly in communities that have poor access to health care and in people who have compromised immune systems—commonly, kids under five, older people and those with other illnesses.
As the motion correctly points out, Australians should be proud of the work we are doing to assist our neighbours to prevent and treat tuberculosis. It forms a large part of our Health for Development Strategy, which draws on close to half a billion dollars of our foreign aid budget to combat health threats across the world by increasing the capacities of our partner countries' health systems; improving sanitation, hygiene and nutrition; and investing in health research and development. When it comes to tuberculosis we know that some of the conventional medicines are no longer effective in resistant strains of the disease, causing additional problems and, in higher incidence areas, additional pressure on their health and hospital systems. So our support in funding medical research that aims to bring new medicines diagnostic tests to affected areas is crucial to managing the disease.
It perfectly illustrates the value of our foreign aid program. This money is being used to combat a terrible infectious disease right on our doorstep. It is leading to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of better outcomes in our region and across the world—across the world over time. It is a good example of how foreign aid spending keeps Australians safe. It is another reminder of the importance of medical research and more broadly the importance of backing in our scientific community and the invaluable work they do. Tuberculosis has only been managed as well as it has been in most regions of the world because government put faith in their medical researchers and their medical practitioners.
It is worth noting that even in this country it is something we need to continue to work on so that uninformed, misguided, ignorant and dangerous people cannot hijack good sense and the public debate in order to steer people away from preventative health medicine and good health. We have recently seen Senator Hanson of the One Nation party question the efficacy of preventative vaccines. We have seen her pedal the uneducated nonsense that vaccines might cause autism and the like. As the mother of a child with special needs—one on the autism spectrum—I find that assertion quite ugly, frankly, and also hazardous to our community. I am glad her uneducated ramblings were called out for what they were: factually incorrect and just dangerous. But these views are not isolated just to Senator Pauline Hanson and we have a lot of work to do to back in our scientific and medical research communities and ensure we are doing all we can to encourage and promote preventative health care.
The substantive issue of tuberculosis in the motion before us specifically mentions the important work we are doing in PNG. As I mentioned before, there are 33,000 cases of TB in Papua New Guinea alone—just on our doorstep. The Australian government is working very closely with the PNG government and the World Health Organization to develop new strategies to combat this disease, which is a particular burden on the PNG community. As the motion states, it is particularly important to acknowledge our global partners in this fight and thank them for their work in this space. I again support this motion and call on the government to provide continued funding for tuberculosis prevention and treatment in Papua New Guinea and continue funding for the development of improved diagnostics and medications to combat tuberculosis beyond 2017.
Debate adjourned.
BILLS
Treasury Laws Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016
Treasury Laws Amendment (2017 Measures No. 1) Bill 2017
Returned from Senate
Message received from the Senate returning the bills without amendment or request.
COMMITTEES
National Broadband Network - Joint Standing
Appointment
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Broadbent ) (12:01): I have received a message from the Senate informing the House that Senators Burston, Georgiou, and Roberts had been appointed as participating members of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network.
BILLS
Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2016
Consideration of Senate Message
Bill returned from the Senate with amendments.
Ordered that the amendments be considered immediately.
Senate’s amendments—
(1) Schedule 1, page 5 (after line 2), after item 5, insert:
5A Subsection 3(1)
Insert:
fourth income threshold has the meaning given by subclause 3(4) of Schedule 2.
(2) Schedule 1, item 41, page 36, (lines 26 and 27), omit step 4 of the method statement, substitute:
Step 4. Work out the hourly rate of CCS for the individual for each of those sessions of care (see clause 2).
If the applicable percentage is 0% for each of those sessions of care, the amount of child care subsidy for the individual for the week, for those sessions, is nil.
Otherwise, go to step 5.
(3) Schedule 1, item 41, page 38 (after line 8), at the end of subclause 2(1), add:
Note: If the applicable percentage for a session of care is 0% (see table item 6 of subclause 3(1)), the hourly rate of CCS for the individual for the session of care is nil.
(4) Schedule 1, item 41, page 39 (table item 4), omit "upper income threshold", substitute "fourth income threshold".
(5) Schedule 1, item 41, page 39 (after table item 4), insert:
5 |
equal to or above the fourth income threshold and below the upper income threshold |
20% |
(6) Schedule 1, item 41, page 39 (table item 5), omit "5", substitute "6".
(7) Schedule 1, item 41, page 39 (table item 5), omit "20%", substitute "0%".
(8) Schedule 1, item 41, page 40 (after line 16), after the definition of third income threshold, insert:
fourth income threshold means the lower income threshold plus $274,290.
(9) Schedule 1, item 41, page 40 (line 18), omit "$274,290", substitute "$284,290".
(10) Schedule 1, item 92, page 82 (lines 13 to 15), omit all the words from "Or, the individual" to and including "the year.".
(11) Schedule 1, item 92, page 83 (line 8), omit "passed;", substitute "passed.".
(12) Schedule 1, item 92, page 83 (lines 9 to 11), omit paragraph 67DB(2) (d).
(13) Schedule 1, item 92, page 83 (lines 12 to 26), omit subsections 67DB(3) and (4).
(14) Schedule 1, item 92, page 83 (line 28), omit "(5)", substitute "(3)".
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (12:02): I move:
That the amendments be agreed to.
I am pleased to support the amendments put forward by the Senate on what is a very important and significant piece of policy reform that will make child care and early education services in Australia more affordable for the vast majority of hardworking Australian families. It is a substantial reform that will increase the opportunities and choice families have to balance work and family life. Our reforms give hardworking lower-income families an increase in their effective rate of subsidy on their childcare costs from around 72 per cent to 85 per cent and provide support to families who earn less than $350,000 as a household. A family earning around $60,000 a year whose childcare centre charges around $100 a day would pay just $15 per day for the care of their child and with just one child in child care would be around $2,000 per annum better off as a result of the proposals and the reforms of the Turnbull government in this package. Families earning $60,000, $70,000 or $80,000 per annum—hardworking families—will find that they are all significant beneficiaries of these changes.
Family eligibility for the childcare subsidy is determined by a three-step activity test that more closely aligns hours of subsidised care with the combined amounts of work, training, study, volunteering or other recognised activity undertaken. This is an important part of the reform that was recommended through the Productivity Commission, and I pay tribute to then Minister Ley, who recommended that the commission be undertaken. It ensures that the greatest number of hours of support go to those families who are working, studying or volunteering the longest number of hours. It is estimated that our reforms will encourage more than 230,000 families to increase their involvement in paid employment.
We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from quality early childhood education and care, which is why we are providing additional support to those who need it. The childcare safety net will support families earning around $65,000 a year or less who do not meet the activity test by providing up to 24 hours of subsidised care per fortnight. This is the equivalent of two weekly six-hour sessions and will be provided at the highest rate of subsidy for these families, which I again note increased from 72 per cent from what they would otherwise receive, to 85 per cent under our reforms. Our reforms will place downward pressure on what has been incessant childcare fee increases through an hourly rate cap as well as abolishing the current childcare rebate cap for most families and increasing it from $7½ thousand to $10,000 for higher-income families above $185,000. We will introduce new compliance powers to further strengthen the government's efforts to clamp down on fraud, provide a childcare safety net for the most vulnerable children, and slash red tape so that services can offer more flexible hours.
These are important reforms. They are going to make a very big difference to help hardworking Australian families. They are going to make our system of childcare payments and benefits far more effective in the future. And I endorse the amendment put forward by the Senate. I am very pleased particularly to be able to be speaking on this message in that these measures were put together when I was the Minister for Social Services. I want to pay credit to Minister Birmingham and Minister Ley, who also had carriage of these matters. This has been a long two-year process. We have been very committed to seeing these changes come into this place and be supported to help hardworking Australian families to get access to the affordable child care that they need, to help those disadvantaged families through the safety net program.
Early childhood education has an important impact on the lives of young Australians and can be the absolute game changer for them and their future opportunities. This package supports them in that objective while supporting the families to be able to go out there and take part in our growing economy and seek the additional hours in the work that they need to support their families. This is the right package for Australia. It is a package that has been fought hard for by the coalition government. It has been resisted now for two years, and I am so pleased, having been directly involved in structuring these reforms, that this parliament is now in a position to finally give hardworking Australian families the affordable child care that they deserve and that the Turnbull government is delivering for them.
Ms KATE ELLIS (Adelaide) (12:06): As Labor made clear in the Senate, we will not be standing in opposition to these amendments to the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill 2016. We do have some concerns that we will place on the record, but our concern, in all of this debate, has never been about the high-income-earning families who will be affected by these amendments; our concern has been and remains those incredibly vulnerable and disadvantaged children at the other end of the spectrum who will be significantly disadvantaged as a result of this package.
These amendments that the parliament is currently debating will cut off subsidies entirely from high-income-earning families. As I said, Labor is not standing in opposition to that. But we do need to say that this will actually be the first time that not every child in Australia has had a universal entitlement to some sort of subsidised early childhood education. And that does set a precedent. It sets a precedent that, if you carried it through, would mean that, for schooling, higher-income families would have to start paying much higher fees to access public schools. It would mean that we would start putting the income of the parents onto the consideration of the early education that their children receive.
We believe that there should be some universal entitlement to early childhood education in the country. We also believe that we should be moving our early childhood education and care system closer to the schooling system, not further away from it. We do not want to see policy which entrenches a backward step where we view child care as a babysitting service, not as quality early childhood education and care, which we know we need to be moving towards.
I would also note that, as the Treasurer just pointed out, these bills have been debated for two years. The amendments that stand before the House were put to the Senate at the last minute, after three Senate inquiries which did not consider these amendments. After a number of submissions and debates over two years, these were last-minute amendments.
No work has been done to look at the workforce participation impacts of these amendments. We know that we are talking about means testing on family income, not on the secondary-income-earner's contributions. So there has been no work around workforce participation. The other thing we do not know is the behavioural impacts and what this will do for these families' decisions. If they are getting no subsidies, why not withdraw their children from regulated, quality, early childhood education and care services and instead invest in nannies, which they can have in their own home but which we know are not regulated and do not have to meet the same standards of care? So there are implications of this which the parliament should watch carefully.
Our concern, all along, has not been about high-income-earning families, though; it has been about some of the most disadvantaged children in Australia. Sadly, these were the children who were sold out in the Senate as a result of the dirty deal done when Nick Xenophon and his team and One Nation agreed with the government that—despite the fact that we are spending an extra $1.6 billion in child care as a result of these measures—some of the most vulnerable children in Australia would not only not receive any additional support but in fact would have their access to early childhood education and care halved. That is what this piece of legislation does.
It is sickening to me that we would stand here as a parliament and say that we are going to bring into place these reforms, to put a few extra dollars in middle-class parents' pockets, but, at the same time, turn our backs on children who may be living in families where there is intergenerational unemployment. They will have their hours of access to early childhood education and care cut, to the point where—while, at the moment, they can attend two days a week—under these reforms, they will receive only one day's care. That is what the debate has been about. So some might like to say that there has been some pedantic debate about whether these children should receive 12 hours or 15 hours. That is not what this is about. It is about the fact that, at the moment, children have access to two days' or 24 hours care; under this proposal, that would be cut to just 12 hours.
The entire early childhood education and care sector has unanimously said: there is no way that they can continue to deliver two days' care when they are only getting subsidies for 12 hours. They have said that the minimum it would take is 15 hours. That is why Labor has stood up and fought for those children. And we will stand up and fight for them in the future. We know that, if we do not stand up and fight for some of the most vulnerable children in Australia, we are locking them in to more generations of welfare dependency. It is short-sighted policy. It is wrong. And the Senate was wrong to sign off on it.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Broadbent ): The question is that the amendments be agreed to.
Question agreed to.
Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (12:12): The Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016 primarily implements eight recommendations of the expert panel review of medicines and medical devices which handed down its stage 1 report, which dealt with regulatory frameworks for medicines and medical devices, in March 2015, and its stage 2 report, which dealt with the regulatory framework for complementary medicines and the advertising of therapeutic goods, in July 2015.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Broadbent ): Can I just interrupt the member for Makin a moment. The question is that this bill be now read a second time. Thank you, Member for Makin.
Mr ZAPPIA: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will not repeat my introductory comments, but—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can, because I would like to hear them again.
Mr ZAPPIA: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker! The Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No.1) Bill 2016 primarily implements eight recommendations of the expert panel review of medicines and medical devices, which handed down its stage 1 report, which dealt with the regulatory frameworks for medicines and medical devices, in March 2015, and its stage 2 report, which dealt with the regulatory framework for complementary medicines and the advertising of therapeutic goods, in July 2015. The two reports contained 58 recommendations, of which the government, I understand, supported 56. I understand the government proposes additional legislation to deal with other recommendations in that report.
The intent of the expert panel review was to identify areas of regulation of medicines and medical devices that could be streamlined without compromising the safety, efficacy and quality of therapeutic goods available in Australia. The bill establishes a framework for the provision of regulations or legislative instruments that will enable the fast-tracking or expediting of the assessment and approval process of therapeutic goods.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has existed for over 26 years. It has oversight of a large number of medicines, medical devices and complementary medicines. As at April 2016, the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods had around 87,000 entries. Over those 26 years, there have been several changes to the TG Act to ensure it continues to be appropriate for the changes occurring in society, and, in 2002, medical devices were included in the act. Australian consumers rely on the TGA to ensure that the health products they use are safe. They put their trust in the TGA assessment, as do health professionals who prescribe, select or recommend the medical products. The implications of a poor assessment of a product can be very serious. There is a balance required between expediting the TGA's process and maintaining the safety, quality and efficacy of products. The reforms proposed by this legislation are substantial and complex. The critical details of the reforms will be in the ensuing regulations and legislative instruments, which we have yet to see.
I note that the bill was introduced by the government with a five-minute second reading speech, which I believe did not do this legislation justice. Furthermore, whilst the government advises that the regulations will be subject to extensive consultations, we do not know what consultations are proposed and with whom. If indeed consultations have already taken place, who was consulted and what were the outcomes? There are too many unknowns, and it is impossible to know whether the balance that is necessary will be achieved. The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills raised similar concerns about the broad delegation of legislative power and the significance of the matters in the delegated legislation. The committee also highlighted further concerns about strict liability offences, reversal of the burden of proof and abrogation of the privilege against self-incrimination. That is why the bill was also referred to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee.
Whilst we will be supporting this legislation, we do so with several reservations, which I will outline shortly. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration rates very well when compared with overseas regulatory authorities. For example, median approval times for new active substances are 391 days, or about five weeks longer than the fastest performing authority, Health Canada. Quoting directly from the expert panel's review:
According to the TGA's key performance indicators report for the period July to December 2014, 100% of new applications were processed within the statutory timeframe of 255 working days.
Whilst making the TGA approval process more efficient is strongly supported, expediting the process should not in any way raise the level of risk to consumers. In the past there have been cases of medical products being found to have serious adverse effects or failing to perform as expected.
In April 2010, the TGA recalled silicone breast implants manufactured by French company Poly Implant Prothese, otherwise known as PIP. The implants had been used in Australia since 1999. Concerns had been raised that the implants had a higher rupture rate. Investigations by French authorities found the manufacturer had been using a cheaper, industrial-grade silicone, which was not approved. I also understand that in 2013 the founder of PIP was sent to prison for four years and received a fine of 75,000 euros. Regulators around the world came to different conclusions and responded with different advice to patients on whether people who had the implants but had not yet experienced problems should have them removed. The TGA states on its website:
These investigations have not found any evidence to suggest that the risks involved with the use of PIP breast implants are any greater than those for any other brand of silicone gel-filled breast implants.
Expert advice provided to the TGA has concluded that the currently available scientific evidence does not support a recommendation to routinely remove (explant) PIP implants from people who do not have any evidence of problems associated with their implants.
However, the French government recommended that 30,000 women in France have the implants removed. I understand that around 500 women in Australia have been part of a class action lawsuit over the implants, with many individual stories from victims who have had to have the implants removed and have been left physically scarred. Symptoms reported include large lumps appearing on the neck and chest, migraines and headaches, nosebleeds and pain. In 2014 there was also a recall of Cereform breast implants made by another French company, CEREPLAS, which had not fully validated the sterilisation process as required.
There was also the faulty DePuy ASR hip replacement, which was implanted in around 5,500 Australian patients. The supply was discontinued in Australia in December 2009, with a worldwide recall in August 2010. The metal ball was found to be grating against its socket, resulting in metal fragments high in cobalt and chromium entering the bloodstream. Many people who had the device implanted suffered from symptoms including severe pain, partial loss of vision and hearing, depression, lethargy and heart problems. Faulty hip and knee devices can leave patients with bone degeneration and metal poisoning, and they may end up confined to a wheelchair or needing limbs amputated. These are very serious medical conditions. More than 13 per cent of the people who had these implants required revision surgery. That surgery comes at an additional cost to the patients and to the health system. As well as the financial costs, surgery is never risk free. It results in time spent in hospital or convalescing. In the case of joint replacements, the patients are more likely to be elderly, and surgery will likely take a greater toll on their body.
Serious adverse effects have also been exposed with respect to medicines. In their submission to the recent Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians state:
The TGA has a strong history of identifying safety concerns before other regulators, examples of this include:
Dabigatran, where the TGA identified and began to act on a pattern of major bleeds associated with its use before other regulators such as the FDA.
Cerivastatin, where the TGA were ahead of other regulators in identifying increased risks of rhabdomyolysis with use of cerivastatin compared with other statins. The TGA issued warnings regarding this risk in February 2001, prior to the drug being taken off the global market in August 2001.
Lumiracoxib, where TGA withdrawal of the drug from market in August 2007 for safety concerns prompted New Zealand, Canadian and European regulators to withdraw the product, and resulted in the FDA not approving the product for use.
We know that patients want access to new medicines and medical products as soon as possible. Additionally, expediting the approval process will have economic benefits for the country. As noted by the expert panel, in 2013-14 Australia's pharmaceutical industry turnover was $23.4 billion, with exports of $3.89 billion. It directly employed about 41,000 people, of which nearly 15,500 were in manufacturing. The complementary medicine sector turns over between $2 billion and $3.5 billion in revenue each year and directly employs about 5,000 people in high-skilled manufacturing positions. Complementary medicines are a rapidly-growing industry sector with huge potential for overseas market growth. The medical device industry is equally important to Australia's economy. Australia's medical device industry has a turnover of around $10 billion per year. In 2013-14, Australia exported medical devices with a value of about $2.1 billion to 167 countries around the world. Australia has more than 500 medical technology companies, and they employ 19,000 people. Medical technology companies operate in a very competitive global market.
Turning to the specifics of this bill, the bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989. First, it will enable the making of regulations to establish new priority pathways for faster approval of medicines, medical devices, biologicals and conformity assessment certificates in Australia.
Second, it will enable the making of regulations to designate Australian notified bodies that would be able to appraise the suitability of the manufacturing process for medical devices manufactured in Australia and to consider whether such medical devices meet relevant minimum standards for safety and performance. This would be an alternative to the Therapeutic Goods Administration undertaking such assessments.
Third, it will allow certain unapproved therapeutic goods that are currently accessed by healthcare practitioners by applying to the secretary for approval. They will be more easily obtained by practitioners by notifying the secretary within 28 days of having supplied such goods to their patients, rather than requiring prior approval. The amendments would allow the minister to make a legislative instrument specifying which goods would be able to be accessed in this way, by which kinds of healthcare practitioners, and in what circumstances and in accordance with conditions specified in the instrument.
Four, it would provide review and appeal rights for persons who apply to add new ingredients for use in listed complementary medicines. Last, it would remove the requirement for the minister to consult the Therapeutic Goods Committee when making standards for therapeutic goods other than medical devices. The Therapeutic Goods Committee, along with three other committees, were effectively abolished by regulation on 1 January this year. I understand the TGC's role has been spread across other committees. The minister will have the option of consulting any of the other committees, but will not be compelled to do so.
The bill also includes a number of other, mostly minor, measures to provide greater consistency across the regulation of different kinds of therapeutic goods under the act, to reduce regulatory burden, to reduce health risks to the public and to make other minor changes. The reforms are intended to bring new medicines to market more quickly by entering into work-sharing arrangements with comparable overseas regulators, the increased use of assessments done by comparable overseas regulators and the implementation of expedited and provisional approvals.
With respect to medical devices, the reforms also allow for commercial bodies in Australia to be designated to undertake medical device assessments. The reliance on overseas regulators and assessments by designated commercial bodies, whether in Australia or from overseas, is not without risks. As the expert panel state in chapter 3 of their report:
In recent years the European system has been shown to have systemic weaknesses, which has led to concerns about the quality of conformity assessment undertaken by some EU notified bodies. A series of articles published in the BMJ raised a number of issues including:
The fact that European notified bodies are private commercial entities may create a conflict of interest and brings into question the extent to which the regulatory system prioritises patient health and safety over financial or trade facilitation considerations.
Lack of transparency about the basis of marketing approvals issued by European notified bodies.
Concerns that the level of evidence to support the marketing approval of many higher risk devices is insufficient to allow safe widespread use.
I understand that there are some 70 such bodies operating currently in the EU. I understand that they are also competing to increase their profits, as one of them quite proudly mentioned in one of their reports. The fact that they are private entities with responsibilities to their shareholders raises the very concerns that are alluded to in the comments that I have just made. What comes first—their priority to their shareholders or their priority to the health and wellbeing of the people who are going to use the products which they have been tasked to assess and approve?
A report produced by the US Food and Drug Administration in May 2012 also found concerns with the European conformity assessment system, asserting that it has resulted in harm to patients through the application of less-stringent assessment standards than those that apply in the US. I quote from that report:
Because of the EU’s lower approval standard and degree of oversight, high-risk devices are more often approved first in the EU than in the US. The lack of valid evidence of effectiveness has several negative effects on patients, however. As shown in this report, the EU’s reliance on limited testing, generally without significant testing in humans, can fail to predict dangerous risks and ineffective treatment in actual use. As a result, approval of devices without a valid demonstration of effectiveness has permitted the marketing of products in the EU that turned out to cause severe harm to patients, either because the testing was inadequate to reveal the device's risks or because use of an ineffective device denied patients access to effective treatments for serious diseases. In addition, the lack of valid data on effectiveness has caused some of the biggest EU countries to delay reimbursement for some approved high-risk devices until a second, sometimes lengthy cost-effectiveness review is completed. In those cases, EU approval of a device does not necessarily mean that it is available to patients there.
The EU system for approving devices has now also come under criticism from the European medical community because of the number of devices that have turned out to be dangerous or ineffective. The medical community has also expressed dissatisfaction with the inconsistent review standards of the private bodies that approve devices in the EU and the secrecy surrounding the device approval process there.
The report goes on to say that the EU is in the process of reviewing its regulation of medical devices and that some notified bodies have had their authority to undertake assessments under the medical device directive withdrawn, while others have had the authority suspended or reduced in scope. Both of those actions suggest that the system does not always work as expected. The EU experience cannot be ignored and should serve as a warning about the risks associated with allowing private entities to undertake assessments. The expert panel also refers to concerns about the US regulatory system for medical devices.
The government also states that, as a result of the reforms, there will be enhanced post market surveillance of medicines and medical devices. How this will be done, and by whom, will be of interest, but it will inevitably require greater resources by either the product manufacturers or the TGA. This is of particular significance, given reports last year that TGA compliance staff had been reduced, that fake pharmaceuticals were being sold to consumers by organised criminal groups, and that the TGA did not have the resources to police this growing problem. Reforms to the regulation of complementary medicines include increasing the information available on the efficacy, introducing statutory time frames for the approval of new ingredients, and adopting a risk based approach to the variations of complementary medicines. There will also be a simplification of therapeutic product advertising regulations, and streamlining of the Special Access Scheme. It seems that there is a push towards self-regulation of product advertising. Again, self-regulation is not without its failings—as we have seen all too often in so many other industry bodies—which, ultimately, have led to the government having to, in some form or another, step in and correct the problems.
Lastly, I also raise concerns that the use of private commercial bodies for assessments will inevitably lead to downsizing of the TGA itself, and could lessen the ability of the TGA to perform its statutory obligations. This is a matter which the expert panel referred to in chapter 7 of their report. In particular, the report stated:
Reductions in de novo evaluations and introduction of abridged assessments for some variations will result in a reduction in NRA staffing needs, primarily highly skilled medical and scientific staff who will be difficult to replace if the need arises, especially quickly. Such a reduction, if significant enough, may undermine the NRA’s capacity to:
• respond to sudden increases in workload, resulting in less timely evaluations of medicines and medical devices, thereby undermining one of the aims of the Review;
• respond to emerging public health issues, such as the need to undertake recalls, manage medicine shortages, or manage major non-compliance. In these instances, resourcing would need to be redirected from other core business, which in turn will translate into reduced timeliness and responsiveness; and
• undertake evaluations of orphan drugs or process applications for access to unregistered medicines in a timely way.
The report also raised concerns that continued investment in IT systems necessary for timely and cost-effective regulatory services may come at the expense of other activities. This is because those systems are likely to have similar costs, even if they end up being used by fewer people. If the NRA's income declines, other activities may be cut to make up the shortfall. These are serious concerns, which have not been adequately addressed. I am particularly concerned by any changes which, effectively, will reduce the ability of the TGA to continue to perform the very valuable work that it has performed over the last 26 years or so.
This is important legislation that enables changes to a complex regulatory system. The changes will mostly be made via regulations that have not been drafted, necessitating further scrutiny of the government's implementation planning once they are available. We accept that new medicines and medical devices are being developed and trialled around the world every day, and that where those products are showing encouraging results consumers want access to them as quickly as possible. If the approval process can be sped up then it should be. But in the rush to get new products onto the market, we should be confident that the people who take them are not placed at any level of increased risk. Once made, these changes will be very difficult to unwind.
This is legislation that affects most Australians. It is legislation that affects an important industry sector. It is legislation that changes longstanding practices of the TGA. The government is asking the parliament to support the legislation by saying: 'Trust us with the regulations.' We know what happens when this government says 'trust us'. In summary, Labor is concerned that the substance of this legislation will be in regulations that we have not yet seen. We therefore reserve our position on the regulations until we do see them. Labor is also concerned about the lack of detail surrounding third-party conformity assessments of medical devices. There is little information provided in this bill into the selection process of third-party conformity assessment bodies. Who will they be? What assessment process will be required of them? What oversight of the process used by the assessment bodies will be undertaken by the TGA itself? What accountability and reporting mechanism should be put in place? We have not seen any of that detail whatsoever. We are simply being asked to trust the government with respect to the regulations or legislative instruments, which effectively are the key to this legislation.
Finally, we have concerns about the details relating to post-market monitoring and what resources will be provided to the TGA for this measure. As I mentioned earlier, we already have some concerns about the scaling down of the TGA itself, which in turn will reduce its ability to carry out other functions. What resources will be provided to the TGA with respect to the post-market monitoring that is expected under the legislation? We do not know. We will wait to see what the details will be once the government provides those regulations. As I have said from the outset, Labor will support this legislation, but we do so with reservations, which I have outlined and which we reserve our right to reassess once we see both the regulations and the legislative instruments that will be brought into this place.
Ms BIRD (Cunningham) (12:39): I rise today to speak on this important bill, the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016. As did my colleague the member for Makin, I indicate my support for this bill, with a number of reservations. Firstly, I would like to touch on aspects of the bill and what reservations I hold. Secondly, I would like to talk about some important examples where this is a significant local issue in my electorate.
The bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989. It seeks to do a number of things. It seeks to enable the making of regulations to establish new priority pathways for faster approval of medicines, medical devices, biologicals and conformity assessment certificates in Australia. It also seeks to enable the making of regulations to designate Australian notified bodies that would be able to appraise the suitability of the manufacturing process for medical devices manufactured in Australia and to consider whether such medical devices meet relevant minimum standards for safety and performance, as an alternative to the TGA undertaking such assessments. It seeks to allow certain unapproved therapeutic goods that are currently accessed by healthcare practitioners through a process of applying to the secretary for approval to be more easily obtained by practitioners only having to notify the secretary within 28 days of having supplied such goods to their patients, rather than requiring pre-approval. The amendments would allow the minister to make a legislative instrument specifying which goods would be able to be accessed in this way and by which kinds of healthcare practitioners and in what circumstances, in accordance with conditions specified in the instrument. The legislation will also provide review and appeal rights for persons who apply to add new ingredients for use in listed complementary medicines. It will also remove the requirement for the minister to consult with the Therapeutic Goods Committee when making standards for therapeutic goods other than medical devices. The TGC, along with three other committees, was abolished by regulation effective on 1 January. The TGC's role has been spread across other committees. The minister will have the option of consulting any of the other committees but will not be compelled to.
I acknowledge that the bill includes a number of other, mostly minor, measures which aim to provide greater consistency across the regulation of different kinds of therapeutic goods under the act, reduce regulatory burden, reduce health risks to the public or make other, more minor changes. As I said at the outset, I and Labor support the bill, but we do have reservations about some of the detail, in particular the details of the regulations, which have not been drafted to date, and those around third-party assessments of medical devices. I will not go into those in any detail, because they have been quite clearly outlined by my colleague the member for Makin.
In this debate today, I specifically want to talk about the importance of this sort of legislation to two constituents of mine who represent, I think it would be fair to say, a broader number of constituents across my electorate. Certainly, in their campaigns they have had significant support indicated very broadly in our community.
Firstly, I would like to talk to the chamber about someone who I have talked about in this place before, and that is my constituent Ben Oakley. Where the regulation of medicines and medical devices can be streamlined whilst the safety and quality is maintained, it should be. I have recently been making representation on behalf of Ben and his dad, Michael Oakley, who have been campaigning on the issues surrounding medicinal cannabis. Michael and his son, Ben, came to Canberra on 15 February this year. They came to talk to people about their experiences and the importance of access to medicinal cannabis.
For the information of the chamber, Ben has an incurable neurological disorder, which is known as Stiff Person Syndrome, and he uses medicinal cannabis to manage his condition. When Ben was diagnosed, he was the youngest person in Australia to be afflicted with this condition, which affects about 20 people here. At the time he was triathlon fit; indeed, he was first struck when riding his bike home. He was quite shocked by the impact of that first seizure, given that he was such a young, fit person. Originally Ben came to see me with his dad to talk about the issue of rare diseases. Before he started treatment with medicinal cannabis, Ben had more than 600 seizures, including 61 in a nine-hour period, with one of those spasms lasting more than two hours. Since accessing medicinal cannabis, Ben has had only three seizures in total.
For over two years Labor has called on the government to do more to improve access to medicinal cannabis for people with life-threatening illnesses. In February 2016 the government introduced legislation to amend the Narcotics Drug Act to establish a licensing arrangement for the cultivation, manufacture and supply of medicinal cannabis. At the time , along with Labor, I welcomed this action. Our belief was that it would ensure access to a safe, regulated source of medicinal cannabis from a domestic supplier and we made it clear at the time, as did the then health minister, that medicinal products made from Australian grown cannabis crops could be in use as early as 2017. However, it has taken over a year for any real access to be granted and there is still a long, long way to go.
I am very happy to indicate to the chamber that I am very grateful to the health minister's office—both the former health minister and the current health minister—for the assistance that they have provided to Michael and Ben Oakley to try and work through the complicated and confusing process of legally obtaining medicinal cannabis. Their doctor, however, has only just been granted prescriber status and now he, in conjunction with the hospital pharmacy, needs to find an overseas supplier and courier in order for Ben to receive the treatment he desperately needs. The process is confusing and time consuming and there is still no steady supply. Prescribing doctors and their pharmacies need to go in search of this product and try and find a suitable overseas supply for use in Australia.
Following Ben's visit, the Leader of the Opposition wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to identify an overseas source and regulate its supply in Australia to improve consistency of supply and give patients confidence that they are using safe products. This would also remove some of the complicated and confusing requirements that exist within the existing arrangements. The Leader of the Opposition offered to work with the Prime Minister and support any changes necessary to achieve this. I hope the Prime Minister responds positively to that invitation. After witnessing the battle that Ben and his family have been through to try and obtain medicinal cannabis legally, I support this bill's intention to streamline the regulation of medicines and medical devices, while maintaining safety and quality, regulation of medicines and medical devices. Fast access to new medicines and medical devices is critical for people whose health and wellbeing worsens each day they wait for new treatments to be approved.
At the beginning of my contribution to this debate, I indicated there were two people I had met for whom these issues are important. I want to go now to the second case that has been brought to my attention. We do need to ensure that patients have fast access to life-saving medicines and new treatments and that these treatments are affordable. I recently met with Melissa Bowyer from my electorate. Melissa's son Riley was diagnosed with Periodic Fever Syndrome or PFS in April last year. This is a rare auto-inflammatory disease that causes frequent fevers at 40-plus degrees, along with body pains in the back, the legs and the abdomen. As a result, Riley has missed out on a great deal of preschool as well as many other activities that other young children his age should out enjoying. Melissa detailed for me the impact that this has had on her family. She has had to resign her job in order to care for Riley.
Melissa is a member of Rare Voices Australia which launched the Fair for Rare campaign earlier this year that seeks to raise awareness in the community of rare diseases. Melissa has found that access to vital health services and treatment for rare diseases is scarce and scattered across the country and that this significantly impacts on families. Rare Voices has been working, including with Labor's shadow minister for health, to push for answers around the Life Saving Drugs Program review and to raise awareness of the importance of having a clear and timely funding pathway for rare disease treatments—a pathway that is, indeed, Fair for Rare.
Nicole Millis, Rare Voices Australia's executive office, said just one new medicine was funded under the Life Saving Drugs Program in 2016 and concerned that changes had been made to the scheme without consultation. In Senate estimates in February, departmental officials were unable to explain the delays in reforming the program with the review being under review for two years. The government's lack of consultation with Rare Voices is in stark contrast to Labor's approach. At Labor's health policy summit, Nicole Millis was invited to participate and she said that:
...it was important that RVA was part of these discussions, being a voice for all Australians living with rare disease. Our invitation to the event arguably shows our increasing political presence. As can be seen in the National Health Policy Summit Communique, RVA was successful in bringing rare disease into the discussion around social inequality.
Importantly Nicole was also able to personally engage and thank shadow health minister Catherine King and many other leading Labor figures who have provided political support to RVA's ongoing call for transparency and resolution of the Life Saving Drugs Program review and access to rare disease treatments.
It is clear that streamlining the approval process to ensure that people like Ben Oakley and Riley Bowyer can access the treatments they need to improve their quality of life is of very real importance to them and their families. I particularly thank both of these constituents and their families. Melissa brought along her mum on the day she came to see me, as well. You can see the impacts and the stress, indeed the distress, that these sorts of rare diseases can cause for these families. It takes so long for somebody to correctly identify the disease that you have, and that process in itself takes an enormous toll on families. To have them then go into a system where accessing the treatments they need becomes a long a tortuous road is not good enough. I commend the Rare Voices campaign and I sincerely thank my own local constituents Ben and Michael for campaigning on medicinal cannabis and Melissa and her young son Riley for campaigning to get better access to treatments for rare diseases. I can assure them that I will be continuing to campaign on that in this House as well.
Ms McBRIDE (Dobell) (12:53): I started my pharmacy training in 1994 and first registered as a pharmacist some 20 years ago. In my working life as a community and hospital pharmacist in Australia and overseas I have witnessed much change. Work in health is fast paced and breakthroughs in treatment save lives. With conditions that we were grappling to understand when I was starting out a pharmacist, such as HIV, in 2017 people are living close to normal lives due to modern treatments. Medicines such as statins—HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors—the new blockbuster drugs of the 1990s, are now routinely prescribed by GPs in practices across Australia.
The Australian healthcare system is founded on the principles of universal access. Governments have a duty to ensure equity in the financing and provision of healthcare services. We all have a stake in the health of our nation—those of us who are sick or care for someone who is sick; those of us who live with and manage chronic and complex conditions; those of us who despair for those who are suffering; and those who live each and every day in the hope of a cure. Medicines are important. Access to medicines saves lives.
I am pleased to support the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No.1) Bill 2016 because ultimately it will mean improved access to medicines, a change which is better for all of us. However, I do so with some reservations. This bill will amend the Therapeutic Goods Act to support a number of recommendations made by the expert panel review of medicines and medical devices led by Professor Lloyd Sansom. The expert panel's purpose was to consider whether and where reforms to the Australian regulatory system could benefit Australia and Australian health consumers. The review, rightly, found that the standards of the Therapeutic Goods Administration are internationally respected and its regulatory functions are well carried out. But in health we strive for continuous improvement and constantly ask how we can and should do better.
The recommendations adopted in this bill would improve the functioning of the TGA and support access to medicines. Labor supports the bill and I am pleased to speak this bill, though with some reservations. The Therapeutic Goods Administration Act 1989 and its associated regulations provide a number of avenues through which unapproved therapeutic goods may be supplied, including the Authorised Prescriber Scheme and the Special Access Scheme —the SAS. An unapproved therapeutic good means any medicine not entered in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods, any medical device not entered in the register, any biological not entered, or a therapeutic good already entered in the register that is used beyond the conditions of its marketing approval. The SAS is currently categorised into category A, life-threatening, and category B, non-life-threatening.
I will start by discussing recommendation 24 of the Sansom review, which relates to category A and category B Special Access Scheme medications, which are handed out on a daily basis to outpatients of Wyong Hospital. The bill supports recommendation 24 of the review, which stipulates that the current criteria and processes for category A SAS patients remain unchanged. However, it proposes that certain low-risk category B medicines should receive automatic approval, subject to a number of safeguards. As a hospital pharmacist and former member of the Central Coast Local Health District Drug and Therapeutic Committee, I understand the importance of robust decision-making processes and approval pathways for medicines and medical devices. I am also aware of the necessity for the regulations, protocols, policies, procedures and guidelines that safeguard their use. However, I am acutely aware of the unnecessary delays, treatment interruptions and distress to patients and their families that can and do occur because of the administrative burden to access these medications—the paperwork, the lengthy phone calls and the extensive consultation and liaison required for drugs which in many cases are low risk—medication such as Midodrine, used in the treatment of orthostatic hypotension. The delay in commencing this medication due to current SAS processes can delay effective treatment and increase the patient's hospital stay. That outcome is not in the best interests of the patient or our health service.
The TGA reports that it receives around 20,000 SAS category B applications each year. Only 0.3 per cent of these applications are rejected. Regularly submitting and resubmitting paper-based SAS category B forms for medications that have an established history of use for a given indication and do not risk public safety only increases the administrative burden for clinicians and, as I have pointed out, can delay or interrupt necessary treatment. I welcome this commonsense change for certain low-risk category B medications. I would also welcome a move away from the current paper-based system and the development of an online system for SAS applications and notifications.
This bill also supports recommendation 26 of the Sansom review, proposing to enable more timely access to unapproved therapeutic goods for patients under the Authorised Prescriber Scheme and reduced regulatory burdens on clinicians.
The AP Scheme allows approved prescribers to prescribe a specific therapeutic good to a class of patients under their care. The current process involves assessment of the clinical justification by both the TGA and either a human research ethics committee or a specialist medical college. There are no changes proposed to the HREC or specialist college role in the AP Scheme, but the TGA will provide increased guidance to assist in the delivery of those roles.
The bill also supports recommendation 27 of the Sansom review, which proposes that the government develop a more comprehensive postmarketing monitoring scheme for medicines and medical devices, including better integration and analysis of information from datasets including the medical benefits scheme; the establishment of registries for high-risk implantable devices; the implementation of an alert scheme for newly registered medicines to encourage reporting of adverse events; allowing the electronic reporting of adverse events; and improving collaboration with overseas regulators. Central to this is better integration and timely analysis of available datasets, including analysis of matched, de-identified data from the PBS, MBS, eHealth, hospital records, private health insurance and other available datasets.
I note, in particular, the contribution of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, which says:
… it is essential that we move towards a holistic, nationally-coordinated and outcomes-focussed approach to undertaking pharmacovigilance activities … pharmacovigilance encompasses the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other medicine-related problem.
I support the PSA in their assertion that Australia has the ability to lead the world in the collection of accurate and timely information on new medicines. If we are to build efficiencies in the health sector and improve health outcomes for patients, integration of datasets is vital.
I particularly welcome changes that will encourage the reporting of adverse events for newly registered medicines. The TGA states:
No therapeutic product is ever completely risk free. Some risks may be known when a medicine or medical device is first entered on the … Register … However, some information only comes to light after more people use the products.
Twelve per cent of all medical admissions and 20 to 30 per cent of all hospital admissions in the population aged 65 years and over are estimated to be directly attributable to medication misadventure. Everyone wants the doctor who sees them in the ED to have the most up-to-date information. Everyone wants the pharmacist who reviews their medication to have the most up-to-date information. I particularly welcome changes that will encourage the reporting of adverse events for newly registered medicines, whilst noting that the government has proposed strengthened postmarketing monitoring and surveillance. We have not seen all the details, so it is not possible to determine if those enhanced measures will be adequate. We also do not know how the Australian notified bodies will be chosen or how they will be monitored.
Medicines matter. Last year I met Jude, a young boy from Hamlyn Terrace. Jude has a double mutation of the cystic fibrosis gene, along with other complex health conditions. His mum, Caron, is a nurse and midwife. Along with his dad, Matthew, they do an exceptional job loving and caring for Jude. Their lives were turned upside down when Jude was diagnosed with CF. Jude is two years old. They are Jude's voice. They are the voice of other children and families who share their journey. They told me how important Medicare and the PBS are for them and how heartbroken they were when the advisory committee deferred the listing of the drug Kalydeco, which will change the life of Jude and around 30 other children across the country under the age of five living with this disease. Their lives are forever changed as a result of the recent PBS listing of Kalydeco, and I thank the Minister for Health and the government for doing the right thing for Jude's family and other families. Jude is responding well to the treatment, which he had access to within one week of the announcement. His mum, Caron, tells me he is a bundle of energy—running and playing like any other two-year-old. He no longer has to spend all his energy focused simply on breathing.
Like Jude, I met Evie and her mum, Sonia, when the Kalydeco kids came to Canberra. Evie's life could have been very different. Currently, Evie takes 15,500 tablets each year, needs 1,100 hours of physiotherapy and nebulised medicines, is connected to a feed pump for 3,350 hours a year, requires 730 insulin injections and misses between 40 and 60 days of school. Then there are Evie's blood tests, MRIs and other monitoring. Fast access to new medicines is critical for people whose health and wellbeing worsens each day they wait for treatment. Access to medicines matters. They can change the lives of people like Jude and their families.
Last week I meet with Darryl and Heath from the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations. The AFAO is the peak body for the HIV community response. They provide leadership, coordination and support to the national policy, advocacy and health promotion response to HIV-AIDS. Among the many important matters raised by this community-led advocacy group was access to PrEP. PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, can reduce the risk of infection of HIV by up to 90 per cent. While originally developed to treat HIV infection, it is now also used to prevent the infection in those at high risk of the virus.
PrEP is one of the most significant advances in the continuing effort to eliminate the transmission of HIV. Modern treatments for HIV both dramatically improve the outlook for people with the virus and help to prevent its transmission. As a hospital pharmacist working with the Central Coast Local Health District Sexual Health Clinic and their medical director, Dr Debbie Allen, I was involved for many years with the work being done to advance the cause of those living with HIV.
The Holden Street Sexual Health Clinic in Gosford is a trial site for PrEP. It will cater to 50 patients and is one of 20 sites across NSW which saw some of the 3,700 Australians taking part in EPIC-NSW—Expanded PrEP Implementation in Communities in NSW. The trial will provide clinical data that will hopefully see PrEP on the PBS in the coming years. While the PBS will likely make a decision on including PrEP this year, Australians are already accessing the drug. GPs across Australia are assisting their patients with access to medication through the personal importation scheme. But this does not treat all Australians equally. We should be ensuring that people at high risk of HIV have access and that existing state based trials are expanded with additional trial spaces.
Australia should be proud of the level of care, treatment, research and prevention of HIV that we have supported for decades. Better access to PrEP is the next step in responding to HIV, and bills like this go some way to ensuring that Australians are all able to access the very best quality medications and health care in a timely manner. I welcome the meeting between the PrEP stakeholders and the chair of the PBAC held last month, which gave organisations a valuable opportunity to express their views about the listing of this medication or this treatment. This is another important step in advancing this important cause.
Fast access to new medicines is critical for people whose health and wellbeing worsens each day they wait for access. As a pharmacist working in community and hospital pharmacy over the last 20 years, I know that medicines are important, I know that medical treatments can change lives and I know that fast access for people who have conditions that worsen each day is critical. Labor will be supporting this bill; however, we do so with some reservations.
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (13:08): I commend the comments by the previous speaker, the member for Dobell. I agree entirely. Call me old and cynical, but 38 years as a medical practitioner before coming here taught me to be suspicious of streamlining proposals and efficiency measures touted by governments, state and federal. In the case of Liberal and coalition governments, it was good practice to set the bulldust detectors to Spinal Tap's 11 on the 10-point scale. With Labor governments as a medico you had to sometimes comfort yourself however with the simple thought that, 'At least they mean well.' But in every case—and I am sure I am not alone in this—you seldom went far wrong in assuming that the departmental officialese of 'efficiency, economising and enhanced productivity' being parroted by the minister was code for either cost cutting or cost shifting back onto unsuspecting public patients.
As a newly minted member of parliament, I have tried to modify those personal prejudices and curb the ingrained and battle-hardened scepticism. The trouble is, though, I keep talking to patients and medical colleagues and those discussions sometimes lead pretty quickly back to that darkest of all dark questions: what are they really up to? So I still tend to wonder how seemingly nice or anodyne-sounding ideas such as those contained in this Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No.1) Bill 2016 might work out in practice.
This bill, of course, takes a very sensible steps towards facilitating the more rapid take-up of new medicines and other medical advances. Our medical armamentarium has improved dramatically over the last 200 years. As a doctor, the number of medications available to treat common candidates such as asthma, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease and infection are so numerous that it is almost impossible to know them all and all their side effects. Increasingly, we are faced with new drugs targeted to specific and sometimes rare disorders. These new medications can be lifesaving, as already mentioned in the case of Kalydeco for certain forms of cystic fibrosis. New classes of drugs, such as the biologics, are very expensive but can also be very effective for some of the rare immunological disorders and for some forms of cancer.
Increasingly, demand for medications for some disorders in old age is rampant. Some of the newer cancer medications such as those for lung, bowel and prostate cancer are in constant demand, and new treatments are being developed all the time. Genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis can now for the first time be treated with drugs directly targeted to the underlying metabolic disorder. The next generation of these drugs is already in the pipeline.
Most of the research into the effectiveness and safety of these medications occurs in Europe, Japan or the United States. Data about the effectiveness and side-effects profiles are available from overseas institutions which are very reputable. Australia does not have the research ability to undertake strict double-blind trials on all these new medications. Our health consumers and medical professionals are well aware of the availability of new treatments and regularly review information from other countries about new modalities and will actively seek out these treatments, often available through various internet sites. That certainly happened to me in practice. Therefore, it is important that we are able to approve access to, recommend and prescribe these treatments as soon as we can where warranted. Sometimes it has taken a very long period of time for medication that has been approved overseas to be approved in Australia. Ondansetron is one that comes to mind. It is a medication used for severe vomiting due to severe illness and chemotherapy.
More generally, though, these days I recognise that there are two, not three, truisms about efficiency measures in health. The first is that Liberal and coalition governments are not the most wholehearted defenders of the universality principle and public health spending to walk the earth. They have form that dates back to their early opposition to Medibank, its repeal and their reluctant acceptance of the general public's continued support for Medicare bulk-billing and proper protection from the potentially crippling costs. This I do not believe is a contentious point.
Three days after last year's 2 July election, a somewhat chastened Prime Minister rightly observed in relation to those legitimate expectations on the issue of public trust:
That—
the election result—
is a very clear lesson. We have to do more to reaffirm the faith of the Australian people in our commitment to health and to Medicare.
He said the coalition had to:
… work harder to rebuild or strengthen the trust of the Australian people in our side of politics when it comes to health. There is no question about that.
I am sure that the Prime Minister actually believes that. What I am less sure of is that all those who sit behind him or on the Treasury bench, including two former health ministers—Mr Abbott and Mr Dutton—do.
But let's move on. The second truism is less contentious but should not for that reason go unmentioned. It is, of course, that all governments must deal with the rising cost of medicines and health care. Those rising costs have to be met from increased levies or taxes or through savings in other areas. That inevitably means that all governments are always on the lookout for savings in health. How could it be otherwise with health expenditure by governments, state and federal, now in excess of $108 billion per annum, of which the Commonwealth's share is $66 billion?
Medicare Benefits Schedule spending has risen by more than 60 per cent annually over the last two decades, and medical costs have been on average the fastest-growing component of the CPI over the last 15 years. Ross Gittins in his usual insightful way picked up on this policy dilemma in one of his excellent columns earlier last week. As Gittins argues—and I firmly agree with him:
… the intergenerational reports make it clear health will be by far the fastest growing.
That's not so much because of ageing as because advances in medical technology are hugely expensive, and it's quite unrealistic to imagine that Australian voters will settle for anything less than gaining subsidised access to the latest and best technology …
Add 'earliest' to Gittins' list and you can see immediately what this bill is trying to do, even if I have some current qualms about how it is trying to do it. Gittins goes on—and I still think he is on the right track—to say:
Our politicians … need to be brave and tell voters the truth: if they want ever more and better healthcare then, as with everything else, they'll have to pay more for it—in the form of, say, regular increases in the Medicare levy.
And yes, the last Labor government was brave enough to increase the Medicare levy to help fund the NDIS; and no, the electorate apparently did not react as if it was the end of civilisation. I also agree with Gittens that part of the solution is cutting out waste and efficiency. Again, this bill is highly pertinent, and where I think there is a strong measure of agreement across the chamber is that the introduction of new medicines, medical devices and procedures should not be unduly impeded, particularly when they can be life-saving. Gittens goes further—and I think this is where some of those opposite might be a little less sanguine about his proposed course of treatment. Gittens makes for me the not unreasonable point that those who want over and above the basic service provided by government should usually pay for it themselves. Taxes should not be levied or expended to finance, entrench or sustain inequality. That brings me to what I consider the third truism of Australian health policy, and back to the detailed elements of this bill.
From the time I considered giving up my career in medicine and standing for the seat of Macarthur, it seemed to me that the problem with government health policy was the lack of an overarching plan. Related to this was the sometimes haphazard or clumsy way in which policy was made and implemented. If you look at the health bills before this House over the last couple of weeks—some are admirable in their own way—you get a sense of government nibbling at the edges of policy, rather than trying to foster a broader consensus about how $108-plus billion of government spending annually on health care might be more effectively deployed. Perhaps what we are seeing that this week is no more than an incident of how the drafting resources of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel line up with the parliamentary timetable. But it does play into a wider unease I think we might all share about the delivery of health care, and the formation of health policy more broadly, with this government. The first bills I spoke on in this place were the National Cancer Screening Register Bill 2016 and the National Cancer Screening Register (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2016. The object of those bills was unexceptional enough, and even welcome—you did, though, need to ignore the fact that the proposed register was long overdue, and might have been extended to a national register for breast cancer and other cancers. What was really concerning to many, and even slightly dodgy, was that the bills as first presented trespassed on privacy rights, and that the proposed register had already been flogged off—in advance of parliamentary approval—to a private body not noted for its experience or expertise in the field of handling medical records.
I was reminded of those concerns when I tuned into the Health Report on Radio National, as I do quite often, to hear doubts being expressed about unexplained delays in implementing a national strategy to deal with type II diabetes, and the delay in implementing promises made at the time of the election about insulin pumps for children with type I diabetes. Diabetes is a huge problem in Australia and costs our economy over $14 billion a year. Acting Deputy Speaker Hogan, you would think that a strategy developed to prevent diabetes would not be bogged down in a government working group for the best part of two years; you might expect it would have a bit of a higher priority and some urgency—so too with this bill. We have here a bill introduced late last year to streamline the processes for getting new medicines and medical devices onto the Australian market, a worthy idea but not a new one. The bill encompasses the work of the Sansom review established in 2014—which reported in 2015—to which the government responded some two years later, in September 2016. There has also been a Senate inquiry by the Standing Committee on Community Affairs, which recommended a comprehensive review of the system for registration and subsidisation of medicines. So the government and the policymakers, in effect, have been working on this for the best part of at least three years, even if you ignore any work done prior to the Sansom inquiry getting underway. It is at that point that you start to wonder about whether the process, for reasons unexplained, has gone a bit off the rails; if the wheels have not totally fallen off, they are certainly displaying a few disconcerting wobbles.
For starters, the current bill was introduced prior to the government responding to the community affairs committee report—something you think might easily have been done. That is something the Senate also seems to have thought a bit remiss, because the substance of this bill was promptly referred off to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee by the Senate Standing Committee for Selection of Bills. That is no huge drama of itself, although you do wonder if that might not have happened if the process had been handled more adroitly or in a more conciliatory fashion. I also note that this House is being asked to consider the merits of the bill without the benefit of the work or findings of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, which is not due to report for a few days yet. The other Senate committee to look at the bill is the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. The task of that committee is to ensure that legislation, amongst other things, does not unduly trespass on individual liberties; and does not undermine the rule of law or parliamentary sovereignty by making rights and liberties unduly dependent on administrative powers, inappropriately delegating legislative powers, or insufficiently subjecting the exercise of legislative power to parliamentary scrutiny. The scrutiny of bills committee reported its findings on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016 —which are quite numerous for such a short bill—to the Senate on 8 February and asked for a detailed response by 23 February. One arrived on 2 March.
The scrutiny of bills committee has now considered the minister's response and it has commented in a number of ways: firstly, that the explanation memorandum was insufficiently candid and informative; that more significant elements of the assessment regime should be included in the primary bill and not in delegated legislation; and that authorised persons under the act have defined qualifications or skills. The committee also commented that processes by an advisory body under the proposed act be subjected to legislative control; and that defences available to manufacturers accused of providing false or misleading information or documents unduly cast the onus on the Therapeutic Goods Administration. These are matters which I expect will be addressed in another place, and need not be fatal to the bill. But they are significant matters and, as with the case of the national cancer screening registry bills that I referred to earlier, the net effect is that you are a little less confident than you might otherwise have been about supporting these proposals. If we are to make the sort of progress required in advancing the quality of medical care by guaranteeing value for money, we must ensure that the policy processes are working a little more smoothly than may be the case in the health portfolio. The health portfolio seems to follow much of the other government legislation, in that it is thought-bubble policymaking. There is no overarching plan; there is no real plan for a health policy for all Australians in 2017. Let us hope the new minister can bring some of his well-known and not inconsiderable talents to the task. I wish him well. We support this bill, but I have some concerns about the whole process of policy and health policy determination, and the real mishmash of ways that it is being organised by this government.
Mr HAMMOND (Perth) (13:22): I too rise to speak to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016 and I thank my honourable members for their contribution to this debate. This bill is principally a measure to cut red tape. It consolidates, streamlines and reorganises a number of the rules, regulations and processes around the approval of therapeutic goods in a way that is aimed to get medicines and other goods to patients when they need them. I aim to speak with some more specificity in a moment about the merits, or otherwise, of the measures in the bill, but let's start at first principles.
From the consumer affairs perspective, there are significant product safety considerations when assessing for approval any new therapeutic good. Therapeutic goods are products used in humans in connection with preventing, diagnosing or treating an illness or injury; testing a person; affecting conception; pregnancy testing; or replacing or modifying parts of the anatomy. They range from paracetamol to condoms, prescription drugs and prosthetic feet. But product safety concerns do not exist in a vacuum. When a patient is dying or suffering pain, the calculus changes—and so the role of the Therapeutic Goods Administration in approving and regulating these goods, which requires specialist knowledge and skill as well as a robust regulatory environment.
In terms of the mechanics, therapeutic goods are assessed by the TGA and then entered into the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before they can be sold. TGA takes a risk based approach to regulation, focusing on high-risk medicines like prescriptions, which must be registered. Lower risk therapeutic goods such as sun screens or vitamins may be listed if the applicant certifies that the claims about the effectiveness of the product are accurate and that certain standards are met regarding ingredients, quality, labelling and packaging. So the TGA relies upon applicant certification with a compliance regime for low-risk therapeutic goods but does a direct evaluation for high-risk goods. It should be noted too that certain programs allow products that are not on the register. For example, the Special Access Scheme allows import or supply of unapproved goods for a single patient. This is linked to the single patient's doctor. The TGA monitors products that are approved. This includes risk management plans; collecting reports of adverse events or reactions; audits; and environmental scanning for safety issues.
I would now like to go through some of the provisions of this bill individually because I think it is important to consider the balance between product safety and patients' therapeutic needs. This bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 primarily to support some of the key recommendations of the Sansom review of medicines and medical devices, which reported in 2015. The review's intent was to reduce unnecessary duplicative or ineffective regulation without jeopardising the safety or quality of therapeutic goods. The review also aimed to position Australia to respond to emerging global trends. Two reports were provided in 2015. The first report had 32 recommendations, including to expand pathways for sponsors to seek approval, the enhancement of post-marketing monitoring and improvements to the transparency and predictability of TGA decision-making. The second report focused on complementary medicines and advertising and made 26 recommendations, including around improving market approval and advertising requirements and streamlining the advertising framework. The then health minister responded to the report formally last year, agreeing to a majority but not all of the recommendations in those two reports.
Whilst Labor is supportive of the aims of this bill, some of the specifics are probably not ideal. Fast access to new medicines and medical devices is critical for people whose health and wellbeing worsens each day, and then they are required to wait for access. Furthermore, duplication of effort is wasteful and, again, should be avoided where it can. That is why Labor will be supporting the bill. Labor will also be watching very closely the development of regulations as yet undrafted—and I will come back to that—and it is important that regulatory regimes around consumer safety are monitored on an ongoing basis.
Specifically, the bill will ensure greater consistency in the regulation of different classes of therapeutic goods; streamline the approval process for new medicines, medical devices, biologicals and conformity assessment certificates in Australia, providing patients with faster access to these goods and medicines; enable regulations to be made so Australian notified bodies would be able to appraise the suitability of the manufacturing process for medical devices that are manufactured in Australia; enable Australian notified bodies to consider whether such medical devices meet relevant minimum standards for safety and performance; allow certain unapproved therapeutic goods that are currently accessed by applying to the secretary of the Department of Health to be more easily obtained by practitioners; adopt a risk based approach to the management of variations to medicines by allowing certain kinds of variations that do not impact the quality, safety or efficacy of medicines to be made by notification to the TGA rather than requiring the approval of the secretary; allow practitioners the opportunity to notify the secretary within 28 days of having supplied therapeutic goods to their patients rather than requiring pre-approval to allow the TGA to develop a more comprehensive post-market monitoring scheme for medicines and medical devices ; provide review and appeal rights for people who apply to add new ingredients for use in listed complementary medicines; and enable the cancellation of registered or listed therapeutic goods from the register if the sponsor of the goods has supplied false or misleading information in relation to their application. This ought to protect consumers and, hopefully, reduce breaches of the Australian Consumer Law in relation to therapeutic goods.
The bill will also serve to strengthen post-marketing powers, recalls and notifications and the obtaining of information about therapeutic goods. This is particularly important from a consumer affairs/public safety point of view. The bill will allow the secretary to reinstate therapeutic goods to the register that were cancelled if the goods were cancelled for non-payment of annual charges and if, principally, the sponsor has paid the charge; develop criteria for developing and identifying certain therapeutic goods that are not in the register that may be able to be supplied to patients other than those who are gravely ill by notification to the TGA rather than, as is the case currently, requiring the prior approval of the secretary; require manufacturing licence holders to provide information or documents upon request; allow conditions on the inclusion of kinds of medical devices in the register to be either prescribed by regulation or set out in a legislative instrument made by the minister to bring the situation in relation to conditions for medical devices in line with 'registered' or 'listed'; ensure the capacity to refuse to list on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Perth will be given an opportunity at that time to complete his contribution.
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
New South Wales: Gosford By-Election
Ms McBRIDE (Dobell) (13:30): There are only two weeks until the Gosford by-election on 8 April. The prepoll is open, and residents on the Woy Woy peninsula have a clear choice when they vote. Locals have not forgotten that two years ago the Liberal government shut down the Woy Woy Roads and Maritime Services office, closing the last government office in the area. Fifteen thousand residents living on the peninsula are forced to travel to Gosford or Erina Fair, an hour round trip, every time they need to renew their licence, seek assistance from a government agency, pay a bill or make an inquiry about government services in the area.
Labor candidate Liesl Tesch and New South Wales Labor leader Luke Foley have committed that a Labor government will establish a Service NSW centre in Woy Woy to make it easier for locals to carry out government transactions and get the information they need quickly and efficiently close to home. This facility will open for extended hours, including weekends, to make it easy for locals to get assistance with Roads and Maritime Services, Fair Trading, births, deaths and marriages, Housing NSW, the Office of State Revenue, New South Wales seniors card, Opal cards and top-ups.
Labor has committed to improving services on the peninsula and across the Gosford electorate. While the Liberal government continues to strip services from locals on the Central Coast, only Liesl Tesch and Labor will ensure that residents get their fair share on the coast.
Bennelong Innovation Fair
Mr ALEXANDER (Bennelong) (13:31): The day I know you have all been waiting for is finally here, the day of the Bennelong Innovation Fair. There are no more sleepless nights sick with anticipation. We have virtual reality, we have HoloLens, we have fuel cells, we have do-it-yourself cataract surgery, if that is your thing, and we even have a brewery. It is thirsty work, this innovation.
Bennelong is the innovation capital of Australia and home to some of the most innovative companies and organisations in the country. We are home to the cancer-curing Gamma Knife, Australia's only hydrogen fuelling pump, and the labs that build every single cochlear implant, and of course we have Macquarie University, a world leader in many fields. Wi-Fi was invented here, and even the Granny Smith apple comes from Ryde.
What is next in the innovation world of Bennelong? Why don't you come down and ask the winners of the schools STEM challenge? They will be in the Great Hall too, showing off their inventions: computerised gloves to help the disabled, self-driving cars and much more. So come one, come all to the Great Hall from 5.30 to 8:30. The future is exciting, and there has never been a more exciting time to be in Australia. Don't stand on the bus stop of life and let this bus of life go by. Get off the bus stop of life. Be there from 5.30 to 8.30. You will, won't you, at the innovation fair?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): I am not quite sure what to say.
AFL Women's League
Ms KATE ELLIS (Adelaide) (13:33): After the weekend, some may remark that footy is back. Whilst we enjoyed a great game, seeing the Crows beat GWS yesterday, of course footy has been back since February this year, when Australians got to see the first match of the inaugural AFL Women's league with that sell-out and lockout game in Melbourne. We have seen a huge success, and I want to stand here today and congratulate the AFL and all of those in the AFL Women's league, who have worked so hard to make this not just a reality but an overwhelming success.
I stand here today happy to admit that I used to be embarrassed to confess that my childhood dream was to grow up and play the sport that I loved, footy, for the team that I loved. Of course, I realise that that was not possible, but it is so nice to think that there are generations of young girls and women who are growing up today knowing that that is indeed a reality and something where they can look to their heroes and aspire to be just like them.
Speaking of heroes, of course, it was the grand final of the AFL Women's league on the weekend, and I am happy to report that the mighty Adelaide Crows have gone down in the history books as the first winners of the premiership cup. I would like to congratulate their absolute champion coach, Bec Goddard, and their co-captains, Erin Phillips and Chelsea Randall, who today have been awarded the MVP and most courageous player awards. I thank them for their tremendous efforts in this historic achievement.
Boothby Electorate: St Vincent De Paul Society
Ms FLINT (Boothby) (13:34): On 15 March, I attended the opening and rededication of the St Vincent De Paul Society's shopping outlet store at Brighton. Parish priest the Reverend Dr Anthony Kain and I had the great honour of unveiling a plaque to mark the occasion. Located right in the heart of the volunteering and community centre of Brighton, the new Vinnies store is next door to St. Jude's Anglican Church, Brighton Uniting Church and Brighton Primary School. The store ensures that clients and customers of Vinnies feel equally welcome when seeking assistance or shopping. It is a beautifully presented space. Profits from sales in this store and others help fund many services, including Vinnies home visits program. I must thank, Mr Steve Kelton, the southern regional president, for drawing my attention to the huge variety of work Vinnies does in my electorate of Boothby. Steve is a tireless volunteer, whether through home visits and Fred's Van or overseeing Vinnies' activities in southwest and southern Adelaide.
I would also like to commend CEO Mr David Wark and state president Mr Brian Spencer for the work they are doing in South Australia. Last year Vinnies provided assistance valued at over $2 million, and they now have 35 shops in South Australia servicing almost 600,000 shoppers per year. My electorate of Boothby is home to stores at Brighton, St Mary's and Mitcham. Residents are blessed to be so well looked after by Vinnies.
Asylum Seekers
Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (13:36): Saeed—not his real name—is currently in Villawood detention centre, threatened with deportation. He is a stateless man from a religious minority who faced persecution in Iraq, where the Australian government wants to forcibly return him. He fears for his life if he is sent there. He sought asylum in Australia in 2012. He arrived with his brother, who was granted protection in Australia, but despite identical circumstances Saeed's claim was denied. Saeed does not speak English and was never told that he had the right to appeal the decision to deny him protection. I am informed that important information about his case was not considered by the department at the time, but Minister Dutton has refused to give Saeed an opportunity to have his case reassessed.
This is what happens when an immigration system is set up to punish people seeking asylum rather than welcoming them. People close to him have described him as a peaceful family man. He has spent three weeks on a hunger strike this month and is too sick to travel. Serious concerns have been raised about his health.
Saeed's lawyer has been denied access to speak with her client at important times. The immigration department even drove him overnight to Sydney to avoid scrutiny. Melburnians have held vigils outside the MITA detention centre, and I acknowledge my constituents who have peacefully stood up for justice for Saeed. Over 17,000 people have now signed a petition calling on Qantas and other airlines not to facilitate the deportation of Saeed to a place where his life would be in danger. I call on Minister Dutton to stop this deportation and allow Saeed's case to be reassessed.
Gold Crown Carnival
Mr GEE (Calare) (13:37): I wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that over 5,000 people flocked to the Bathurst paceway for the Gold Crown Carnival last week, one of Australia's premier harness-racing events and the richest country series in Australia. I would like to make mention of the Bathurst Harness Racing Committee, who did such a wonderful job organising this great event—President Wayne Baker, Vice-President Laurie Clifford, Treasurer Phillip Webb and board members John Brien, Frank McRae, Peter Turnbull, Robert Chew and Nathan Hurst. I would also like to mention the CEO of Bathurst Harness Racing, Danny Dwyer, who did such an outstanding job, and his team, including marketing manager Marianne Donnelly, administration officer Julie Loader, track curator Tony Hagney, grounds manager Mark Evans and grounds staff member Peter Muller.
The final night of racing was on Saturday, which I attended. We saw homegrown talent on display. Cyclone Kate, who is trained and driven by former Bathurst resident John McCarthy, came from nearly last place to take out the Bathurst Mayor's Cup. Also Lithgow trainer and driver Geoff Simpson and Castalong Shadow won the Gold Crown Final. My Sweetchilliphilly won the Gold Tiara Final and the Gold Chalice Final was won by Atomic Red.
I would also like to mention the representatives from Racing NSW who were in attendance: John Dumesny, Adam Fairley and board members Peter Nugent, Rod Smith and Chris Edwards. Congratulations to all involved on a magnificent sporting event.
Pensions and Benefits
Mr BRIAN MITCHELL (Lyons) (13:39): Tasmanians awoke yesterday to a special feature in the Sunday Tasmanian: 'Thousands endure a life of struggle.' It tells the story of life for age pensioners in Tasmania, and it is heartbreaking. More than 1,000 Tasmanian pensioners participated in the newspaper's survey, which reported that 59 per cent said life on the pension is difficult or very difficult, 74 per cent said that they run out of money before the next pension payment is due and 90 per cent believe the age pension should provide a reasonable standard of living, not just the bare minimum.
A single pensioner receives $400 a week and the poverty line is $426. The fact that age pensioners live below the poverty line in one of the wealthiest nations in the world—a wealth they helped create—is shameful. One couple, Sue and Brendon, reported that they buy an $8 pack of supermarket sausages and divide it into portions to last three nights. The response of Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz was: 'We need to balance the obligation not to leave their grandchildren with a huge burden of debt.' When we fail the most vulnerable in our nation we fail as a nation. If this government argues that it can afford a $50 billion handout to banks and corporations, it is not a matter of fact that it cannot afford a better deal for pensioners; it is merely a matter of priorities.
Schools
Mr GOODENOUGH (Moore) (13:40): I strongly support the current budget submission by the National School Chaplaincy Association, the peak body for school chaplaincy, for expanded funding for the next five years to 2023. In Western Australia, YouthCare delivers school-based chaplaincy programs, providing the necessary pastoral care to keep students engaged in learning by increasing school attendance and reducing absenteeism.
Over the past year, 22 chaplains based at 33 public schools in my electorate of Moore conducted approximately 11,700 counselling sessions with students, their parents, carers and school staff relating to family relationships, behavioural problems, peer relationships and mental health. Young people face a range of pressures in our community, with issues such as bullying, depression and drug use commonly encountered. YouthCare chaplains assisted at-risk students with limited family support to overcome the obstacles to furthering their education by serving more than 2,000 meals at breakfast clubs, conducting social, emotional and physical programs, and providing mentoring, with some 2,951 students attending lunchtime groups.
Adequate resourcing is needed to deliver these valuable services into the future. Security of tenure is also important to the chaplains in terms of their employment contracts. Immeasurable benefits to society are achieved when at-risk youth are constructively engaged in learning. (Time expired)
West Footscray Festival of Colours
Mr WATTS (Gellibrand) (13:42): Yesterday people from across Melbourne's west came together to celebrate the West Footscray Festival of Colours in Barkly Village in my electorate. It was a fantastic success. Barkly Street was closed off for the festival for the first time. Thousands of members of the community packed the village to enjoy the food, music, kids activities and the festival atmosphere on a gorgeous Melbourne day. The highlight of the day was the throwing of the colours, a somewhat belated Holi celebration, that was exuberantly embraced by the entire community. I am still cleaning some of the colour out of my ears as we speak.
West Footscray is home to a thriving community of Australians who have come to Melbourne's west from the Subcontinent. I am very pleased that we now have a local festival that celebrates their place in our diverse community. I want to pay particular tribute to the organising committee for their extraordinary work in making this festival the fantastic success that it was. Sharee Grinter, Pratima Prabhu, Mark Tiwari, Pradeep Tiwari and Sonia Dhillon deserve particular acknowledgement. Some of the businesses who got behind this fantastic initiative include: the Barkly Street Traders Association, West Footscray Neighbourhood House, Bharat Traders, Maribyrnong City Council, West Footscray Library, VU, Bollywood Fashion 'n' Beauty, Aangan, Dharma Circle, Lucky Pet, Nuevo Latino, Krishna Imports, Little Creatures Collective, DIY HIFI, Made in Braybrook, the Chinese Bible Church and the Women's Circus.
Well done to everyone involved. I look forward in taking part in a bigger and better festival next year. I have worn a tie in tribute to the festival, bringing some of the Festival of Colour to our parliament.
Mr Perrett: I can't hear you over that tie.
Mr WATTS: I encourage everyone in Melbourne's west to get behind it. It is a loud tie, but it sends a strong message.
Canning Electorate: Australian Football League
Mr HASTIE (Canning) (13:44): As the footy season starts I rise to acknowledge the men and women of Canning who put Peel footy on the map in 2016. I would like to start with the Peel Thunder league team, who last year clinched victory from the jaws of two-time premiers the Subiaco Lions. The game was hard-fought by both teams but Peel blitzed the Lions in the last quarter to bring home a 23-point win. Meanwhile, the Peel Thunderbirds have been outstanding in both the seniors and youth competitions. The senior women's team made a preliminary final, while the youth took out a back-to-back premiership, remaining undefeated and making them the most successful footy team in the state. A number of these women have since been drafted to the Dockers' AFL women's team, which is a great historical achievement. One woman from the Canning electorate, Sabrina Frederick-Traub, was picked up by the Brisbane Lions as a marquee player and just played in her first AFL Women's grand final.
Congratulations to all players in Peel. I look forward to watching another year of stellar footy down at Bendigo Bank Stadium. I hope that both the Peel Thunder and the Thunderbirds win a premiership in 2017.
Brand Electorate: Comet Bay College
Ms MADELEINE KING (Brand) (13:45): A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Comet Bay College and the south of my electorate of Brand, located between the equally beautiful Secret Harbour and Golden Bay. Comet Bay College is an independent public secondary school, which hosts an Australian Rules education program and a Defence Transition Mentor Program, which supports secondary students of Defence Force families as they move through the lives of those who serve and their families, which are understandably challenging because of extended absences and family moves due to the deployments around the country and around the world.
During my visit, I got to speak to a group of year 11 and year 12 Comet Bay students who were studying politics. They were not only studying politics; they were very interested in politics. They were terrific and keen to learn more about the parliament, how it works and the actual work and practice of what we do—or try to do—every day in this place. I explained the extensive system of parliamentary committees, of which I am on five, and assured the students that parliamentarians regularly work together in a bipartisan fashion in the interests of the community.
I would like to thank their teacher Mr Wayne Lanham for letting me into his classroom and I would like to thank Renee, Tamsin, Hannah, Kaitlyn, Chloe, Jet, Claire, Leah, Liam and Jaxon. I want to wish them all the best in their ongoing studies at Comet Bay College and beyond that in vocational education or at university. Thank you for welcoming me into your classroom. There is nothing that you young people of Comet Bay cannot do, so long as you apply yourselves, work hard and pay attention to your education. And do not spend too long at the beach, although it is very tempting in your beautiful part of the world.
Corangamite Electorate: Bluewater Leisure Centre
Ms HENDERSON (Corangamite) (13:46): I was delighted to join hundreds of basketballers in Colac yesterday to celebrate the very first games to be held at the new basketball stadium at Bluewater Leisure Centre. Colac Basketball Association President, Peter Lemke, said that the new three-court stadium is a game changer.
The redeveloped Bluewater centre includes an upgraded swimming pool, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a childcare centre and, now, regional Victoria's best basketball courts, which can also accommodate netball, badminton and other sports. I am very proud that the Australian government is the major funder of this $13.6 million project, contributing $6.58 million. This comes on top of another $2.5 million that our government has provided to Colac Central Reserve—which is also looking amazing and almost ready to be finished—all part of our commitment to young people and to the health and wellbeing of regional communities.
The stadium is shared with the Colac Secondary College, which has access to two courts during school hours, providing a major boost to the school's physical education program. Yesterday, Principal Simon Dewar could not take the smile off his face. After significant delays over the faulty stadium floor, I want to commend Colac Otway Shire for putting the additional money into making sure that this stadium is up and running.
Macquarie Electorate: Huntingdon's Disease
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (13:48): At the weekend, I had the pleasure of joining around 100 women and a few men at Windsor bowling club to raise funds for research into Huntington's Disease at a High Tea for HD. Amidst champagne, scones and slices, there were tears as well as laughter to raise awareness about the disease and do something practical. I am wearing the ribbon and wristband that were there on the day with the HD colours.
There were many people involved in such a successful event, with Kez Fitzpatrick, Kiarnie Thomas and Leanne Epps three of the driving forces. What united them was the experience of their sister, mum and friend Karen Thomas who explained that she was diagnosed with Huntington's at around the age of 30.
Huntington's is caused by a defective gene, which results in the gradual destruction of neurons. The brain cells that affect the body central nervous system start to die and symptoms like twitching, clumsiness, short-term memory loss, depression and less ability to organise will develop. Later the symptoms will be debilitating, with walking, speech, swallowing and other basic tasks very difficult to do. The defective gene can be passed from one generation to the next. If a parent has the gene, the child has a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting it.
Clearly, we need to learn more about this disease. There is now a test for the gene, but, even so, there is no treatment that can stop, slow or reverse the course of HD. For the sake of those who live with Huntington's, we need to be serious about doing more.
Cayzer, Dr Bill
Mr HOGAN (Page) (13:49): Today, I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr Bill Cayzer. Dr Cayzer moved to Grafton for what was to be a five-year stint after he graduated from the University of Sydney 37 years ago. This Friday, Dr Cayzer will retire from the South Grafton Medical Centre after treating generations of families in Grafton. He has, obviously, seen many changes and the medical profession, including changes to his once 100 hours per week.
He is also committed to his family: Jenny, his wife, and daughters Anne-Marie, Laura, Ashly and son Nigel. Dr Cayzer also help Jenny design and put into production a product called Fly LegsUp—a unique device that allows long-haul air travellers to travel in greater comfort and helps to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis.
In retirement, Dr Cayzer is looking forward to rekindling his love of the piano and wants to also take up the trombone, as well as some well-earned travel time. Dr Cayzer, thank you for your devoted services to the Grafton community over the last 37 years and I know I, on behalf of the whole community, wish you well in retirement.
Lalor Electorate: Featherbrook College
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (13:51): I recently had the pleasure of visiting Featherbrook prep to 9 college in my electorate. This is a brand-new school in the electorate. I was invited to discuss democracy and Australia's political process. It is always an honour to speak to students about the role of government. I firmly believe that, if students are taught to be active participants in the political process, the community and the country will be better for it.
In my part of the world, there are many suburbs and housing estates that did not exist 10 to 15 years ago. Featherbrook prep to 9 college is in Point Cook, which now boasts a population of 40,000 and did not exist 15 years ago. Families have only recently moved in and are beginning to establish their cultures. The work of building community is difficult. It will be up to the young people in my electorate to actively build the type of community they want to live in. That is why it is important that these students not only understand politics but know that their local members are accessible and approachable. This is integral to them having trust in political process.
I want to thank Kerry Clayton, the principal, for the kind invitation and the student leaders in this brand-new school for spending time with me that afternoon: Manasvi, Stavriana, Madison, Teaokatoa, Gina, Karthik, Logan, Neo, Lika and Tiarnan. I wish you well in your studies, I wish you well in the leadership of your wonderful new school and good luck in building the community that you all envisage.
Petrie Electorate: Bounty Boulevard State School
Mr HOWARTH (Petrie) (13:52): I have great news on an outstanding example of putting politics aside and pulling together for the common good. The House may recall my calls in February for Queensland's education minister Kate Jones to kick the can and fund a hall for Bounty Boulevard State School in North Lakes, the biggest state primary school in Queensland. It followed two letters to the minister urging her support. To her credit, Mr Jones has responded to lobbying by myself and, more recently, the state member for Murrumba, providing a $5 million capital works grant that should see the hall completed before the year is out.
A special thanks goes to—as is often the case—an incredibly hardworking P&C. Congratulations to school principal Paul McSwiney, who has been an incredible advocate for his school. I spoke with Paul earlier this morning and he credited current and former P&C chairs Luke Beazley and Stuart Arthur with being instrumental in galvanising the community.
The PM will be pleased to know that I will stop bugging him for additional funds for this school. It is being funded by the state, as rightly it should be. The $1.1 billion in additional federal funding this year to states has been spent wisely in this case. Despite being the largest state primary school in Queensland, Bounty Boulevard is one of the best. I congratulate the parents, teachers and all staff.
Jagajaga Electorate: Eltham High School
Ms MACKLIN (Jagajaga) (13:54): Congratulations to everyone at Eltham High School for your participation in the 'Do it in a Dress' campaign. Over 40 students at the uniform-free Eltham High in my electorate of Jagajaga have been wearing school dresses every day in March to raise money for the educational charity One Girl. Eltham High is currently the leading fundraising school in Australia, having raised over $15,000. It aims to reach 20,000—a fantastic result.
One Girl works with partners who have a long history of delivering high-quality education programs across Africa. The students at Eltham High know about the importance of girls getting an education across the world. They know there are 60 million girls around the globe who are not in school and they know that every extra year of a mother's education reduces the probability of infant mortality.
On Sunday, there was a clean-up at Eltham High. The principal, Vincent Sicari, wore a dress and raised more money for this great cause. I want to congratulate everyone, particularly year 12 students Bri Flint and Ella Leaford, who started the school's participation in the campaign to show their appreciation for the education they receive at Eltham High and to help disadvantaged girls around the world. (Time expired)
Workplace Relations
Mr IRONS (Swan) (13:55): It is a pleasure to follow the member for Jagajaga. I hope to hear some positive news back from her with her contact with the new Western Australian government regarding redress for forgotten Australians. I look forward to that.
I want to bring to the attention of the House a newspaper article that was in the West Australian last week. I am sure the member for Perth will agree that that is something I do not often do—bring the attention of the House to a newspaper article in the West Australian. The article reports that the state WA member of the Cannington and industrial relations minister, Labor's Bill Johnston, shared a microphone in Perth with unionists who declared their support for breaking the law.
The article went on to say that the member told the rally that it was 'ridiculous' to suggest Labor should be embarrassed about its ties to the union movement. Well, I beg to differ. The member's comments and attendance at the rally came after ACTU Secretary Sally McManus made the claim that it was acceptable for unions to break laws that they disagreed with, which she justified by saying the CFMEU broke workplace laws when responding to workplace fatalities.
The Australian published data last week that showed of the 47 matters before the courts involving alleged unlawful industrial action and the right of entry breaches by CFMEU officials, none of them were in direct response to a workplace fatality. To use workplace deaths, which affect so many people, to justify unlawful behaviour is just wrong. I am sure most Western Australians who are law abiding citizens would agree. Despite what the member for Cannington thinks, Labor should be embarrassed about this association. All of WA's law-abiding citizens should reject them and their platform.
Northern Territory
Mr GOSLING (Solomon) (13:57): The people of the Northern Territory are reeling from the news that $2 billion of GST revenue will be ripped from us in the next few years. I cannot overstate the devastating impact this has going to have on our families, our economy, our services, our work in closing the gap and developing the North. The Turnbull government has turned its back on the Top End. Even the Senator for the Northern Territory, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, is nowhere to be seen.
We have had the Senator for Queensland, the minister for northern Australia, claim that the coalition is making direct investments in the NT. Nothing could be further from the truth. Beef roads: three kilometres of bitumen. Yeah, thanks very much! The North Australia Infrastructure Facility and $5 billion to build critical infrastructure through the North: how much is being spent in the Northern Territory? Not one dollar. We are witnessing a serious lack of investment and interest by those opposite for the Northern Territory. Not since 2001-2002 have we seen such a critical lack of investment.
Our local newspaper had some unkind words to say about those opposite, and I will not repeat that one particular word. But what I will say is, 'Get on a plane.' (Time expired)
Small Business
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (13:59): I would like to send a thank you to the small businesses in my electorate of Hughes, especially those in the retail, hospitality and fast-food sectors. As Sir Robert Menzies said in his 'forgotten people' speech:
They are envied by those whose benefits are largely obtained by taxing them. They are not rich enough to have individual power … And yet, as I have said, they are the backbone of the nation.
And as Menzies warned, 'We shall destroy them at our peril.' Mr Speaker, look at what we are doing to them at the moment.
Dodgy union deals selling off penalty rates for union membership have put small business at a distinct competitive disadvantage on the weekend. We have forced Australian retailers to pay GST while giving exemptions to their foreign online retailers. While we talk of certainty for those pocketing benefits under the RET, what about certainty for the small baker, who has invested in his business, when he opens his electricity bill? Now, we have the Hazelwood Power Station closing down, which will push up the prices of electricity for small business even more.
This government understands those issues. We understand how important small business is to our nation. We will continue in this place to work every day to give small business a level playing field so that they can employ people and create wealth in this country.
The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.
CONDOLENCES
Robinson, the Hon. Ian Louis
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:00): I move:
That the House record its deep regret at the death, on 23 March 2017, of the Honourable Ian Louis Robinson, a Member of this House for the Division of Cowper from 1963 to 1984 and Page from 1984 to 1990, place on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service, and tender its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.
Ian Robinson was born in 1925 in Coraki, New South Wales. He was a dairy farmer, a journalist and a company director before he entered politics as a member of the Australian Country Party. Ian's is a record of public service that spans many decades. Before he joined the federal parliament, he had already served 10 years in the New South Wales parliament as the member for Casino. He was elected as the federal member for Cowper in 1963. He went on to serve at the federal level until 1987. He never lost sight of the enormity of his responsibility to the people of Australia. As he put it, the work we do here 'fairly and squarely' determines the future of this Commonwealth. He was a strong voice for his rural and regional community, for roads, for the decentralisation of services and for the state and federal governments working together. He dedicated himself to improving the working relations between the states and the Commonwealth. After his time in state parliament, he had a special insight into both the problems and the possible solutions.
He was a passionate advocate for rural and regional Australia, and was concerned to reverse the drift of people from the bush to the city. Ian knew that when our regions are strong, our nation is strong, and everything he did was to help encourage vibrant regional communities flourish. Apart from a time serving as the Assistant Minister to the Postmaster-General, Ian served on committees looking into areas as diverse as pharmaceutical benefits, Aboriginal affairs and the need for a new and permanent parliament house. After so many years of service to the community of north-eastern New South Wales and to our nation, he will be sorely missed and mourned. I extend on behalf of the House our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Florence, and his family, and the deep appreciation of the nation for his lifetime of public service.
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:02): In 2015 on his 90th birthday Ian Robinson showed a local reporter a black-and-white photograph of the opening of the New South Wales parliament in February 1954. Ian said to the journalist, pointing to that photo, 'Only two of us left.' First, pointing to himself, he said, 'a young skinny kid'. The other, of course, is Queen Elizabeth II. In the New South Wales Clarence Valley the Robinsons were royalty. Ian's grandfather first started farming the land there in 1874. Ian remembered the art of horse-drawn ploughing and the coming of the tractor. He remembered sitting outside on the schoolroom steps, too young to attend class but too eager to wait another year.
Thirty-seven years as a state and federal politician sounds like an arduous innings to many of us, but it was nothing to a dairy farmer. Ian Robinson was a born-and-bred oldschool Nat. He was not tribal or visceral about it. He came from the school of politics that valued courtesy. As he put it, 'We believed you should respect your adversaries, as you would never know when you would need them in the future.' Now, perhaps not altogether altruistic, but a timely and a timeless piece of advice for all of us. On behalf of the party that Ian fought so gamely and for so long, I offer our heartfelt condolences to his beloved wife, Florence, his family and friends. At the end of a long life well lived, may he rest in peace.
Mr HOGAN (Page) (14:04): 66421699 is a Grafton number I have rung or received a call from at least once a week, often more, for many years. It is or was Ian's phone number. I rang it often when I was frustrated; after a conversation with him I always felt calmer. Ian was a kind man and a gentle man—a man, as has been said, who served his community for 37 years. And there are many wonderful legacies that he has left our community, from flood mitigation, aged-care facilities to many more. He was an MP when the Queen visited our region in 1954. He worked with and knew well people who are an integral part of our political history. Robert Menzies and Earle Page were both close colleagues. He recounted a conversation with me once about a chat he had with Arthur Calwell, who felt a young and up-and-coming Gough Whitlam was going to be a problem. He is a personal friend of Doug Anthony and many other legendary political figures.
He died at 1.30 last Thursday. He was just setting himself up for question time. Given the quality of some of the questions, maybe it was better he missed it! Life, like it does though, threw him many challenges at him as well as others. His first wife, Cynthia, died of meningococcal very suddenly in 1989. His only child, Scott, tragically took his own life a number of years later. But from every dark cloud, as we know, is a silver lining, and Ian's silver lining was his second wife, Florence. They have been or were married for close to 20 years, and I know she misses him already. He loved the Nationals, he loved the Clarence Valley and he loved this great nation. May he rest in peace.
Mr JOYCE (New England—Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) (14:06): Mr Speaker, I thank you for allowing me this brief summation of the life of Ian Louis Robinson, dairy farmer. I will try not to add to the comments that have already been made, but all of us know that through our life here the average term of a politician is roundabout seven years. He was in this job for 37 years between state and federal politics, which, if nothing else, gives a sense that the community must have believed that he was a person worth electing. As the Leader of the Opposition said, his approach to politics was one of working with people because he always believed that that is the way you get a lot more done for your community.
One of his great ambitions was to upgrade roads in his area. In his time he called for 100 million pounds to be spent on local road infrastructure. That is around $2.7 billion in today's money. You can ask what the purpose of that its. Well, today we have the $3.2 billion Roads to Recovery Program, so some of these sentiments continue on through the ages.
He knew every leader of the National Party, except Senator William J McWilliams from Tasmania—the first. That gave him the capacity to watch question time with a real process of observation and experience, suggesting where people had their strengths but predominantly suggesting where they may have their weaknesses.
He was also a great advocate for decentralisation, all the time saying that if you want to get people out into regional areas you have to have a positive government program to do it. Doug Anthony always felt a sense of guilt that he had not appointed him to higher office, beyond his assistant ministry. He was one who, nonetheless knowing that his good friend Doug Anthony had the capacity to appoint him to a higher ministry but had not, he still remained incredibly close and good friends with Doug Anthony. This gives you a sense of the maturity of the person, who might have had his ambitions but also had the maturity, and was a strong enough team player, to say 'That is my lot and that is what I will do.'
To his wife we offer our condolences and our prayers. Obviously, he outlived his first wife, whom he loved. He was blessed, having been married twice and loving both dearly and closely. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.
The SPEAKER: As a mark of respect I invite honourable members to rise in their places.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
The SPEAKER: I thank the House.
Debate adjourned.
Reference to Federation Chamber
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Industry) (14:09): by leave—I move:
That the resumption of debate on the Prime Minister's motion of condolence in connection with the death of the Hon. Ian Louis Robinson be referred to the Federation Chamber.
Question agreed to.
STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE
Cyclone Debbie
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:10): I rise to speak to the people of Far North Queensland, who are facing some very challenging and dangerous days ahead. Tropical Cyclone Debbie is likely to particularly affect the people of the electorates of Dawson and Herbert. It appears that the severe weather has already claimed a life. Police have confirmed that strong winds contributed to a car crash that killed a tourist near Proserpine this morning. Tropical Cyclone Debbie is expected to intensify into a severe category 4 cyclone before making landfall between Townsville and Proserpine around 8am tomorrow morning. The region is already experiencing winds of up to 100 kilometres an hour along the coast and the wind strength will continue to increase through the day. There has been up to 50 millimetres of rain along the coast and this will continue today and tomorrow.
Federal and Queensland authorities are preparing for the onset of a cyclone. The Australian Defence Force is pre-positioning assets ready for the cyclone, including HMAS Choules, to assist in the response. Our emergency services are the best in the world in preparing for and responding to natural disasters. Our message to the people of the region facing the cyclone is to please heed their advice. Evacuation orders are already in place for parts of the Burdekin Shire Council and the Whitsunday Regional Council. For those in the path of Tropical Cyclone Debbie, please take care and stay safe. If you have received an official evacuation order you and your family must leave home immediately. Seek shelter with friends and family who are inland or on higher ground. If you decide to shelter at home make sure you are prepared. Have your emergency kit ready and listen to the radio for cyclone updates. Check on your neighbours and vulnerable friends and family. Help them get to an evacuation centre. With the forecast of very heavy rain in the coming days, do not drive through floodwaters. Remember, if it is flooded, forget it.
To all the police and other emergency workers—volunteers and full-time emergency service workers who give up their time and courageously put their own lives at risk and will coordinate this response, together with the ADF—we say thank you for your services. Your selflessness, your commitment, your tireless dedication to your fellow Australians is the very best of the Australian spirit. Time and time again Australians show grace under pressure, bravery in the face of danger and rally to help each other without a second thought. These virtues will be on display over the next few days, where Australians face the worst that nature can throw at us. I have no doubt—and I am sure I speak on behalf of all members of this House—the people of Far North Queensland will face the storm with courage and resilience, and the emergency workers there and the members of the ADF who are there will pull together, as Australians always do, to meet the challenge and recover from the impact after the storm has passed.
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): Thank you, Prime Minister, for your words. I wish to say to Australians listening to question time today that despite the cut and thrust of the next hour all of us will be thinking of Queensland and what it is undergoing in the coming days. From Townsville, in particular, to Mackay—household names like Ayr, Bowen, Proserpine, and Hamilton and Magnetic Islands and all the other islands—we are thinking of them today. I want to acknowledge the member for Herbert, Cathy O'Toole, who has taken leave from this place to be with her community. I spoke to her just before question time. She certainly informs me that in her opinion everything that ought to be in place is in place, from the Navy to the RAAF to the Army, local government and state. She said they are doing a mighty job. Indeed, no doubt all Queenslanders in the affected areas are.
Queenslanders are a practical people, and they are all too familiar with facing natural disasters. But every cyclone is different and unpredictable. So all of us strongly urge everyone in affected areas to pay attention to the warnings and to listen to the authorities, as the Prime Minister has outlined. If you have been told to evacuate, do not delay. If you are staying put, use the time to prepare. Have the first-aid kit and the water and the other essential supplies ready. Please be good neighbours. Check to see whether older residents need help. Charge your phones while the power is on. Make sure your pets are safe inside. But, most of all, look after each other and stay safe.
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (14:15): I would like to add to what the two previous speakers have said here. The mayor of Newcastle rang me after Cyclone Larry and said, 'Your real problems will set in in two years time', and I would like everyone in the parliament to understand that I found that to be extremely true. People took terrible punishment at the time and, as the Prime Minister said, showed great resilience and courage in the face of great tragedy. But two years later very serious problems set in for us. So I would just like to thank both the leaders but also wanted to add that as one of the areas also under threat here.
Mr CHRISTENSEN (Dawson) (14:16): I wish to briefly comment and thank the Prime Minister and opposition leader. It looks as though the eye of the cyclone will cross tomorrow morning in my electorate perhaps somewhere between Ayr and Mackay. It is tracking further south. I have to say that local mayors with whom I have been in contact over the past 24 hours have been particularly gracious of the support from the federal government in terms of the Defence Force deployments. That is very pleasing to see. All we can say is that it is in the hands of God at the moment as to what happens. We can only hope and pray that either the cyclone changes course or the damage is at least as it can be.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Workplace Relations
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is the Prime Minister looking after big business with a nearly $50 billion tax handout while doing nothing to stop nearly 700,000 workers having their pay cut?
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:17): The Leader of the Opposition has been paying visits to Australian businesses in recent times—Velo Cycles, Leussink Engineering—all businesses that desperately need a tax cut, desperately need some help to make more investments, to do better, to ensure that they can employ more Australians. They know that to have more jobs you need more investment. And indeed that was what the Leader of the Opposition used to say. Remember? He gave a number of very powerful speeches in this House when Labor was in government, and he said that a cut in company taxes, which he was arguing for—
Mr Bowen interjecting—
Mr TURNBULL: I hear an interjection from the member for McMahon. He wrote a book about it.
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr TURNBULL: Look, I'll get to you, Sunshine. I'll get to you; just hang on. So, first we have the Leader of the Opposition. He said: 'A cut in company tax will deliver more investment, more productivity, more employment' and was then followed by the member for McMahon. Not limited to speakers in the chamber, he wrote a book. Volumes of it can be found in any good bookstore where remaindering occurs! It is there, piled up, next to the Kung Fu cookbook, in colour. It is all there, the book by the member for McMahon. And he argues for cutting company tax.
Right across the board, they also argued for it, and they were following in the footsteps of the great Paul Keating. And then of course, when we get to the Fair Work Commission—and they all defended the fact that they established it and they put everybody on it—it gave them a reference on penalty rates. They had committed again and again that they would back it in. The Leader of the Opposition pledged not once, not twice but three times on Neil Mitchell's program on 3AW: 'I will back the Fair Work Commission's decision, even if it results in a reduction in Sunday penalty rates.' Oh yes, he said to the people of Melbourne, he was absolutely committed.
And what has the Fair Work Commission, established by the Labor Party, done? The Fair Work Commission—the personnel chosen by the Labor Party, the reference written by the Labor Party—has considered all of the evidence that it has had and has concluded that bringing Sunday penalty rates closer to Saturday rates will result in more businesses offering more employment to more Australians. It is the Fair Work Commission that has decided to back small business. It is the Labor Party that is abandoning small business.
Energy
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (14:20): My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the action the government is taking, including ordering the ACCC to review electricity prices, to ensure that energy is reliable and affordable? How will these measures benefit households and businesses of Australia, including in my electorate of Forde?
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:22): I thank the honourable member for his question. The businesses and the families in the honourable member's electorate and in the electorate of every honourable member in this House depend upon secure and affordable electricity. It is the lifeblood of our economy. We need it at every level of our business. Every part of our lives depends on secure and affordable electricity.
We are seeing today an extraordinary combination of failed Labor policies that are driving electricity prices up and driving reliability down. During the six years of the Labor government, household electricity prices went up by 100 per cent. They then declined with the abolition of the carbon tax, and now they are rising again, and we are taking action. We are setting out to ensure that the gas supply—
Mr Bowen interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for McMahon.
Mr TURNBULL: is secure. We have got a commitment from the gas producers—because, again, Labor policy has made gas scarce. The Victorian government's is the latest example of energy recklessness. The Victorian government has allowed the huge Hazelwood Power Station to close, tripling the royalty on brown coal; doing nothing—
Mr Champion interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Wakefield.
Mr TURNBULL: to provide the backup or the storage required to replace it, or an alternative generator; they have done nothing except ban the exploration for and development of gas in Victoria—gas, of course, being the fuel that we were supposed to be transitioning to, but of course it is not affordable.
We have seen these rises in electricity prices. We have seen the criticism of the way in which the retail market is operating, particularly in Victoria, and the Treasurer has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the consumers' defender, to investigate this move in retail prices, and they will thoroughly investigate that, and they will give us, using their compulsory powers, the information we need to ensure that we protect Australian families, Australian businesses and Australian jobs.
Our energy policy is based on economics and engineering. We are providing the backup. We are defending the market. We are backing storage. We are about to embark on the largest storage project in our history, and we are making sure the consumer watchdog is there, protecting Australian families from rip-offs in the electricity market. We are getting on with the job. Labor is standing in the way of affordable and reliable electricity.
The SPEAKER: I think it is a good time to remind members on both sides: I will not continually keep warning them, particularly if they have a track record. The member for Wakefield is warned, as is the member for McMahon.
Workplace Relations
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): My question is to the Prime Minister. In question time last Thursday, the Prime Minister refused to say whether his submission would ask the Fair Work Commission not to implement the penalty rates decision. Can the Prime Minister advise whether the government took any action at all in its submission to stop workers from having their pay cut?
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:24): The government defends the independent umpire. The government believes that an independent umpire should set wages and conditions. We defend the Fair Work Commission. We respect their judgement. We respect their investigation. We defend the independent umpire, which was an article of faith for the Labor Party for 120 years.
It is not just the Leader of the Opposition who has defended the independent umpire. That other tribune of the workers, that other populist hero, the member for Gorton, said only two years ago: 'These questions would be best left to the independent umpire.' That is what he said. Now he is denouncing the Fair Work Commission. He must be ringing up all the time, apologising to all his union mates who sit on it! But anyway, he is denouncing it now. They defended the independent umpire.
And the grounds of the independent umpire were absolutely sound. They heard the evidence, they listened to the submissions and they concluded there would be more jobs and more businesses open on Sunday if they brought Sunday rates closer to Saturday rates. That was the decision.
And you would have to ask: what was the Leader of the Opposition thinking when he started the inquiry? Did he think the Fair Work Commission was going to increase Sunday penalty rates? I do not think so. He knew exactly what he was doing. He cannot be trusted—one backflip after the other; no integrity; no consistency from that Leader of the Opposition.
Energy
Ms FLINT (Boothby) (14:26): My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the government's efforts to drive down energy costs for hardworking Australians and their families? How is the government acting to ensure that Australia has a competitive and transparent energy market that delivers reliable and affordable energy to consumers?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (14:26): Thank you—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Hunter is warned.
Mr MORRISON: I thank the member for Boothby for her question. She knows what it is like to live in a state where the state government cannot keep the lights on. She knows that full well; hence, her keen interest to make sure that Australian households and Australian businesses can benefit from the policies of this government, which is doing everything it can to ensure we put downward pressure on upward increases in electricity prices.
Under the Labor Party, when they were in government, electricity prices doubled under those opposite. And, during Labor's time in government, electricity prices were increasing at an average rate, annually, of 12½ per cent per year.
Under the coalition, the average annual rate of growth of electricity prices is less than 0.5 per cent. What that means is: under Labor's policies, electricity prices increased more than 25 times greater than is occurring under this side. And our record is to keep these prices down and to do everything in our power to ensure we can.
That is why we are acting on gas supplies. That is why the Prime Minister has called in the gas suppliers to ensure that we can have the certainty of the supply of gas during peak periods. It is why the minister for energy has been acting on competition reforms and regulatory reforms to ensure that, whether it is on the pipelines or gas issues, these are being addressed. It is why this government is acting on energy storage with projects like Snowy 2 or Cultana or projects of that nature.
And it is why today I have tasked the ACCC with prising open the books of electricity retailers to ensure that Australian consumers, families, households and businesses are going to get a fair deal. This process has already proved its worth, with the east-coast gas-supply-market study, which was undertaken by the ACCC, which this government is now acting on the findings of. So the ACCC have demonstrated their worthiness and their skills and experience in being able to pinpoint the issues so that this government can take further action to put downward pressure on electricity prices. They will report back with an interim report within six months, and the final report will be delivered by 30 June next year.
This is in stark contrast to what the Labor Party did when they were in government and what they were trying to do. They said they would do something about the cost of living, and the shadow Treasurer then and now, and the minister responsible then, came up with—you remember it—Grocery Watch, and he came up with Fuel Watch! And, having huffed and puffed about controlling prices, he dropped them, some $20 million later and six months afterwards—not because there was no legislation; he just knew they were a complete failure, as the Labor Party's policies were on all these issues when they were in government.
Workplace Relations
Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (Gorton) (14:29): My question is to the Prime Minister. On Friday, Labor made a submission to the Fair Work Commission, including opposing any move to review and cut the penalty rates of 84,000 workers in the hairdressing and beauty industry. Why won't the Prime Minister admit to the House and to the Australian people that he did absolutely nothing to protect the penalty rates of hairdressers and beauticians?
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:30): I thank the honourable member for his question. I have already referred to the way in which the honourable member defended the independence of the Fair Work Commission and in fact extolled it. The reality is that the honourable members opposite in their focus on workers today should have regards for the 450 workers at Hazelwood who are going to lose their jobs and they should be paying attention to that. We, on the other hand, are providing over $40 million in funding to support enterprise, development, new jobs, new opportunities in the Gippsland area, and the members for Gippsland and McMillan have been working with the government to ensure that that community, which is being hard hit, is being provided with support. What we are also doing is spending $600 million on infrastructure through those areas. But you can see the member opposite has no interest in those workers—none at all.
Mr Brendan O'Connor: Mr Speaker—
The SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will resume his seat.
Ms Plibersek interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Sydney will cease interjecting. Has the Prime Minister concluded his answer? The Prime Minister has concluded his answer. The member for Gorton will resume his seat.
Honourable members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Members on both sides will cease interjecting; otherwise, they will have an early exit from question time. The member for Braddon is warned.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
The SPEAKER (14:32): I inform the House that we have present on the floor of the chamber this afternoon His Excellency Mr Woo, the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea. On behalf of the House, I extend a very warm welcome to you here today.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
The SPEAKER: In the gallery, we also have present the former member for Solomon, Natasha Griggs. Welcome to question time.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Workplace Relations
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (14:32): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment. The LNP issued 35,000 457 visas. The ALP made it 165,000. Meat processing giant AMH protested that their competitors are paying 457s 30 per cent below the award. TWU revelations showed Sydney Airport workers rostered on three-hour continuous shifts sleeping next to baggage carousels on dirty concrete floors abounding with rat droppings, dirt and mites. In six months, there have been 12 deaths on construction sites. What has been the government's only reaction? A tax upon the protective bulwarks, the CFMEU. Surely the government's time would be better spent targeting CEOs' obscene pay levels instead of pay and conditions for hardworking Australians.
The SPEAKER: I am pondering whether there was actually a question there.
Mr Katter: I wanted to seek leave to table—
The SPEAKER: The member for Kennedy has had his 45 seconds; he is not getting 90, I can assure the House of that. The Leader of the House can address the substance of the question, if he would like.
Mr Katter interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Kennedy does not have the call. He will resume his seat.
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Industry) (14:34): I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. Having been here for 24 years, like the member for Kennedy, I have learnt to be able to interpret much of what the member for Kennedy has said over that almost quarter of a century. I think the gist of the member for Kennedy's question is that governments should put the conditions, the safety and the pay of workers foremost in their decision-making process. The second part of his question was that the CFMEU is the bulwark of our protections in terms of these kinds of issues in the workplace.
Ms Burney interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Barton will cease interjecting.
Mr PYNE: In terms of the first part of his question, I think that most members in this House would agree that one of the primary responsibilities of any government is to look after workers' safety, to look after their conditions and to look after their pay. That is why this government has taken the necessary actions through building up the economy, through the creation of jobs and through putting in place the architecture to build the pay and conditions of workers every day. That is what the Treasurer does and that is what Senator Cash does in the Senate as the Minister for Employment. I can reassure the member for Kennedy that the Prime Minister and his government are absolutely committed to taking care of the conditions and the safety of workers in their workplaces.
In terms of the second part of the member for Kennedy's question, which was the defence of the CFMEU, on that question I think I have to part company with him, because my view and the view of the government is not that the CFMEU is the bulwark of our protections in terms of the workplace. In fact, the Heydon royal commission made it absolutely clear that the CFMEU is one of the major problems in the construction sector. The Heydon royal commission said that they had a low regard for both civil and criminal laws in the workplace and that they did not believe the rule of law applied to them. Justice Heydon recommended the establishment of an independent authority in order to restore the rule of law to the workplace. That is why we introduced and passed the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation, that is why we introduced and passed the Registered Organisations Commission legislation and that is why we are introducing and will soon pass through the House of Representatives the Fair Work Amendment (Corrupting Benefits) Bill 2017—because this legislation, working with the ABCC and the ROC, will ensure that workers are placed first and foremost, not dodgy union leaders and not business people, for that matter, who fall for being shook down by unions like the CFMEU. We certainly do support the member for Kennedy's intentions in support of workers and their safety, but we certainly do not agree with him that the answer to that is the CFMEU.
Forestry Industry
Mr BROAD (Mallee) (14:36): My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on what action the government has taken to secure the future of 250 employees at the Heyfield timber mill? Is the minister aware of any threats to the jobs of hardworking regional Australians?
Mr JOYCE (New England—Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) (14:37): I thank the honourable member for his question and note the concern that is starting to become ever-escalated in Victoria about the threat to the timber industry and the hardworking men and women in that industry. They want to know who in Canberra is actually going to start standing up for them. I am glad that we are. We are standing up for these working men and women.
I know the concerns that the member for Gippsland has in regard to this, making sure he stands up for these forestry workers. I know the concerns the member for Murray has in standing up for these forestry workers. I know the concerns the member for Mallee has in standing up for these forestry workers. I know the concerns the member for Macmillan has in standing up for these forestry workers. There could be people in other regional seats who could be standing up for these forestry workers. I know it is incredibly important to stand up for these forestry workers.
We have to protect the dignity of these people and make sure they have a job. It is very important that we do not put possums before people. It is very important that we stand up for these people. It is very important that you use your time in this chamber to go in to bat for these people—not hide behind other issues and try to avoid this issue. If you did avoid the issue, you would be avoiding the issue like the CFMEU members here. The member for Shortland has never stood up for these workers. The member for Griffith has got herself on Instagram laughing about the issue, laughing about the forestry workers. That is a shame. You should be standing up for them. The member for Gorton should be supporting his brother in standing up for these forestry workers.
It is an issue that the Victorian government could fix. If it was not chasing Leadbetter's possums and votes in St Kilda, it might actually stand up for some of these forestry workers. It might actually stand up for these people. We know that these people who are working are probably some of the people who are doing it toughest. They are probably some of the poorer people in our community with unskilled jobs, jobs in the forests, that have been supporting their families.
It is a shame when the Labor Party no longer represent labourers. It is a shame the Labor Party have given up on labourers, given up on workers. Not once has anybody from the Labor Party come to the dispatch box to try to defend the jobs of working men and women in the forestry industry, an industry that supports 21,000 people. It is in relation to this forestry industry that today we have a call from the Gippsland mayors for immediate action to avert a community catastrophe at Heyfield. It goes on the backburner, because they are true to form. They are not standing up for the workers at Hazelwood either. All of a sudden, the workers at Hazelwood, the workers at Heyfield, are having to rely on other people to stand up for their jobs. These are blue-collar workers who, in the past, would have thought that the Labor Party would go in to bat for them. But they are not. The Labor Party are going in to bat for the Australian Greens. They are going in to bat for people in the corner of the chamber over there who do not want to stand up— (Time expired)
Workplace Relations
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:40): My question is to the Treasurer. The Australia Institute found the decision to cut penalty rates could blow a $650 million hole in the budget over the forward estimates. Has the government modelled the cost to the budget of the decision to cut penalty rates?
Mr Fletcher interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The Minister for Urban Infrastructure will cease interjecting.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (14:40): I thank the member for her question. I had reached for my file on education. I thought the question might have been about education, but it was not. I am happy to address the question that she has raised. The budget each year takes into account all the various parameter estimates that need to be considered to provide the forward estimate forecast, whether it is on revenue or on these other matters, and these will all be considered. I find it interesting that the Labor Party come into this place and walk away from defending the independent commission. I think about history, and I go back to when they were in government and when penalty rates were cut from 200 per cent to 175 per cent. I do not remember the Labor Party at that time saying: 'No. That decision should be reversed, and legislation should be brought in.' When those opposite in the Labor Party were in government and facing the first cut in penalty rates—initiated at that time by the modernisation of the award process—they did not say that then. But there was another opportunity—
The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business on a point of order?
Mr Burke: Yes, on direct relevance. We have let it go for a minute without raising the point of order. The question has no effective preamble, no barb in it. It is asking whether the Treasurer has modelled the cost. It is a very straightforward question, and he should be brought back to the answer.
The SPEAKER: The Treasurer is still on the policy topic. I am listening very closely. The Treasurer is entitled to a preamble. He is on the policy topic, but I will keep listening to him. The Manager of Opposition Business is right that this did not contain a preamble.
Mr MORRISON: As opposed to a preamble, in my answer to the question I said that all the relevant parameters will be considered in the updating and forecast for the budget. That is the normal process, and that is what we will be doing in the normal process. If they wish to review transcripts, I have said similar things in relation to similar questions since the decision was brought down.
Mr Rob Mitchell interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for McEwen is warned!
Mr MORRISON: But I am also asked about penalty rates. When Sunday penalty rates were cut from 200 per cent to 175 per cent, the opposition did nothing. When they were cut from 175 per cent to 150 per cent following a decision of the commission, they did nothing. On this occasion, they decide that they need to intervene in the independent decision of the commission. This shows the Leader of the Opposition is not interested in penalty rates for workers. He is just a cheap opportunist who will run on any issue to run down the economy or anything else just to pursue his shallow political interest.
Energy
Mr RAMSEY (Grey—Government Whip) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Energy. I refer him to the case of O'Leary Walker Wines in the Clare Valley—incidentally, just outside my electorate but in the member for Wakefield's electorate. Their business has seen a 100 per cent rise in the cost of electricity in the last 12 months. Will the minister update the House on the government's action to ensure that hardworking businesses and families receive a more affordable deal for energy? Is the minister aware of any other approaches?
Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Minister for the Environment and Energy) (14:44): I thank the member for Grey for his question and acknowledge his deep concern for the rising electricity prices for those in businesses in his electorate, like Olympic Dam, like Nrystar at Port Pirie and like Arrium at Whyalla. But he is also concerned about the impact of price rises right across his state—like on O'Leary Walker, the winemakers in the Clare Valley. They have seen their electricity prices dramatically increase to $50,000 a year. They have been in business for some 16 years, they employ 12 people and now they are looking at having to spend more than $20,000 on diesel generators, which they say will mean they cannot employ as many people as they otherwise would. That is why we on this side of the House are very focused on significant energy market reforms: trying to get more gas into the domestic market; reduce the price for the transportation of gas; change the LMR process to reign in network costs; to invest record amounts in battery storage particularly for Snowy Hydro 2.0.
Also, today's announcement by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister around the ACCC review is very significant, because retail prices can make up to 25 per cent of the household bill, and it is very opaque. Often, retail prices are bundled in with wholesale prices. We know that the margins are high and that some 50 per cent of customers have not changed suppliers over the last five years, so this will be very important in getting the real facts on the table so we can push real reforms. I am pleased to say to the House that, since the announcement this morning from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, the Energy Users Association of Australia has said:
This ACCC investigation will help clear the air and improve transparency for consumers which is a great outcome.
Energy Consumers Australia has also welcomed the announcement. But what do you think the Labor Party do when we make a good announcement about driving down retail costs? What do you think they do? They put out a press release. The member for Port Adelaide and the underpaid member for Fenner rush out a press release and they quote the Australian Energy Council. Who is the Australian Energy Council? It is the body representing the retailers, and the Energy Council say the following:
Retail electricity markets are working effectively and efficiently.
This is who they are quoting in their press release. After putting up electricity prices by 100 per cent when they were last in office, they are now citing the representative of the retailers against the consumers.
Mr FRYDENBERG: No wonder the member for Port Adelaide is trying not to listen, because he thinks what happened in Adelaide was merely a hiccup. We care about jobs, we care about investment and we are doing all we can to lower the literacy prices.
Taxation
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (14:47): My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that scrapping the deficit levy in the budget will deliver a tax cut of more than $16,000 a year for millionaires? Why does the Prime Minister believe that millionaires deserve a tax cut but retail workers should cop a pay cut of up to $77 every week?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (14:48): I thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond to the member's question. It refers to millionaires.
Mr Khalil interjecting—
Ms Ryan interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The members for Wills and Lalor will leave under 94(a).
The members for Wills and Lalor then left the chamber.
Mr MORRISON: The member asked a question about the deficit levy, which he knows comes in for an income of $180,000—that is the top marginal tax rate. On 3AW on 21 April 2016 Neil Mitchell asked the Leader of the Opposition a question:
Is $180,000 a year rich?
The Leader of the Opposition said:
No, it's not …
But it does not stop there. The hypocrisy of those opposite is amazing. If I look at ABC's Insiders, the shadow Treasurer, talking about the deficit levy, said:
… we don't like this increase in tax … therefore we wouldn't be supporting it … We don't like it and we don't support it.
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Rankin is warned.
Mr MORRISON: He said:
Paul Keating … started the process of reducing those marginal tax rates to make us more competitive as a nation in a globalised world. That's the direction we should be heading in.
Well, the direction that the shadow minister wants to head in is completely the other direction.
Ms Plibersek interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Sydney is warned.
Mr MORRISON: The best one comes down to the shadow Treasurer. Many years ago, when he was talking about the issue of tax cuts, he said:
The other tactic is to portray the Labor Party as being opposed to tax cuts or being opposed to tax cuts for high-income earners. Both of these allegations are untrue … We all like a tax cut. Everybody likes a tax cut. People at the upper end of the income scale like a tax cut, and they deserve a tax cut.
That was from Chris Bowen, now the shadow Treasurer, back in the June 2005. This shadow Treasurer cannot stand up to his own shadow.
Honourable members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Gorton is warned. Members on both sides will cease interjecting. I said at the start of question time I would not keep continually warning members. The member for Lyons was bellowing uncontrollably. He can go back to his office under 94(a), and others who have been warned or who were ejected last week are on similar notice. They are not going to disrupt question time. They were not elected to come here and disrupt the proceedings of the House.
The member for Lyons then left the chamber.
Energy
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Small Business. Will the minister update the House on action the government is taking to protect small businesses from the impact of a costly and unreliable energy supply? What hurdles stand in the way to achieving energy affordability for hardworking Australian small businesses, such as Blu Logistics in Gympie, which has seen its power bill dramatically rise by 60 per cent in the last two years?
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Minister for Small Business) (14:51): I thank the member for Wide Bay for his question. The Wide Bay electorate has more than 13,000 small businesses, and the member knows that it is those small businesses which create jobs and which create opportunities. I visited Gympie in the member's electorate recently and met Tim Jensen of Blu Logistics solutions. Running a fleet of prime movers and stainless steel food-grade tankers, Tim specialises in the collection of and transport of milk and other bulk food-grade liquids. His power prices have increased 60 per cent in the past two years. Tim is running a business connecting farmers with freight movement and families with food throughout five states. What could be more important? But high energy prices are a barrier to Tim's investment.
High energy prices cost jobs. High energy prices stop investment such as Tim's. High energy prices mean small businesses cannot have a go; they cannot grow. That is why this government has a plan to deliver energy security and affordability to small businesses and families who need the confidence that, when they flick the switch, electricity will be available and affordable. That is what this government can and will deliver—for example, through Snowy Hydro mark 2.
Today the government has announced the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the consumer watchdog, will conduct an extensive inquiry into rising power prices. The ACCC will investigate the National Electricity Market and retailer behaviour to ensure that the market is operating competitively. This government understands the cost of ideology in energy. We know it affects people such as Terry and Liz Poulton, small-business people from Dandenong in Victoria who were in the national headlines today. They are considering their business future after a shock electricity bill of more than $4,000 last month. That is up from an average of $1,300 per month, and it has real impacts on their small business. Terry and Liz have a dozen employees, so sky-high prices and empty promises from those opposite mean precious little. They mean very little when retailers announce a 13 per cent price hike in power prices for small businesses after the closure of the Hazelwood. They mean very little when household bills increase by 10 per cent. They mean very little when you are a small business trying to pay workers' wages.
The member for Wide Bay asked about uncertainty in small business. I can tell him that the cost of more than doubling electricity prices is uncertainty. A carbon tax, which those opposite want to reintroduce, creates uncertainty. Citizens' assemblies create uncertainty. Unrealistic renewable energy targets create uncertainty. These are just a handful of the 13 energy policies those opposite have had in eight years. Higher electricity prices for all Australians, that is what those opposite stand for. That is why we are calling in the watchdog. That is why we are delivering a better deal for small businesses and consumers. (Time expired)
Taxation
Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (14:54): My question is to the Treasurer. Is the Treasurer aware that last week he failed on no fewer than 12 occasions to confirm that the entire $50 billion handout to big business would be in his budget this year? Is the Treasurer also aware that over the weekend the Prime Minister did what he could not and confirmed the entire tax cut would be in the budget? Given the Treasurer's clear incompetence, will he now stand down and take a pay cut, instead of inflicting a pay cut on 700,000 Australians?
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (14:54): Later this afternoon the shadow Treasurer will have the opportunity to walk into this parliament and vote for something he says that he has always believed in. He has said:
… it's a Labor thing to have the ambition of reducing company tax, because it promotes investment, creates jobs and drives growth.
He has said:
It is a statement of fact which I agree with.
He agrees with himself. He says:
I have previously said the nation should be aiming for a 25 per cent corporate tax rate.
The Leader of the Opposition has said that reducing the corporate tax rate flows on to workers in the form of higher wages, therefore improving standards of living. That is what he told ACOSS, and he has also said that cutting the company income tax rate leads to more jobs and higher wages.
If they believe in better wages for Australian workers, if they believe in more investment, if they believe in a growing economy, then what they should do this afternoon when this bill is before this chamber is come into this place and vote for it. If they refuse to vote for it, they have exposed not only their hypocrisy but also the shallowness of their thinking and the weakness of their resolve.
Global Security
Mr GOODENOUGH (Moore) (14:56): My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister advise the House of the importance to our region of the fight against ISIS in Iraq in Syria?
Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Minister for Foreign Affairs) (14:56): I thank the member for Moore for his question and note his concern about ISIS, the self-described Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a very dangerous and brutal terrorist organisation. Our objectives in our fight against ISIS remain destroying its base in Iraq and Syria, countering its poisonous and violent ideology, preventing its spread globally and taking away its capacity to carry out terrorist attacks globally and regionally, including in Australia.
Australia is already one of the largest contributors to the fight against ISIS. We have about 1,000 Defence personnel in theatre. In Iraq, they have been training 20,000 Iraqi security force personnel, including police, who are involved in the operations to take back Mosul from ISIS. In Syria, the RAAF have carried out about 2,000 missions against ISIS strongholds.
Last week I attended the first full meeting of the Global Coalition to counter ISIS. A total of 68 member countries now form that coalition, which was designed to accelerate the coalition efforts to defeat ISIS. Amongst the outcomes from that meeting, the Global Coalition confirmed that it is necessary for us to counter the ideology and the narrative, encourage more voices of moderation within Islam and be more politically persuasive to those at risk of radicalisation. It was also acknowledged that more must be done to create economic opportunities and greater political engagement in countries where there are large numbers of young people, in particular, who risk alienation, which we need to prevent.
It was also acknowledged that our region is facing a particularly challenging counterterrorism environment. Islamic extremists have infiltrated the southern Philippines, and last year Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the dangerous terrorist group known as Abu Sayyaf, was declared as an ISIS emir, which means he is the regional commander. The Philippines government is concerned—indeed, President Duterte confirmed—that it is their belief that ISIS may well declare a province of the ISIS caliphate from the Middle East in the southern Philippines. The Australian government has responded with a package of support to promote development and peace in Mindanao and the southern Philippines in particular.
The global coalition is determined to ensure that we defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria and prevent its spread to our region.
Budget
Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (14:59): My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to reports that the Treasurer's colleagues are saying that his job could be on the line if he does not succeed with this year's budget—with one frontbench colleague saying: 'He'll need to perform or he's out.' Is that why the Treasurer is so desperate to pass his $50 billion handout to big business, instead of protecting the penalty rates of ordinary Australians?
The SPEAKER: I have not called the Treasurer. I made the point with fair warning last week that it was not sufficient to ask a question—in this case, I believe, to deliberately ask a question—that is mostly out of order and then at the very end of the question seek to maintain the whole question is in order. In this case, when I rule out the pieces that are out of order, there is nothing to ask the Treasurer. Let me put it in more simple language: you cannot come along with a Holden badge and stick it on a Mazda and say it is a Holden. The question is out of order.
Honourable members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Let me remind members interjecting on me that it is particularly serious.
Asylum Seekers
Mr CREWTHER (Dunkley) (15:01): My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister update the House on the government's efforts to assist persecuted minorities seeking refuge from terrorism in Syria and Iraq? What steps has the government taken to ensure the integrity of the program?
Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) (15:01): I thank the honourable member for his question and I want to say, 'Thank you' to all of the colleagues on this side of the parliament and, indeed, all of the parliament for the support of the government's program in bringing people in through the Refugee and Humanitarian program. I want to pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, and the current Prime Minister for their stewardship of this very important policy. The government has consistently said that one of the dividends of stopping boats would be that we want bring people in the right way and we have done that.
As we have tragically seen in London over the course of the last few days and as we have seen elsewhere around the world, we do need to make sure that the people we are bringing into our country through any migration program are the right people—those people who are going to contribute to our country to build a new life here, to educate their children, to make sure they provide a better future for generations that would never have been imagined previously. We have to do that as opposed to bringing in people who may seek to do harm to our fellow Australians and so we have taken very seriously the objective to scrutinise each and every one of the applicants within this intake. We have given ourselves the very best chance to make sure that all of these people who are coming in under the Syrian and Iraqi program will contribute to our country and will be great Australians.
I can inform the House that in an unprecedented attempt to scrutinise through biometric testing and in collaboration with our five eyes partners we have looked at each and every application and we have excluded 30 or so applicants who have had adverse biometric matches on national security grounds. A number of individuals have also received an adverse security assessment. None of these people have travelled to our country; none ever will. The reality is that we have been able to save lives through this program. I want to pay tribute to those people in our offices—particularly in Amman, in Beirut, in Ankara and Dubai—and those staff who went with the assistance of security officials into the northern part of Iraq, a very dangerous zone, to rescue Yazidi women from that zone. Some of the stories relayed to us are absolutely horrific—absolutely horrific. As Australians all of us should stand proud not only with the success we have presided over in this program but with how all of these people will contribute in a positive way to our country into the future. That is what our measured and successful migration program is about. The Australian public have demonstrated over a long period of time that, if governments of the day have their migration programs in check, they will support these investments into the humanitarian program.
Workplace Relations
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (15:04): My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is giving a $50 billion handout to big business and a tax cut for millionaires on 1 July, while supporting pay cuts for nearly 700,000 Australians.
Government members interjecting—
The SPEAKER: Members on my right.
Mr SHORTEN: Why does the Prime Minister have a plan for big business but always has an excuse to do nothing for Australian workers and their penalty rates?
The SPEAKER: The minister for immigration and the Treasurer, the Prime Minister has the call.
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (15:05): The plan for big business that the Leader of the Opposition had was taking secret payments to the AWU. That is what he had. Let's go through a few of them. He says he is proud of his time as a union leader—
Honourable members interjecting—
Mr TURNBULL: There he is—you can't take it, can you?
The SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will resume his seat. Members on my right! The member for Corangamite! The Manager of Opposition Business. On a point of order?
Mr Burke: On a point of order—on reflection on members.
The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. It might assist her own side, if she is not concerned about the House, for the member for Lindsay to cease interjecting. I am listening very carefully to the Prime Minister's words. So far from what I have heard, he has referred to events—I was trying to listen through what was loud interjections on both sides. Let me assist the House by saying this: there was a statement made in answer to one of the questions last week which on reflection I felt I should have asked to be withdrawn. I have asked other things to be withdrawn since. It would assist me if members do not interject in such a fashion that I am prevented from hearing. I want to keep hearing the Prime Minister and I am listening very closely. The Prime Minister knows that he cannot reflect on members.
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (15:07): The Leader of the Opposition talks about plans for big business and dealings with big business. Here are some details of payments by big business which were kept secret from the members of the Australian Workers' Union and were paid to the Australian Workers' Union. Thiess John Holland—$300,000 while they built the Eastlink freeway. The AWU issued false invoices to disguise the payments as training—
Ms Plibersek interjecting—
The SPEAKER: The member for Sydney has been warned.
Mr TURNBULL: back strain research, forum tickets and conference sponsorships. None of these benefits were provided. ACI Operations, another example of big business, paid the AWU in Victoria half a million dollars while workers were laid off at the Spotswood glass manufacturing plant. The AWU invoiced the payments as paid education leave, but the payments were used to pay off a union loan on its premises. And what about Chiquita Mushrooms? That is a very famous one. It paid the AWU $24,000. Again, the AWU did not trouble their members with any details of these payments from big business. What was that invoiced as? Again, paid education leave. You have to hand it to the AWU—they are absolutely committed to education, at least on all those dodgy invoices. What about Unibilt, who made a campaign donation of $32,000 to the member for Maribyrnong in 2007, when he was running for parliament, at the same time as the company was negotiating an enterprise agreement with the union of which he was the national secretary?
We are not going to take lectures from the Labor Party about dealings with big business. They say they are proud of the Leader of the Opposition's record as a union leader. It is one secret payment after another. If he was so proud of those payments, why doesn't he tell the world? Why doesn't he tell us what they were really for? We know they were not for the matters set out on the invoices. Let him tell us the story. He has a great barrister there, the member for Isaacs. He says he is especially proud of the Leader of the Opposition. He could get him to make a case, powerful advocate that he is. He could sell anything. We do not care who presents the facts, but it is about time that Labor told the truth about these secret payments from big business. (Time expired)
Workplace Relations
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (15:09): My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry representing the Minister for Employment. Will the minister inform the House why it is important to outlaw secret payments between big unions and big business? Is the minister aware of any examples where the integrity of enterprise bargaining agreements has been undermined by the behaviour of unions and some businesses?
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Industry) (15:10): I thank the member for Fisher for his question. He, like every member on this side of the House, knows that we must end the corrupting benefits in the industrial relations system that have been infecting the relationship between business and the unions for decades. That was identified by the Heydon royal commission. This government is implementing the recommendation to outlaw corrupting benefits and to make the payment of them a criminal act. I know that the member for Fisher is very keen on industrial relations reform. He, like every member on this side of the House, wants to see that change come about.
He asked me for a few examples. There are a few examples. The Prime Minister went through a few just then. Visy Industries, for example—$200,000 to the AWU in 40 secret payments, while they were negotiating six enterprise business agreements with the AWU. The Leader of the Opposition was the secretary at the time, national then state. Alcoa—$90,000 to the AWU across eight secret payments while they were negotiating five enterprise business agreements. Sugar Australia—$16½ thousand to the AWU while they were negotiating three enterprise business agreements. It goes on and on—business after business negotiating enterprise business agreements with the AWU while the Leader of the Opposition was the state or national secretary.
The Leader of the Opposition would have us believe that this was all the most amazing coincidence, the most remarkable coincidence, and there was no connection between the workers' rights being sold down the river under enterprise business agreements while secret payments were being made by those businesses to the Australian Workers' Union. It reminds me of that wonderful movie, Muriel's Wedding. 'Deidre Chambers—what a coincidence! Make some room for Deidre Chambers, family, so she can come and join us.' You can just imagine the Alcoa executives at the Bamboo House in Little Bourke Street—we have been there many times—enjoying themselves between their shark fin soup and their duck pancakes, discussing their enterprise business agreements and their relationship with the union, and who should come into the restaurant? Bill Shorten—what a coincidence!
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the House will refer to members by their correct titles.
Mr PYNE: Of course, Mr Speaker—the Leader of the Opposition. They probably would not have called him that, but nevertheless. Their favourite union leader came into the restaurant. 'Make some room, fellers, for the Leader of the Opposition!'—while we discuss our enterprise business agreements and the secret payments that we make to the union to ensure that workers are sold down the river. The AWU has more power in the Victorian Labor Party and this man has more power at the preselections and the state council of Victorian ALP. That is what it was all about, and we are going to keep exposing it.
Taxation
Mr HAMMOND (Perth) (15:13): My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is it that under this Prime Minister companies like James Hardie pay no tax, but workers on award wages end up with a pay cut?
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (15:13): I thank the honourable member for his question. My government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance in a manner that has no precedent. Our multinational tax avoidance legislation went through at the end of 2015. The Labor Party voted against it. Can you believe that? They did not want multinationals to have to pay all the tax they should. The diverted profits tax, which I will ask the Treasurer to speak about now, is one of the most far-reaching multinational tax avoidance measures in any comparable country. It is a bold move, which will look into the affairs of multinational companies and make sure that they pay their tax.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (15:14): As the Prime Minister has said, the diverted profits tax will be voted on in the Senate today. The diverted profits tax bills on the multinational anti-avoidance legislation, which were passed through this chamber and voted against by those opposite, provide a penalty tax to multinationals who seek to shift their profits offshore and not pay their fair share of tax. What we see on the issue of taxation is a Labor Party who say one thing and do another. They say they think companies should pay less tax, but they vote against it. They say they want multinationals to pay their tax, but they vote against it. It is this government that cut personal income taxes for workers in this country—people on average weekly earnings; ordinary time earnings. In our budget, we provided a tax cut to those workers. Some 500,000 people were not going onto the second highest marginal tax rate because this government took action. So when it comes to taxes, we think they should be lower, but we think everybody should be paying them and that is what our legislation does.
The Labor Party talk one game, but when it comes to acting on their convictions they are all at sea, because the Leader of the Opposition is nothing more than a rank opportunist. The Australian people have worked him out. They know he will say whatever, do whatever and switch whatever position he has to. One day, he says he wants to restore penalty rates. The next day, he is doing a deal with big companies to trade away penalty rates. The Leader of the Opposition has been worked out by the Australian people. They know that he cannot be trusted. Those who sit behind him know he cannot be trusted either.
Roads
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Urban Infrastructure. Will the minister update the House on the Turnbull government's significant infrastructure investment in South-East Queensland, including in my electorate of Forde, and how the delivery of projects like the M1 upgrades will support jobs and economic development in South-East Queensland.
Mr FLETCHER (Bradfield—Minister for Urban Infrastructure) (15:17): I thank the member for Forde for this very important question. He is a member who is committed to delivering outcomes for his constituents. Over the weekend, we saw a very significant announcement delivering outcomes for the people of South-East Queensland—over $500 million of infrastructure investment from the Turnbull government and the Queensland government in South-East Queensland and throughout Queensland. The M1 Pacific Motorway will be widened from four lanes to six lanes between Mudgeeraba and Varsity Lakes. The M1 Pacific Motorway intersection with the Gateway Motorway at Eight Mile Plains will be substantially upgraded to reduce that significant bottleneck for southbound motorists. The Mt Lindesay Highway between Browns Plains and Beaudesert will be significantly upgraded and the Walkerston Bypass near Mackay will also be delivered.
There is a lot of credit that needs to go around for these very significant achievements, because there has been advocacy on behalf of the electorate by the member for Forde, who has done a terrific job—a terrific outcome. The member for McPherson has done an extraordinary job in delivering for her electorate. The member for Fadden and the member for Moncrieff have done extraordinary jobs. The member for Wright has done a remarkable job. The South-East Queensland LNP team are delivering for their electorates. Of course, we also need to give credit to the member for Dawson for the Walkerston bypass. The LNP team in Queensland is delivering outcomes. There is a lot of credit to go around, because this is a very significant achievement.
But I will tell you who should not get any credit—it is this lot. This lot deserve no credit. Of course, the shadow minister has the hide of an elephant, so he puts out a media release on Sunday trying to claim credit. You have to read through this entire media release and nowhere do you find the statement, 'Labor committed zero for the Mudgeeraba to Varsity Lakes upgrade.' Nowhere do you find that statement. I think this shadow minister needs to talk to the shadow minister for regional communications. They need some remedial lessons in how to write a media release that tells the truth: 'We committed zero.' Because that is what Labor is good at. There was zero for the Mudgeeraba to Varsity Lakes upgrade. This government, together with the Queensland government, committed over $500 million. This is good news for people who use the M1 every day between the Gold Coast and Brisbane. This is the LNP Queensland team delivering for the people of Queensland. The member for Forde, the member for McPherson and the LNP Queensland team: the Turnbull government delivering.
Mr Turnbull: I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORTS
Report No. 44 of 2016-2017
The SPEAKER (15:20): I present the Auditor-General's performance audit report No. 44 of 2016-17 entitled Army’s workforce management: Department of Defence.
Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.
DOCUMENTS
Presentation
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Industry) (15:20): Documents are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.
BUSINESS
Rearrangement
Mr PYNE (Sturt—Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Industry) (15:20): By leave—I move:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the following from occurring:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the following from occurring:
(1) the Grievance debate scheduled for Tuesday, 28 March 2017 to take place at 6.30 pm on Wednesday, 29 March 2017 and other government business to continue until 7.30 pm on Tuesday;
(2) any variation to this arrangement to be made only by a motion moved by a Minister.
Question agreed to.
BILLS
Farm Household Support Amendment Bill 2017
National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2016
Education and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2017
Returned from Senate
Message received from Senate returning the bills without amendment or request.
COMMITTEES
Public Works Committee
Report
Mr BUCHHOLZ (Wright) (15:21): On behalf of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present the following reports—Referrals made November and December 2016 (2nd report of 2017)and the Eightieth annual report (2016).
Reports made parliamentary papers in accordance with standing order 39(e).
Mr BUCHHOLZ: by leave—On behalf of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present two reports—the committee's second report for the 2017 reporting period and the Eightieth annual report. The second report for 2017 looks at two proposals referred to the committee in November and December of 2016. The first was the relocation and fit-out of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. This involves the fitting out of two buildings at Brindabella Business Park in Canberra and the moving of the Cyber Security Centre from its current location in the Ben Chifley Building into the newly fitted-out buildings. The project cost is estimated at $38.8 million, excluding GST.
The second proposal is for hardening works at the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre. Changes in the detainee cohort have led to the need for hardening works to increase security at Yongah Hill. The project cost estimate is $27.4 million, excluding GST. The committee recommends that the two projects should proceed.
I also present the committee's eightieth annual report, which reports on the committee's activities for the 2016 calendar year. In summary, despite the 2016 election, it was a busy year for the committee. Nine projects were reported on, with a total combined value of more than $1.3 billion. The committee also examined the 66 medium works proposals, with a total value of $371 million.
I would like to thank the committee members for all their hard work during the 2016 year. I would also like to thank the committee from the 44th Parliament, especially the former committee chair, Senator Dean Smith. I thank them for their commitment and their valued contribution. The committee really appreciates it. I would also like to acknowledge the work from those on the other side of the House. The deputy chair of this committee and member for Makin, Tony Zappia, works very collegially with the committee, as do other serving members.
More importantly, I would like to take the opportunity to inform the House of the outstanding work that the secretariat does in this space in building that conduit between the Department of Finance and a myriad of different bodies and agencies that make applications to the Public Works Committee. I want to make particular note of Alison Clegg and Susan Cardell, who served when I first took on the committee as chairman. Both have now moved on to bigger and better things within the department. Thank you, ladies, for the work that you did in a very professional and robust way. I welcome and thank in advance both Pauline Cullen and James Bunce for the work they do in this space helping cut through a myriad of paperwork which could be quite laborious. The amount of work that they do in preparation behind the scenes to make sure that the committee is able to table robust, well-thought-out reports is a credit to the secretariat and to the department. They are sitting in the chamber; I acknowledge both of you today.
I commend the reports to the House.
BILLS
Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr HAMMOND ( Perth ) ( 15:26 ): Prior to the time in which members' 90-second statements began I was taking the House through aspects of the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016. I made the point that the bill as amended will ensure the capacity to refuse to list in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods, or the ARTG, as it is more commonly known, medicinal products that have the potential to undermine Australia's public health efforts. The bill will also require listed medicinal products to only include ingredients that have been approved for use in listed products.
I am pleased that the government has made provisions for these measures in the 2016-2017 budget and out into the forwards. In a time of constrained resources, I am particularly pleased that it is within a sustainable cost recovery model. I understand that $20.4 million over four years has been allocated to approving TGA regulation and that, from the next financial year, the cost recovery mechanism will cover future ongoing costs.
I will now outline to this place what consumer bodies think about this bill. From what I understand, generally , stakeholders such as Medicines Australia, Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, Complementary Medicines Australia and Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association have been supportive of this bill. Given this bill will make it easier for those organisations and the companies they represent to bring the products to market , this, in i t s elf, is unsurprising. Indeed , I would be very concerned if these organisations had come out against it.
As the shadow minister for consumer affairs, I think it is important to also view this bill from the consumers' perspective. I am conscious that there is a balancing exercise here between rapid processing of medicines and devices and safety for consumers and families. We should always be ready to amend rules and put checks and balances in place to ensure that products in Australia are safe and are appropriately risk assessed. Moving towards the risk-based approach foreshadowed in this bill will require the TGA to perform rigorous and best-practice risk assessments.
Dr Martin Whitely, a former member for Bassendean in my electorate and now a researcher with the Health Consumers' Council, made a submission to the Senate committee accepting the benefits of 'streamlining' the TGA's approval processes, but warned that there remains a need for rigorous safety and transparency processes to improve upon the safety and efficacy of medications. Meanwhile, the Consumers' Health Forum of Australia, the national peak body representing the interests of Australian healthcare consumers and those with an interest in health consumer affairs, also supported the government's approach, with their CEO, Leanne Wells, welcoming the fast-tracking of assessments for medical devices and medicines in her response to the minister's announcement of the government's response to the Sansom review last year.
The CHF's chief concern was about cost to consumers. Streamlining of the TGA process will get medicines to market quicker, but many will still be prohibitively expensive until they receive Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme listing. And I know that a number of pharmaceutical companies have also called for so-called parallel consideration of new medications so the TGA and PBS can consider them and approve them concurrently, rather than successively. CHF also stated in September 2016:
CHF is concerned that regulation of complementary medicines, which have been the subject of ongoing controversy concerning questionable advertising, has not been tightened up sufficiently.
We support a simpler pathway to "register" evidence-based complementary medicines this will need more public education to convey the difference between "listed products" which do not have evidence of efficacy, the proposed new approval category of products backed by some evidence and "registered" products which are backed by good evidence of efficacy …
In relation to strengthening post-marketing activity, schedules 8 to 11 in this bill improve the post-market monitoring scheme for medicines. This is important, and includes record-keeping requirements and empowers searching of premises to ensure compliance. Improvements have also been made to rules around recall information, specifically to grounds on which the secretary may require recall actions to be taken, and allowing the secretary to inform the public or specified persons of recall information about goods. It was also good to see powers for the secretary to better manage shortages of goods.
However, as identified by consumer groups, there is room for improvement. Firstly, concerns have been raised by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, including about some strict liability offences—for instance, for health practitioners who do not comply with the notification requirements of the scheme—reversal of the evidential burden of proof in relation to some offences, and impacts on the privilege against self-incrimination. I note that this bill leaves much detail to delegated legislation. Labor referred the bill to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee due to concerns that many changes will be made by regulations that have not yet been drafted. I think too often parliament is tempted to defer too much of its power to delegated legislation. I would say to the minister that the opposition will be closely scrutinising regulations pursuant to this bill. There were issues raised about how conformity assessment bodies will operate. These are essentially third parties who will undertake conformity assessment of devices and their manufacture to ensure they comply with safety principles. The secretary is again able to delegate their powers in a number of areas in the bill. Again, if this delegable power is used to avoid proper scrutiny then it will be cause for significant concern.
As shadow minister for consumer affairs, I am particularly interested in how we continue to monitor safety concerns with therapeutic goods. I would like to make sure that we have a very robust system of post-market safety alerts and post-market recalls, to make sure that safety, quality and marketing issues are identified and, most importantly, resolved quickly. Whilst there are elements of self-regulation within this bill, it must be monitored to make sure that compliance is being enforced. I will end by reiterating this: there is always a balance to be struck between efficiently providing patients and health consumers with therapeutic products that will ameliorate their suffering, and managing the risks inherent in bringing new goods, particularly drugs, to market. Labor will always work to improve outcomes for patients. We will be closely watching the effect of this legislation and the impact it has on health consumers in coming years.
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (15:33): I want to thank all of the members of the House who have spoken on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (2016 Measures No. 1) Bill 2016. In particular I want to note the bipartisan support for this measure—and we appreciate the cooperation of the opposition—and to acknowledge the work of the officials within the Department of Health, including the work of the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Professor John Skerritt, who is in the chamber at this moment. The measures contained in this bill will support the implementation of eight key recommendations of the Expert Review of Medicines and Medical Devices Regulation. These recommendations aim in particular to enable faster access to important new medicines and medical devices for Australian patients, as well as to streamline administration and reduce regulatory burden in several areas.
They come at exactly the moment where the government was able to announce price reductions for 1,100 medicines across Australia on the weekend. Those are 1,100 medicines which will be cheaper for Australian families, and eight new medicines which either are being listed or access is being extended to under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The TGA and the PBAC operate as two steps in the gateway towards the listing of medicines or, in other cases, devices, where there is a different listing process, but those two pathways begin with the TGA, and only on the weekend we saw the incredible outcomes for the Australian people in the cost of living and better access to medicines.
In that context, in relation to this bill some of the streamlined processes—for example, replacing the need for pre-approval with notifications for some variations to products that do not affect product safety—will lower costs to industry and, potentially, consumers through decreased TGA fees. The bill will also enable regulations to be made to allow Australian companies to undertake conformity assessments of medical devices, make it easier for doctors to prescribe to patients unapproved products with a history of safe use, give sponsors of complementary medicines review and appeal rights when decisions are made about proposed new ingredients for listed complementary medicines, and support accelerated access to certain vital and life-saving prescription medicines, which may be available to Australian patients up to three months faster than under the current framework. Three months can make a fundamental difference to either the health of a patient or their prospects going forward.
The reforms in the review cover far-reaching aspects of the regulatory framework for therapeutic goods, including prescription medicines, complementary medicines, medical devices, advertising and enhanced post-market monitoring. In order to realise the benefits to industry and consumers as soon as practicable, the government has committed to a staged approach to implementation over 18 to 24 months, with a second bill covering further reforms expected to be introduced in the 2017 winter sittings. I thank all of those involved, particularly the TGA, officials within the department, and the industry itself. I want to compliment those involved in the medical devices sector, but in particular Medicines Australia and the work of their chair and CEO. They have played a very important role in all of their dealings with government. I thank them, I commend them and I commend this bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Third Reading
Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (15:37): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan) Bill 2016
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
to which the following amendment was moved:
That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"the House declines to give the bill a second reading as the:
(1) Government has failed on fiscal policy, tripling the deficit and increasing net debt by $100 billion, and putting our hard-earned and coveted triple A credit rating at risk;
(2) Prime Minister and the Treasurer have failed to deliver the economic leadership that this country needs and deserves; and
(3) Government's plan to give a $50 billion tax cut to big business is not affordable in the current fiscal and economic circumstances."
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (15:38): I thank members for their contribution to the debate. This measure works to deliver job security, stronger wages, increased investment, and the growth that Australians depend on. It has been now 26 years that Australia has had continuous annual economic growth. In the September quarter of this year, should that growth continue, and we believe it absolutely will, that will be the longest run in economic growth in recorded history. This is an extraordinary achievement of the Australian people.
But you cannot take credit for granted. You cannot just expect that it will continue to turn up year after year, unless you do the things that are necessary to drive that growth. That is what the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan) Bill does. That is what these changes do. These changes to our corporate tax rate will provide the impetus, the opportunity, the encouragement, to coax capital out of its cave, to ensure that businesses are investing their businesses, to support the jobs held within those businesses and the wage increases that will flow from those businesses doing better. You don't get a job in a business that is not open and you do not get a wage rise in a business that is going backwards. These changes are designed to support investment in Australian businesses, because that is what Australian jobs depend on, that is what Australian wages depend on, and that is why they are critical.
Treasury analysis shows that over half the benefits of these arrangements flow through to workers as increases in real wages. Economy-wide modelling undertaken by Treasury suggests a cut in the corporate tax rate to 25 per cent would increase before-tax wages by over one per cent. As the Prime Minister recently stated, full-time workers on average weekly earnings would have an extra $750 in their pockets each and every year if we had a 25 per cent business tax rate today.
The corporate tax cuts are expected to increase business investment by 2.6 per cent and GDP by over one per cent in the long-term. The benefits of a lower company tax rate were outlined in a Treasury working paper released by the government on 3 May 2016. This was supported by independent modelling undertaken by KPMG and Independent Economics. All three studies found the company tax would raise living standards. Modelling released in February by the IMF as part of its article IV review of Australia is also consistent with these estimates. When Australia cut its rate to 30 per cent in 2001 it was below the OECD average corporate tax rate of 32 per cent. At that time there were 19 OECD countries with a higher company tax rate. Now, Australia has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the OECD, above the average corporate tax rate of 25 per cent. Only five OECD companies have a statutory company tax rate that exceeds Australia's 30 per cent rate, and it is going to get worse unless we take action.
The United States, as we know, is already moving to a 15 per cent corporate tax rate. When I met with the Treasury Secretary recently he made it very clear that this was a high priority item for the new US administration, and they will be bypassing us unless we are able to take action to ensure a more competitive tax rate for Australian businesses.
Various countries we compared directly with, such as the UK, Ireland and Singapore, have corporate tax rates well below the OECD average, ranging from between 12½ per cent and 20 per cent. The UK corporate tax rate is currently 20 per cent and they are planning to reduce it to 17 per cent by 2020. Nine other countries we compete with have reduced company tax rates in the last decade, including recently Malaysia, Japan and Vietnam. The US, France, Israel and Indonesia—as I have mentioned in terms of the US—are also looking to reduce their company tax rates.
Opposition to these changes betrays a disturbing complacency on the part of those who believe growth in our economy, and the jobs and incomes that depend on that, simply falls from the sky. It is made worse by the fact that those in the Labor Party who are opposing this bill have spoken so much in favour of these changes in the past and are choosing for nothing more than rank politics and opportunism to engage in the politics of negativity. That is the position of the Labor Party. But there are others who take a different view. The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Phillip Lowe, said it simply: 'We need to make sure our tax system is internationally competitive.' Rio Tinto's global chief executive said:
If Australia remains stuck with a 30 per cent corporate tax rate, this will come at a cost in investment and jobs, as other nations leave Australia further and further behind.
Indeed, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry said:
If the company income tax were to be cut, the principal beneficiaries would be workers.
But it is the Labor Party's own words that condemn them. When he was Assistant Treasurer the Leader of the Opposition told the ACOSS national conference on 30 March 2011:
Reducing the corporate tax rate … sees more capital flowing into our domestic economy, which will then flow on to workers in the form of higher wages—thereby improving standards of living.
Again, as Assistant Treasurer he said in this House on 23 August 2011:
Cutting the company income tax rate increases domestic productivity and domestic investment. More capital means higher productivity and economic growth and leads to more jobs and higher wages.
The shadow Treasurer, when he wrote his book Hearts & Minds, had a chapter on promoting growth through cutting company tax. There was a chapter on the need to cut company tax. He said:
It's a Labor thing to have the ambition of reducing company tax, because it promotes investment, creates jobs and drives growth.
And when he was asked whether Martin Parkinson's statement that a higher company tax falls hardest on workers and employees, he said, just in 2015—in late September—'That's a statement of fact which I agree with.' He said:
I have previously said that the nation should be aiming for a 25 per cent corporate tax rate.
Now, I do not believe that the shadow Treasurer has changed his mind on any of that. I do not think the Labor Party have changed their mind on any of these things at all. They know that this policy boosts investment, supports jobs and increases people's wages.
But they are going to oppose it. They are going to oppose it for the simple, crass politics of negative opposition. And they are saying to every Australian worker—and it is not just businesses with a turnover of $50 million or $25 million or $100 million or $200 million or $1 billion but businesses that have a turnover of between $2 million and $10 million, companies that have an average number of employees of 22, and there are 100,000 of them, and there are 2.2 million Australians who work in those businesses—'No, we are not going to allow the business that you work for to have greater scope to invest in that business to secure your job and to secure your wage.'
This is a massive sellout, not just by the Labor Party but by the shadow Treasurer in particular. I know that he knows that this is the right thing to do. It is a sad day when a person who has stated such strong convictions on this issue has been so appallingly rolled by his leader. That is disappointing. But the moment of truth is about to arrive, and he will have to vote to oppose this. And he will vote to oppose this, and that will go on the record. And perhaps the shadow Treasurer should put an insert into his book Hearts & Minds, and he should call that chapter, an epilogue, 'The day I sold out', because that is what he is about to do. He is going to write a new chapter in that book which says, 'The Labor thing is no longer a Labor thing.' And he cannot use the excuses of the situation of the current fiscal position, because he praised the UK government for cutting company taxes when their deficit was at 10 per cent.
So, there are no excuses. There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. He is going to vote right now in this place, with his leader, who also expressed these strong convictions about the importance of having a lower company tax rate to support investment, to support jobs and to support wages. And he is going to refute it all, and his name will be entered in the Hansard as being a massive sellout. That is for him to address. It is for the Labor Party to address. But the real losers from that process: 1,000 workers today and this week are losing their jobs in Victoria, at the Hazelwood plant. Those opposite, the Labor Party, cheered on the closure of that power plant. And now we have the other issues in the timber industry. On this day, they are going to vote against jobs again this afternoon. They are going to vote against investment. They are going to vote against wage increases for Australians. They have no alternative plan to grow the economy—none whatsoever. All they are doing here today is crass, rank political opportunism. And I thought better of the shadow Treasurer.
The SPEAKER: Order! For members' benefit: the original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for McMahon has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question, therefore, is that the amendment be agreed to.
The House divided. [15:53]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
Question negatived.
The SPEAKER (16:00): The question is that this bill be now read a second time.
The House divided. [16:00]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
Third Reading
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (16:06): by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
The SPEAKER (16:08): The question is that this bill be now read a third time.
The House divided. [16:08]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Simplifying Student Payments) Bill 2017
Returned from Senate
Message received from the Senate returning the bill without amendment or request.
Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016
Second Reading
Consideration resumed of the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (16:11): This bill, the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016, is about the implementation of the effects test—and it will have an effect. Its effect will be negative. This will have the effect of chilling competition and reducing innovation, and it will affect the prices that Australians pay for goods in a very bad way. What the government is seeking to implement in this bill is bad law. It is law which is not well thought out and which will have a deleterious impact. The Australian people should get no comfort from the fact that, according to leaks from the cabinet, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the finance minister, the Attorney-General and the minister for revenue all think it is a bad idea. They have been rolled by the Deputy Prime Minister. Just a few moments ago, the Treasurer was talking about being rolled. He has been rolled on this important piece of economic policy, because the Leader of the Nationals is calling the shots when it comes to competition policy in Australia. That is a very bad thing for the nation.
This is a proposed change in the law which would mean that, instead of looking at the intention of a company with significant market power, you would look at the effect of their actions, particularly if the effect of their action is a substantial lessening of competition in any market. I can understand why some people might look at that and think it was superficially attractive. I do not deny for a second that there are issue and problems which need to be addressed and I will turn to Labor's alternative plan—Labor's positive plan—for doing that. The fact of the matter is that these issues have been addressed, looked at and considered in Australia for a long time.
Since the early 1970s, there have been 12 reviews of competition law in Australia, and 10 out of those 12 reviews have recommended against an effects test. These have been reviews by serious people looking at this in a very considered fashion, and they have recommended against the implementation of an effects test. That is for good reason, because it is a well understood principle of competition law and the law generally that if a business with market power intends to reduce competition for its own benefit this should be dealt with—this is not acceptable behaviour and it should be dealt with. Companies with substantial market power should not act to reduce competition for their own benefit; that should not be their intention. But it is a dangerous leap to change this principle and to disregard the intent of the company and, in effect, outlaw a company making life more difficult for their competitors simply because they are innovating or increasing their own competitiveness. It is a dangerous time for Australia when the National Party is dictating economic policy.
This has been through a Senate inquiry, which I will come to in a moment. The critics of this bill, through the Senate inquiry process, were very clear in their views. The Business Council of Australia criticised this bill and opposes it very strongly. The Treasurer, a few months ago, in relation to other matters, was talking about companies who support a company tax cut. That comes as little surprise—companies supporting a company tax. But you have companies opposing this government, which claims to be pro-business and which lauds its pro-business credentials right around the country, and they are going to the Senate inquiry and saying, 'This is a very bad idea whether it be BlueScope or Woolworths.' And they are saying this not just because of the intent of the government in doing this—the government is designing a system which would reduce the competitive juices in the economy—but also because of the way the government has gone about it. The way it has gone about it creates uncertainty and it creates a lawyers' picnic. The only people who will be happy with this will be competition lawyers. Despite the fact that they think this is bad policy, many lawyers in Australia will nevertheless see the commercial opportunities that will abound because of this government's ineptitude.
It is so clear that the government is inept in doing this that last week the Treasurer briefed The Australian Financial Review that he will be moving amendments to his own legislation. Before it has even been dealt with in the House, he is saying, 'I have to fix a few things up,' and what he is fixing up is removing the defences in the bill, the mandatory safeguards, which were recommended to be put in by the Harper review. I do not agree with the Harper review's recommendation to introduce an effects test; I acknowledge and accept that that was what Ian Harper recommended, but I do not agree with it. I think he got this one wrong. Broadly, I think the report was pretty good, but I think he got this one wrong. But he did recommend that safeguards be put in, and what we saw was an:
… astonishing amendment from a supposed free-market government.
They are not my words; they are words from the Business Council of Australia. That is what the group which the government goes around the country lauding in support of its other policies said about this Prime Minister and this Treasurer, just last week. It means that small business will be subject to uncertainty. What the government is doing is quite cruel here in holding this out as some sort of remedy for what are the legitimate concerns that some small businesses have in Australia, when it is not a remedy for those, and would, in fact, just be creating uncertainty which will damage all.
The fact of the matter is, as I said at the outset, that there are issues that need to be addressed. Labor is the party of competition reform. We are the ones, when it comes to serious competition reforms, who have always delivered. The first federal competition law in Australia, which was an initiative of the Whitlam government, was the Trade Practices Act. That was the first serious national competition law that we had—consumer affairs protection was included in that as well. Then we had the competition policy reforms of the Hawke and Keating years, the National Competition Policy, which was a key reform in leading to the 26 years of uninterrupted economic growth that we have had in this country, and it improved the competitive juices of our economy. Then we had, coming together with the reform of the Competition Act, the criminalisation of cartel conduct and the harmonisation of consumer affairs laws across the country under the Rudd government.
So, our side of the House is pro-competition. We believe that the beneficiaries of competition are the people we are here to represent—people going about their business and wanting a good deal from the economy, because competition produces that good deal. But that competition policy must be finely calibrated and must be carefully designed, not written on the back of a coaster in a hotel, as the Deputy Premier Minister likes to boast that he does from time to time—that he writes his ideas down for competition policy reform on the back of a coaster in the Birdsville Hotel. No, it must be thought through with proper consultation.
This is the other point about the amendments which the Treasurer has flagged that he will move—there has not been a jot of consultation. This bill should go back to the Senate inquiry again. That is what should happen here. The government took a bill to the Senate, it sent it to a Senate inquiry, there was a process where people could come in, and then after the Senate inquiry the Treasurer said, 'Don't worry about that. I've got a whole heap of amendments which completely change the bill.' If this government was fair dinkum and if this Treasurer had an ounce of courage, he would say, 'Fair enough. These are substantial changes; I will send this to a Senate inquiry again, so that these amendments can be considered properly.' That is what the Treasurer should have the courage to do, because these are very significant amendments which he is moving and which need to be dealt with.
The fact of the matter is that the proposal put forward by the Labor Party and taken to the last election is a much better solution to the challenges that small businesses face, because some big businesses have very deep pockets and armies of lawyers. So the risk of a small business being overwhelmed and having to pay the big business legal fees if they take on a competition action against a big business is very substantial, and it means it does not happen as much as it should. This is not just about the ACCC enforcing the law—that has its place and is an important part of it—but businesses can begin and bring their own actions as well. At the moment they are not doing that, for very understandable and legitimate reasons. They are concerned that the court case would be very expensive and they may well have costs ordered against them, and that would drive them out of business.
So last year we announced a policy, which we took to the election, which would deal with the competition issues and deal with the understandable reluctance of many small businesses to bring actions against big businesses in the competition space. We would let a small business request a no adverse cost order, early in a court case. If the judge decided that the case had merit, the small business would not have to pay the big business costs—win or lose, they would not have to pay the big business costs. This would also enable the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to provide professional assistance as to whether the no adverse cost order was likely to be successful, in keeping with the ombudsman's current dispute resolution mandate, and to help filter vexatious litigants from the process. In fact, we introduced a private member's bill into the Senate last month which would implement this policy. So it is open to honourable members and Senators who sit opposite us to support that sensible outcome, to say, 'We want to see more small businesses being able to bring the actions.' It is not about changing the law to outlaw actions which are currently legal; that is not the right approach. The right approach is to allow, assist and encourage small businesses to bring actions under the existing law, which is simply not happening enough.
This access to justice reform was welcomed by the Business Council of Australia. It would be a sensible and practical support for small businesses around Australia, unlike this ridiculous policy, which is opposed by the Prime Minister, opposed by the Treasurer, opposed by the finance minister, opposed by the Attorney-General and opposed by the minister for revenue. But it was supported by the Deputy Prime Minister and it was insisted upon by the Deputy Prime Minister as part of the coalition deal when the Prime Minister rolled the member for Warringah in the push in the party room. That was his price for keeping the peace. That is not the way to write economic policy in this country.
These are serious changes. They are far-reaching changes that will have a very significant impact. When this government talk about the cost of living, what is their big cost-of-living policy at the moment? It is to reduce penalty rates for workers who commit no crime other than working on Sundays. As Grant King, the president of the Business Council, is quoted as saying on 23 March in relation to this bill:
"The Turnbull government seems intent on putting pressure on the household bills of every Australian," …
"The proposed 'effects test' is so broad and ambiguous that companies risk being sued by their competitors merely for offering discount prices for consumers.
"The government's latest amendment removing 'mandatory factors' completely disregards Ian Harper's recommendation that safeguards are needed to protect against legitimate competitive conduct being captured.
"The mandatory factors didn't provide nearly enough protection for legitimate business conduct, but the answer should have been to improve them, not to remove them altogether.
Mr King and the Business Council are right about these points. I and our side are not prone to agree with the Business Council on every occasion, but we will call it as we see it. We will say when they are right, and they are right about this issue. We could have engaged in politics and supported the government and said that we would crack down on these nasty big businesses. But consumers would have paid the price for that—and consumers will pay the price for that if the government succeeds in getting this legislation through this House and the other place, as I suspect they will.
This will impact on the cost of living of Australians by putting upward pressure on prices. It stands to reason that if you have a big business or even a medium-sized business that has substantial market power in one particular market they will talk about how they can improve their operation in that market, and they may say, 'Let's discount. Let's go on a discounting process. Let's reduce our prices. Let's be more competitive.' But now there is this effects test they may say, 'But this might affect some of our competitors. Some of them might actually go out of business if we are as competitive as we possibly can be. If our prices are as cheap as they possibly can be, some of them might actually be adversely affected.' Every boardroom and every manager will now have to consider that, and not just consider that in a national sense but consider their approach to smaller markets and their approach in any particular market segment. Even if their intent is not adverse, which in many cases it will not be, if the effect of their actions is adverse, then they will be taken in by this piece of legislation. This is a fundamental change to the principles that have underpinned competition policy and competition law in Australia for many decades, certainly since Commonwealth control and Commonwealth authority in the 1970s. As I said, there have been 12 reviews of this since the early 1970s, and 10 have said that this is a very bad idea. We will continue to say it is a very bad idea, and we will continue to argue against this because we will stand up for good policy.
This bill also contains amendments that would repeal the telecommunications specific anti-competitive conduct provisions in part XIB of the Competition and Consumer Act. Currently, part XIB provides the ACCC with powers to take speedy action and better resolve disputes when anti-competitive conduct is suspected. The acting shadow minister for communications, the member for Isaacs, and the member for Throsby will be saying more about this. We will not support this change. Given the concentrated nature of the telecommunications market, it remains appropriate to preserve part XIB. Labor considers that the stronger powers under part XIB remain necessary to deter misuse of market power, potentially by the NBN in the future and certainly by Telstra at the moment. There is no good case for the repeal of this particular section of the act. The government, on the one hand, say they are going to make the market more competitive with this ill-thought-out approach—at least that is their intention—but on the other hand they are seeking to water down the existing provisions for the telecommunications sector. We will be introducing amendments to preserve part XIB as it currently operates.
I now move:
That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"The House declines to give this bill a second reading and calls on the Government to explain why it is introducing a dangerous piece of economic policy that is legally unworkable, will chill competition, and will create uncertainty for business".
I move this amendment because I think it is appropriate that this House send a message to the government that it has got this wrong. This is utterly bad policy. This is policy which fundamentally misunderstands how competition law works in Australia.
I suspect the Minister for Social Services strongly agrees with the Labor Party position on this. To give him his due, the Minister for Social Services is, as I understand, quite an accomplished lawyer. He understands how competition policy works. There is no way that he would think this is a good idea. There is no way, given the overwhelming weight of expert evidence from competition lawyers in Australia, that sensible commentators in the competition space would think this is good policy, because it is not. It should be resisted by sensible members opposite. It was resisted, to give them credit, by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the finance minister, the Attorney-General and the minister for revenue. You would think that would be enough to maintain the position for sensible policy in the cabinet. But, in this government, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the finance minister, the Attorney-General and the minister for revenue got rolled on this important matter of economic policy.
On this side of the House, we are of one mind. We stand for good policy, and this is not good policy. Quite the contrary, this is very bad policy. It should be resisted and it should be opposed in the House.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): Is the amendment seconded?
Mr Brendan O'Connor: Yes. I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for McMahon has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.
Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (16:29): I am really pleased to rise to speak on this bill today. It certainly is an important, fair and much anticipated proposal by the coalition government in regard to competition law. It is certainly much anticipated in the seat of Wide Bay.
In my maiden speech, I highlighted the need for big business to play fair, particularly when it comes to markets and particularly when it comes to monopolies and duopolies. Where there is an abuse of market power, there needs to be a capacity for regulators to step in to ensure there is a level, competitive playing field, so that we give a better and more competitive choice to consumers and allow new participants to enter the market. I support the changes proposed in this bill because they will deliver reforms to strengthen the economy, encourage business to grow, and improve opportunities for creativity and innovation, which in turn will look after the little guy.
A report authored by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims outlined the problem with the current section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act and the need for it to be reformed, when he warned that the current law is fatally flawed and impedes competition. In 2003, Justice Kirby said in a dissenting judgment in the High Court's Rural Press decision that in his view:
… the approach taken by the majority is insufficiently attentive to the object of the Act to protect and uphold market competition. … The outcome cripples the effectiveness of s 46 of the Act. … The victims are Australian consumers.
The coalition's changes proposed to competition law are based on a recent, thorough and in-depth analysis of competition law in modern Australia. In 2014, the newly elected coalition government commissioned a root-and-branch review of Australia's competition framework, known as the Harper Review. The Harper Review fulfilled a 2013 election commitment and delivered the first comprehensive review of Australia competition laws in 20 years. A key focus of the review was to identify impediments across the economy that restricted competition and reduced productivity.
Considering the importance and significance of this reform and the potential impact on competition, the government extensively engaged with all stakeholders through the review process. There were almost 350 written responses received on the Harper report issues paper; around 600 written submissions were received on the draft report; around 140 submissions were made to the government's response to the final report; 86 submissions were received in response to the discussion paper on the misuse of market power that was released for public consultation; and 34 submissions were received on the exposure draft legislation in relation to section 46. Submissions focused on whether section 46 sufficiently deterred anticompetitive conduct by firms with a substantial market power and whether it created commercially predictable outcomes.
The Harper Review found that, while the provisions of the act were sound, section 46 was unfit for purpose, unnecessarily complex, imposed costs on the economy, was not reliably enforceable and burdened business. The Harper Review found that the current section 46 permits anticompetitive conduct that impedes and slows the entry of new and innovative firms to the market, delays the entry of new technologies into Australia and slows productivity growth. The Harper Review recommended refocusing section 46 so that it would prohibit a firm with a substantial degree of power in a particular market from engaging in conduct with the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in any market.
So, on 16 March 2016, the government announced it would adopt in full the Harper Review recommendations relating to the misuse of market power. Schedule 1 of the bill amends section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act so as to prohibit
A corporation with a substantial degree of power in a market must not engage in conduct that has the purpose, or has or is likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition in:
that market; or
any other market in which that corporation, or a body corporate that is related to that corporation:
supplies goods or services, or is likely to supply goods or services; or
supplies goods or services, or is likely to supply goods or services, indirectly through one or more other person; or
any other market in which that corporation, or a body corporate that is related to that corporation:
acquires goods or services, or is likely to acquire goods or services; or
acquires goods or services, or is likely to acquire goods or services, indirectly through one or more other person.
The change change ‘uses existing legal concepts from within the competition law—such as “substantially lessening competition”—and ensures the focus of the provision remains only on those firms that have substantial market power’.
The reform to section 46 will provide a commercial and legal framework that prevents firms with market power engaging in behaviour that harms the competitive process. This reform is particularly important for more than two million Australian small businesses, which make up more than 97 per cent of all businesses. Wide Bay has over 13,000 small businesses, and many of these operate in the agricultural sector which in Wide Bay contributes over a billion dollars to the economy. This sector comprises both small and large businesses competing in the same commercial territory. From fruit growers to dairy farmers, there is much anticipation regarding these changes to the completion law. They hope that, through enabling a fairer and more competitive environment, this reform will also see great growth in the local economy.
The new provision will more effectively address anticompetitive conduct to protect competitive processes, rather than individual competitors. Implementation of the provision will be undertaken jointly by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian government. This bill will deliver on a key election commitment made by the Nationals and the coalition to address misuse of market power by introducing an effects test. This reform equips us with an important tool that will: help to sustain and grow businesses; create an environment in which innovative firms can enter new markets; assist the introduction of new technologies into Australia; and supply the best quality products at the lowest prices for consumers. I commend the bill to the House.
Mr HAMMOND (Perth) (16:37): I rise to join the honourable shadow Treasurer in opposing this bill, for various reasons. Firstly, Labor opposes any notion that putting into place an effects test is going to enhance competition. More to the point, and quite conversely, as I will set out in further detail, our submission is that any proposed effects test will fail competition policy. The other aspect of this bill, which perhaps is not getting an awful lot of sunshine on the other side, relates to part XIB of the act insofar as it relates to the repeal of telecommunications-specific anti-competitive conduct provisions.
The position of the Australian Labor Party in relation to its criticism of the effects test and the fact that it is likely to fail competition policy has been articulated in a consistent fashion both before the election, immediately afterwards and in this place as we speak. The arguments against the effects test are set out in comprehensive and easy-to-read detail in an opinion piece in The Australian Financial Review by the shadow Treasurer in October last year. He said:
In this year's election campaign the term "anti-business" was thrown around with a lot of abandon and there was of course much discussion of "innovation". All the while, Malcolm Turnbull was carrying a policy that is fundamentally antibusiness in its intent and impact and has the potential to chill innovation just when we need it the most. … The so-called "effects test" would try to assess whether a company with a high degree of market power is engaging in conduct with the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially reducing competition in any market. It is a well-understood principle of competition law … that if a business with market power intends to reduce competition for its own benefit, this should be dealt with. But it is a dangerous leap to change this principle to disregard what the intent of the company is and outlaw a company making life more difficult for their competitors simply because they are innovating or increasing their own competitiveness.
Put simply, any amendment of the type proposed by the government in this case will not enhance innovation. It will not enhance entrepreneurial fervour. It will not enhance competition, to the point where both business and the consumer will be left worse off. Indeed, the shadow Treasurer makes the point in his article, in relation to posing the question:
How will it benefit consumers for any business to wonder whether a drive to reduce costs and bring down prices will see them hauled before the courts? It won't.
If we go back and have a look at the history of the analysis as to whether an effects test is likely to do the job, the results speak for themselves. If we go back and look at the start upon which the analysis was undertaken, back to 1976, since then 12 Australian competition reviews have considered an effects test. Ten of those reviews have recommended against it. Just in case one was not compelled to a conclusion by the numbers, if one digs a little further down to see exactly what the critics have to say about the imposition of an effects test in competition policy, look no further than Graeme Samuel, who is the ex-chair of the ACCC, Peter Costello himself, the Business Council of Australia, and allegedly also the Prime Minister when the matter was considered and rejected by the cabinet led by the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah.
The chair of the competition review, Professor Harper himself, has conceded that the proposed effects test will create uncertainty. I will be saying more about that a little later. But if we have a look at what those public commentators have had to say about why this is a flawed piece of policy, the former Treasurer, the Hon. Peter Costello, said:
When you are looking at competition policy there is one basic question you have to ask before you can settle anything else . . . who is competition policy for? … If you take the view that competition is there for the consumer, which is what I believe is the fact, everything else will fit into place.
That is why he was against the so-called effects test:
The so-called effects test is actually designed to protect competitors, particularly less efficient ones, from a competitive challenge.
Let's see what Richard Goyder of Wesfarmers, the largest employer in Australia, had to say:
Every year we look at ... 20 new Bunnings warehouses, 30 new Coles stores, 20 new Kmart stores ... does that mean now every time we have a capital expenditure proposal come to us that we've got to look at the likely effect on competition?
Mr Graeme Samuel, the former ACCC chairman, also echoes those proponents criticising the effects test:
Under the Harper amendment, businesses would curb their competitive behaviour because of the legal risk. This would have drowned the commercial activity of big business in a sea of uncertainty. Lawyers and economists would need to sit at the right hand of business CEOs to guide them on the legality of every significant transaction.
The member for Hughes himself says:
It is not an effects test; its effect is to substantially lessen competition. It is not what you think it is it; it is a Trojan horse.
The reason it is a Trojan Horse is because of the impact of the test once one actually sees it put into place. Firstly, in relation to consumer prices: the day this decision was announced, the Deputy Prime Minister said that selling milk for a dollar a litre was too low; the price should be higher. At the same press conference he raised that milk was sold in China for up to $11. This is just the start of how consumer prices, the everyday cost of living, will hit families after the introduction of an effects test.
In relation to uncertainty: businesses need certainty to plan and make decisions. Litigation over the effect of their decisions will heighten uncertainty and make it difficult for businesses to plan ahead. This will impact on investment and jobs.
On innovation and growth: we hear a lot of talk about innovation over the other side, but when we actually see the rubber hit the road, look no further than Australia's largest employer, Wesfarmers, who have already said that they are deeply concerned about the negative impact of this decision on innovation. It will make it harder for businesses to test new products. That is the context upon what we will really see here if this bill is passed and we see the implementation of a so-called effects test.
There is an alternative path, and it is a path that the Labor Party put forward in a policy called Access to Justice for Small Business—a two-year trial put forward by the party which has two key components. The first component is in relation to making sure we do see true testing of the competition environment in a manner which actually allows businesses to thrive and prosper. The party has put forward a mechanism to allow private litigants bringing actions under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act to apply to the court at an early stage, seeking relief from potentially adverse costs orders.
That is a very important component because it completely changes the landscape in relation to actually testing propositions as to whether anticompetitive behaviour is being played out in the business environment and, ultimately, to the detriment of consumers. It is well known that one of the largest disincentives in relation to testing these issues of anticompetitive behaviour through the courts is simply the costs involved in bringing such an action, not to mention the risk of adverse legal costs. Quite simply, many small to medium businesses just cannot afford the risk and, on that basis, will decide against pushing propositions where they see anticompetitive behaviour actually taking place.
The other aspect of the access to justice policy relates to the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. It is Labor's plan to fund the small business ombudsman to vet small business applications for preventing adverse orders who are considering action under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act. What this is likely to do is actually enhance the environment in that the reform put forward by the Labor Party will waive the liability of private litigants where they can demonstrate the merit of their case and how they are opposing anticompetitive behaviour. This is a practical policy alternative to encourage access to justice for small businesses. It is good for competition and it is good for small business.
But that is really only one of a suite of proposals which are pro-consumer and pro-competition that Labor took to the 2016 election. Some of the others are as follows: increasing civil penalties under the Australian Consumer Law from $1.1 million to $10 million, bringing those penalties in line with the competition provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. It is a vitally important reform that is required if we are actually going to put into place a set of enforceable deterrents to business when they are seen to be breaching the Australian Consumer Law. Quite frankly, the problem with such a relatively low threshold of a civil penalty as $1.1 million is that it does not necessarily deter those very large multinationals or corporates from adverse effects upon competition and consumer behaviour because, quite simply, the punishment does not fit the crime.
In relation to other proposals put forward by the party, there was a proposal to adopt the European Union's penalty system for anticompetitive conduct based on 30 per cent of the annual sales of the relevant product or service multiplied by the number of years the infringement took place limited to the greater of 10 per cent of annual turnover or $10 million. Again, for the same reason, what we really need to see here is some teeth on the tiger that are likely to actually have an effect upon preventing anticompetitive conduct or conduct which causes adverse outcomes for consumers.
What the Labor Party has also proposed is the use of some of the revenues from the increased penalties to increase the ACCC's litigation budget from its current level of $24.5 million to a maximum of twice that level at about $49 million. Again, it is all designed so the landscape can be altered to ensure that there is accountability on behalf of corporates who are seen to be engaging in anticompetitive behaviour or behaviour that would adversely affect consumers in a way where these cases can be properly tested in the courts.
They are all triggers or mechanisms in which litigation can be used effectively in order to make sure that corporates do not engage in anticompetitive behaviour which will affect markets, which will affect innovation and which will affect consumers. What we do not see is any of that in relation to this so-called effects test. What we do not see is any real sense or comfort that the implementation of these amendments will do anything but throw the landscape in relation to whether anticompetitive behaviour is being undertaken or not within the court system itself.
There is often a phrase bandied around called 'a lawyer's picnic'. I have not been to too many lawyer's picnics in my time, and they are not exactly the most exciting of affairs, which is why I try to steer clear of them. I suspect the member for Pearce is nodding in furious agreement over on the other side of the table! But what it will create is a situation where there will be an incentive to litigate in a way that is unlikely to benefit anyone, let alone business or the consumer. When we create an uncertain landscape with amendments like this—as night follows day—they are required to be tested, which, in itself, is not a bad thing. But it is a bad thing if what is currently put into place is a myriad of mechanisms and protections in which the legal system can be used for the benefit of consumers, the benefit of innovation and the benefit of business.
In relation to part XIB of the Competition and Consumer Act, it was introduced in 1997 to facilitate the transition to open competition in the telecommunications market. There are two main elements of that part: the competition rule, which sets out telecommunication-specific competition, and the competition notice regime, which allows the ACCC to issue competition notices and quickly respond to a breach of the competition rule. The basis of the argument to amend that provision of the act is that the general effects tests will apply to all industry sectors and, therefore, part XIB is no longer necessary. That is opposed, in no uncertain terms, in relation to this bill because, quite frankly, part XIB should not be repealed because what it does in its current form is provide the ACCC with stronger and faster intervention measures for the telecommunication sector than would otherwise be available under a general effects test.
In conclusion, what is plain to see once the surface is scratched in relation to what is being put forward in this bill is an outcome which is bad for business, is bad for consumers and, generally, is bad for the community, and it should be opposed.
Mr GEE (Calare) (16:52): It is a great pleasure to support the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016. This bill represents a triumph not only for the Deputy Prime Minister but also for the National Party. It is also a triumph for small businesses, including primary producers who do business with large corporations. This bill is a game changer, ushering in a new section 46 and a new era for competition law in Australia with the effects test. It is a reform that was born of the Harper review into competition policy that was commissioned in 2014. That review found that section 46 did not adequately prevent the misuse of market power. Specifically, the 'take advantage' element of section 46 was found wanting in being able to distinguish competitive from anti-competitive conduct and thereby being able to identify a misuse of market power. In other words, the current section 46 is simply not doing what it was designed to. It is ineffective.
The Harper review also found that the focus of the section on prohibiting conduct if a corporation acted with the purpose of damaging a competitor was inconsistent with the overriding policy objective of the act, which is to protect competition and not individual competitors. Competition itself is, after all, not bad thing. It brings with it innovation, better service and lower prices, which should not be discouraged. But it stands to reason that, by its very nature, competition itself will result in some competitors being harmed. The new proposed section 46 aims to enhance and promote competition.
Not only is the current section 46 ineffective but the ACCC's record in enforcing it is mixed at best, and the win/loss record starts to look even worse when the ACCC's record in contested cases is taken into account. Private section 46 cases have been few and far between, and few of those have been successful. One of the reasons there have been so few of them is because section 46 actions can be David-and-Goliath affairs. If you are a David going up against a Goliath in a section 46 case, you need an iron will.
In fact, the last successful private section 46 action was the case of NT Power, which successfully took on the Northern Territory government's Power and Water Authority and Gasgo for access to transmission and electricity infrastructure. After NT Power lost in the Federal Court and then lost a Federal Court appeal, the case ended in a great come-from-behind victory in the High Court. I know quite bit about that case because, as a youngish solicitor, I had the good fortune to be a part of NT Power's legal team when the case was run in Darwin, and I am here to tell you that section 46 cases are tough ones to get over the line. As I said previously, you need a client with an iron will because taking on the big end of town is not easy. The old 'bury them in tens of thousands of discovered documents, often served at the last minute and during the hearing' trick is one such strategy that I have personally seen deployed. There can be a lot of rain in Darwin but, when you are litigating against the big end of town, it can rain documents as well in a section 46 case.
The fact that section 46 cases are so hard to run and even harder to win makes it even more surprising that the Labor Party have squibbed on real reform of that section. Their so called 'access to justice' proposal does nothing to make it easier for small businesses to run and win a section 46 case. All it does is allow an applicant to make an application at some point in proceedings for the respondent to be liable for the applicant's costs if certain criteria are fulfilled. The proposal is worthless without meaningful reform to section 46.
You can just hear the lawyer's advice to a small business contemplating initiating a section 46 action under Labor's regime. It would go something like: 'Only the brave and the few have ever initiated section 46 actions, and only the fewer still have ever won one. So the odds are stacked against you but, if you are brave enough to give it a go at some point, under Labor's reforms you may be able to make an application for a costs order at some point during the proceedings. We're not sure when. We're not sure how. We'll just have to give it a go and for hope for the best.' The reality is that the chances of any such application for that type of order succeeding under the current regime would be remote. Labor's proposal amounts to window-dressing, pure and simple.
I should point out that the junior counsel on the NT Power case was none other than Alister Henskens, now SC and MP, being the New South Wales member for Ku-ring-gai, and the partner with carriage of that case was renowned litigator Antony Riordan from Colin Biggers & Paisley. He was the original architect of that section 46 action. I know that both are watching the passage of this bill with great interest.
This new and improved section 46 will better target anti-competitive conduct whilst supporting pro-competitive conduct and will greatly simplify the provision. It will prohibit a corporation with a substantial degree of market power engaging in conduct that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in: that market; markets in which the corporation itself, or a related body corporate, supplies or acquires goods or services or is likely to supply or acquire goods or services; or markets in which the corporation is indirectly supplying or acquiring goods or services or is likely to supply or acquire goods or services. The new section 46 will make it very clear that large corporations with a substantial degree of market power are going to have to think very carefully about the way in which they operate for fear of falling foul of this section.
As we heard earlier, there has been opposition to this bill from some notably large corporations. But as Chairman of the ACCC, Rod Sims, recently stated to The Australian Financial Review:
Companies that want to compete on their merits have nothing to fear. Only those who wish to exclude their competitors and damage the competitive process will need to re-examine their conduct.
He has also described the claim that the changes will lead to a rise in prices as 'nonsense' because, as he has pointed out, consumers clearly benefit from more competition.
Besides the ACCC, the calls for reform have had strong support from a number of key organisations, including: the National Farmers' Federation; the Institute of Public Accountants, which described the reforms as a sensible and long-overdue improvement; Master Grocers Australia; the Queensland Dairyfarmers Organisation; the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; the Small and Medium Enterprise Business Law Committee of the Law Council of Australia; the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman; the Australian Hotels Association; AUSVEG; and the Australian Dairy Farmers. In the latter's submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee it wrote that it:
… congratulates the federal government on working to provide more transparency and fairness in the market through legislation such as the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016.
They added:
This legislation will help ensure that farmers, processors and consumers are not adversely impacted by the actions of those who hold significant market power in Australia.
Very well said. So, in a practical sense, who does this bill assist?
Mr Deputy Speaker, you do not have to look very far, or drive very far, in my electorate to find those who have been crying out for reform in this area—I speak, of course, of the apple and cherry growers of Calare. For many years, they have been making the case for change in this field. Local orchardist Guy Gaeta is one such voice and one such farmer. In fact, he has been calling for reform in this field for so long, he could hardly believe that a government finally had the courage and determination to bring these changes in. Many growers are forced to sell their fruit to big retailers who have a very substantial amount of market power. Growers have felt for a long time that big retailers are able to dictate prices for their fruit, and that they are forced to sell at prices that are unacceptably low. They do not believe that the treatment they have received is fair or that that the current system is transparent. There were hundreds of orchards in Orange decades ago, but now we are down to about 30. That is largely because the sons and daughters of orchardists have left the land, because they could not see a future. This leads to a lessening of competition. In some years, the prices on offer have been so low that growers have questioned whether it was even worth harvesting their crop. When you put it to our orchardists that a bill like this one will lead to higher prices, they laugh in disbelief and point to the—often huge—margins that retailers are able to put on the wholesale price of their produce.
This issue is one of the reasons growers in our areas are pushing so hard to gain access to new markets overseas. In fact, there was a delegation to this parliament last week letting the government know that that is exactly what is needed: better export protocols and better access. Our primary producers in Calare are small-business people; all they want is a system that is both fair and transparent. We have some wonderful orchardists in our area: Peter West and Tim and Jayne West from Balmoral near Orange; Tim Hall from Melrose at Nashdale; Bernard and Fiona Hall from Caernarvon, blazing the trail for exports; Daniel, Jamie and Nina McClymont; Ian and Pru Pearce, Robert and Jeannie Pearce, and also Ross Pearce of Mirrabooka near Orange; Sophie Jones of Hillside Harvest; James Sweetapple—he makes some great wine, but is also a great cherry producer; Kelvin Price of Kelanvale near Borenore; Michael and Kim Cunial at Carinya at Nashdale; Joe Caltabiano at Omaroo near Orange; Zac and Thelma Rossi; Peter and Robyn Vardanega from Prospect Orchard near Nashdale; and Graeme and Anne Eastwood from Rose Farm near Nashdale.
It is not just the orchardists who will gain protection and relief through this provision; other primary producers such as grape growers and dairy farmers could also conceivably benefit from these reforms. Any small business that bears the brunt of misuse of market power could also benefit. Smaller and independent grocery stores are yet another example. Associate Professor Julie Clarke of Deakin Law School stated in her submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics in January this year about this bill that:
… its passage will implement a long-overdue improvement to a core element of Australia's competition law.
I agree. And I am proud that it has been the Nationals who have been driving this landmark reform. I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister for his dogged pursuit of this historic change, and I commend this bill to the House. Let the new era of competition law in Australia begin.
Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (17:03): You have to shudder, Acting Deputy Speaker Irons, the minute you hear a Nationals MP champion economic policy and say that a bill is as a result of their influence—run! Run, run, run! I have to say, as the member for Calare finished his contribution, he showed what had driven this. We are debating here the introduction of an element of legislation that 10 inquiries since 1974 have looked at, and they have all said: 'No, do not touch the effects test. Do not touch it.' Now we have the government doing just that, and it is not because they have come up with some new way to give effect to this concept within competition law. This is not policy; this is—as is so often the case with this government—all about politics. It is all about delivering on a promise given by a new prime minister back in 2015, to a nervous and unsure National Party that did not necessarily trust that he could deliver for them. That is why we have this effects test.
There is very little data to suggest this will help. There is a lot of concern that it will not help; there are a lot of people saying that it will have a chilling effect on competition, and there are a lot of people wondering what might happen to the prices consumers actually have. Given the last contribution to this debate, the Nationals are there, beating their chests and saying: 'It is as a result of our advocacy that we are getting it.' Barnaby Joyce was out there saying: 'One-dollar milk is too cheap'—that is what he was saying. And then, in the next breath, he was saying: 'If you are in China, you are paying $11 for milk.' Well, he can represent producers; I represent consumers in Western Sydney, who want to see grocery prices lowered. I remember in previous parliaments when we were talking about what we were trying to do with an emissions trading scheme and the imposition of a carbon price: you would only ever see those opposite in a grocery store, or in a butchery outlet or somewhere—anywhere—talking about the impact on prices, saying that we needed to see food and grocery prices go down. Now we have those opposite—now they are in power—championing the fact that grocery bills should be going up, and saying that this is what we should be aiming for. Well, I represent consumers. I represent people who want to get access to cheaper food, who want to get access to fruit and vegetables that are lower in cost. But, as we have seen, this is about representing the Nationals' interest, not the national interest. That is why we are debating this bill; that is why we are debating this very far-reaching change to competition law.
We on the Labor side do not mind strong competition policy but it has got to be informed and, importantly, it has got to be enforced. And we do not believe the government's package provides for being informed properly and backed up with proper enforcement mobility. As has been outlined by the shadow Treasurer, we see dangerous legislative proposals that do not address either resourcing the ACCC or making it easier for small businesses to litigate in their own private capacity.
And whilst we might have the Nationals championing this, what have we had from the champion of the Liberal Party, Peter Costello, a person who occupied one of the most senior economic positions in this country for an extended period of time? When he reflected on what was being proposed and given effect to in this legislation, he said, 'A so-called effects test will protect competitors, especially less efficient ones, from competition.' That is from someone who is heralded by that side as an economic pioneer and occupied the key economic position in the Howard-Costello government. That is his take on what is being proposed right now. He thinks this is all about protecting less efficient competitors, not raising the bar of competition across the board.
In submissions to the Harper review that considered this, the effects test was described as legally unworkable. Further, it will chill competition and create uncertainty for business. These changes will potentially deter job creating investment in Australia by adding new layers of red tape and barriers to investment which have already been imposed by this government. It is not hard to see why you would have another former figure in that government say he could not see the benefit in supporting these changes, and that was the former Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb. He believed the measures contained within this bill were anti-investment.
As I said before, this is not about good policy, it is all about politics. It is all about ensuring Prime Minister Turnbull satisfies the concerns driven by the National Party. In many respects, the National Party are the ones who are driving economic policy within this government—and exhibit A is this bill. That is not the way this should be done—not on something as complicated as competition law. On both sides of the House a lot of us want to ensure competition law is strong, robust, workable and enforceable. But it should not be subject to some sort of deal-making within the coalition.
We on the Labor side are certainly in favour of efficient markets. That has been the big thing. When you look at the way the Labor Party has transformed itself since the eighties, it has been about a realisation that efficient markets that are working properly and fairly are the best ones to be able to work in the interests of all—in terms of business and also consumers, in terms of more efficient investment, in terms of innovation and in terms of delivering for the entire country. These things are critical. Again, if 10 reviews since 1974 have considered the issue of the effects test and cannot bring themselves to recommend it, you have to wonder why we are being required to think about it here.
Besides politicians, senior figures within conservative ranks have questioned whether this is wise policy. In fact, they are not questioning it, they are saying outright that they do not believe in the value of this being imposed in competition law. The former chairman of the ACCC, Gordon Samuel, said:
Under the Harper amendment, businesses would curb their competitive behaviour because of the legal risk. This would have drowned the commercial activity of big business in a sea of uncertainty. Lawyers and economists would need to sit at the right hand of business CEOs to guide them on the legality of every significant transaction.
That is what they are saying, and I think that is a real worry.
In this debate about the effects test and the future role of the ACCC, I cannot overlook another recent foray by the ACCC in an area that simply staggers me, and that is their announcement last year that they will now consider the acquisition of start-ups by big businesses. The acquisition of start-ups by big business has been a valid and accepted objective of a lot of start-ups. You can either list on the stock exchange, go public and get bought out that way, or you can be acquired. This has operated for quite some time. In a country where the rate of start-up formation is relatively low, it is unbelievable that we would now have a further level of uncertainty being injected by ACCC Chairman Rod Sims last year, who mused publicly that they would now consider whether the acquisition of start-ups by big business was against the interests of the market.
As I said, what it would potentially do is put a chilling effect on activity in this space. It also flies in the face of the reality of a lot of start-ups: where they have found a market niche, done the R&D, found the investment and developed a proposition that could actually deliver value to consumers or other businesses, it is not necessarily the case that their acquisition would prevent the emergence of a large-scale competitor to established businesses. Rod Sims mentioned the examples of Telstra and Optus in start-up acquisition. Telstra and Optus have very large venture capital funds that are backing this innovation. They are not backing this because they believe that they need to acquire competitors; they are backing this because some of the innovative thinking that is being championed by some of these smaller start-ups will actually add to the strength and security of Australian corporates, our businesses.
Here I am, as a Labor politician, championing that we want to see smaller businesses go and become bigger ones. The issue is not about size; it is about behaviour. If bigger businesses are working and collaborating with start-ups to see an idea grow, take hold and potentially be of benefit to the start-ups, the founders, their employees and the bigger corporate, that has got to be a good thing for the country. I have not heard Rod Sims, the ACCC chairman, come out and clarify exactly what is behind his thinking. What are the examples that are driving his view that he now needs to disrupt, in his own way, the investment flows towards start-ups by suggesting that he will now put the regulatory blowtorch into this sector? I have not seen it.
The other thing that we have not seen is the government come out and say whether or not they back this. The government have been noticeably silent on whether or not the ACCC is on the right path, looking at whether bigger businesses can acquire start-ups, and they need to step up and explain exactly what their thoughts are on what the ACCC is doing. We have seen today that the government can step in, for example, and order the ACCC to look at energy prices. Why can't the government step in and say either way whether or not they believe what the ACCC is doing is right or urge the ACCC to consider very carefully the path it is treading?
This is a disaster in the making. We already have a relatively low rate of start-up formation compared to other parts of the world. If this interrupts or inhibits the flow of capital to start-ups, this is disastrous, because these small enterprises have a capacity to grow much faster than other small businesses and that growth equates to a growth in employment. And so I am certainly calling on the ACCC to spell out very clearly what the business case is for this suggestion that they would intervene in this way to interrupt the flow of capital to capital-demanding start-ups in this country by some sort of regulatory threat. It is unacceptable that the ACCC has left start-ups hanging, wondering what is going on.
Those start-ups themselves have not welcomed this imposition. In fact, some of them have said that there is a better thing to do. For example, the founder of Vinomofo, Andre Eikmeier, said:
Instead of blanket restrictions on what big companies can or can't acquire … the ACCC should focus its efforts on regulating what big companies do after they've acquired start-ups.
This is smart advice. After all, that is what we are trying to prevent through restricting anticompetitive behaviour. That is a good point, and this what he interrupts. The growth in the fintech sector actually went against the grain of what has been recorded on the global scale. On the global scale, there was a cooling in investment, but in Australia it sped up and a lot of it has been driven by, for example, investment in mergers and acquisitions and that is what has been pointed out:
This was driven by large M&A and VC transactions.
Investment in Australia's fintechs reached a record $650 million in 2016. We cannot afford to have investment flows interrupted by regulators that are overreaching and impacting on the growth of valuable sectors to the Australian economy into the future.
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (17:18): People sometimes ask the question of me: what is the difference between the Liberal and Labor parties? There are many differences, and one of the fundamental differences is that, when Labor members rise to speak in their place, they do so as soft puppets of the union, merely chanting the union line and devoid of individual thought, and no dissent or contrary opinion is allowed. In contrast, on this side of the House, we evoke the spirit of Sir Robert Menzies. We are allowed—in fact, encouraged—to have individual thought. As backbenchers, we are free to express contrary opinions. This is a great privilege offered by the Liberal Party and one that I intend to use now.
Just for clarification, my views are not those expressed by the opposition in regard to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016. In fact, I listened with great interest to the member for Fenner's contribution to this debate and it seems that he is as clueless on competition policy as he is on the workings of our share market, with his recent most embarrassing comments that five entities owned and controlled the majority of the shares. What an embarrassment—ridiculed and laughed at by every serious economics commentator in this nation, and yet that is the shadow Assistant Treasurer in this parliament.
When it comes to debate on competition policy, it is very important to set out what someone's core beliefs are. My core belief is belief in free markets, that free markets achieve the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of people, and that is what our history is showing. But the free markets are not something that are just naturally occurring. For a market to work properly, we must have some regulation on misleading and deceptive conduct. We must have some regulation on coercion, whether it is physical or economic coercion. The phrase we often hear, 'protecting competition and not competitors', simply gets the cart before the horse. What we should be trying to do with competition law is protect competitive opportunity to engage and enlarge individual liberty. We need to make sure with our competition policy that the individual that wants to have a go and start their own business rather than being a unionised employee of a big corporation does not have their opportunities restricted by any competitive practices designed to eliminate them.
I think my core beliefs were best put by US President Teddy Roosevelt over a century ago when he said:
It is of the utmost importance that in the future we shall keep the broad path of opportunity … open … it shall be not only possible but easy for an ambitious man, whose character has so impressed itself upon his neighbors that they are willing to give him capital and credit, to start in business for himself, and, if his superior efficiency deserves it, to triumph over the biggest organization that may happen to exist in his particular field. Whatever practices upon the part of large combinations—
that was the word they used then for large businesses—
may threaten to discourage such a man, or deny to him that which in the judgment of the community is a square deal, should be specifically defined by the statutes as crimes.
What denies an individual opportunity is anticompetitive price discrimination, buyer induced price discrimination, and predatory conduct, both predatory pricing and predatory buying. This is important not just for the individual but for our society. Overly concentrated markets are bad for both consumers and wealth creation.
We need to encourage individuals to start up and have a go. Look at some of the most recent companies. It is the small firms that play a crucial role in experimentation and innovation and that drive the technology change that creates wealth and drives prosperity. Companies such as Apple, Google and Disney all started in a garage. Walmart, the world's largest retailer, started with just a single store. This is what we want to encourage—entrepreneurialism, free markets and individuals running their own businesses without fear of being driven out by a larger competitor using anticompetitive practices.
This bill has been described as introducing an effects test. Some members of the opposition have talked about the debate on the effects test over a number of years, but that was a completely different effects test to what this bill introduces. I will go through that. Firstly, section 46 currently provides that a corporation with a substantial degree of market power cannot take advantage of that power for the purpose of (a) eliminating or substantially damaging a competitor, (b) preventing the entry of a person into a market and (c) deterring or preventing a person from engaging in competitive conduct. So it is damaging a competitor. If we replace that word 'purpose' in section 46 with the word 'effect', the act will be much more usable and more small-business friendly. It will enable section 46 to actually work in practice.
But that overlooks section 46(7) of the act, which says:
… notwithstanding that, after all the evidence has been considered, the existence of that purpose is ascertainable only by inference from the conduct of the corporation or of any other person …
So what it is saying, as Professor Corones notes in his legal text, is that the courts may draw inference from the conduct or any other circumstance without the need for direct evidence. A requisite purpose may be inferred on the basis of objective evidence, so when it goes to proving purpose there is no need for a smoking gun or some form of document that says, 'This was our purpose—to eliminate a competitor.' Purpose can be inferred. If we look at the history of section 46, there is hardly a single case where it has fallen over because the ACCC was unable to prove purpose, yet it has been put that that is the entire problem with the act.
What has been done in this so-called effects test? It is not the effect of damaging a competitor. The words have been changed. A new test has been added that requires not only damage to a competitor but also a substantial lessening of competition. That is completely different. The effect of substantially lessening competition is completely different to the effect of damaging a competitor. So now we have a section that starts off with the requirement that you have a substantial degree of market power and ends with the requirement that the conduct will result in a substantial lessening of competition. Having those two terms—the test at the front and the test at the back—is actually contradictory. It is very difficult to envisage a circumstance where a firm actually has a substantial degree of market power and then goes on and engages in conduct that results in a substantial lessening of competition because, if you have a substantial degree of market power, already the situation has occurred where there has been a substantial lessening of competition. So we need to be very careful about what we are talking about.
I will give you some examples of what is a substantial lessening of competition. Let us look at when St George merged with Westpac. The four largest banks in this country do not have a substantial degree of market power, because the test for a substantial degree of market power is the ability to raise your prices without losing customers to your competitors. If Westpac put up their rates, in theory customers could go to the Commonwealth Bank, the ANZ or the NAB—and likewise. When there was the proposal for St George to be taken over by Westpac the ACCC said:
The ACCC does not consider that there is sufficient evidence … required to show that the removal of St George as an independent player would be likely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition.
For small business, under the new test of section 46, they now have to show that not only were they damaged and run out of town by a company with a substantial degree of market power and it was done for an uncompetitive purpose, but also that that resulted in a substantial lessening of competition. This raises the bar rather than actually lowering it.
The other issue is that this new bill eliminates some of the existing sections of the act. It takes away the specific provision that we have on predatory pricing. The problem we have with the previous act when it comes to predatory pricing is that, to be guilty of an offence of predatory pricing, you must possess a substantial degree of market power at the time you engage in the act. As Justice McHugh said in the Boral case:
Conduct that is predatory in economic terms and anti-competitive may not be captured by s46 simply because the predator does not have substantial market power when it sets out on its course to deter or injure competitors. That may be because until it achieves its objective it has no substantial degree of market power.
… … …
Section 46 is ill drawn to deal with claims of predatory pricing in those conditions.
That problem was fixed with section 46(1AA). We are now repealing that in its entirety. Now, under the new provisions, a company will be able to engage in conduct with a specific purpose—a predatory pricing scheme selling below cost with the intention of eliminating a competitor for the purpose of obtaining a substantial degree of market power—but, because when they engage in that conduct, if they do not have a substantial degree of market power, they are not caught by the act.
There is some concern about how this act will be interpreted. We had hearings with the Standing Committee on economics earlier this year, and the ACCC chairman suggested that the changes being made to section 46 would help him police the banking sector and stop the banks from engaging in anti-competitive conduct. He thought there was not quite enough competition in the banking sector. I asked the chairman, 'Can you tell me which bank has a substantial degree of market power, and what market that is?' We had the entire brains trust of the ACCC there, and not one of them could come up with an example of which bank had a substantial degree of market power. That is the problem and the difficulty with the current section 46. It does not apply unless a company has a substantial degree of market power. That is the issue. We are actually, in my belief, making it harder with this act to prove a breach of section 46. We are enabling a company that has a substantial degree of market power to eliminate a smaller competitor from a market by using that market power, but providing that does not result in a substantial lessening of competition; they can now do that.
That brings me to a difficult position that I have. I have concerns with this bill. However, I acknowledge that there are many in the small business community that are in support of this. I also acknowledge that the coalition took this as a policy statement to the last election, and, as a member of the Liberal Party, I stood behind that commitment. That is what people in my electorate voted for; therefore, I am compelled to support this legislation in the House. But we will see. I could be wrong. It will be a number of years until the courts determine the effect of this legislation. I hope that I am wrong.
Mr THISTLETHWAITE (Kingsford Smith) (17:33): My Labor colleagues and I are opposed to this reform, quite simply because the effect of it will be to actually reduce competition in markets in Australia. Instead of prohibiting the misuse of market power, the overall effect of Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016 will be to reduce competition in markets in Australia. The reason for that is that companies will become timid when it comes to competing on price. They will be scared away from competing on price with the threat of legal action hanging over their heads, because of the effects of discounting campaigns that they may undertake and their competitors potentially using those campaigns, under this proposed legislation, to prosecute them in the courts for misuse of market power. The overall result of this legislation is that Australian consumers will be worse off. Australian consumers will be the great losers under this legislation, because the effect of it will be to reduce competition within markets. This bill does represent, quite seriously, a threat to business across the nation and, for that reason, Labor is opposed to it.
Schedule 1 of this bill amends section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act to prohibit a corporation with a substantial degree of market power engaging in conduct that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in that market or any other market in which the corporation itself or a related body corporate supplies or acquires goods or services or is likely to acquire or supply goods or services, or any market in which the corporation indirectly supplies or acquires goods or services or is likely to supply or acquire goods or services. The objective of section 46 is to prevent firms from engaging in unilateral conduct that harms the competitive process. This requires distinguishing between vigorous competitive activity, which is desirable, and economically inefficient monopolistic practices that may exclude rivals and harm the competitive process.
This amendment is more commonly known as the effects test. It has been debated in Australia, up hill and down dale, for many decades. Those opposite like to use the example of Coles and Woolworths and the effects on farmers, but the overall effect for consumers will be that it risks business being afraid to compete, which ultimately hurts consumers and stymies growth in our economy. It will create a legal risk in that every time a business seeks to lower prices for their customers, particularly if they are getting into a competitive process with other businesses—so they get into a discounting campaign, if you like, with other businesses—the effect of that may be prohibited under this legislation, and the consumers will be the losers. The benefits of strong competition are obvious for all. When a business seeks to innovate in their space by creating a new or better product, or lowering prices made possible by lower costs, this often results in less efficient and innovative businesses becoming uncompetitive in the market. This is a natural outcome and is one that should be recognised as not inherently bad but beneficial to consumers, while also providing incentive for better business practices.
The ironic thing about this whole debate is that it appears that it is those on this side of the chamber that are arguing for freer markets, not those on the other side. The previous speaker came in here and said he was all about free markets. He raved on about the freedom of choice that members of the Liberal Party have and how, in the great Menzies tradition, they are free to vote whatever way they like on legislation. Despite the fact that he has been the number 1 opponent of an effects test over the course of the last couple of years in this place, he gets to the end of his speech—I was almost bowled over—and says that despite his opposition to this in the past he is going to vote for it this time in the House of Representatives. You cannot get any more hypocritical than the last speaker, who says that he is opposed to an effects test and he rails about the Liberal Party's philosophy of freedom of vote on this issue and then, at the end of his speech, tries to slink out of it by saying, 'By the way, I'm going to vote for it. That's the end. That's all I've got. I'm out of here', hoping that no one will notice. Hypocrisy is alive and well in the Liberal Party.
As I said, it is rather ironic that it is Labor that is supporting free markets and competition here and it is the government that is seeking to introduce more regulation, stifle competition and bind the hands of businesses in this country. What we see is a dangerous legislative process without either addressing the resources of the ACCC or making it easier for small businesses to litigate in their own private capacity.
I mentioned earlier that this issue has been debated up hill and down dale for many years. Since 1974, there have been no less than 10 inquiries in Australia into competition laws that have considered the proposal of an effects test. All of them have rejected it bar one. Every single one of those inquiries, bar one of them, has rejected it. And, of course, apart from Professor Harper's review, only one other inquiry has recommend it. In the submissions to the Harper review, the effects test has been described as 'legally unworkable', something that would 'chill competition' and something that would create uncertainty for business. Responding to the government's commitment to an effects test in July last year, the Productivity Commission was absolutely scathing of this notion, saying:
The existing competition regulation and oversight is adequate for managing concerns about abuse of market power by supermarkets and traders engaging with farm businesses.
The current focus on the potential for the misuse of market power by wholesale merchants and supermarkets engaging with farmers is not well supported by evidence.
It also said introducing an effects test was unlikely to shield farm businesses from intense competition in retail food markets, saying:
… shielding farm businesses from competition would also not be in the interests of consumers.
That is at the heart of this debate. That is what Labor is all about—increasing and enhancing competition in markets not attempting to stifle it. Competition creates downward pressure on prices and leaves consumers better off.
In reality, like so much of what this government does and says, this legislation really is about internal party politics, not what is ultimately in the best interests of Australian consumers. What you see here is the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, bending over backwards to placate the Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby. We all know that this is one of his pet issues. This is his misguided notion of economic reality and what is good for competition in Australia. On this—and this says it all about this government's approach on this issue—the National Party is determining economic policy when it comes to competition in this country. Well, God help us all! It is the Australian consumer that is going to lose out because of this because businesses will be too timid and too scared to compete with each other on price, and they will keep prices higher. The consumer will be worse off under the threat of prosecution under this legislation.
Ten out of 12 reviews of competition policy in the last 40 years have rejected an effects test as being bad policy which has the potential to drive up prices. That is the key determinant of those inquiries that have been opposed to this—drive them not down but up. This is because of an ill-thought-out and dangerous idea. Professor Harper himself concluded that the proposed test will create uncertainty. Treasury has confirmed this. The directions proposed to accompany the legislation have corrected been described by former ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel as 'bewildering'. They are bewildering. So much for providing certainty for business. So much for providing certainty for consumers and creating an environment of competition for consumers. When the former chairman of the ACCC describes the government's own guiding material on implementing this legislation as bewildering, then you know you have a problem.
In the lead-up to the last election, Labor took a different approach. We did not succumb to populist rhetoric and pressure from the National Party. Labor outlined a practical approach for preventing destructive anticompetitive behaviour with our access to justice package. This was put together—I might say, quite professionally and skilfully and in consultation with the business community—by the member for Greenway, Michelle Rowland, as the former shadow minister for small business. The difference between the Labor Party's approach and the government's approach on this is that we consulted with businesses. We actually consulted with small businesses and consumers throughout the country. All they did was listen to the Deputy Prime Minister and his misguided notion of competition and economics. Labor, listening to and consulting with small businesses, came up with what they really want, which is practical assistance to ensure that they can compete in markets and, where they feel that competition is anticompetitive, take action in tribunals and in the courts without being priced out of the market by big businesses, who can rely on big legal bills and expensive lawyers to hope that they will not have action taken against them.
Our access to justice package basically creates a level playing field. It would ensure that private litigants, small businesses and their industry representatives could better use existing legislation to prove the abuse of competition under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act, allowing judges in the Federal Court to waive liability for adverse costs orders. So, under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act, private litigants would be empowered to bring litigation without the crushing burden of enormous legal fees. At an early stage of a court case the private litigant would be able to request a 'no adverse costs order', preventing large legal fees of the defendant from being transferred to the litigant. Even in the lead-up to that, under our system the small business would have the opportunity to go to the small business ombudsman and get—an opinion, if you like—a determination on whether or not a 'no adverse costs order' would be in order if the action were taken. This would have the effect of changing the dynamics of small businesses and their representatives in their ability to bring private litigation. Those who misuse market power or seek to fix prices—amongst other anticompetitive practices—would be subject to closer scrutiny.
Concern continues to surround the potential for this legislation to result in intensification of legal action and the disruption of businesses' ability to move forward with certainty. This will impact on investment and jobs, and that is why Labor is opposed to this bill. This is simply policy on the run to appease elements of the National Party. It will be bad for business and bad for competition, and consumers will be worse off. That is bad policy, and that is why Labor will not support it.
Ms HENDERSON (Corangamite) (17:48): It is my great pleasure to rise and speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016 and place on record my strong support for this important reform. This is a very important reform. The bill before the parliament today to amend section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 is all about standing up for small business, is all about ensuring there is a level playing field and is all about ensuring that we do not continue to see the sort of anticompetitive conduct, dominated by the likes of Coles and Woolworths, which has in many respects served to squash or diminish small businesses.
We have seen some dreadful examples—and where was the Labor Party? Where was the Labor Party in standing up for consumers and small businesses when we saw shocking conduct by the likes of Coles and Woolworths in demanding, unlawfully and improperly—I say a sort of corporate corruption, frankly—rebates from their suppliers that were designed to push suppliers to the wall? What we are seeing from the Labor Party is, 'Yes, the status quo is fine.' The status quo is not fine. What we heard from the member Kingsford Smith, who spoke before me, is just rubbish. As a strong Liberal, I am very proud to stand up for this reform, and the coalition is very proud to stand up for this reform, because we have seen in section 46 a provision that is not properly working.
The Harper review recommended strengthening section 46 of the act after finding that the current law regarding misuse of market power is not reliably enforceable and does not effectively target and deter anticompetitive conduct, to the detriment of Australian consumers. The government has adopted a recommendation from Harper—who did a superb job, I have to say, and I want to put on record that very important point—to create a commercially and legally robust law to prevent firms with substantial market power from engaging in conduct which harms competition in Australian markets. This is not about preventing a large supermarket chain from discounting. What we heard from the member opposite in the previous contribution is just rubbish. This is about ensuring that, whether you are a big business in this country or whether you are one of Australia's more than two million small businesses, which make up more than 97 per cent of all businesses, you can operate as a business on a level playing field. The reformed section 46 will prohibit a corporation:
… from engaging in conduct that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in markets in which they directly or indirectly participate.
Treasurer Scott Morrison made it very clear in his media statement on 1 December 2016 that:
The new provision will more effectively address anti-competitive conduct, protecting the process of competition rather than individual competitors.
He continued:
These reforms represent an important step towards ensuring Australia's competition laws are fit for purpose and support competition in a dynamic economy. They are a key part of the Government's response to the Harper Review, which is all about increasing choice and delivering better services and outcomes for Australian consumers.
This has been a pressing issue in Australian competition law over a long period of time. It has been supported very strongly by the ACCC. I have to say that Chairman Rod Sims, leading that organisation, is on balance doing a very good job of tackling these issues of failure to comply with competition law. I think he has led the way, along with the likes of Professor Allan Fels and Professor Harper, in illustrating and demonstrating that this is no longer fit for purpose.
This reform modernises competition law by simplifying it and by strengthening the protections for small businesses from economically harmful, illegitimate, anticompetitive behaviour by big firms with market power. As we know, this is done by the introduction of an effects test.
The economic case for this reform is extremely strong. No other country, except New Zealand, allows monopolists to harm competition. This is what the Labor Party is supporting: a proposition where if you have a monopoly or a duopoly, in the case of the large supermarkets, you can conduct yourself in a way that harms competition in the market. I say that because the 'misuse of market power' provision was simply not working. The threshold was too high. It was simply too onerous for a smaller business to go to court and argue that there had been a breach.
In recommending this change, Professor Harper has recommended a reform that ensures there will be continuing protection of legitimate competitive behaviour, which is why I say to members opposite that it is just absolutely wrong and improper to argue that this will prevent some sort of healthy discounting in the market. I think history will prove me to be correct on that important point. It recognises that the line between competitive and anticompetitive behaviour is not drawn by having a purpose test but by having a proper economic test. We know that this is opposed by sections of big business, but it is strongly supported by small business, farmers and consumers.
I want to reflect on the contribution I made on this issue on 3 March last year, when I congratulated the 20 industry bodies calling on our government to amend section 46. Let me mention some of these bodies, all coming together to say that the current law is not working. As I mentioned when I started my contribution, we have seen some terrible examples of abuse of competition law from the likes of Coles and Woolworths, which basically, almost frankly, tried to blackmail their suppliers by demanding, improperly, rebates. Some of the conduct has been terrible. Coles and Woolworths have had legal repercussions. In Coles' case, in fact, it incurred a fine of some $10 million.
We will not tolerate this. We will not tolerate a legal system that allows this to happen. Where the law requires strengthening we will firmly stand behind all businesses, big and small, to ensure that we have a robust market. That is the essence of a free market. It is not to protect the big boys. It is not to protect those who have the power. The essence of a free market is in protecting competition and in standing up when there is anticompetitive conduct in the market. I want to reflect on the alliance of bodies that called for reform—so it is simply not true that most voices are against this reform: the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Booksellers Association, the Australian Hotels Association, the Australian Retailers Association, Australian Dairy Farmers, the Australian Newsagents' Federation, the hairdressing association, the Commercial Asset Finance Brokers Association, the Convenience and Mixed Business Association, Fresh Markets Australia, the Central Markets Association of Australia, MGA Independent Retailers, Independent Contractors Australia, the Motor Trades Association—the list goes on and on.
The current provision simply is not working. I want to put on the record that I consider it to be disgraceful that the Labor Party is not supporting a change in this provision. We are seeing once again a case of the Labor Party saying one thing and doing another—we have sent it on the issue of penalty rates. Might I say that I do want to question the Labor Party's motivation. We all know—and we have had a lot of evidence on this before this parliament in recent weeks—about some of the dirty deals that are being done where young workers have had their penalty rates stripped from them altogether because of deals between the likes of the SDA union, the shoppers union, which is one of the most powerful unions in the country, and the likes of McDonalds, KFC, Woolworths and Coles. There is absolutely no doubt that Labor, metaphorically, is firmly in bed with these large companies and I find it a disgrace that the Labor Party is not prepared to stand up for fair competition and not prepared to stand up for our farmers, our consumers and our small businesses.
So, how ironic is it—and everyone in this parliament knows—that the Labor Party have been doing these deals? That is why they are not backing this reform—because they are in bed with the likes of Woolworths and Coles and other large employers. That is why we have introduced our corrupting benefits bill—because we have heard much evidence in this parliament in recent weeks about the inappropriate payments that have been received by unions, which just coincidentally happened to occur at the same time as these EBAs have been negotiated, EBAs that have left young workers in McDonald's receiving something like $26 an hour on a Sunday with no penalty rates whatsoever and other businesses and other workers being paid at least $10 more an hour. That is what the Labor Party is doing out there in the workplace: dirty deals in conjunction with unions like the SDA. And this is the result. So, we need to look behind what the Labor Party is saying tonight in this debate and we need to see their motivation.
I make the same point on multinational tax avoidance—again, a case of the Labor Party saying one thing and doing another. It is another failure by the Labor Party to stand up for those big multinational companies who were ripping off Australian workers. And it is an absolute disgrace that the Labor Party has opposed our measures to combat multinational tax avoidance, again backing their mates. Frankly, I know—and we all know in this parliament—that there is a great deal of embarrassment by Labor members that they did not support that particular bill, which has now resulted in our government collecting $2 billion in tax liabilities from multinationals, which has come from a range of sectors in the energy, resources and e-commerce sectors by the Australian Taxation Office.
So, when we hear about hypocrisy, look no further than this Labor Party—a Labor Party that does not have the guts, does not have the courage, to stand up to the big boys in town and say 'Enough is enough.' And as I say, we did not hear those voices when Coles and Woolworths were systematically ripping off hardworking men and women who had spent a lifetime building up their business. And even after that conduct, even after they had been caught, even after they had been fined, even after they had paid their penalty, I was getting complaints into my office; there were still stories of suppliers being told what they had to do and not do when it came to repaying Coles and Woolworths with their sleazy rebates.
So, I say, on behalf of the Turnbull government, that I am very proud of this reform. This shows that we are determined to stand up for all businesses. This shows that we are determined to stand up for jobs. I commend this bill to the House.
Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (18:03): I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016. And just before I get into the substance of the legislation, for the benefit of those listening I want to explain parliamentary processes. There is normally one speaker from the government side and then one speaker from the opposition side. I just want to be clear that I am a member of the Labor Party speaking now. The previous speakers are actually speaking on behalf of the government about the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill. I say that up-front, because I just want to be sure that people understand what the government is proposing.
I remember—not ancient history, but I remember—a government that said 'We will be elected on a platform of jobs and growth.' That was what they talked about. And the other big thing, the great vision of the Abbott-Turnbull government, which they articulated over three years—and I remember the speeches from those opposite—was about red tape reduction. That was their great vision for the 21st century: jobs and growth, innovation and red tape reduction. Well, what do we have here? This bill that the government members are speaking in favour of does exactly the opposite of what the Abbott-Turnbull government promised. It will deter job-creating investment in Australia.
What does this bill do? It introduces the effects test into the Australian consumer law. To be clear, this is an additional test to the current purpose test already in section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act. Yes, it is correct. The Liberal Party is advocating more red tape when it comes to consumer law—yes. That is why I wanted to be sure that people at home who were listening understood. And what are the dangers associated with this economic policy? Surely if it is designed to protect consumers it would be worth having a look at, because all sensible governments will look at things that protect consumers and also obviously have a look at our agricultural producers.
I will go to the words of a former Liberal Treasurer, pretty well known. I think he was in the job for about 12 years. He did not quite have the ticker to go to A grade but as a Treasurer he had 12 years of experience. He is the pin-up boy for the Liberal Party. Former Treasurer Peter Costello has said:
The so-called effects test is designed to protect competitors, particularly less efficient ones, from a competitive challenge.
That is Peter Costello.
Well, let's have a look at what this legislation means for businesses. It is not the purpose for which a business undertakes an action but the effect that the action has on competition. For example, a retail chain wanting to expand by opening a new store may very likely be advised by their legal team that taking that step—a step that would create new jobs—might attract litigation under the effects test. Businesses would need to think twice before undertaking any capital expenditure. That would cost hundreds of construction jobs and ongoing retail jobs each time a business decides it is not worth the risk.
Wesfarmers—and I declare up-front, as I do on my register of interests, that I have shares in Wesfarmers, as many mums and dads around Australia do—the largest employer in Australia, each year looks at 20 new Bunnings warehouses, 30 new Coles supermarkets and 20 new Kmart stores. Richard Goyder, the managing director of Wesfarmers, wonders how this proposal to change Australia's consumer laws will affect the growth of their company. And remember: Wesfarmers are an international business, with Bunnings stores in the United Kingdom and beyond, so they know how to compete on the world stage. Richard Goyder said:
… does that mean now every time we have a capital expenditure proposal come to us that we've got to look at the likely effect on competition?
I know there are problems with Coles and Woolworths in terms of selling food and grocery items. And I know that, wherever there is competition in a suburb, Coles and Woolies will actually be cheaper; so the competition is a good thing. But we have to be very careful about bringing in expensive red tape.
Even small business is concerned about this proposal that the party of markets has put to the chamber. The Council of Small Business Australia has raised concerns that the laws will lead to a lawyers' picnic, as litigation around the meaning of the wording could lead to complex court cases. I am all for lawyers having a job, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, and I know your family is well connected with Brisbane's legal fraternity. But we have to invest in markets that produce lower prices wherever possible. Small businesses are the ones who are supposed to benefit from this crazy policy straight out of the Deputy Prime Minister's thought bubble. But even small business thinks it is a crazy policy.
As I said, the only people who will benefit from this legislation are lawyers. And I do not have anything against lawyers. I see a few of them in the chamber. I would not say a bad word against them; they do a valuable job. But it is bound to cause a raft of litigation. Obviously lawyers have to work, but why create extra red tape—especially when you have retailed your politics to the Australian people for so long, in the 45th Parliament, saying that there are going to be red-tape-reduction days with celebrations throughout. And now you are bringing in more red tape.
Sadly, what does red tape mean? I do not want to quote back to them those speeches that I heard day after day from those opposite, but red tape means that the real losers in this policy will be the consumers—the mums and dads who are already battling to put food on the table each and every week, as we see a 75-year rise in inequality and wages growth at the lowest level of increase since they started measuring wage growth. So we know families are doing it tougher. Why would you bring in more red tape so that every food item you buy is going to be more expensive?
On the day the policy was announced, the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, said that selling milk for $1 a litre was too low and the price should be higher. Obviously, this was the National Party looking after dairy farmers. That is a good thing. We all do what we can to support our dairy farmers in terms of buying milk. But, in the same press conference, he said that in China Australian milk sells for up to $11 a litre. So how much does the Deputy Prime Minister think Australians should pay for their milk?
Ms Butler: $11!
Mr PERRETT: Is it $11? I will take that interjection from the member for Griffith. There is no doubt that if this bill is passed and the new test becomes law then consumers will pay more for their everyday living expenses, as I said, at a time when wages growth is flat to negative and inequality is at its highest level since World War II—not a great combination. There is no way around that. Reducing competition means higher prices.
So the effects test has been floating around as a policy idea for many, many decades. Since as far back as 1974, we have had various inquiries which have considered an effects test. In fact, 10 inquiries since 1974 have looked at an effects test. And all of them have rejected it, apart from the Harper review. That is the only inquiry that has ever actually recommended an effects test.
Let us look at some of the evidence the Harper review received. Some said that it was legally unworkable, something that would chill competition and something that would create uncertainty for business. These are not the sorts of conditions that the Liberal Party should be championing. These are not the sorts of conditions that will promote investment. These are not conditions that will create jobs at all. They will just create more unnecessary red tape and be a barrier to business development.
Liberal members, especially those who have spoken on those red tape celebration days, have also, in the past, been critical of the effects test. Let us have a look at them. There is the former Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb; he knows a little bit about competition; he opposed the test. The former Treasurer, Joe Hockey, also opposed the test. Craig Kelly, the member for Hughes, has said:
It is not an effects test; its effect is to substantially lessen competition. It is not what you think it is … it is a Trojan Horse.
I am sure that Mr Kelly, a man of his word, will vote against this piece of legislation! Like any Liberal member, he is able to make up his mind every time he votes, so I am sure he will cross the floor on this and be true to his own words! In fact, current cabinet members Senators George Brandis and Mathias Cormann, from the other place, have been reported as being against the effects test. Even the Prime Minister himself has previously been critical of the effects test.
So this is yet another example of a Turnbull government backflip when it comes to saving the Prime Minister's job. This crazy harbourside-hillbilly alliance will actually do damage to the country. It is not a policy that is being driven by the good of the economy; it is a policy that is being driven solely to satisfy the unrest in the coalition government.
Well, what is the alternative? Labor has a policy that will encourage competition and be good for small business—the sensible middle way. We know that jobs and growth actually, fair dinkum, come from small businesses. So Labor's plan is to encourage private litigation under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act, where cases are in the public interest. This policy will allow private litigants who can demonstrate the merits of their claims against anti-competitive behaviour to access the courts without the risk of liability if their claim fails.
Labor will also boost the funding to the small business ombudsman. The small business ombudsman will be able to assess the merits of a litigant's case so that businesses will have a better understanding of the likelihood of their claims' success.
Labor has a good record on pro-consumer and pro-competition policy. In fact, before the 2016 election, the Labor Party introduced a suite of policies, including an increase in the civil penalties under the Australian Consumer Law from $1.1 million up to $10 million, bringing penalties in line with the competition provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act. We adopted the EU's penalty system for anti-competitive conduct, which is based on 30 per cent of the annual sales of the relevant product or service, multiplied by the number of years the infringement took place, limited to the greater amount of 10 per cent of annual turnover or $10 million—so, a bigger stick.
We would use some of the revenues from increased penalties to increase the ACCC's litigation budget from its current level of $24.5 million to a maximum of twice that level, at $49 million. We would amend the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to give a 'market studies' function to the ACCC so that it can explore public interest issues such as pricing discrepancies and increased market concentration. We would amend section 76 of the Competition and Consumer Act to allow the court to apply higher penalties for conduct that targets or disproportionately impacts disadvantaged Australians. We would include a requirement in the Competition and Consumer Act that the ACCC prioritise investigations of conduct that targets or disproportionately impacts disadvantaged Australians.
The Labor Party is happy to bring positive ideas to the table. The Labor Party would task government to investigate the impacts of increased market concentration on income inequality in Australia and produce policy recommendations on how the negative effects of market concentration can be mitigated. We would encourage states and territories to include competition principles in planning and zoning legislation, as recommended by the Harper review, with a specific focus on shortfalls of appropriately-zoned land for key services in disadvantaged communities. We all know that, if you do not have an effective market when it comes to landlords, in terms of Coles and Woolies, that can actually increase the rents and increase the prices that consumers pay. The Labor Party is fair dinkum about protecting competition and, obviously, if you have competition, that is good for consumers.
When I go for a morning walk around Canberra, I see the most animated Liberal in Canberra—that is, Bob Menzies' statue. He actually believed in markets; now we are seeing the people opposite, the party of government, bring in red tape and more cost for consumers. We know that healthy competition is important, that consumer confidence is important and, more importantly, that business investment is important. Labor understands this and Labor's policies will promote all three of these outcomes. The government's policy will do the opposite; it is designed to stifle competition, which will have a negative effect on business investment. As an illustration of how crucial these economic components are, I will read an extract from a letter dated 10 March 2017 from the Institute of Public Affairs. They label themselves as the premier free-market think tank, 'dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of economic and political freedom'. This might be the last time that I ever quote the IPA, but their letter says: 'Business investment as a percentage of GDP is now below Whitlam-era levels, and it is forecast to fall further. This is a key factor undermining labour productivity and wage growth, which is currently at a record low.' When the 'premier free-market think tank' is concerned that business investment is too low and falling further and the Turnbull government is advocating for a policy that will deter business investment, you know that there is something wrong.
The Turnbull government have failed at the very task that they set for themselves: to create jobs and growth and to get rid of red tape. They set the standard and they have failed their own test. Employment conditions have deteriorated so much that they are now worse than at any time since the peak of the global financial crisis. This policy before the chamber will only make things worse. It is a dangerous economic policy at a time when we should be very careful about the direction that the ship of state is taking. As I said, this policy is not going to be good for consumers at a time when they are really under the hammer; wages growth is low and economic conditions are not ready for this legislation.
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (18:18): When we heard the 'jobs and growth' slogan during the last federal election, who knew the real meaning of it? Who knew that what the Prime Minister was really talking about was jobs for lawyers and growth in litigation? That is what the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016 delivers. I guess in that strange, perverse way, this legislation is delivering on the jobs and growth slogan that the government repeated ad nauseam—almost to the point where people in Australia were ready to stick their fingers in their ears to avoid having to hear that phrase one more time—during the federal election. What have they actually delivered when it comes to jobs and growth? Not very much. Underemployment is at record levels. We have been keeping records since 1978, and underemployment is at record levels for that period, with 1.1 million Australians who cannot get enough work. This bill will not do anything for those Australians and nor will it do anything for those Australians who are presently on the unemployment line—about 750,000 of them.
Nor will it do anything for growth; in fact, if anything, it is at risk of putting a handbrake on growth, because of course growth will depend on increases in productivity and increases in innovation, both in big and small firms. If you are looking over your shoulder every time you are thinking about an innovation, it makes it much harder to innovate. If you are looking over your shoulder wondering whether a regulator or an individual is going to bring proceedings against you, because the effect of the innovation making your firm better able to compete against its competitors could possibly be to substantially lessen competition by making it harder for others to compete against you—in other words, if your innovation is going to make your firm amazing and leave other firms being just average—if you are worried about whether or not that is going to get you sued, then of course that is going to be something that will make you think twice before deciding whether to invest in that innovation and before deciding whether to pursue that innovation. A test that focuses on the effect of conduct rather than the intention behind it has every risk of putting people in a position where, through no malicious intent, through no attempt to try to crush their competitors—other than through the ordinary ways in which everybody wants to make a profit and make their own firm the best it can be—through no malice at all, they have to be worried about the unintended effect of substantially lessening competition in a market.
I should say that I have a lot of sympathy for people who are concerned about whether the purpose test is adequate. I understand the difficulties that people have in proving the purpose or intention of someone else in legal proceedings. I certainly do not dismiss those concerns whatsoever. I understand that when you are trying to prove that somebody else had an intention to substantially lessen competition, if that was the purpose of their conduct, that can be a very difficult thing for regulators or private litigants to have to prove, and I certainly do not think that anybody would claim that the current legislation is perfect. For that reason, I certainly understand the concerns of the Council of Small Businesses and, particularly, of Peter Strong, who is the CEO of the Council of Small Businesses. He is a remarkable advocate for small business in this country and he is just tireless; he works very hard and he is always persuasive. I certainly understand the concern that he and his members have in relation to the difficulties facing small business. They are seeking to make sure that anti-competitive behaviour is not engaged in by others to their detriment. But that does not mean we should supplement a purpose based test with a test like the one being proposed now by the coalition government. It will put a handbrake on innovation, a handbrake on productivity improvements and, very possibly, a handbrake on growth.
Instead, we should be making it easier for small businesses to be empowered and making life easier for small businesses. Quite clearly, the bipartisan view in this place is to make life easier for small business. For example, it is why Labor have been so clear that we are committed to tax cuts for small businesses. It is why Wayne Swan introduced the instant asset write-off provisions for small businesses that, unfortunately, the government decided to scrap when they came to office. When they finally—and quite rightly—reinstated the instant asset write-off, it was a tacit admission of the foolhardiness of the decision to scrap it in the first place. But I think there is, by and large, a very clear bipartisanship in relation to making life easier for small business.
Most people in this place will have worked in small business, will have been proprietors of small business or will have had connection with small business. For example, my mum started her own small business when I was still at school. I still remember what it was like after school—going down to the new shop, getting it painted and getting the signage organised. It was a family effort. My father was working at the post office at the time, so he fitted in getting the business up and running around his paid employment. It was a really exciting time for our family, and it was building on a family tradition of small business. My grandparents had opened a newsagent and had then gone on to open a really successful plan-printing business. My mum's sister—my aunt—and her husband started a refrigeration business. My other aunt—mum's other sister—started a business in body corporate management much later on. Our family is very much a small-business family. So I really understand some of the challenges for small business—how hard it can be and how difficult it can be to understand, or just to get the time to think about, all of the different things you have to do. There are all of the challenges—marketing and making sure your employees are doing what they should be doing, while at the same time making sure you comply with legislation, pay the tax on time and all of those things.
I certainly do not stand here in any way dismissing or rejecting the concerns that small business have about the possibility of big players misusing market power in order to substantially lessen competition. But that does not necessitate the conclusion that we should introduce an additional layer of complexity. People have called it red tape, but it is really an additional layer of complexity in our competition laws that will create a whole new set of jurisprudence that is foreign to Australian jurisprudence. It will also create a new level of risk aversion in Australian business, with people being very concerned about the unintended but potentially very real effects of decisions that they make.
As a Labor person, I want to see greater competition. I think that the effects test idea has the real risk of actually lessening competition, of making it less likely that firms will take innovative steps and seek to improve their productivity because of the possible risk of inadvertently running foul of these laws. I also want to see innovation. Labor took to the federal election a comprehensive suite of strong innovation policies aimed at fostering the start-up sector, the start-up ecosystem, in this country. We took to the election our policies for tax relief for angel and early-stage investment, for promoting venture capital in this country and for making sure that people could get the talent they needed by reforming immigration laws and visas and by making sure that all of the start-ups in this country had a real voice and real opportunities to grow, to scale up and to become global. That was the passion behind the innovation policy that Labor took to the federal election. It is something that I am very concerned about too. We want to see a strongly innovative nation, not just in the high-growth start-up sector and in tech firms but also in big firms that want to innovate, that want to make their processes better and that want to do better.
A really good example comes to mind. I had the benefit of chatting to someone from Swisse, who have been doing a lot of work in advanced manufacturing in Australia because of the quality and the reputation that we have as Australians. As a consequence of their innovation and high-quality standards, they are able to create real jobs here in Australia because of the exporting that they are doing now—to China, in particular. I do not want big firms like that having to worry about whether the steps they are taking to scale up their enterprises—even very big enterprises scaling up beyond our borders and becoming global firms—will inadvertently breach Australia's competition laws if the effect of their becoming better is to substantially lessen competition in the market. I certainly do not want high-growth start-ups, in the context of thinking about scaling up, having to worry about whether they might inadvertently breach an effects test.
As I was saying a little earlier, those sorts of highly innovative firms are the firms we are going to be turning to to really innovate and find ways for Australian businesses to become more productive. That is the last thing we should be doing right now, at a time when, globally, economists are saying, 'Where is productivity going to come from?' We are in a low-growth world. The recovery from the global financial crisis has been slower than people predicted at the time. We are looking around for sources of innovation and productivity improvement. The last thing we should be doing is implementing any sort of legislation that might put a handbrake on innovation, that might put a handbrake on productivity improvements. It is not just Australia; the whole developed world is finding it really difficult to see where additional productivity improvements and economic growth are going to come from.
In the face of that challenge, we as a parliament should be working together to think about what we can do to set the right conditions so that firms can innovate. There are all manner of things that we should be talking about rather than this effects test. For example, one of the committees of the parliament heard recently from representatives of the creative arts and the creative industries about the importance of injecting creativity into our national economic debate, in relation to both supporting existing firms and to partnering with universities, start-ups, incubators and accelerators to make sure that the nation's creative talents are being harnessed and tapped, with a view to improving the benefits that we get from blending creativity with, for example, technological skills or business skills. That would be a much better use of the parliament's time than debating the effects test.
Similarly, we are about to hear, over the coming months, about where the start-up sector is in this country—where the ecosystem is. There have been calls for things like, for example, copyright reform. There are some really thorny, difficult issues in relation to copyright reform that would benefit from further debate, discussion and elucidation in this place. That would actually contribute, or could have the potential to contribute, to innovation and productivity to a much greater extent than this potentially harmful legislation we are talking about here today.
We should also be not just considering how we get more productivity enhancements and how we increase innovation in our economy but also thinking about the impact on our economy of legislation that could potentially have an impact on consumption. One of the key criticisms that Labor has made of this bill is that could potentially put up consumer prices, especially for everyday consumer goods. Labor has been very concerned that an unintended consequence of this bill—although it was perhaps anticipated, given the Deputy Prime Minister's comments about the price of milk that the member for Moreton talked about previously—would be to push up consumer prices. Because, when we talk about competition policy, the whole purpose of making sure that we have a good, strong competition policy—or at least the Labor purpose, and you will remember that it was really Labor that drove the early days of competition policy in this country—is to favour the interests of consumers. So if this bill was to put up consumer prices, particularly for everyday goods, that would be an adverse outcome of the legislation for consumers. But it would also, unfortunately, have the effect that they might be a bit less likely to consume, or they might consume a little bit less, and that is the last thing that we want to be promoting at this point.
I mentioned the Deputy Prime Minister before. I really think that this bill is a great example, if one were to be needed, of just how beholden this government is to the National Party economic agenda. This bill suggests that it is the Deputy Prime Minister who is running the economic policy for the government, not, for example, the Prime Minister or the Treasurer. This is very much a measure that is pursued by the National Party. It is something that the Prime Minister himself has not supported in the past. It is something that almost every major review into competition law has opposed in the past. The government might want to reflect on the success or otherwise of having the National Party driving the agenda for this government; it certainly has not worked out well for them in other areas. If you let the Deputy Prime Minister run the show then you end up moving probably every government agency to his electorate, with each move having a benefit-cost ratio of less than one. You would end up having someone who cannot work out the difference between regional Victoria and inner-city Brisbane running the economic policy. I am not sure how well that would go for the nation. I do not think that turning to the Deputy Prime Minister for your economic policy is the right way to go. (Time expired)
Mr STEPHEN JONES (Whitlam) (18:33): The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Misuse of Market Power) Bill 2016 is as confused and incoherent as the government and the Prime Minister himself. Most of the debate within the chamber today has focused on schedule 1 of the bill, which proposes to amend section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act to introduce an effects test that looks at whether conduct engaged in by a firm with a substantial degree of market power has the purpose or effect, or is likely to have the purpose or effect, of substantially lessening competition.
I want to focus on schedule 2 of the bill. It has not had a lot of focus in this debate, but it is important, because schedule 2 of the bill goes on to propose the repeal of telecommunication-specific anti-competitive conduct in part XIB of the Competition and Consumer Act—a longstanding and very effective regime, which has ensured a greater degree of competition within this industry. I want to foreshadow now that if the government does not come to its senses and back away from this reckless piece of legislation, and if the bill moves from this place to the other place then we will be moving amendments to restore the provisions in part XIB when this bill reaches the Senate. Let me make the case for why that is critical.
On the one hand, the government claims it wants to strengthen competition law through the introduction of a general effects test, a short-sighted and dangerous piece of legislation which is legally unworkable, will chill competition and create uncertainty for business. This has the same effect that it did when at least 10 inquiries since 1974 have considered and rejected it. That is right: 10 inquiries have considered this and they have rejected it. But the Prime Minister, a man who has no advisers, because he is always the smartest man in the room, is pushing this reckless, senseless piece of legislation into the chamber today. We hope that he comes to his senses, but, if he does not, we need to rescue something from the ashes of this reckless path.
On the other hand, through schedule 2 of this bill, the government, through its misguided repeal of part XIB, wants to strip away a regime which is tried, true and tested. This is the provision which applies specifically to the telecommunications sector, a sector which has long been at the epicentre of competition disputes. The government would like us to believe that important features of the telecommunication competition regime have been used less over time and that means that they should be repealed—that is, this was a strongly litigated and strongly used piece of legislation when it was originally introduced and that is true but, because it is used less now, we do not need it any more. We argue something different. In fact, this is a very clear reflection of an ex ante regulation working not only in the interests of the industry but, more importantly, in the interests of consumers. The inconsistency in the intent of this bill is just another example of the lack of policy direction that has been plaguing the Turnbull government since its inception.
I want to focus on part XIB. Telecommunication services are one of the key drivers of productivity and growth in the Australian economy. The connectivity afforded by communications networks breaks down the barriers of distance and helps unlock the economic and social potential of the nation by providing all with a stake in society. The centrality of communications to the lives of Australians emphasises the importance of having well-designed competition regulation in the telecommunications sector, and I hope this is a point which is not lost on this parliament. I would like to quote the CEO of the Council of Small Business Australia in comments that were published on 20 November last year:
While there has been plenty of discussion in recent years about the dominance of the banks, the major supermarkets and the big retailers, Australia's telecommunications sector is arguably the worst example of a major failure in competition laws and policy …
I also note that on 5 September last year the ACCC announced it had commenced a market study of the communications sector, with the view of ensuring that implications of developments in the sector are well understood and of identifying issues that prevent relevant markets from delivering outcomes in the interests of consumers. This begs the question: if the government is so confident that the state of competition in the telecommunications sector is such that it warrants the repeal of longstanding and successful legislation, why is the ACCC devoting considerable and scarce resources to a market study of this very sector? If everything is going so swimmingly and we can repeal these provisions in part XIB, why has the ACCC launched a major investigation of regulation within this sector?
The NBN wholesale market indicators report released by the ACCC on 2 February this year also illustrates that structural separation and the market transition to the NBN is an ongoing issue. According to the NBN wholesale indicators, Telstra had almost 51 per cent of the market share for fixed-line services in operation over the NBN at the end of 2016. This has been achieved in the presence of 148 other access seekers of the NBN and the level playing field that it affords. In comparison, Telstra was reported to have nationwide fixed-line broadband market share of 44 per cent in June 2009. Not much has changed over that period. If anything, Telstra has concentrated its market share. In the mobile sector, Telstra was estimated to have a market share of 45 per cent in mid-2016, in comparison with its 42 per cent market share in June 2009.
To be clear, these examples of increasing market share are not to say that the state of competition in the telecommunications sector has not improved or that it is worse than it was before. Rather, it highlights that the impacts of structural separation, transition to the NBN and the broader evolution of the communications sector on the distribution of market power are not yet wholly understood, nor has there been sufficient time for such changes to diffuse through the market. For these reasons alone, it is irresponsible of the Turnbull government to remove tried, true and tested competition safeguards in the telecommunications sector.
I want to talk about how part XIB of the Competition and Consumer Act actually works, because I suspect the majority of members who are going to pile into this chamber very soon and vote in favour of its removal do not have the slightest clue about what they are about to vote for. The introduction of part XIB in 1997 was intended to supplement section 46 of the act by increasing the ability of the ACCC to respond quickly to evidence of anticompetitive conduct in telecommunications markets.
Broadly, the part XIB regime is composed of two limbs. The first is the competition rule, which broadly defines anticompetitive conduct. There are two circumstances where a carrier, a carriage service provider or a content service provider would be considered to have contravened the competition rule. One circumstance is where a carrier or CSP takes advantage of a substantial degree of market power in a telecommunications market, with the effect, or likely effect, of substantially lessening competition in that or any other telecommunications market. The other is where a carrier or CSP engages in conduct relating to a telecommunications market that contravenes the general anticompetitive conduct provisions in part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act, which, of course, includes section 46. The second limb of XIB is the competition notice regime. This is where the teeth start to bite. It enables the ACCC to respond quickly and issue competition notices where it has reason to believe that anticompetitive conduct has occurred. Substantial penalties will apply if a court subsequently finds that this has been the case and that, in fact, anticompetitive behaviour has occurred.
These two elements combine to provide a very strong deterrent against anticompetitive conduct as well as very fast mechanisms for the competition regulator to respond when suspected issues arise. These powers have been entirely appropriate for a sector with very high levels of market concentration and a unique level of interdependency amongst competing firms relative to other sectors of the economy. Simply put, part XIB is working. It is good for competition and it is good for consumers, and the government today should not be scrapping this provision in the act. That is why it exists.
Let's see how part XIB has worked. Since the introduction in 1997, the ACCC has issued five part A competition notices. In 2005-06 alone the ACCC conducted 11 investigations into anticompetitive conduct. The issues investigated in this period included: alleged anticompetitive conduct in relation to the wholesale and retail pricing of line rental, something very dear to most consumers throughout the country; alleged anticompetitive conduct in relation to the retail and wholesale pricing for bundled services, including broadband, local call services and long-distance call services. Then there was an investigation into carriers introducing new retail products to the market before they were available on a wholesale basis to their wholesale customers; and carriers denying or restricting access to retail mobile services used in conjunction with fixed cellular terminals. There was another investigation into alleged resale price maintenance in relation to wireless broadband services; and there was an investigation into alleged anticompetitive conduct in relation to corporate and government telecommunications services.
What all of these investigations prove is that, when the regulatory gaze is upon the industry, behaviour changes. The ACCC itself noted in relation to some of these investigations that 'the alleged conduct either ceased or changed following the ACCC's inquiries'. There you have it, Deputy Speaker: far from being the case where only litigation corrects or changes behaviour, the mere intervention of an activist regulator conducting inquiries or investigations changes the behaviour of the market players. Who benefits? The consumer—the consumer benefits.
The last Part A competition notice formally issued by the ACCC was in April 2006 in relation to a Telstra wholesale line rental price increase for basic telephony services. At the time of the price increase for wholesale access, there was no corresponding increase to the retail price. This left competitors dependent on the wholesale service at a disadvantage. It was an unacceptable proposition for the competition regulator, who subsequently took action. In its report on telecommunications competition safeguards shortly thereafter, the ACCC noted the complexity of the task before them in building the case. It said:
Investigating alleged price squeezes is a highly involved process, involving the collection and analysis of extensive costing, pricing and other material from industry participants, and assessing that material against the complex economics and jurisprudence relating to misuse of market power and the lessening of competition.
The history of the use of Part X1B and other relevant parts of the act, which in a few short moments are going to be stripped from this act, if the government gets its way, shows that there is indeed an ongoing need for these industry-specific provisions within the act and an ongoing need for an activist regulator which has built up industry-specific knowledge and expertise to ask the right questions, conduct the right investigations and ensure that we have an industry which is structured in a way that delivers highly-competitive, quality services to the end users in the telecommunications industry. The luddites over there might not understand what they are about to vote for, but I can tell you that, if they vote these provisions out of the act, it will be consumers who suffer at the end of the day.
Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (18:48): The Greens went to the last election calling for an effects test to be put into our competition law. We have been taking on the Coles and Woolies of politics and we have also been taking on Coles and Woolies. We have heard story after story from small businesses and from individuals who have been put under undue pressure by big corporations with ties to the old political parties in this country. We know, as every customer and consumer knows, that in Australia at the moment the big companies, especially in areas like groceries with the actual Coles and Woolies, have too much power. They are able to wield that power down the line to make their producers produce in a certain way, at certain prices and at certain times in a way that makes life pretty difficult for the farmer or the producer at the end and in a way that makes it very difficult for small businesses to intervene and compete. They have also been able to use that market power to get others out from under them so that they cannot come in and compete with them. That hurts the people who want to set up in competition to Coles and Woolies or who might want to set up a small business with the aim of one day turning their small business into a big business or perhaps just keeping their small business as a small business.
We know that the law at the moment places far too high a hurdle in front of any small business that wants to complain about the way that these big companies are using their market power. What they have to do under the current law is to say, 'Big companies, you are using your power to squeeze us out of the market and make our life unviable, not just as part of the cut and thrust of normal competition. You are misusing your market power in a way that is designed to eliminate us, but you are using it for the purpose of eliminating us. You are not using it for the purpose of increasing competition or keeping prices low or bringing new products on line, but you are doing it for the purpose of putting us out of business or of lessening competition in some other way.' That is a pretty high hurdle for any small business to jump over, because it asks them to read the minds of the people sitting around the boardrooms of Coles and Woolies and to get them to prove that they had a particular intent in their minds and then come to court and litigate it and win that litigation. That is something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to do for most small businesses in this country.
The reason we have been calling for an effects test is that what has to be demonstrated is not the purpose or the reading of the minds of board directors or the sales managers or the marketing managers of Coles and Woolies, but actually looking at the effect of their actions in practice. If it has had the effect of substantially lessening competition and forcing them out, they should be held to account for it. That is why, for quite some time, we have campaigned for an effects test. But it is interesting to come into this chamber now and hear this debate, because hearing the Labor opposition talking about it, they are conducting this debate like Liberals. The Labor Party is sounding like the Liberals, because they are getting up and talking about the importance of pure, unfettered competition that cannot be intervened in at all by legislation. They are saying that by and large things work fine as they are at the moment—there is no problem with what Coles and Woolies are doing. Maybe that is tied to the donations they make; maybe it is tied to other arrangements that Coles and Woolies have with other parties that make donations. I do not know. But it is odd listening to the Labor Party come in one after another and say that we have to preserve pure competition and economic rationalism, especially when it has delivered such a raw deal for consumers, small businesses and small producers around this country.
Labor is acting like the Liberals, but the Liberals have gone missing in action on this a bit. There has been a high proportion of National Party MPs on the speaking list and a smaller proportion of Liberals. This is something that the National Party was able to secure from the current Prime Minister. To that extent, good on them for getting a reform that is not about doing farmers over by having more coal seam gas extraction on their land and giving farmers fewer rights than they currently have. Good on them for getting a reform out of the government that might actually do something for small producers that want to take on Coles and Woolies or their equivalent in other areas.
But—there is a but—I say this to the National Party members of this House who have been able to secure this arrangement: have a close look at the bill, because one of the concerns that we have is that the government is so intent on being seen to pass it but not actually passing it that they have buried a couple of traps in there. One of those has been something that the members of the opposition have drawn attention to, which is the effect that this is going to have on telecommunications. On our quick, first reading, this will take out some provisions of legislation that provide ways of dealing with competition issues in the telecommunications sector. It is not immediately apparent why this bill needs to do that. It would have been interesting if the opposition had come along and moved an amendment to take that part of the bill out. They have not done that, so maybe they do not feel that passionate about it. They feel about it from the perspective of speaking about it, but they have not moved an amendment to take that part out of the bill. But it is an issue. We are going to need to give this a bit of scrutiny as it progresses through this parliament. If what is being done is bundling up in what could be a very good piece of legislation about introducing an effects test some other matters that might, either by design or intent, by purpose or effect, slow things down in the Senate, that would be of concern.
I would urge those National Party MPs, who seem to have some sway over what this Prime Minister and government do, to listen to the concerns that have been raised so that this bill, or a version of this bill, can get through the Senate in a way that puts a proper effects test into law. In relation to this bill here and now, I will be supporting the passage of the bill in this place because it represents a chance to reform the law properly and introduce an effects tests; but some of these issues that have been raised—not the ones where Labor has gone back to the old Kevin Rudd days of being economic conservatives—it is odd that we go from rightly saying that we do not want to have a tax cut for big corporations to all of a sudden walking in here the same day and saying, 'We are now economic conservatives who want to defend pure neoliberal competition policy.' Let's put that to one side. The issues about the telecommunications industry are important issues, and they deserve to be addressed and looked at. There are potentially others as well about when this bill will come into operation. Is it going to be contingent on future pieces of legislation being passed, which it probably does not necessarily need to be? Or is this going to come into effect if the Senate reaches agreement on it?
I support the passage of this bill through this place so that we can get a closer look in the Senate. I would hope that there might be some amendments moved by various parties at that stage to try to deal with some of these things, and I would hope that National Party MPs, in particular, take a very close look at this bill and make sure that a good effects test comes into law when this is passed through the Senate. If we have to strip away other bits of the bill to make sure that happens, that is what should happen. Hopefully there will not be other things buried in this bill that are designed just to slow the progress of it down.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (18:58): I would like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate. Having reflected on some of that debate, I have to ask the question: what has the Labor Party got against small business? Why are they so opposed to small business? Today they came into this place and voted against a tax cut for small business, to actually increase the threshold for a small business definition, which I know that Deputy Speaker Kelly is very passionate about when he is not sitting in that chair, where he is completely independent at this moment, but sitting elsewhere. Two to 10 million dollars—they voted against that today. They said today that small business has to pay more tax. Now they do not want to level the playing field for small business. If you are a small business person in this country, you must look at the Labor Party benches with complete despair. I suppose many small businesses have had much experience of looking at the Labor Party with despair. As these two bills have come into this place today and are being dealt with, it has demonstrated once again that the Labor Party has no friends in small business and small business has no friend in the Labor Party.
This bill represents one of the most significant reforms to our competition laws in recent times. It will ensure that our laws promote strong competition in our markets and a level playing field for business, including over two million small businesses, to the ultimate benefit of Australian consumers. The bill reforms section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act and makes consequential amendments to the telecommunications-specific competition laws in part XIB of the same act. The amendments introduced in this bill are designed to address fundamental deficiencies with section 46 as identified by the Harper review, which was initiated by this government and is being implemented by this government. The new section 46 will better target anti-competitive conduct, better support pro-competitive conduct and facilitate more reliable enforcement. The reforms will ensure that section 46 is appropriately focused on protecting the competitive process and the long-term interests of consumers, rather than individual competitors or a particular group of businesses. Overall, this reform will benefit consumers and the economy by giving all businesses a better opportunity to compete on their merits.
When first introduced into the parliament, and as recommended by the Harper review, schedule 1 included a provision requiring the courts to have regard to anti-competitive and pro-competitive factors—these are the so-called mandatory factors—when deciding whether conduct has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition. As was recommended by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, the mandatory factors will be removed from the new section 46 through amendments that I will put to the House shortly in the consideration in detail.
Stakeholders expressed concern that the inclusion of the factors would add significant uncertainty and complexity to section 46. Removing the factors would also reduce any risk that the substantially lessening competition test will take on a different meaning with the new section 46 compared to other provisions in the competition law that use that test but do not contain mandatory factors. The commencement of this bill has also been adjusted to ensure that the new section 46 does not take effect until and unless authorisation is available for conduct that might otherwise breach section 46. A broader competition law reform package, which among other things, will extend authorisation to section 46 conduct, is currently being finalised for imminent introduction.
As a result of the reforms in this bill, our competition regulator will be better equipped to promote open, competitive and well-functioning markets in Australia that are focused on producing better outcomes for customers. These reforms will support a level playing field for all businesses, to ensure that new and innovative firms can expand and enter new markets, new technologies can be introduced into Australia and consumers can access the best-quality products at the lowest prices. By strengthening our competition laws, these amendments will support our long-term productivity growth, which is absolutely essential to creating jobs, securing jobs, ensuring wages can increase and ensuring Australia's continued economic growth.
As Treasurer, I have been very pleased to sponsor this bill into this parliament and, through the government's processes, to have been joined, in particular, by the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, who has also been working very strongly to this end. I particularly, once again, want to congratulate and thank the former member for Dunkley, who was responsible for carriage of these matters in the last parliament. I think it is a testimony to his commitment on these issues while he was in this place. That work has been followed on by myself and the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services. I commend the bill to the House.
The SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for McMahon has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.
The House divided. [19:07]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
The SPEAKER (19:15): The question is that the bill be now read a second time.
The House divided. [19:15]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)
Consideration in Detail
Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Treasurer) (19:21): I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill and I seek leave to move government amendments (1) to (3) together.
Leave granted.
Mr MORRISON: I move government amendments (1) to (3):
(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table), omit the table, substitute:
Commencement information |
||
Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
Provisions |
Commencement |
Date/Details |
1. The whole of this Act |
At the same time as Schedule 1 to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Competition Policy Review) Act 2017 commences. However, the provisions do not commence at all if that Schedule does not commence. |
|
(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 25) to page 4 (line 4), omit subsection 46(2).
(3) Schedule 1, item 2, page 6 (lines 8 to 20), omit subsection 46(2).
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the amendments be agreed to.
Question agreed to.
Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (19:23): by leave—I move amendments (1) to (9), as circulated in my name, together:
(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 3), insert:
Part 1—Main amendments
(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 4), omit "Section 46", substitute "After section 46".
(3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 5), omit "Repeal the section, substitute", substitute "Insert".
(4) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 6), omit "46", substitute "46AA".
(5) Schedule 1, item 2, page 5 (line 21), omit "Section 46 of Schedule 1", substitute "After section 46 of Schedule 1".
(6) Schedule 1, item 2, page 5 (line 22), omit "Repeal the section, substitute", substitute "Insert".
(7) Schedule 1, item 2, page 5 (line 23), omit "46", substitute "46AA".
(8) Schedule 1, page 7 (after line 35), at the end of the Schedule, add:
Part 2—Consequential amendments
Competition and Consumer Act 2010
3 Subparagraph 6(2)(b)(i)
After ", 46", insert ", 46AA".
4 Subsection 51(3)
After "46", insert ", 46AA".
5 Paragraph 84(1)(b)
After "46", insert ", 46AA".
6 Subsection 86(1A)
After "46", insert "or 46AA".
7 Subsection 10.04(1)
Omit "section 46", substitute "sections 46 and 46AA".
8 Subsection 51(3) of Schedule 1
After "46", insert ", 46AA".
(9) Schedule 2, item 9, page 10 (line 17), after "46", insert ", 46AA".
In moving these amendments I was just observing that in recent years in this parliament the NDIS was, I think, a wonderful initiative, and I think tonight we are doing something about the oligopoly of the two great supermarket monsters. We are unlike any nation on earth. I refer you to the inquiry done in 1990, I think, in which it was said that Woolworths' and Coles' market share had grown from 50.5 per cent to, in one series, 72 per cent, and in the other series, 68 per cent. So, in the space of nine years they have grown from 50 per cent of the market to an average of 70 per cent of the market.
According to their own annual reports, they have had around 2½ per cent growth in their market share in the years since, which leaves them at close to 100 per cent actually. We remain the only place on earth where we have only two people to sell food to and only two people you can buy food from. There are hundreds of manufactures in Australia who face exactly the same situation—they have only two people to sell to and we the consumers have only two people to buy from, because of their domination of the market. On odd occasions my wife bought some beverages from Dan Murphy's, because she thought it was privately owned, but it turned out it was anything but privately owned.
Turning specifically to the amendments, I must admit that this was a tricky one. It took me a while and I had some great assistance to help me get my head around it. The current act says that 'A corporation that has a substantial degree of power in a market shall not take advantage of that power … for the purpose of … eliminating a competitor'. I will not go on to the other details. So, it applies if they have a substantial degree of the market, which, of course, Woolworths and Coles do, and they take advantage of that power for the purpose of eliminating a competitor.
I have been many times to Rod Sims at the ACCC and said, 'Please, please, please,' and he said, 'No, I can't prove purpose.' On a careful analysis of the act there is a second section in the act that states, 'the purpose of a person may be established for the purposes of'—gobbledegook—'a corporation'—and this is the important part—'may be taken to have taken advantage of its power'. What that means in plain English is that the purpose can be interpreted, assumed, as existing. So the purpose is not necessary or essential. That makes section 46(1), (2) and (3) a very powerful section. But who is going to contest it? Not even the ACCC is going to fight that battle. There is some vagueness, but still I think it is a fair call to say that the word 'purpose' is in fact overcome by the effect of section 46(7). (Time expired)
The SPEAKER: The member for Kennedy's time has expired but the member has again sought the call.
Mr KATTER: To explain what I am saying here I must use a specific example. In my home town of Mt Isa-Cloncurry—in Mt Isa an IGA opened up. Some will argue that suddenly there was a plethora of specials at Woolworths and Coles in Mt Isa. Whether that was the cause or not, whether that was the purpose of the plethora of specials and advertising, suddenly the IGA was closed down. Under the existing laws if the IGA bloke had had the money to contest it I think he had a very strong case under section 46. Similarly, in Townsville, at Garbutt, a large suburb in Townsville, there was a very big IGA there and it was closed down under fierce competition from Woolworths and Coles. Again, under the old act they had a very valid case. So the old act looked after Garbutt and it looked after Mt Isa—a big city and a small town.
Now, the new act strengthens the case for the IGA in Mount Isa. It says we do not have to prove purpose at all anymore. It is just an effect test. So, we are as right as rain in Mount Isa. We are much stronger—
ADJOURNMENT
Shortland Electorate: National Youth Week
Mr CONROY (Shortland) (19:30): National Youth Week begins this Friday, and I am pleased to report to the House on events that are taking place in Shortland as well as speak about a very special festival I will be attending on Sunday.
Too often in the media youth are portrayed in a negative light. But in my experience, as a member of parliament, whenever I visit a school or meet with youth or community groups I am always amazed and uplifted about the contribution young people make to our society. National Youth Week is an opportunity for young people aged between 12 and 24 to celebrate and showcase the great contributions they make to our communities. I want to acknowledge and thank Lake Macquarie City Council for the events they are holding across Youth Week. There is a full program of events every day next week, and this will provide young people with an opportunity to express their ideas and views about issues that affect their lives and our community. The Doyalson Raw Challenge, a seven-kilometre course with 55 obstacles organised by Southlakes Youth Service, certainly sounds interesting. I also recognise that Central Coast Council is celebrating Youth Week with a variety of functions. All the proceeds from Comedy for a Cause at The Hub Youth Entertainment Venue this Friday night are being donated to the charity Musicians Making a Difference.
I am especially excited about attending the GOATS festival at San Remo this weekend. GOATS stands for Going Off At The Swamp. It is organised by The Epicentre, which was formerly the San Remo Neighbourhood Centre and is a drug- and alcohol-free event that provides an opportunity for young people and children to showcase their talents. The festival gives young up-and-coming musicians an opportunity to perform in front of a large crowd. The theme for this year is 'Get involved. Be heard. Make a difference.' And I am really looking forward to joining the San Remo community and the broader northern Central Coast community at the festival. As I said before, GOATS is organised by The Epicentre, and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and pay tribute to the tremendous work The Epicentre does in San Remo and surrounds. I have regularly held mobile offices at the centre and have seen firsthand the difference it makes in a community that has some very challenging socioeconomic issues. I particularly want to recognise and thank Jillian Hogan, who runs The Epicentre, and her team for their work and commitment to our community. It is such a pleasure in this job to meet people who work tirelessly to improve the lives of others. Fred Hollows once said, 'You only really accomplish yourself when you get involved with other people's welfare.' Well, I can assure the House that Jillian certainly accomplishes herself. She is a special person, and on behalf of the community I represent I publicly thank her for her dedication, passion and commitment.
As we are about to celebrate Youth Week, I would also like to congratulate the 2016 Shortland Youth Volunteer of the Year award recipient, the Lake Macquarie Youth Advisory Council. The council is a volunteer group made up of young people aged 12 to 24 and works at addressing issues affecting young people. Over the past year the council has organised Youth Week celebrations, assisted with the planning and delivery of the Endless Summer Charlestown Swim Centre event, and provided advice to council, the police, and youth and community service organisations. So I am pleased to recognise the young people who volunteer on the advisory council. I have great confidence in our future knowing that these fine people will be working and contributing to our society.
Young people in my area face many challenges. As a regional community and also an outer metropolitan community we face great issues around access, whether it is to services such as mental health services, to a job market or to universities, without facing crippling debts. There are many challenges that young people face, so it is so important that we recognise their achievements, encourage them to do more where we can, and really applaud their efforts in this environment. We have quite a high level of youth unemployment in my area. We have real issues with apprenticeships disappearing. So, we need to support youth where we can and recognise their great achievements.
I will end my contribution tonight where I began. Too often we hear negative stories about youth. However, as members of parliament we have the privilege to meet with outstanding young people regularly, and I thank the fine young women and men of Shortland who make such a difference in enhancing our community. I am very much looking forward to being at the GOATS festival this Sunday. It is a very special day. I encourage all the residents of the Shortland electorate and the broader Central Coast and Lake Macquarie regions to drop in. There will be some great music, some great information stalls and some great food being run, usually by people like the Lions Club. So, drop in, have a great time and support a great cause.
Marine Reserves
Mr FALINSKI (Mackellar) (19:35): The Northern Beaches is my home—always has been, always will be. I grew up watching the yachts on Pittwater, the rock fisherman at Long Reef, surfers and swimmers braving the elements for an early-morning dip, and the surf lifesavers who protect our beaches. Some of the fondest memories from my childhood—and the new ones I get to create now with my own daughter—involve the beach and the ocean. During the long weeks in Canberra, that is what reminds me most of home. While for some tourists it may seem like fantasy, it is just everyday life for those of us fortunate enough to live on the Northern Beaches—a life intertwined with the ocean.
Much of my time since becoming the member for Mackellar has been spent reaching out to my community, meeting with constituents and finding out what is most important to them. The protection of the marine environment has been raised over and over again. Many Northern Beaches residents have taken the time to write, to call or to see me in person. I have heard you, and I am here today to represent you.
Our marine environment is precious and should be protected—by every level of government. As an island nation with over 10 million square kilometres of ocean we have the third-largest marine jurisdiction in the world. And as Liberals we have shown time and time again a deep commitment to protecting our ocean. It was in fact the Fraser government that established the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and lobbied for its World Heritage status. John Howard and Minister Robert Hill introduced the world's first oceans policy and struck agreement with state and territory governments to establish a national representative system of marine protected areas—the first of its kind in the world. Today, we have 60 marine reserves in Commonwealth waters alone, representing over 38 per cent of our oceans, the second largest area behind the United States. Over the last two decades, we have established a reputation as world leaders in marine conservation—the gold standard in protecting our marine ecosystems. This is a legacy of coalition governments, and one we are very proud of.
The science behind marine reserves is unequivocal. We know that they can increase the abundance and diversity of organisms, and protect threatened and vulnerable species. They allow ecosystems to recover from past natural and human impacts, safeguarding while preserving these treasures for my daughter's generation and those that follow.
Conservation does not just benefit the environment. Our marine reserves support a sustainable fishing industry, promote tourism and provide countless jobs in businesses small and large.
Commonwealth marine reserves generally start three nautical miles from shore and extend out to the edge of Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone. Whilst most of us do not directly engage with these parks, their significance and value benefit all Australians.
In 2014, the government commenced a review of Commonwealth marine reserves to ensure these areas continue to support their objectives and strike a balance between competing usages. As part of this review process, the government will be seeking public comment on draft management plans to be released in the coming months. I encourage my community on the Northern Beaches to contribute to the review process. The finalisation of management plans will bring to a close a comprehensive review, creating certainty for all users in marine parks. I understand that the minister has requested that the Director of National Parks finalise the management plans for the reserves in the next six months, and the government will continue to work with all users on monitoring and researching projects to continually evolve our management of these reserves. In the meantime, the Turnbull government has already committed over $56 million in additional funding over four years, to strengthen the management of its marine protected areas, in order to ensure they are well managed and supported—a testament to our dedication to our marine parks.
Our marine environments are a precious gift. We all depend on the living ocean. It defines so much of our identity as Australians. I will continue to work with the federal and state governments to ensure these irreplaceable jewels can be preserved for all future generations. I want to keep the conversation going, keep updating you on progress and seek your feedback.
Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility
Mr SWAN (Lilley) (19:40): Tonight I rise to speak about the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, or NAIF. I have always strongly supported the concept of an Australian government investment corporation to fund critical economic infrastructure, and I have a passionate commitment to investing in infrastructure in northern Australia.
With the state government and Townsville Enterprise, I strongly pushed for the CopperString Project and made a very substantial budget allocation of $355 million for that project. Unfortunately, that project was torpedoed in the Abbott government's 2014 budget.
As I said before, I strongly support the concept of the NAIF. At a time when economic growth is depressed across the developed world, organisations like the IMF have emphasised the need for countries like Australia, who have fiscal space, to use the government balance sheet to invest in infrastructure and boost economic growth.
Our future economic growth requires investment in productivity-enhancing assets, particularly infrastructure, in an efficient and disciplined way. Ratings agencies and the public are increasingly focusing on what government debt is funding. Investments that generate a positive long-term return are increasingly preferred to debt that funds grants or recurrent expenditure.
The Australian government already has the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That corporation is immensely successful. It was set up by the Gillard government, with me; the climate change minister, Mr Combet; and Penny Wong, the finance minister; we were enormously proud of its investments. But the CEFC's governance and its policies are a proven gold standard of government financing bodies.
In comparison, the NAIF looks as dodgy as Lehman Brothers. And we all know how that ended.
Compare the investment mandates. The CEFC must operate with a portfolio benchmark return of the five-year Australian government bond rate, plus three or four per cent per annum over the medium to long term. The NAIF does not have a requirement for a positive return. The board only needs to be satisfied that the government can be repaid or the investment can be refinanced. And we have no idea how the board is going to make those decisions. Indeed, they have said they have no documentation about this—none! Nor do they have any documentation about how they would be satisfied that a project actually needs a loan. The few policies they do have they are now keeping a secret. Just image what the Business Council would have had to say if Labor had presented such a flimsy investment mandate to this parliament for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation! There would have been screams of 'boondoggles' and 'fiscal irresponsibility' for 'Labor mates'.
Despite the success of the CEFC, there have been repeated efforts by Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull to shut it down, and there have been attempts to direct its investment from a political level. The flimsy investment mandate of the NAIF is now how conservatives in this country operate. The Turnbull government wants to turn it into a boondoggle machine in pursuit of its ideological and political pork-barrelling. But the NAIF appears to have been intentionally set up, in the first instance, with no ability to operate independently; with a board that has been stacked in favour of mining investments; and with an investment mandate so broad and vague that Minister Canavan can essentially treat the NAIF as his own personal slush fund. The government has stacked the board with pro-mining people who are unwilling to assert NAIF's independence—and that is the most alarming aspect of NAIF.
In comparison to the CEFC, which has repeatedly—and very publicly—defended itself against government interference and staunchly guarded the independence of its investment decisions, the NAIF has remained entirely silent in the face of enormous political pressure and manipulation. For months, Ministers Canavan and Joyce have repeatedly promoted a $1 billion loan to Adani to partly fund the Carmichael railroad while simultaneously claiming that investment decisions of the NAIF are independent. If the Adani mine is to go ahead, it must be able to stand on its own merit—it should not get one-fifth of Minister Canavan's slush fund to help make it a profitable investment. Given the coalition's apparent willingness to set up the NAIF so that it risks becoming little more than a publicly-funded slush fund for the Liberals, I have written to the Auditor-General requesting that he investigate the governance and operations of the NAIF. North Queenslanders deserve an investment fund that provides the long-term certainty and job creation they desperately need. Therefore, the NAIF must have the independence to provide that. (Time expired)
Arts
Ms FLINT (Boothby) (19:45): Tonight I want to mention two definitive life experiences that are the reasons why I am so passionate about promoting and defending Australian musicians and why in future you will see me doing the same for our writers, authors, filmmakers and artists, from painters to printmakers and photographers. We must support those Australians who tell our stories and who, by doing so, show us who we are, remind us who we were and suggest to us who we might one day be. The role of our artists is not just important locally; it is critical to explaining our culture and our way of life to the world. Our musicians do this particularly well, and I am delighted that the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Live Music—which I co-chair—event this Wednesday, 29 March will be attended by music legend and APRA chair, Jenny Morris, with performances from 7 pm by iconic Australian artists including Diesel, Daddy Cool, Eskimo Joe, Daryl Braithwaite and fabulous new talent Montaigne. The Herald Sun's Rob Harris and Buzzfeed's Alice Workman will MC, and The Australian's very own talented in-house musician, James Jeffrey, is going to pipe us in to ACDC's Thunderstruck.
I grew up listening to singers like Jenny Morris, Daryl Braithwaite, Diesel, Daddy Cool and ACDC pretty much everywhere I went. Every Saturday of my childhood was spent driving hours to my parents' football, netball and tennis matches in country South Australia. There was no child-friendly music in our car in those days—or at the footy club discos that followed! Instead, my siblings—Johnny, Simon and Belinda—and I were raised on the very best of Oz rock, from Cold Chisel to Daddy Cool, from ACDC to The Angels and Rose Tattoo. At home we watched Countdown on Sunday nights and Rage on Saturday mornings—the ABC was one of only two TV channels we had.
I spent my high school years booking live bands like Swamp Donkey and Lyrup Syrup for school socials, but the first real gig I attended was the Cold Chisel reunion tour in 1998. It remains my sentimental favourite, but as Chisel would say, 'Who needs that sentimental bullshit anyway.' Later, my siblings and I graduated to Triple J and then to the Big Day Out, and bands from the Testeagles to The Waifs, from the Hilltop Hoods to Eskimo Joe, from Little Birdy to Magic Dirt and to so many more. There have been many gigs since, including last Saturday when my sister and I saw Tim Rogers, The Whitlams, the Violent Femmes—who I will proudly claim as Aussies because their bass player has lived in Tasmania since 2006—and the Hoodoo Gurus at A Day on the Green.
Music has not just informed my life but also my career as a columnist. At The Advertiser I wrote about the importance of female musicians as role models. I wrote about Cold Chisel and The Waifs, bands who describe Australian life from the city to the country, tell our stories of war and the strange experience of homecoming or leaving it all behind. Which neatly brings me to why these issues matter. Locally and internationally, we need artists who tell our stories and explain who we are. We need to support our music industry, which contributes around $4 billion to $6 billion to the Australian economy. Boosting our music exports would generate even more income, and more tourists might visit to see our bands—already live music generates revenues of $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year alone. In my home state of South Australia in any one month around 70 per cent of live music gigs are performed in our pubs and hotels. Our pubs and their employees are a very important part of our live music scene.
We also need to encourage our creatives to create, and that means ensuring they are properly rewarded for their creative efforts. In a practical sense, musicians are not really that much different to newspaper columnists. Respectively, they are dependent on record labels or their newspapers for a contract that provides them with their income. Both need strong copyright laws to protect their income and their intellectual property. This has been ever more challenging in a world where technology has outpaced the law. Letting online providers give away this content for free or turning a blind eye while others do undermines artists, labels and newspapers' income and their fundamental right to protect their creative efforts and property. As ACDC famously sang, 'It's a long way to the top, if you wanna rock'n'roll,' so let us not make it any harder for our artists and our musicians to do so and let us protect their intellectual property when they get there.
Parramatta Electorate: Community Events
Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (19:50): There are three local events I would like to refer to tonight. On 17 March, I was pleased to attend the 75th anniversary service of one of our fine schools: Delany College, Granville. Delany College was opened back in 1942 as Patrician Brothers' High School and went co-ed in 1997, catering for years 7 to 12. The college was renamed after Bishop Daniel Delany in honour of its Patrician heritage. Appropriately, the 75th birthday celebrations were held at St Patrick's church on St Patrick's Day. I was pleased to be able to attend the service with students past and present as well as with the wider school communities of the Parramatta and Granville area.
Delany College is a great school and it reflects the culturally-diverse community of Granville. As Father Paul Roberts said, 'When I walk into school, I see the remarkable diversity of humanity—a mix of students from parts of the globe, living in peace.' I would like to acknowledge the work of Principal Robert Muscat, along with the teachers, in helping continue the traditions of Delany College. I thank them for allowing me to be part of their 75th anniversary celebrations and pay tribute to the students of Delany College both past and present.
The Pakistani community celebrated last night. If you want to know about the Pakistani community in Australia, you only have to look at the mighty census. In 1901 census, there were 360 cameleers from the area which is now known as Pakistan. They were largely ex-British military cameleers and they were essential in building the Overland Telegraph Line—one of the great engineering achievements of the 19th century, with 36,000 posts and 3,200 kilometres of wire. In the 2011 census, 67.8 per cent of the Pakistan-born aged 15 years and over had some form of higher non-school qualifications compared to 55.9 per cent of the broader Australian population. It was a community punching above its weight on high school qualifications back in 2011, and it is continuing to do so now.
Last night, they got together at the Himalaya Emporium in Bankstown to celebrate Pakistan Day. As usual, about 500 people turned up. I have had the privilege of attending a number of their functions previously, but I was in Canberra last night, so I was not able to attend. I know I missed a really good night. The event recognized five Pakistani-Australians who have made outstanding contributions in their professional field. That is quite a tradition on Pakistan Day in Pakistan. An award ceremony is organised where the President gives military and civilian awards to people for their contributions to Pakistan. In Blacktown, awards were given for contributions to Australia. The recipients were Asim Saleem, Uzma Shahzad, Adnan Meher, Shafqat Ali and Dr Mansoor Syed. I convey my hearty congratulations to them all. Also recognised were Pakistani-Australian students who received an ATAR of 95 or over in their 2016 HSC. Abbas Rana, the president of the association, reiterated the need to support Australia and feel like Australians, as only love for this country can make us a good part of this society. Despite not being able to attend, I thank the president, Abbas Rana, for the kind invitation, and I hope I can make it next year.
On Friday, 31 March, it will also be a very sad day in Parramatta because a whole group of us will be heading down to the Parramatta pool for our last swim there. The pool was built in the 1950s by the community. It was literally crowdfunded by the community, who wanted a pool. It is a war memorial pool. On Friday, 31 March, the state government will close it and demolish it to make way for a stadium. Many of us have swum in that pool for the Parramatta City Swim Club that has been teaching there for decades. About 1,300 kids go there for lessons, and local schools use it. Saint Pat's school down the road have pointed out that it will cost them $600 for a 62-seat bus every time they want to go to a pool now.
This was a CBD pool. It will be until Friday. Many of us have been swimming in it for years. I swam in it when there were outdoor cold showers in winter. Some of us in Parramatta are tough. It is one of the best pools in New South Wales. It has an Olympic diving tower—one of only two in Sydney. It has 10 lanes. It is an Olympic standard pool. You can actually set a record in that pool. On Friday, it will all be over.
I would like to thank Suzette Meade, in particular, and the many people in the community who fought so hard to keep this pool open. They have done a remarkable job. I say to the state government and the state member, Geoff Lee: this will not be forgotten. This is painful for us. This is our pool, and we want to keep it. We will not forget when the election comes around. (Time expired)
Calare Electorate: Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience
Mr GEE (Calare) (19:55): The extraordinary Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience exhibition recently visited the Calare electorate. It is presented during the Anzac Centenary, spanning 2014 to 2018—the most significant period of commemoration in our nation’s history. It is the largest travelling exhibition in Australia since the 1988 bicentennial exhibition, and it serves as a moving and dignified account of the actions of not only our First World War service men and women but also those who remained home and sustained them from afar, as well as those who have kept the peace and responded to humanitarian crises across the globe since Federation
One of the most important legacies of the Anzac Centenary period is an increased understanding and awareness of our wartime history, particularly amongst younger Australians. Over 40,000 school students have visited this exhibition. Orange was the 21st location for the exhibition. In an important milestone, it welcomed the 300,000th visitor to the Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience since it opened in September 2015 in Wodonga—an amazing achievement. I was delighted to not only welcome the exhibition to Orange but also officially open it, representing the Minister for Veterans' Affairs.
The Great War left virtually no Australian family untouched by its horror. From a population of fewer than five million, over 416,000 men enlisted, of whom more than 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. Like so many communities across Australia, the central west region of New South Wales made a very significant contribution to Australia's First World War effort.
On 10 October 1915, Captain Bill Hitchen and 25 men marched from Gilgandra to Sydney on the Coo-ee March—named after the cry used to enlist more than 260 men for the war along the way. The community zone of the exhibition—a highly popular feature—showcases historical artefacts from the local region. A photo of the Coo-ee Marchers at the Wade Park pavilion, marching down Summer Street, is featured. William Edwin Agland, former assistant town clerk in Orange and the son of the Orange mayor, wrote from England to express his disgust at the no result in the October conscription referendum. He said that they 'should be over here, up to their bellies in mud and slush and fighting for freedom, instead of waltzing up and down Summer Street, making eyes at the pretty girls.'
Orange can also lay claim to Australia’s first Victoria Cross winner. The story of Sir Neville Howse is also featured in the community zone. He won his VC during the Boer War and also served at Gallipoli. He survived and became a fierce campaigner for the rights of returned soldiers, as well as becoming the member for Calare.
The Orange RSL sub-branch boasts 120 members. It played an important role in putting together the community zone at the exhibition, and I would like to make mention of the committee members. They include Les McGaw, the honorary secretary, treasurer, custodian of the cenotaph, and recruiting and membership officer; and Lindsay Wright, the president and also the recruiting and membership officer. It should be noted that I have undertaken to procure for Lindsay a new hat this Christmas, as he badly needs one. The members also include: Ros Davidson, vice-president; Chris Colvin, vice-president; Allister Kable, pension and welfare officer; Tony Gosper, trustee; and Graham Scott, custodian of the cenotaph.
During the Centenary of Anzac, so many of our RSL sub-branches across Calare are paying tribute to the service and sacrifice of our ancestors. We acknowledge the vital contribution that these sub-branches make to our country communities.
The Canowindra RSL sub-branch has 20 members. Its committee is made up of Michael Harrison, the president; David Cullane, the vice-president; Christina Sampson, the secretary; Ian McLlvain, the treasurer; Noelene Liccioni, a trustee; and Ellen Brown, a trustee.
The Molong RSL sub-branch committee includes: David Bloomfield, the president; Tristan Cronin, vice-president; Kenneth Roberts, vice-president; Edward Carpenter, the treasurer; Michael Few, the honorary secretary and trustee; David Townsend, the parade marshall; and Greg Ruming, the welfare officer. They all do a wonderful job.
The Bathurst RSL sub-branch has over 230 members. Its committee consists of: Leslie Anderson, the honorary secretary, and the recruiting and membership officer; David Mills, president; Jennifer Brennan, vice-president; John Graham, vice-president; Brett Kenworthy, treasurer; William Abbott, trustee; Roy Brownlow, trustee; Bruce Irvine, trustee; Bradley Hock, pension officer; and Brian Tobin JP, the pension and welfare officer.
Neville Stapleton is the honorary secretary and treasurer of the Oberon RSL sub-branch. William Wilcox is the president, Peter Perry is a vice-president, Greg Reid is a vice-president and Elaine Boxer is the trustee. The Oberon RSL sub-branch has 30 members.
I do not have an opportunity to name all of our wonderful sub-branches tonight, but the Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience exhibition is a poignant tribute to the service and sacrifice of the men and women who went to war for Australia. I pay tribute to them and to the RSL sub-branches and their important work.
Question agreed to.
House adjourned at 20:00
NOTICES
The following notices were given:
Mr Georganas: to move:
That this House:
(1) acknowledges the pivotal and vital role that our schools play in preparing our children to be active and contributing citizens;
(2) notes:
(a) that school education is an essential component in providing children with the skills and knowledge they need to reach their full potential, including academic, social and communication skills; and
(b) the important work that schools undertake to ensure that students are prepared for the challenges of further study and working life, especially in new emerging technological and scientific fields;
(3) acknowledges and thanks school leaders, teachers and support staff for their dedication, commitment and professionalism in ensuring not only that every child learns, but is also nurtured and cared for; and
(4) further notes:
(a) that the one factor that makes the biggest difference in a child’s learning is the quality of their teachers;
(b) the challenges faced by teachers and support staff in providing individual care and assistance to students who are struggling with various aspects of their school life; and
(c) the need for governments to fully support teachers in this important work.
Mr O’Connor: to move:
That sections 11(3)(a) and (c) of the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act 2016—Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work 2016, made under section 34 of the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act 2016, and presented to the House on 7 February 2017, be disallowed.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ) took the chair at 10:31.
CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Legal Aid: Southern Community Justice Centre
Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (10:31): I rise today to express the outrage that many in my electorate are feeling over the Attorney-General's reckless cuts to our community legal centres. As a result of a very poor decision by the Attorney-General and this government, from 1 July this year, community legal centres across Australia will lose 30 per cent of their funding. Yet again, the government have highlighted how incredibly out of touch they are with everyday Australians. They have zero understanding of how devastating these cuts will be for thousands of people. Today, I give the Attorney-General some insight and tell him how important the work of our community legal centres is, but in particular the Southern Community Justice Centre in my electorate.
For over three decades, the Southern Community Justice Centre has provided free and accessible legal services to the most disadvantaged members of our community. The compassionate, knowledgeable and dedicated staff of the Southern Community Justice Centre work tirelessly to help vulnerable people navigate what can often be a very complex legal system. One of the centre's most important roles is to provide support for victims of domestic violence. Women who flee domestic violence situations often lose access to their money and have nowhere to run. The Southern Community Justice Centre is there to help these women face the many legal issues that arise during this traumatic time.
The justice centre also provides advocacy and advice to people on a range of other issues like tenancy disputes, debt, consumer problems, contract disputes and financial scams. The centre's executive director, Cathy, provided me with a couple examples of the work they do. One gentleman came to the justice centre in a helpless financial situation after losing thousands of dollars in a scam. He signed up for a money-back guarantee treatment for a medical condition he had. Twelve months later, the treatment had done nothing. Despite his efforts, the company refused to refund him. Desperate and with nowhere else to go, this man approached the justice centre. They fought for him, and he successfully received a refund of $1,500. This might not seem a lot to the Attorney-General, but it was a lot to this gentleman.
Another example is a mother who came to South Australia with her child after fleeing a domestic violence situation. When in South Australia, the mother got some money together and applied to the court to change the child's surname to hers. She then went to submit the application to births, deaths and marriages, only to be told that recent changes now meant she had to apply to the court. Of course, this was an involved, complex legal situation—and just another example of the good work community legal centres do.
Bonner Electorate: Schools
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (10:34): A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting the student leaders afternoon tea for new school leaders around the Bonner electorate. Joining me on the day was my good friend Andy Gourley, the CEO of Red Frogs, who is such a positive role model for young people today. The event celebrated the achievements of these exceptional young people and gave them a valuable one-on-one with Andy. Student leaders from Manly West State School, Mount Gravatt East State School and Clairvaux College, along with over 40 students from other local primary and high schools, attended the event.
I was impressed with the insightful questions that they presented to me and to Andy. I have no doubt these young men and women have very bright futures ahead of them. Students were captivated when Andy talked about the way Red Frogs came to be and the amazing work that Red Frogs volunteers do. Andy did a great job in inspiring young students to be the best that they can be in the new leadership roles. As he told them, leadership influences others and passion creates change, so you need to become the change that you want to see in the world.
It was wonderful to see such a strong turnout of student leaders in our community and to connect them with such amazing motivators, like Andy. I received great feedback on the event from the schools that got involved and I was glad to hear that the students left feeling empowered to make a difference in their school community.
Goods and Services Tax
Ms MADELEINE KING (Brand) (10:36): The Commonwealth Grants Commission announced last week that WA's return from GST, collected in that state, will be 34c in the dollar and that is up from 30c. There is understandable outrage throughout Western Australia about this. I appreciate the efforts the Minister for Social Services—and former Treasurer and Attorney General of WA—Christian Porter, Senator Dean Smith and others have made in trying to extract some change in the GST distribution. It is awful for them that their leaders do not seem to be listening.
It was outrageous for the Prime Minister to promise to put a GST floor in, of all places, the WA Liberal State Conference, in August last year and then, six months later, abandon all such plans for a number of years. Given this kind of easy disregard for WA concerns, I can understand the frustration of WA Liberals, particularly the five WA Liberal cabinet members, and we can all understand the anger of the Western Australian people.
The lag in calculating the Commonwealth redistribution of GST comes some years after the then WA Liberal government increased the rate of the already extraordinary royalties the state was earning from the mining boom. Because of the timing of the GST redistribution, WA was receiving a high GST return while it also earned high royalties. Knowing the GST return would decrease in a few years, the Liberal WA government increased the royalties yet again. I do not agree with the current distribution of the GST revenue but, for the most part, this problem for Western Australia has been foreseeable for years.
The decrease in revenue to WA was always coming, but they spent at all anyway. The WA Liberal government spent everything on a gamble that iron ore royalties would remain stratospheric and they would be able to force the Commonwealth Grants Commission and the federal Liberal government to change the GST redistribution system. Quite a gamble—quite a gamble from the people and the party claiming to be good economic managers. The least they could do is be competent. The gamble has not paid off and WA is left with a 34c-in-the-dollar return on GST, a budget deficit of $3.9 billion and a federal Liberal government threatening to withhold $1.2 billion of infrastructure funding. It is farcical. It cannot go on and a new way must be found.
I do know that the injustice felt by many in WA is real, particularly real in these difficult economic times. I do know it is not beyond the wit and goodwill of this great federation to sort out the outdated system without devastating the economies of smaller states where our families, friends and colleagues all live and work every day. As Australians we can, we must and we will work this out. It is the ultimate dereliction of duty and responsibility to the Commonwealth, the government and the Treasurer supposedly trying to govern, to say the GST distribution is a matter for the states to sort out.
What kind of leadership is that? It got too hard so they are out. They have left the building. That is simply not good enough. It is not good enough for Western Australians, it is not good enough for Australia and I call upon this Turnbull Liberal government to do its job.
Deakin Electorate: Deakin Twilight Cup
Mr SUKKAR (Deakin—Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) (10:39): A couple of weeks ago the Melbourne East Netball Association held the annual Deakin Twilight Cup, an event that I have been thrilled to jointly host over the past four years. The tournament sees more than 500 junior netballers from 14 clubs across the region participate in a round-robin tournament throughout the day.
The participating clubs this year included Bayswater United, Blackburn Lake, Heathmont United, Holy Spirit, Mullum, Norwood Heights, Nunawading, Our Lady's, Park Orchards, Rangeview, Ringwood North, Southward, St James and, of course, Trinity.
The tournament is designed to be a really fun day for players in the under-11, under-13, and under-15 age groups. Each team plays up to eight matches of 15 minutes in duration throughout the day. The top four teams in each category then go on to compete in a final series under lights—hence, why it is called the Deakin Twilight Cup.
Congratulations to the winning teams in each of the respective sections. In the under-11 age category the section 1 grand final was won by Park Orchards, while the section 2 winners were the Southwood Legends. In the under-13s the section 1 grand final went to Southwood Diamonds, while the section 2 winners were the Ringwood North Crunchy Nuts. Finally, in the under-15 category the section 1 grand final was one by the Ringwood North Coco Pops—obviously they had thought of their names over breakfast that day!—and the section 2 match was won by Southwood Lightning.
Held at the HE Parker Reserve, I really enjoyed watching a couple of the games and then having an opportunity to meet the players by presenting trophies and medals to the grand finalists and runners up. I want to particularly acknowledge all of the players and, of course, the volunteers, parents and those on the MENA committee, led by Councillor Kylie Spears, who really do a power of work each year to get this tournament going—but they do a power of work every Saturday to make sure the tournaments and competitions run very smoothly.
This year the Deakin Twilight Tournament took place on a pretty hot day—33 degrees—a couple of degrees away from players not being able to participate. So I am really pleased that future competitions and future participants in the Deakin Twilight Cup will be hosted in a purpose-built stadium that will enable all players at HE Parker Reserve to play inside rain, hail or shine.
As I said on the day, planning is rapidly progressing towards delivering on that stadium, which was a commitment of the government last year. We have provided $10½ million of funding towards a new state-of-the-art netball centre. I am very much looking forward to seeing that stadium built and seeing it able to offer opportunities for lots of young netballers into the future.
Centrelink
Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (10:42): Every week my office takes on new cases that emerge from the torrent of issues generated by the Centrelink system, which is in crisis. The cases are new; the issues are well worn. They typically include people trying to receive the age pension, youth allowance or Newstart allowance, or people trying to deal with requests for information or debt notices from the Department of Human Services. They typically include people who wait inordinate amounts of time on the telephone, people who are perpetually directed to use online processes that often do not work, people who lodge claims and send letters that go without response for months and people who provide documents that magically disappear and are requested again. These problems have been exacerbated by the robo-debt debacle. They are being made harder by the government's failure to support and resource Centrelink staff.
Last week I heard from a resident in North Fremantle who is still awaiting the resolution of her age pension claim that was lodged last July. This constituent was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of last year and, at the age of 67, after working in Fremantle hospitals for more than 30 years, decided it was time to step back from her demanding role in a cardiac care unit to take care of herself in retirement.
From the time of lodgement nothing was heard until November, when a letter arrived that sought further information. It was duly provided but only resulted in a failed claim notice on the myGov web portal. No explanation or further instructions were provided. Through December several calls were met with reassurances that the process would end shortly. Then in February a letter arrived seeking yet further documents, because the retiring nurse was a beneficiary of a family trust, a small investment property and modest superannuation—all assets that she disclosed at the outset.
The relevant documentation was delivered, and a dutiful officer spent two hours scanning and uploading the paperwork. Now, you would think at this point the end was in sight—but, no; upon lodging a complaint last week, my constituent was informed that the documents were still outstanding. This kind of maddening ring around leaves people in a state somewhere between rage and exhausted depression. My staff members are happy to work with constituents to clarify and resolve their issues and, in many cases, we have assisted people in considerable distress, having received notice of a very substantial debt.
We are given generous assistance by Centrelink liaison staff and social workers within the department, but it is clear that the volume of demand, the flaws in the system and the oppressive approach to managing the workforce in recent times are creating intolerable delays and errors.
Centrelink staff have been waiting for and working towards a new and fair employment agreement in good faith since June 2014. They have not received a pay increase for three years; instead, jobs have been cut, job security has been weakened and working conditions made less flexible. It is well past time for the government to bear down on these systemic problems. They are hurting Australians who can least bear it.
Hume Electorate: Volunteers
Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation) (10:45): Today I want to salute just some of the many thousands of highly-valued volunteers in my electorate. The tireless community work of these quiet achievers has in many cases, quite literally, been on show over the last few months with people like Val Stewart and her horde of helpers at the newly-established Mother Hubbard's Cupboard in Camden, who do an amazing job of working agencies in the community to support local families in need, especially victims of domestic violence.
There are people like Wayne Wilmington and his team at the Luddenham Show Society who put on another bumper annual event, bringing the country to the west of the city. The Goulburn AP&H Society president Jacki Waugh and her incredibly committed crew of more than 40 locals, after being forced to cancel their show last year, bounced back with a vengeance just a few weeks ago to stage a really top weekend, pulling thousands of visitors from the south coast, Sydney and Canberra regions.
President Stuart Keith and the Taralga AP&H Association held their annual event recently in the beautiful tablelands village that sits between Goulburn and the Abercrombie. It was their 131st show, and the Flock Ewe competition was as tough as ever.
This year's Tarago show put on by the local society and headed by president Keith Hunter will go down in history as the day when the Lose Screws team knocked off the eight-time tug-of-war champions, the Loaded Dog, to win the prestigious title.
The entire district of Tarago in the south of my electorate and just a 30-minute drive north of where we are today had its own tug of war with a raging grass fire in mid-January. The Currandooley outbreak torched almost 3,400 hectares. It destroyed one house, killed hundreds of stock and turned kilometres of fencing to ash. It could have been much worse if it were not for volunteers. Hundreds of them, including crews from Tarago and Taylor's Creek rural fire brigade units, converged from around the region in blistering conditions to bring the blaze under control and keep people safe. A few days later, more than 30 volunteers from BlazeAid, that wonderful organisation that helps out in cases like this, mobilised to mend fences and help clean up.
I am pleased the federal and New South Wales governments came together to ensure eligible farmers and communities in the Tarago district receive the support they need to recover as quickly as possible. If volunteers are the heartbeat of Hume, then my electorate is in a very healthy state.
Hume Electorate: Men's Shed
Ms HUSAR (Lindsay) (10:48): This morning I have come to talk about the men's shed in my electorate. I was very pleased to be at the opening of the shed on March 4, alongside the shed boss man and president, Michael Siegle, and the men's shed CEO, David Helmers. In front of 80 of the current members, we were able to open our newest men's shed, which also happens to be the largest men's shed in the country in terms of square metreage and was a gift from the Nepean Volunteers Rescue Association when they became defunct. This men's shed offers men in my community an opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with other men and support one another.
I just want to make special mention of Paul James and John Stalliny, who spoke about their own interaction with the men's shed and how the men's shed has been able to assist them. I also want to give a small history of the men's shed movement. Very proudly, it is a Labor initiative. In 2008, Nicola Roxon, as health minister, launched the consultation on men's health policy, which then came into effect in 2010. It is a proud Labor tradition, because we know that men need support in other ways, and one way in which we can do this is to reach out via men's sheds.
Men, we know, have poorer access to health care. They tend to have fewer visits to doctors and seek medical assistance at later stages in their illnesses. They have longer working hours, there are the requirements of seasonal work and sometimes they are affected by privacy or just the fear of knowing their true health status. Men's Sheds can help with some of these things, such as by providing other men for them to talk to. On average, Australian males have a shorter life expectancy. The rate of death for males at working age, 25 to 64, is substantially higher. In just one year alone, there were 1,901 male suicides compared with 634 female suicides. That is a difference of 1,267, which are many more. Importantly, these Men's Sheds exist for our men to reach out to one another. They are available to any man over the age of 18.
I want to put on the record that, unfortunately, the coalition's health cuts are not helping to reverse the trends in men's health. With the freeze on Medicare rebates, doctors will increasingly be forced to abandon bulk-billing and increase out-of-pocket expenses for patients, which will substantially affect our male population and will discourage them when they are already reluctant to see their GP. If that is not enough, the coalition's cuts to bulk-billing incentives for pathology and X-ray mean people avoid getting those preventative health tests, which we know substantially increase better outcomes in that space. We already have difficulty in getting men to reach out for these and I am not sure that we should be making it any more difficult. I just wanted to update and congratulate the people involved in Men's Shed.
Forde Electorate: Building Stronger Communities Grants Program
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (10:51): It is always good to see my neighbour, the member for Wright, in the chair. The coalition government's Stronger Communities program is a tremendous success. I would like to take this opportunity to share with the chamber some great projects that have been supported in my electorate of Forde. It is fantastic to see the benefits that the Stronger Communities grants have brought to our local community. The ones I announced last year have been put to very good use. The grants were awarded to local organisations for projects contributing to the region's long-term vibrancy and viability.
Park Ridge Pirates AFL club have purchased their new mower and have now put it to great use in maintaining their football fields. As a club that continues to grow and develop and provide a wonderful community service around Park Ridge, it will be very well used. Brigalow Country Music Club put the funding to great use by expanding the clubhouse by constructing a new deck. The shade sails will soon be up and the project looks fantastic. Certainly during the Christmas period, when they held their Christmas carols, the deck was very well utilised. One of my favourite projects was organised by My Ormeau, a community group located in Ormeau. Their funding went to building a parent room to be used at the local Ormeau fair, the Ormeau Christmas carols event and many other local events. The reason for this is that there is nothing worse as a parent than having no space to change a nappy or care for a little one or having to squeeze parents and children into narrow portable toilets. The parenting room debuted at the 2016 Ormeau carols and was hailed a huge success by local families. Some other exciting projects currently underway include field lighting at the Logan Uniting Church soccer fields and major refurbishment to the Chambers Flat equestrian grounds. Logan Lightning FC have also had funding to refurbish the club house at Chris Green Park. That has recently been finished and looks terrific.
These are just some of the examples of the fabulous opportunities that the Building Stronger Communities Grants Program creates in our local communities. As we move forward with these projects, the community is benefiting to a huge extent. It helps when we provide that little bit of assistance, that little bit of a hand up, for our local community groups who do so much tremendous work in their communities. Most of those people are volunteers. Not only do they work hard in their day jobs but they also put in a tremendous amount of time and effort in local community groups. To be able to help them out in this way is very pleasing and to see the great things they have done with the money is fantastic.
Broadband
Ms CLAYDON (Newcastle) (10:54): What has happened to broadband in this country is nothing short of a travesty. Labor's full fibre NBN had indeed the potential to be the single greatest economic enabler for our country in decades, and nowhere was set to benefit more than regional towns and cities like my home town of Newcastle. Then along came the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull. He talked a big game about innovation, about agility, about disruption and about the critical importance of digital infrastructure. But that was just talk. In practice, in fact, he betrayed the Australian people, our future and indeed everything he knows to be true by delivering a substandard offering based on ageing copper wires. This will be this Prime Minister's shameful legacy. Only this month, global internet speed rankings revealed that Australia now lags behind Kenya, Latvia, Romania and Estonia. In my electorate of Newcastle, the Turnbull government's second-rate NBN rollout has been plagued with installation problems, glacial speeds, huge lag and drop-out for too many homes and businesses, and the number of complaints I receive is growing every week.
I wrote to the ACCC last year about this and I am pleased that they are now investigating widespread problems with the NBN not delivering on the advertised or expected speeds. But this still will not solve the fundamental problem that Mr Turnbull's $50 billion NBN is outdated, second-rate and built on last century's technology. When I put the call out for constituents to tell me what speeds they were getting, I was inundated with people telling me how their new NBN connection with actually slower than their ADSL—the very connections they were meant to replace—with rates as low as four megabytes per second. One constituent even told me that on some nights, NBN is slower than what his dial-up connection was from the 1990s. Others noted that every drop-out also caused them to lose vital phone services and pointed to the very real risk that this will present in an emergency. But not all constituents were unhappy. One posted to my page told me that he was getting 91 megabytes per second and is very happy with his service. Do you know why? Because he is one of the lucky few in Newcastle to be on Labor's first-rate, fibre-to-the-premises network. In fact, he told me that he chose his house precisely for this reason. It is outrageous that the Prime Minister has created a digital divide where those with Labor's first-rate NBN are able to participate fully in the digital world and the digital economy, while those lumbered with the 19th century copper technologies of the past are being left behind. Sadly, for most people in my electorate that is the majority.
Bowman Electorate: Survey
Mr LAMING (Bowman) (10:57): In the coming weeks, we will again be conducting Redland's biggest survey, which has been held four years in a row now and probably has the largest collation of electorate-wide data in the country, following a single electorate over time. The response rate now is in excess of 30 per cent of the entire electorate. As we see very high levels of response, we benefit from a longitudinal assessment of how opinions are changing and we are adding in some new questions that are particularly relevant to this year's situation. Obviously, there is economic uncertainty for Australians and there are social issues that were not around three to four years ago. What we will be particularly focusing on in this survey will be issues that are not necessarily federal issues. I have the form here that will be arriving in every letterbox in the next two weeks, it is important to remember that it is Australia Post delivered—so by law it must go into every letterbox—and it is branded with a very clear envelope. So do not throw it out; don't mistake it for the Reader's digest material. This has important stuff inside. It is reply paid.
We use of volunteers to process what is a large amount of data. Most importantly of all, we invite community groups in to be invigilators and to monitor and scrutineer the process. Obviously the big question at the moment will be same-sex marriage. There will be both sides of that debate in the office as we open those forms, so there can be comfort that the process we are applying is absolutely on the straight and narrow. That is important for trust, because those results are always within a few per cent of 50-50 in Redlands. The other areas will be the introduction of a sugar and sweetened beverages tax—always very controversial; legalised euthanasia—one that pops up quite often; and banning the burqa—a common debate but we really do not know just how deeply held some of those views are. And, should there be tougher laws on gangs and bikies—something that Queensland enjoyed under the previous state government; and better marking of Australian produce in supermarkets—always very strongly felt views. The questions here are not about everyone saying yes or no; they are about discriminatory questions that identify people's views when pressed into a difficult choice. An example of that is, would you pay more tax to fix the following problems? No-one likes paying more tax but some problems are big enough to deserve paying more tax.
We are looking at issues such as cheaper child care, better disability access, life-saving medications and child protection. Those are things we feel very strongly about, but we want to know whether people would pay more tax to see that done better, and that is a far harder question than the banal question, 'Would you like to have more and more services without actually having to pay for them? On foreign affairs, the simple question: is the US our best mate—a nice, simply-worded question? Should we be staying in Afghanistan and Iraq? Are we beating ISIS—getting a granular sense of how people feel about our foreign policy exposure at the moment? Is another global financial crisis just around the corner? These are all questions that people may find are quite deeply seated but are often not teased out. I am glad to say in Bowman that will be happening in the next couple of weeks.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): In accordance with the standing orders 193, the time for constituency statements has now concluded.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Multiculturalism
Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (11:01): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) Australia has had a policy on multiculturalism since 1973; and
(b) Australia's multicultural policy demonstrates our shared values and cultural traditions and complements our national characteristics of equality and a fair go for all;
(2) recognises that:
(a) our diversity:
(i) makes us a richer, more vibrant and creative country; and
(ii) brings economic and social benefits and gives us a competitive edge in a globalised world;
(b) multiculturalism:
(i) is in our best interest and speaks to fairness and inclusion; and
(ii) enhances respect and support for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity;
(c) we are committed to a just, inclusive and socially cohesive society where everyone can participate in the opportunities our country offers;
(d) promoting understanding and acceptance is important;
(e) racism is harmful to individuals and to the community; and
(f) racist behaviour should not be tolerated in a civil society; and
(3) calls on the Government to reaffirm its commitment to Australia's culturally diverse and socially cohesive society and to condemn those who are actively seeking to incite division.
I am very pleased to move the motion that has been circulated in my name. It is particularly important in the current political climate where we have the Turnbull government introducing legislation into the Senate that will allow more racist speech and where we have a Queensland senator calling for the banning of an entire section of the Australian religious community. It is important in that light that today we recognise the great benefits of Australia's multiculturalism and the harm that racist behaviour causes to individuals and our community.
Moreton is a very diverse mix of multicultural and ethnic communities and religious beliefs. There are large communities of Taiwanese, Chinese, Indians, former Yugoslavs, Pacific Islanders, Somalians, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Rwandans, Filipinos, South Africans, Indigenous Australians, New Zealanders, Fijians, Koreans and Vietnamese to name but a few. My community is richer and more vibrant and creative due to the contribution of our ethnic communities. I am very glad that I am raising my family right in the middle of such a diverse community. My young children see the differences in other Australians and they also see what unites us. And I am grateful that my two young boys are part of that daily version of giving me hope, because imagine seeing the world through the eyes where you only see division. That must be a horrible world to live in and a horrible place to dwell in.
It is a place that the leader of the One Nation political party knows only too well. She gives us a glimpse of that vile place where she vents her hateful and divisive rhetoric. It is so wrong to single out one Australian religious community and have them believe that they are not welcome here. I take this opportunity, publicly in Australia's democratically-elected parliament that represents all Australians, irrespective of their beliefs or lack of belief, to make it very clear that I condemn the words of the leader of the One Nation political party. All Muslims are no more to blame for all terrorist attacks of criminals than are all Catholics to blame for the sexual abuse against children by some evil clergy. The sins of an evil few should never be visited on the innocent many. The hateful words of the One Nation political party's leader who, let's admit, is a professional politician of more than 20-plus years, were uttered in the same week that the Turnbull government introduced legislation to water down the protections against racist hate speech.
I was deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that presided over the inquiry into freedom of speech. The majority report tabled from that inquiry did not recommend changing the Racial Discrimination Act. There were some amendments recommended for process, but in terms of changing the Racial Discrimination Act, especially section 18C, that was not the recommendation. The human rights inquiry was conducted over 112 days with hearings in every capital city, including Darwin and Hobart. The committee heard from Indigenous and ethnic communities across the depth and breadth of the country. These people sat in front of the committee and told us of the very real harm that racism causes to individuals and their communities—real harm like physical and mental illness, reduction in educational advancement, reduction in job opportunities, enforced isolation and the inability to participate fully in society because they are afraid to contribute.
The rushed bill introduced by the Attorney-General last week, which had a three-hour Senate inquiry, does not reflect the considered majority report of the Liberal-dominated committee. The rushed committee inquiry—which was launched last Friday and did not hear from the Indigenous community—was quite bizarre. So much for a party that professes to believe in free speech in a democratic society. This was a sham of a process. The Liberal government love talking about freedom of speech, but whose freedom and whose speech is important to them? Their actions, sadly, speak much more loudly than their words. If they were truly concerned about Australia's Indigenous and multicultural communities and their concerns, they would immediately dump this rushed proposed change to the Racial Discrimination Act. No good can possibly come from allowing more racist hate speech—and that, sadly, is what the government are attempting to do.
All Australians deserve to feel safe and valued in their own country, whether they were born here or migrated here. The contribution of immigration to the Australian economy is enormous. We know that, so it is incumbent upon those in positions of power to promote understanding and the acceptance of all Australians, whether they were born here or migrated here. It should be abhorrent to all Australians that an Australian politician is singling out a whole community and telling them they are not welcome here. It is un-Australian and goes against the Constitution.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): Is the motion seconded?
Ms Vamvakinou: I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.
Mr ALEXANDER (Bennelong) (11:06): It is always a pleasure to speak on motions like this, and I thank my friend the member for Moreton for raising it. It is my great honour to represent Bennelong, the most multicultural electorate in the country. It is home to people from around the world—Chinese, Koreans, Italians, Armenians, Indians, Persians and many, many more. Our suburbs show off this vibrant mix. Eastwood is full of restaurants from across East Asia, and every Wednesday morning the mall is filled with the relaxing movements and music of dozens of people doing tai chi.
Italians first moved to Ryde a few generations ago and, in that time, have stamped their identity on the architecture, the businesses and the schools. Armenians have been coming to the area since common bonds were shared in the aftermath of tragedy in the First World War and have subsequently blossomed. Two of our local councillors come from Armenian stock and the Premier of New South Wales herself grew up locally with her Armenian family.
These unique ethnicities do not live in their own bubble—we all work together, celebrate together and live together. The Lunar New Year celebrations are embraced by both Chinese and Koreans alike and also by tens of thousands of people from across all of Sydney who come to watch the energetic and engaging festivities. Similarly, this May our Indian community will join with the Pakistanis, the Sri Lankans, the Bangladeshis, the Nepalese and Afghanis as they host the inaugural SAFAL Fest, the South Asian Film, Arts and Literature Festival, at Macquarie University. I am particularly proud of this event. It has been put on with the help of funding from the federal government, who contributed some $3,000.
One of my most successful initiatives locally has been the Bennelong Cup. Early in my time as an MP, I visited a local school and saw a high percentage of students from Asian backgrounds. I noticed that there was a divide in the playground between the European and the Asian students. I know personally that nothing fosters relationships like playing sports together, so I instituted the Bennelong Cup schools table tennis initiative, together with help from Hyundai, Andrew Hill of STARStv and the leader of the Australian Asian Association of Bennelong, Hugh Lee. We put table tennis tables in over 40 schools across the electorate and hosted a competition between all of them. The event continues to be a great success. Fast-forward to today, and the Bennelong Cup has just hosted its sixth annual competition, alongside a test match played by teams from eight nations. But the highlight is always the schools competition. Seeing a gymnasium filled with students from all backgrounds competing, playing, laughing and making friends with each other is the true success of this initiative. It is multiculturalism at work, fostering relationships—attitudes that will serve these students well throughout their lives.
While Bennelong shows multiculturalism's success in microcosm, it is also true to say that Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world. Our achievements as a nation can be attributed to the contributions of more than 300 different ancestries, from the First Australians to the newest arrivals. Almost half of our current population either were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas. Australia has a rich history of migrants contributing to our social and economic fabric. Over time, the coming together of many peoples has helped build our infrastructure, enliven our communities, enhance our cultural experiences, increase opportunities and, most significantly, expand the way we engage with the world. Only together, through shared values, rights and responsibilities, have we built this modern and prosperous Australia. Our values unite us. They are based on respect, equality and freedom. We recognise the importance of integration, mutual respect and mutual responsibility, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our prosperity.
Thank you again, member for Moreton. I wholeheartedly agree with every line of your motion. Our community's strength is in its diversity. I am immensely proud of Bennelong, the diverse heritage of local residents and, most importantly, the harmonious way in which we have all integrated with each other. We have taken the best of each culture and grown into a unique and exciting community. This fusion makes this area of Sydney great and it is what makes me so proud to be its MP.
Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (11:11): I commend the member for Moreton for putting this very important private member's motion to the House for debate. Multiculturalism is the foundation of modern Australian society. Although this motion refers to Australian having had a multiculturalism policy since 1973, the truth is that Australia began becoming a multicultural society long before that. We can go back to the First Fleet, to Muslims from Afghanistan and to the Chinese of the gold rush period, not to mention the migration of people from the United Kingdom and Ireland, but it was Arthur Calwell's ambitious, expansive migration policy of the late 1940s, which sourced migrants from war-torn Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, that sowed the foundation for modern multicultural Australia. With the pronouncement that, 'We cannot hold this continent with 7½ million people,' Calwell and his contemporaries set about changing the cultural face of Australian society in the pursuit of nation-building and prosperity. It is no coincidence that Calwell has been referred to as the 'father of multiculturalism', a reference not often countenanced in the history of multiculturalism.
The election of the Whitlam government in 1972 led to the official formation and adoption of a policy that sought to effect and implement the integration of migrant Australia. Multiculturalism recognised the strength of our cultural diversity. It recognised that not only migrants' labour but also their cultural inheritance were vital nation-building resources for our prosperity. As a policy, multiculturalism created a socially and culturally inclusive society in making us a richer and more vibrant nation, and in providing a fair go for all underpinned by the principles of access and equity in service delivery. The key piece of establishing legislation was the Racial Discrimination Act, a legal framework that ensured the protection of people's rights and their dignity.
By and large, multicultural policy has enjoyed bipartisanship at both state and federal levels, but this has not always been the case. We have, over recent years, endured debates that called for multiculturalism to be abandoned because it was seen as divisive and detrimental to Australia. Nothing is further from the truth. Without multiculturalism, Australia's migrant society would not have achieved the social cohesion we have, which has enabled us to prosper as a success story of Australian nationhood. I know the Prime Minister believes this also, and I want to commend him for his multicultural statement promoting inclusion and integration, which he launched last week. But I want to ask him why he has sought to undermine this statement by moving to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. By weakening 18C, the Turnbull government is sending mixed signals: on the one hand, it supports multiculturalism; on the other hand, it does not support the very tools needed to protect and ensure our social cohesion.
The second coming of One Nation and the formation of other conservative groups mean that debate around these very important issues, which are ultimately about our national identity, remains timely and critical. Pauline Hanson is the same crude voice today as she was 20 years ago. Her current target is Muslim Australians, and she goes as far as saying, 'Islam is a disease. We need to vaccinate ourselves against that.' Is this not insulting and humiliating? It sure is offensive and it is a disgraceful display of small-mindedness and opportunism. I disagree with the Prime Minister: there is nothing sophisticated about Pauline Hanson mark 2. She remains as bigoted, unsophisticated and crass as she has always been. It is Muslims today; 20 years ago it was Asians. I am sure that 50 years ago it would have been Europeans, my family and I included. Pauline Hanson threatens our national security. The Prime Minister is right to point this out. Her views undermine our social cohesion. She and others like her use the pretext of freedom of speech to promote verbal violence, and as such she has to be held to account.
George Zangalis is an Australian, a unionist, chair of 3ZZZ community radio and one of the 'unwanted Australians'. He has spent most of his life fighting racist views such as those espoused by Pauline Hanson. He says:
It took a long time of sustained efforts to legislate against racism and enshrine multiculturalism as the glue that binds the nation together. The Turnbull Government's amendments strike at the very heart of such protection.
Under threat is not nor has it been freedom of speech, especially for those who yield power and cry the loudest for taking the guts out of 18C but protection against racism for minorities that 18C currently provides.
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (11:16): Happy birthday, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz!
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the member.
Mr VAN MANEN: It is my pleasure to rise to speak on this private member's motion on multiculturalism. I would like to thank my good friend the member for Moreton for bringing this motion to the House, because I think it is very important that we do, on a regular basis, recognise the value of our multicultural society. As the proud son of Dutch migrant parents, it is heartening to me to reflect on and boast about our success to the rest of the world. All Australians can be rightly proud of our strong and successful multicultural society.
The story of Australia began in the distant past with our Indigenous population and heritage. It grew with the establishment of the institutions of the British Empire and continues today with people from lands far and wide. Since 1945 we have seen more than 7.5 million people migrate to Australia, and around 45 per cent of Australians today were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was. From the First Australians to the newest arrivals, our achievements as a nation can be contributed to more than 300 different ancestries and heritages that we identify in the Australian community today.
Last week the Prime Minister released the coalition's 2017 multicultural statement. The release of this statement was a timely renewal of our commitment to a strong, prosperous multicultural Australia. In part this was recognised through the annual Harmony Day celebrations, but I know, as a member who represents a community with some 217 different cultural backgrounds, that every single day in our communities right around Australia many Australians from all walks of life work together to ensure that we have a harmonious society.
We should be very proud of this most successful multicultural society in the world, where more than 85 per cent of Australians agree that multiculturalism is good for our country. Our rich history of migrants has contributed to our social and economic fabric, with almost half our current population, as I said earlier, born overseas. Over time, the coming together of many peoples has helped build our infrastructure, enliven our communities, enhance our cultural experiences, increase our opportunities and, most significantly, expand the way we see and engage with the world. It is only together, through these shared values, rights and responsibilities, that we have built this modern and prosperous country. Our values unite us. They are based on respect, equality and freedom. We recognise the importance of integration, mutual respect and mutual responsibility, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our prosperity. It is important that we recognise that our diversity and harmony are underpinned by the security of our nation. We respond to threats to our way of life by continuing to invest in counterterrorism, strong borders and a strong national security framework. It is important that we continue to recognise that we cannot take our harmony and prosperity for granted.
Through the multicultural statement, the government continues to promote the principles of mutual respect, denouncing racial hatred and discrimination as incompatible with Australian society and culture. Migrants to Australia have come here in search of new opportunities and a better life. I frequently have those discussions with members of my community. While English is, and will remain, our national language and is a critical tool for migrant integration, our multilingual workforce is giving Australian businesses new horizons and boosting the opportunities to take skills in this country overseas. The most commonly spoken languages in Australia include Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Vietnamese, Filipino, Spanish and Hindi. We should be very proud of the tremendous work that we do in this country to welcome those from across the seas and we should continue to focus on that objective.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the honourable member for that contribution. The question is that the motion be agreed to. I give the call to the honourable member for Hindmarsh.
Mr GEORGANAS (Hindmarsh) (16:11): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and may I wish you a happy birthday as well.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the honourable member for Hindmarsh as well. And thank you, Bert, for that!
Mr GEORGANAS: I thank the member for Moreton for bringing such an important motion to the House, especially in the current political climate. Multiculturalism can mean many different things to different people, but to me it describes the reality of our nation. We are a nation made up of people from every corner of the world speaking every language you could possibly think of. In this place alone, if you scratch the surface, you will find that just in this chamber we have the member for Forde, with the name van Manen; the member for Caldwell, with the name Vamvakinou; and me, the member for Hindmarsh, with the name Georganas. We are just three of the many members in this House from diverse backgrounds, and that is something we should be very proud of. I think there would be very few countries around the world where you could arrive as a migrant with very little skill in English and have your children become members of parliament. It is something very special that we should cherish in this nation, because it shows what an egalitarian nation we are, and it shows that the cohesiveness of multiculturalism has worked very well for this nation and will continue to work well for years to come.
To others, multiculturalism is a policy that was introduced by the Whitlam Labor government, and it has been maintained by consecutive governments of different political persuasions and strengthened over time. In fact, it is precisely the bipartisan approach of supporting multiculturalism that has ensured its success and the unique success stories that we hear in our communities. Recently we have seen some attacks on multiculturalism. These elements within our society are very few but unfortunately very loud, and the noise that comes from these very few elements is scary because it brings uncertainty to this wonderful nation where we have had cohesiveness for many years.
When you look at this nation you see people from every corner of the world, as the previous speakers in this debate have spoken about. Every language that you can possibly think of is spoken in this nation. That is because people of different communities are not trying to overwhelm one another with their particular culture, language or traditions. It is about bringing the best of every culture from the world to this nation and contributing to this wonderful country of Australia, and that is why it has worked so well.
I have great pleasure in attending citizenship ceremonies. Nothing gives me more pleasure than going and seeing the joy on people's faces when they commit and affirm to our nation, which means that their future is here in this country—and, even more importantly, not just their future but their children's future and their children's children's future. You see the success stories: not just success stories of businesses, although there have been many of them, but success stories in every walk of life. Just the fact that a family can come here from a war-torn country, with absolutely no hope and certainly not being able to fulfil any of the dreams that they may have had in their home country, and fulfil some of those dreams is such a special thing. It is a special story that we have, and we are an absolute world example of living in harmony, living together and sharing those good things that we bring to this nation.
If you have a look around the world, there is no other country that is doing it better than we are. You look at the conflicts around the world and the different religious and tribal divisions. One of the reasons we have done it so well here is that we are an inclusive nation and we bring people in. We encourage people to become citizens as quickly as possible when they are here. We encourage people to participate and become part of our community, and all of this is through that fabric that we call multiculturalism.
As I said, it is a policy that was introduced in 1973, but the reality is that multicultural Australia has existed for many, many years. In South Australia, for example, we have the Afghani camel people who came over and opened up the centre of Australia. Their descendants still live in my electorate, with names like Abdullah and Halimah. These are people still within the western suburbs of Hindmarsh whose great-great-grandparents came from different parts of the world. So this motion is important, and we should call for the reaffirmation of these policies.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the honourable member for his contribution and offer that 'Buchholz' has strong German heritage.
Mr CHRISTENSEN (Dawson) (11:27): Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, let me wish you a happy birthday. I will not go any further or I will make disparaging remarks about the chair! I will tell it to you later.
For more than 200 years, Australia's history and culture have been enriched by waves of immigration. People from many countries around the world came here to share in the freedoms and opportunities that this blessed nation provides. The Italians, the Greeks, the Germans and many others joined the predominantly English, Irish and Indigenous Australians and built one of the most modern and successful Western societies in the world. In the process, a national identity and a national culture was formed that we all know and understand, even though sometimes it is difficult to define.
A multicultural society is one that embraces a number of minority cultures, and multiculturalism is the belief that such a society benefits by maintaining more than one culture within its structure. For more than 200 years, Australia was that country. It embraced a number of minority cultures, and that worked well when those ethnic and national minorities embraced the majority culture, the Australian culture. But I am sad to say I do not believe that is any longer the case. We now have isolated immigrant enclaves and cultural enclaves that do not embrace the dominant Australian culture. They are aided and abetted by the politically correct, the elite and the socialist left, who massage their own guilt complex by rejecting, denigrating and persecuting the majority Australian culture. Their pursuit of equality focuses on tearing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. How can Australia be a successful multicultural society when it harbours enclaves that do not embrace the major culture of the country in which they reside, much less the culture of other minorities?
All human races, nationalities and ethnicities that we find in Australia today are descended from immigrants, and that even includes the nation's first people, who were the first immigrants from across the world. But we cannot call ourselves a successful multicultural society, because one ethnic group is openly reviled, despised and denigrated by the elite, the politically correct, the law, the media and even the Human Rights Commission. Institutionalised cultural suppression does exist in this country today, not to suppress a minority culture but to elevate minority cultures above the majority. Our culture is being oppressed and supplanted by a culture that is so at odds with its hosts that it hates all that the host country and its people stand for, and I talk of radical Islam.
If we were a truly multicultural society—a society that accepts different cultural practices—you might expect the government to step in when school students refuse to accept the cultural practices of others. When male students at Hurstville Boys Campus of the Georges River College refused to shake the hands of women handing out awards, the New South Wales government did not step in. It supported the misogynistic stance of the students. Australian culture, which is men and women being equal, was not accepted by the students. It was deemed unacceptable and had to be denied.
In what definition of multiculturalism would it be acceptable for an immigrant, an ethnic minority or anyone for that matter to defy the cultural practices of the host country? Where is the benefit to society in having violent ethnic gangs creating havoc in the central business district of a major capital city in this country? Where is the benefit to society in having enclaves where a separate community recreates a mini country within its own culture, with its own culture and language, that isolates itself from the rest of the country and attacks outsiders should they dare to set foot on its so-called foreign soil? That is not the warm and fuzzy peace-and-love society that this motion would have us believe multiculturalism to be.
I note this motion calls on the government to condemn those who are actively seeking to incite division. As a member of the government, I am very happy to condemn those who actively seek to incite division. I condemn those who divide the country by isolating themselves and trying to create alternative countries within Australia. I condemn those who divide the country by promoting foreign legal systems, such as sharia law, and creating alternative laws and alternative legal systems. I condemn those who divide the country by not just refusing to participate in Australia's cultural norms but also demanding the rest of the country give up their own cultural norms.
Multiculturalism in Australia was a good thing, but it failed the minute we failed to stand up for the rights of our own culture. That is why I am now against multiculturalism. Our nation was stronger with one culture—a culture we were willing to defend and a culture that had been enriched by people from other lands and other cultures and by people and cultures that were aligned with our own values. If we continue to supplant our culture with one opposed to it, everything will fail. (Time expired)
Mr HAMMOND (Perth) (11:32): I rise to support this motion. I realise that when people refer to ethnically diverse communities in Australia perhaps not that many might immediately think of my home electorate of the federal seat of Perth. But I can assure you that there are very strong migrant communities all throughout my electorate that have added immeasurably to the vibrancy of our local community and have done so for decades, if not hundreds of years. I immediately think of the Glendi Greek Festival that I attended late last year in Northbridge, the Chinese New Year parade, the Vietnamese community's amazing dinners that I am invited to, the Macedonian community coming together to build a new church in North Perth, the Nepalese community fundraiser I went to last year or the WA Italian Club reception only a few weeks ago.
From that, I suspect you get the impression quite clearly and quite rightly that the federal seat of Perth, indeed, is an incredibly vibrant ethnic community. How dull would life be without these wonderful events? So I pay tribute to migrant and ethnic communities in Perth and thank them for the contribution they have made not just to caring for each other but also to the richness, vibrancy and diversity of Perth more broadly.
Tuesday last week was Harmony Day—a day when the nation chooses to celebrate our diversity. By way of a history lesson, Harmony Day was invented by John Howard to try to mainstream politics around migrant communities for two key reasons. He did this, firstly, in an attempt to mitigate the appeal of Pauline Hanson 1.0. Secondly, he wanted to wrest migrants' votes off the Labor Party by presenting the Liberal Party as the friend of diversity. Certainly the Liberal Party under John Howard had a degree of success on both counts, although, sadly, both now appear to have fallen away. Indeed, the Liberal Party, egged on by hard-right conservatives, are now again seeking to weaken race hate laws. They also now have an appeasement policy towards Pauline Hanson 2.0—particularly if the recent Western Australian experience is anything to go by.
Listening to the Prime Minister last week, his Orwellian newspeak that I suspect even he had difficulty believing, insisting that weakening section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act was actually strengthening it, was, with respect, pathetic. War is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery and, now, racism is diversity—I mean, please! The fact that the Prime Minister introduced this short-sighted, divisive amendment on Harmony Day just adds insult to injury. I do not know what is worse—if he did not realise it was Harmony Day or if he knew and did it anyway.
Let's get real, though. I suspect the Prime Minister actually wants this bill to fail in the Senate. I think he lost a vote in his own cabinet and wants to kill off the bill before it reaches the House. Certainly the member for Bennelong will not want to have to vote for the bill—perceptions of racism, after all, are part of what lost the Liberals the seat in 2007—and nor will the members for Reid, Banks and Chisholm with their ethnically diverse electorates and wafer-thin margins. I would say to those honourable members: be very, very careful what you wish for. For every racist and divisive vote the Liberal Party tries to court, there is a multitude of anti-racist Australians whose support you will lose. I would say this to the Prime Minister: you must no longer have an attitude of tolerance and appeasement towards the bigots in your party's far-right ranks. People are starting to notice.
I am an Anglo-Saxon, white male who has never, ever had to fall victim to racism or prejudice. But, in a sense, that is the point. The issues that confront our migrant communities do not just impact upon those communities; they affect us all. Racism, wherever it occurs, does not just harm its direct victims; rather, it demeans us all. For so long as we tolerate the notion that, in order to give bigots the right to exercise their so-called freedom of speech in a way that risks those who are vulnerable in our community, those ethnic communities who have had to work so hard to overcome perceptions of racism must simply fall back into a category where they are potentially maligned does us as a community and society no good at all. I will never stop calling out racism when I see it, and I see it in the eyes of the rich white men proposing these changes to 18C. (Time expired)
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (11:37): Since the end of World War II, approximately eight million people have migrated to Australia. They have done so for many reasons. They have done it to escape poverty. They have done it for peace and security. They have done so for the economic opportunities that Australia provides. They have done so for our beautiful weather, climate and way of life. But, most of all, those people who have migrated to Australia have done so for freedom. Freedom has been above all those other reasons for why people have migrated to Australia. They have done so to ensure that they and their children do not have to tolerate some of the totalitarian regimes where they have come from. Therefore, when freedom is threatened in Australia, it should be the multicultural groups in our country that are first to rally to freedom's defence.
What we have seen recently with the decisions of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the actions they have taken and the contact they have engaged in is a bureaucracy that is simply drunk with power—power given to them by the provisions in 18C. We should not have in this country a situation where a cartoonist can be called before a government bureaucracy to explain himself. We should not have had the 18C shakedown where young students who were denied access to a computer lab because of their race and ethnic identity raised it as an issue, accusing the university of segregation, were hauled before the courts of this country. When that happens, it should be the ethnic groups in this country that stand up and say: 'This is wrong. This is an erosion of our freedom.' That is why the government is making very modest changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
What I find appalling—and this is something the motion calls for, to condemn those that actively seek to incite division—is the Labor Party's conduct. It is the Labor Party—we just heard it from a member of the opposition—saying that those who want to change 18C are somehow inciting racial intolerance. I say it is the other way around. It is those who are making those comments who are the ones inciting racial intolerance in this nation. We should all be able to get together as a parliament and say, 'What happened to the artist Bill Leak should never, ever happen again in this country.' Surely that is something we can all be united on. But instead the Labor Party are using that as an opportunity to play divisive ethnic politics. This is contrary to everything that our country stands for. The changes to 18C are modest and they are needed because of the examples of Bill Leak and the QUT students' case.
When it comes to multiculturalism, we have been a very successful nation over many years—probably the most successful multicultural nation anywhere in the world. But there are problems starting to occur. When we see ethnic crime gangs and the crime increase in Victoria, we need to admit that there are problems starting to occur. When we see young Australians brought up in this country going to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and taking up arms against Australian troops, we need to see that there are problems occurring. When we see issues of forced marriage, the subjugation of women and people saying it is okay to refuse to shake hands with a woman—these are cracks in the wonderful multicultural society we have.
Rather than ignore these issues or bury our head in the sand and say there are no problems, it is up to responsible members of this parliament on both sides to say that there are issues, to say that we need to concentrate on the things that unite us, rather than the things that divide us. If we do not call these things out, there will be other politicians who will come into this place who will say far more radical things, and they will be the ones attracting popular support. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ) (11:42): The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Water Infrastructure
Ms LANDRY (Capricornia—Deputy Nationals Whip) (11:42): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) the Australian Government is committed to providing water infrastructure to increase agricultural production and irrigation potential across Australia;
(b) the Australian Government has committed funding to the following projects, which are examples of how the Coalition is serious about jobs and growth in this country, promising:
(i) $130 million to cover 50 per cent of the cost of building Rookwood Weir, near Rockhampton, with a further $2 million to ensure that the Queensland Government can complete the final business case required for Rookwood to proceed;
(ii) $225,000 to secure water infrastructure for Clermont and Theresa Creek Dam in Queensland; and
(iii) $3 million towards a feasibility study for Urannah Dam near Mackay in Queensland, benefiting an area from Eungella to Collinsville and the northern tropics;
(2) notes the failure of Federal Labor and Queensland Labor to financially commit to projects such as Rookwood Weir; and
(3) commends the Australian Government for recognising the potential of Australia by investing in water infrastructure.
The federal government is committed to a secure future for regional Australians through increased agricultural production and water infrastructure. The unprecedented guarantee of funds for water security by the Australian government confirms our commitment to the future prosperity of regional Australia. However, the Queensland government under Labor is looking a gift horse in the mouth, refusing to move on business cases and construction. Our commitment is resolute and vital for regional Queensland. The coalition government is providing $500 million in grants and $2 billion in loans. Not since the 1970s has there been such a push by the federal government to incentivise states to build the water infrastructure needed to allow regional Australia to grow in the 21st century.
There were announcements with this purpose in the agricultural competitiveness and northern Australia white papers. The coalition government committed $60 million to water resource assessments, feasibility studies and the development of business cases nationally. Half of that funding is for Queensland. This includes $130 million to the construction of Rookwood Weir, $225,000 to investigate water security solutions for Clermont, $2 million for a feasibility study of the Urannah Dam and an additional $2 million to complete the business case for the Rookwood Weir. This unprecedented Commonwealth investment in water infrastructure, which is primarily a state responsibility, is a visionary policy of the Turnbull-Joyce government, designed to finance projects to grow regional Australia. Let us look at what these projects mean for regional Queensland.
Rookwood Weir has been described as a game changer for Central Queensland. It has the potential to create 2,100 direct new jobs in the region as well as doubling farming output along the Fitzroy River. The Turnbull-Joyce government has now funded the business case, completed EPBC approvals and committed $130 million for Rookwood Weir. We still have no commitments from Queensland state Labor. The funds will assess the feasibility of securing reliable, long-term water supply for Clermont. It will open up development in the Galilee Basin through new and upgraded major water infrastructure for Clermont. Theresa Creek Dam will have vital augmentation and remediation works completed.
Farm production is forecast to leap by 8.3 per cent during this financial year, but these opportunities will be lost for Central Queensland as Labor continues to drag the chain. It is time for the Queensland government to look beyond the Brisbane bubble and commit to building Rookwood Weir. The latest advice is that the state government is working on the business case for Rookwood Weir. This is the business case the federal government committed to fund in May 2016. This is all for a project that Peter Beattie in 2006 declared would be built by 2011. In that time, the Western Australian government have completed feasibility studies, committed their own funding and submitted two applications to the Commonwealth government major water projects. It is the same in Tasmania, where the state government has completed business cases for their water projects and is now building them. The other states can do it; it is not hard. The Queensland government just needs to get on with it.
Showing a complete lack of comprehension for economic security, the Queensland water minister, Mark Bailey, has requested that the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund be repurposed for urban water supply. This is a new level of contempt shown for regional Queensland by the city-centric Labor-Green coalition in Queensland. Urban water supply has always been the responsibility of state governments and water utilities. This is not a cost-shifting exercise.
Agriculture is delivering a record contribution to the Australian economy, with exports up 10 per cent and overall production at a record-breaking $63.8 billion. This is no accident but the result of effective policy and funding. Central Queensland will be missing out, because the Queensland Labor government finds one excuse after the other.
I call on the Queensland Labor government to fast track Rookwood Weir with the same level of urgency they applied to funding the Brisbane Cross River Rail. I call on them to fast-track the business case, commit the funds and start creating jobs for Queenslanders outside that inner-city bubble.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr EVANS (Brisbane) (11:48): I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (11:48): I welcome a discussion in this place about the efficient use of our very precious water resources in this country. There is a misunderstanding amongst some in our community who believe we have an abundance of water and soil resources. In fact, the contrary is the case. We do live on the driest inhabited continent in the world, so it is important that we ensure that our water and soil resources go to those activities which produce the highest possible return for our country in economic terms and are used in the most efficient possible way.
I would usually welcome and invite a motion like this from the member but, sadly, this is just a stunt. And worse, this whole conversation that the minister for agriculture and the member for Capricornia are having in Central Queensland is just a stunt. It is a sleight of hand designed to, in some cases, bring people false hope but, more particularly, to blame someone else for not doing anything.
The member for Capricornia cannot have it both ways. Her own policy document says—this is the government's policy document:
We will also fund half the cost of Rookwood Weir—up to $130 million—if the business case meets all the necessary requirements and it acquires the required environmental approval.
Now there are three stages to building a dam. You need to make a business case. It has to be able to pay for itself in the long term. The farmers, who might be relying on that water resource, need to be able to afford the water resource, and that is all part of the economic equation. Then you need environmental approval—a shared responsibility between the state and federal governments—and then of course you need money.
The member for Capricornia is suggesting the money is on the table. That is the line the minister for agriculture likes to use—the money is on the table. It might be on the table, but the minister for agriculture is not prepared to spend that money until the necessary economic case is made and the environmental approval secured. That is exactly what the Queensland government is saying—they will not spend money on the project until the economic case is made and the environmental approvals have been determined; exactly and consistent with the position of the Commonwealth government.
The minister for agriculture loves to talk about dams. He knows dams are a popular thing within our communities, particularly within certain demographics. He never differentiates between whether he is talking about catchment dams, on-river dams, off-river dams, on-farm dams—he does not worry about any of that; he just talks about dams. If the minister for agriculture was serious about dams, he should put a little more detail into his proposals than that. He should stop misleading communities, particularly in Queensland, by suggesting he has got a big bucket of money here ready to go regardless—no matter what happens, no matter what the economic case—and that he would spend it tomorrow, if only the Queensland government would get out of the way. That is exactly what he is not doing when you look at his own policy document.
Just as the member for Capricornia went into the last election, keeping a secret from her constituents—the plan to compulsorily acquire prime agriculture land in her electorate just like she deceived her electorate in the lead-up to the last election—she is now deceiving them once again. She wants them to believe that, if the Queensland government would simply get out of the way, she would be building Rookwood Weir and some of those other water projects tomorrow. That is simply and patently untrue. She knows it to be untrue and she should fess up to her local communities and properly explain to them both the challenges involved in getting these projects to fruition and the legitimate role of the Queensland government as a partner.
The Queensland government is not standing in the way of any of these projects. What does stand in the way of these projects is the deceitful behaviour of this government, always running around promising things they know they cannot deliver before the next election. The minister for agriculture only ever has one thing in mind: the electoral cycle and what he can falsely promise before an election—and of course he worries about the consequences after the election. The member for Capricornia is now paying the price for that, given the way they kept secret the plans to expand Shoalwater Bay. (Time expired)
Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (11:53): I rise today to support the member for Capricornia, a very hardworking local member, representing one of our great agricultural electorates. The member for Capricornia made the very good point: agricultural production has risen by 10 per cent to nearly $64 billion—a massive contribution to the national account, and much of that produce is exported and of course it is a sustainable industry.
The member for Hunter made a very good case for doing nothing—there are a lot of reasons why we should not build dams, and we have heard them all before. It has been around 30 years since we built a substantive dam in this country to provide water for irrigation. I was very pleased when our current minister for agriculture announced our dam-building program in the agricultural white paper, which amounted to—whatever the member for Hunter might claim—$500 million for capital costs to build more dams around this country and another $2 billion in loans. I absolutely welcome that from the minister for agriculture. I welcome his commitment to further the agricultural industry in this country, and of course water is a key part of that.
In my electorate of O'Connor we have a wonderfully productive region called the Southern Forests. It is a big agricultural electorate anyway, but the Southern Forests area, based around Manjimup, Bridgetown and down to Pemberton and Northcliffe, is some of the richest agricultural country on this land. It is set amongst 300-foot high karri trees and is a testament to not only the soil type but also the climate. Unfortunately in this drying climate, our horticultural industries in that area need water security. Most of the water at the moment is provided by gully dams built by individual farmers and we have reached the capacity of that particular system, and also the reliability of gully dams given the variable seasonal rainfall is a little bit suspect.
The previous Western Australian government, through its Water for Food program, has come up with a plan, which I think is a very good plan, to pump water from the Donnelly River, which is not far from the river mouth that flows out into the ocean. They assured me there is very little environmental impact to pumping water out of the river, up into holding weir at the high point of the district, and then allowing that water to reticulate throughout the area. We are talking about an area of around 100 kilometres by 50 kilometres. It will be a large area that will provide additional growth to the horticultural industry in that area and will also firm up the existing water supply. I am a big supporter of this particular plan.
Prior to the election in Western Australia, the previous government signed a heads of agreement with the federal government to look at us funding a portion of that project. It is a project of about $79 million. The state government is committed to providing around one third of that funding, the local landholder is looking at providing another third, and they are looking to the federal government to provide the final third of that money through our dam-building policy. I believe this money will be very well invested in my electorate. We have a strong horticultural area through Southern Forests at the moment, but it is just not on a quite big enough scale to host the big food processing plants we see at other horticultural parts of Australia. Horticulture means jobs. It means jobs for the local people, but horticulture, by its very nature, means the work is a little bit intermittent, so we rely on backpackers to a large extent in that area. To that end, I think we came to a good outcome on the backpacker tax at the end of last year. I know that many operators in the area, now that it has settled down, have no problems finding ample backpacker labour, and the Commonwealth government is now being paid our fair share of tax by the backpackers, which is a good outcome all round.
I am very supportive of this particular project. As I said, I will be approaching the agriculture minister, Minister Joyce, to look for his support for this project. We are at the stage where we have done a high-level feasibility study and the costings are there. We now need to move ahead towards environmental approvals, but obviously there is no point in progressing those until we have the funding secured from the federal government. I thoroughly endorse the federal government's dam building program and look for support for my electorate of O'Connor, particularly in the southern regions area.
Ms KEAY (Braddon) (11:58): I would like to talk to the last point of this motion which is to congratulate the government for the delivery of irrigation projects across Australia and bringing to the front here in this chamber the Tasmanian experience. These projects make a difference to regional Australia. Low-value areas of agricultural land are being transformed through delivery of secure and reliable sources of water, but the self-congratulatory nature of this motion does not match the reality of what has happened in my electorate of Braddon and in my state of Tasmania. Every single irrigation project that has been delivered in Tasmania is a Labor project, either delivered by Labor or planned by Labor. These are the same projects that the Deputy Prime Minister likes to take credit for, along with the former Tasmanian Liberal members, the self-styled 'Three Amigos'. It was Labor under the leadership of former Tasmanian Premier, Jim Bacon. He launched the Tasmanian Water Development Plan in August 2001. This was the first time since the 1980s that a government had recognised the value of Tasmania's water resources.
It is not that well known but, beyond the west coast of Tasmania, a large part of the state is in a rain shadow. Hobart is the second driest capital city in Australia and land in the midlands and on the east coast was principally used for sheep farming. Labor had the vision to develop a water management plan, and the first signature project was the Meander Dam or, as it is now known, the Huntsman Lake in the Northern Midlands. The Meander Dam was completed in November 2007, and the momentum for development of irrigation projects continued under the leadership of Labor primary industry ministers Bryan Green and David Llewellyn and former Labor Premier David Bartlett who had a bold vision for Tasmania to become a food-bowl state for Australia.
In 2008 Tasmanian Irrigation Pty Ltd was established by the government and merged with the former Rivers and Water Supply Commission. Tasmanian Irrigation's work has continued on from the water development plan of 2001. The aim of Tasmanian Irrigation is to grow wealth in Tasmania by developing and enhancing the productive capacity of the state's agricultural sector.
Tasmanian Irrigation develops schemes as public-private partnerships, working with private landholders to establish how much water is wanted, and the cost of building a scheme is shared between the public and private sectors. Tasmanian Irrigation progresses the schemes from feasibility assessment through to construction and the operational stage. State and federal Labor contributed $220 million, for tranche 1 projects, over the years 2010 to 2015. There are now eight operational schemes in Tasmania.
Under construction are the Upper Ringarooma scheme and the South East Stage 3 scheme. In total, Labor's irrigation program represents a public-private commitment of over $310 million. These schemes are changing regional dynamics. In my electorate, at Labor's Dial Blythe scheme at South Riana, 44 farmers continue to grow crops, including pyrethrum poppies, and highly productive dairy operations, which they did not do before. The Dial Blythe area lacked surety for water and this scheme resolved that issue.
Tranche 2 schemes are located in Scottsdale, Swan Valley, Southern Central Highlands, Circular Head and North Esk. But when it comes to these schemes the federal Liberal government's record is nowhere near Labor's. The Deputy Prime Minister was recently in Tasmania praising himself for Labor's Southern Highlands scheme. What the Deputy Prime Minister forgot to tell the Tasmanian community was that this project had already been announced and funded by federal Labor, in 2013, through the report An innovation strategy for Tasmania: focus on food bowl concept of August 2012.
Funding for this scheme and all of the tranche 2 schemes was reannounced by former Prime Minister Abbott in February 2015 and not one agreement was signed until last year—three years to sign an agreement to start tranche 2 of Tasmania's next irrigation schemes! The Circular Head Irrigation Scheme, in my electorate, was signed in January this year by the Deputy Prime Minister. Extraordinary. But in government business enterprise scrutiny, in December 2014, the Liberal minister for agriculture, Jeremy Rockliff, was very hopeful that in the next 12 months the federal government would commit its funding for tranche 2, which is $60 million. That is about $50 million short of delivering these projects. (Time expired)
Mr O'DOWD (Flynn) (12:03): I am excited to support the member for Capricornia's motion calling on state government commitment to vital water infrastructure. Water is life, water is production and water is money. We live in one of the driest continents on the planet. Despite this, agriculture is one of our largest sectors for employment: GDP of $63.8 billion and an export value of $48.7 billion.
We all know farm production needs three commodities: sunlight, soil and water. The Lower Fitzroy region, in my electorate of Flynn, is ideally placed for water infrastructure. It has excellent and various soils, reasonable rainfall and tonnes of sunlight. There is a reason it is called the beef cattle of Australia: it has improved pastures and grain crops that support our feedlots. With more irrigation water available, more production and value can be achieved in the horticultural industry—helping citrus, blueberries, almonds and macadamias—and also in small crops and turf.
It is estimated that a project like the Rookwood Weir would see an agricultural boom in the region worth at least $1 billion per annum. It is all about jobs. Rookwood Weir promises 200 to 400 construction jobs and 2,100 ongoing jobs, with the agricultural boom to follow. Federal environmental approvals have been cleared. Build it, and the farmers will come. The question is: why doesn't the state government want to do this? That is for the state government to answer. The coalition has committed $130 million, half of the construction costs of Rookwood Weir, pending the result of the business case to be run by the state government. The sooner this case is developed and announced the better. The state government can make the most of this and have the commitment ready to go.
The member for Capricornia and I have been advocates of the Rookwood Weir for some time, but it does need to progress asap. We should be sticking up for our constituents and, what is more, jobs. Jobs and prosperity are what the Rookwood Weir will bring to Central Queensland. In the past $1 billion has been spent on desalination plants, and they have produced nothing whatsoever, whereas a weir will bring lasting benefits to the region. We have to change our attitude.
I am proud to second this motion because my electorate of Flynn is littered with similar beneficial projects. Some of them are already there, some are in the pipeline, and some need to be funded. The Fairbairn Dam on the Nogoa River near Emerald is a case in point. It has produced so much since it was built between 1968 to 1972—that is how long it took to build. It has revolutionised farming in the Emerald area. We now grow cotton, citrus, table grapes, sunflowers and corn. The developing macadamia industry is a crop of the future, with demand outstripping supply at the moment. So, if you want to go into farming, I suggest macadamias in the Central Highlands. It has made the Emerald economy far more diverse and sustainable. Agriculture is still highly important to that area despite the enormous economic benefits of the coal mines. Coal mines do use water, and they also share in the benefits of having the Fairbairn Dam close by.
Coalstoun Lakes is another area in my electorate that would benefit hugely from a good supply of water. They have very rare earth, and quality crops could be grown in the 6,000 to 7,000 hectares of beautiful red soil. In South Burnett we have Boondooma Dam, which is under pressure now—and let's hope that the rain will come and fill it to capacity. But, until that happens, the farmers of the North Burnett will have their supply cut. Actually, the Tarong Power Station is now getting water out of the Boondooma Dam instead of the pipeline from the Wivenhoe Dam, which was damaged in the 2011 floods. If we can get that pipeline repaired, it will give more water security to the farmers of North Burnett. (Time expired)
Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (12:08): I rise to deliver a speech on behalf of my colleague the member for Herbert. She prepared this speech, but she is with her community, helping to prepare for Cyclone Debbie—and we wish her and her community all the best.
In the speech written by the member for Herbert, she says that Townsville is currently drought declared and the Ross River Dam is sitting at 17 per cent capacity. Since 16 November 2016 the Townsville City Council has been pumping water from the Burdekin Falls Dam at a cost of over $27,000 per day. Of the 130 megalitres pumped per day, 40 megalitres are lost through evaporation. Sadly, the Turnbull government is doing nothing to address this situation.
The member for Capricornia's motion seems to suggest that the Turnbull government is actually doing something about water, and the member for Herbert has said that is a joke not well received in the Townsville community. Yes, the Minister for Water Resources, Mr Joyce, is constantly spruiking his Hell's Gate Dam feasibility study, which is a follow-up to the first Hell's Gate feasibility study delivered by the then Treasurer Wayne Swan. It seems that Minister Joyce has just copied and pasted the member for Lilley's original funding, with no credit given to Labor. Every time Minister Joyce even mentions the words Hell's Gate Dam, there should be a footnote reference which reads, 'Originally derived by Treasurer Wayne Swan and Cathy O'Toole in 2013'—and the member for Herbert has also asked that I acknowledge that the member for Kennedy was part of the idea. Surely Minister Joyce should give credit where credit is due.
The member for Herbert is happy for Minister Joyce to keep copying Labor's ideas, but she asked him to copy her Burdekin Falls Dam idea. The Burdekin Falls Dam was delivered by the last member for Herbert, the Honourable Ted Lindsay, as a member of the then Hawke Labor government. It has only ever been Labor that has had the grunt and division to deliver water security in North Queensland, and the member for Herbert hopes to pick up from where her Labor predecessor, Ted Lindsay, left off over 20 years ago. The Burdekin Falls Dam was built in the late 1980s but the full vision was never completed. After 20 years of Liberal representation in the Herbert electorate, they are still waiting for the gravity fed pipeline directly from the dam, raising the wall of the Burdekin Falls Dam and eventually adding a hydro power plant.
The Turnbull government says it is apparently focused on addressing water and energy issues. Well, talk is cheap. The member for Herbert says, 'Put your money where your mouth is for North Queensland.' The Burdekin Falls. The Burdekin Falls Dam is five times the size of Sydney Harbour and plans for the full vision and completion have been around since 1977. Although imitation is the greatest form of flattery, the member for Herbert says, 'Trust me, Townsville does not need any more feasibility studies, Minister Joyce.' The member for Herbert needs the Turnbull government to start leveraging off one of the greatest water and energy resources in North Queensland, and that is the Burdekin Falls Dam. To not do so will foreshadow a huge loss of investment in the region and a loss of new industries and local jobs. Families in Townsville are already stressed, and enough is enough. Children are scared that they are going to run out of water. Small businesses like U Bute Turf are being pushed to the brink.
The Turnbull government's inaction is holding Townsville to ransom. There is absolutely no reason why Townsville should be facing a water crisis when access to water is actually the major problem. Just one hour's drive away is a great resource, the Burdekin Falls Dam. Procrastination by the Turnbull government leads to continued stress for the Townsville community. Adding insult to injury, this incompetent government is going out of its way to exclude Townsville from accessing funds from the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund. The tragedy is that Townsville, because of its city status, is excluded from accessing these funds. Drought is drought. It should not matter where you live, you should be able to depend on assistance from the government. Sadly, this is not the case with the Turnbull government.
The Deputy Prime Minister needs to cut the red tape and allow for a portion of the funds to include Townsville, especially if Townsville is to be a pivotal trade supply hub for North Queensland. The member for Capricornia's motion is to be seen in that light. Because Townsville is excluded from the National Water Infrastructure Fund, the Turnbull government will continue doing nothing for the north. It shows you how out of touch the government is with regional Queensland. So I am sorry, member for Capricornia, but your motion to commend the Australian government for recognising the potential of Australia by investing in water infrastructure is nothing but a joke, and Townsville is the punchline. And I assure her that the people of Townsville ain't laughing. And the member for Herbert will not allow motions like this to be moved without reminding people of that.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Workplace Relations
Ms LAMB (Longman) (12:14): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) there are over 90,000 people employed in the accommodation sector of the hospitality industry and many of these are women;
(b) full time workers will have their take home pay cut because of the Fair Work Commission's (FWC's) decision to cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates for the hospitality award;
(c) the base wage for a Level 1 guest service worker is less than $700 a week;
(d) the cut to Sunday penalty rates for these workers is $4.55 an hour, which is more than a fortnight's pay per year; and
(e) those affected are among our most industrially powerless workers in the economy and they have been made poorer;
(2) condemns Government Members and Senators who called for cuts to penalty rates and their continuous pressuring of the FWC to reduce penalty rates; and
(3) calls on:
(a) Government Members and Senators to stand with Labor to protect low paid workers take home pay; and
(b) the House to support Labor's Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay) Bill 2017, to amend the Fair Work Act 2009.
I rise today to move that this House condemns the savage cuts to the take-home pay of hardworking Australians that this government is so eager to pass. Time and time again we are hearing this government saying businesses will now be able to employ more people or that they will stay open longer. I know that the Turnbull government lives by the principle of 'If you repeat something often enough, then people will start believing it.' But no-one is falling for this. If you have a look at the accommodation sector of the hospitality industry as an example, base wage is less than $700 a week, and the cut is $4.55 an hour. This cut will result in the loss of over a fortnight's worth of take-home pay each year for these workers. I ask those opposite: for what? How are you going to attempt to spin this? Why would a hotel employ more people than they need to? Aren't they already employing the amount of people that they need? This does not make sense.
It is not only to the workers that this does not make sense. Just recently, the RSL and Services Clubs Association Queensland released a letter stating that their loyal employees do not deserve to have their pay reduced. Is there an organisation in this country more Australian than the RSL? There is one in every town and state. They are made up of service men and women who fought for the rights of Australians, and here they are now still having to fight for the rights of Australians.
Employers are against these cuts. Employees are against these cuts. If economists were to speak out against these cuts too, the government would have to concede that these cuts are a horrible idea. Do you know what? That is just what economists have done. Just yesterday The Sydney Morning Herald published comments from Richard Denniss, the chief economist from the Australia Institute think tank, whose conservative estimates indicate that cuts to penalty rates would blow a $650 million hole in the budget, through loss of personal income tax revenue and higher welfare costs. It says a lot about the government that they are so determined to attack workers and prey on the vulnerable that they are willing to take down our nation's economy with them. It is unbelievable.
My electorate of Longman is in the beautiful Moreton Bay region. It is one of the fastest-growing regions right across Australia. It is also a region that is home to workers in the electorates of Dickson and Petrie. These electorates are home to young families, new homebuyers, people who are working and living in the area—people who rely upon penalty rates, people who do not deserve a pay cut. I call on the member for Dickson—and I am glad the member for Petrie is here, because I call on him too—to stand with me and stand up for these workers and their families, because they need you. Do not turn your back when the region needs you. Do not turn your back on the workers of this region. They need us.
I challenge the member for Petrie—and I challenge the member for Brisbane as well, while he is here—when you next go back to a hotel, to a retail store, to a pharmacy, talk to the staff there. Talk to the people that you will be hurting if you pursue these changes. Try and look them in the eye when you do it and tell them how this is going to be good for them. Tell them how a cut is going to be good for them and their families, how that is going to help them raise their families, pay their mortgages and put food on the table. Tell them about that. Tell them how taking a cut to their take-home pay is going to be good for them.
Last week Labor introduced a private member's bill into this House which would not only stop the effect of this penalty rate decision but would further ensure that there would be no future decisions by this commission in order to prevent penalty rate cuts in other awards such as the clubs awards or health and beauty. The government have the capacity to stop these cuts and they can do it today. So the question is: why won't they? Why won't they stop these cuts to hardworking Australians in my electorate of Longman and in the electorates of Dickson and Petrie in the Moreton Bay Region? Why won't they stop them? (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Bird ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr Keogh: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr HOWARTH (Petrie) (12:19): I reject the motion put forward by the member for Longman, and the numerous assertions she makes in its defence. It is more of the same—grandstanding, scaremongering, and reckless, baseless blocking of practical measures designed to advance the interests of Australians. The member for Longman says no to company tax cuts and relief for employers so that they may create jobs. She says no to equalising penalty rates so that employers may offer additional hours and employ more people.
The Fair Work Commissioner has echoed the Productivity Commission in advocating for the modernising of four of 122 awards as a solution to increased pressure on employers. Essentially, the commissioner has determined that the disutility of working on a Sunday is the same as that of working on a Saturday, and finds both should be compensated. I agree that people should be compensated for working on Sundays. And it is true, isn't it, that working on Saturday or Sunday—working on the weekend—is unlikely to be favoured by the majority without some form of sweetener. As the Tourism Accommodation Australia chair said:
For us the objective was to modernise the award, not to abolish penalty rates, but to make it relevant to the 21st century as a means of employing more Australians.
Just for the record, who is the chair of Tourism Accommodation Australia? Old Labor stalwart, the former head of the ACTU, Martin Ferguson. And he is right; when I talk about compensation for work on the weekend, I am referring to loading under the award. Of course, the majority of workers in the hospitality and retail sectors do not receive penalty rates by method of settling pay, and most are not paid under an award but are instead subject to enterprise agreements. So when the member for Longman hopped into Coles when she was campaigning, to thank staff for working over Easter—and she is here with her little Easter egg, card and all the rest of it—she was much the over-eager bunny. Did she tell those workers who she stopped in to thank that the reason they were not getting a full holiday-pay loading was that the union had ripped the guts out of the award? Did she tell them that? I do not think so. I have to laugh at Will, who says in a Facebook comment:
Did the girl serving you mention that, thanks to the unions, Woolworths and Coles get away with paying their workers time and a half on Sundays with no penalty rates on a Saturday as is?
I bet she did not mention that. But it is not their bosses, not the Fair Work Commission, not the government; it is the unions who seem to take the same position on penalty rates as the Labor Party takes on company tax cuts—they support them, but only if they are the ones doing the cutting. The unions, not workers, have a good friend in the member for Longman, who cannot see the wood for the trees.
Mel Tait, the general manager of the Murrumba Downs tavern located in neighbouring Dickson, gave evidence to the Fair Work Commission. The tavern employs 32 people and, according to Mel, if penalty rates were equalised she could provide longer shifts for existing permanent employees and also have more casual and permanent employees. A stone's throw from Longman, Mel could create jobs for Ms Lamb's own constituents with a little support and relief from those company tax cuts that Labor supports—as long as they are not in opposition.
As highlighted in the report of the Fair Work Commission, employers are struggling to stay afloat. Penalty rate equalisation may put a chink in the budget of a minority of workers, but if their employers cannot continue to trade then all talk of pay rates is academic anyway. The member for Longman should know this—but she is too busy drumming up business in my electorate of Petrie, hauling Cat and Erin—presumably the 'industrial powerless' she referred to earlier—in front of a camera to discuss the impact of penalty rate cuts. I do not know Cat and Erin's particulars, but the interview was conducted outside Westfield North Lakes. Those ladies work for a large retailer, but most in that situation are on EBAs—the same EBAs that the union of the members opposite has cut the guts out of. Did the member for Longman tell Cat and Erin that on public holidays they will still receive double time and a half if casual, and double time and a quarter if full-time or permanent part-time? I am doubtful, and the record shows that Labor and the member for Longman do not like to let the facts get in the way of a good story—not in the community, where they are whipping up fear; not in the parliament, where they rely on convenient stats; not on the member for Longman's Facebook page—where, I am told, I am labelled a crim and—even more pathetically from the member for Longman—where my family is brought into her comments without any moderating from her. This is political pointscoring, forsaking the truth and her own credibility in the process—shame on you. (Time expired)
Mr KEOGH (Burt) (12:24): This government's decision to not defend and protect venerable Australians and take-home pay and to support a reduction in Sunday penalty rates is a travesty. It further illustrates how this government is out of touch and has the wrong priorities for Australia. Meanwhile, this week, they will proceed with giving a $50 billion tax cut to big business, including $7 billion just for the big banks. Penalty rates are fundamental to the Australian way of life. They protect our weekends and provide a way for low-paid workers to get a bit more in their wallets each week, making it easier, although not easy, to make ends meet. Everyone knows one of the biggest battles fought by the union movement was for the five-day week and the eight-hour day. This government talks about flexibilities, but it was unions that delivered it while protecting workers. This was the foundation and basis of penalty rates in Australia; this should never be forgotten. This is why the Labor Party exist—to ensure the legislated protection of Australian workers. It is our raison d'etre.
A key point often overlooked is that the concept and existence of penalty rates underpin the take-home pay of salaried workers. Many Australians earn an annualised salary, trading off overtime and penalty rates to provide greater flexibility to employers but also greater autonomy to employees. Both of these are good things. Indeed, worker autonomy is said to greatly increase worker mental health. However, the quid pro quo here is that these salaries compensate—they compensate for reasonable overtime; they compensate for weekend work—and, on a waged basis, a worker would receive penalty rates.
Many have complained that they work on weekends and do not receive penalty rates, and many of those complaints have been coming from the media. But they forget their salaries compensate for this. No-one claims that this is perfect, but if penalty rates are taken away their salaries will decline in real terms. The same thing goes for those employed in fast food and retail under EBAs. Those agreements include uplifts in base rates so that those working weekends are better off overall. Their produced penalty rates have been calculated against a higher base rate. Together with guaranteed minimum shifts and a raft of conditions agreed to by workers and employers, these staff are better off than under the award. But all of this will be undone by the Fair Work Commission's decision because you cannot negotiate a higher base rate when penalty rates under the award are lower.
Bill Clinton's campaign strategists famously hit the proverbial nail on the head when he said, 'It's the economy, stupid.' Well, stupid this government certainly must be when it comes to economic management. Month after month, the RBA and respected economists have commented on the need to increase consumption here in Australia to see wages, which are stagnant or falling in real terms, increase. Economic growth in this country is perilous as it stands and the government has no plan to fix it. Its one-point plan for jobs and growth will not actually create any growth and now it wants to cut wages for Australia's lowest earners. Everyone knows that those that earn the least spend the highest proportion of their income in the economy. This means, according to analysis in 2009, that for every $100 that an Australian worker loses in penalty rates, they spend $80 to $100 less in the economy. The very shops that are crying for penalty-rate reductions are the ones that will have less money spent in them as a result. Overall, this means a not insignificant amount of money is ripped out of the economy because the savings by business will not go back into the economy necessarily. Not only will they not translate into jobs, or at least anywhere near the same number of value of jobs, but any savings will end up in investments or off-shored profits. They do not help the Australian economy.
Let us look at the economic vandalism that the Turnbull government is supporting: less take-home pay for Australia's lowest-paid workers, less income tax to pay for essential government services, more people on welfare or part-Centrelink payments, less spending in the economy resulting is less GST revenue going back to the states, less payroll tax for the states and less superannuation build-up for low-income workers, meaning increased reliance on pensions in the future. Finally, we think of the worker on the street—the guy working in a cafe on the weekend to pay his rent or the woman working weekends in a small grocery store so she can make ends meet for her family or vice versa or anyone else of many combinations of those that rely on penalty rates. How heartless is this government? It tries to hide behind claims of an independent umpire, while, at the same time, it wants to retrospectively overturn a decision of the full Federal Court on native title law. Last year, it not only overturned a decision of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal; it abolished the whole tribunal as well. Get with the program, government members—stand up for low-paid workers and support Labor's bill to protect penalty rates.
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (12:29): In my electorate of Fisher, I have formed a local business advisory council—a group of business leaders in my community who meet to tell me about the issues that are important to them. At the most recent meeting of the council, the very first issue that was raised was the important, positive impact that the Fair Work Commission's decision will have on employment in our region. As the member for Longman should know, tourism and services are among the biggest employers on the Sunshine Coast. With world-class beaches, the magnificent, beautiful hinterland and the very best of coastal food and drink, our community is becoming world renowned as a leisure destination of choice. In 2015 alone, the Sunshine Coast received 5.8 million visitors; those visitors stayed more than eight million nights and spent nearly $1.7 billion.
Tourism is the lifeblood of our economy. Tourists today have rightfully high expectations for the services they receive. In particular, they expect to be able to enjoy the sights and experiences on offer seven days a week, all year round. While they are out and about enjoying our beaches, our bush and our cultural sites, they expect to be able to stop in at any one of our fantastic coffee shops and restaurants.
In Fisher, we live in a truly seven-day economy, but we live with a five-day regulatory framework. Businesses in Fisher must open on Sundays, but consumer expectations dictate that they cannot charge a Sunday premium. If you run one of the very many independent family-owned food outlets in our community, you must pay your staff almost $30 an hour. That is a lot of coffees and sandwiches. The reality is that many businesses are forced to not open, even when they desperately want to. New jobs, new and longer shifts are being lost every Sunday for the people in my electorate, because local businesses simply cannot afford to pay them.
There is a sad irony to this motion being proposed by the member for Longman—let's leave aside the fact that the Fair Work Commission inquiry was set up by the Leader of the Opposition and that its terms of reference and its members were chosen by him; in fact, they were hand-picked—and, that is, the low-paid workers that Labor claim to represent in this motion, and, in particular, the women highlighted by the member for Longman, are among those most affected by the underemployment caused in part by these stratospheric penalty rates. Let's also not forget that many members opposite, including the Leader of the Opposition, negotiated enterprise bargaining agreements that reduced Sunday penalty rates far lower than the Fair Work Commission's decision was.
If the motion is correct in saying that 'those affected are among our most industrially powerless', it is because they are represented by unions which give their workers' rights away at the first sign of a benefit for themselves. These pay agreements not only cut the pay of the workers they claim to represent but reduce further the number of small businesses that can open and the jobs that are available. Because of these pay deals, a local bed and breakfast in my electorate must pay $10 an hour more than a multinational five-star hotel. The local takeaway must pay $8 more than McDonald's. It is no wonder that they cannot afford to open and offer more jobs to local people when the deck has been stacked against them by dodgy union deals made with the blessing of this dodgy Labor Party.
There are more than 700,000 unemployed people in Australia, and many thousands more do not get as many hours as they want. They are the workers we should be thinking of. They are not receiving double time on a Sunday, as many on penalty rates are. They are receiving nothing—nada, zero, zip—because the companies cannot afford to open their doors. It is sad that those opposite just cannot understand this reality. When will you wake up to yourselves? It was your union mates with your unrealistic demands that destroyed car manufacturing in this country, and now you want to destroy the retail sector, you want to destroy fast food and you want to destroy hospitality and pharmacies in my electorate.
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (12:34): I came to this place with the belief that there are good people on both sides of this House. That belief was borne out of my experiences in the 1980s as a journalist in the press gallery, where I watched Liberal people like Senators Fred Chaney and Chris Puplick, and the then member for Mackellar, Jim Carlton, support the Hawke government on improving the safety net for the most vulnerable, and in lifting the standard of living for workers. So it is disappointing to see that those opposite are now so relentless in their ideology that they do not seem to stop and think about the consequences of their failure to protect low-paid workers in our community, which is why I am pleased to support the motion by the member for Longman, who has no trouble seeing the impact of the Fair Work Commission's decision to cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates for the hospitality award, among others.
I would not normally call myself a traditionalist. But, to me, Sundays and public holidays should be protected as a day of rest, or of being with family and friends. My family has always been full of small business people. I grew up with my parents the newsagents, my uncle the pharmacist, my other uncles the real estate agents, and in the next generation we have had a lot of shift workers—my husband is a journalist, and my cousins are junior doctors—and it was not long before some of those shift workers became self-employed in some way. And the third generation—my children and my cousins' children—picked up part-time jobs, which inevitably meant they worked late nights and weekends on top of everything else they did. I understand the need for employers to have access to workers on Sundays and public holidays, and I understand the need for workers to be able to access shifts that mean they may have Monday to Friday clear for other activities, including parenting. But I also understand that Sundays and public holidays are a really important lull or pause in a week where, in fact, family and friends might get a look-in, and where multiple generations of a family can be at the same table at the same time. And if you cannot be there, I think you deserve additional compensation for missing out on the stuff that connects us as humans.
So let's talk specifically about hospitality. The first person to contact me about the impact of the Fair Work Commission's cut was Linda. Linda works at a swish hotel in the upper Blue Mountains. She has not always worked in hospitality but has a retail background, among other things, and has now re-trained as a chef. She works unsociable hours, but the low hourly pay is boosted by the penalty rates on weekends and holidays. Well, no longer—Linda says she is not sure what she will cut. Will it be getting her car serviced? Will it be paying insurance on her house in a bushfire-prone zone? Will it be fixing a broken fridge? Who knows. But here is the mark of a loyal employee: she does not blame her employer for the cut, although she is disappointed that their view is that it will boost profit rather than allow them to employ more people. She recognises that this is the government's fault for failing to stand up for low-paid workers. Another person I have spoken to about this is Robert. He works full-time in retail, and he says that his employer has no intention of putting on extra staff. So this is the message workers are being given by some employers: if we get the chance to pay you less, we will take it.
Of course, it is not the same for all businesses in my electorate. Leah, who owns The Sweetest Thing lolly shop and gelato bar in Springwood, has a different view. With a seven-day-a-week business, Leah is really grateful to her staff for being willing to work on Sundays so she can be with her kids. Leah plans to keep paying the current Sunday and public holiday rates. This view is shared by the Glenbrook liquor store, and I note that in some states the RSL has already come out saying that their loyal workers do not deserve a pay cut. My experience with small business owners is that they want to do the right thing by their employees, even when governments do not.
Let's think about the impact of that $77 per week cut from each worker's Sunday pay packet. Over a year, it is more than $4,000 per worker. In Macquarie, there are around 10,000 workers in the food and accommodation sectors and in retail. They obviously do not all work every Sunday, and they will not all be affected from 1 July. If they are lucky enough to be in a unionised workforce, they will be protected. The data shows that in the retail sector, union-negotiated EBAs have delivered weekly wages $90 higher than the award rates. So they are the sorts of improvements that they already have, plus the protections from this sort of legislation. Over time, it is going to undermine the entire wages structure. From my calculations, it looks to be millions that will come out of the pockets of workers in Macquarie, and that is money we will not have to spend in cafes, restaurants, pharmacies or hairdressers. I worry about that economic contraction in my community.
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (12:39): Talk about scaremongering! The member for Petrie drew my attention to an interesting photograph here of the member for Longman standing outside a Coles supermarket saying, 'Thank you for working over Easter.' I wonder if the member for Longman has read through the Fair Work Commission's full bench decision on Hart v Coles Supermarkets of 31 May 2016. In that decision made by Vice President Watson, Deputy President Kovacic and Commissioner Roe—three members all appointed by the Labor Party—what did they say about the Coles deal on penalty rates? They said:
For some employees, particularly those who work primarily at times which attract lower penalty rates …
And why do they attract lower penalty rates? Because the unions have taken away their penalty rates. It goes on:
… under the Agreement when compared to the Award …
So here is the Fair Work Commission saying that workers at Coles get less than what is under the award. It goes on:
… the loss in monetary terms is potentially significant. The potential loss is likely to be of significance for part-time and casual employees.
Where were the Labor Party and the member for Longman? Were they complaining about this deal between Coles and the shop assistants union? Where were they? The Fair Work Commission found that this agreement makes low-paid workers worse off, and we had complete and utter silence from the Labor Party.
What the unions have done is create all these dodgy deals with the largest employers in the country, and the reason they did it is simply so they can get the union fees. So you have these poor employees at Coles working below the award rate, and what do they get for that privilege? They get money taken out of their pay by the union—not even voluntarily. It is taken out automatically by their employer. Is it any wonder these dodgy deals have been done?
This has created a situation where you have a massive unfair competitive disadvantage being faced by small businesses. I will give you a few examples. A family-owned takeaway employing someone on a Sunday under the current award rate pays $29.16 an hour. But under the agreement negotiated by the unions the same worker doing the same work at KFC, where their money is taken out by the union, gets paid only $21.19 an hour for that privilege. That is just one example.
Another example is a family-owned newsagency. They are forced to pay $37.05 under the award, but Officeworks pays $30.05. A family-owned pizza takeaway pays $28.48 on a Sunday under the award, but under the great deal the unions have struck Pizza Hut workers get $20.35—about a 50 per cent difference in cost because of the great deal the unions struck! It goes on and on and on.
Here is another one: the Red Rooster agreement approved by Fair Work Australia. These are weekend rates:
All work performed on a Saturday or on a Sunday during ordinary hours shall be subject to the following penalty rates …
And there is a thing here for Queensland. Guess what it says for Queensland, Member for Longman. What penalty rates do they get? What do they get on a Sunday? Zero—a duck egg. How does someone become better off if they are getting zero penalty rates on a Sunday under a union agreement? How are they possibly better off? We have seen the Fair Work Commission say these are nothing other than dodgy deals where the actual employees are worse off.
Because of this massive competitive disadvantage small business face, many of them are simply not opening their doors. How can you compete in a highly competitive market if you are forced to pay your staff 50 per cent more than the companies that you are competing against? This is the disadvantage that small businesses face, and that is why they are not opening on a Sunday. The unions have taken that away.
Opposition members interjecting—
Mr CRAIG KELLY: They hate the idea that it is the unions that have ripped off workers and ripped off their penalty rates. That is what they cannot stand, because they know the truth. We know that if you give small business a level playing field they will employ more people, they will create more jobs, and ultimately that is what this is about. It is about the person who is currently unemployed and will be given more chance to get a job on a weekend, with small business having more chance to compete. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Business
Mr EVANS (Brisbane) (12:45): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises that the last two budgets demonstrate the Government's achievements in supporting small businesses;
(2) notes that the Government has delivered:
(a) a Ten Year Enterprise Tax Plan to reduce the tax rate to 27.5 per cent, commencing on 1 July 2016, with the tax rate to progressively reduce to 25 per cent by 1 July 2026, noting that the lower rate will apply to businesses with annual turnover of less than $10 million from 1 July 2016;
(b) an immediate tax deduction for small businesses when purchasing assets up to $20,000;
(c) a more than $4.8 billion reduction in red tape and compliance costs for business;
(d) simplified business activity statement reporting requirements to reduce compliance costs for small business;
(e) improved access to digital services for small businesses through the rollout and pilot of the Single Touch Payroll system; and
(f) an extension of the unfair contract term provisions to create a level playing field for small businesses when entering standard form contracts;
(3) acknowledges the Government's efforts to boost innovation, open markets and grow businesses through:
(a) delivering the $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda, which includes key measures to promote a dynamic culture of entrepreneurship, changes to insolvency reform and access to finance;
(b) signing new trade agreements with Korea, Japan, China and Singapore and committing resources to help small and medium businesses access new export opportunities;
(c) creating an advocate for small business with the appointment of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman in March 2016;
(d) strengthening our competition laws to protect small businesses against anticompetitive
behaviour and the misuse of market power;
(e) helping small businesses gain greater access to finance through innovative solutions and diverse funding options with the release of the Fintech statement; and
(f) making it easier for small businesses to access Commonwealth procurement opportunities; and
(4) encourages the Government to continue to pursue cutting red tape and compliance costs while implementing a rigorous policy agenda which supports Australian small businesses.
Small business was at the centre of the government's last budget and the one before that because small business is the engine room, the backbone, the hardworking base of our economy. Small business drives much of the innovation, the job creation, the productivity and the entrepreneurship that we need to generate the opportunities our country so critically needs right now.
In my electorate of Brisbane, there are about 30,000 small businesses employing local people and providing so many of the local opportunities. Nationally, small businesses are collectively the biggest source of jobs and opportunities right across Australia, and all of the actions being taken by this government—some of which I listed in this motion—are targeted at the important prospect of every small business across Australia potentially employing one extra Australian, which would solve unemployment and underemployment for our youth, for our mature-age job seekers, for the Indigenous and for the disabled who want and deserve the dignity of work.
In addition to recognising how the last two budgets demonstrate this government's support for small business, I want to mention our ongoing focus on cutting waste and the task of budget repair following those years of Labor mismanagement. Those priorities are critical to the question of business and household confidence because confidence is so directly relevant to the prospects of so many small businesses, retailers and service providers alike who rely on discretionary spending by their customers. Equally important, for similar reasons actually, is the government's innovation agenda. The $1.1 billion of initiatives is incredibly significant and the regulatory changes to make it easier to fund start-ups and commercialise ideas are excellent, but even those benefits are outweighed, I feel, by the fact that the government's focus has lifted the topic of innovation into the national conversation, making many Australians right across the country think again about the little business idea they have had hanging around in the back of their minds and really driving entrepreneurship.
I spoke at some length last week about another key plank of our support for small businesses—our enterprise tax plan to reduce company tax rates. I look forward to speaking, hopefully later this week, about closing down the growing loophole of the GST low-value threshold, which has been acting like a reverse tariff wall, disadvantaging local retail businesses to the benefit of their offshore competitors. These measures are about improving our international competitiveness, a problem which is not going to go away; it is only going to get worse over time if we do not act. The reduction in our marginal company tax rate, despite the rhetoric sometimes of others in this House, is targeted for many of its first years predominantly and solely at small business. If we continue along the path towards being less internationally competitive when most other equivalent economies around the world are heading in the other direction, small businesses and innovation and jobs will inevitably go overseas.
In March last year, the coalition created an independent advocate for small business with the appointment of Kate Carnell as the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. This is already paying dividends for the small business community. We have seen her recently release her recommendations on the payment times and practices inquiry. Coming from a small business background myself, I know how cash is king, and these recommendations should help small businesses improve their cash flow. The small business ombudsman has also made some significant contributions in the area of small business lending by the banks. I want to mention in passing the government's hearings into the practices of the big four banks here in Australia as one of the MPs who gets to sit on the House economics committee which holds the big four bank CEOs to account. I have made it a particular focus of mine to ask about competition in the banking sector and banks' lending practices to small businesses. I am of and I am from small business. The list of government achievements and priorities in this motion is as extensive as it is because of the Liberal-National Party being the ones with the experience, the real-world experience in small business. We better understand the opportunities and the challenges faced by small businesses today. We are committed to the success of small businesses right across Australia. We are doing so much to allow them to grow, to innovate, to trade, to compete and, as I said, to create the jobs and the opportunities that this country so desperately and critically needs. I commend this motion to the House.
The SPEAKER: Is the motion seconded?
Mr Van Manen: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr SWAN (Lilley) (12:50): I would like to say a few words about the important topic of small business and the role that small businesses play in our economy. If you read through the list that is there in the motion, the problem is that most of those policies mentioned in the motion are not going to do anything about the fundamental problems facing small business in our community and in our country. What we see is a repetition of a list of policies which can best be described as trickle-down economics, the centrepiece of which is a $50 billion unfunded corporate tax cut, which will do very little for small business in our community. It certainly will not be a generator of demand which will propel small business forward in our community, and it certainly will not be assisting them to create the jobs of the future. Twelve thousand or so small businesses in our community know, in their bones, that the most fundamental factor affecting their prosperity is the level of demand in the economy, and you would say at the moment that demand in our economy is anaemic. It is not terribly weak but it is not terribly strong either. Small business depends, critically, on the strength of demand in the economy and, most particularly, on the strength of the labour market. So, if we want to do something for small business in our community, let's go right down to what we can do to boost demand and strengthen the labour market so consumption can then be strengthened to boost small business. It is a virtuous cycle.
There is a myth peddled by those on that side of the House that somehow the problem in Australia is that businesses are cash-strapped because of excessive taxes and onerous regulations, wages are always too high and therefore we are not seeing the investment that we need to enhance productivity and drive job creation. Well, the very last thing a $50 billion corporate tax cut is going to do in this community is to boost employment in small business. This was recognised only last week by David Gonski, the prominent Australian company director, who simply pointed out that tax cuts, particularly to the top end of town—where most of them leak overseas—are not going to be the elixir for economic growth, most particularly for small businesses in our community.
Small business do it tough. They do need sensible tax policy from governments. And they got it from the last Labor government. They got the instant asset write-off, which was a huge boost for small business in our community—abolished when the Abbot government came to power and, fortunately, brought back after they realised the stupidity of what they had done. But they also knocked off some other policies that we put in place at that time to boost small business. One in particular was loss carry-back, which ought to be brought back by this government if it has a genuine concern for small business. But the fact is, what small businesses need, above all, is strong demand for their products, and what we are confronting in Australia at the moment is the twin evils of weak aggregate demand and a squeeze on low- and middle-income households. In Australia, labour's share of the national income is actually falling. This means that middle-income households are missing out on a growing share of our income growth, and they are being squeezed in their capacity to purchase services and to drive demand. Slow growth in incomes of low- and middle-income earners is the major impediment to small business in our community. Yes, they will benefit from a small-business tax cut—and good—but it will not provide the customers they need to drive their businesses forward.
As a policy option, we need to reverse this squeeze on middle incomes, and one way to do this is to boost public investment. Public investment is attractive as it not only boosts demand but it also deals with supply-side constraints in the economy and offers productivity gains. Only if we solve the problem of a lack of investment can we fix the lack of demand, so this is urgent. I certainly hope in this budget we see some action from the government to boost total demand, to boost public investment, to strengthen the labour market and to add to the consumption capacity of low- and middle-income earners in our community. But above all we need to boost public investment with the aim of lowering unemployment, which will produce a much stronger labour market.
Wage stagnation, or wage deflation, is one of the most damaging problems facing small business in our community, but the crew opposite do not understand that. They come in here and into the House day after day, giving us a prescription for lower wages. We hear them in here today claiming that, somehow, a cut in penalty rates is going to be good for employment growth. It is going to be damaging for employment growth, damaging for consumption and damaging in many of those areas—which we have spoken about before—that rely on the wages and income of the workers who are working on Sundays to boost demand and drive businesses in those communities. It is simply self-defeating.
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (12:55): It is with great pleasure that I rise to support the motion by the member for Brisbane on supporting small business. I congratulate the member for Brisbane for bringing this important motion to the House. As the member for Brisbane put it, our last two budgets have clearly demonstrated our commitment to and achievement in helping Australian small business grow and prosper. As we see small business as the engine room of our economy, it is important to recognise that it is the coalition government that is seeking to identify opportunities, recognise the importance of small business and support it to grow and prosper. We know that, by backing small businesses to succeed, it will help our economy grow and create more jobs. That is the rationale for the 10-year enterprise tax plan. It is designed so that, in its initial stages of implementation, it focuses on assisting the small business sector. It is vital that we give Australian small business every opportunity to invest, innovate, grow and employ Australians.
As the member for Brisbane touched on, if only a fraction of the small businesses in our economy employed one more person, the change to the unemployment rate would be a very significant reduction. We need a tax system that supports the enterprise of these hardworking mums and dads who own these small businesses in our community, because we want them to invest. We want them to grow their businesses. As somebody who was a businessperson prior to coming into politics, I recognise the importance of how businesses can grow with the assistance of capital and building the right staff and right team around you as you invest and grow.
We want to ensure that Australia continues to be an attractive place to do business. We do not want to lose the opportunities, talents and skills we have in this country overseas. We want our businesses to grow and develop so they can employ that skill, talent and capability here in Australia. As part of that, it is important that we manage the process of moving to a more diversified economy. As I said last week about the amendments to the Singapore free trade agreement, we are seeing increasingly that it is not manufactured goods export, as it was historically. It is now about professional services—education, accounting, legal services. The skills and abilities we have in Australia are being increasingly recognised overseas.
These changes we are looking to make to the tax system—and, by extension, regulation and other measures that we have had in the past couple of budgets—are so important, because they create that framework and incentive for small business here in Australia to grow, develop and expand their horizons overseas. I see that with many of the small businesses in my electorate of Forde: their willingness to take on opportunities overseas that allow them to grow the business here and employ more people locally. Where those businesses have in the past gone to China to manufacture, interestingly, they are now increasingly repatriating those manufacturing capabilities to Australia. In part, it is to protect their intellectual property, because they are finding manufacturing overseas can put at risk the integrity of their intellectual property rights in the manufacturing process. As we see that change, over time, we want to create as a government the opportunity for those businesses and the incentive for those businesses to come back here to Australia, because it is through that process that they are creating jobs in our local economy.
That is where, in this debate about global taxation, as other countries lower tax rates we have to ensure as a country that we are competitive in a global marketplace. As the member for Brisbane and others on this side of politics will recognise who have been in business, it is a global marketplace we are now competing in. So it is through the measures of this government that we are looking to create that framework, that opportunity, for our business sector to grow, prosper and employ more and more Australians.
Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (12:59): I thank the member for moving this motion on supporting small businesses, because it gives me an opportunity to talk about something I care a great deal about, which is small business. I hear a lot, in this House, small business being talked about as the backbone and the engine room and the job creator and, of course, it is. But I do not want to talk about what small business does today I want to talk about why—why it is valuable, beyond the jobs and beyond the strict interpretation of economy as jobs and growth.
There was some wonderful research done in the US, recently, that looked at the longevity of a person when their long-term partner dies: they have been married for 50 years and then their partner dies. How long does that person live? What this research found was very interesting. It showed that there was a direct correlation between the longevity of the surviving partner and the vibrancy of the street life in the community in which they lived—in other words, the stronger the small-business community that provided those networks, the longer the person lived.
The reason for that is quite simple. When that surviving partner walked down the street and saw the fruiterer they had known for 20 years and the restaurant where they had got engaged, and all the small businesses that were there, and their history was there, people saw them as the surviving member of a partnership. Someone saw them, so their partner was still with them walking in that environment. When you walk down a street where you know no one, you do not take your history and your life with you. Street life is an incredibly important social element in the world of people, and that is what we are. We are a community of people.
In many ways, it is the by-product of the small business. The small business is the bath but the baby is that mirror you get, that sense of place when you recognise people you have relationships with—the safety net that the butcher who has been there for 40 years plays when they notice that old Mrs Jones down the road is looking a bit unkempt and hasn't been in for her meat this week. The relationships that provide the safety nets for our community are the things that really matter, and that is why small business matters. Not any small business—when we lose one small business and replace it with another, that is not the same, because we lose the baby, we lose the relationships. We lose the relationships with suppliers and we lose the flow of money through our local economy as well when we lose a business and replace it with another.
I would like to see us have a debate about what causes this country to lose completely viable businesses that are viable in their own right but some external factors cause them to go. If you listen carefully to the small-business advocates around the country you hear that. You hear the unlevel playing field, the effect of the cash economy, the underpayment of workers on legitimate business, that unfair competition and reduced spending capacity of their customers who work for these businesses as well. It is also the phoenixing, late payments, unequal bargaining with big companies, access to finance, access to justice if you want to defend your business against unfair behaviour, unfair tenancy agreements and unequal bargaining positions on those, councils that do not seem to consider the needs of existing businesses when they rezone and, effectively, price the local business out of that market. When you rezone it is not just homebuyers that are affected, you also affect the rental and capacity of small businesses to stay in the communities in which they built those relationships. You lose the business and you lose the baby that that business provides.
When we live in 90-minutes cities, as we do—not 30-minutes cities but 90-minute cities when you are out west—people leave home early. They do not buy the coffee at the local cafe, they do not come home and have dinner in the local restaurant. So not only do they not support the local business but also they do not build that sense of relationship and cohesion that is one of the great benefits of having strong local businesses. Research shows across the board that active relationships actually support our community in many, many ways. You can see arguments by small business that big business avoids tax but small business does not have the same opportunity to do so. Arguably, neither should. The cuts to family payments, the cuts to penalty rates and the reduction in payments for people at the lower end of the spectrum reduce the spending capacity of their customers. The appalling stuff-up of the NBN affects business all over the country and their ability to do their work. There is the scrapping of the loss carry-back. There is a lack of any action by this government to stimulate demand and work towards the building of community so that we strengthen that multiplier. We have a lot to talk about. (Time expired)
Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (13:05): Up until the last 30 seconds of the speech by the member for Parramatta just then, I was enjoying it immensely. I actually entirely agree with her about the importance of small business in terms of local identity, relationships and the role played just walking down the street—when one small-business owner might meet another and when people who shop in one shop know those who shop in another. Indeed, it is the social capital that gets created by small businesses that is often overlooked in this debate. I am glad that the member made reference to it, because it is critical. Particularly when you go to regional and rural areas of Australia, you recognise the role played by small businesses in ensuring that the fabric of the community is strong. Nobody invests more in their local communities than small businesses. Therefore, I could not agree more wholeheartedly.
I was disappointed, however, in the member for Lilley's address today that tried to suggest, yet again, that the solution for the woes in Australia, with the current economy—and, indeed, small business—is higher tax and higher spending. Having experienced the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era firsthand, how much time does he need to understand that you cannot tax your way to prosperity and that you cannot spend your way to fiscal responsibility? Indeed, that is where Labor has gone so wrong over the years. The one thing that the member for Lilley called for was a stronger labour market. Well, there is one thing you can do to ensure a better labour market in this country, and that is to make it a bigger labour market, by ensuring that we are attracting the right investments and encouraging the right growth so that businesses—in particular, small businesses, which represent around 97 per cent of businesses across this country—are able to employ more people. That is why you see the entire economic agenda of this government driven towards attracting more investment, unleashing more growth and improving the participation rate, particularly for women.
The member for Lilley also mentioned the importance of addressing the squeeze on low- and middle-income families. Indeed, this is key, and it is why the government is working so hard to ensure that we can bring some energy security to Australia. The Labor state governments have done a woeful job at that, with their inflated and unrealistic renewable energy targets, which are only forcing up and putting the squeeze on low- and medium-income families in particular. That is also why, last week, we had such a good win around child care, to make sure that child care is more affordable for those families most in need. The last point mentioned by the member for Lilley was the importance of boosting public investment; however, it cannot be done the Labor way. It has to be done where we are investing in productive infrastructure. The $50 billion plan of the coalition government aims to achieve just that end.
I think we all know that small businesses do face some challenges across supply, demand and finance. On the supply side, unlike big corporations, they are more limited with their economies of scale. They have to deal with far higher fixed costs. Often, you have management who are also owners, which puts restrictive behaviour on supply. Demand is also key. Small businesses are far more susceptible to fluctuations in demand and fluctuations in levels of confidence, and they are less able to diversify their activities. On the finance side, they are more cash constrained. They find it harder to borrow money, and cash flow and capital are far more difficult.
This is the reason why I rise today to support the member for Brisbane in his motion, because it is the coalition government that is looking to reduce the tax rate to 25 per cent for small businesses and is looking for deductions for their asset purchases. It is the coalition government that is simplifying BAS reporting; that has the Innovation and Science Agenda; that has made new free trade agreements with Korea, China and Japan; that has appointed a small business ombudsman; that is introducing an effects test; that is making it easier to access procurement for Commonwealth work; that is changing country-of-origin labelling; and that is introducing a level playing field to ensure multinationals cannot avoid tax and GST on low-value goods. It is the coalition that stands up for small business.
Mr DICK (Oxley) (13:10): I rise to speak on this motion today, and today I will be focusing on paragraph (2)(a) of the motion moved by the member for Brisbane:
a Ten Year Enterprise Tax Plan to reduce the tax rate to 27.5 per cent … with the tax rate to progressively reduce to 25 per cent by 1 July 2026 …
I note that the government is saying that this is already happening, when nothing is clearer than that this government is slowly, slowly walking away from its centrepiece. When the Treasurer was asked last week by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer, 'Do you stand by your tax cut to big business, and will it be in the budget?' the government refused to answer it. It refused point blank to answer whether it stands by its central economic argument—I may say its one so-called silver bullet to deliver the jobs and the economic growth that our nation needs. There is nothing else on the table. There is nothing else being put forward except a large tax cut to multinational companies.
We heard from the member opposite that this is the way forward. Well, I know that in my own community the way forward is not to rip apart the social safety net. It is not, as the government likes to do, to talk about jobs but not invest in skills and training. In my own electorate, thousands upon thousands of young people have missed the chance for an apprenticeship on this government's watch.
But what are the government's priorities? Their priorities are, as we have heard in this motion today—and they want to be congratulated for it—to deliver a $50 billion tax cut to some of the largest multinational companies in the world, including $7 billion of tax cuts to the big banks. I will say that again: $7 billion worth of tax cuts to banks.
On top of this, I note that, when I did a mobile office on the weekend in the suburb of Brookwater, a number of residents raised the issue of the government's agenda and what they were doing, and a local couple summed it up very well when they said: 'Just once, we would like this government to be focused on us, not the top end of town. Just once, we'd like a discussion that is not about lifters and leaners and not about whether people should be entitled or dodging the pension or getting Centrelink robo-debt letters despite not owing a dollar to the government, victimising and demonising people who can least afford it.' Just once, they would like a conversation not about how we can let the top end of town off the hook and not about how we can do more for the trickle-down approach that this government is absolutely addicted to but about how we can make hardworking families get ahead. Time and time again, writ large, it is this government's agenda. It is not worried about the bottom end but about the top end.
They can say all they want, but out there in the public there is a reason why support for the government is crashing. The community is walking away from the government. In the member for Forde's electorate, there is a reason—through you, Mr Deputy Speaker—you got a massive swing against you at the last election: the community do not trust you. They do not believe in you and what you are doing. They want a government that puts them first, just like Bill Shorten and Labor will always put people first, just like the couple raised with me. They did not raise with me how the big banks needed a hand. They did not ask me about multinational companies needing a bit of an extra hand. They were worried about their take-home pay. A young worker told me they stand to lose $60 per week—
Mr Van Manen interjecting—
Mr DICK: That is not a lot of money for the member for Forde. It does not make a lick of difference to him. But it makes a difference for that worker in my community who is going to suffer a $60 a week pay cut.
We also have data released today that shows the government's complicity in terms of delivering a pay cut will mean a $650 million hit to the budget if these penalty rates are scrapped. Not only is it bad for family budgets; it is bad for the economy. So let us not have any more lectures about debt and deficit from those opposite. Start talking about the people who need a hand. That is the people in my community and every other community across Australia.
Ms LANDRY (Capricornia—Deputy Nationals Whip) (13:16): Time and time again we hear of the need to cut red tape for small business. Thanks to the coalition government, action is catching up with the rhetoric. The government's efforts to support small business are being felt across the nation. Throughout Capricornia, small business has been suffering, with continued delays in new mining approvals and lack of support for major new infrastructure projects from the Queensland Labor state government. But, with the resilient spirit of Central Queensland, small business perseveres. Running a small business is tough in an ever-evolving economic landscape.
I think back to the days when my own parents ran Lucky Daniels Casket Agency in Rockhampton. It was hard enough then to make a decent income, so much so that on occasion I would have to step in and help out, and mum needed to work night shifts as a nurse. But, as hard as it was then, my parents did not have to navigate the complex system we simplistically label as 'red tape'. They did not have to worry about BAS statements. They did not need to worry about social media strategies and ensuring their business had an appropriate digital presence. They did not have to worry about competition from online suppliers and competition from major internationals. They did not have to worry how they were going to pay staff members double time and a half and still be able to feed their family at the end of the day. Running a small business today is just that—running. They run from union pillar to taxation post and back again, via digital trenches and gutters of compliance.
The steps the coalition government is taking have real and measurable outcomes. An immediate business tax deduction of $20,000 for purchasing assets can make a big difference. It is the difference that will enable them to buy the computer that will allow them to manage their online presence. It is the difference that will enable them to afford to open on a Sunday, in the hope of countering losses from 24/7 online competitors. The simplified business activity statement and single-touch payroll system will reduce compliance costs. In the real world of a small business, this is the difference that means a working mum will not have to stay up half the night to finish the BAS on time. Or it saves that little bit of time so that dad can get home in time to have dinner with the kids. It is making a difference.
We have heard a lot about innovation. The National Innovation and Science Agenda lets Australia get back to being creative in its approach to business. For my electorate in Capricornia it also means that young unemployed people with great ideas will now have access to mentoring and funding. They will not be expected to live out their days in dead-end jobs but will be rewarded for having the courage to follow their goals. In Capricornia, we are already seeing the response. The region has traditionally been seen as a region lacking in innovation and entrepreneurship. In the last year alone we have seen new start-up hubs and support through our industry forums and grants. We are seeing industry and education collaborate to drive innovation and agriculture research. We are seeing businesses interested in learning how to adapt to the 21st century through TEDx and Google forums.
Small business is the backbone of our economy. Most small businesses do not have a team of accountants, ongoing administration support or marketing departments; they do the work themselves and have to continually navigate an increasingly complex business world. Every new compliance requirement and government regulation means less time to focus on growing their business and employing more people. By continuing to reduce red tape, the coalition government is proving its commitment to the working class, making business easier for Australians, and will deliver more for everyday families than what union-driven compliance will ever achieve.
Ms HUSAR (Lindsay) (13:20): I rise to respond to the motion put forward by the member for Brisbane. This motion, quite frankly, is nothing more than a push piece of self-indulgent nonsense trying to pump up the devastatingly flawed—and, if you listen to the newspapers, soon to be doomed—big business tax plan of this Liberal government. Following the member for Boothby's small business motion last week, which I also spoke on, I am disappointed that the member for Brisbane has decided to present this vacuous and ideological vision that seems to illustrate the government's misguided priorities when it comes to small business.
I have to say that at least the member for Boothby's motion last week had its foundations in reality—and it is very noble of me to support the member for Boothby's motion. It spoke about the importance of small business to local economies, it spoke about the importance of employment and the effects of a strong local small business sector, and it spoke about the flow-on effects of people shopping locally. And it asked the members of this House to promote that to their constituency, which I was more than proud and happy to do. In contrast, this motion serves absolutely zero purpose other than as a vain attempt to cling to a policy that already has one foot in the grave.
Moving past the self-serving tone of this motion, let me at least pretend that it makes an attempt to deal with the substantive issues facing small business owners and their employees. As I said last week, my electorate of Lindsay in Western Sydney is home to a very large number of small businesses—in fact, there are roughly 9,000 small businesses registered in my community, employing around 15,000 to 20,000 people. We are a community of hardworking and determined people, as I often say in this place, and I know our local small business owners demonstrate these traits in spades. And, while I think of our small business owners in Lindsay as being exceptional, we know the values of hard work and determination are spread throughout Australia's small business community.
We have 2.1 million small businesses across the country employing roughly five million Australians, so it is crucial that we support small businesses as much as we can. What we should not be doing is spending billions of taxpayer dollars subsidising big businesses that are making huge profits, under the guise of supporting small business. You do not help small business owners and employees by misappropriating billions of dollars of hard-earned money and giving it straight to the big four banks. The member for Sydney—and my great colleague—Tanya Plibersek, often says that, if you asked someone on the street if they would prefer to give $2,000 to a local school or to a bank, they would pick the school every time. That is something for this Liberal government to take away from this.
This motion is actually all about their failed, flawed $50 billion plan. Before those opposite start jumping up and down and shouting about how great their unfair tax company plan is, which I am sure they have been doing prior to my arrival, I am happy to remind the chamber that it is Labor's small business tax plan, not this government's, that will most assist Lindsay. The coalition's policy will also add $4 billion in interest debt to the budget with their plan. Our plan, though, correctly focuses on supporting small business—those with an annual turnover that is under $2 million. There are very few people in my electorate who would think a business with a turnover of $10 million per year should be getting a tax cut while they have their penalty rates slashed.
That is not all: this government are cutting pensions and family payments, and they are making 1.5 million families worse off under their childcare changes. They want to see young unemployed people suffer the indignity of having no support for four weeks and then, when they do start receiving financial support, the amount of money that they are able to receive will be cut.
I have been told time and time again in my electorate that the Liberals' business tax plan is woefully targeted, and everyone knows exactly what it is—a tax cut for the government's big business mates and/or donors at the expense of small business owners and those struggling to get by. Again, I reiterate: it will add $4 billion in debt to the extra interest charges. For a government that is continually obsessed with debt and deficit, I would say that is pretty astonishing.
We have now learned that the recent penalty rates decision this government has supported will also cost another $650 million to the budget through lowered tax revenue, because people will lose take-home pay and end up paying more in welfare spending. The whole situation reeks of unfairness. This is a government obsessed with looking after its big business mates at the expense of ordinary people.
Let's compare the government's plan with Labor's small business tax plan. Our plan, which will see the company tax rate reduced for all businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million, will benefit 9,626 businesses in my electorate out of a total of 10,313 registered businesses. That is 93 per cent of all businesses in Lindsay benefiting from Labor's tax plan. It shows that the government's big business tax plan, which will cost $50 billion and hand billions of dollars of taxpayers' money straight to the big four banks, is focused solely on wealthy business owners in the north and east of Sydney and not on us in the west. The reality is that the policy is unfair no matter how the government dresses it up and tries to sell it to the public. This government needs to take a leaf out of Bill Shorten's playbook and implement policies that put people first. (Time expired)
Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa) (13:25): It is a pleasure to rise to speak to the motion from the member for Brisbane, particularly after his years of advocacy for small business, in particular in Queensland. As a former small-business owner, I understand that the government has forward a suite of measures that will create the environment for small business to prosper—to be the engine room of the nation that it is and to employ the people that it does, particularly in my electorate of Maranoa. The more than 32,000 small businesses in Maranoa will be the beneficiaries of the suite of measures that this coalition government has put in place. In fact, 25½ thousand of those businesses will take advantage of the first tax cuts that will come into place, which will be for small businesses with turnover of up to $10 million.
The previous speaker talked quite loosely about businesses with turnover of up to $10 million. She clearly does not understand what a small business is, which clearly demonstrates that she has never worked in a small business or owned one, never had to bother to actually pay a wage, and never had the responsibility of keeping the doors open and paying the rent. Unfortunately, that is what the previous speaker does not understand. It is quite disappointing and why those opposite do not understand what these tax cuts will do for an electorate like mine, with 25½ thousand small businesses. Small businesses are the engine rooms of small rural communities; they are the employers that keep our towns alive. That is an important piece of the motion that the member for Brisbane has put up, coupled with the instant asset write-offs that are getting small business investing in small business. That is the exciting piece of this: we are seeing small businesses in regional towns investing in other small businesses through these instant asset write-offs. It is a smart economic lever that we have pulled, understanding how business works and how capital flows. We understand that that is an important piece of the puzzle. We get small business.
We also understand that red tape gets in the road of small businesses doing their job of employing people and making our small communities—and our large communities—grow. We have reduced red tape by $4.8 billion, but we are not going to stop there. Senator James McGrath, the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, was in my electorate recently and made it quite clear that he is about to start a new endeavour to further cut red tape. I commend Senator McGrath for doing that, because it is important that small business be given the environment to prosper, to create the jobs and create the wealth, whether that be in the cities or in regional and rural areas. We need to simplify the reporting requirements of our small businesses, understanding that they do not need to be burdened with red tape from bureaucracy that really have no value to those people or the nation.
The big kicker, particularly for my electorate of Maranoa, is the trade agreements that this government has achieved over the last four years with China, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. They mean that we are seeing real dollars flow into the electorate of Maranoa, effectively by flowing back into small businesses that support rural communities. Three years ago my primary producers were getting around $400 a head for a steer. Today they are getting about $1,200. That is an exponential increase in the incomes of people in regional and rural Australia, which flow back into the shops of Roma, Charleville, Longreach, Warwick and Kingaroy. It is creating in our economy the resilience that we need. These are important measures. A responsible government understands it cannot get involved in the daily lives of businesses or households. Our job in government is to put around our businesses the environment and infrastructure for them to grow, prosper, innovate and invest. It is about making sure they have the environment to take our small towns—and our big towns—to the next level.
We have also endeavoured to ensure things are fair. The appointment of an Australian small business ombudsman—and I was fortunate enough to meet Kate Carnell recently—is a huge step in putting in place a framework that protects small business against big multinational companies that take advantage of them and the great work they are doing not only in big cities but in regional areas. It is important that we put in place that framework of competition law to protect them.
Another important piece or work has been in Commonwealth procurement. Small businesses right around Australia, even in Maranoa, will be able to take advantage of Commonwealth government procurement opportunities if we can free our bureaucracy from the mindset that big is good. Small business can make a big impact on Commonwealth procurement. This will grow our small businesses, create greater wealth in our small communities and create more employment.
I congratulate the member for Brisbane on this outstanding motion.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Vamvakinou ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:14
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Maher, Mr Terry
Ms McGOWAN (Indi) (16:14): It gives me great pleasure today to introduce members of the Wodonga & District Turf Club and friends to the House, because we want to pay tribute to the Victorian turf club volunteer of the year 2016, Mr Terry Maher.
Terry was born to a strong racing family. His dad and mum, Jack and Monica Maher, were already entrenched on the committee of the Wodonga & District Turf Club. From day 1, Terry was around horses and always going to land a role in the industry. As a 17-year-old aspiring trainer, Terry joined the Wodonga & District Turf Club committee alongside his dad, Jack, who was president from 1958 to 1960.
The Maher family, I have to say, is a three-generation racing family in our community. We currently have Terry and Gail working. We have Peter and Julie Maher, Jack, Sam and Alex. It is not often you get a chance in parliament to sing the tributes of a family that has made such a difference to our local community.
Not only has Terry been awarded volunteer of the year; I would also like to acknowledge Kevin, Paul and Tom, who have made the effort to come to parliament today, because we are seeking funding to build a convention centre at the Wodonga race club. It is already a fantastic facility, and we want to make it bigger and better. I know this is the right committee to do it, and I am calling on the minister to come forward and give us the funding we need. Thank you.
Cook Colliery
Mr O'DOWD (Flynn) (16:16): Cook Mine is an underground coal colliery located approximately 30 kilometres south of the town of Blackwater in Central Queensland. It is owned by Caledon Coal. Early in March, a significant water inflow occurred at the mine. The inflow of water in the longwall section has been contained. The water level is being gradually lowered, but this will take time. The inflow of water fully inundated the longwall face and equipment. It was fortunate that no person was drowned or injured. The company is still ascertaining the full impact of the water damage.
The Cook quarry is Caledon's sole operating asset and sole source of income. Regrettably, it has been necessary to stand down some workers at this time. This will affect approximately 275 workers. Employees can take annual leave or long service entitlements for the period they are being stood down. This is not a decision the company takes lightly, but it is necessary in the circumstances. It could be two months; it could be longer; it could be less. We do not know. This uncertainty is affecting the Blackwater community, with residents who work at Cook Colliery considering where they can go and what they can do, waiting day by day and in limbo. This is another blow for the proud town of Blackwater, but we will survive. Thank you.
Marine Rescue NSW Cape Byron Unit
Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond) (16:17): Recently I was proud to present national medals to Pam Ditton, Joy Taylor, Rodney Syl Reid and Len Hughes in recognition of their long service to Marine Rescue Cape Byron. The presentation took place at the Cape Byron Bay Lighthouse. Between them, they have amassed more than 60 years of service to the organisation, providing experienced and vital emergency services to our coastal community.
Len Hughes was with Marine Rescue Cape Byron until late 2015. Pam Ditton became a training officer, and she trained all new members in procedures in addition to conducting regular radio shifts. Joy Taylor volunteered as treasurer when she transferred, carrying out fundraising with her husband, Ted, every Tuesday, Wednesday and on Byron market days as well. Rodney Syl Reid served with the Air Force from 1967 until 1987 and is now both watch officer and rescue controller with Marine Rescue. He has been involved in so many rescues.
Marine Rescue NSW volunteers are recognised for their marine skills, their experience and their commitment to saving lives on the water. Through their many key services, they provide a swift, coordinated emergency response 24 hours a day. They also monitor along the coastline and are involved in boating safety and education.
In New South Wales, there are more than 3,000 volunteers in 45 strategically-located units, watching over the state's most popular boating, fishing and cruising regions. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the medal recipients on that day and, indeed, all the members of Marine Rescue Cape Byron and those throughout New South Wales for their tireless service to our community.
North Shore Prostate Cancer Support Group
Mr ZIMMERMAN (North Sydney) (16:19): Each year in Australia, 20,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer, making it our most common cancer. Like many families, my own has experienced the effects of this cancer. For those who are diagnosed with prostate cancer, support and information are vital. Recently I had the opportunity to attend the regular meeting of one of the many groups working to provide that support. The North Shore Prostate Cancer Support Group has operated out of the Royal North Shore Hospital in my electorate for over two decades. Like the many support groups of this type found across the nation, it is run entirely by volunteers and plays an incredibly important role in helping men with prostate cancer, their families and friends. I also acknowledge the support it receives from the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.
Knowledge is power, and the embrace of peers provides comfort and strength. The support group provides these in spades, as I was able to see firsthand when I visited the group. Members of the group are able to share experiences in what is clearly a friendly and welcoming environment. Their speakers are drawn from some of the nation's leading medical experts. On the night I visited, for example, they heard from Associate Professor Andrew Kneebone, one of Australia's foremost radiation oncologists. I want to pay tribute to those involved in running the group: the convener, John Fullagar, and his committee. I should also mention the irrepressible Stewart Begg, who encouraged me to attend. Organisations like the North Shore Prostate Cancer Support Group help so many people during what can be a confusing and difficult period, and I thank them on behalf of my community.
City of Casey Australia Day Study Tour
Mr BYRNE (Holt) (16:20): Last week I was pleased to meet with a group of very bright and capable year 11 students who were participating in the 2017 City of Casey Australia Day Study Tour. Each year, the City of Casey encourages youth in year 11 to nominate for an Australia Day Study Tour Award. This award enables students to learn more about how our country is governed. For those students who wish to pursue a career or further their studies in the areas of politics or law, this tour, organised by the City of Casey, provides an excellent insight into the world of Australian politics and legal affairs.
I want to commend the City of Casey for organising this wonderful program each year. I certainly enjoyed meeting the young people, and I would like to read their names into the parliamentary record: Georgia Bennett, Jordan van Rhyn, Jane Russo, Shivam Singh, Assad Sultani, Abdul Mohammed, Lissette De La Motte, Natalia Girvasi, Mitchell Pateman and Ciara Smith.
They will also be participating in National Youth Week, which is 31 March to 9 April. We will be running a forum on 20 May, in conjunction with Google, talking about issues to do with young people, including mental health and use of the internet. There is a lot of discussion about young people in the City of Casey, in my area. Every year that I meet them, I see incredibly impressive young people who are going to be future leaders. Congratulations to those young people and to the City of Casey for making it happen.
Defence Industry Future Frigates and Offshore Patrol Vessels Roadshow
Ms PRICE (Durack) (16:22): I am very pleased today to speak about the most exciting news for regional WA. What I speak of is new defence jobs. On 11 April, together with the Department of Defence, I will host the Defence Industry Future Frigates and Offshore Patrol Vessels Roadshow in Geraldton. Following the downturn of the mining and resources sector in the last few years, the bush has adapted to the new normal, and the people in regional WA are hurting. Our government's naval shipbuilding program is music to the ears of people of all walks of life and ages, as it will open up hundreds of jobs over the next decade and beyond.
I have fought hard, since the release of the defence white paper early last year, to make sure that regional WA is in the mix for contracts and therefore defence industry jobs. I am determined that regional WA does not miss out, but we must get organised. I therefore encourage WA regional tradies—the fabricators, the electricians, the welders, the engineers, the designers and the boat builders—to attend this event to find out how they can diversify into the defence industries. Regional WA has the potential to play a massive part in the naval shipbuilding program, as the new contracts will require vital input from regional WA. There will also be an event on 12 April in Bunbury. I am about action; I am not about political slogans. I think the public are tired of that. That is why the member for Forrest, Nola Marino, and I, as WA regional Liberals, are delivering for people in rural, regional and remote Australia.
Hogan, Ms Dorothy (Dot)
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (16:24): I rise to speak about a local Labor stalwart and community champion, Dorothy Hogan, commonly known as Dot. Dot went to primary school with my mother, Joy, and they have been lifelong friends. Dot met and married her husband, Ted, a local police officer, and together they raised their large family in Leichhardt-One Mile, where she is a pillar of the local community. She volunteers at her church and helped out when her children were at school.
We even make sure we arrange branch meetings so Dot can be there. Every Labor member in the electorate of Blair would agree it would not be a Labor campaign without Dorothy Hogan. During the 2013 federal election, the then Labor national secretary, George Wright, described Dot Hogan as a 'national treasure' for singlehandedly making more than 10,000 phone calls to talk about Labor values and policies with Blair voters. She would not like me to say she is competitive, but Dot certainly gives Young Labor a run for their money when it comes to voter contact. It helps that she seems to know most people in Ipswich.
Time has gotten on, but in the 2016 federal campaign Dot, at 78 years of age, arrived at my office, cleared a desk, stayed for about eight weeks and got on with business. At the end of every day before Ted picked her up, Dot would hand in the notes and observations she had made that day. She would always ask for copies of new Labor announcements and inquire where she ranked on the national caller tally. When I was not there for the ballot draw, because as a shadow minister I was in Melbourne announcing Labor policy, Dot was there for the ballot draw. Every person in a political party does their bit during a campaign. Congratulations, Dot. I am grateful for your support, friendship and trust.
Grey Electorate: Infrastructure
Mr RAMSEY (Grey—Government Whip) (16:25): Port Augusta is the crossroads of Australia. All east-west and north-south traffic passes through Port Augusta over the single-lane Joy Baluch Bridge. The Baluch Bridge was opened in 1972, replacing the Great Western Bridge, which has since served as a safe and attractive walkway linking the two halves of Port Augusta.
The Port Augusta City Council maintains the Great Western Bridge but last week received advice that it was unsafe and closed it to pedestrian traffic. All foot traffic, including schoolchildren, bikes, the disabled, gophers, wheelchairs and sometimes the inebriated must now use the Baluch Bridge with its narrow 1.8-metre walkway and no barrier between pedestrians and the traffic, including triple road trains. As a consequence, a 25-kilometre speed limit on the bridge has been imposed, causing a major bottleneck, particularly at peak periods.
The Joy Baluch Bridge is part of the national road network, and I have contacted the Federal Minister for Transport seeking immediate action to install a walkway with adequate width and separation from the traffic. I am also calling on the council and state government to lodge bids with either the Bridges Renewal Program or the Building Better Regions Fund to restore the Great Western Bridge to a standard capable of carrying emergency services traffic—because emergency services are all located in Port Augusta East—supporting the tourist industry and, most importantly, restoring a safe route for foot traffic.
Workplace Relations
Mr HART (Bass) (16:27): I rise today to speak about the plight of workers who are caught in between two legislative schemes. These workers have not received their fair and just entitlements, as their co-workers have, with respect to the insolvency of the company ACL Bearings.
There is often injustice surrounding insolvency. The rules regarding insolvency—in particular priorities in insolvency—are designed in some measure to redress some of that injustice by allocating priority to certain creditors. These employees were paid their priority entitlements under the old General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme. Because of when these employees were terminated, they received less of their entitlements than some of their co-workers who had the benefit of the new fair entitlements scheme.
The Gillard Labor government introduced the new legislation which created the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. The operation of that scheme was prospective and not retrospective. There is a ministerial discretion available to enlarge the payment available to these workers. That has been partially successful, in that eight weeks additional redundancy was made available to those made redundant prior to 2011.
This company continued to trade, as it was part of the essential supply chain for the Australian automotive industry. A shutdown of ACL Bearings would have created chaos, with losses of tens of thousands of jobs. The formal legal process of receivership and liquidation is now approaching completion. All of the assets have been or will be distributed. Fairness demands, now the liquidation receivership of ACL is complete, that these workers are treated the same as those who worked on.
Roads
Australian Football Women's League
Mr ROBERT (Fadden) (16:28): Over the weekend, we had two momentous events on the Gold Coast. Firstly, the government very proudly announced an agreement with the state government for funding of Queensland roads, worth half a billion dollars. A significant part of that was the upgrade of the M1 north of Mudgeeraba up towards Varsity Lakes, something we announced during the election. Let it be very clear to the House that the Labor Party announced zero for the M1—check the budget papers. I encourage all Gold Coasters to check the budget papers, and you will find Labor left you out to dry. That is what they did. The government announced it, the government has now provided it, and it is up and running.
I am proud to announce that, for the commute between Mudgeeraba and Varsity Lakes, two lanes each side will go to three lanes—six lanes in total. The time for the commute will soon grow less. There is also $5 million for the next step between Varsity Lakes and Tugun. Congratulations to the LNP team, which does not take the Gold Coast for granted like Labor, but is all about delivering for the GC.
On a final note, and something that I think we can all agree on in this House, the first ever AFL women's grand final was hosted at Metricon between the Lions and the Crows. The Gold Coast was proud to step up to the plate with this fantastic venue. Sixteen thousand people attended the game. It was a disappointing loss for the Lions in what was a very tough game, but it was a great outcome for the country.
Macarthur Electorate: Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (16:30): History provides the greatest lessons, and all too often we are too busy to reflect and learn from our history. Today I rise to speak in recognition of a local group in Macarthur that has been helping preserve the history of the greater Campbelltown area since 1947—the Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society.
Campbelltown is an area rich with the elements of history that have been, and are, so defining of our nation and our future. One of these historic fixtures is St Elmo house, a heritage-listed building located in the heart of Campbelltown. The historical society has recently published a book by John McLean on the St Elmo Estate housing development. It was the first major community housing development in Campbelltown. It was a low-cost housing development for returned servicemen, which commenced in 1947. This plan offered a deal that had never been any equalled, with low deposits being offered. Once the deposit was paid, the title deeds were transferred to the purchaser, and the balance was paid off one pound a week, interest-free. This enabled the purchaser to then borrow the money for building costs from the bank. Over 900 families took advantage of this plan and were integral to the expansion of Campbelltown as a town and now as a city.
In 2017 housing affordability is an even greater issue, and it is time to look back on our history to learn a thing or two about housing affordability. The Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society recently published a book on the St Elmo Estate, and it is really salutary reading about how we should be approaching our housing affordability issues.
Gilmore Electorate: Regional Motorsports Complex
Mrs SUDMALIS (Gilmore) (16:31): Our dream of a regional motorsports complex to be built in Gilmore is buried in the roots of a not-so-rare plant. That is over 300 or so construction and ongoing jobs lost. That is almost $11 million investment from the private sector and a co-funding grant of $9.75 million from the federal government lost. After 48 hours of phone discussions and clarification with federal government departments and ministers, and last-minute appeals to one state MP—because the other one for South Coast was already on board—the final discussion with Motorcycling New South Wales resulted in a decision to withdraw the application. They felt it was all too hard. Our community is the poorer for that outcome.
So, just what have we lost? Research showed that a high-quality off-road facility is far more attractive to riders than local-level facilities. It would have helped to reduce the illegal trail bike use in our surrounding national parks and reserves. Motorcycling sports events, when scheduled for other locations interstate, create a huge demand for accommodation. This would have been a catalyst for new accommodation investment. Partnerships had been formed with TAFE Illawarra and an Indigenous employment agency. There would have been jobs across a range of skill levels, from low skill and casual for younger people and career-progression opportunities through to high-tech and advanced manufacturing and automotive positions. These are the opportunities that we have lost. They are gone—more than 300 jobs for fewer than 300 orchids.
Parramatta Electorate: Australian Blind Cricket
Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (16:33): Last year I made contact with local Goalball legend Troy King at an international tournament at old Kings School. Goalball is a game for vision-impaired people that involves throwing a ball, which contains bells, at the goal. Troy brought to my attention another vision-impaired team that was training at the local Kings School for an international tournament that took place last month. This time it was not Goalball, but blind cricket.
Blind Cricket is an extraordinary game that is adapted for athletes with 10 per cent vision or no vision at all. It was actually invented in Melbourne in 1922. Players bowl underarm at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour, and the cricket ball is made from hard plastic and contains ball bearings inside, which allows the totally blind players to track the ball once it has been bowled, hit or thrown.
Australia's T20 Blind Cricket team returned from overseas last month after competing in the Blind Cricket World Cup at different locations all over India. Ten nations participated: Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, New Zealand, England, South Africa and the West Indies. The Australian team made it to the semis, which is an incredible achievement, especially considering that in India and Pakistan blind cricket is a professional sport and players are paid wages and receive bonuses when they win a championship like this. I would like to congratulate Lindsay Heaven, Matt McCarthy, Stephen Palmer, Steffan Nero, Ray Moxly, Mike Hamilton, Jack McAlister, Ned Brewer, Matt Cameron, Dan Pritchard, Brad Brider, Mark Haskett, Brendan Spencer, Michael Zannis, Vaughan Roles, David Saxberg, and Christine Casey who came from all over Australia to compete on behalf of Australian Blind Cricket. Well done, guys!
Farrer Electorate: Child Care
Ms LEY (Farrer) (16:35): I would like to congratulate all involved in the extensions to the Culcairn Early Childhood Centre, which I attended yesterday. It is a great example of all levels of government working together to help local communities provide the essential services they need. The federal coalition invested $40,000 towards the project through the National Stronger Regions Fund. Importantly, the upgrade allows the centre to nearly double its enrolment from 22 to 40 day-care places—preschool, after-school and long day care, put together with different sets of arrangements depending on who is there and how it is all brought together on the day.
It is absolutely vital that we continue to have that flexibility in child care in rural and regional Australia. The issues of access and affordability, which matter so much to parents around the country, only become relevant if you have actually got a service that you can attend and that service is there where you need it either for your work or for your child's early learning. Is very important both for the children who benefit from incredibly high-quality early learning in a small country town and for the parents, who are able to participate in the workforce or in education and therefore bring much needed dollars and advancement to their families and to their communities.
Moreton Electorate: Legal Aid
Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (16:36): The Women's Legal Service Queensland is located in Annerley, in my electorate of Moreton, but they assist women throughout Queensland—from Cape York down to Coolangatta and from Cunnamulla through to Caboolture. Last year, 11,000 Queensland women were assisted by Women's Legal, a service which is in such demand that 50 per cent of calls apparently go unanswered. Women's Legal is at the front line of assisting women, especially those escaping domestic violence. But there is a crisis looming for Women's Legal Service. From 1 July, the Turnbull government is cutting their funding by 30 per cent. That will mean almost 4,000 highly vulnerable Queensland women experiencing domestic violence will not receive help when they finally get the courage to reach out for assistance. This will also mean the closure of the rural, regional and remote priority legal advice line and a reduction in the state-wide helpline's operating hours.
Women's Legal Service has raised funds themselves to try and assist as many women as they can, but they cannot do nearly enough fundraising to fill the gap of a 30 per cent cut to their funding. At least 71 women died as a result of domestic violence last year. What sort of government takes away the lifeline of women trying to flee domestic violence? A government that is out of touch. A government that does not consult with stakeholders. A government that does not reflect gender balance here in parliament. Women's Legal Service is teetering on the edge of a funding cliff. Time is running out. The Turnbull government needs to act immediately to give certainty to the lawyers and workers at this service and reverse its cruel funding cuts.
Bonner Electorate: Small Business
Mr VASTA (Bonner) (16:38): Last Saturday, I attended the 60th anniversary celebrations of Pet City in Mount Gravatt. This is an amazing feat for an independent family owned store. I would like to speak today about the dedicated people who made this milestone possible, their contribution to the wider community and other small business news from my electorate. Pet City was opened by Evio Continati as Mount Gravatt Produce Agency in 1957. By the early 1970s the business had evolved to better meet the needs of pet owners, and the name pet city was adopted. Today it is a local business icon in the Mount Gravatt community and a multi-award winner in the pet industry.
The current store owner, Evio's daughter Kim Peries, has done an outstanding job of building up pet city. Under her guidance, pet city has partnered with local schools, respite centres and charity such as Rotary. Kim is also the Vice-President of the Southside Chamber of Commerce, which provides support and networking opportunities for local businesses. I am proud to support the Southside Chamber of Commerce's work helping small businesses in the area grow. Their new president, Kathleen Lewis, has kindly agreed to partner with me for an upcoming Q&A which I am hosting with the Minister for Small Business, the Honourable Michael McCormack. The Q&A will be open for small business owners in the area to come and discuss negative and positive experiences with the minister. It is a great opportunity and I encourage local business owners to attend.
Muir, Mr Alan 'Ali'
Mr GOSLING (Solomon) (16:39): I rise in blue today to recognise the great Territorian, Ali Muir, who passed recently, so I wanted to reflect on our Ali's life. As I said, he was a great man. In the eulogies—and there were about seven speakers at his funeral—the common theme was 'What a great bloke'. What a great bloke. Ali served with the Australian Army in Vietnam and he was a champion football player. He was with the 3rd Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam, and it was great to have people that served with him there at the funeral service, which was at the Marrara basketball stadium. I want to acknowledge Digby Hart, who did a fantastic job as the celebrant; the pallbearers Jamie Ryan, Taituhia Cubillo, Muscle Adams, Ryan Muir, Travis Vigona and Normie Hagan; and the guard of honour, the Darwin Buffaloes Football Club. When I arrived at the stadium, the buffaloes were there in full strength. 'What a great bloke,' is what everyone said all day. Vale Ali Muir. Old buffaloes never die.
Forde Electorate: Pink Stumps Day
Mr VAN MANEN (Forde—Government Whip) (16:41): I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Bethania Cricket Club for their fantastic fundraising efforts during the 2017 Pink Stumps Day. No stranger to the cricket field, I was very pleased to be able to join the club's fundraising day by donning a pink shirt and participating in a cracking game against Greenbank, though it was rather warm that day. I was also joined by one of Logan City's councillors, Steve Swenson. There was competitive banter and plenty of fun. It was a hot day but it did not deter the great crowd. The batsmen and wicketkeepers were all dressed in pink pads and everyone wore pink caps and, most importantly, the stumps were pink.
More than 44 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every day and Pink Stumps Day encourages local cricket clubs, businesses, families, friends and schools right across the country to bring the magic of the pink test to the local communities in support of the McGrath Foundation. Over the past six years, more than $4.7 million has been raised by cricket clubs around the country hosting a Pink Stumps Day. It was fantastic to see my local cricket club of Bethania join together with other clubs around the country for a great cause and it was a great pleasure to participate and support their Pink Stumps Day event.
Goods and Services Tax
Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (16:42): There is a problem with the distribution of GST proceeds and it needs to be fixed. Everyone accepts that there are swings and roundabouts in the system, and since Federation there have been considerable periods in which Western Australia has been a net beneficiary of Commonwealth financial support. But over the last decade, off the back of a strong resources economy, Western Australia has made a significant GST contribution to the wellbeing of the Commonwealth. We have been a net contributor by a large margin and I believe most Western Australians are proud to have been able to do that, but the situation has changed dramatically. Western Australia is in recession with sharply falling demand, low investment and high unemployment. We needed investment in productive infrastructure and jobs to start some time ago, but the coalition government has done nothing about this issue. The payment of top-up funding is no solution. It works to keep the whip hand with the Commonwealth and leaves Western Australia vulnerable to the top-down, high-handed approach that seeks to dictate which projects our community can pursue, and it puts us at the mercy of Western Australian Liberals, who take their support in Western Australia entirely for granted. The current GST calculus does not take account of gambling tax receipts, a source of revenue that Western Australia has quite sensibly chosen not to chase. We should not be punished for that. Nor does the current system take proper account of the costs of remoteness and these are things that can be addressed. The bottom line is the current system which last week allocated Western Australia 34c in the dollar at a time of severe economic downturn is not fair and it is not working.
Fisher Electorate: Fisher Seniors Council
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (16:44): I strive to be a member of parliament that listens to my community. That is why I formed three advisory groups: the Fisher Youth Council; the Fisher Seniors Council and the Fisher Business Council. On Monday 13 March, I hosted the first meeting of our Fisher Seniors Council at the Caloundra Power Boat Club, overlooking the crystal clear waters of Pumicestone Passage at Golden Beach.
The seniors of the Fisher electorate are a lively and a wise lot. They are both politically and financially astute and, collectively, they bring many years of business, military, family and real-world experience that should be listened to. At our first Fisher Seniors Council, we discussed many issues, including the increasing unmanageable cost of electricity and gas supply, and the need for Australia to further develop energy security; housing affordability; fixed four-year terms for federal governments; Senate reform; and same-sex marriage.
I want to thank the members of the Fisher Seniors Council—Frank Gower, Don Gilbert, Helen Burke, Annette Brodie, Barry Hawes, Marie Pigott, Mo Barnes, Rob Corbett, Ron Worthington and Joy Morwood—for their contribution and for sharing my goal to make Fisher the place of choice for education, employment and retirement.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): In accordance with standing order 43, the time for member's statements has concluded.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Family Planning Services
Dr LEIGH (Fenner) (16:45): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) the Global Gag Rule (GGR), as implemented by the United States, will prove detrimental to millions of women and girls around the world;
(b) the GGR has expanded to an unprecedented degree, applying to 15 times more funding as a consequence of its extension into all global health funding, which will result in roughly $9.5 billion dollars in global health funding being affected;
(c) the GGR will result in the targeting of some of the most effective health organisations in the world, operating in 60 low and middle income countries;
(d) a study by researchers at Stanford University found that after the GGR came into effect in 2001, the abortion rate increased sharply in sub-Saharan African countries that had been dependent on such funding;
(e) the funding cuts will likely prevent many global health organisations from offering HIV prevention and treatment services, maternal health care and even Zika virus prevention; and
(f) it is possible that as many as 21,700 maternal deaths could occur in the next four years as a consequence of this executive order, which is in addition to 6.5 million unintended pregnancies and 2.1 million unsafe abortions from 2017 to 2020, according to Marie Stopes International;
(2) recognises that:
(a) when Labor was in government, overseas development assistance increased from 0.28 per cent of Gross National Income in 2007-08 to 0.37 per cent in 2013-14, and was on track to reach 0.50 per cent in 2017-18; and
(b) under the Coalition, development assistance is now just 0.23 per cent of national income, the lowest level since comparable records began in the 1970s, and well below the OECD average of 0.30 per cent; and
(3) calls on the Australian Government to join the Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and Canadian governments in filling the gap in development assistance funding left by the United States Government's imposition of the GGR.
Madagascar is not a country that gets many speaking minutes devoted to it in this House, and it is unlikely many of the women in Madagascar remember when Donald Trump described himself as 'very pro-choice'. I do.
It is also unlikely that many of the women in Madagascar gave much attention to the photo of President Trump, flanked by White House aides, signing his global gag rule. But women and girls, in Madagascar and around the world, will suffer mightily from its implementation.
Previous versions of the rule prohibited non-government organisations that receive US funding for family planning from having any involvement with abortion. The rule meant that an organisation could not even use its own money—not only in providing abortions but also for a physician, counselling a patient as to the best course of care or referring a patient to another source of treatment. It meant that patients would not have condoms to reduce HIV transmission.
President Trump's version of the global gag rule extends it to all global health funding for any aid program that was linked in any way to abortion funding, not just family planning. It now applies to 15 times more funding, which will result in roughly $9.5 billion dollars in global health funding being affected.
Lalaina Razafinirinasoa, the country director of Marie Stopes Madagascar, has said that her organisation provides family planning services to approximately 800,000 women and men and is the largest provider of family planning services in Madagascar. In 2015, Marie Stopes Madagascar received US$3.7 million from USAID and, in 2016, they received US$3.5 million. Half of Marie Stopes Madagascar's service delivery methods are funded by USAID—the mobile clinic working in outreach areas for 400,000 people; and the voucher program for around 35,000 young people and poor women a year.
According to Ms Razafinirinasoa, all of the funding Marie Stopes Madagascar receives from the US government will be lost, starting in October. This is because the global mission of Marie Stopes is to give women the right to have children by choice, not by chance. Even though Marie Stopes Madagascar provides birth control, not abortion, it is guided by this broader mission and is caught by President Trump's global gag rule.
According to Marie Stopes Madagascar, in 2016 it helped avoid approximately 165,000 unwanted births. If it had kept its funding until 2020, it could have prevented over one million unintended pregnancies, more than 2,000 maternal deaths and approximately 340,000 abortions. They estimate the savings to the Madagascan government would be around 39 million pounds in direct healthcare costs over that period. And this is just one organisation, in one country. The healthcare of women and girls will be affected in at least 60 low- and middle-income countries.
As my colleague Senator Claire Moore pointed out in the other place, the International Planned Parenthood Federation will not sign any declaration that limits the numbers of services and types of services that they provide for women and families across the world. They will not sign, so they will lose more than $100 million in US government funding during this term. In practical terms the effect of the global gag rule could lead to as many as 21,700 more maternal deaths over the next four years, in addition to 6½ million unintended pregnancies and 2.1 million unsafe abortions from 2017 to 2020.
A study by researchers at Stanford University found that, after the global gag rule came into effect in 2001, the abortion rate increased sharply in sub-Saharan African countries that had been dependent on such funding. That is right—the past implementation of the global gag rule has led to an increase in the abortion rate. The funding cuts will likely prevent many global health organisations from offering HIV prevention and treatment services, maternal health care and even Zika virus prevention. Treatment will not be provided to millions of people with sexually transmitted diseases, including treatments that would prevent the transmission of HIV to infants. A number of countries refuse to sit back—the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Canada have all increased their contributions to an international pool aimed at ensuring reproductive health services across the developing world are maintained.
In Australia we have cut aid to the lowest level since comparable records began in the 1970s. We need to step up and fill this gap, and we need to do so with increased funding rather than simply the reannouncement of previous funding. Australia needs to do its part where the United States has failed.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Is there a seconder for the motion?
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (16:51): I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr LAMING (Bowman) (16:51): There is no doubt that in Australia we hold the importance of maternal and child health very dear, and I commend the member from the opposition for raising this issue. Looking at sexual and reproductive health and the importance of universal access to it has been well understood in bilateral agreements, in Bretton Woods institutions and in most of the aid organisations around the world. I have worked in Madagascar and, although glaucoma is a far cry from maternal health, there is no doubt that we take a major and multilateral approach towards making sure that maternal and child health is as good as possible, for economic reasons as much as for social reasons.
We know that if modern contraception and the type of services that we enjoy here in wealthy countries were accessible, there would be massive falls in maternal and child deaths. We would expect that global maternal deaths would fall from 290,000 to around 90,000, and we know that infant deaths would fall by around 75 per cent from 2.9 million down to around 660,000—still startling numbers, but massive improvements are achieved by the interventions of wealthy economies. Australia holds its head high in this area, and that is why we are very keen to align ourselves with some of the concerns expressed by the opposition member, but we also note that the decision of the US is one for them to decide upon domestically.
In my role with donor coordination, having worked with major agencies in East Timor and other areas, I saw that most of these agencies simply move around to fill the gaps that are evident in-country and on the ground. While I am not commenting on the US policy, I would say to the member opposite that, fundamentally, in each of these areas—Madagascar included—agencies will simply respond to the need and shift their priorities if they identify that a deficit in maternal and child health needs to be filled. I have confidence that other agencies, other bilateral arrangements and other governments will fill that need. I am very confident that, even though it is an unmet need, there will be a significant move to do that, and I think that those providers are mature enough to do that.
Australia's record on sexual and reproductive health is very significant. In the last financial year we provided just over $9 million in core funding to the United Nations Population Fund under a four-year partnership, which is commendable. We also provided $4.6 million in core funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation and another $3.5 million to the IPPF for its sexual and reproductive health program for crisis and post-crisis situations, as well as $2.5 million to UNFPA for essential child and maternal commodities. Australia also funds bilateral and regional partnerships to strengthen sexual and reproductive health services to a range of countries—Cambodia, which will be familiar to many; Timor-Leste; PNG, our northern neighbour; Vietnam and Pacific island economies. You cannot say that Australia does not have a significant footprint in this area already, but I would also have to concede that the withdrawal of a major donor economy like the US presents significant threats, which are going to have to be addressed by other bilateral agreements and other nations.
We also need to note that significant cuts were made by the previous speaker's side of politics prior to the 2013 election, and these have had significant impacts that have not been made up for by commitments since. After unsustainable and unaffordable increases under that government, the foreign aid budget has now found a more settled position where the focus is absolutely on value for money, delivery and a quality outcomes framework, not just how much money, in a raw sense, is dispersed.
During the 2016 campaign, Labor did announce that it would be increasing its aid budget by $800 million over four years if elected, and this was their first instalment. It is very important to remember—of course we will never allow them to forget, either—that this was in the context of massive cuts that had been delivered by the Labor government when they were in office by diverting $750 million from the aid budget. Ironically, it was to address the people-moving challenge. We found, paradoxically, that the Gillard government became one of the largest recipients of its own foreign aid budget, which was quite ironic if not tragic. What we did see were significant cuts from that side of politics—some commitments more recently to increase, but they are easy to make when you are in opposition. What we had was a government that could not hold its head high on foreign aid. It has since made some empty promises about increasing funding, but it is where the rubber hits the road that matters. When you are in government, it is how you spend it and how you raise the revenue that really matters, and I do not think Australia will let them forget.
In closing, the US has made this decision, but—as someone who has worked in this field of donor coordination, in East Timor in particular—I know that there are solutions and that providers will find a way to fill this vacuum.
Ms BUTLER (Griffith) (16:56): This is a very important motion, and I thank the Member for Fenner for drafting and proposing this motion that we are debating here today, because it is about the question of access to reproductive health services and abortion for women in developing countries. Pregnancy, childbirth and termination of pregnancy complications are one of the leading causes of death for women in developing countries. In fact, complications arising from pregnancy, childbirth and terminations of pregnancy result in around 830 maternal deaths per day in developing countries. As a nation that is well-off and in a position to influence what happens globally in relation to access to reproductive health services, we should take a very strong interest in an area that is killing 830 women every day.
Accordingly, I think that it is both within our rights to be concerned about the global gag rule, and it is also incumbent upon us to be concerned about the global gag rule. In January this year President Trump reinstated the global gag rule but expanded its scope. Instead of just applying to reproductive health organisations, it applies to all health organisations and all American overseas aid so that any organisation that has any arm undertaking assistance with abortions, with terminations of pregnancy, is affected. That is greatly concerning because what it means is that, no matter what an organisation is doing in a particular country, if any part of their international operation is providing terminations, is providing counselling in relation to terminations, is referring women for terminations or is advocating for abortion services, then they are affected by this global gag rule.
Marie Stopes International has estimated that this is going to have a significant effect on the ability of women worldwide to get access to the services they need. Without US funding, the loss of services during President Trump's first term—between 2017 and 2020—will mean there will be 6½ million more unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe abortions and 21,700 maternal deaths. As the Member for Fenner pointed out, taking away access to reproductive health services has, in at least one example, led to more terminations of pregnancy not fewer, and of course that makes sense intuitively. If you cannot get access to contraception, counselling, education and the services provided, then that is likely to contribute to there being more unplanned pregnancies not fewer. Restricting access to safe, legal termination does not reduce abortions. It just means that women have unsafe abortions instead of safe abortions. It is something that people who are concerned about abortion would do well to consider when they support the global gag rule, because, if in fact the effect of the rule is to give rise to more unplanned pregnancies and more unsafe abortions, that would be a very poor outcome of the reinstatement of this rule.
It is disappointing to me that we have to have this debate and that a US President in 2017, surrounded by an all-male cohort, decided to reinstate a global gag rule purportedly aimed at trying to reduce abortion, although, of course, as I have just said, it does not have that effect today, when we should be really focused on what is best for reproductive health and what is best for women and their children in developing countries.
I come from Queensland. Queensland, of course, needs to acknowledge its own poor track record when it comes to pregnancy termination legalisation. This year there was some proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion in Queensland. It was unable to be successfully put before the parliament. It is very disappointing to me that my own state still makes abortion a crime. It has effects for women and doctors and allied health services providers. At the same time, I should acknowledge the progress made by Natasha Fyles and her colleagues in the Northern Territory parliament who very recently were able to successfully fulfil an election promise to make abortion legal in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory Criminal Code and the Queensland Criminal Code are effectively the same criminal code, so it would be very useful if the Queensland parliament would follow the Northern Territory's lead and make abortion legal in Queensland.
Ms BRODTMANN (Canberra) (17:01): As a former diplomat, I do not normally comment on matters internal to a particular country, but I felt compelled to do so today when I saw the motion that was put up by the member for Fenner. I commend him for putting this motion up because it is an issue that I know many Canberrans feel very strongly about, many Canberra women feel very strongly about, so I felt compelled to speak on this matter today. It is a matter I feel very strongly about too. I commend the member for Fenner for putting the motion forward.
I feel very strongly about this motion because the bulk ignorance of this global gag rule, or the Mexico City policy, which was signed off with such fanfare, with such sense of urgency in an all-male signing ceremony, is absolutely breathtaking. It is regressive and it is life-threatening. Women in developing countries will pay the price for this policy. They will pay with their health, they will pay with their children's health and with their babies' health. They will pay with their lack of opportunity, their lack of education and their lack of choice, and some will pay with their lives.
The Mexico City policy, re-enacted on President Trump's first day in office—the sense of urgency on this was just breathtaking—demands that all non-US NGOs who receive US aid cannot perform, nor actively promote, abortion. NGOs will forfeit all US aid if they so much as tell a woman that abortion is a legal option for them or refer them to a provider or advocate for abortion rights.
All the medical evidence is clear. If you take safe abortion services out of the reproductive healthcare package, it exposes women to risk—significant risk; sometimes a risk to their lives. Every year 21.6 million women are so desperate to end their pregnancy that they put their lives on the line by risking an unsafe abortion, and 18.5 million of those 21.6 million women are from developing countries. Forty-seven thousand of them die from complications through unsafe abortions and millions more are left with the life-altering injuries that you get from having an unsafe abortion—an abortion that is done in often putrid conditions by someone who does not know what they are doing. We have all read stories about the impact of unsafe abortions saying that, if you do not die in the process, essentially you can have your reproductive ability significantly compromised, if not ended.
Deaths due to unsafe abortion remain close to 13 per cent of all maternal deaths. This policy will not just stop women having abortions; it will also force them to have unsafe ones, because, as Marjorie Newman-Williams from Marie Stopes International says, attempts to stop abortion through restrictive laws or by withholding family planning aid will never work because they do not eliminate women's need for abortion. This policy only exacerbates the already significant challenge of ensuring that people in the developing world who want to time and space their children can obtain the contraception they need to do so. And therein lies the rub with this policy: it not only targets the abortion; it also targets family planning services.
As we have heard from my colleagues, USAID is currently the world's largest bilateral donor in family planning and, as a result, has transformed the lives of women and girls in developing countries by expanding access to voluntary contraception. Take those billions out of the system and it is going to have a devastating impact on so many lives.
Tragically, the policy will have the opposite effect to the one intended. A 2011 study found that abortion rates in sub-Saharan African countries actually increased while the Mexico City policy was in force under President Bush.
Three hundred thousand women die from pregnancy or childbirth related complications each year, leaving about one million children motherless—children that are more likely to die within one to two years of their mother's death. And, for every woman who dies in childbirth, dozens more suffer injury, infection or disease. The policy denies women the right to make choices that could improve their living conditions, from the girl who could have avoided an unwanted pregnancy and continued her education to the mother of five who could have averted a life-threatening risk of an unsafe abortion. The impact of this policy will be catastrophic, and it is women in developing countries who will pay the price.
Debate adjourned.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Victoria: Law and Order
Mr CREWTHER (Dunkley) (17:06): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) the Victorian Labor Government was elected on 29 November 2014 and the Premier was sworn in on 4 December 2014;
(b) the Premier:
(i) in his election platform stated: 'More young people are turning to a life of crime. Crime has increased every year...Courts and prison systems are under huge pressure'; and
(ii) took only one promise to that election in regards to law and order—$148.6 million to free up some of the 400 officers who supervise prisoners in holding cells;
(c) since being elected, the Victorian Government has seen prison riots, millions of dollars in damage to prison facilities, and a total loss of control over the justice system;
(d) when the Premier was elected, the crime rate was 7,869 offences per 100,000 Victorians, and Victoria's crime rate two years later is now 8,975 offences per 100,000 Victorians;
(e) between October 2015 and September 2016 this crime rate includes 12.6 per cent more assaults, 21.5 per cent more robberies, 13.7 per cent more burglaries and break and enters, 17.5 per cent more thefts, and 75.3 per cent more justice procedures;
(f) the Victorian Government is unable to control the criminals in prison let alone the criminals on the streets of Victoria; and
(g) under the Victorian Government, Victorians are just less safe;
(2) further notes that the Australian Government supports the fight against crime in Victoria, more broadly and specifically in the electoral division of Dunkley, through measures such as $925,150 from the Safer Streets Programme (SSP);
(3) calls on:
(a) the Federal Opposition to support measures that allow the Government to achieve savings to ensure even more funding for programmes like the SSP; and
(b) Members of the Victorian Parliament to ensure that Victoria has stronger policies on law and order including less bail and more jail for criminals who would pose a risk to the community; and
(4) condemns the Victorian Government for a lack of action on law and order and failing to protect Victorians.
Law and order has always been of serious concern for most of us, but, in Victoria, it has reached an extremely worrying point: Apex and copycat gangs; youths out on the street when they should be asleep; carjackings; home invasions; aggravated burglaries—anxieties about what kind of behaviour will be drawn out overshadow every public event, and we wait to read the damage in the newspaper the following morning. People are afraid to go out on their own, and there is now a market for tracking devices should your car be stolen.
Crime in Victoria is out of control. It does not matter what the state Labor government has to say; the statistics speak for themselves. The numbers of offences recorded increased by over 10 per cent from 2015 to 2016, and Victoria's crime rate is now at 9,119 offences per 100,000 people. This figure has increased by over 1,000 offences per 100,000 people since the election of the Daniel Andrews Labor state government in November 2014, and it shows no sign of abating.
The two local government areas that my electorate covers, Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula, have both experienced an increase in the number of offences committed and the number of offences per 100,000 people, as have many other areas across the state, some even more so. It is no wonder, when we are seeing police numbers drop across the state and police stations close. To quote a selection of crime reports from Dunkley's local papers over the last few weeks: in Frankston a vehicle was set alight, suspected stolen; in Seaford, assaulting a police officer; Langwarrin, police are seeking witnesses to a car fire; Mount Eliza, a pharmacy theft; Frankston, driving erratically—police tried to pursue but called off the chase; Carrum Downs, a group of youths armed with poles and wooden stakes. Such examples are not only present in my area but are increasingly common across the state. I have no doubt that my Victorian colleagues are observing similar patterns. Just this morning, for example, there was a horrific attack with an axe in an outer metropolitan shopping centre. We have become accustomed to the daily news of shocking street crime carried out on our streets in our towns and communities.
It is terrifying. Victorians just do not feel safe any more. People feel powerless. Their concerns are just not being taken seriously by the state Labor government, and we are left wondering: where next?
There is weakening confidence in our courts and prison systems; there is weakening confidence in our laws—and there is weakening confidence in our own state government, which is meant to be keeping us safe in Victoria. Commonwealth agencies have assisted their state law enforcement counterparts in Victoria to the extent that they can. However, we must acknowledge that this is very much a matter for the Victorian government.
It was, though, with sincere relief that last year Minister Keenan and I announced $166,000 from the Safer Streets Program specifically for Dunkley to fund multiple CCTV cameras and improved lighting facilities to deter and protect against crime in safety hotspots, which I know that this was welcomed by the community. We appreciate the support from the Minister for Justice, especially as we do not receive this support from our state Labor representatives or state government.
Victoria's bail laws are the weakest in the country, and we have witnessed prison riots so destructive that the prisons were considered unusable in their current state. Last month even the federal Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Bill Shorten, said:
I don't think we need too many more reviews. We know the problem. We just need to toughen up on the offenders.
We know it. The federal opposition knows it. The state opposition knows it. The Victorian state Labor government has let Victorians down by not acting on law and order and have failed to protect Victorians from a sweeping wave of crime across the state, of which we have yet to see an end.
The Australian federal government's stance on law and order issues is irrefutable. I call on the federal opposition to help us to continue to protect Victorians in the absence of a state government with the courage to take actions to fix our broken justice systems and to fix the continuing law and order issues in Victoria.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hastie ): Is there a seconder for the motion.
Mr Wood: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Ms O'NEIL (Hotham) (17:11): I feel like I might be the first person to have to inform the member for Dunkley that he has actually got himself elected to federal parliament, not to state parliament, and it speaks volumes that we have member of this House who has come in and moved a motion, three-quarters of which relates to the Victorian government and Victorian government issues. One might think, if we were being unkind, that it is because he does not have much good stuff to talk about in relation to what the Abbott-Turnbull government has been doing.
I want to address some of the comments that were made regarding the Victorian government, which, as I said, takes up about three-quarters of the member's motion, and then I will talk a little bit about what is an abysmal community safety record of this Abbott-Turnbull government—and I am glad that the member has provided me with the opportunity to do that.
The Andrews government came to power after four years of almost total inaction on the law and order front. It is hard to believe, with all of the ridiculous cries of anguish from those on the other side, that during the four years of the previous Liberal government in Victoria not a single sworn police officer was funded—over four years. There was an environment of rising crime, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that the state government was going to have to do something about it. But for four years the Liberal government sat there and did nothing.
In the just over two years that the Andrews government has been in power in Victoria a great deal has changed. Principally, 4,210 police personnel have been funded, and there are now more active police in service today than there were under the former government—despite, as I say, the hypocrisy from those on the other side. In addition to that $2.862 billion has been invested in policing and crime prevention. These are the headline numbers, but of course there is much more detailed policy work going on in the background.
Out of the additional police officers I talked about, 415 have specialised expertise, and a specialised role, in combating family violence. A dedicated 24-hour police assistance line has been set up for non-emergency calls. This is really critical because a lot of the crime that we are seeing in Victoria is not life-threatening, but it is very important that police are able to assist. Automatic number plate recognition technology has been extended to 220 highway patrol vehicles. Previously there were six with this capability, despite all of those issues in Victoria.
There has also been $2 million committed to improve police mental health—and we know that when there are big issues with crime police mental health suffers; $10 million for youth crime prevention programs; three new helicopters; and one fixed-wing aircraft. The examples go on and on.
Those are some of the areas of expenditure, but of course there has been some significant law reform which will help police tackle crime. One of the changes gives police the power to take more DNA samples than they were previously allowed to take, which will see the number of DNA samples analysed by police increase from 7,000 to 70,000.
This is just a very limited snapshot of what is underway. The Victorian government will be able to provide you with a much more detailed explanation. As I say, we are not the Victorian government here but we are finding ourselves talking about these issues, because the Turnbull government cannot think of any of its own achievements to talk about.
What I want to say about the Turnbull government is that it is particularly galling that this motion is being put forward by a member of that government—
Mr Crewther interjecting—
Ms O'NEIL: The member for Dunkley is new here, and he is probably not aware of what has been three years of horrendous inaction on community safety issues. We know that those on the other side love to drape themselves in the Australian flag. I know Minister Keenan loves nothing more than to stand up next to the uniforms when there has been a big drug bust. But, behind closed doors, something very different is going on in this government when it comes to community safety. Let me just mention a few of the highlights. This is a government that is cutting $100 million from the Australian Federal Police, which is a 10 per cent cut to our national policing budget, in an environment where the AFP is being asked to do more and more. It is an environment where police officers have not had a pay rise in two years and they have a very legitimate expectation of seeing their pay go up. Illicit guns are out of control, and the government is losing the war on drugs. All of these things have serious implications for Australians. So I would say to those on the other side: get your own house in order before you come in here and criticise the state Labor government.
Mr WOOD (La Trobe) (17:16): I would like to congratulate the member for Dunkley for putting up this motion. He is a member who cares about his constituency and who, like myself, must be inundated with inquiries from people who are actually living in fear in Victoria. That is not something we say lightly, but that is the situation we now have.
The facts are quite simple. When Premier Daniel Andrews was elected, the crime rate was 7,869 offences per 100,000 Victorians. Victoria's crime rate two years later is now 8,975—
Ms O'Neil interjecting—
Mr WOOD: Now I have just heard the member for Hotham interrupt, and it is absolutely disgusting how the member for Hotham actually stands there and—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hastie ): Order! The member for La Trobe can sit down. That is enough interjecting. The member for La Trobe has the call, and he will be heard.
Mr Giles: He just reflected on her.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am quite happy with what he said thus far.
Mr WOOD: I did not reflect on her; I know that. Between October 2015 and September 2016, this crime rate included 12.6 per cent more assaults; 21.5 per cent more robberies; 13.7 per cent more burglaries and break and enters, otherwise known as aggravated burglaries; 17.5 per cent more thefts; and 75 per cent more justice procedures. If you compare this with what is happening in New South Wales at the moment, their crime rate is going down, so there is simply an issue with this.
I am a former police officer, and what is happening in Victoria greatly concerns me. I have actually put a petition together that looks at adopting a 'one strike and you're out' policy when it comes to bail and serious violent crimes and changing the presumption laws for remand for violent offences so that the onus is shifted to the offender, and being granted bail becomes the exception rather than the rule.
The petition also looks at establishing a multiagency task force comprising Australian Federal Police, the Victorian police, immigration officials, intelligence analysts and, importantly, youth workers, to take on violent gangs and stop young people getting involved in gangs in the first place. It seeks to ensure that the multiagency task force has a footprint in the outer eastern suburbs and also the western suburbs, ensuring that growth corridors and hotspots for violent youth gangs are actively targeted. It seeks to ensure that existing settlement services are as well targeted as possible to help prevent young people from entering gangs in the first place and finding themselves in even more difficult situations when they realise the cost of leaving the gangs further down the track. It welcomes the strengthening of visa cancellation laws by the federal government in 2014 and the cancellation of the visas of foreign gang members involved in serious criminal acts. The petition calls for an examination of ways to strengthen visa-cancellation provisions where required to, firstly, deport violent gang members who are on visas if they commit serious criminal acts, and to, secondly, demand explanations and issue warning notices for less serious offences by young people on visas. It is only measures like these, and supporting the coalition's $50 million Safer Streets program, that are actually going to make a difference in Victoria.
We also need to look at the issues of unexplained wealth and firearms legislation. It seems ridiculous to me that the Labor Party are not willing to come on board when it comes to mandatory minimum sentences in relation to firearms offences. Three earlier attempts by the coalition government to crack down on illegal firearms trafficking by introducing mandatory minimum sentences have been blocked by Labor's hypocrisy. They are hypocrites, because the claim that is laid out in the Australian Labor Party's National Platform is that they oppose mandatory minimum sentencing, which is fair enough; however, the ALP's own 2010 election policy document, A secure and fair Australia, reads:
In May 2010, Federal Labor introduced tough new people smuggling offences. They included penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment and mandatory minimum terms of up to eight years.
The shadow minister for justice, Clare O'Neil, recently said this was 'something that honestly happened a long time ago'. To me, it was not that long ago.
We need to get tough on crime. We need to get tough on those committing serious, violent crimes in Victoria. Again I congratulate the member for Dunkley, who cares about his constituents and who is sick and tired of getting phone calls and messages from people who are victims or concerned about being the next victim.
Mr GILES (Scullin) (17:22): I am very pleased in this debate to follow the contribution of my friend the member for Hotham, the shadow minister for justice. But I am disappointed that we are having a debate on these terms, which do not do anything for anyone, in Victoria or otherwise. This debate is a waste of the parliament's time. What we have heard in the contributions from members opposite is them seeing themselves as commentators—or perhaps complainers—rather than as people interested in solving serious problems. I hope, over the rest of this debate, I will be proven wrong but I do not think that is very likely.
The member for Hotham described the contributions of government members in this debate as 'galling'. I think that is actually pretty generous when you have regard to the record of this government and reflect particularly on two things: the true state of Victorian state political decision making and its consequences over the past six or seven years and also our role as members of this federal parliament. The member for Hotham was correct to reflect on some of the key failings of the Turnbull government—and, indeed, the failings on the record of its predecessor, led by the member for Warringah—in imposing cuts that have had a very serious impact. These are things that should be reflected on in the subject matter of this debate.
I was very interested to see, in the litany of complaint that constitutes the motion before the House at the moment, reference to the Safer Streets program. Of course there is a role for CCTV; I think we all understand that. But this program has been an extraordinary failure. Its failure was set out clearly not in Labor terms but by the Australian National Audit Office, which found that 90 per cent of the program's funding had been allocated to government-held seats. It was the purest of pork-barrelling disguised as concern for community safety, which is something we have seen all too often from conservatives. That is what is so disturbing: at one level hysteria is being fanned, with people being made to feel much more afraid than they should be; on another level, under the cover of a debate about community safety, there are efforts to foment division and attack social cohesion, when we should be joining in the shared challenge of ensuring that all of our communities are safe. It is of concern to me and to all members on this side of the House, and I know it is of genuine concern to members—
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr GILES: I missed the interjection, but I am sure it was very amusing. It is a concern that we all have—to reach out, to listen to concerns in the community and, where they are genuinely felt, to respond to them. A big part of the response is to look at our responsibilities and the responsibilities of state governments. I think all of us in Victoria are concerned about the increase in a range of crime statistics, most particularly family violence. I am very proud of the work of the state government, first in opposition, with now-Premier Andrews instituting the Neave royal commission and then committing to implement every single one of its recommendations. I do not think that there is a single act a state government in Australia could do that would have the same effect of crime reduction as that.
In turning to the complex issues which sit beneath this rhetorical motion, it is critical to note that it was actually in 2011 that most Victorian crime statistics started to increase and increase dramatically. That was under the then Baillieu, soon to be Napthine, government. Trying to repair the failure to invest in community safety under the Liberal government has been a challenge that the Andrews Labor government has confronted.
It is only Labor governments in Victoria that have funded frontline policing. We are starting to see a turnaround in response to that. In particular, we see youth crime now starting to go down. There is a contrast between the measured approach of the state government and the shameful fearmongering of the state opposition, which has caused international damage to Australia, as well as damaging communities. What we do not need in a debate about community safety is attention-grabbing and irresponsible statements like those of Matthew Guy or indeed the exploitation of programs like the Safer Streets Program for political benefit. On this side of the House, we are interested in a serious conversation—a conversation with community, a conversation with police, a conversation with state and territory governments, but a conversation that is based on fact and based on a sense of our responsibilities as federal parliamentarians.
Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (17:27): I want to start by following on from the previous speaker, who made reference to the fact that we should look for real solutions in this important issue of how we protect Victorians and their safety. Of course, one of the best ways to make sure that you can deal with a problem is to identify the problem itself. That is the spirit and the intent of this motion. There are so many people in my electorate who now, really for the first time really in their adult lives, having lived in a safe community, are concerned about their safety and security. That is not in dispute. You go and talk to many residents. It was one of the highest-polling issues in a recent community survey that I did of the Goldstein electorate. In addition to matters like the national economy and making sure people have jobs and opportunity was that they could be safe in their homes, that they could be safe on their streets, that they were not at risk of carjacking.
If you had asked people in the wonderful electorate of Goldstein whether they had ever thought carjacking was going to be a risk in their lives, it would have been an absurdity. But they do not feel that way today. Why? Because they have a lived experience—of somebody they know, either directly or indirectly through the community—of the serious consequences that have occurred. It is about time people in this parliament, on both sides—and I always welcome the opportunity from the opposition—did something simple, which is to stand up and call out this behaviour, rather than simply seeking to involve themselves in political buck-passing on this issue.
The obligation of every government—particularly of a state government, responsible for corrections and police and emergency services—is to protect citizens from undue harm. The crime wave that has swept across the great state of Victoria causes genuine angst and fear. It is challenging to confront the idea that our communities are no longer safe and as harmonious as we would like them to be, but the reality is that this comes up from my constituents all the time. And, perhaps unlike some other members, we are listening, we are mindful and we are conscious of the human impact that occurs. The Crime Statistics Agency has reported that assaults have spiked by 12 per cent, robberies have increased by 24 per cent, thefts are up 16 per cent and overall crime is up by 10.2 per cent. There have been particularly high increases in the City of Glen Eira, which fits within the wonderful electorate of Goldstein, as well as the City of Bayside.
Daniel Andrews, tragically, has abandoned community safety and presided over a failing justice at the same time that these events happened. He cannot get past that. I know shouting and yelling from the opposition or having some sort of strong statement about what the Baillieu government did in the past might help them heal over their pain. But it is actually happening. We know sentencing has been weakened, and that has basically been now acknowledged by the state government. The bail laws have been watered-down, and that has basically been now acknowledged by the state government. And we have seen fundamental relocation of police resources to not protect the community. The Premier promised to tackle the issue of violent youth gangs who have consistently terrorised Victorians, but has not made the process that I think even he wanted to seek or achieve. The reality is that there is no stopping the aggregated burglaries, car thefts, home invasions, assaults and on-street carjackings.
There was a horrific example just outside of my electorate recently. A young man was in his car and on the phone to his husband. In the midst of that phone call, he got carjacked, in the middle of the day, in a shopping centre. If that can happen to somebody in their early 20s, imagine how vulnerable so many people feel if they are in their 60s, their 70s or their 80s. They just want to go out there; they just want to do a bit of shopping; they want to get on with their lives peacefully and normally with respect for other people. What they are experiencing is carjacking. We had another one in Brighton, where a women was robbed and assaulted before her car was ultimately stolen. The reality is that the tragic loss of Thalia Hakin in the Bourke Street carnage early this year is still very raw in my community, because Thalia was only 10 years old. We continue to stand with the Hakin family and given our heartfelt best wishes to her family—her mother and sister, Maggie.
Victorians have had enough. Federally, of course, we are listening and acting, and that is why programs like the $50 million Safer Communities Program provides funding to implement to solutions, including greater CCTV, as well as $116 million for a National Anti-Gang Squad. But there is only so much that we can do from Canberra. It takes a state government from Spring Street to act.
Mr KHALIL (Wills) (17:32): While the majority of matters relevant to this motion are state-based issues, I am very pleased to speak on this motion because it is important that we correct the record when such wildly inaccurate criticisms and claims are made in this place. It is supremely hypocritical for this coalition government to be crowing about the importance of national security and law and order whilst simultaneously defunding—gutting!—our federal policing and national security programs. This motion by the member for Dunkley is nothing more than a politically motivated attack on the Victorian Labor government and a grubby scare tactic designed to unsettle Victorians. It might be because of his rookie status, but probably he has been encouraged by his more experienced colleagues that sit next to him. This motion makes reference to Premier Daniel Andrews's election platform in which he stated that: 'More young people are turning to a life of crime. Crime has increased every year. Courts and prison systems are under huge pressure.' And it is on this basis that the Andrews government took action to address this challenge upon their election in 2014. You should take note of this because these are the facts. In just over two years, the Victorian government, under Labor, has invested an additional $2.8 billion in policing and crime prevention and an additional 4,210 police personnel have been funded. This is in contrast to the four years of the Liberal-National government when zero sworn police officers were funded—zero!
Here are some more facts for you: the Andrews government has also invested in a dedicated 24-hour police assistance line for nonemergency calls and a reporting website so that Victorians can contact police when and where they need to; an automatic number-plate recognition technology for 220 highway patrol vehicles to crack down on dangerous drivers; modernising and expanding the Victorian Police Air Wing with three new helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft; building a new training facility for Victorian Police Special Operations Group, bomb squad and Critical Incident Response Team; and $10 billion worth of youth crime prevention grants. The government has also expanded certain powers to allow the police to do their jobs and fight crime more effectively. The Andrews government has passed laws giving police the power to take DNA samples from the people suspected of committing an indictable offence without a court order and increased the number of DNA samples analysed by the police from 7,000 to 70,000 during their period of government.
They have also passed new laws targeting drive-by shootings. The hypocrisy of the member for Dunkley in putting up a motion like this flies in the face of the facts that I have just articulated and focuses on a state government, who are putting law and order at the forefront of their agenda. By contrast, the Turnbull government talk a big game about law and order but have quietly—it is not really quiet any more, because we have exposed it—ripped away funding from the Australian Federal Police and will wind up some of their most important programs.
Last month at Senate estimates—maybe the member for Dunkley might want to have a look at those transcripts—it was revealed that the Turnbull government has cut $100 million from the AFP's federal policing and national security programs over the forward estimates—$100 million from the AFP. That is your government; that is what you have done.
According to the AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin, this $100 million cut will need to be made up by the AFP pulling back on their programs to tackle organised crime, illicit drugs and fraud—that is as a result of your actions. These programs include the AFP-led National Anti-Gangs Squad, which targets bikies and organised crime. We hear all about that from some of those opposite when we are in the chamber, and this program has already been cut by $6.3 million this year alone.
The government's $100 million cut will also result in the end of the AFP's targeting illicit gun crimes measure. Given the government's recent rhetoric on illegal firearms and the massive increase in firearm theft recently, this is quite extraordinary. It is actually breathtaking that you put this motion up.
Federal Labor has proposed tough new measures to allow courts to lock the worst firearm traffickers up for life but, instead of joining us to crack down on illegal gun trafficking, what has this government done? They have just focused on cheap tricks and mandatory minimum measures which the experts all agree do not work.
Commissioner Colvin also confirmed last month that the AFP has not even been able to factor in an expected pay rise for cops into its budget, and in fact we have even heard reports that our brave men and women on the frontline of federal policing are facing pay cuts of up to $35,000 because of the actions taken by this coalition government.
I would suggest to the member for Dunkley and the Turnbull government—it might be a rooky area by putting this motion up; I hope it is—that, instead of focusing on the Andrews government, which is actually doing things and making a commitment to law and order, and working hard to tackle crime and deliver a safer community for Victorians, it should support the AFP and focus on the many things it could be doing to tackle crime at a federal level.
Debate adjourned.
Minister for Young People
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (17:37): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) the first Minister for Employment and Youth Affairs was appointed by the Fraser Government in 1978;
(b) subsequent Labor and Coalition Australian Governments have appointed Ministers with a portfolio concerned with youth, and the Howard Government had three different Ministers who held the youth affairs portfolio;
(c) in 2013 the Abbott Government abolished the youth portfolio;
(d) in May 2014, the Government advised it was planning a 'focused and targeted approach' to consult with young people, yet this year is likely to have the last National Youth Week with no funding in the forward estimates;
(e) the Deloitte 2017 Millennial Survey suggests that young people struggle to engage with major political parties—not having a Youth Minister acts as a clear signal that engagement with young people is not a priority for this Government; and
(f) Australia's youth unemployment and underemployment are an increasingly systemic concern, with the current youth unemployment rate sitting at 13.3 per cent and the youth underemployment rate sitting at 18.3 per cent; and
(2) calls on the Government to appoint a Minister for Young People, sitting within the Cabinet, having a particular focus on youth engagement, youth employment and transition to work.
The purpose of this motion is very clear: we have, according to 2011 ABS statistics, 2.86 million young people aged 15 to 24. Those young people are not represented by this government, and they should be. And so I call on the Prime Minister, who has absolute discretion on the portfolios in his cabinet, to ensure that young people are represented in cabinet through the appointment of a minister for young people.
For nearly four decades, we have had a minister for youth in this parliament. In 1978, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser appointed a minister for youth—the actual title was Minister for Employment and Youth Affairs, and I am sure the decision of the then Prime Minister was in part due to the youth unemployment rate rising in the late 1970s. Now we have a youth unemployment rate that is higher than during the global financial crisis. Nationally, youth unemployment sits at 13.5 per cent and, in regional areas, we know it is much higher.
If the first experience a young person has when leaving education is waiting on the unemployment queue, then we, as a nation, have failed them. According to Brotherhood St Laurence Australia's youth unemployment hotspots report, which was published in March 2016, youth unemployment in outback Queensland was a staggering 28.4 per cent; in Cairns, 20.5 per cent; in Tasmania's south-east, 19.6 per cent; and, in my electorate in the Adelaide Hills, it was 16.2 per cent—an increase of more 6.9 per cent in just one year. And there is no evidence to suggest this has reduced.
These figures do not consider underemployment. Today, Brotherhood of St Laurence released Generation Stalled, which stated that the youth underemployment rate is now 18 per cent—the highest it has been since records began. What this means is that more young people now than at any other time in the last 40 years—even during the GFC, even during the 1990s recession—are looking for extra hours of work and they are not getting those hours. Generation Stalled is an apt title, but I think it should be 'Generation: We Failed'.
Not only are we failing young people in relation to employment opportunities; we are failing them in parliamentary representation. We are failing them in housing affordability. The likelihood of a young person ever experiencing the security of owning a home is diminishing day by day. The Treasurer's response is: get a good job. The Prime Minister's response is: have rich parents to stump up a deposit.
These comments show a government that has no idea and no connection to young people, and how difficult it is to transition from stable employment to home ownership. They have no grasp on the reality that the biggest homeless group is actually young people—42 per cent of homeless people are under 25 years of age—and that the face of homelessness is a young woman. Young women are overrepresented at youth homeless services.
In 2013, the then Abbott-led coalition abolished the youth portfolio. Since that time, we have seen attack after attack on young people. We have seen a call for university deregulation that would see university become something just for the privileged. Let's not forget: many people in this parliament enjoyed a free university degree. That seems to be forgotten in current policy.
In the 2014 budget, we saw a policy that would have seen young people seeking work put on a six-months-on six-months-off youth allowance. What on earth were they thinking? In the same budget, National Youth Week was stripped of funding, and this Friday marks the end of funding, as we know it, for National Youth Week; there is nothing in the forward estimates. The Australian Youth Affairs Coalition was defunded, effectively, ensuring that young people had no advocacy platform. I would argue that, if there had been an effective minister for youth at the time of the 2014 budget, we would not have had these harsh measures.
More recently, the omnibus bill concocted a four-week wait period for young people applying for assistance; that, in some way, young people would be able to magically find a job living on sunshine and fresh air. The government has no regard for the facts, even the basic fact, that it costs money to look for work. I am very pleased that my team refused to agree to the four-week wait period and refused to agree to increasing the age for youth allowance.
As a nation, we are not considering the needs of young people. For the next generation to be employed, we need full employment to ensure that our rapidly ageing population is managed, and managed well, in retirement. To not have a dedicated minister for young people in this parliament is an opportunity lost. And so I implore our Prime Minister: be future thinking, be agile, be different to your predecessor and appoint a minister for young people.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hastie ): Do I have a seconder for the motion?
Ms McGowan: I am very happy to second this motion and to speak after the government speaker.
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (17:42): It is the responsibility of all of us in this place to engage with young people in our electorates. It takes a village to raise a child. The next generation of Australians will not feel listened to. They will not be inspired to take on our values of democracy and civic responsibility, because of one person in the ministerial wing of this building. Every member of parliament must play their part in hearing our young people and showing them that democracy works for everyone.
In my own electorate of Fisher, I take this responsibility very seriously. To help me listen to the voice of local young people, I have set up the Fisher Youth Council. This council will meet around four times a year, and I want to take this opportunity to thank Jack Baker, Jak Hardy, Tom McLean, Patrick King, Samantha McGowan and Michael Negerevich for taking part.
The issues that young people raised show how considered and insightful their views and ideas are. They contributed not only problems but suggested innovative solutions. I can see those opposite bickering at the make-up of the group—I am working on the ladies; I am working on those numbers to make sure that we get some good numbers of young ladies in the group; don't you worry about that!
On the issue of affordable housing, the council identified a lack of financial education in our schools as a major contributing factor. They believed that a greater focus in schools on providing training and how to manage personal finances would give young people the tools they need to take control of their own financial and housing future.
The council raised, themselves, the question of furthering youth engagement in politics. Again, they proposed solutions, noting that social media is the most effective way of communicating with young people. In particular, they believed that a single designated social media account, designed to inform young people about how the government can help them, would be valuable.
The council also talked about an issue I have raised, in this place, myself—that is, of furthering the take-up of apprentices among young people. They agreed that they have not received enough information, but they also identified that we might need to consider how we manage wage expectations among school leavers. The Fisher youth council that I convened makes me optimistic. If you take time out to listen to young people, young people are among our nation's most engaged and passionate advocates for reform, so I cannot accept the motion's suggestion that young people are not engaged.
Its suggestion that young people are not a priority for the Turnbull government could also not be further from the truth. Compared to most in our nation's history, the Turnbull government is a young team. We have almost as many cabinet ministers in their 30s as in their 60s. I bet you didn't know that. They just might look a lot older! That won't get back to them, will it? This is a 21st century cabinet. We have no minister for young people because all of our ministers, all of our members, are focused on Australia's next generation.
The motion focuses, rightly—as we do—on the issue of youth unemployment. The coalition government has introduced a raft of programs aimed at tackling this important issue under its $331 million youth employment strategy and its $830 million youth employment package. The Empowering YOUth Initiatives, for example, provide grant funding up to $5 million to organisations that deliver programs which get young people aged 15 to 24 into work. I know the member for Mayo is very keen on getting young people into work, and rightly so. The government is drawing ideas from the sector, supporting and promoting grassroots initiatives in the community. This month, the Minister for Employment announced another 21 organisations that will receive this funding as part of its second round. In total, the program will invest more than $50 million in early intervention.
I could talk all day about the various programs but time is getting away from me. The Pathway program provides an incentive for businesses to hire young people, with youth bonus wage subsidies of up to $10,000. Subsidies are available to businesses that take on eligible young jobseekers under 25 years of age. I encourage all members to join with me in convening a youth council in their own electorates and listen to what young people have to say.
Ms McGOWAN (Indi) (17:48): I acknowledge the comments of the member for Fisher and say what a great idea it is to have a youth council, but I will get into my speech and do battle with you about other things you could do to engage with young people beyond a youth council.
I start by saying how proud I am to second the motion from the member for Mayo on the proposed minister for young people. I am really delighted that you have taken the position of bringing this important matter to parliament, and I congratulate you for that. I look forward, over the next three years of our terms in parliament, to being able to celebrate the appointment of a youth minister. These are the beginning steps of laying the foundation for that.
Why does it really matter? It matters because our Prime Minister has said that the key for the future of this country is innovation and creativity. We absolutely know that if we are going to be the innovative, creative country that we could be we have to work with everybody in our country to do it. Sadly, we are not doing that. We do exactly as the member for Fisher said: we set up councils. We make things distant. In the process of distancing ourselves from young people we are losing the opportunity to have their input in the foundations of a policy that could make this country really great.
What I love about this idea is that it is not just a minister, like we have a health minister or an aged-care minister, it is a position that networks and links across all portfolio areas and bring the best ideas together. What I am really pleased about is we have a chance with this position to actually create, as the Prime Minister wants, an innovative solution rather than building more silos. And in talking about innovative solutions, I would really like to acknowledge some of the wonderful work that really is happening in Indi. And I would like to take the member for Fisher's ideas and just say, 'Let's just value-add to some of that stuff that is going on,' because there is so much that is happening in my own electorate and in Victoria that I know we could value-add to. And what a minister for young people would do is take the good stuff from your electorate and the good stuff from my electorate and maybe put them into a national youth council. That way, maybe, we can actually take all these good ideas that are coming and contribute to policy.
So what is happening in northeast Victoria? Representatives from the Wodonga Secondary College's Flexible Learning Centre and Wodonga College of TAFE are going to Melbourne to participate in the 2017 youth summit at the MCG on Friday, 31 March. What an amazing experience that will be. The Alpine Shire is organising an amazing race day. It is being coordinated by Elisha Hazeldine to bring the young people together. At the Corryong Neighbourhood House, we are going to have a program called Stepping Up and it is coordinated by Sara Jenkins. So we have the microcommunity, the young people, coming together.
Wodonga Senior Secondary College and Benalla Flexible Learning Centre are going to have a Drumtastik day. It is an opportunity to make music and find voice through song. The Mansfield Youth Transition Project day will be led by Jodie Bell. SoundOut17 will be coordinated by Samantha Lampe from Wodonga City Council. Rumble in the Gums will be coordinated by Bree Fitzpatrick from the Moira Shire Council. The GeekCon day will be coordinated by Tom Arnold from the rural City of Wodonga. And activities will conclude right across my electorate on 4 April with the northeast Victoria 2017 politics camp hosted by local government. But the politics, the activity and the engagement in Indi is not only limited to the people who live in my electorate. Many of my community have left the electorate and are now living and studying outside. So on Friday, we were going to have a young Indi expat breakfast here in Parliament House. We will invite the young people studying at universities and working in Canberra to come to Parliament House, have a chance to get to know each other and use their ideas in a structured, facilitated session to input on policy.
I am really looking forward to the member for Mayo and I walking the talk of absolute participation of young people in politics, not just having them as 'other' but having them as an integral part of how this place works. So to that end, I would like to acknowledge Eliza Ginnivan, being here today, and the other young people part of my team and the regular grouping of young people who come to parliament and work in my office in the development of policy, working out how we are going to vote and in learning how to be an Independent. It is fantastic to have young people from right around Australia, but in particular in my electorate, having the opportunity to do so. In bringing my comments to a close and supporting this motion, my call-out is to the government: the answer to innovation and the answer to creativity lies in the digital natives of our country. Let us get them involved in policy and let us have a minister to help us do that.
Mr MORTON (Tangney) (17:53): How great it is to speak on this motion about young people in front of a deputy speaker who is quite possibly the youngest member of the Speakers' panel, if I am correct.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hastie ): It is a fairly aged panel!
Mr MORTON: I would like to start by congratulating the member for Mayo for bringing this important issue to the House. It gives us an opportunity to think about the contribution that young people can make in some of the important points that she raised in her particular motion. I grew up on the New South Wales Central Coast and it is good to also see the local member for Dobell here today, the local member for that region. It is an area where there was no shortage of young people with ability, but there was a shortage of young people able to realise that through the application of their effort they could reach their full potential. One of the things that I said in my maiden speech was that I wanted to dedicate my service to this House to ensuring that young people knew that their future is determined by them, by their application of their effort; that everyone has a potential and that they can reach it through their application of their own effort.
Young people aged in their 30s have to struggle quite a bit and have to prove themselves more often than not. Young people have to work harder. There is ageism in our society. We hear a lot about elderly people, but we do not hear about the struggles of young people in relation to having to prove themselves. There are many young people who have achieved a lot, but their achievements are something they have had to apply their effort to even more because, on face value, people assume that just because they are young they are unable to achieve something. This happened to me when I first applied to be the state director of the WA Liberal Party. I was aged 25. I did not put my age on my application to become the state director of the WA Liberal Party, but what I put on my application was the experience I had professionally. When the then state president found out that I was only 25, there was a bit of an uproar in relation to me omitting those details from my CV, but I thought that by putting my age on my CV I would be distracting from the experience I was able to bring to the role of state director—a role that I held for a long time and a role that I really enjoyed.
One of the things in this motion is the issue of youth employment. Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie, this is an issue that is very close to your heart as the member for Canning. As I said, we want to be able to have a society where people can apply their own effort to succeed. There is a particular bill before this parliament in relation to PATH. It is a bill that will give young people the opportunity to apply their effort, show their full potential, be given the opportunity to work in a business and be incentivised by a $200 a fortnight payment in addition to their welfare so they can get the opportunity to experience what it is like to participate as an employee in a business. This bill is before the Senate at the moment and I would encourage all members to ensure that this bill does pass the Senate. It is very important. I have had the opportunity to give young people are start in a business. There are some arguments from the other side of the chamber that this does not guarantee a job. As a previous employer, I would not take someone on if I were required to absolutely give them a job, but I would take someone on to give them a chance. I would take them on and would allow them to apply their effort to be able to succeed. Yet this bill is still in the Senate and, in my view, should come out of there very quickly and be passed so we can incentivise both businesses and young people to apply their effort to succeed.
The issue of engagement in politics is also important in this motion. I said a lot about social media when I was leaving the role of state director of the WA Liberal Party. It is making our world smaller, not bigger. You are able to use social media to engage on the things that interest you to the exclusion of all others. I fear that, unless we proactively engage with young people in our society, they will continue to move further and further away from our political debates, so it is timely that we think about how we need to engage with young people in our society. The example that I use is that, if a young person is interested in skateboarding, they can know the results of a skateboarding competition in New York before they know about a very important policy or incident that has occurred in their town or in their community.
All of our ministers are dedicated to doing the very best by young people. There have been suggestions about youth councils and national youth forums. I encourage the parliament to think about the ways in which young people can have direct access to the parliament and have their say. I commend the member for Mayo for bringing this very important issue to this chamber.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the honourable member. There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
United States-Australia Alliance Relationship
Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (17:58): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that a simple resolution is currently before the United States Senate in the name of Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and 13 other United States Senators reaffirming a strong commitment to the United States-Australia alliance relationship;
(2) reaffirms the strong alliance relationship between Australia and the United States;
(3) supports continued diplomatic, military and economic cooperation between Australia and the United States; and
(4) reaffirms the importance of a United States-Australia relationship based on mutual respect befitting a close and longstanding alliance partner crucial to the preservation of Australia's national interests in the Asia-Pacific region and around the world.
If you have ever watched track and field events at the Olympics and if you are familiar with the four-by-100-metres relay—an event historically dominated by the United States, by the way—you would know that the manoeuvre of transferring the baton from one runner to another is tricky and those baton transfers are points in the race carefully followed by the crowd and also the commentariat. The transfer of power from President Obama to President Trump reminded me of such a race. There was much confused speculation by the commentariat in the lead-up and following the inauguration, including here locally after that now famous phone conversation between the new President and Prime Minister Turnbull.
Of course, the panic merchants and nervous nellies had their say on the future of the United States under the new President and, indeed, the future of the United States-Australia alliance. James Curran, from the United States Studies Centre, suggested the Australian government may potentially be 'trading away key national security interests' and warned that if the government is 'prepared to kowtow', 'it doesn't augur well for the ANZUS alliance'. Meanwhile Peter Jennings, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the ABC, 'Australia should consider a freezing of the alliance, a sort of lull in alliance cooperation.' Then, on 7.30, the former foreign minister in the Gillard Labor government, Bob Carr, in his limitless wisdom, claimed the US President did not 'regard ANZUS as a useful starting point for the Australian-American relationship' and further suggested that Australia should 'reflect on its "special relationship" with the United States'.
It was in this swirl of claim and counterclaim, tweet and countertweet, that the sensible circuit-breakers on both sides of the Pacific quickly cut in to calm elements of the media who seemed determined to blow the situation out of reasonable proportion. Supporting sentiments expressed by our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, ranking Republicans in the United States such as Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, together with Senator Marco Rubio, joined with other senators—13 in all—to support a resolution in the name of Democrat Senator for Maryland and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Ben Cardin, reaffirming a strong commitment to the United States-Australia alliance relationship.
Historically, Australian governments of both persuasions have acknowledged that Australia's alliance with the United States—signed on 1 September 1951 and coming into full force the following year, at the height of the Korean War, with the memories of World War II still very raw in the national consciousness—has been, and continues to be, the cornerstone of our strategic architecture. The United States is Australia's principal long-term strategic partner and also our foremost investment partner, with US investment providing much of the rich flow of foreign capital that our country needs.
Australia sees a strong and active US presence in the Indo-Pacific and a robust alliance relationship as key to underwriting continued peace and security in our region. We have benefited greatly from the United States as a security guarantor and exemplar of an international rules-based order which has delivered the stability needed for freedom and prosperity to flourish. Clearly the future is unknown and the present is not without its challenges, challenges such as the threat of terrorism and a shifting geopolitical landscape; however, Australia and our neighbours are in a far better place to tackle these challenges by working closely with the United States, rather than contemplating any alternative paradigm.
I want to acknowledge the words of US Senator John McCain from earlier this year:
… Australia is one of America's oldest friends and staunchest allies. We are united by ties of family and friendship, mutual interests and common values, and shared sacrifice in wartime.
Today in this chamber, via this motion, we reciprocate the generous sentiments endorsed by members of the US Senate by expressing the same ourselves, by expressing sentiments of mutual respect, common endeavour and brotherhood of purpose with the United States. The United States is indeed our staunchest ally. The United States is our friend.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): Is there a seconder for this motion?
Mr Leeser: I second the motion and reserve the right to speak.
Mr HILL (Bruce) (18:04): I rise to support the resolution reaffirming the US-Australia alliance relationship and see it as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of our alliance—what underpins it and what it brings to each partner—and to share a few thoughts. We often hear talk of the strong friendship between our nations which underpins the alliance, and I believe this operates at multiple levels, as was touched on at the end of my colleague's remarks—three types of friendship, if you like.
The first is the unsentimental perception of friendship in the more realist tradition of international relations—where you have no real friends, just overlap of interests, which may be transient or which may last for decades or centuries. In this regard, our interests certainly still align. Secondly, there is the deeper level of shared values: transparency; accountability; democracy, however imperfect; a set of ideals; and equity—'a fair go', in our lingo.
Of course, we are not the same. I will say without hesitation that Australia, in my view, is a better society. Our focus on the common wealth, on the provision of the public good and universal services and so on is, to my mind, a better way of living than the focus we see at some ends of American society, on extreme individualism. But we certainly overlap enough to say we share values, although we may express them differently. And, far rarer in such relationships, we share a mutual sentimentality too, a genuine warmth, having fought and died together for a certain kind of freedom over many years, in many wars. I think it is important to have a clear-eyed view of these distinct aspects, though, lest we confuse warmth and shared history with current and future interests. That would be a dangerous sentimentality.
Reflecting then, Australia gains much beyond the important, if narrow, commitment under ANZUS to consult in the event of a threat. We have the ability to speak to the US at the highest levels when required, as a trusted ally and friend. The alliance with the US transcends individual administrations. It is difficult to overstate the value of the intelligence aspect of the alliance. Cyber is posing profound challenges to the security of nation-states. Cyber is a new vector of war in an information age. It is both an enabler of the traditional land, sea and air domains and, increasingly, a theatre in its own right. There is the capability that we get from the alliance—technology sharing, interoperability and credibility earned over many years. This capacity and our track record—people know we will fight for shared values—gain us a measure of respect in the region and elsewhere.
That said, I firmly reject any sense that we should ever just do what the US says. That is not in our national interest. It is not what a good partner does. The mess that the Howard government led us into in Iraq is the starkest modern example of that. It is important that Australia is able to articulate precisely where we stand and, as a result, cause our close friend to at least reflect and understand a different point of view, even if it is not always shared. We must pull our intellectual weight, and our views must always be an affirmation of our identity. If we are clear-eyed and direct, the US then can gain an Australian perspective, because they cannot, and can never, have our optics as a small country. In that regard, we speak from the perspective of most countries in the world—we are pragmatic and we are not overly idealistic.
Geography these days is not quite destiny. Technology has shrunk the world and moderated its previous overwhelming influence. But it is reality, and the reality of our geography—being located at the bottom of Asia while being a close ally and friend of the US—is unique. It provides much to the US that is of value. There is the geographical space for forces and assets—whether that is in Darwin or at Pine Gap or other critical infrastructure. There is the continuity of technology and interoperability. We are a high-end, tier 1 military partner in this part of the world, and that is of value. We are highly adaptable. We give credibility in international spheres—diplomatic support, if you like. Again, there is a credible critique that Prime Minister Howard effectively rented the US our flag, given he went to Iraq but then limited the rules of engagement so much, to limit real exposure. And we can be an honest friend—not 'all the way with LBJ'. Labor has a long and proud history of being a steadfast supporter of the US alliance while being better able to critique and articulate our national interest, such as coming to the table in Vietnam. This will be important in coming years.
I will close by observing that, increasingly, we have to bring an Asian understanding. Part of our optics that is of value comes from our orientation towards Asia. Our relationships with South-East Asia and the broader region are critical. We must remain curious and intelligent and learn through a growing cultural sensibility. We are Australians; we say what we think but, hopefully, with a bit of an Asian face. If geography is reality and a key determinant of our national interest, we must also remember that the alliance is but one pillar of our foreign policy—the language of 'cornerstone' somewhat worries me—and it is coupled with our commitment to multilateral institutions, a global rules based order and our connections in the region.
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (18:09): I congratulate my friend the member for Fairfax on bringing this motion to the Federation Chamber today. It is a motion moved within one month of the 65th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty coming into force. In preparation for my remarks today, I re-read Sir Robert Menzies' remarks to the US House of Representatives when he spoke to them in the middle of the negotiations for that treaty. The ANZUS Treaty is a very important piece of our global international security and has provided a great deal of security and stability for the entire Pacific. It has reminded us that Australia and New Zealand do not stand alone in the Pacific; that we will coordinate efforts with the United States for a more comprehensive system of regional security; that each country is to develop its own capacity to resist armed attack; that we work together against the common danger of armed attack; and that we work together and consult when the territorial integrity or the political independence and security of the US or Australia is threatened, and that includes our island territories or our military forces.
The US alliance has underwritten our regional stability and our security. It is central to the peace and stability of our region. The US has acted as a security guarantor and instigator of the rules based order, bringing stability and generating the conditions for prosperity. Australia works with the US in our region on a range of issues including counter-terrorism, building capacity to counter violent extremism, addressing the problem of returning foreign terrorist fighters, and maritime security. The US is our most significant trade and investment partner. I had the privilege of living in the United States for some period and I can reflect that Americans do feel a great deal of kinship with us, and that kinship was actually bolstered by the recent commitments that Australia made in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is unsurprising that senators in the United States Congress decided to move a motion supporting the US alliance.
The coalition has always supported the US alliance. It has been our consistent policy since the time of ANZUS. Indeed, the Labor Party has some history in this space, of which they should be proud. John Curtin, during World War II, sought to reach out to America free of any of the pangs of the traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom. I can hear members opposite quite excited to remind me of that. Labor's history in relation to the US alliance is not a completely unblemished set of records. I think it is important that often they tell us that Australia should have an independent foreign policy, as if we have anything other than that. Australian governments always make decisions about Australian foreign policy that are in Australia's best interests. In the same way, people are quite surprised to hear President Trump say that America will have an America-first policy, as if America would have anything other than that; as if Australia would have anything other than an Australia-first policy.
There has been always been a strain of thinking on the Left that does not like Australia being part of the Western alliance. An 'independent foreign policy' is code for Australia not being part of the Western alliance but being part the old, nonaligned movement. I think particularly of the Whitlam years which were effectively the great demonstration of this policy in action. It was a period of time when we were the only democratic country in the world to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, when we were one of the first nations to recognise Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, when we were one of the first nations to establish diplomatic relations with East Germany, when we sought admission to the non-aligned movement at the sponsorship of Tito's regime in Yugoslavia, when the then Victorian state secretary of the Labor Party, Bill Hartley, said:
We are looking forward to the possibility this year that the—
Labor Party—
Federal Conference will jettison the American alliance and other overseas commitments and join the third world.
Gough Whitlam told the House on 13 December 1973:
We are no longer a cipher or a satellite in world affairs ... We are no longer a colonial power. We are no longer out of step with the world's progressive and enlightened movements towards freedom, disarmament and co-operation.
That was not the US alliance; that was the Whitlam government moving us towards the independent non-aligned foreign policy that many on the Left and many in the Labor Party still hope for.
We saw another demonstration of this just recently with the former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in November, the former Labor foreign minister, Bob Carr, and the former Labor leader, Mark Latham—the most irresponsible person ever to lead a political party in the history of this country; he was chosen by the Labor Party to lead them—all lining up to wipe their boots on the US alliance, and we see this again and again. It is not just retired parliamentarians who have said this. Tanya Plibersek and the shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, have talked about the nature of the independent foreign policy. We on this side of the House will always support the US alliance because the US alliance is in Australia's best interests. The same cannot be said for those opposite.
Mr FEENEY (Batman) (18:14): I am very pleased to rise in support of this resolution, and I congratulate the member for bringing it before the House. The contribution of the previous speaker reminds me of the old adage: if you want to talk about fighting communism, you join the Liberal Party; if you actually want to fight communism, you join the Labor Party. This is a resolution where previous speakers have already expounded upon the fact that there are strong military relationships, shared history, shared values and a strong kinship. All of that is true. But the resolution also speaks of mutual respect. In the treatment by President Trump of Prime Minister Turnbull I think that mutual respect lapsed. It is simply a matter of fact that when it comes to the president of the United States dealing with the leader of Australia, irrespective of which party they lead—in that context they lead our nation—we expect that person to be treated properly and with respect. That was a very unfortunate signpost and a very unfortunate beginning to the relationship with the new American administration.
Throughout my career I have been a staunch supporter of the alliance with the United States, and that has been true in the counsels of the trade union movement and of the Labor Party. I remain a staunch supporter. But we have to acknowledge that the relationship is under strain. Of course that is why this resolution has been brought forward. In acknowledging that strain, we have to acknowledge that the alliance, while of course it must be an institution that survives the ebb and flow of different administrations in different countries, is facing very real challenges—challenges of the moment and longer term challenges.
We must speak truth to power and we must speak truth to crazy. We see in President Trump a spiral of leadership which potentially has very unfortunate consequences for our nation. President Trump has brought to the body politic of the United States an unprecedented level of falsehood—statements such as that Ted Cruz's father helped kill President Kennedy; that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower; that there were some three to five million illegal votes cast in the recent US election; mocking the disabled. We saw his National Security Adviser Flynn forced to resign because of contact he had with the Russians. And, most recently, we saw the FBI director confirm that that agency began investigating the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia from July 2016. We have a president of the United States whose own party often seeks to distance itself from him. The resolution being brought forward in the US Senate, which is absolutely welcome and a joy to see, was of course brought forward in the context of those senators wanting to reassure Australia in the context of the behaviour of their president.
We saw an appalling attack by President Trump on Senator John McCain, when he described him as not being a war hero because of course he had been captured by the enemy—a disgraceful set of remarks. And we see continuing attacks on the fourth estate, denigrating his critics as 'fake news'. Even legislative oversight is denounced by President Trump: John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was denounced by President Trump when he—as is, of course, his legislative role—asked questions of the administration concerning military action in Yemen. Also we see judicial oversight scorned, with the President referring to 'so-called judges', denigrating and undermining the legitimacy of the judiciary in the United States.
What this adds up to is the fact that the United States, the arsenal of freedom in our world, has now entered into a domestic political discourse which unnerves its allies. When the President of the United States talks about 'America first', he is not talking about anything other than pursuing self-interest in a Westphalian nation-state system. That might be perfectly reasonable behaviour, but it does mean the United States is moving away from what has long been its global mission of exceptionalism, where it has talked about doing more than pursuing its own interest. When they called for Gorbachev to pull down the Berlin Wall, they were not simply seeking their self-interest; they were speaking to shared values about promoting democracy and fighting tyranny. We now see Trump changing that political discourse and changing in a way which unnerves America's allies.
The world needs the United States. United States is now asking itself the question, does it need the world? A US retreat into isolationism is something that we should be very concerned about indeed. It is the United States which has questioned its alliances. It is President Trump and his tweeting that has questioned the existence of NATO, the alliance with Japan and the burden-sharing that the US has around the world. These questions have been put before us not by the Greens and not by Labor voices but, ultimately, by President Trump himself. (Time expired)
Mr BYRNE (Holt) (18:19): I rise in support of the motion raised by the member for Wide Bay—noting, in particular, the resolution of Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland and 13 other United States senators who moved a resolution in the United States Senate reaffirming a strong commitment to the United States-Australia alliance.
A previous contributor made a point about John Curtin. It is fair to say, in this place, in a spirit of bipartisanship, that the relationship Curtin had with the United States was quite pivotal in what followed, in our relationship with them, in the world order, post the Second World War. I note that in December it was the 75th anniversary of one of the most momentous developments in Australian foreign policy, when Labor Prime Minister John Curtin made his famous turn to America during one of the darkest times in America's history.
According to the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, writing three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Prime Minister Curtin's new year's message to the Australian people, published in The Melbourne Herald on 27 December 1941, Curtin said:
Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.
This statement was not uncontroversial at the time. Despite the statement being criticised by the British, Curtin's initiative boosted Australia's defences against the threat of invasion. It laid the ground for the post-war ANZUS Treaty of 1951 and it forged an alliance that has been central to Australia's foreign policy and defence strategy ever since and will remain so.
I am deputy chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and will talk about our intelligence linkages in a second. As a member of parliament what most viscerally reminds me of the deep and abiding connection that we have with United States, particularly in matters of defence and strategic interests, is the honour I had of being flown onto the deck of the USS Carl Vinson—which is currently around the South China Sea—in 2003. It had come off a deployment in Iraq.
Landing on an aircraft carrier is a very interesting experience, particularly in a 16-foot swell, but we did. There was one person in uniform next to me who intrigued me, at the back of what is called a Cat, a plane that carries aircraft parts. It is loud and you sit facing backwards. We had five attempted landings and, on the fifth, we got there, so it was a pretty interesting experience. I was also intrigued by the way in which we were treated when we got off this fully operational aircraft carrier in the far northwest of Western Australia.
What happened—and, particularly, learning the history after we were catapulted off—was two things. One was that the person who was feted by the Americans as soon as he got off the plane was Duncan Lewis, then a Brigadier General in the SAS, and we were working with the Americans to paint targets against the Taliban. The second was that the first strikes post September 11 were launched off the deck of the USS Carl Vinson.
It was the shared history, dialogue, friendship and our shared values, in a discussion like that, which confirmed the closeness that we have with the United States and why our strategic interests will always be very similar—because of the same core values that we bring. We are both democratic countries. We are situated in different parts of the world, but those core values remain the same, regardless of any hiccups with any leader of any political party or whatever. It is those deep institutionalised bonds, the person-to-person contact, that underpins this alliance and, regardless of the media reports, will continue to underpin the alliance for a very long time.
I would also like to talk about the intelligence connection we have. We are part of a Five Eyes intelligence arrangement, one of the closest we share information on in our war against terror and our war against other countries that might do us harm. I declare in this chamber that I have been over to the CIA twice, in 2011 and 2016, and dealt with people there in my capacity as deputy chair, and I would say there is almost no closer relationship than Australia and the US, particularly with respect to intelligence sharing. And that will grow. Regardless of what has been said, that will continue to grow and develop and evolve.
So talk of the US alliance and its demise is incredibly premature. It is not in Australia's strategic interests for it to evolve into some pathways people have put forward. It will continue, again, because we are a people with very common values, with shared interests, with a desire to have peace and order and stability in this region. I certainly look forward to playing my part in that as a parliamentarian in this place.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): The member's time has expired; I thank the member for Holt. There being no further speakers at this time, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Hazelwood Power Station
Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (18:25): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes:
(a) the Hazelwood power station is scheduled to close on 26 March 2017;
(b) its closure will affect 750 direct jobs in Gippsland;
(c) unemployment is already at 8.1 per cent in the Latrobe Valley;
(d) the Victorian Government has created a $266 million transition package for workers affected by the Hazelwood closure; and
(e) the Australian Government has only contributed $43 million to this transition package;
(2) acknowledges that government plays an important role in creating policy settings to attract new investment and jobs, both in the Latrobe Valley and across regional Australia in general;
(3) condemns the Australian Government's:
(a) inaction in not meeting with affected workers; and
(b) failure to act in setting policies that give business the confidence to invest and create jobs; and
(4) calls on Australian Government Ministers to meet with affected workers and their unions and to start investing in industry and jobs across regional Australia in the upcoming federal budget.
This week is a tough week for the Latrobe Valley, there is no denying that. This week we will see the Hazelwood Power Station close on 26 March. Affected at the core of this decision are 750 direct jobs in Gippsland, in a region where unemployment is already at 8.1 per cent. These are the first lines of this motion. When the government—this week and in previous weeks—has sought to politicise this closure and use every question time that they can to go the state Labor government and to make as much political mileage out of this issue as they can, it is important to remember that at the core of it are 750 workers who are going through transition. We on this side talk about it as a just transition—the need for governments to work with local communities and with industry to ensure that these workers have jobs to transition to. We have heard a lot of rhetoric from the government, particularly the Prime Minister, yelling at Labor and its unions: 'What are you doing about blue-collar jobs?' I will tell you what the Victorian state Labor government is doing about blue-collar jobs: it has created a $266 million transition package to support the workers and the communities affected by the Hazelwood closure. You would think, given the government's rhetoric, that they had matched this contribution but they have not. This federal government have only put $43 million into the transition package. Whilst we acknowledge it is a significant contribution, it is well short of the state Labor government's contribution—the very government that they continue to politicise and have a go at over this closure.
A bit of history about Hazelwood which members of the government seem to forget: it was first opened in 1964. It was privatised by a Liberal government, Jeff Kennett's, in 1996 and sold for $2.35 billion. That money has since been spent. This is why communities, Labor governments and Labor oppositions continue to oppose privatisation. What happens when an asset like a generator is privatised is that you lose control over what happens. I acknowledge that some members of the government have said that the overseas owners of the Hazelwood Power Station have made a commercial decision to close this facility. When it is no longer state-owned, it is no longer in our control. That is the very problem with privatisation. I also want to acknowledge how unhelpful the comments by the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, have been in offering false hope to those workers, saying that a state Labor government or a federal government should just step in and buy this asset. That is not helpful at this time. He should withdraw those comments and apologise to those workers. The closure was originally scheduled for 2005, so it does not come as a surprise to anybody in this community that this particular generator and asset is closing down. However, there is frustration from the community that it has taken this government so long to get on board with the plan. In other countries—like Germany, for example—they start planning shutdowns of coal-fired power stations 10 to 20 years out. That is not what we have seen in this case.
In the time I have remaining, I want to outline what some of the state Labor contribution is going towards. Money is going towards transition—that is, transfer partnerships which create vacancies by offering redundancies to people working in other electricity agencies. Over 150 jobs have been saved by helping people transition into other jobs. An economic growth zone has been created. The Latrobe Valley Authority has been created. Money has gone to worker and business support, a transition centre, and to support to help business and encourage business to move to the Latrobe Valley. To share a quote from one of the workers involved, a third-generation electricity worker, Bill Simpson, is 'pleasantly surprised' by the Victorian government's Latrobe Valley Worker Transfer Partnership Agreement, as he says he 'can hopefully stay in the industry'. These are the words of the workers. It is disappointing that this government, despite all their rhetoric, have not met with the workers to work out how they can support them. I ask the government to drop the politics, increase the funding and support these workers.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): Is there a seconder for this motion?
Mr Champion: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (18:30): What a pack of crocodile tears we just heard then! Hazelwood is closing for one reason: it has been driven out of town by the state Labor government that has tripled the royalties on coal—that is the input cost for Hazelwood, and it tripled the royalties—and by the federal Labor Party, which has a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target. Of course Hazelwood is uncompetitive and cannot continue under such circumstances.
I appreciate that this is going to cost jobs, but it is not only the jobs at Hazelwood that it is going to cost. I would like the Labor Party to think about the increased cost of electricity that we have seen because of closing Hazelwood. How many other jobs will that cost throughout the economy? You must have competitive electricity prices and competitive energy costs, otherwise you do not have an economy. You do not know or understand the damage that you are doing to our nation's prosperity and our nation's ability to create wealth with your misguided green policies, and that is what we see.
It actually gets worse. Not only have we had these price increases, but the real question that I would like to know the answer to is: what is going to happen to the reliability of supply? We have heard the AEMO say that there is no problem, but I would like to have a quick look at the numbers. We know that last year Victoria's peak electricity demand was 9,523 megawatts. That was last year. What will they need next year and the year after? I would suggest, at a minimum, Victoria needs—to make sure they are safe from blackouts—an availability of 10,000 megawatts. Let us go through where those 10,000 megawatts could possibly come from. Before Hazelwood, they had 9,655 megawatts of fossil fuel generating capacity. Knock out the 1,600 megawatts from Hazelwood, and we come back to 8,000 megawatts from fossil fuels. Where is that extra 2,000 megawatts of electricity going to come from on a hot day in summer? Victoria has wind energy of 1,485 megawatts but, as we know, that is as useful as tits on a bull in a crisis—because when the wind does not blow, the power does not flow. It is completely and utterly useless. We know the peak demand for electricity often occurs late in the evening, around 6 pm, and solar does absolutely nothing to help there. Victoria has hydro energy of 356 megawatts. So where will this shortfall come from? The only possibility is hydro energy from Tasmania—relying on the extension cord across Bass Strait to stop Victoria from blacking out.
What about South Australia and New South Wales—
An opposition member interjecting—
Mr CRAIG KELLY: That is exactly right! That is a very good question. I hear the member over there, and I am sure that he would be very concerned, because we know that South Australia relies on an extension cord—the interconnectors through to those brown-coal power stations—to suck about 700 megawatts of electricity to keep the lights on in South Australia. What will happen now that Victoria is becoming a net importer of electricity? South Australia is going to flick the switch to Victoria and there will be no power there. The lights will go out again! This is where we see the insanity of this Renewable Energy Target, because whatever we build in wind or solar we have to back up 100 per cent in fossil fuels.
The Renewable Energy Target undermines all of the business case for that fossil fuel generating capacity—the baseload capacity that we need to keep the lights on. The RET drives the power stations out and it makes them uncompetitive. You need to run these things 24/7, and when you have to turn them on and off to let the wind come in and out of the grid, they become inefficient to run and they become uneconomic to run. No-one is going to invest in them simply because of the RET. We are undermining the economic viability of our nation. We need to have a complete revision of where we are up to in energy generation facilities in this nation. We cannot continue to keep building wind turbine after wind turbine and closing down our fossil fuel generating facilities, because it drives the prices up, it drives people out of business and it makes our nation uncompetitive.
This is all about the economy. There are so many things that we, as members of parliament, want to spend our money on. There are so many things we want to invest in, from schools to aged care to education to hospitals. But we need to create wealth in this nation. If we wipe out our coal-fired power stations, we wipe out the best wealth creation facilities— (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Wicks ): Before I call the member for Wakefield, could I remind all members present here of the importance of using appropriate parliamentary language.
Mr CHAMPION (Wakefield) (18:35): I will not be repeating the language used by the member for Hughes. He always gets himself a bit overexcited in these debates, and in the flurry of facts out comes a bit of language. Interestingly enough, at the end of it he admitted what he is really on about—that is, getting rid of the Renewable Energy Target. I look forward to seeing him out there on top of his constituents' roofs, tearing off solar panel after solar panel, chucking them on the road. That is what he will be doing. He is against renewable energy. That is what he is against. Let's make no mistake about it—and I see him exiting the chamber.
The motion sponsored here by the member for Bendigo is a sensible motion. It talks about the challenges that are before us in taking what were a series of state-run monopolies that have been bolted together into a national market where generation has been privatised and then disaggregated. The poles and wires are largely now a system of privately run monopolies. That is essentially what has happened. We had, I guess, a system that worked pretty well before this, but now we are approaching a system that, in my view, does not really work for anybody.
We are facing some very serious situations in relation to many of these brown coal assets. I will talk about the one in South Australia at Port Augusta, with its mine at Leigh Creek. The only reason that was put there in the first place was that Sir Thomas Playford got sick of the deliveries of black coal from New South Wales. They often would not arrive, for one reason or another, particularly during the war years—but even in the postwar years. So South Australian needed its own generation capacity. We are now seeing that happen again. We are now seeing a Premier with a plan. We have had to reassert control over our state's energy market, and that is what Premier Weatherill has been doing.
You might ask yourself: why? It is because we have a complete absence of national leadership in this country—a complete absence of national leadership. What we have at the moment in the Prime Minister is a national commentator. He wants to commentate on things. He is there every day in question time talking about South Australia, talking about Victoria and Hazelwood, and, bizarrely, talking about New South Wales. New South Wales has a high level of coal dependency and a Liberal state government but still had to have load shedding this summer. It still had to effectively turn the nation's largest aluminium smelter off—and we all know what the company said about that.
We have the national commentator, who, whenever he is presented with a problem, is a bit like a mirror: he is looking into it. In the absence of a national energy plan, in the absence of national action, we get the photo opportunities out the front of the Snowy Mountains. Then we have the alternative Prime Minister in the government providing us with his views. The member for Warringah is all for action. He is in the Herald Sun giving a lot of false hope to workers, but at least he has an idea—not like the Prime Minister, who is looking into things. There is a complete absence of action.
South Australia has a plan and is asserting control over its—
A government member interjecting—
Mr CHAMPION: The honourable member might laugh, but there is not much going on in New South Wales; there is not much going on nationally. We hear laughter and complaints from those opposite. But you are in government. It is your job. The Labor Party has a national gas reservation plan. We have not heard those opposite talk about that. In case the member is wondering, I was talking about that in 2013. These problems have been a long time coming, and there has been every opportunity for the government to act. But, instead, what we have is a Prime Minister who is looking into things. He is a mirror. We have a national commentator. We have a government that wants to assert that there are all these problems. If only there were someone there to fix them. Well that is what national governments should do: they should look down the track and make sure there is a national energy market that is operating.
We all know we have to manage this change. We have old assets needing to be retired. We have to get into renewable energy in a way that provides regular suppliable power. We have to protect the Australian gas market against the export price. These are all challenges for a national government, and only a Labor government will do it.
Mr DRUM (Murray—Chief Nationals Whip) (18:40): I find it quite incredible that we have this motion put before the House this afternoon, given the fact that the member for Bendigo, who has put this up, simply has not got her facts straight on where the truth is in relation to the motion put forward. It is incredible that a Labor member of this House would highlight the damage to regional jobs that her own party and colleagues have in fact caused.
We all understand very clearly that, when it comes to these Hazelwood power stations and the way they have been closed, the Labor Party has its own policy that is all structured around its contract for closure scheme. Here is the policy that is now coming home to roost. We have Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, who effectively at the start of last year decided he was going to triple the tax and the royalties payable on brown coal in Gippsland. You would not believe how much money he has raised out of these power stations: he has raised $255 million. He has put an extra tax on the operators to the tune of $255 million, and now that it is closing down he is going to offer the workers $266 million. Talk about taking with one hand and giving with the other. I cannot believe his audacity, and here we have the member for Bendigo wanting to highlight this.
She wants to put it out there and sing from the rafters what a horrible thing this is that these people have lost their jobs—effectively, caused by Labor Party increases in taxes associated with brown coal. But don't take our word for it; the spokesperson for the Hazelwood power station Loy Yang B said that, when this tax was introduced, it would inevitably have a detrimental impact on the region's energy sector. They said they had not been consulted on this decision. Their other comment was that this government decision takes $20 million straight out of the Hazelwood business.
It has simply been Labor policy to close Hazelwood since 2010 and, now that it is closing, they are trying to turn around and offer a support package, a rescue package. This should not surprise anybody in Gippsland, when you consider what they are also doing to Heyfield timber and Australia's sustainable hardwoods. Daniel Andrews is doing his utmost to shut down the timber mill at Heyfield, to the extent where we have had thousands of CFMEU workers marching on the Victorian parliament only last week, expressing their utter disdain for Premier Andrews. He has halved the available timber for the timber mill to effectively use in order to maintain its viability. Obviously, they cannot. If you are given half the amount of timber to harvest that you were previously working with, you cannot remain viable. And now that they are not going to remain viable, Daniel Andrews is saying, 'Maybe the federal government should buy it' or 'Maybe the federal government should walk in now and fix this up.' This mess was created by the state government and, all of a sudden, they expect the federal government to come in and fix it up.
Right now, the Hazelwood Power Station is generating 22 per cent of Victoria's energy demands, and how we are expected to fill that gap, once they start turning the generators off, is anybody's guess. The workers at Hazelwood are exceptionally proud of their jobs and they have been in constant contact.
There is another part of this motion that says the affected workers have not met with the government. If the member for Bendigo had bothered to do a little bit of research, she would have realised that the management of the CFMEU were in Canberra last November. The Facebook page of the member for Gippsland, Darren Chester, would suggest that he has been constantly meeting with the workers from Hazelwood. If those opposite had bothered to do their research, they would also be aware that the federal government has been meeting not just with the union but also with workers from the Hazelwood plant. There are a whole range of inaccuracies and untruths associated with this motion.
Here we have the Labor Party, who have taken $255 million with one hand, refusing to hand back the same amount of money now that Hazelwood is closing.
Mr CONROY (Shortland) (18:45): I am going to start my contribution by talking about the real reasons why Hazelwood closed down, because we heard utter rot and rubbish from the member for Murray. He talked about a $20 million cost imposition. Even if I accepted that—and I do not—Hazelwood was facing a $400 million safety upgrade bill just to bring it up to modern WorkCover standards. Add to that a massive requirement to increase their capital expenditure to modernise the plant and you have the real reason the Hazelwood owners made a commercial decision to end this plant's life. The decision is no surprise, because the average age of Victorian power stations is 41 years. In New South Wales, it is 35 years. This infrastructure is reaching the end of its life, and we should be having an adult and sensible conversation in this parliament about how we replace its generation capacity. But we are not, and that is the great tragedy of this government and this Prime Minister.
Yesterday we saw the demolition of the two 155-metre cooling towers at Lake Munmorah power station on the Central Coast. It is a region you represent, Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, as do I. It was the end of an era. The power station was of the same vintage as Hazelwood but produced slightly less power—1,400 megawatts versus 1,600 megawatts for Hazelwood. This was another power station that closed because it had reached the end of its plant life. The Hunter Valley, of which I am a proud representative, has one-third of the coal-fired power stations in the country: 9,000 megawatts of power production. Its four power plants are due to close in 2022; around 2030, for Vales Point; 2034; and 2035. A third of our power production from coal-fired power will go in the next 20 years, yet this government have no plan to replace it. They have no plan to replace it because they will not embrace what all of industry is calling for: an emissions intensity scheme that will give industry the certainty to make investment decisions. These decisions cannot be made based on the whim of whoever is going to be Prime Minister in six months time; they must be based on a bipartisan commitment on investment regulations over the next 40 years.
Every significant energy player in this country has called for an EIS, most recently—last week—Snowy Hydro, of which the Prime Minister is such a great fan. BHP has called for it, and so have the Business Council and AIG. Every major energy player, the energy consumers, the energy networks, the Grattan Institute—effectively everyone with a pulse in this sector has called for it, and the only people standing in the way are the government. That is a great tragedy. We do have an energy crisis, and that is because the government have sat on their hands for four years. Workers and communities are now paying the price, and we will see more need for structural adjustment as these plants close down.
That is the essence of this motion: the complete lack of commitment to structural adjustment from this government. When Northern power station closed last year, the government provided nothing other than a CV-writing course. Unfortunately, coalition governments have an appalling track record on this front. When the mighty BHP steelworks in Newcastle closed in the late nineties, what was the structural adjustment support the federal government gave the workers? The renovation of the Newcastle yacht club. The renovation of the Newcastle yacht club was the greatest structural adjustment assistance for thousands of steelworkers put out of work. Regrettably, not many steelworkers are members of the Newcastle yacht club and they did not benefit. Not even the construction activity benefited those redundant workers.
We need a just transition for the Hazelwood workforce, and that is why I support the Victorian government's attempt to move as many workers as possible into other power plants. I really applaud the fact that they have been able to save 150 jobs. Hopefully, there will be more as other power companies come online. I pay tribute to the Victorian government, the unions involved and the companies who tried to make this happen, and hopefully, if the federal government comes to the party, more can be done.
This is a time for a serious adult conversation about energy in this country. What we have from the member for Hughes is climate change scepticism, petty point-scoring and a failure to embrace the future. What we need is a serious plan centred around an emissions intensity scheme and a just transition focus for structural adjustment that means that workers in communities like mine, the ones around Hazelwood and the next member's communities are not suffering all the pain from a necessary transition. I am hopeful that we can come to a solution on this. I am very willing, as is all the Labor Party, to work with the coalition on this, because this should be above politics, but unfortunately so far we are just getting desperate political point-scoring for the coalition government.
Mr BROADBENT (McMillan) (18:50): I am the member for McMillan and I represent the workers in the Latrobe Valley.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Mark Twain, 1835-1910.
Today, it is not a pleasure for me to hear the hear the conversations between members of this House, where voices are raised and considerations are given outside of those people who are directly affected by this change. Listening to Fran Kelly's program in Morwell the other morning, as I was at a faraway place, I heard one of the workers come on to discuss, obviously, this plant that he loved. I did not get his name. He said to Fran, 'Fran, it's an old girl and it's done its time. You can fix it and we can keep it going, but even if you do it's still an old girl and it will always be needing attention far beyond the attention that can reasonably be given to the Hazelwood power plant to keep it going.'
I have not been privy to the negotiations of the company with the government. I know there were increases in coal royalties that may have had some effect on the company's own position. I know that the Greens in Victoria were using this to thump the state Labor government every day of the week—the dirtiest coal power station in Australia or the world et cetera. But my workers felt that, every time someone had a go or a crack at them, they were at—excuse the pun—the coalface of that attack. I want to say to those workers: 'That was unfair. That's not right. You’ve given your all, and some of you have given three generations of your families' work on people's behalf, my behalf, my family's behalf and on our behalf. You've given your time, energy, and expertise and you have given it to Victoria and Australia to grow our manufacturing industry to give us opportunities we would not otherwise have, so I am reflecting on the fact that you gave to us something that no-one else could give to us, through Sir John Monash, who gave to us the great opportunities for Victoria's manufacturing industry over many years.'
Now times have changed and there is an expectation of the Australian community and even this parliament that that which was is no longer and cannot be sustained. The previous speaker was absolutely correct. There is probably more than millions to be spent to upgrade the plant on occupational health and safety grounds, and that would only be the beginning. To keep this plant going, you are talking a billion—a thousand million—or more dollars. And on behalf of my people, I would say, 'Take me to Driffield and build me a new and far better, cleaner coal-fired power station, if that is your intent to keep it going for three years.' You are not going to spend a billion and a half on the old lady. If you are going to do that, spend a billion and a half working on how you can best use the coal, whether it beats the fertiliser or hydrogen or all the opportunities that have been laid out before us where you can use that amazing God-given resource that is the Latrobe Valley.
I say to the members here, in five minutes you cannot describe the wealth that has been given to us by this old power plant. You cannot describe how those workers will feel when they walk out of that plant this week. I agree with you, some of them will be going to another power plant, and that is great. For some, it is time to retire, and that is fine too. But all those left in the middle ground will have to make decisions that are difficult for them. They will have to say to their children, 'We've got to move.' One of the workers said, 'We've got to move to South Australia,' and his daughter said, 'I don't want to move, Dad. This is my life: Latrobe Valley. My friends are all here.' Everyone in this parliament feels for that young girl who does not want to move because of the situation that has happened in her father's life that she does not understand. If I were that 13-year-old girl, I would be upset too.
I say to this House: let us forget the bickering over Hazelwood Power Station, and let us look to the future and the opportunities that are there to grow Gippsland in a way that we can all, every one of us—I need to finish on this—can be proud of. (Time expired)
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Firearms Trafficking
Mr GOODENOUGH (Moore) (18:56): I move:
That this House:
(1) notes that while Australia has some of the strongest firearm controls in the world, illicit firearms continue to remain a threat to community safety;
(2) acknowledges that the Government has:
(a) introduced legislation which doubles the maximum penalties for firearms trafficking offences, including mandatory minimum sentences of five years imprisonment;
(b) invested:
(i) $88 million to increase screening and examination of international mail, air and sea cargo to detect illicit firearms and firearms parts at our borders; and
(ii) $116 million in the National Anti-Gangs Squad which has been successful in getting illegal guns off our streets; and
(c) provided an additional $25.4 million to fund the expansion of the Australian Federal Police's (AFP's) National Forensics Rapid Lab to enhance the AFP's capacity to detect and seize illegal firearms and target the criminal syndicates that peddle them;
(3) notes that the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens have opposed mandatory minimum sentences for illegal firearms trafficking; and
(4) calls on Members to support tougher sentences for illegal firearms trafficking, including the need for mandatory minimum sentences.
The coalition government introduced the Criminal Code Amendment (Firearms Trafficking) Bill 2015, which sought to double the maximum penalties for firearms trafficking offences, including mandatory minimum sentences of five years imprisonment. However, Labor and the Greens opposed imposing mandatory minimum sentences for illegal firearms trafficking. Given that 90 per cent of firearm-related crimes are committed with unlicensed firearms, the focus of law enforcement should be directed at clamping down on the estimated 260,000 illegal firearms in Australia. Legitimate shooters support tough legislation to prevent illegal firearms from being brought into the country.
From the outset, I should declare that I am a life-time shooting enthusiast who has participated in a range of competitive shooting sports—pistol, rifle and shotgun—and I have been hunting for more than 30 years. I am a life member of both the National Rifle Association and the Sporting Shooters' Association of Australia. In addition, I am one of the founding members of the Parliamentary Friends of Shooting along with Senator Bridget McKenzie.
Firearms have the potential to be used for both good and bad purposes. I am strongly in support of tougher sentences for illegal firearms trafficking, including the need for mandatory minimum sentences, which will be effective in combating the illegitimate use of firearms whilst promoting and protecting the rights and liberties of lawful, legitimate users of firearms.
There are currently more than 2.7 million registered firearms in Australia. Firearms, most certainly, have a legitimate place in our society. They are used at clubs and in Olympic and Commonwealth Games sports. They are an essential part of agriculture for controlling feral pests. Firearms are used to provide food through hunting and they are used for recreational shooting. They are essential for law enforcement, defence and security. And historic firearm collections form part of our cultural and military heritage.
It is the misuse of firearms for criminal purposes which this legislation seeks to curtail. There is no good reason for illegal firearms to enter Australia's borders as their misuse will impact adversely on the legitimate use of firearms through negative public perception. Unfortunately, high-profile firearm incidents will continue to elevate firearm-related crime to the forefront of public awareness, media headlines and political agendas.
Firearms trafficking is generally defined in the 2001 United Nations Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Ammunition as the unauthorised 'import, export, acquisition, sale, delivery, movement or transfer of firearms, their parts and components and ammunition' across internal or state borders.
A recent report from the Australian Crime Commission estimated that there are more than 250,000 unlicensed long arms and 10,000 unlicensed handguns in Australia. The ACC defines the criminal tracking of firearms as the movement of illegally owned, modified or manufactured firearms between market suppliers and organised crime. Criminals regularly use illicit firearms to protect their area of criminal operation, for use in other criminal activities such as extortion, to settle inter-gang disputes and in the collection of outstanding debts and drug payments. The ACC conservatively estimates that serious and organised crime costs Australia at least $15 billion each year.
Stronger penalties are required to adequately reflect the serious nature and consequences of supplying firearms and firearm parts to the illicit market. Strong penalties will act as a strong deterrent and a disincentive to people seeking to illegally import firearms and their parts into Australia. By increasing the maximum penalty for these Commonwealth firearms offences, it will put the Commonwealth in step with other jurisdictions and their maximum penalties for firearm-trafficking offences.
The Australian Institute of Criminology released a report in 2012 titled Firearm trafficking and serious organised crime gangs which indicated that the main entry points for firearms entering Australia were via parcel post, contained in passenger luggage through ports and airports, and through sea cargo and air cargo. Under the previous Labor government, less than 10 per cent of air cargo and less than five per cent of sea cargo were inspected upon entry into Australia's borders. Since being elected, the coalition government have invested $88 million to increase the screening and examination of international mail, air cargo and sea cargo. The funding boost provides our agencies with more resources to detect and intercept illicit firearms and parts.
The magnitude of the task of monitoring our borders on a vast geographical scale defies comprehension. We have a sparsely populated continent with a significant number of remote towns where only basic port and airport facilities exist without the advanced security found in capital cities. The vast Australian continent covers an area of more than 7.6 million square kilometres, with a total coastline length of 35,876 kilometres and some 758 remote estuaries around the country in which vessels may land.
Detecting illegal weapons can be described as like finding a needle in a haystack. In February 2015 the coalition government closed the loophole which allowed criminals to avoid prosecution for trafficking firearm parts into Australia. Without these amendments, criminals could evade trafficking offences and penalties by simply dismantling firearms and trafficking the parts separately. According to an Australian Crime Commission report titled Organised crime in Australia 2015, the online purchasing of illicit firearms is an emerging threat. The increased use of internet and darknet websites is likely to drive an increase in firearm importation and pose a threat to border security. Websites such as Black Market Reloaded and Agora have enabled the trade—
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Sitting suspended from 19:03 to 19:26
Mr GOODENOUGH: These websites have enabled the trade in illicit firearms to operate freely, affording anonymity and offering secure online payment systems. The Armory is an example of a website specifically designed to facilitate the trading of firearms, components and ammunition.
In Australia, the sale and supply of firearms to the illicit market is typically carried out by organised crime groups but also individual lower level criminals driving the demand for illicit firearms. There are direct links between firearms trafficking and other serious crimes, such as drive-by shootings. Criminal use of firearms includes the distribution and supply of drugs, armed robbery, committing acts of violence, impeding law enforcement, standover tactics, intimidation and threats against rival groups.
The coalition government established the National Anti-Gangs Squad in 2013 and resourced it with $116 million in funding to target outlaw motorcycle gangs, particularly their role in firearms trafficking. Since its establishment, more than 5,600 illegal firearms have been seized in cooperation with the states. The coalition government has allocated $25.4 million to fund the expansion of the Australian Federal Police's National Forensics Rapid Lab to enhance the AFP's capacity to detect and seize illegal firearms and target the criminal syndicates that smuggle them.
I advocate for firearms reform which places greater emphasis on licensing the firearms owner, with more stringent background checks, safety training and in-person interviews. This would be coupled with a comprehensive firearm registration system which registered individual firearms to suitably licensed owners for accountability and traceability. At present, too much focus is placed on the technical attributes of the firearms themselves and insufficient focus on the suitability of the owner.
In summary, I am strongly in support of tougher sentences for illegal firearms trafficking, including the need for mandatory minimum sentences. It is true to say that licensed firearm owners in the Australian shooting community overwhelmingly support a crackdown on illegal firearms. There is no place in the community for illegally imported firearms to be in the possession of criminal elements which are very likely to misuse the firearms to commit crimes. Such adverse publicity affects the public perception of lawful firearms owners and impinges upon their freedoms.
Ms O'NEIL (Hotham) (19:28): I really appreciate this opportunity to make a contribution on the motion moved by my good friend the member for Moore. I must admit I was a little bit surprised to see that the member for Moore wanted to come in today and talk about guns, because in a very crowded field I think this is a subject on which there has probably been more disunity and dysfunction within the government than on any other. We have 18C, tax reform, climate change, competition policy and economic policy, but I think it is guns that take the cake.
But what I really want to talk about today is that there is a lot of politics around about this issue, but what is important is that there are real community safety repercussions from some of the divisions about how we should proceed with guns policy. I will just very quickly speak about some of the issues that we have observed on guns since I have been a member of parliament. This is the issue on which we saw something very extraordinary happen in the House of Representatives, and that is that the Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, both stood up in the same question time and gave completely contradictory accounts of how their offices had managed gun policy.
Debate interrupted.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30
QUESTIONS IN WRITING
nbn co
(Question No. 32)
Mr Keogh asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, in writing, on 11 October 2016
To ask the Minister representing the Minister for Communications—(1) Can the Minister provide a timetable of expected dates for remaining Telstra exchange handovers to the NBN network in Western Australia.(2) Will the date for exchange handovers be set by Telstra or the NBN.(3) In respect of the Maddington exchange in Western Australia, (a) when is the handover expected to occur, (b) what work remains to be undertaken before the handover can occur, (c) is NBN taking any steps to expedite the handover, and (d) once the handover occurs, how much longer will residents and businesses in suburbs serviced by the Maddington exchange be required to wait until the NBN reaches their premises.(4) Has NBN undertaken any tests of the capacity of the existing copper network that will be utilised in the fibre-to-the-node model in suburbs serviced by the Armadale exchange in Western Australia; if so, what were the results; if not, how will NBN provide a minimum upload and download speed guarantee.
Mr Fletcher: The answer to the member's question is as follows:
(1) Below is a timetable of expected dates for the handover of the remaining Telstra exchanges to NBN Co Limited (nbn) in Western Australia. Please note timelines may be adjusted to meet future requirements.
Site Name |
Planned delivery |
Palmyra Mundaring Wanneroo Cottesloe Mount Hawthorn Canning Vale Baldivis |
Handover complete Handover complete Q2 2017 Q2 2017 Handover complete Q2 2017 Q4 2017 |
Morley Maylands Hamersley Dampier Denham Secret Harbour Midland Forrestfield |
Q2 2017 Handover complete Q1 2017 Q1 2017 Q1 2017 Q1 2017 Handover complete Q1 2017 |
(2) The exchange handover date is agreed between Telstra and nbn, following an agreed process initiated by a request for handover from nbn as per the Telstra Definitive Agreements.
(3a) nbn does not have a Maddington exchange in its plan. The Maddington area is served by the Forrestfield Fibre Serving Area (FSA). Handover occurred in January 2017.
(3b) The exchange handover is dependent on DC Power upgrades and Site Make Ready requirements.
(3c) Refer to a and b.
(3d) The current design and construct programme for the Forrestfield service area modules are forecast to be ready for service in the first half of 2019.
(4) nbn undertakes data analysis of network reliability when completing the designs for FTTN serving areas.
nbn: Acacia Gardens
(Question No. 43)
Ms Rowland asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, in writing, on 19 October 2016.
To ask the Minister representing the Minister for Communications—When will the entire suburb of Acacia Gardens in New South Wales be fully connected to the NBN?
Mr Fletcher: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
On 20 December 2016, NBN Co Limited (nbn) implemented the first phase of an upgrade to its 'check your address' website function. This information was updated at the end of February 2017 and now includes updated rollout information for almost all Australian homes and businesses. The website estimates that most residents of Acacia Gardens can expect to be able to order National Broadband Network services by the end of 2017. nbn will continue to update the estimated time for service availability as planning and then construction progresses. Residents of Acacia Gardens may wish to monitor nbn's website for updated information or register their address to receive rollout updates for their particular address.
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis
(Question No. 616)
Ms Butler asked the Minister for Health and Aged Care and Minister for Sport, in writing, on 10 November 2016:
Can the Minister advise on the extent to which Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis is in use in Australia.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
In May 2016, the Therapeutic Goods Administrator (TGA) approved an extension of the listed use of Truvada® for use as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). There are currently no generics for Truvada® available on the Australian market as the patent has not expired.
In July 2016, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) published its decision to not recommend listing Truvada® for use as PrEP on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Individuals may receive a prescription for PrEP from their doctor and may fill it either through a local pharmacy, paying an unsubsidised price, or use the TGA Personal Importation Scheme to access products from overseas. Under the TGA Personal Importation Scheme, individuals may import unapproved therapeutic goods into Australia without any approval required by the TGA provided that certain conditions are met.
The Commonwealth is aware of six jurisdictions conducting, or expected to commence, PrEP trials:
New South Wales – EPIC NSW;
Australian Capital Territory – is also participating in the EPIC NSW trial;
Victoria – PrEPX Study;
Queensland – QPrEP Demonstration Project;
South Australia – PrEPX-SA; and
Western Australia – WA PrEP Demonstration Project expected to commence in the second half of 2017.
These trials allow individuals determined to be at high risk of contracting HIV to access PrEP. The Commonwealth understands that three trials have varying levels of capacity remaining. Current details regarding these trials can be sourced from the respective jurisdiction's health department.
Centrelink
(Question No. 686)
Mr Clare asked the Minister for Human Services, in writing, on 27 February 2017:
What is the average daily (a) number of customers attending, (b) waiting time for customers attending, and (c) number of staff on duty at, the (i) Bankstown, and (ii) Hurstville, Centrelink branches, aggregated monthly from January 2014.
Answer
Mr Tudge: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
Regarding questions a) and b) for Bankstown and Hurstville, the answers are attached.
With regards to question c) this would require an unreasonable diversion of resources to calculate.
Attachment
Hurstville |
|
|
Month |
Average Daily Contacts |
Average Wait Time (mm:ss) |
Jan-14 |
299 |
32:44 |
Feb-14 |
323 |
24:49 |
Mar-14 |
315 |
24:20 |
Apr-14 |
315 |
24:53 |
May-14 |
291 |
25:24 |
Jun-14 |
297 |
21:41 |
Jul-14 |
295 |
22:22 |
Aug-14 |
278 |
20:05 |
Sep-14 |
291 |
20:00 |
Oct-14 |
297 |
17:17 |
Nov-14 |
308 |
20:09 |
Dec-14 |
317 |
22:04 |
Jan-15 |
360 |
22:17 |
Feb-15 |
358 |
20:10 |
Mar-15 |
341 |
09:33 |
Apr-15 |
337 |
09:15 |
May-15 |
324 |
09:29 |
Jun-15 |
301 |
18:15 |
Jul-15 |
276 |
16:18 |
Aug-15 |
278 |
16:14 |
Sep-15 |
258 |
13:46 |
Oct-15 |
263 |
14:45 |
Nov-15 |
276 |
10:05 |
Dec-15 |
283 |
13:12 |
Jan-16 |
313 |
18:00 |
Feb-16 |
323 |
13:20 |
Mar-16 |
325 |
08:36 |
Apr-16 |
284 |
07:54 |
May-16 |
296 |
07:28 |
Jun-16 |
294 |
08:16 |
Jul-16 |
291 |
09:49 |
Aug-16 |
275 |
09:06 |
Sep-16 |
272 |
12:22 |
Oct-16 |
280 |
14:07 |
Nov-16 |
258 |
18:05 |
Dec-16 |
245 |
19:51 |
Jan-17 |
269 |
24:45 |
Feb-17 |
285 |
16:50 |
**Daily averages are based on the number of working days (ie. excluding any State and National public holidays) for each site within the period. |
||
Attachment
Bankstown |
|
|
||
Month |
Average Daily Contacts |
Average Wait Time (mm:ss) |
||
Jan-14 |
603 |
24:27 |
||
Feb-14 |
597 |
20:06 |
||
Mar-14 |
508 |
23:52 |
||
Apr-14 |
543 |
22:34 |
||
May-14 |
540 |
21:52 |
||
Jun-14 |
573 |
20:45 |
||
Jul-14 |
570 |
21:32 |
||
Aug-14 |
555 |
17:20 |
||
Sep-14 |
579 |
17:42 |
||
Oct-14 |
580 |
18:57 |
||
Nov-14 |
594 |
21:07 |
||
Dec-14 |
602 |
18:35 |
||
Jan-15 |
621 |
22:29 |
||
Feb-15 |
624 |
20:51 |
||
Mar-15 |
602 |
17:00 |
||
Apr-15 |
539 |
15:28 |
||
May-15 |
545 |
17:13 |
||
Jun-15 |
526 |
15:00 |
||
Jul-15 |
515 |
16:52 |
||
Aug-15 |
468 |
14:45 |
||
Sep-15 |
583 |
13:10 |
||
Oct-15 |
633 |
11:15 |
||
Nov-15 |
611 |
13:09 |
||
Dec-15 |
640 |
14:04 |
||
Jan-16 |
602 |
17:24 |
||
Feb-16 |
585 |
19:12 |
||
Mar-16 |
610 |
18:02 |
||
Apr-16 |
560 |
18:42 |
||
May-16 |
582 |
14:32 |
||
Jun-16 |
654 |
14:18 |
||
Jul-16 |
622 |
15:36 |
||
Aug-16 |
587 |
17:03 |
||
Sep-16 |
551 |
14:24 |
||
Oct-16 |
572 |
16:54 |
||
Nov-16 |
556 |
18:32 |
||
Dec-16 |
503 |
18:53 |
||
Jan-17 |
528 |
29:14 |
||
Feb-17 |
540 |
22:55 |
||
*Bankstown Centrelink and Bankstown Medicare sites colocated on 31 August 2015 |
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**Daily averages are based on the number of working days (ie. excluding any State and National public holidays) for each site within the period. |
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