On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties I present the committee's report entitled Report 152: Treaty tabled on 16 June 2015.
Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).
by leave—Mr Speaker, can I also take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election to high office. As you were a former chairman of this committee, I think there must be bright things ahead for me in the future!
Today I present the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties' Report 152: Treaty tabled on 16 June 2015. The report contains the committee's views on amendments to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, usually referred to as MARPOL.
MARPOL is administered by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and provides an international regulatory framework for dealing with marine pollution. It addresses six types of marine pollution: oil, bulk noxious liquids, harmful substances in package form, sewage, garbage and air pollution. The regulations for each of these types of pollution are contained in annexes to MARPOL. We considered four amendments to the annexes relating to oil pollution, harmful substances carried at sea in package form and air pollution.
The first amendment was prompted by an incident in 2014 where a fishing vessel using heavy grade oil as ballast sank in the Antarctic. The clean-up exercise was difficult and costly. Water is usually the ballast of choice, and this sort of accident had not been anticipated. It appears that the extra fuel was being carried as ballast. The amendment will close this apparent loophole in the regulations by prohibiting ships in the Antarctic from carrying heavy grade oil. Such ships will be restricted to carrying and using either marine diesel oil, marine gas oil or other lighter fuel blends. By explicitly banning the carriage of heavy grade oil it will make sure that the original intent of MARPOL is enforceable in the Antarctic.
The second amendment will remove radioactive materials from the scope of the 'harmful substance' criteria, as such substances are covered by other IMO regulations. This will get rid of the duplication requirement for labelling radioactive material in packaged form.
The third amendment relates to the emissions of nitrous oxide from the burning of gas fuel. It will clarify the definition of 'fuel oil' to include gas and of 'marine diesel engine' to include a gas fuelled engine. The fourth amendment will improve the transparency of the International Air Pollution Prevention Certificate, making it easier to understand and allowing quicker verification.
The committee supports Australia's ratification of the amendments and recommends that binding treaty action be taken.
On behalf of the committee, I commend the report to the House.
by leave—Mr Speaker, can I also take the opportunity to personally congratulate you on your election as Speaker. In my 19 years in this place it has always been the case that speakers from Victoria have done a lot more for the dignity and reputation of the House than speakers from other states, and I am confident that you will continue that tradition.
The amendments to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships that we are reporting on today are a step towards a more coherent and environmentally-sound standard for global shipping. While the eight-month delay between the amendments being agreed to and being tabled in parliament raise questions as to process, the amendments are not controversial and should be supported.
One amendment clarifies the prohibition on the carriage of heavy fuel oil in the Antarctic and the closing of a loophole that might otherwise allow vessels to escape culpability to the detriment of the environment. It is encouraging to know that Australian ships are certainly not engaging in this practice.
While the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code now regulates the carriage of radioactive materials in packaged form, and where reference to it remains included, it is difficult to mount a case in support of the duplication of this provision. In saying this, it is essential that the regulations in the code are as comprehensive as those included within the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.
In light of the not insignificant emissions generated by gas-fuelled ships, the extension of the regulation of nitrous oxide emissions to ships fuelled solely by gas fuel is welcome. Given that the technology required to ensure compliance exists, the committee's suggestion that this amendment is unlikely to be a regulatory burden on Australian ships is positive. While cognisant of administrative pressures faced by vessel operators, where there are opportunities to enhance transparency we should endeavour to do so. Therefore, the requirement for vessels over 400 gross tonnes to maintain a record of compliance should be supported. Advice from the Office of Best Practice Regulation that suggests that there is not expected to be any additional cost for Australian businesses as a result of the discussed amendments is welcome.
Australia has a responsibility to be a leader in marine environment protection and to uphold internationally consistent standards in the maritime industry. I acknowledge the work of both marine conservation groups and unions like the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers and the MUA in promoting high standards. Australia's reliance on the international maritime industry, which underpins its international trade, is substantial. If we were to reject, for example, the amendment clarifying the prohibition on the carriage of heavy fuel oil in the Antarctic, we would risk falling below internationally adopted standards. We would expose ourselves to heightened environmental and financial repercussions if a heavy fuel oil spill were to occur in the Antarctic area, and this of course could potentially undermine our influence in protecting Antarctica's environment. For these reasons, the amendments to the annexes of the Protocol of 1978 relating to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships should be supported.
By way of some additional background, this convention, which is referred to by the initials of MARPOL, provides an international regulatory framework for dealing with six classifications of marine pollution: oil, noxious liquid substances in bulk, harmful substances in package form, sewage, garbage and air pollution. Regulations for each of these classifications are contained in annexes to MARPOL. It is administered by the International Maritime Organisation, and decisions on amendments to MARPOL are made by the Marine Environment Protection Committee of that organisation.
In 2014 a fishing vessel using heavy grade oil as ballast sank in the Antarctic. The National Interest Analysis states that the flag state refused to take remedial action as it interpreted regulation 43 as not applying to heavy grade oil used as ballast. The department of infrastructure explained to the committee that water is usually carried as ballast. Nobody anticipated this sort of occurrence. Water is the ballast of choice, for fairly obvious reasons. So the amendment to annex I will close this apparent loophole.
I will also briefly comment on the amendment to annex 1 of the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels. This adds the pink-footed shearwater to this agreement. The impact of this on Australia is negligible because this species does not occur in fisheries within Australian territory or any part of Australia's jurisdiction, so it will not involve any change to the practices of Australian fishers. I have previously expressed concern about the plight of albatrosses, petrels and other seabirds whose numbers have declined rapidly in the past few decades as a consequence of marine pollution, longline fishing and the loss of food sources due to industrial fishing. I repeat that concern today. We have an obligation to future generations to pass on a world that includes albatrosses and seabirds, and I strongly support this international agreement.
Last evening before the adjournment debate, I was reminding those in this place that consumers have been protected from unfair contract terms since 2010. Despite, in many cases, small businesses having no more market power than consumers, the former government did not see fit to extend the protections regarding unfair contract terms to small businesses. I am grateful to the Minister for Small Business for bringing the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Small Business and Unfair Contract Terms) Bill 2015 to the House, which will see, under these new protections, a court able to strike out a term of a small business contract that is considered unfair. It obviously will thereby reduce the incentive to include and enforce unfair terms in contracts with small businesses.
In my former life I would often advise mum-and-dad small businesses not to enter into contracts which, whilst attractive in very many respects, included a term which was clearly unfair and which, if used in an inappropriate way, would do irreparable damage to their business and their operation. I am glad that those who continue in my former profession can sit with their clients in confidence and with the confidence to say that that provision will ultimately be read down by the courts.
I thought I would momentarily digress from the bill to say something about the Minister for Small Business. I think he is the political equivalent of the Energizer Bunny, but that might be for others to determine. He seems to go and go and go. I hope I will have his energy when I am his age—although he is only a few years older than me. It is important to highlight what he has been able to achieve in less than two years as the Minister for Small Business. It is also important to reflect that he served a significant period as the shadow minister for small business during a time when this nation suffered, if you like, a carousel of small business ministers.
In the 2015-16 budget the minister has delivered the nation's biggest Jobs and Small Business package. I do not like talking about the minister's package! Of course, I like talking about his small business package, which is worth $5.5 billion. The small businesses of Australia love that package about as much as a fat kid loves cake, quite frankly. They are absolutely into it. It contains a 1.5 per cent cut in the company tax rate for small businesses, or a five per cent tax discount. There is an immediate deduction for assets valued at up to $20,000. It has breathed fresh air into the small business sector. Over the winter break, I enjoyed visiting many small businesses in my electorate and reminding them that the instant asset write-off is something that they could have availed themselves of but, more importantly, that they can continue to avail themselves of over the next two financial years.
The minister was a member of the cabinet which did away with the carbon tax, saving households $550 a year. He is undertaking a review of Australia's competition laws. He has allocated $8 million over four years to transform the existing Office of the Australian Small Business Commissioner into the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. He has established a small business helpline, which has received some 100,000 calls in the last seven months. With the assistance of his colleagues on this side of the House, he has streamlined access to Commonwealth procurement contracts to ensure that bills are paid on time. Under the changes to the Commonwealth Contracting Suite, we are making it far easier for small business to ply their products and services to government. This includes, under his stewardship, a simplified process for tendering for contracts below $200,000.
Franchisees have also benefited from a new franchise code of conduct. An estimated 372,500 small businesses have benefited from the administrative changes to PAYG instalment thresholds that were announced with the assistance of the Minister for Small Business. As a result of the changes, 32,500 small businesses that have no GST reporting requirements will no longer have to lodge the dreaded business activity statements. The minister has assisted in announcing an entrepreneurs infrastructure package. In addition to that, we have the small business advisory services program as well as the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct to protect small suppliers from big supermarkets. In all of this work, the minister is supported by a team of colleagues who understand small business.
Last evening, I mentioned that I come from a small business background. I ran one myself. I spent many an hour in my parents' small businesses. Holidays in our household were either spent at the shop or on the farm. I often reflect on why it is that it is so important to this side of the House that we have a focus on small business. It is not, as some would suggest, because many of us have a background in small business. It is because we understand that small business is, quite frankly, the engine room of our economy. We do not necessarily see that understanding on the other side of the political divide—although, in recent times there has been, effectively, a clamouring to own this space.
I think that, through how well the small business package has been received, there has been an understanding, if you like, from both sides this place of how important the small business sector is. As I said, this was not always the case. There was a time when those opposite did not seek to mislead the Australian people into believing that they were there to support small businesses. Indeed, in July 2000 then Labor leader Kim Beazley acknowledged that the Labor Party was not the party of small business. There was a leader of the Labor Party who was prepared to be honest about the Labor Party—a much stronger Labor Party than the one that traipses its way into this place. He said:
We have never pretended to be a small business party. The Labor Party has never pretended that.
At least in 2000, the Labor Party was prepared to be honest about its propensity or otherwise to support small businesses. What we have now is a party, which is quite correctly described as the party of union officials, pretending to come into this place and be the best friend that small businesses have ever had. We know that that is not the case, and the Australian people know that that is not the case. You need not look any further than at the fact that there was a carousel of small business ministers during the failed Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Craig Emerson is no longer here, of course, but he was a minister for small business. He was someone who found himself on that carousel to nowhere—or at least a carousel of no progression with respect to small businesses. He said:
Labor, as a party, was born of the trade union movement. We are proud of our bonds with the trade union movement—we say it long, we say it hard and we say it often. The Liberal Party knows its origins and so do we. We recognise our origins, and we are very proud of our bonds with the trade union movement.
See, that is the problem.
At the moment, in this nation, we are having a debate about the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Those on this side of the place are incredibly proud of the work of the Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb, in establishing that free trade agreement. We understand that it is good for small business. We understand that it is good for farmers—particularly, I must say, those in my electorate of Barker. But those on the other side of this place are seeking to run a campaign to undermine that agreement. They seek to instil fear in ordinary every day Australians. They seek to mislead them that the free trade agreement is not what we say it is—namely, in a new globalised world, a significant economic marker which will be unequivocally good for the small businesses and the workers of Australia. They seek to mislead them that, rather, that agreement is something to be feared.
When people consider that question, I want them to think about the origins of the two major parties in this place. Our origins are deeply embedded with the small businesses of this nation. It is trite but true to say that small business is deeply embedded in the DNA of each of us. Of course, those opposite—including the member for Bendigo, who seems to be leading the charge on this, from the backbench on behalf of the Labor Party—are the party of the union movement. The member for Bendigo thinks that this place ought to be more influenced by the union movement, notwithstanding that, overall, only 12 per cent of workers find themselves as part of a union. Here is the challenge for the Labor Party: are you for jobs or are you for your union mates? Do you want to run scare campaigns or do you want to continue to work to build and strengthen the economy of Australia, because it is good for the small businesses of Australia, which, in turn, are good for the workers of Australia? I extend that challenge across the chamber and across the political divide. I hope that they fall on the side of small businesses, workers and jobs, but I suppose we will soon see.
Mr Speaker, it is my first opportunity to say how genuinely and personally delighted I am with your elevation to the chair. I wish you much success in a very challenging and important role in our parliament. Congratulations, sir.
I would like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate. The Treasury Legislation Amendment (Small Business and Unfair Contract Terms) Bill 2015 gives effect to the government's promise to provide a fair go for small businesses by extending the unfair contract terms protections for consumers to the small business sector.
In framing this bill, the government consulted widely. Last year we conducted a 10-week public consultation process to gather information about the extent of the problem and to canvass views on policy options. We received over 80 submissions and around 300 survey responses as part of this process.
Commonwealth, state and territory consumer affairs ministers formally agreed to amend the Australian Consumer Law in April, as required under the intergovernmental agreement. In line with the Corporations Agreement of 2002, the Commonwealth outlined to the states and territories that these legislative protections would be mirrored in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001, with no objection being raised.
Based on these consultations, we then invited public comment in May on the exposure draft legislation. Almost 50 stakeholders took this opportunity to comment on the drafting of the bill. Overall the feedback showed that small businesses across a wide range of industries had real concerns about unfair contract terms. In particular, it became apparent that small businesses, like consumers, are vulnerable to the inclusion of unfair terms in standard form contracts because, like consumers, they often do not have the time, the legal expertise or, frankly, the negotiating muscle to critically analyse and push back on contracts offered to them. Notably, there was significant support for addressing this problem by extending the current consumer unfair contract terms laws. The feedback we received guided the effective development of the law and will support its implementation once it has been passed by the parliament.
This bill extends the consumer unfair contract terms protections to small business when they agree to low-value standard form contracts. It contains amendments to both the Australian Consumer Law and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001. It enables a court to declare void an unfair term—for example, one that allows one party to unilaterally change the price—that may be contained in a contract where at least one party was a business with fewer than 20 employees when it agreed to the contract and where the value of the contract does not exceed $100,000 or, if the contract is for more than one year, $250,000.
The size of a business will be determined by headcount, with casual employees only included if they are employed on a regular or systemic basis. This approach, used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, best represents the normal workforce of a business and is a simple and accessible way for all businesses to record the size of their business at any point in time.
Having a transaction value threshold limits the protection to lower value day-to-day transactions where the cost of seeking advice on a contract's terms may be disproportionately high, while maintaining the onus on responsible small businesses to undertake due diligence for high-value or, should we say, enterprise-critical contracts fundamental to the success of the business. There is a significant difference between high-value contracts and those day-to-day contracts thrust before small businesses.
It is not the role of the government to be a 'contract nanny'. It is right and reasonable for all enterprises to seek advice on larger enterprise-critical contracts. Responsible and savvy small businesses understand this responsibility. Whether a contract falls within the transaction value threshold of $100,000, or $250,000 if the contract is for more than one year, will depend on the value of the contract based on the consideration payable under the contract known at or before the time the contract is agreed to.
I acknowledge that some people found the limits too low, while others argued that the limits were too high. However, we found from consultation that these limits will cover the vast majority of standard form contracts that small businesses enter into.
I further acknowledge that some concerns have been raised regarding duplication with existing laws. Recognising the importance of avoiding duplication and red tape, the bill contains a mechanism for exempting legislation and regulation deemed enforceable and equivalent to the Australian Consumer Law and/or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 contract terms protections. In making such an exemption, the Commonwealth minister responsible for competition and consumer policy must first consider what impact the proposed exemption would have on small businesses, and on businesses generally, and whether it is in the public interest. This will ensure that, no matter what, small businesses can be sure they are protected.
This bill is an important reform that will have a significant positive impact on Australia's two million small businesses. Since 2010 these protections have been available to consumers and it is time that small businesses, who often face the same vulnerabilities as consumers, received the same protections when offered 'take it or leave it' contracts.
This bill provides small businesses more than a remedy for unfair terms. It will also mean that, in drawing up contracts with small businesses, contract proponents will think twice before including or enforcing unfair terms in these contracts. It will reinforce ethical contracting and it will give small businesses greater confidence to enter into contracts that enable them to invest and grow their business.
The protections in this bill will take effect six months after it receives royal assent. Over this six-month transition period, regulators will produce guidance material, including interactive web pages with animated videos, a guide for small businesses and a compliance manual for businesses that deal with small businesses. To facilitate this, the government provided $1.4 million to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as part of last year's budget. After the new laws have been in place for six months, the ACCC intends to work with industry to identify and address any problematic contract terms.
The cost of complying with this law will be predominantly borne by larger businesses that frequently engage in contractual dealings with small businesses and offer particularly complex contracts. Some small businesses that offer complex standard form contracts to other small businesses may also need to review their contracts. That is appropriate, because smaller businesses should be protected from unfair terms, no matter whether they are dealing with a larger enterprise or another small business. Where businesses are not willing to voluntarily amend contracts to remove unfair terms, enforcement action may be necessary. Importantly, we will be conducting a post-implementation review to make sure the unfair contract terms protections are working as intended to protect small businesses. We can draw from the insights and experiences with the current consumer protection and apply those lessons to this area of small business application.
As part of this review we will also be able to consider any concerns that the small business community may have. This reflects the ongoing commitment to consult and collaborate effectively. The coalition made a commitment to implement this measure in two successive elections. In fact, it was announced well in advance of the 2010 election. It has been worked through in great detail via an extensive process of collaboration and consultation.
I particularly want to thank the Treasury team—Ben, Aidan, Shakira, Abigail and Nirmalen—who have been very active in the Treasury portfolio, and also, my own staff in the ministerial office: Vincent, Daniel, Ineke and Joshua. It has been a long journey, but an important one.
This bill introduces significant reform that will level the playing field for small businesses to grow, invest and create jobs. With this legislation, the government is helping small businesses to invest in their businesses' success, rather than spending time and money navigating a maze of contract terms. It is another part of our plan to make Australia the best place to start and grow a business. I commend the bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
This this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I am pleased to rise and speak to the ADF Superannuation Bill 2015, the ADF Cover Bill 2015 and the Australian Defence Legislation Amendment (Superannuation and ADF Cover) Bill 2015. This package of bills will create a new superannuation scheme for members of the ADF. The opposition supports these bills and the outcomes they seek to achieve for our future ADF personnel, as well as those ADF members who choose to transfer across from the previous scheme.
In rising to speak today I would primarily like to speak to the provisions in the bills that support the aims of Project Suakin by introducing greater flexibility and portability than was available under the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme. Project Suakin was an initiative of the former Labor government. I launched it in August 2011 in my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence. It began as a project aimed at enhancing the reserve employment model and the reserve integration with the total force, most particularly in the Australian Army.
However, the scope of the project very quickly grew to encompass the whole of the Defence Force, and indeed the whole of the Defence organisation, including permanent members of the Public Service. The aim of this project was to modernise the ADF workforce environment to reflect the evolving realities and priorities of a more mobile workforce in a way that facilitated member retention, increased female workforce participation and gave Australia the most effective Defence Force and Defence organisation possible. This was a long-term investment in our Defence personnel and our Defence Force capabilities.
In 2011, more than 10,000 ADF members—both permanent members and reservists—provided input into the project through a survey that looked at their priorities and career requirements. In conjunction with other research this survey confirmed that the face of the ADF was changing, as were the workplace requirements. It revealed that our reservists wanted increased opportunities and better career management as well as—insofar as practicable—predictable work patterns. Meanwhile, our permanent members were increasingly looking for greater flexibility and a wider range of service options that more accurately reflected their changing circumstances. It was also clear that for many, service with the ADF was no longer a lifelong career, as periods of service were shorter—often much shorter than the average terms people spend with the public service. There is also greater fluidity, with many members moving in and out of the Defence Force or across service streams more than once during their careers.
So, as Project Suakin rolled out, it aimed to remove the barriers—both legal and administrative—that limited flexibility in the ADF workforce environment and in doing so provide a full spectrum of service options from full-time to part-time for our ADF members. For example, when an ADF member becomes a new parent, or when they take on the responsibility of an aging parent, their circumstances and ability to work will inevitably be affected. In his discussion of Project Suakin in The Strategist, Hugh White gives the example of a young soldier who wants to take a couple of years out of the Army to set up a nest egg and so spends a couple of years working in the mining industry. But we do not want to lose that talent permanently. These personnel, trained by the taxpayer and instilled with the virtues and values of the ADF, should be retained by the Australian Defence Force and should not be lost just because we cannot provide them with the flexibility they need and have indeed come to expect. We also want to encourage greater female workforce participation by facilitating an environment where women can have long and satisfying careers in our Defence forces regardless of whether or not they decide to have a family.
So Labor's Project Suakin set out to transform, over the long term, the workforce environment that these personnel operated in. Despite underhanded efforts on the part of those opposite to try to rebrand Project Suakin as a coalition initiative in 2013, I am glad that this endeavour has continued to be supported on a bipartisan basis. I am particularly pleased to see measures in these bills which complement and facilitate the goals of greater flexibility embodied by Project Suakin. No matter how many times those opposite seek to relaunch this initiative, it will remain supported on a bipartisan basis and a tremendous initiative.
The new superannuation scheme created by these bills moves us away from the rigidity of the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, the previous superannuation scheme which applied to serving members of the ADF and which provided for limited portability. Unlike the MSBS, this new scheme allows members to transfer their superannuation when they move to a new employer. This recognises the point that I raised earlier—that ADF personnel have increasingly been a part of the Defence family for shorter periods, with many pursuing independent civilian careers after providing service to their country. Those personnel who choose to pursue a civilian career can now take their superannuation with them. Likewise, those ADF members who move in and out of the service over the term of their working life will no longer incur the costs of dealing with cumbersome rigidities in their superannuation.
Importantly, these bills also makes changes that will assist permanent members who cannot or do not wish to work full-time. Under the current arrangements, permanent ADF members who wish to work other than full-time must take part-time leave without pay. These bills will remove that requirement. The new scheme also broadens the definition of 'salary' for superannuation purposes and removes the requirement for compulsory employee contributions.
By increasing the flexibility available to ADF members in relation to their superannuation, these bills, and the new scheme itself, support the original aims of Project Suakin. Labor fully support the continuation of the work that we began back in 2011 when we initiated Project Suakin. We therefore support the formation of this new superannuation scheme, particularly its ability to support flexibility and portability.
In this, its final form, the package of bills also achieves an appropriate balance between fiscal responsibility and the full and appropriate recognition of the unique nature of military service. Firstly, these bills bring ADF super in line with the broader Public Service's move away from defined benefit schemes and towards accumulation schemes. This moves us away from the ever-increasing long-term underfunded liabilities that were created by defined benefit schemes. We are advised that this move will reduce long-term underfunded liabilities by some $126 billion by 2050.
Secondly, the appropriate recognition of military service is achieved through the rate of employer contributions. Here I think a bit of background on the history of this package of bills is appropriate. Originally, those opposite proposed a rate of 15.4 per cent for non-warlike service and a rate of 18 per cent for warlike service. Fifteen point four per cent is the same rate that employees of the Public Service receive. This created a two-tiered system that made a distinction between different members of the Defence Force as well as between different duties of the same member of the Defence Force. Labor opposed this two-tiered system, believing it was cumbersome and created an unnecessary distinction.
There are administrative challenges with implementing such as system, including difficulties that may arise when certain duties are retrospectively identified as warlike. There are also practical issues surrounding when exactly non-warlike service becomes warlike service in what is often a fluid operating environment. These administrative issues do not support the distinction required for this two-tiered system and in their practical application would likely create more problems than benefits.
In addition, the Australian Defence Force has a culture of inclusion, where all members are part of a greater total force. Labor believes that making a distinction in this way is unnecessary to the proper acknowledgement of the unique nature of military service. Military service in unique not only in the way members of the ADF put themselves in danger but also because it includes aspects such as the military code of discipline, the regimented lifestyle, being away from family for long periods and regular relocation at the hands of the posting cycle.
It is for these reasons that Labor opposed the original formulation of these bills and the proposed two-tiered system. It is why we welcomed the decision by those opposite to abandon the two-tiered system and adopt an employee contribution rate of 16.4 per cent. A rate of 16.4 per cent is above the employee contribution for the Public Service, thereby recognising the different working environment within which these two groups operate. It is a reasonable compromise that does not create any of the difficulties that would have been experienced in a two-tiered system.
Finally, these bills also create ADF Cover, which replaces the death and invalidity cover offered by the existing scheme. Given the unique and often dangerous work which our ADF personnel undertake as part of service to their country, accessing death and invalidity cover from group insurance arrangements at a reasonable price is often impossible. ADF Cover creates an avenue for ADF personnel to access these benefits in line with the coverage offered under the Military Superannuation and Benefit Scheme.
Labor has been clear in its commitment to work with those opposite in a bipartisan fashion in matters relating to defence. That is as it should be. However, that bipartisanship should and must always have its basis in good, sound, fiscally responsible policy. Here it does just that. This package of bills and the superannuation scheme they create support the work of Labor in our initiation and development of Project Suakin by facilitating greater flexibility in the way superannuation is dealt with. This builds on the project's original aim and purpose of creating a full suite of options for ADF personnel that reflect the changing circumstances and priorities of an individual member's life, particularly in this modern world. It also strikes the appropriate balance between fiscal responsibility and the proper acknowledgement of the proper recognition of the unique working environment within which ADF members operate.
I am very pleased we are supporting this package of bills and the continued work of Project Suakin. I single out the honourable member for Canberra to commend her for her efforts in putting these measures together and in working so constructively and to such good effect with those opposite. I commend the bills to the House.
It is with great pleasure that I rise today to speak on the Australian Defence Force superannuation bills. It is great to follow the member for Batman and to see that this legislation is being done on a bipartisan basis for the benefit of our Defence men and women, who do such a great job for our country. This legislation will establish a new military superannuation scheme for our Australian Defence Force members, to be known as ADF Super. The Australian government is resolutely committed to supporting Australian Defence Force members throughout their service and in their retirement.
Over the winter break, I had the opportunity to spend time with some of our troops at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area near Rockhampton, during Exercise Talisman Sabre. Talisman Sabre brings together more than 33,000 Australian Defence Force troops and US Armed Forces to conduct combined task force operations. It is about improving combat readiness and the ability of our two armed forces to work together on a variety of missions, from conflict to peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance efforts. During my time in Shoalwater Bay, I enjoyed seeing the US paratroopers jump from a C17 after a 22-hour flight from Alaska. It was a sight to behold and a great pleasure to be a part of that.
Visiting our troops was also a great opportunity to discover firsthand the tremendous amount of training and hard work our ADF personnel undertake to prepare for their future missions. Their hard work and their making of huge sacrifices—literally putting their lives on the line for the welfare of our country—are reasons to recognise and appreciate the service that they give. For this reason it is only fair that the Australian government takes care of its Defence personnel both during their service and in the years after.
This commitment has seen the development of this landmark legislation to establish a new military superannuation scheme for ADF members, known as ADF Super. As part of the government's recognition of the unique nature of military service, accompanying legislation was also introduced to establish ADF Cover—a new scheme that will continue to provide members of the ADF with death and invalidity cover. Groundbreaking legislation to enable ADF members to seek part-time work, subject to Defence capability requirements, has also been introduced.
ADF Super fixes one of the longest running grievances of the veteran and ex-service community—namely, the lack of flexibility and portability of a member's superannuation benefit. The government, together with those opposite, have worked with stakeholders, such as the RSL, the Defence Force Welfare Association and the Australian Defence Association, in developing these policies. All major stakeholders support these important reforms, as do the opposition. The Abbott government is committed to supporting ADF personnel and these reforms will help bolster Defence capability. Importantly, these reforms will also improve conditions of service for members of the Australian Defence Force.
ADF Super introduces new, modern and flexible superannuation arrangements for people joining the ADF on or after 1 July 2016. The new military superannuation scheme will be a fully-funded accumulation scheme and the current Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, MSBS, will be closed to new members from 1 July 2016. Importantly, current serving MSBS members will not be compelled to move to ADF Super, although they can choose to do so. For the first time, ADF members will be able to join the superannuation fund of their choice, with a default military superannuation scheme established as is required under law.
In recognition of the unique nature of military service, ADF Super members will receive a generous employer contribution rate of 16.4 per cent, regardless of the superannuation fund they choose. This rate is higher than that offered to Australian public servants and is significantly higher than that available to the majority of Australians through the superannuation guarantee. There will be no requirement for ADF Super members to make employee contributions to their super. As a result, should serving MSBS members choose to move across to ADF Super they will receive an additional five per cent in their salary because they will no longer have to make five per cent compulsory contributions to the MSBS.
ADF Cover establishes a new statutory death and invalidity scheme that provides the same level of cover as is provided to members of the current MSBS. Due to the unique nature of military service, it can often be difficult for ADF members to obtain death and invalidity cover at a reasonable cost. ADF Cover seeks to address this issue. It ensures all ADF personnel who are members of ADF Super have full death and invalidity cover and it will apply regardless of the superannuation fund chosen by the ADF member. ADF members will not be required to make any contributions to ADF Cover. ADF Cover will provide benefits for ADF members who are medically discharged and whose capacity to undertake civilian employment is limited as a result of a medical condition that occurs while serving in the ADF.
Accompanying the introduction of ADF Super and ADF Cover is legislation that will provide for significantly more flexible service for our ADF members. The government has introduced groundbreaking reforms that, for the first time, will enable ADF members to seek part-time work, subject to Defence capability requirements. These significant reforms will improve the ADF's workforce model as well as provide additional flexibility for members of the military. This legislation will also improve the ADF's employment offer, leading to improved recruitment and retention of personnel. Our Defence Force is a modern, flexible and responsive employer, and the introduction of these flexible part-time arrangements for full-time ADF members will encourage skilled and experienced people to stay in the ADF longer.
The government is committed to supporting Australia's Defence Force personnel and these reforms will greatly improve the conditions of service for the ADF. I would like to congratulate our Assistant Minister for Defence, Stuart Robert, on these reforms that will take care of our Defence personnel now and into the future. I commend these bills to the House.
It gives me great pleasure to speak about the package of Australian Defence Force superannuation and cover bills and explain to the House why I support them. My speech is in three parts—support for the new superannuation scheme, discussing the importance of defence in my electorate of Indi, and acknowledging the contribution by service personnel. The most valuable resource of the ADF is its human resource—the men and women who are committed to the promotion and protection of Australians' interests at sea, on land, in the air, anywhere at any time. While the men and women of the ADF are protecting our interests, it is essential the government protect their interests. The key interest of workers is superannuation. It is the way workers can accrue funds to replace or supplement their income in retirement.
The bills before the House today are about the here and now, and the introduction of new ADF super and cover schemes is an opportune time to pause and acknowledge the service men and women who today are serving in the ADF and those considering a career in the ADF in the future. Service in the Navy, Army and Air Force is not just a job—it is a unique career. The findings of the Defence Force Welfare Association tell us that the majority of people who enlist in the ADF do not intend to pursue a lifetime service career. An effective ADF fighting force in fact demands a large core group of young adults in its fighting ranks. This core group is constantly renewed by the steady influx of new recruits to keep the core group young. The pay and conditions for service personnel should effectively and comprehensively meet the demanding and unique nature of the day-to-day work involved in fighting. While service could be overseas on peacemaking or in warlike operations, in training establishments teaching trade skills or providing military assistance to the civic community in times of disaster, Australia can and does rely on the men and women of the ADF with confidence, pride and respect.
Noting the need for renewal of the defence workforce with younger personnel, superannuation and the accompanying death and invalidity cover schemes must be relevant, flexible and portable. Currently full time ADF members must be members of two military superannuation schemes—the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Scheme, a defined benefits scheme, and the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, a hybrid scheme because it is part defined benefits and part accumulation. This legislation before the House today provides for a new military superannuation scheme for members of the ADF, and it is an accumulation scheme. The ADF Super scheme has five important features: choice over a superannuation scheme, individuals may join ADF Super or a commercial scheme; the ability to transfer accumulated benefits to another fund if they leave the ADF before preservation age; there is no mandatory member contribution; there is an employer contribution rate of 15.4 per cent, increasing to 18 per cent during periods of war-like service; and the death and invalidity cover under the new arrangements is at least equivalent to current MSBS cover. In a word ADF Super provides choice, flexibility and portability.
I would like to spend a moment talking about the DFRDB Scheme. Noting that ADF Super is the future of superannuation for the ADF, it is timely to reflect on the past, and in particular on the earlier DFRDB Scheme. I am delighted to support the great work of the Indi ex-service community, particularly those still in receipt of the DFRDB. In June, I wrote to the Assistant Minister for Defence in support of two constituents from my electorate, Mr Jim Hislop and Mr Herb Ellerbock. These ex-servicemen have identified several sections in the DFRDB Act in which they submit that the government is failing to meet its obligations to ex-service personnel. On behalf of the veteran community, Jim and Herb spent many hours researching and preparing submissions on two issues—an anomaly for DFRDB recipients who commute, and the method of indexation for members who do not commute. I support the work of Jim and Herb and add my voice to the many voices of DFRDB recipients and concerned ex-service personnel. Thank you for your work. I ask that the government investigate the issues raised and I await a response from the assistant minister.
Defence is highly valued in my electorate of Indi. Indi is gifted to be the home to several diverse and strategically critical defence establishments, in Bandiana near Wodonga and further south near Benalla. These facilities are alive with service personnel, public service staff and civilian contractors, who with their families contribute to their community in so many ways. On Monday 3 August I visited Gaza Ridge, Latchford and Wadsworth barracks as well as the Bandiana neighbourhood community centre, Everyman's Welfare Service and the Army Museum Bandiana. Under the command of Colonel Duncan Polich, the Army Logistics Training Centre provides employment and training for Wodonga and surrounding areas. ALTC maintains an intake of 850 trainees and employs 1,200 Army personnel and civilians. ALTC trains new recruits—currently there are 1,492 in training—and it trains 5,000 students every year spread across 334 courses. ALTC works closely with the Wodonga TAFE, Monash University and RMIT to provide nationally recognised qualifications to military personnel. The facility employs trainers, often ex-military, and they also provide leadership to local youth. Defence Force trainees gain experience through apprenticeships, gaining equivalent qualifications to cert 4 in a medical program or in electrical and mechanical engineering. Trainees may also be selected to participate in additional leadership exercises outside of their normal training including trekking Kokoda, Mount Feathertop and Mount Kosciuszko.
The Joint Logistics Unit—Victoria is an impressive facility run by Colonel Todd Ashurst. The JLUV incorporates 120, 000 square metres of storage providing real-time logistics to the ADF. The facility provides primary support for the ADF in clothing and 50 per cent of the national maintenance, including deep level maintenance such as rebuilds and refreshes to light armoured vehicles and transport vehicles and equipment. Further south near Benalla is Thales Australia, a munitions factory operating under the Domestic Munitions Manufacturing Arrangements Project for the Department of Defence. It is a facility of national significance and is vitally important to our local community in term of ongoing employment and economic impact. The jobs are direct manufacturing jobs in regional Victoria, vital to providing economic stability and growth. I have had the pleasure of visiting this facility on several occasions and meeting with management and workers who are all focused on delivering high-quality munitions. In 2014, with the support of my neighbour, Minister Sussan Ley, the member for Farrer, we lobbied the government to continue to fund the Benalla and Mulwala facilities. The government announced a five-year plan to extend domestic munitions production at these facilities—very welcome, indeed.
The career journey that starts in Defence is often continued when ADF personnel exit the military. Many ex-service personnel head out into the commercial workplace, bringing the skills that they acquired and honed in the military. I meet them regularly in my electorate as small business owners, administrators, HR managers, IT technicians, telecommunications engineers, contractors, electricians, carpenters, public servants and community members. As I move about my electorate, I meet many people who have served in the ADF. It is quite common for people who have served in the Bandiana Military Area to stay in and around the local area; they take up jobs and they contribute their knowledge and skills to their communities.
Today I particularly want to acknowledge and commend several Indi constituents for their contribution to local government: the CEO of the Indigo Shire, Mr Gerry Smith, and the Director of Infrastructure Services at the Rural City of Wangaratta, Mr Alan Clark. I would also like to acknowledge my political adviser, Karen Keegan, who too is ex-Army. The message is that service personnel are a gift that keeps on giving.
It is with pleasure that I inform this place that next week I am participating in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I am off to Alice Springs with the Army to be part of the Army Aboriginal Assistance Program, where I will work alongside Defence Force personnel. I am honoured to be able to participate in this program. It gives me the opportunity to see how the Army works, to meet the men and women who have dedicated themselves to this unique and vitally important work. I have spoken to other members of parliament who have participated in the program, and they assure me that I will get great value and insight into the unique nature of the military service. I have already ordered my size 9 steel capped boots. One of the special features of the program is that I get the opportunity to host a member of the ADF in this House this week. Welcome to all the ADF participants to Parliament House, and I particularly welcome and say thank you to Wing Commander Robyn Johnstone, who is working in my office.
Another jewel in the Indi crown is the Hume Veterans' Information Centre located in Wodonga. This centre recently received federal government funding through the Building Excellence in Support and Training program, knowns as BEST. This program is administered by the Department of Veterans' Affairs. The centre is a vital organisation in Indi and without federal government support the centre would be unable to provide the ongoing community support for veterans and war widows. In the past 12 months, the centre has experienced an increase in requests for support. The centre is keen to meet this demand and help where possible. The centre supports the veteran communities not only in Wodonga and surrounds, but in Tallangatta and Corowa and provides in-home support to ensure veterans and widows are safe and being looked after. The centre relies on the help of volunteers to assist our veterans to access services and entitlements. So a warm and sincere thank you to all the people at the centre, but particularly to Kevyn Williams, who is the chairman of the Hume Veterans team; you provide tireless and timely support to the veteran community. We appreciate it and are very grateful. Thank you also to the federal government and Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Senator Michael Ronaldson, on behalf of the Indi veteran community for your ongoing support for the centre.
I have spoken at length, at an earlier time, about the 2015 Anzac Centenary activities in Indi, and it goes without saying that Indi turns out in great numbers to participate in the Anzac commemorative services. I am delighted that on 4 September the Prime Minister will launch the 100-years commemorative exhibition from Wodonga. I look forward to welcoming him to my electorate. The Spirit of Anzac Centenary Experience is the government's travelling flagship exhibition that commemorates the First World War. It will visit 23 locations around Australia over the next 20 months, and Wodonga is the first stop for this travelling exhibition. The exhibition will be open at the Wodonga Sports and Leisure Centre on Friday, 4 September and run until Thursday, 10 September.
It is an exhibition that tells the story of Australia's involvement in the First World War and the ensuing century of service of Australia's armed forces in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations in which Australia has been involved. An important feature of the experience will be the 'local stories' zone. These stories will be created with each local community and contribute a legacy for each region. I am delighted that some local participants in the Anzac $150,000 contribution from the Commonwealth government will be exhibiting.
While the ADF Super and Cover bills are the 'here and now' for the men and women in the Australian Defence Force, the real impact of these bills will be realised when people exit the services or, sadly, when members are medically discharged or die in service. I know that the values of courage, integrity, respect and teamwork underpin the day-to-day work in the ADF. The work is demanding, risky, stressful, tiring, lonely, repetitive and dangerous. The work takes the men and women of the ADF away from their families and friends for lengthy periods of time, often without any notice. It is timely to say again that military service is unique.
I want to place on record my respect and thanks to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force—to those currently serving, to all the volunteers, to those who have served and, sadly, to those who have given their life while serving in the Defence Forces, to their families and friends. Thank you.
I rise to speak in support of the Australian Defence Force Superannuation Bill 2015 and related bills. These bills seek to update and modernise superannuation arrangements for members of the Australian Defence Force. The intention is to ensure that superannuation benefits for ADF personnel continue to reflect the unique nature of service relative to other Commonwealth public servants. At the same time, the bills introduce the flexibility and portability that Australians have come to expect from contemporary superannuation schemes.
Since 1991, ADF members have been required to be part of the MSBS—also known as the 'Military Super' scheme. As a defined benefit superannuation scheme, participants are entitled to a defined benefit that is based on years of service and final salary. In contrast, private sector employees and, since 2005, new Commonwealth public servants are generally members of accumulation superannuation schemes. The structure of the MSBS has posed challenges both to ADF members and to the Commonwealth. For ADF members, it has restricted choice by preventing serving ADF members from choosing to be a part of an alternative scheme, a choice that is available to the vast majority of the Australian workforce. It has also restricted flexibility by preventing ADF members from being able to transfer their benefits to another scheme when they leave the Defence Force.
The MSBS has also imposed a significant funding challenge for government. As a defined benefit scheme, it is not fully funded by member contributions and therefore creates uncapped liabilities for government. These liabilities are difficult to manage because the nature of superannuation means that meeting obligations to a young employee today means incurring liabilities that will only be required to be paid in several decades time when that employee retires. In effect, this means that government is incurring debt obligations now and leaving future generations of taxpayers to pay for them.
Successive governments have grappled with the issue of how to ensure sustainability of ADF superannuation arrangements. In fact, these bills are the culmination of an exhaustive process of review and consultation that had its genesis under the former Howard government. In February 2007, the member for Dunkley, who was at the time the Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, announced a review of military superannuation arrangements. Among the concerns the government noted at the time were the growing unfunded liabilities associated with the MSBS. The findings of that review—the Podger review—were released by the incoming Rudd government later in 2007. The review found that the MSBS fell well short of best practice and recommended its closure and replacement. The details of the replacement scheme were the subject of further consultation with stakeholders, and the successive Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments were unable to obtain the necessary agreement from veterans groups and other stakeholders in order to proceed with reforms.
On coming to government, the coalition announced the establishment of the National Commission of Audit, which was tasked with, among other things, identifying potential future risks to the structural integrity of the budget. The Commission of Audit identified the MSBS as the only major Commonwealth superannuation scheme with unfunded defined benefits that remains open to new members. It recommended that the MSBS be replaced by an accumulation scheme for new ADF personnel.
The bills that comes before the House today are reflective of the many years of debate, discussion and consultation with affected stakeholders. The bills introduce new, modern and flexible superannuation arrangements for people joining the ADF on and after 1 July 2016. For the first time, ADF members will have the flexibility to change superannuation funds and join a superannuation fund of their choosing.
Importantly, ADF members will receive a generous employer contribution rate of 16.4 per cent, irrespective of their choice of superannuation fund. This exceeds the 15.4 per cent offered to Australian public servants and well exceeds the 9.5 per cent available to the majority of Australians through the Superannuation Guarantee. Under the new scheme, serving ADF members will no longer be required to contribute a portion of their salary to their superannuation scheme. Existing ADF members will have a choice as to whether to transfer to the new scheme or remain in the existing MSBS. However, ADF members who elect to transfer to the new scheme will receive an immediate increase of five per cent in their take-home pay—five per cent being the minimum amount that they were previously required to pay into the MSBS. As a consequence of the introduction of the new scheme, the MSBS will be closed to new members from 1 July 2016.
The changes proposed in these bills bring the Australian Defence Force superannuation arrangements in line with the realities of modern work. The workforce composition of the ADF has changed in recent decades, mirroring trends in the wider workforce. Increasingly, ADF recruits are spending shorter portions of their career in Defence. They are seeking to join the ADF, serve their country while gaining job skills and then use those job skills to transition to careers outside of Defence.
When it comes to recruitment, the ADF is beginning to move with the times. Particularly in specialist categories where recruitment is difficult, the ADF is now advertising itself as an option for young people who want to gain skills that they can use later in their career outside the ADF. As a consequence, generations of recruits coming through are not seeing a Defence job as a job for life. However, the old MSBS superannuation arrangements were acting as a barrier to ADF positioning itself as a modern employer. The unique nature of its defined benefit arrangements based on years of service act as a disincentive to leave the ADF, and the lack of portability of superannuation reduces the attractiveness of a Defence Force career for prospective recruits.
At the same time, these bills demonstrate the coalition government's commitment to charting a responsible course back to surplus. By closing the MSBS to new members, the government is taking action to minimise uncapped future liabilities that would otherwise have been borne by future generations of taxpayers. In the 2014-15 budget papers, it was estimated that the impact of the closure of the MSBS from 1 July 2016 will reduce unfunded superannuation liability by a staggering $126 billion by 2049-50.
The evolutionary nature of this legislation means that stakeholders have had ample opportunity to understand and accept the rationale behind the changes proposed. The government accepts that superannuation is a contentious area of policymaking and that change by its very nature advantages some more than others. However, I am advised that organisations such as the Defence Force Welfare Association, or DWFA, have expressed broad support for the closure of the MSBS and the establishment of an accumulation scheme for ADF members. I note that the DFWA and other organisations, such as the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations and the Returned and Services League of Australia, expressed concern at an earlier proposal to set the contribution rate at 15.4 per cent, the same as for other Australian public servants. In response to their feedback, the government has proposed an increased rate of 16.4 per cent in recognition of the unique nature of the Australian Defence Force service. In response to stakeholder feedback, the government has also elected not to proceed with a two-tiered contribution rate that distinguishes between 'warlike service' and other service.
The position that has been reached is one that, I am advised, is acceptable to the Labor Party and I acknowledge their support for these bills. To the extent that it is possible, I think that bipartisanship on matters relating to Defence is in the best interests of serving personnel. Bipartisanship on this issue is an indication that the government has the balance right on reform of ADF superannuation.
In reforming Australian Defence Force superannuation the government wants to achieve three objectives: firstly, it wants to ensure that ADF personnel remain adequately supported by a superannuation scheme that recognises their service to this nation; secondly, it wants to ensure that a Defence Force career remains an attractive proposition to young Australians; and, thirdly, it wants to ensure that future generations of Australian taxpayers are not saddled with debt obligations that this country cannot afford. These bills ensure that the government fulfils all three objectives and ensures that long awaited reforms to Australian Defence Force superannuation are responsibly delivered. I commend these bills to the House.
I rise to speak on the Australian Defence Force Superannuation Bill 2015, the Australian Defence Force Cover Bill 2015 and the Defence Legislation Amendment (Superannuation and ADF Cover) Bill 2015. I want to go through the dry parts of the bills because my Defence community in Townsville are very keen on this legislation. I will make sure I get across exactly what we are trying to do here and then I will make some general comments about Defence in my city.
This legislation introduces new, modern, flexible superannuation arrangements for members in the ADF on or after 1 July 2016, known as ADF Super. For the first time ADF members will be able to choose their superannuation fund. This legislation will also make rules for the administration of the ADF super fund. ADF members know that in their work it can be difficult to obtain death and disability cover. We are also introducing legislation to establish ADF Cover, a new scheme that will provide members of the ADF with death and invalidity cover, which is so important for members of their family. Legislation will also enable ADF members to seek part-time work, subject to Defence capability requirements.
Until now ADF members have had no flexibility with their superannuation benefits. People struggling with their military superannuation, especially those who have already separated, continually come into my office. The current Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, or MSBS, will be closed to new members of the ADF from 1 July 2016. Although existing ADF members will not be forced to move from MSBS to ADF Super, they can choose to do so.
The government has consulted with the wider Defence community on this legislation, the Defence Force Welfare Association, the RSL and the Australian Defence Association. There is cross-party support in this chamber for this legislation. This legislation fixes one of the biggest and longest-running grievances of the veteran and ex-service community. This legislation will introduce new measures to allow the Minister for Defence to create a trust deed by 1 July 2016. This deed will establish the ADF Super scheme and vest the fund in the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, or the CSC—the one thing Defence loves is acronyms; they just love acronyms. If you had a whole conversation just using letters, people wearing a uniform or who have worn a uniform would be able to follow it no problems at all.
ADF Super members will receive a contribution rate of 16.4 per cent, regardless of which superannuation fund they choose. This rate is higher than for the APS at 15.4 per cent and the general population at 9.5 per cent. I want to talk about that later because there are specific reasons. We must understand the nature of service. ADF Super will apply to those ADF members who join the Defence forces from 1 July 2016. Current ADF members who are on MSBS and switch to ADF Super will receive a five per cent increase to their take-home pay as members will no longer be required to make the compulsory five per cent contributions. I do not think that will be lost on my city either. This will apply to former serving MSBS members who rejoin the services and choose to join ADF Super and to MSBS and DFRDB members who receive retirement pay and rejoin the ADF on a full-time basis or as a reservist on or after 1 July 2016. The current MSBS will be closed to new members from 1 July next year. Currently contributing DFRDB members are unable to transfer to ADF Super.
The Australian Defence Force Cover Bill 2015 establishes the new statutory death and invalidity scheme to be known as ADF Cover. All ADF members who join ADF Super will be covered by ADF Cover regardless of their superannuation fund. ADF Cover will provide benefits for those who are medically discharged and have only limited employment as a civilian as a result of service. If a member's capacity is reduced by 60 per cent, they will be classified as class A and receive an appropriate pension. If an ADF member's capacity is reduced by 30 per cent or more but less than 60 per cent then they will be classified as class B and will receive the appropriate pension. If the member's capacity is under 30 per cent, they will be classified as class C and superannuation will be preserved in the fund they choose.
If an ADF member dies in service, or if an invalid dies while receiving an invalidity pension, benefits will be paid to the dependants of that member or invalid or to their estate. The lump sum to the surviving spouse is 25 times the prospective service to age 60 multiplied by the member's salary on the date of death. That will be attractive to some Defence wives I know who have spoken about their capacity to claim on this as well—I mean that as a joke.
The spouse can convert the lump sum to a pension. The pension is 1.5 per cent of prospective service to age 60 multiplied by the member's salary on the day of death. The pension is increased if they have eligible children. If there is no spouse but there are dependent children, the lump sum—calculated as 25 times prospective service to age 60 multiplied by the member's salary on the date of death—is paid to the guardian or legal personal representative for the benefit of the children.
So those are the nuts and bolts of what we are trying to achieve here. I really should address the flexibility of service. This legislation provides for more flexible service for permanent ADF members. For the first time ADF members can seek part-time work. This will be subject to capability requirements of the force. It is believed those changes will improve the ADF workforce model, will provide additional flexibility for members and will lead to improved recruitment and retention in the force.
When people come to me to talk about military personnel, there are the normal gripes about DFRDB and DFRB that we have worked on. We have changed the allocations for those sorts of things in that space. Most guys who are younger than me—sub-50; around your age, Deputy Speaker Mitchell—
Nice crawling!
in the mid-thirties. For guys who have gone through this, there is the growth of their superannuation and lack of ability to make the nest egg even better with the rigidity of the current system. That is what really gets under their skin. That is what they want addressed.
I want to address the rate of superannuation for military personnel. Some people may think that service personnel get it pretty good, but I am here to tell you that in my city, when it comes to ADF personnel, we ask a lot of them. We hire a specific kind of person and we ask a lot of them. Very few jobs in this country require you to routinely carry 45- or 48-kilo packs, jump out of the back of trucks, jump out of the back of helicopters and the like and be prepared to go, at a moment's notice, anywhere in the world for these things. Wear and tear is part of your job.
My nephew has just joined the Army. He has just finished at Kapooka. He is one of the few guys who came through and will be getting an apprenticeship. He is very keen on his fitness and very keen on joining up. He wanted to go down the fitter and turner line to work on calibrations, making guns and helping with those sorts of things. I stressed to him, 'Please, please, please, don't join the infantry,' because when you finish in infantry you have shoulder problems, back problems, hip problems, knee problems and ankle problems. That is just par for the course. No matter how fit you think you are, you are hurting yourself every day when you are in the ADF. It is the nature of service that they do. I will explain my nephew's recruitment process—the way the ADF is changing the way they are hiring. They still look for the type-A personality; they still look for the person who is able to make decisions and is able to train for those decisions. When my nephew was going through the recruitment process, I was interested in hearing from him firsthand about what they were talking to him about. They wanted to know what kind of person he was, what kind of man he would become and how he would contribute to his society. An Army person, an Air force person, a Navy person or a person on the city street may not think that those questions are relevant. We are trying to make sure that we are hiring the right sort of person.
The ADF is a changing organisation. We are lucky that we probably have the highest paid soldiers, sailors and airmen in the world. Recently at the operation Talisman Sabre at Rockhampton, I was talking to a US army colonel. He said, 'I'm very interested in the support that you give your soldiers by way of pay, because it is a lot better than ours.' That does not mean that they are overpaid. There is the level of training that they go through. We have a different kind of Army. With the size and scale of the US Army, you have the necessary workforce and you are able to keep pushing people forward. We have a small to medium sized Army with a small to medium sized Defence Force. We require an intelligent soldier, an intelligent sailor and an intelligent airman or air woman. We must make sure that we are in that space and that we are able to provide the level of support required to make sure that they are available to give their best performance at the best possible time. We have a different kind of soldier to other armies. We are smaller, we have to be more adaptable, we have to be smarter and we have to be more intelligent. The basic soldier, sailor or Air Force person in this country is very clever. We must make sure that we do those things.
My electorate is one of the youngest electorates in the nation, but I have one of the largest veteran populations as well. The sorts of issues at play in this space must be taken care of because it reflects across my entire community. We must ensure that we leave the door open. When someone gets out of the Army, Navy or Air Force the door needs to be open for them to come back, even on a part-time basis to put their toe back in the water. What someone is like as a 25-year-old when they have done their eight or nine years on initial deployment is going to be completely different to what they are like as a 35-year-old who may have been married, had a couple of kids, has settled down in the community and is maybe looking for stability. We have to make sure that in our community we have the circumstance where people can come back into the service. It is not just about turning up on a Tuesday night for a march and a bit of a chat but coming back on a part-time basis, putting their toe in the water and saying, 'Can I rejoin? Should I rejoin?' They need the ability to work on a part-time basis and, as long as the ADF is in agreement, they would be able to provide as much income as they are prepared to make for their entire family.
In this place, we have to make it as easy as possible for people to transition back into the service, because we invest an awful lot of money in their training. The LHD is currently in Townsville and is about to do exercises in the Coral Sea. Major General Stuart Smith is in my city. When he talks about the training of soldiers for combat conditions, he talks about making sure that it is not so much a learned response but muscle memory, so that that is what you do. That is the level of training that is required in this space. That is why we have to continue to make sure that our training is the best, that our support is the best, that our medical is the best and that our superannuation is the best—superannuation and retirement benefits for the men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to keep our country safe. At the end of the day, we have a very safe country and it is in no small measure due to the work that our Defence Force personnel do on the outside. With those few words, we commend this bill to the House. We hope it goes through and that by 1 July 2016 we will be up and away. I thank the House.
Debate interrupted.
Today is Vietnam Veterans Day. Today we commemorate the Battle of Long Tan. In 1966, it was the largest single-unit battle fought by Australian troops in Vietnam. Today we also remember and acknowledge all Vietnam veterans and the sacrifices made by our young men and women and their families during this conflict that spanned 10 years.
Indi has a vibrant and involved veteran population. As always, the veteran community is supported by all the RSLs across Indi. Today the Beechworth RSL is holding a service at 3 pm. It will be a small service with members from the Bright RSL in attendance. Unfortunately, I cannot be there for the commemoration and to welcome the new Beechworth RSL president, Damian Batty. I also acknowledge all the great support provided by the Vietnam and Associated Veterans Club in Wodonga under the stewardship of President Jim Salmond. I thank him for his warm welcome.
It is also timely to acknowledge the Vietnam and Veterans Families Counselling Service that operates in the DVA office in Wodonga. Thank you to Lisa Clark and her team for the great and important work that they do.
In this Anzac centenary year, it is important that all of us in this House recognise the commitment veterans have made, particularly during the Vietnam conflict. Today we remember you, we acknowledge you, we honour you and we say, 'Thank you.'
I rise to speak about Jason Day and his fantastic win in the US PGA championship on the weekend.
Just to give some background about him: Day married his wife, Ellie, in 2009 and they are now expecting their second child. Day took up golf at his boarding school on Queensland's Gold Coast. He was sent there by his mother to curb his rebellious and partying ways. As we know from today's media, at the age of 12 Day lost his father, Alvin, who had been an enormous influence on his life. After his father died of brain cancer, his mother, Dening, sold the family home to send him to golf school and give him the best chance of reaching his dreams. Day said:
It was very easy to stop partying because there was nothing else to do except go to school and golf. There was literally nothing around us, So I was pretty much forced to go to school and golf. And I realised what my mum had done, and that I needed an education.
Day turned professional in 2006 after winning the Australian Master of the Amateurs. He hit the big time in 2010 with his first event win.
Day faced troubles during his professional career, with injury setbacks and battles with vertigo. This led to many major near misses when he came so close but could not find the finishing touches to his game. Day is officially ranked No. 3 in the world and he has six previous PGA tour victories.
I would also like to mention his caddy, Col Swatton, a PGA professional, who has coached and mentored Day since his early teens, and the enormous support from the Australian PGA, without which none of our golfers would be so successful.
For two years the Abbott government has engaged in an unprecedented attack on the ability of Australians to access affordable health care. The freeze on the Medicare Benefits Schedule rebate, which kicked in with a vengeance on 1 July, is simply the fourth version of the GP tax the government is using to drive down bulk billing and to drive up the cost of seeing a doctor.
Already there are reports from across the country of new fees of up to $20 and $30 for patients who cannot afford them and who have all previously been bulk billed, including concession card holders and residents in nursing homes. A Tasmanian GP told Australian Medicine that his practices in Ulverstone and Penguin have been forced to introduce a $30 charge for the hundreds of patients who had previously been bulk billed. He said:
We have now reached an inflexion point, triggered by the rebate freeze, where it is increasingly unaffordable.
We have doctors right across the country reporting this. One from Perth recently said:
Unfortunately the freeze on the rebate means that we will either have to increase the gap for our private patients or consider a gap fee for those who bulk bill.
Hard-working GPs across the country are trying to do the best for their patients, but because of the actions of this government, they are now forced into making a choice—going broke, or raising their fees and ending bulk billing. Shame, government, shame!
I take this opportunity today to update the House on an Indigenous health issue in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, a major regional centre in my electorate of O'Connor.
In response to a series of allegations, the board of the Aboriginal corporation, NTPAC, decided to return government funding and start the process of dissolving the corporation. This has seen the loss of 11 staffing positions and left 500 clients unsure about where they can access equivalent services.
I am not going to discuss the allegations that led us to this point, as there is an investigation underway. What I am most concerned about—and have been working hard on—is making sure the maternity and family services previously provided by NTPAC are maintained in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and also that the 11 staff made redundant receive the entitlements they are entitled to.
I have been in constant contact with Minister Nash, who is responsible for the funding, and Minister Scullion, who is responsible for the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, which is winding up the organisation. I have invited both ministers to Kalgoorlie to meet with the stakeholders to ensure that an equivalent service is maintained.
On Friday, Minister Nash and Minster Scullion will meet with alternative service providers. There are other organisations in Kalgoorlie capable of taking over NTPAC's funding, and I have spoken to several. My preferred outcome is for one of them to continue NTPAC's services. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the meeting, as I have a prior engagement in Esperance. However, I will speak with both ministers after the meeting and will continue to fight to maintain this important service in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
This government's cuts to health and hospitals across the nation have been devastating, especially in regional and rural areas. We have seen cuts to hospital funding and dental care—and we have seen many versions of the GP tax. In regional areas, locals blame the National Party for these harsh cuts and hold them responsible.
When we look at hospitals, we see that this government has ripped up Labor's hospital funding agreements with the states. They are ripping more than $57 billion in funding from our public hospitals. What this means for the hospitals is an increase in emergency department waiting times and an increase in elective surgery waiting times, and it will reduce the number of hospital beds across the country. This will be even more devastating in regional areas.
We have seen so many different versions of the GP tax. This government is cutting $2 billion from Medicare over the next four years in its latest attempt to introduce a GP tax. These cuts will see bulk-billing rates plummet and will mean increases in out-of-pocket costs for millions of patients. That is the reality. An article published in the Medical Journal of Australia estimated that these cuts would see concessional patients who had previously been bulk-billed face new costs of at least $8.43 per visit—a huge increase that most people will not be able to afford.
We have also seen some really savage cuts to dental care. Across two budgets this government has now ripped around half a billion dollars from programs designed to care for the dental health of some of Australia's most vulnerable patients. Shame on this government, which has made massive cuts to health and hospitals.
Earlier this year I was very proud to announce the rollout of the NBN in Narre Warren and Narre Warren South in June 2016. This has come after already having Narre Warren South on the planned rollout maps, only to have it ripped away from the community by the then Labor government. Furthermore, at the Timbarra community cabinet held by the Labor government in 2012, the then communications minister, Stephen Conroy, when specifically asked about the NBN rollout in La Trobe, responded that it was not even on the radar. By delivering NBN in La Trobe, the Liberal government has not only delivered what the Labor government could not; obviously, it will be delivered years earlier than Labor could have ever imagined.
Special thanks go to Steve Barnes, who led the local charge. He is a great resident of Narre Warren South. Thanks also go to the City of Casey council and Minister Malcolm Turnbull. We have managed to secure a commitment to deliver NBN, beginning with a rollout by June 2016 in Narre Warren and Narre Warren South. It is also great news for Narre Warren North, Clyde North and Berwick. Over 13,000 local families and businesses will have very fast internet sooner and more affordably.
Again, congratulations, Steve Barnes; you have done a terrific job. Thanks very much for all your support.
This government's attacks on Medicare are starting to be felt in regional Australia, particularly in regional Victoria. To highlight the struggles that the small regional town of Hamilton in the electorate of Wannon is facing, I will read something that has been texted through to me. Hamilton Medical Group just posted this:
In view of the Government freezing of the Medicare rebate, in order to sustain a medical service and attract doctors to come and work in Hamilton, the Hamilton Medical Group will be changing its billing policy.
From Monday, September 28, 2015 full payment will be required for all consultations on the day of service.
This is how this government is breaking Medicare. This is how this government is smashing bulk-billing. It is a backdoor way to freeze the rebate to force local medical services to increase their fees. For people in Hamilton, like people in Bendigo, where other practices have been forced to do this, it means that, before they can get support, before they can get to see a doctor, they have to have the money in the bank. Another example in my own electorate relates to psychology services. Patients have been asked to have $165 up-front in their bank account before they can see somebody. Of course, this will be reimbursed, but they have to have the money up-front. They will be out of pocket by $40. These are the attacks of this government. (Time expired)
The Hasluck Local Sporting Champion Grants kicked off in Hasluck last week. I had the privilege of presenting 11 local sporting champions with certificates to recognise their excellence in their chosen sports. The local sporting champion grants are about giving opportunities to young sporting men and women to continue to pursue their dreams. The local sporting stars in Hasluck were chosen because of their enormous individual commitment to their chosen sport, which involves early mornings and late nights, and numerous consults with physiotherapists, chiropractors and podiatrists.
For the families of these sporting champs, it means giving up weekend mornings so that you can cheer on from the sidelines for the children that make you proud. I want to acknowledge Michael Verran for swimming, Trent Daniele for baseball, Dustin Brown for baseball, Jarryd Bain for baseball, Ethan Williams for rugby league, Toby Sullivan for rugby league, Luke English for AFL, Jessica Shaw for calisthenics, Emma Green for lacrosse, Ben Harris for canoeing and Rebecca Robinson for swimming.
I was extremely impressed by all of the sporting champs and I wish them all the best in their future endeavours and hope that they achieve their dreams of becoming professional sports men and women. I know they will make us all proud. When I interviewed them on the presentation of their certificates, all of them had a great sense of pride not only in the sporting pathway they were choosing but also for the level of support they receive from their families, who give up an incredible amount of time.
When it comes to health, government members are just not listening. They are not listening to the Australian people. In particular, they are not listening to the 10,000 Scullin constituents who signed my 'No GP Tax' petition last year. In fact, they are not even listening to their own Prime Minister. I think we all remember the promise before the election: no cuts to health. All we have seen are significant cuts to health, in particular, to primary health care, which are having such an impact.
Three times this government tried to introduce a co-payment, a GP tax, through the front door. Now, having failed, through two failed health ministers, we are seeing it through the back door, through a freeze on indexation. People in the communities I present are deeply concerned about this for them, for their families and for their neighbours. So I have written to every GP clinic in the Scullin electorate. I have not received all the responses yet, but what I have heard back is deeply, deeply concerning. A bulk-billing practice told me they would be introducing co-payments next year to cover their costs. Another clinic told me they have had to introduce new $10 fees for concessional patients, who cannot afford it. These are patients who had previously been bulk-billed, because Labor invested in Medicare, because Labor believes in universal health care.
For 40 years this has been a defining issue in Australian politics. For 40 years Labor members have stood up for the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to decent health and decent wellbeing. Government members, for 40 years, have done the opposite. It is time for this to end. (Time expired)
Yesterday's meeting of the Parliamentary Friends of Medicine discussed adult vaccination and the cost of avoidable disease in adults. Despite a childhood vaccination rate over 90 per cent, the adult rate is around 50 to 70 per cent. This presents a particular risk for those Australians aged 65 and over. A special thankyou to our guest speakers: Professor Raina Maclntyre, Head of the School of Population Health at UNSW; Dr Mark Simmerman, Regional Director of Epidemiology and Medical Affairs at Sanofi Pasteur Asia Pacific; and Ms Carole Bloomer, a lung transplant recipient and pneumonia patient.
The influenza virus is especially dangerous, and a vaccine is offered free for high risk people under the National Immunisation Program. The current vaccine protects against two A strains and one B strain of flu. However, with two known B strains in circulation, the choice of which to include in the vaccine is not perfect. Over recent months, Australian businesses have seen a huge spike in sick days as the B strain not included in the vaccine has become prevalent.
A quadrivalent vaccine that includes both B strains is available through the private market but is not currently supported through the National Immunisation Program. As co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Medicine, I will be writing to the Minister for Health requesting her advice to ensure that Australians at high risk from influenza and its complications can receive the strongest possible defence against this disease.
I rise in the chamber today to speak about health and about how Australia is changing before our eyes. We have had two years of this government—two years of good government, so claims the Prime Minister! Well, let us look at health and test that good government, shall we? Three attempts to break Medicare have been blocked in this place. Debate has been raging for months, and they have taken the back door with a freeze on the indexation—a freeze that, we hear in our electorates, makes going to see a doctor more expensive for people in our communities. This is a disgrace. You know what is worse? The funding cuts to the flexible health area—funding cuts to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
Members opposite are running round tables on ice in their electorates. I hope that they are listening. I hope that they are listening to the families who need to turn to their GPs and who need to access those areas for support. I hope that they are listening, and I hope that they turn this back before it is too late, before Australia is changed forever and before Medicare is undermined completely.
Cancer has touched so many Australians either directly or indirectly. As patron of a local charity in my electorate of Mackellar, Fight on the Beaches, it was my privilege to attend the second annual Christmas in July ball to raise money for Cure Cancer Australia. Each and every day, around 330 Australians will be diagnosed with cancer, and, as we all know, research is vital to the fight against this insidious disease. That is why a group of northern beaches women in my electorate established the Fight on the Beaches charity only last year.
In hosting the first annual ball last year, they raised $100,000 for Cure Cancer Australia, and it was used towards supporting the work and research of Dr Christine Napier, of the Children's Medical Research Institute, on a project she hopes will lead to clinical trials for less toxic anticancer drugs. This year, the Fight on the Beaches charity ball was bigger and better than ever, with the dinner sold out and raising more than $200,000—well above their $150,000 target—which will go to funding two equally important research grants through Cure Cancer Australia.
Fight on the Beaches was supported by many individuals and business sponsors, who gave generously to ensure the night's success. I would like to acknowledge the executive committee, Michelle Heaton-Armstrong, Meghann Parker, Rebecca Coulson, Stacey Mitchell, Lisa Routledge, Colleen Camelin, Carol Chaffer, Danielle Hobbs and all the other volunteers who assisted on the night, without whose hard work the success of the ball would not have been achieved and the money not raised for this very important work.
The Abbott government's changes to the general practice incentives program for after-hours services are yet another attack on Medicare and access to affordable healthcare for all Australians. Recently, I was contacted by—and met with—a well-established, reputable, local general practice in my electorate. As a result of the changes, they will have their PIP payments cut from $44,000 to $14,000 a year. The net effect will be that the practice will have to drastically cut back on after-hours service and around 65 patients per week will not get access to after-hours care. That, in turn, will mean that more people will seek treatment at the emergency departments of public hospitals or defer their doctors visit. Both options are likely to result in a more expensive public health outcome. This surgery has an 80 per cent bulk-billing rate, so increasing patient fees to make up the funding shortfall is not a realistic option. I have written to Minister Ley about this matter, providing her with all the relevant details, and I await her response.
Treating patients at their local practice, by their GP, is the most cost-effective and health-effective option for the patient and the community. The Abbott government should stop trying to dismantle Medicare. It should listen to the front-line health professionals. It should reverse its miserly cuts to the Practice Incentives Program payments and prevent the disastrous health effects that the false savings—these funding cuts—will cause.
Deputy Speaker, if you look up in the gallery you will see the Loddon Murray Community Leadership Program. You will also see the Northern Mallee Leadership Program. These are young men and women from Australia, and my patch, who are here to learn about how they can be better leaders and make their community greater. A country gets the government it deserves, and a community is only made great when people work hard and contribute.
Last night, I hosted some of these people in the dining hall and the sometimes-honourable member for Bendigo hosted the other guys in the dining hall, but it was a very good dialogue and discussion. They are here to talk to different members of parliament and gain a greater appreciation of the Australian political system. The program is 23 days, 118 speakers, 17 workshops and 28 site visits over nine months. It is quite extensive. It is something that we should roll out Australia wide, rather than just in Victoria, as we can build up the people who live in our communities.
I want to say to the people in the gallery that with opportunity comes responsibility—the great words of Winston Churchill. You are having a great opportunity to build your capacity, but there is a responsibility to give back to your community, and I purely believe that you will do it. It is a pleasure to be able to host you in the parliament today.
The one thing that Australians know is that you cannot trust the Abbott government. You particularly cannot trust the Abbott government when it comes to health. Before the election, the Abbott government said, 'No cuts to health'. After the election, in the first budget, there were cuts to health. This is a government with a mean and tricky agenda. It really wants to undermine health in Australia, and it believes that you should obtain health care not when you present your Medicare card but when you present your credit card. The Abbott government is a government that believes in a US-style health system—one that we, on this side of the House, are opposed to. We believe that every Australian deserves quality health care. We do not believe that a government should deliver cuts instead of health care.
The member for Charlton is sitting beside me. Our electorates are very close to each other. When the Prime Minister was the health minister, bulk-billing rates went down and down. The member for Charlton tells me that that has happened in Charlton under this government. And it is happening in the Shortland electorate. We, on this side of the House, will fight these health cuts. The people of Western Australia will have a chance to cast their vote against them— (Time expired)
This will be boring, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. I am always fighting for small business in Victoria. The Age's Josh Gordon, on 17 August, wrote that businesses are urging the state government to reconsider plans for a Friday public holiday before the AFL grand final. A survey of employers reveals that three-quarters intend to close for the day to avoid the extra wage bill. Highlighting the significant economic impact of the holiday, a survey by the Australian Industry Group found that eight out of 10 Victorian manufacturers and more than seven out of 10 services and construction businesses plan to shut their doors for the day, costing the state economy $1 billion at least. That suggests that 158,000 companies will be closed for the day. A further 31,000 will stay open but will cut staff or their opening hours.
The Ai Group's Victorian Director, Tim Piper, said the research highlighted the damage inflicted on Victorian businesses, especially small business. On average, businesses that will not open will lose $15,800 in sales, while still having to pay $9,000 in wages. Those that will open expect to spend an average of $6,700 extra on penalty rates. In the article in The Age, Mr Piper said:
That's a headache, not a holiday … There should be no doubt Football Friday is bad news for the state and its businesses. As we have stressed in our dialogue with the government and in the formal response process, we strongly urge reconsideration of this additional public holiday.
The analysis follows a government-commissioned study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which found the Friday holiday will cost the state economy $852 million a year in lost production. (Time expired)
I rise to talk about Medicare—a great Australian institution. After the rejection of their $7 GP tax three times—and who could forget Joe Hockey comparing it to two middies of beer?—and after that disastrous sales campaign failing, they have now introduced a GP tax by the back door through a freeze on the rebate for GPs. This equates to an $8 dollar GP tax. That will hit my community most grievously. It will end bulk-billing. The sad truth is it is part of an ideological agenda to attack Medicare that the Liberal Party has had for the last 40 years. At least in the seventies and eighties they were open about it. Their official policy was to abolish Medicare. Now, they are doing it by the back door.
The tragedy is it will be counterproductive. Primary health care is the most cost-effective form of health care. We need to be investing more in it, not less. A former secretary of the health department has found that if just one in 50 of the deterred visits to GPs that this initiative will produce, if just one in 50 of those 1 million avoided visits, presents to an emergency department the entire savings will be wiped out. This is a policy that will not work. It will hurt Australian families and will end a great Australian institution—Medicare and bulk-billing. It must be opposed and condemned. (Time expired)
This week I will be launching the Boost the Bruce campaign in relation to the Bruce Highway. The Bruce Highway is the biggest traffic carrier throughout Queensland. More than 100,000 vehicles use the highway every day between Caboolture and Caloundra alone. This government is about 21st century infrastructure. We are investing heavily. That is why I have joined with the members for Dickson, Longman and Fisher, as well as Queensland Senator James McGrath, to push for the Bruce Highway to be widened to at least six lanes between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane. We also want to see the Gateway Motorway upgraded from the Deagon Deviation to the Bruce Highway.
I encourage locals to jump on board and sign the petition at boostthebruce.com.au. Boost the Bruce is a long-term vision that North Brisbane needs. As the federal coalition government, we want to work together with the state government to ensure that Queensland gets the infrastructure it needs and the resources to make this project a reality.
I give my congratulations to you, Mr Speaker. One of the greatest challenges faced by those of us who live in rural and regional Australia is the maintenance of access to affordable healthcare services. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister is cutting $2 billion from Medicare over the next four years in his latest attempt to introduce a GP tax. These harsh cuts, of course, will hit pensioners and low-income earners hardest. But, more broadly, they will have their greatest impact on those of us who live in rural and regional Australia. You have to ask: where are those opposite who represent rural and regional seats in this matter? Where is the member for Barker? Where are the members for Eden-Monaro, Page, Capricornia, Braddon, Lyons, New England, Bass, Gilmore and Mallee? Of course, there are a few more. Where are they when their constituents need them?
We do not begrudge our city cousins for the plentiful GPs they have in their local electorates, but in rural and regional Australia, the Prime Minister should understand, we have doctor shortages and we have GP to resident ratios that are all too low. This will make the situation worse in rural and regional Australia. This, apparently, is a Prime Minister who wants to be known not for what he did but rather for what he ended. The way he is going, bulk-billing in rural and regional Australia will come to an end. (Time expired)
On 9 August, Fairless, a film celebrating a country town legend, was premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival. The film features a Shepparton cycling great and dairy farmer, Steve Fairless, who first competed in the 1998 Seoul Olympics. The documentary is about Steve's comeback to the cycling world. In 2013, he won the Australian masters road title. Last year, he went to Slovenia to compete in the world masters championships. He came second in the 50-54 age bracket. He controversially lost by 0.1 of a second. But, in true fighting spirit, he is now in Austria to take out the world title. Fairless the film was written and directed by another Shepparton great, Marcus Cobbledick. It has now been sold to Qantas and Emirates airlines for their in-flight entertainment. (Time expired)
The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.
I deeply regret to inform the House that there was a vicious attack in Bangkok last night. A bomber or bombers struck near the Erawan Shrine, which is a popular tourist location. The attack was clearly aimed at innocent people. While full details are yet to be entirely known, we do know that at least 20 people have been killed and at least 125 have been injured. This is yet another attack on innocent people going about their daily lives.
I can inform the House that our embassy in Bangkok remains in close contact with the Thai authorities to determine whether any Australians have been involved in this atrocity. So far, we have no information to indicate that there are any Australians among the dead or injured. I can further inform the House that the Australian Federal Police have offered their Thai counterparts technical assistance. Other security agencies have also offered support to their Thai counterparts.
Some 900,000 Australians travel to Thailand every year. Thailand is a friendly neighbour. Millions of Australians have happy memories of trips to Thailand. Australians should continue to go to Thailand, because the object of the sorts of people who let off bombs in crowded cities is to scare us from being ourselves. We should never be cowed or intimidated by that. Nevertheless, Australians overseas should remain vigilant, they should monitor the Smartraveller website and they should exercise an appropriate degree of caution.
In these sad circumstances, we are honoured to be joined today in the chamber by the Thai ambassador. I welcome His Excellency to the chamber today.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
All Australians are very, very sad. We abhor this atrocity and we extend our sympathies and our condolences to the government and the people of Thailand.
Let me finish on this note: attacks such as this only strengthen the resolve of the government and the people of Australia—the people and the parliament of Australia—to do whatever we can to counter extremism and to combat terrorism.
There is of course much that we still do not know about the terrible events in Bangkok that the Prime Minister has reported on. The perpetrators have not claimed responsibility and motivations are unclear. Even the death toll—currently at 20 or 21—is yet to be confirmed as final.
What we do know is that it is an act of murder aimed at the innocent. What we do know, as a nation of travellers who have long loved to visit our friends and neighbours in Thailand, is that Australians could easily have been amongst those killed. Australians are a very adventurous people. There is no part of the world that Australians will not travel to. We trust in the world because of our own optimism. There are few places more well travelled by Australians than Thailand, so this event is not just in a far-flung part of the world, but because of the personal experiences of many Australian families it seems closer perhaps than some of the other news we hear in the world.
On behalf of the opposition I offer our condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured. As the Prime Minister has said, our thoughts are with the government and the people of Thailand and all nations who have citizens affected by this senseless act of violence. At the very least, we know this is a crime of hatred designed to provoke fear, and as a nation and as a proud member of the international community we say with one voice: you will not go unchallenged or unpunished, and we will not change who we are because of this.
Your Excellency, this parliament and this nation's thoughts are with the people of Thailand today.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
I have another statement on indulgence, Mr Speaker. Earlier today, many members attended a service to mark Vietnam Veterans Day. As the House would know, over 60,000 Australians—Army, Air Force and Navy personnel—served in Vietnam: 521 died, over 3,000 were wounded and many suffered unseen scars that have never healed. This year marks a half century since the first contingent of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment departed, and today marks the 49th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.
Courage, determination, resourcefulness and unflinching loyalty to mates marked the Australian experience in Vietnam. At Long Tan, at Fire Support Base Coral, at Fire Support Base Balmoral, at Binh Ba and in countless contacts and firefights throughout that war, that courage and that selflessness was on display.
I regret to say that back home we did not always appreciate our veterans and their virtues at the time. While people were entitled to question the war, they should never have doubted our soldiers. Eventually we would see what had always been true: that our personnel in Vietnam were and are the very best of Australia.
In 2006, on the eve of Vietnam Veterans Day, the then Prime Minister, John Howard, addressed this chamber and apologised on behalf of our parliament for the mistreatments of earlier times. On that day Kim Beazley read from a letter by the then member for Cowan, Graham Edwards, who, as we all know, served and was wounded in Vietnam. If I may, I will quote from that letter. Graham Edwards wrote:
… I want to say I am proud to have served my nation and proud of all who served with me.
I am proud of my mates and the contribution they made to Australia.
I take pride in their mateship.
I don't need anyone's apology for that.
I say of all our Vietnam personnel: they did their duty, they did us proud and their sacrifice should never be forgotten by the country they served.
Today I, too, had the privilege of commemorating Vietnam Veterans Day at the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial. Today, of course, is the 49th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. Like Lone Pine or Tobruk, Kokoda or Kapyong, Long Tan resonates with all Australians. It is etched in our collective memory. At Long Tan, D Company of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, a mixed group of nashos and regulars, confronted wave after wave of enemy assault in the rain and mud of a rubber plantation. One hundred and eight Australians, supported by New Zealanders, would see a battle where 18 Australians lost their lives and 24 were wounded. As the relieving troops made their way into the fighting, they came across the prone bodies of their fallen comrades—faces to the foe, faithful to the end and true to their motto: duty first.
The war in Vietnam was a difficult ordeal for tens of thousands of young Australians, knowing that any moment could bring a deadly encounter with a skilful and determined enemy. But, as always, the courage of all who served should give us cause for pride.
We salute today the outstanding record of the most decorated unit of the Australian Army, the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, with four Victoria Crosses awarded; the daring of our special forces; the bravery of our RAAF; and the important and irreplaceable contribution of the Royal Australian Navy—not forgetting the civil affairs engagement that helped build our relationship with the Vietnamese people. Indeed, one good thing to emerge from the Vietnam War was that so many Vietnamese, forced to flee their war-torn homeland, chose to come to Australia and enriched our nation with their remarkable contribution.
There is a painful legacy that our veterans and their loved ones have had to endure in shared pain and stress. There were people killed, people wounded—more with hidden scars. But there is an injury that was compounded by a shroud of national neglect and rejection which lasted far too long. On Vietnam Veterans Day, we recognise in this place that those who served were for too long not afforded the support and respect they deserved upon their return. So, again, today we remind ourselves of the solemn duty that our country owes to the loved ones of the lost, a duty not just to recite the words 'lest we forget' but to give them meaning, a duty of lasting support and the full respect of history. We owe them more than just their pride. We must keep our promise to the families of the fallen and to all our veterans, including the next generation of diggers as they adjust to life after Afghanistan.
I inform the House that the Leader of the House will be absent from question time today to attend to a family matter. The Minister for Industry and Science will answer questions in the Education portfolio, the Minister for Foreign Affairs will answer questions on behalf of the Minister for Employment, and the Minister for Defence will act as Leader of the House today.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister's series of disastrous captain's picks continues to completely paralyse this government?
Yet another piece of empty bombast from a Leader of the Opposition who has no answers for the questions facing our country. I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that, every day, this government is focused on jobs growth and community safety. Whether it is setting an environmentally strong and economically responsible emissions reduction target, whether it is spearheading a national mobilisation against the scourge of ice, whether it is ensuring that the boats stay stopped, whether it is ensuring a strong national security response to the challenges of our time, this government is getting on with the job. We are getting on with the job. I say to members opposite: just for once, why not stop playing politics and actually engage—actually engage—in the big challenges facing our country?
My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the government is acting to protect jobs against extreme green 'lawfare', whilst ensuring the highest environmental standards are maintained?
I do thank the member for Dawson for his question and I can assure him that, every single day, this government is focused on jobs and growth. Every single day, this government is trying to ensure that our country is open for business. One thing that we need to be open to is investment—the right investment in our country, the right investment in the projects that will give our country the jobs that we need.
I am pleased to say that, because of the good work of this government, particularly the Minister for the Environment, we now have, subject to the Water Act, a one-stop shop for environmental approvals substantially achieved. Thanks to the good work of this government, particularly the Minister for the Environment, we have halved the time taken for environmental approvals—the shortest times on record for environmental approvals—and we have given environmental approval to projects worth over $1 trillion. That is what this government is doing. This government is supporting investment and jobs, but I regret to say that some green groups are doing their best to sabotage investment and jobs in our country.
Let me make it absolutely crystal clear. We want the highest environmental standards to apply to investment in Australia. We want the highest environmental standards to apply to new projects in Australia. But, once those standards have been met, those projects must be allowed to proceed. For instance, let's take the Carmichael mine in Central Queensland. This is a $20 billion investment. This is a project that will create 10,000 jobs. This is a project that will power up the lives of some 100 million Indians for 50 years. It is good for jobs, it is good for global development and it is good for the environment because Australian coal is of a higher quality than the alternative.
This mine is being legally sabotaged by green activists running a strategic campaign against the coal industry and, in fact, against all large developments. I can inform you that this government will repeal section 487(2) of the EPBC Act, which gives activists the standing to sabotage decisions. This government knows where it stands on jobs. The question is: where does Labor stand on jobs?
My question is to the Prime Minister. Dyson Heydon AC, QC yesterday confirmed he accepted an invitation to speak at an event, knowing full well that it was organised by the Liberal Party when he was royal commissioner. Don't Mr Heydon's own admissions show that this royal commission has been politicised from the start and that Mr Heydon's commission should be withdrawn?
Mr Sukkar interjecting—
The member for Deakin will cease interjecting.
In response to the member's question let me make three points. The first point I make is that Dyson Heydon AC, QC is a former judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, a former judge of the High Court of Australia and a judge who has served our country with the greatest distinction and with integrity. Members opposite should be careful about impugning the integrity of such a man.
The second point I make is that the royal commission into union corruption is absolutely necessary, as the facts revealed at that royal commission have shown. Members opposite should be very careful about running a protection racket on a union protection racket. Members opposite should be very careful trying to protect from public exposure their union mates—
Ms Macklin interjecting—
The member for Jagajaga was warned twice yesterday.
who for too long have been ripping off honest workers to protect themselves. The third point I make is that there is a foreshadowed application before the royal commission, and the sorts of points which the Manager of Opposition Business wishes to make could well be made before the royal commission. That is the place for them to be made, should anyone wish to do so.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline how the government is working to create a strong and prosperous economy by acting against 'lawfare'? What challenges does the government face in this important task?
I thank the honourable member for Flynn for that question. There is no doubt that the recent Federal Court decision in relation to the Adani Carmichael mine is a setback for the reputational risk of Australia. It is also a setback for potentially 10,000 new jobs, primarily in Queensland. There has been a litany of challenges against a mine that in fact is going to power the lives of 100 million impoverished people in India. It represents $20 billion of investment in Australia and 10,000 new jobs in Australia. And they are real jobs for truck drivers, train drivers, electricians, engineers, mechanics and geoscientists stretching from Cairns to Mackay, Brisbane and Perth—right across the country, and particularly in Gladstone. These jobs are now absolutely threatened by the militancy of the green movement led by the Mackay Conservation Group. The Mackay Conservation Group was the main legal challenger against the Adani Carmichael mine. The Mackay Conservation Group is located 600 kilometres from the mine, 10 hours drive from the mine. It is represented by the New South Wales Environmental Defenders Office, which is located 13½ hours from the mine.
This is a test for the Labor Party—are they more interested in the politics of the green movement and are they more interested in the preferences of the Greens party or do they really care about the workers of Australia? Does the Labor Party care about the workers of Australia?
Government members: No!
It is only the coalition that is prepared to stand up for the workers, and nothing illustrates it better than what is happening in relation to the Adani Carmichael mine. The government is going to stand up for this investment because fundamentally this is about lifting people in another part of the world out of poverty as a result of Australia's surplus of energy. It is about creating jobs here in Australia that are going to build our prosperity and, fundamentally, it is about standing up to the bullies in the green movement who want to see an end to prosperity.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Treasurer referred to an amendment to the EPBC Act, which none of us have seen. Could he please table it?
There is no point of order.
My question is to the Prime Minister. In an extraordinary statement yesterday Dyson Heydon AC, QC again failed to rule out addressing Liberal Party events in the future.
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right will cease interjecting.
Don't Mr Heydon's own admissions show that this royal commission has been politicised from the start and Mr Heydon's commission should be withdrawn? Will the Prime Minister finally show some leadership and deal with his captain's pick for royal commissioner?
The leadership this parliament should show is the leadership necessary to clean up the union movement. That is the leadership it would be nice to see a little bit of amongst members opposite. Why are members opposite trying to protect the rorts, the rackets and the rip-offs which have been so abundantly exposed before this royal commission? Why are members opposite standing in the way of ensuring that the same standards of conduct that are demanded of company directors are also demanded of union officials? Why is this man engaging in a cover-up of bad behaviour?
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister is not even going close to being directly relevant to the question that was asked—not even close.
I have ruled on this in earlier points of order. The Prime Minister has remained precisely on the topic of the question. The Prime Minister is relevant.
Ms Plibersek interjecting —
The member for Sydney is warned.
What we have seen over the last few days is a squalid attempt by the opposition to smear a former High Court judge—a sordid, squalid attempt by an opposition which should know better to defend the indefensible, which is these series of abuses which have been exposed at the royal commission where union official after union official has been ripping off workers in order to help the union, in some cases ripping off workers in order to help secure a preselection, in order to help secure the numbers within the Labor Party. I say to members opposite: it is about time that we had honest unionism in this country. That is what the royal commission is about—it is about ensuring that we do have honest unionism in this country. That is what the Registered Organisations Commission bill—yet again blocked by members opposite—was about: securing decent, honest unionism in this country. That is what the Australian Building and Construction Commission is all about. It is about securing the rule of law on construction sites.
Your dills in Sydney sent the invitation; how is that our fault?
The member for Melbourne Ports is warned!
Again, that measure was blocked by members opposite. I say to members opposite: stop running a protection racket on a protection racket; stop smearing a High Court judge and give the honest workers and the honest unionists of this country a fair go. We want them to have a fair go and it is high time you did too.
My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development. Will the minister advise the House of action the government is taking to encourage new projects and jobs growth in Central Queensland? How does extreme green warfare present an obstacle to this goal?
I thank the member for Capricornia for her question. As the member would be well aware, the downturn in the mining sector has cost substantial numbers of jobs in Central Queensland.
Mr Husic interjecting—
The member for Chifley is warned!
That is why it is so important for new projects to be given the go-ahead as quickly as possible. We need to find ways to smooth the approvals process so that we can get jobs being created again in Central Queensland, building projects that will deliver for our nation in the long term. Of course there needs to be thorough and appropriate environmental consideration but we see the process being drawn out week after week, month after month, year after year by frivolous legal actions that are not about the substance of the issue but that are looking at legal technicalities to delay and delay. This is not some kind of accidental or community motivated process. The reality was that a prospectus was put out in November 2011 talking about an almost $1 million campaign to stop the Australian coal mining boom. This was a deliberate strategy. The strategy was circulated by Greenpeace, CoalSwarm and the Graeme Wood Foundation. Mentioned through the document were well known people like Drew Hutton, from Shut the Gate, who has been involved in every protest I can remember since my childhood. The reality is that these people have got a deliberate strategy, raising substantial amounts of money to stop projects. They outline in detail their intention to use legal processes to delay and delay until the proponents are eventually exhausted and walk away. They do not win the moral argument and they cost us jobs, but all they are interested in is delaying and delaying. After this recent case, which delays the Carmichael project yet again, the Queensland Labor minister demanded that the Commonwealth take action to fix the EPBC Act to prevent this kind of delaying activity continuing into the future. The Queensland government of course is having it both ways, because on the one hand they are funding the organisations that are running the protest, they have taken $400 million off infrastructure expenditure that was going to benefit from this project—
Mr Perrett interjecting—
The member for Moreton will leave under 94(a). He has been warned twice.
The member for Moreton then left the chamber.
On the other hand, the minister in Queensland, in the state Labor government, knows that these circumstances in the EPBC Act have the potential to delay and prevent projects from proceeding right across the state. We are about creating jobs. We want these projects to proceed. This project will create something like $20 billion or more in royalties for the state and taxes to the government, but it will also create 10,000 jobs—10,000 jobs that will be critical to the people of Central Queensland.
Mr Speaker—
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right, including the Treasurer, will cease interjecting. I cannot hear the question.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Given Dyson Heydon AC QC does not see an issue with the agreement to speak at a Liberal Party event, what does the Prime Minister say to Australians who think it is absurd for Mr Heydon to sit in judgement of whether he is fit to continue his commission? Will the Prime Minister finally show some leadership and deal with his captain's pick for royal commissioner?
If people before a court or a tribunal believe that there is an issue with the presiding officer, there are standard procedures that they can use. I would suggest to the member who asked the question that he does have a few mates who have appeared before the royal commission, and he could suggest to his mates that, if there is any problem with the royal commissioner, they should bring an application in the usual way. The fact that they have not—
Mr Burke interjecting—
The member for Watson.
brought an application in the usual way makes me think that members opposite are even more feral than the ACTU when it comes to protecting union privilege.
My question is to the Minister for Industry and Science. How will the government ensure that the Carmichael Mine in my electorate of Maranoa and other major projects of this nature can go ahead and create jobs without extreme groups using 'lawfare' to disrupt and delay them?
I thank the member for Maranoa for his question. I congratulate him on the work he has done for the people of Maranoa for the last 25 years and wish him well in his retirement, which was announced a few weeks ago. He is a neighbour of mine and a good friend, and we have actually known each other for much longer than politics—back to when he was Chair of the Graziers Association. I wish both him and his wife well.
He knows, as I do and everyone on this side of the House knows, that we need sustainable development of our mineral resources, including coal, to ensure that our economy continues to grow. The member for Maranoa also knows how important it is that Australia continues to have the most rigorous evidence based environmental process in the world. Once coal and other resource projects meet these requirements, they should be able to proceed without being subjected to what is essentially legal sabotage. We on this side are concerned that groups with a philosophical opposition to coal are determined to delay and disrupt every coal project via protracted litigation, regardless of the broader merits of the project; regardless of how strong the environmental protections are compared to where the alternative coal comes from; regardless of how clean the coal is compared to coal from other countries that will be burnt in its stead; regardless of the economic impact on the community; and regardless of the jobs it brings Australians.
This is not restricted to coal; it covers infrastructure projects. In fact what this environmental group has highlighted in the report, which the Deputy Prime Minister quoted, is that they are opposed to any form of economic development. I table the report. There is a strategy to destroy jobs, and it is about time the Labor Party stood up for the workers. We stand up for the workers—how about you guys stand up for the workers for a change?
Opposition members interjecting—
The member for Wakefield.
How about you remember that this project is not only a $20 billion—
The minister will resume his seat.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker—that of relevance. The question was about legal—
There is no point of order. Resume your seat! The member for Charlton is warned.
This question is about jobs and protecting the environment, and that is what we do on this side—unlike those on the other side who only want the votes from the Greens rather than from their own workers.
Mr Conroy interjecting—
The member for Charlton.
We know they do not like the mining industry because they introduced a carbon tax and a mining tax—(Time expired)
Mr Nikolic interjecting—
The member for Bass will cease interjecting.
My question is to the Prime Minister. In the past week the Prime Minister has repeatedly defended Dyson Heydon AC QC by referring to comments made by Julian Burnside QC. Is the Prime Minister aware of comments made by Mr Burnside today? He said:
It seems to me that an honourable person in his position would step down. … I would say I was misrepresented because Mr Abbott seems to have used my comment in support of Dyson Heydon not standing down.
As the shadow Attorney-General well knows, if people before a tribunal or a royal commission have an issue with the presiding officer, there are standard procedures that can be taken. There are standard procedures that can be taken—
Honourable members interjecting—
Prime Minister, resume your seat.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In my almost 20 years in this place, I have rarely heard such a level of noise coming from the government benches while questions are being asked on this side. I ask him to bring to order what is obviously an orchestrated campaign—
Government members interjecting—
The member for Hunter will resume his seat. Those on my right will cease interjecting. The member for Aston will cease interjecting. The minister will cease interjecting.
We have present in the gallery today the former member for Hasluck, Mr Stuart Henry.
I have a real question about jobs and opportunities.
The member will come to his question.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer advise the House how the free trade agreement with China—
Opposition members interjecting—
You might want to listen to this. Will the Treasurer advise the House how the free trade agreement with China, one of our most important partners, will lead to more jobs and opportunities for Australians?
I thank the honourable member for Mitchell for a question about jobs, because that is exactly what the coalition is about—how we can create more jobs for everyday Australians. We are doing it. Last month alone 38,000 new jobs were created in Australia. On average—
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
The member for Rankin is warned.
under the Labor Party in the last 12 months they were in government 3,600 jobs a month were created. So last month alone Australia created more than 10 times the number of jobs that were created under Labor.
Mr Nikolic interjecting—
The member for Bass is warned.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. To be relevant, the Treasurer has to refer to the 800,000 unemployed, the first time since 1994—
Member for Rankin, that is not a point of order. You have been warned. That is disorderly conduct.
Ms Ryan interjecting—
The member for Lalor is warned. The Treasurer has the call.
Mr Speaker, forgive him. He worked for the worst Treasurer in Australian history. He was the man who oversaw 200,000 jobs go under Swanny. He was the brains behind the—
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
This cannot be on relevance, so what is the point of order?
The Treasurer is wrong. The member for Rankin never worked for Joe Hockey, the current Treasurer.
That is an abuse. The member for Griffith will leave under standing order 94(a) immediately.
The member for Griffith then left the chamber.
I know she occupies Kevin Rudd's seat. He was a great fan of the member for Lilley, obviously. We know that. In fact, the shadow Treasurer is also a great fan of the member for Lilley. I have just received his book called The Money Men. When he refers to the member for Lilley, he says: 'Swan remains on Labor's backbench, mainly contributing to the national debate through tweets related to Joe Hockey.'
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
This cannot be a point of order on relevance. That one point of order has already been taken. You are on thin ice.
It is in the standing orders. You have already ruled on relevance, but standing order 91(c)—
Resume your seat. The Treasurer has the call.
We are defending the free trade agreement with China because that represents more jobs for Australia. The Labor Party is running a covert and, at times, overt campaign against more Australian jobs. Those jobs would flow to businesses such as Flavourtech in the Riverina, where they will see the tariffs on their manufactured food drop from two per cent to zero. Fletcher International Exports, a meat exporter, will see 1,200 new jobs created as part of our free trade agreement with China. Rode microphones will see the tariffs on their products reduced from 10 per cent to zero. They employ more than 200 people in the member for Reid's electorate.
The Labor Party are opposing the free trade agreement with China because they are at the beck and call of their union masters, the CFMEU. Now it is time on both the Adani Carmichael project and the China free trade agreement for the Labor Party to choose between their union mates and the workers— (Time expired)
Mr Hutchinson interjecting—
The member for Lyons is warned.
My question is to the Prime Minister. In the past week the Prime Minister has repeatedly defended Dyson Heydon AC, QC, by referring to comments made by Julian Burnside QC. Is the Prime Minister of aware of comments made by Mr Burnside of Mr Heydon today that, 'It really was never a tenable possibility for him to appear to be impartial on the royal commission while being so closely associated with the Liberal Party to accept that invitation'?
While the government is interested in jobs and growth, all members opposite are interested in doing is smearing a former High Court judge. Frankly, for someone who rejoices in the title 'QC' to be engaged in this grubby exercise is beyond contempt. It really is beyond contempt.
Ms Macklin interjecting—
The member for Jagajaga has been warned.
I have been asked about comments today.
Mr Matheson interjecting—
The member for Macarthur is warned.
Let me give the QC opposite who asked the question a statement from Mr Duncan McConnel, President of the Law Council of Australia. He said:
The public attacks on the Commissioner being played out through the media are unacceptable and damage the basis on which tribunals and courts operate …
Mr Watts interjecting—
The member for Gellibrand is warned.
The President of the Law Council went on:
The person who sits as a Royal Commissioner is entitled to the same respect, inside and outside of the inquiry, as a judge in a court.
In this case, Mr John Dyson Heydon AC QC is a highly regarded former judicial officer. The proper way for dealing with any question of bias, including apprehended bias, is to make an application for the Commissioner to recuse himself …
Why does the QC opposite not know that? Why does the QC opposite not respect that? Frankly, the QC opposite has demeaned himself—
Mr Sukkar interjecting—
The member for Deakin is warned.
he has demeaned this parliament and he has demeaned his leader by asking that question.
My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister update the House on the conflict in Syria and Iraq and the threat that it poses to our national security? What is the government's response to this threat, and are there other approaches?
I thank the member for Wright for this very serious question because atrocities in Iraq and Syria continue unabated. Two days ago there were further reports that the terrorist organisation Daesh is using chemical weapons—this time mustard gas—in attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria. Systemic raping of women and enslaving of children continues, as does Daesh's killing spree and forced conversion of members of religious minorities. There are now more than 20,000 terrorist foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, including around 120 Australians. Australian extremists have been exploited by Daesh for propaganda and recruitment purposes but are now also linked to planning terrorist plots in Australia. Reports that Australian foreign fighters are serving with Daesh's English-speaking unit—the so-called Anwar al-Awlaki brigade—to orchestrate attacks on home soil are deeply disturbing. We make no mistake about this—this conflict poses a direct threat to Australia and its people.
The Syrian government itself has perpetrated awful attacks against its own citizens overnight. Regime airstrikes against a market outside Damascus reportedly killed over 80 Syrian civilians. This is militarily, politically and strategically a complex theatre of war and it is important that Australia presents a united front for these terrorist organisations otherwise they will exploit any divisions within Australia. That is why I was shocked to learn that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has broken ranks and is now attacking government policy on the fight against terrorism—in fact, she has had a go at the Leader of the Opposition on the way through. The member for Sydney—
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right will cease interjecting.
Ms King interjecting—
The member for Ballarat is warned.
Opposition members interjecting—
Members on my left will cease interjecting.
The member for Sydney wants Australia's Defence forces to cease the airstrikes against Daesh. She wants our fighter jets to drop food hampers over Syria. Guess who will end up feasting on them? It will be a terrorist picnic. I know the Deputy Leader of the Opposition struggles with geography. She has said more than once that Africa is a country.
The minister will resume her seat. I call the member for Watson on a point of order. Those props are out of order and the clerks will collect them.
Honourable members interjecting—
I am not hearing the member for Watson until the interjections cease.
Ms Rishworth interjecting—
The member for Kingston will cease interjecting.
Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—
The member for Throsby will decide when the member for Watson gets the call.
Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—
The member for Herbert is warned.
Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—
The member for Herbert will remove himself under standing order 94(a).
The member for Herbert then left the chamber.
Member for Watson? No? I call the minister.
I know the Deputy Leader of the Opposition struggles with geography.
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right will cease the chatter.
She has said more than once that Africa is a country. It is not. Now she has claimed that Syria is about the same size as Australia. Australia is 42 times larger than Syria. If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition cannot get basic facts right, if she thinks that Daesh—
The minister will resume her seat.
Mr Speaker, I have a point of order. This may be relevant for the leadership jostling on the frontbench of the government, but it is not relevant to the question that was asked of the minister.
There is no point of order. The member for Gellibrand will remove himself under standing order 94(a). It is a complete abuse of the standing orders.
The member for Gellibrand then left the chamber.
Mr Hockey interjecting—
The Treasurer will cease interjecting.
Ms Rishworth interjecting—
The member for Kingston is warned.
If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition thinks that Daesh can be defeated by food not force, let us hope that she never has anything to do with the planning of strategy in this country. (Time expired)
The member for Kennedy, who missed his call earlier, has the call now. Member for Kennedy your time starts now.
My question is to the Minister for Trade. Andrew Forrest said that the Western Australian government's refusal to build a key rail corridor set Western Australian mining back 23 years. Every inch of rail coal line in Queensland was built by the government. Whilst applauding the government on environmental issues in the Galilee, the government can build this rail line tomorrow. The real problem—the failure by Adani to raise capital—is the same problem as with Rinehart and Palmer. Build it tomorrow, Minister. (Time expired)
I call the acting Leader of the House. I think I can anticipate your point of order.
Mr Speaker, with great respect to the member for Kennedy, he does not seem to understand the difference between a statement and a question. There was no question.
There was no question; there was a 30-second statement.
Mr Katter interjecting—
The member for Kennedy will resume his seat.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It has been a challenge in this House for decades that ministers have had to answer questions from the member for Kennedy. They have often been framed in a unique way, but for heaven's sake let the minister stand up and answer the question.
Mr Speaker, on the point of order: the member for Kennedy has been in this place longer than most people have been here. If he has not learnt the standing orders by now then he should suffer the consequences.
I call the member for Braddon.
Mr Speaker, I have a point of order.
You cannot make a point of order. I have called the next question.
My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is representing the Minister for Employment today. What action is the government taking to ensure fair workplaces and support for honest union leaders? What obstacles may be standing in the way?
I thank the member for Braddon for his question and his support—
Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—
The member for Hunter will not interject when he has been complaining about interjections.
Mr Bowen interjecting—
The member for McMahon is warned.
I appreciate the support that he is giving to the coalition government for our commitment to ensuring that fair workplaces exist in this country and that there is a union movement where officials put the interests of the workers ahead of their self-interest. That is why the coalition have reforms to establish a registered organisation commission and why we are seeking to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission—to protect workers and honest union members—and it is why we established a royal commission to ensure that dodgy union bosses, like Craig Thomson and Michael Williamson and Bruce Wilson are not allowed to keep siphoning off the money of the honest union members whom they were meant to represent. By opposing our reforms, the Labor Party is representing the interests of dodgy union bosses rather than the union members those bosses are meant to represent.
The outrage of the Labor Party front benchers, as they seek to smear the name of a former High Court judge, shows how desperate they are to protect themselves—not just the union bosses—and their union masters in an outrageous attempt to throw mud at a royal commissioner. You have to ask yourself: what does the Labor Party have to hide? It has already been reported that a former AWU secretary—aka the Leader of the Opposition—traded away the penalty rates of low-paid workers. It has spent reported that the AWU received hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexplained payments and that the Leader of the Opposition failed to disclose over $40,000 donated to his political campaign by a company with which his union was dealing until just before he was called before the royal commission. We know that criminal charges have been recommended against at least three of the most senior officials of the militant construction union, the CFMEU, no less than four officials have been arrested as the result of matters before the royal commission and a series of unions have been implicated in secret slush fund scandals that have finally come to light.
So why is the Labor Party so eager to hide this evidence? Here are three reasons. One, union masters have provided Labor members with $46 million since 2007. They would not be here without them. Two, the Leader of the Opposition is facing very serious questions about his time as a union leader. Three, Labor members are being directed by their union masters by standing against reforms that would clean up the activities of dishonest union bosses, and these people will stand to lose millions if the royal commission goes ahead. (Time expired)
Mr Sukkar interjecting—
The member for Deakin will cease interjecting. He has already been warned.
My question is to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. In question time on Thursday, after being asked specifically about when the Attorney or his office was first aware that Dyson Heydon had agreed to be keynote speaker at a Liberal Party event, the minister answered by saying that there had been contact that morning. Given that it emerged on the weekend that the Attorney-General's office received notice on 11 April, why has the minister failed yet again to come into this House to correct the record at the first available opportunity?
I thank the member for his question. The answer I gave last Thursday was in direct relevant response to the question. I am advised the Attorney-General first heard about this through the media. He telephoned the commissioner about 11.30 this morning. The commissioner advised he had already confirmed he will not be attending the Sir Garfield Barwick address. Fact. Secondly, the Attorney-General's electorate office received a save-the-date notice—
Mr Husic interjecting—
The member for Chifley will remove himself under 94A. He was warned multiple times.
on 11 April. The Attorney-General already had a prior standing commitment in Canberra on the day of the event, so his staff automatically declined and apologised on his behalf. The Attorney-General did not see the save-the-date notice.
My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister outline the importance of the 457 visa program and why it is important that its integrity is maintained?
I thank the honourable member very much for his question. Australia, of course, was built on migration and the 457 program is important because it allows employers to fill skilled labour shortages where local workers cannot be found. Skilled overseas workers through the 457 visa program form an integral part of the economic machinery that creates Australian jobs by preventing skill shortages that limit the growth of our economy. The revelation that multiple trade unions have employed 457 visa holders is an act of incredible hypocrisy and duplicity given the long-term campaign the union movement has waged against the 457 program and now against the free trade agreement with China. So I went to have a look at the transcript of the ad which is running on television sets at the moment trying to scare people into believing that the free trade agreement is not good for this country. I had a look at the original transcript of this ad. I think members might be interested in the original transcript. It went something like this. Of course, there is a union boss within this scare campaign ad. The father is sitting there with his son and the father says, 'I can't believe they've done it.' The son says, 'Done what?' Dad says, 'The job I lined up for you at the union. It's been filled by a foreign worker.' 'But, Dad, the union's running a scare campaign against foreign workers.' Dad says, 'Believe it or not, son, the union's employed 41 457 workers, and the most frequently sponsored worker was the workplace relations adviser.' The irony, of course, is that we have seen the member for Gorton today get up here and try to trash the reputation of an honourable man. He got up here and failed to declare his own interest in this matter, because, as it turns out, this ad was authorised by M O'Connor—your brother. Who is he? He is the head of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, who owns and operates most of those people opposite.
Mr Burke interjecting—
Ms Henderson interjecting—
The member for Watson will cease interjecting. The member for Corangamite is warned.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
The minister has concluded his answer.
I know the minister has concluded his answer, but in terms of your management of the House, Mr Speaker—
Government members interjecting—
Members on my right will cease interjecting!
I think the Prime Minister, of all people, wants this parliament to maintain the rule that we do not bring family members into debate.
That is not a point of order.
Government members interjecting—
Mr Burke interjecting—
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
Members on my right will cease interjecting. The Treasurer will cease interjecting. The minister for immigration will cease interjecting. The member for Watson will cease interjecting. That was not a point of order; that was a statement. The member for Lingiari will cease interjecting.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Last year the Prime Minister said:
… you appoint someone of Dyson Heydon's standing because you trust to his judgment and I'm very happy to put ourselves in the hands of Dyson Heydon and see where this Commission goes.
Isn't your continued trust based on your longstanding relationship with Mr Heydon, and the fact that a partisan inquiry is exactly what you wanted?
Mrs Griggs interjecting—
The member for Solomon is warned.
I am sorry, what was that?
That Rhodes scholarship was a good investment.
The member for Rankin will remove himself under 94(a). The member for Rankin can withdraw before he goes.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
The member for Watson will resume his seat. The member for Rankin has been on multiple warnings for interjecting. You have been asked to leave under 94(a).
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Rankin has just been excluded for answering a question that the Prime Minister put from the despatch box. That was his interjection. The Prime Minister said, 'I beg your pardon?' he responded and then you punted him for it.
No. The member for Watson will resume his seat.
Government members interjecting—
Those on my right will cease interjecting. The member for Watson well knows that I have warned the member for Rankin multiple times, so he can pick the standing order under which he was ejected. Disorderly conduct was the first thing that came into my mind. He has left the chamber. He was warned twice. I have bent over backwards. I will not put up with members interjecting continuously, particularly when they have been warned.
It is not surprising that the shadow Attorney-General has dropped out of the attack and that the member for Gorton has now been asked to continue the attack, because the member for Gorton, I suppose, is less familiar than the shadow Attorney-General with the appropriate conduct when there is some issue with the presiding officer of a tribunal or a royal commission. For the benefit of the member for Gorton, who probably was not listening to my response to the shadow Attorney-General, let me quote this statement from Mr Duncan McConnel, the President of the Law Council of Australia. He says:
The public attacks on the Commissioner being played out through the media are unacceptable and damage the basis on which tribunals and Courts operate.
He goes on to say:
The person who sits as a Royal Commissioner is entitled to the same respect, inside and outside of the Inquiry, as a Judge in a Court. In this case, Mr John Dyson Heydon AC QC is a highly regarded former judicial officer. The proper way for dealing with any question of bias, including apprehended bias, is to make an application for the Commissioner to recuse himself …
I say to the member for Gorton and the shadow minister who asked the question, if he, his political allies or his friends have any issue whatsoever with Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon AC QC they know what to do, and why don't they do it? If they think there is a problem they should bring an application.
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
The member for Lingiari is warned.
What are they waiting for? What are the unions waiting for?
Mr Burke interjecting—
The member for Watson.
Perhaps they know that the professionalism and the impartiality of this former High Court judge is absolutely beyond dispute.
Ms Ryan interjecting—
The member for Lalor.
Perhaps they know that it is not a very good look to be trying to cover up the cover-up which so many members opposite have been engaged in for so many years. What we have seen again and again before this royal commission are rorts, rackets and rip-offs perpetrated by union officials against union members. It is wrong. It must stop, and I suspect even the ACTU is starting to feel a little bit of shame.
Mr Mitchell interjecting—
The member of McEwen.
I think that shame would be appropriate amongst members opposite as well.
My question is to the Minister for Small Business. Will the minister update the House on how the government is supporting small business to create jobs and are there any threats to the government's approach in this matter?
I thank the member for Gilmore. She is a great representative for her community and the 9,000 small businesses that are part of it. This morning I was listening to ABC NewsRadio and I heard a headline that said: 'Stronger than expected jobs growth; big boost for the economy,' and I thought at last the mainstream media will pick up some factual economic information and they will underline the fundamental strength in the Australian economy. Alas, it went on to talk about the United States. I thought that was a little bit curious because Australia actually has stronger jobs growth than the United States, than Canada, than the UK, than, in fact, any of the G7 economies.
Ms O'Neil interjecting—
The member for Hotham will cease interjecting.
But you would not know from the rubble and the racket coming from those opposite. The story of jobs growth in the Australian economy under the Abbott is very positive. It should be that way, and it should be recognised as such.
Ms O'Neil interjecting—
The member for Hotham is warned.
We have seen more than 330,000 jobs created in the economy since the election of the Abbott government. What we have seen is that the good news continues. We have the strongest level of female participation rate in the workforce. This is great news. Small business formation—business formation is at record levels, led primarily by women. We have record company registrations. Bankruptcies have fallen to the lowest level in 20 years.
Opposition members interjecting—
The member for Newcastle!
Business entries are up and exits are down. This is a really positive story about jobs and growth—
I rise on a point of order concerning relevance. For the minister to be relevant he has to refer to the nine per cent unemployment in the member for Gilmore's electorate.
Member for Throsby, that is disorderly conduct. The member for Throsby will remove himself under standing order 94(a). I will not put up with frivolous points of order.
The member for Throsby then left the chamber.
A bit of union strong-arming going on over there! This record has been achieved by getting out of the road of job creators. We have been reducing red tape and removing harmful, anti-jobs, anti-growth taxes, like the carbon tax. We have been getting the policy settings right to support enterprising men and women to start to grow their businesses, to succeed, and to employ more Australians. We have been opening up new markets. The free-trade agreement is incredibly important—hundreds of millions of new prospective customers ready for Australian businesses to delight them and to see our economy and jobs grow. This is the story. This is what the member for Gilmore knows and can share with her community.
We are seeing confidence figures coming through strongly. The National Australia Bank SME quarterly survey shows business confidence and conditions are up. Even today the Roy Morgan consumer confidence survey again showed a steady lift despite international volatility. And all the leader opposite can talk about is politics. That is where you go wrong 'sunshine'. This is about jobs and growth.
The minister will address the member correctly.
That is where you get it wrong Leader of the Opposition. And there is that fantastic Australia-leading small business package. What a difference that has made. It is world class—admired by many. Even Labor tries to associate itself with it.
What puts all this at risk? Labor's plan to once again clobber small businesses with a carbon tax on steroids. What else is Labor putting at risk: access to new markets through the FTAs through their complicity in a shabby misleading and dishonest campaign. We are opening the door for business and we are winning that business. (Time expired)
I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
I have received a letter from the honourable member for Perth proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The Government failing to properly invest in Australian jobs and well-planned infrastructure.
I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.
More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—
Today we have learnt that Australia's most appallingly planned infrastructure project, the Perth Freight Link, has blown out by $167 million, and that is before a single contract has been awarded and a single shovel has hit the soil. That $167 million does not include the $300 million that is needed to build a new bridge over the Swan River to actually get the traffic into the Fremantle port. Members might be surprised to know that this project, which is designed to get road truck traffic into the Fremantle port—supposedly—actually misses its mark by 1.5 kilometres. It does not actually arrive at the Fremantle port. So in order to achieve that we now know from other submissions that we will need a $300 million bridge to add to the cost of this project.
Nor does it include the $400 million net that we are going to need now to dig a tunnel through Hamilton Hill, because there has been a very unfortunate redistribution at the state level. The transport minister now finds that the people and businesses who are going to lose their homes and businesses are indeed going to be in his new electorate. So he has committed to a tunnel rather than a surface road, which we know will cost $400 million net, at the very least.
When you add all of this up—an additional $167 million that we have just found out about, with no announcement; the $300 million and the $400 million—we are now going to see a project that is some $2.4 billion. It is no wonder that the Infrastructure Australia report that was very quietly posted late last night on their website, with no announcement, described this as a project that had high risks around its costs.
We have also learnt today from this report that the state government had 11 other options available to them, including rail infrastructure projects, but it did not do any cost-benefit on any of these other 11 projects to see if there were a more cost—effective solution.
Honourable members interjecting—
The member for Bradfield will cease interjecting.
Indeed, Infrastructure Australia made this comment about the selection criteria that were used to chose this one out of 12: 'the methodology showed significant weaknesses, was biased against low-cost options and had limited reliance on objective, quantitative evidence'. That is, they just made up the figures. This is a damning inditement, in reality, on this project. It is interesting that Infrastructure Australia goes on to note that, whilst the business case prepared by the state government claims that this is part of a broader strategy, it observes and actually lists the eight relevant planning and policy documents of the state government and notes that this project was not mentioned in any of them.
So how did we get here? We got here like this. I will describe what happened. At the beginning of 2014 the federal government had a problem. They were about to take $500 million that had been placed in the budget in 2013 for rail projects in Perth. This $500 million for those rail projects had been sought by the Barnett government, because they had gone to the 2013 election promising that they would build a number of rail projects but they depended on federal government funding for those projects. But, because of the Prime Minister's ideological problem with rail, the federal government could not accede to the request of the Barnett government. They could not leave that $500 million in but they knew that if they took it out they would have a hole to fill. So what were they going to do? I will tell the House what we reckon has happened, from the evidence we have.
The assistant minister, who is here today, and the finance minister, Senator Cormann, arranged a meeting with Minister Nalder. We suspect that this meeting—probably when the two of them flew across the Nullarbor together—would have taken place around 6 or 7 February. Poor Minister Nalder goes in with a brief from his public servants to pitch for federal funds for the Outer Harbour—because, as we all know and as the Infrastructure Australia report says, the fundamental problem is that Fremantle port is in the wrong place. He goes in with his pitch. For the last 20 years, successive governments in WA have been planning to move the container terminal to the Outer Harbour, and he goes in to make a pitch for federal funds for this project. Forty-five minutes later he comes out shell-shocked. He has not got funds for the Outer Harbour but what he has got is the Perth Freight Link. We have been able to extract a few documents under FOI, after spending thousands of dollars and over a year of time. What we have found is a schedule of documents that shows that the first dialogue that occurred on this project between the government agencies was in March 2014. And yes, this project was locked like a UFO into the May 2014 budget. There had been no money in the state budget for this project. Indeed the state government had promoted during the previous election the fact that they had taken the money for Roe Highway stage 8 from this project. Troy Buswell was going around saying, 'We're not going to build it; we've taken the money out of the budget.'
Compare that with what Labor did in government. When we came into government in 2001 at the state level we recognised that there was a problem. We recognised that there was a Fremantle Eastern Bypass that no-one was going to build. Richard Court was in government for eight years. He said, 'I'm not going to build it. I'll only build it when there's consensus.' We knew it was a 1970s idea that just did not fly today. So we had the Perth freight network review, a process that went on for two years—a public, transparent process involving business, industry, local government, all of the planning authorities, environmental groups and community groups, all coming up with a workable plan. We developed a six-point plan. An essential part of that was getting on and building the Outer Harbour. So it is quite extraordinary that we are now being saddled with a project that we know will already be out of date as soon as it is open. We acknowledge, as does Infrastructure Australia, that we will have to move the container terminal. We agree that Fremantle will continue to operate as a container terminal—you would expect for at least 10 to 15 years—but it will do so at radically reduced figures not warranting $2.5 billion investment in infrastructure. All of the planning that went on by the Court government, the Labor government and then the Barnett government has shown a continuity of moving forward with the Outer Harbour—until suddenly the assistant minister and the WA Libs had a problem and had to come up with a solution that was anything other than rail. We see already that the cost-benefit ratio of this project has dropped because of the extra $167 million cost blow-out. Imagine how it will drop once we add in the $700 million extra that they are going to need to tunnel underneath Hamilton Hill and to get the project into the port. This project is a complete and utter lemon and represents absolutely wasteful expenditure when we need long-term solutions in Western Australia. We do need this money spent in Western Australia but we do not need it spent on a project for which there has been inadequate planning and which is really incapable of being made retrievable.
Mr Speaker, I add my congratulations on your appointment as Speaker. You have already shown, I think, the reason why so many of your colleagues supported you in the ballot and why the parliament unanimously endorsed your appointment as Speaker. It is great to see that the Carlton Football Club has not only won the first draft this year but also won the Speakership. Well done, Mr Speaker.
I have been wondering why this MPI was put up today. I was quite interested to know why. We were a bit surprised after the TWU in Western Australia came out over the weekend endorsing the Perth Freight Link, contrary to Labor Party policy. In fact the boss of the TWU said, 'This is not going to make my mates in the Western Australian Labor Party very happy, and certainly not the member for Perth, but this is a vital project and we absolutely support it.' That is what the TWU secretary said over the weekend. So I was a bit surprised when this MPI was presented by the member for Perth. I wondered if it was because the member for Grayndler is not here and she is trying to trail her coat for the infrastructure portfolio. Add to that the fact that last night the independent Infrastructure Australia released its latest reports on projects that the federal government is funding, as committed by the government at the election for projects over $100 million. This report showed that the Perth Freight Link has a cost-benefit analysis of 2.8—a fantastic investment.
But then it struck me. The member for Perth wanted this MPI today because she was completely skewered on the weekend by the outstanding finance minister, Mathias Cormann, and the WA transport minister, Dean Nalder, about the history of the Perth Freight Link.
Ms MacTiernan interjecting—
The member for Perth will not interject.
We just had a version of history, but what we did not hear in this whole history was the fact that the Perth Freight Link—or, in essence, the Roe 8 and then the link into Fremantle Port—has actually been on the books in WA since the 1950s. This has been discussed since the 1950s, and the reason we now have to consider the tunnel option that the Western Australia government is pursuing—and I congratulate Minister Nalder on the work he is doing on this—is that the member for Perth, as planning minister, sold off the corridor. That is the reason we have to go underground, and it is going to cost millions and millions of dollars more. The member for Perth, the worst planning minister in the history of Western Australia, sold off the corridor. That is exactly why we have to do this.
This MPI today, given to her by the office of the Leader of the Opposition, is all about defending her record when she was Minister for Planning and Infrastructure in Western Australia.
Ms MacTiernan interjecting—
The member for Perth will cease interjecting.
The reason we have to go through this is that it is about trying to correct the record from the weekend when the Minister for Finance and the Western Australian Minister for Transport, Dean Nalder, completely skewered her record.
Ms MacTiernan interjecting—
The member for Perth!
One of the things that state ministers complain to us about is the fact that predecessors in state governments have sold off corridors over the decades, meaning that they have to go underground. The WestConnex in Sydney is a great example. When you go underground because state governments in the past have sold off corridors, you have to spend nearly seven times more on average. They complain bitterly about it because it costs them more, and we have to spend more money to fix the problem in the future. Selling off corridors for the quick fix of a budget in the short term shows a lack of foresight.
Usually we talk about historic events, like the MATS plan in South Australia where a former South Australian government in the seventies sold off these corridors, but we have history in front of us here. We have the planning minister who refused to have decent planning in Western Australia, in Perth, and sold off the corridor. This is a complete own goal. The member for Grayndler, if he were here, would be shaking his head at this: a Labor Party that now wants to oppose billions of dollars worth of investment. It would include the involvement of the private sector in Western Australia for the first time and excellent economic reform welcomed by none other than the TWU, and the member for Perth wants to abolish it, wants to abandon it, wants to walk away from it, wants to stop it. With Greens senator Scott Ludlam, her soul mate in the Senate, she wants to stand in the way of it. She will use any means possible because it is all about her record as planning minister. That is the reality.
The MPI also canvasses jobs, investment and infrastructure. No federal government in history has spent more time, more effort, more focus and more money on infrastructure than this government, than the infrastructure Prime Minister. Along with the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Deputy Prime Minister and me, he is completely and utterly focused on making sure that we are delivering infrastructure right across the country. There are 10,000 jobs with the WestConnex project, and the second stage, brought forward by 18 months, is underway now because of this government and the concessional loan that we put in place for the first time in history. There are 8½ thousand jobs with the NorthConnex project. There is the Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan. And government is finally making a decision on a second Sydney airport, which is such a vital piece of infrastructure. There will be 4,000 jobs just for the infrastructure to support the development of the Western Sydney airport. There will be the 1,000 jobs created with Gateway WA. The nearly 1,000 jobs that will be created with the North-South Corridor in South Australia will benefit the member for Kingston's seat. This is the project that she is utterly opposed to. At the last federal election the member for Kingston opposed the Darlington interchange project, and we will remind her constituents of that at the next election and when that project gets underway.
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to point out that the minister should read my submission to Infrastructure Australia and that would inform—
No, resume your seat. There is no point of order. The minister has the call.
While we are talking about South Australia, there is another big project about to be announced in South Australia, because this is the government that is getting on with projects, delivering jobs and delivering better outcomes for all Australians. The Perth Freight Link, which Labor absolutely opposes and will do everything to stop, will see 2½ thousand jobs created in Western Australia.
Ms MacTiernan interjecting—
The member for Perth will cease interjecting.
This government has an outstanding record. While we are talking about Western Australia, there is a by-election that is coming up under the saddest circumstances in the seat of Canning. We have to replace a member from this place, and we remember Don's record when it comes to infrastructure. I went to visit Don not long ago and talked to him about the $4 million extra that had been spent by the Abbott government in Canning on infrastructure to deliver 14 Black Spot projects. Fighting for Black Spot projects is an example of why Don Randall was such an outstanding local member. There was $2.6 million worth in Canning in 2015 and 2016 alone. That is what happens when you have a good local Liberal focused on ensuring these projects are put to government to be funded. We are absolutely committed to spending the $4.8 million in 2015-16 to upgrade local roads through the Roads to Recovery process, which is a process that we have put in place.
The other issue that this MPI canvassed is well-planned infrastructure. This is the first government in the history of the Commonwealth to undertake an absolutely comprehensive audit of Australia's infrastructure stock. That was released in May this year. It is an outstanding document put together by Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia is now off consulting right across Australia with all groups looking at what should be in the 15-year plan. This will be the first plan ever put out by a federal government working with the states, working with local government and working with communities to address the key bottlenecks right across the country. That is what we are doing. That is what we are focused on. That is a government that is about planning for the future—not building over corridors because it was popular at the time and because it suited the agenda of the minister at the time.
An opposition member interjecting—
The member for Perth!
That is the worst example of planning—
The member for Perth is warned!
This is what this MPI is all about—a former minister, in a bad Labor government defending bad Labor decisions. The reality is that in 12 months time the Australian people will have exactly the same choice. That is the choice between a government that has got on with infrastructure—by delivering WestConnex; delivering the GUN upgrade in Brisbane; the upgrades in South Road, South Australia; and delivering, for the first time, a 10-year plan for the Midlands Highway—and a government that will rip up contracts like the Perth Freight Link. And we know they will because they did it with East West. They will rip up this contract. They will come into government, they will destroy our sovereign risk, they will destroy jobs and they will put aside all the good work we have done on infrastructure. The Australian people will have a clear choice—and on one side it is a choice against jobs, and on this side it is for jobs and for growth.
I am astonished. We have just heard from a minister for infrastructure who does not seem to understand that the first thing about infrastructure is planning; the second thing about infrastructure is funding; and the third thing about infrastructure is thought. About this particular piece of infrastructure, we have not seen, we have not heard and we are not able to read any consideration of freight-corridor studies—no consideration of the work that may or may not have been done with stakeholder groups; no consideration of the work that would have been done to properly plan and implement this piece of infrastructure, which is not just important for Western Australia and Perth, but it is important for the export economy of our nation.
This very corridor of which we speak is responsible for the exportation of Australia's grain crop. It is important for the exportation of our live animal trade out through the Fremantle port. It is important for keeping safe a major piece of suburban infrastructure while, at the same time, driving economic growth, jobs and, most importantly, the future of the logistics through the south-western corridor of Perth. I am astonished that we would have a minister get up in this place and not make any reference at all to the freight-corridor planning work that should have been done and that should simply be axiomatic in the consideration of a piece of infrastructure of the size and scale of which we have just spoken.
Then again, I am even more astonished that in this place we see important initiatives that are beyond any question to the benefit of Western Australia simply thrown around like political confetti. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement is critically important to Western Australia. Australia's China relationship is fundamentally a West Australian relationship. It is a West Australian relationship because we are the state which exports most to China—from the creation of the Channar agreement 30 years ago, to the direct investment that takes place in Gorgon, that will take place in Browse and that has taken place in our iron ore exports. For over 40 years we have seen the growth in our trading relationship with China, and we see the importance of our free trade agreement with China that underpins, in so many ways, the importance of the infrastructure investment that must follow hand in hand.
Yet what we see more and more often is the use of these mechanisms—these tools for economic growth—as nothing more than tools for politics. What we need is a genuine Australia-China FTA—a high-quality FTA; a trade agreement which achieves genuine market access for Australian exporters that reduces tariffs and creates jobs for Australians and Chinese. It can be achieved and it can be achieved to the advantage of both countries. It needs to be achieved because unemployment in Western Australia is going up as we speak. The China free trade agreement is prescient. It is why Labor needs to see critical safeguards in place in response to the movement of labour between our two countries that underpins the important Australia-China Free Trade Agreement.
Last year Mr Abbott promised that the coalition would retain labour-market testing—the requirement for employers to show that they cannot find suitable local workers before they bring in temporary workers for major projects. This is critically important to us, because the erosion of labour-market testing and safeguards runs the risk of our own community rejecting ChAFTA. That seems not to matter to members opposite. It does matter. It matters because the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement is important. The ability for us to carry in our communities, and for members opposite to carry in their communities, the importance of this measure is underpinned by labour-market integrity tests that can be supported by all of us in our community. Instead, what do we see? We see a government that simply plays to the lowest, base, political equation that it can find, and it throws into a terrible environment the worst possible language around free trade and the worst possible characterisation of those of us who defend Australian jobs and Chinese jobs in this process.
We support the goals of free trade. It may come as a surprise to members opposite that in the six years of the former Labor government $278 billion was invested in Western Australia's resources sector—$278 billion. Since the election of this mob over here, there has been not one dollar of new investment.
What an extraordinary contribution from the member for Brand. He really seems to be straddling the proverbial barbed-wire fence with one foot on either side. For the record, the government has concluded three new free trade agreements—with China, Korea and Japan. These were put into the too-hard basket under the previous government. Job creation and job growth is at the centre of everything that this government does. We have the largest infrastructure rollout in Australian history reaching into every state and delivering more roads and better infrastructure. Since the beginning of this year, nearly 163,000 new jobs have been created—an average of 23,000 new jobs per month. Last month, 38½ thousand jobs were created.
I took the MPI on face value—the government failing to properly invest in Australian jobs and well-planned infrastructure. We have heard from two members from Western Australia and it seems they have a more narrow focus. However, I will speak on my state. South Australia still needs to transform its economy. Unemployment is at 8.1 per cent, where we have had a state Labor government for 13½ years, and business confidence is low. University of South Australia business professor Dick Blandy has said that South Australia cannot take a silver bullet approach to economic reform. He said that what it needs is the liberation of small and medium sized businesses, which are far more likely to add jobs in the future.
The coalition want to unlock that. We want to see South Australia make that transition. We recently announced a $5½ billion small business package, the largest small business package in Australia's history. When the Minister for Small Business recently visited South Australia there was nothing but welcome for this policy and the jobs and opportunities that it will create.
Next, we move to frigates. In the previous six years of the Labor government how many naval vessels did they commission? Not one. How many orders did they place for a naval vessel? Not one. It is absolute hypocrisy for those opposite to talk about investment in Australian jobs when the 'valley of death' and job losses in naval shipbuilding were a direct result of their failure to act for six years. The coalition are doing what we can to fix this. We are bringing forward the offshore patrol vessels and future frigates. This will preserve up to 1,000 jobs that would have otherwise been lost and will guarantee up to 2,500 long-term shipbuilding jobs, primarily in South Australia.
Mr Champion interjecting—
I take the interjection from the member for Wakefield, who is really a 'glass half empty' kind of guy. The Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, said that the future frigates announcement:
… creates the continuity and jobs that workers here in this state and around the nation want …
So the news on future frigates is good news for jobs in South Australia. They are a vote for confidence in our local shipbuilding industry.
Next, I want to talk about infrastructure: South Road, Darlington. The Labor Party promised to fix South Road, Darlington, in 2007. They promised, again, in 2008 and, again, in 2009. They never delivered it; they broke that promise. There were six years of broken promises. This is an exciting project, which means that for residents of the south, residents in the member for Kingston's electorate and mine, will now have a free-flowing journey all the way to Daws Road. It will cost $620 million, and $496 million will come from the coalition government. So we are providing 80 per cent of the funding.
Anyone who is following this debate can remember that this required the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, the member for Mayo, to play hardball with the state Labor government. But we have come up with a great outcome for commuters and we are also seeing the Torrens to Torrens project going ahead. So we have a long-term vision to see the north-south corridor, with free-flowing traffic, going all the way from Darlington to Winfield. The Darlington upgrade will create 370 jobs each year.
Lastly, what would a Labor example be of well-planned infrastructure? The NBN? When we came to government, after six years of a Labor government, how many brownfield-residents in my electorate were connected to the NBN? How many do you think? Absolute zero. Former senator Don Farrell said 10,000 were being connected. It was not true. Recently, the Minister for Communications announced a doubling of the NBN workforce. That means an additional 400 jobs in South Australia. Jobs are at the centre of everything this government does.
The member for Boothby's conclusions sound more like a forlorn hope than an actual reality. It is clear that he lives in some sort of bizarre Bizarro World, in a sort of alternative universe. There are only two issues in South Australia and they are submarines, which we all know the Prime Minister outsourced to Japan. We all know that the National Security Committee of Cabinet signed off on it—with a press release to go out—outsourcing our submarines to Japan. We all know it happened; it has not been denied. Members for Boothby and Hindmarsh and others all have to roll in here and pretend that it is otherwise. Never mention a submarine; talk about all things naval. They promised all these frigates out into the never-never. They will build everything in South Australia except for submarines, which are next to be built.
And of course we know all about the car industry, don't we? Here is a headline, dated 11 December, 2013: 'Hockey dares GM to leave'. We all remember that headline. We all remember the government, the Deputy Prime Minister and others up here, basically daring the car industry to leave. What an approach to foreign investment—we have never seen anything like it—daring a company not to invest in Australia. It is absolutely extraordinary. Then the coalition come in here and say: 'But the unemployment rate is 8.2 per cent. Terrible news. Who would've thought it'? The fact is that they knocked back billions of dollars of investment that would have saved 10,000 jobs in the auto industry and hundreds and hundreds of business that hang off it. And now we wonder why we have a jobs crisis in South Australia. I can tell you why. It is because of the Abbott government, because of Treasurer Hockey and because of these people in government, as we speak.
Do not take my word for it. Listen to what Associate Professor John Spoehr said about the unemployment rate:
In my view this is a male unemployment crisis …
Then he pointed out that male employment dropped in South Australia by 8,000. He went on:
It’s been brewing for a while but now it’s obvious that we are in the midst of a male unemployment crisis that will get much worse as the effects of the auto closure and downturn in construction impact over the next year or so …
And further:
I didn’t expect it to hit as hard as this as early as it has … It’s even surprised me.
That is what John Spoehr, from Adelaide uni, said. He knows something about the South Australian labour market. He has been out there at the Stretton Centre, in my electorate—a new centre, funded by the Suburban Jobs Program, by a previous Labor government. The sum of $10 million was invested, along with all the other millions of dollars that have been invested in Edinburgh, the Northern Expressway and all the infrastructure projects that have been delivered while Labor was in government. The Stretton centre is an absolute success story. It will be planning for the future around jobs. And guess what? It was due to be opened a couple of weeks ago, while this parliament was sitting, by Premier Weatherill. But the opening was cancelled and I will tell you why. This government wants to claim the previous government's centre, because the Assistant Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, wants to rock up and claim that project, just like the coalition did when it recently re-turned the sod on Torrens to Torrens. We have the member for Boothby talking about infrastructure—and what do we find? We find that this is a government that is sitting on its hands. And while it is sitting on its hands, instead of planning, it wants to re-announce old projects!
We just had the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, the member for Mayo, in here, hinting that there is going to be another big announcement. We all know what that will be. It will be the Northern Connector, which has been planned for about the last 10 years. This project has been ready to go. You would have thought, when those opposite were closing down the car industry, that they might have something extra to say.
What did you do in six years!
That is when Patrick Conlon was looking at it. This is not a new project. This is one that was shovel-ready a long time ago. Yet we have the minister for infrastructure in here wanting golf claps because he is going to announce a project that was ready to go a long time ago!
What we have here is a government that acts politically on infrastructure. The member for Boothby basically admitted it when he talked about the Darlington interchange. That investment was just to save him. It was the most expensive election commitment we have ever seen, just to save his margin at the last election—or maybe the one before that. This is the way this government acts. It acts politically. It does not act; it reacts to things. It does not address jobs, it does not address infrastructure and it is certainly no friend of South Australia!
I have rewritten this MPI to make more sense. I have rewritten it to say: how is the government investing in Australian jobs and well-planned infrastructure? It is a shame I only have five minutes, because I could literally take up 50! I will go through some very clear examples in my electorate of how we are investing in well-planned infrastructure and also in Australian jobs.
I am going to start with the Pacific Highway. The Pacific Highway has about $7 billion left to be spent on it. Five billion dollars of that alone is going to be spent on the Ballina to Woolgoolga section. We know that the primary reason that we invest in infrastructure on highways like this is to reduce fatalities. The Pacific Highway now has the lowest level of fatalities that it has had in decades. That is because the number of fatalities has fallen markedly in the areas where the dual duplication has been completed. However, in the areas where the dual duplication has not been completed there are still far too many fatalities. That is the primary reason.
Also, obviously, there were 3,000 to 4,000 direct jobs created during its construction. And when you count the indirect jobs, there were anywhere up to about 10,000 jobs that resulted from this dual duplication—which is wonderful. On its completion, it is going to be wonderful for my community and communities around because commerce, transport, tourism will all be so much easier—all because of this well-planned piece of infrastructure.
Why do I mention the highway? I mention it because there was a difference at the last election between us and the previous government. I acknowledge that the previous federal government were at one stage funding 80 per cent of the Pacific Highway—with 20 per cent state funding. However, when there was a change in state government they quite cynically wanted to change the funding formula, and they only funded 50 per cent with 50 per cent state funding. We went to the previous election with a promise to reinstate the 80-20 rule, to make sure that this really important piece of infrastructure was maintained in order to reduce fatalities, to bring in jobs and to continue the other things—and we have done that.
Just a month or so ago I had the great pleasure of opening the office of Pacific Complete in Grafton. Pacific Complete won the tender to lead the consortium for the Ballina to Woolgoolga section upgrade. Up to 200 people alone are going to be working just for Pacific Complete, who are responsible for managing the project between Ballina and Woolgoolga. Again, this will be a great piece of infrastructure—and there will be jobs.
We have increased Roads to Recovery spending to local councils around the country enormously. There are five in my electorate: Kyogle used to get $700,000; we are going to give them $2 million per year over the next two years. Ballina was $590,000, and is going to get $1.8 million per year over the next two years. Clarence Valley used to get $1.4 million; we are going to be giving them $4 million per year over the next two years. Lismore at $880,000, will be getting $2½ million per year, and Richmond Valley at $700,000 a year, will be getting over $2 million per year. Again, increase in infrastructure—well-planned infrastructure—and job creation.
There are 11 new base stations for mobile phones in my electorate: Babyl Creek, Copmanhurst, two at Bonalbo, Ettrick, Bentley, Hernani, Lower Peacock, Nymboida and Culmaran Creek. These are great examples of infrastructure spend and job creation
I notice a difference in the words of the other side from earlier in the year about the free trade agreements. The biggest private employer in my electorate is the Northern Cooperative Meat Company in Casino. They employ 1,200 people. The free trade agreement with China is exceptionally important to them. They are very happy with it, because China has gone from almost negligible on their sales sheet to now being one of the biggest buyers of both frozen and chilled beef from that cooperative. I know that the 1,200 people who work there are very happy that they will export 70 per cent to per cent of their product under this free trade agreement. Norco Cooperative, another very big private employer in my electorate, is starting to export fresh milk to China and other countries and they are very happy with the agreement.
I could go on about the farming community, the Maccas, the beef and the dairy. They are all very happy with this free trade agreement. We are into job creation and we are into well-planned infrastructure spend.
It is vitally important that we take this opportunity to focus on a project that is wrong on so many levels—a project that should be stopped before a great deal of pointless harm is done and a great deal of public funding is wasted.
As my colleagues have made abundantly clear, the Perth Freight Link is not worth the paper it is written on. In fact, it is a fair question as to whether it is written on any paper it all! It is a project that was simply pulled out of the hat of political expediency and carelessness, with no regard for the damage and waste involved. Nobody knows or can explain where this crazy project came from.
What we do know is that the Abbott government, in an apparent state of budget emergency and when every cent was allegedly precious, decided to throw $1 billion at the Barnett government to build the mother-of-all roads, a super-sized truck freeway that WA never asked for and never planned—a road whose only logic is to underwrite the privatisation of Fremantle Port, which is wrong in itself—at the cost of sensible long-term freight planning and long-established neighbourhood amenity.
As the member for Perth has pointed out very eloquently, the total cost of the project has now soared above $2 billion—$2 billion for a road no-one wants at the extraordinary expense of sensible, strategic transport and infrastructure planning for the long term. I am very grateful to my colleagues today for their comprehensive demolition of the folly that is the Perth Freight Link. I especially thank the member for Perth, whose track record in delivering genuinely transformative transport projects is unparalleled.
The clear and present danger in my electorate is stage 1 of the Perth Freight Link project, a completely new road, called Roe Highway stage 8, that was deemed unnecessary more than a decade ago, that was judged unacceptable by the Environmental Protection Authority more than a decade ago, at a time when the EPA's judgement was considered meaningful. At that time the EPA said that Roe 8 would 'lead to the ecological values of the area as a whole being diminished in the long term' and that 'every effort should be made to avoid this'.
My community is very conscious that, while the entire Perth Freight Link project has countless unresolved problems and issues, the WA government retains a maniacal focus on crashing ahead with six lanes of bitumen through the middle of the Beeliar Wetlands from Kwinana Freeway to Stock Road. I want to put forward, on behalf of the community I represent—tens of thousands of households and families—the impact on local people in the Fremantle electorate. I want to mention Mr Hume, a Noongar elder, who died only a few months ago, and who consistently applied his incredible energy and leadership to the protection of the Beeliar Wetlands and its Indigenous heritage. North Lake and Bibra Lake, which this road will rip apart, are known as Coolbellup and Walliabup to the Beeliar group of the Whadjuk-Noongar. There is archaeological and cultural evidence that these wetlands were the site of semipermanent camps, that they were a birth site and also a traditional burial ground.
I want to mention Gail Beck and the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, which represents the traditional owners, who have expressed their unanimous opposition to this road. I want to mention Tania Smirke and her family, with four young kids, who live in Palmyra and received a letter out of the blue, as did hundreds of people, telling them their house may need to be demolished. I want to mention Native ARC and the Cockburn Wetlands Education Centre for the work they do to engage people across WA in the beauty and magic of Coolbellup and Walliabup. I want to mention Felicity McGeorge, Kate Kelly and all those involved in the Save the Beeliar Wetlands community action group for their indefatigable fight over many years. I want to mention Christine Cooper and the Bibra Lake Residents Association for their work in identifying the military heritage that is at risk. I want to mention the Rethink the Link alliance, which has brought together all these groups and more in a widening and united front that will fight against the Perth Freight Link and that will fight for a sustainable transport future.
Finally, I want to mention Joe Branco, a representative of the North Lake Residents Association, who has fought against the destruction of the wetlands for more than 20 years, who has stood in front of the bulldozers and who will stand in front of the bulldozers again. And I want to make it clear that I will be standing with Joe, with Gail, with Felicity, with Christine, with Kate, with Tania and with thousands of others if that day should come, because there is a steely determination, hardened over many years and many battles, that these precious, rare, fragile, remnant wetlands will not be ruined by an outdated, unnecessary, massively expensive and wasteful truck freeway; that our neighbourhoods, from the freeway to the port, will not be sacrificed to the blindness and carelessness of the road-mad Abbott and Barnett governments.
When I saw the matter for discussion in today's MPI from the member for Perth, I was staggered. Let us remind the House of Labor's misleading statement: 'The Government is failing to properly invest in Australian jobs and well-planned infrastructure.' What a load of hypocrisy! Where to do I start, Mr Deputy Speaker?
I know. Let us start with Adani Mining and the Carmichael mine—Queensland's biggest coalmining project in my electorate of Capricornia. Our government supports this project, which would create over 10,000 jobs. That is 10,000 construction jobs, followed by ongoing operational jobs. As for infrastructure, the Adani project would build the most important coal rail project in modern Queensland and upgrade export and shipping infrastructure at Abbot Point. This project is worth $20 billion to Queensland. But it is under threat—not from our government but from Labor over there and their Greens mates!
Mr Deputy Speaker, you might be forgiven for thinking that Labor and the Greens are the same party. There is no point of difference when it comes to destroying jobs in Central Queensland. They are both guilty. The Greens and Labor have thrown a hand grenade at the Adani project. They are trying to stop progress on $20 billion job-creating infrastructure. The Greens have no policy on job creation—or on funding welfare and pensions, for that matter. But they thought it was a good idea to stop the Adani project by taking court action. And Labor has been noticed in their silence.
As the Prime Minister indicated yesterday, Adani needs to go ahead. We want it to go ahead. This project creates the exact thing that Labor is criticising us for today, and that is significant jobs and significant infrastructure . If Labor and the Greens were serious about the jobs of mining families in Central Queensland, they would get out of the way and let Adani move forward.
The tragedy about this is that the Labor Party in Queensland provided $50,000 to the very Greens group that took the current court action to directly halt the project. You heard me correctly: Labor in this country is funding the Greens to stop the development of important job-creating infrastructure in Capricornia. Labor was also the party that introduced 100 per cent fly-in fly-out contracts on Central Queensland coalmines. Labor's 100 per cent FIFO contracts have obliterated local towns like Moranbah, Dysart and Nebo.
We in the National Party believe that Labor's practice of 100 per cent fly-in fly-out workforces, which shuts local workers out of local coalmines, amounts to geographic discrimination. In contrast, the National Party is committed to investing in infrastructure projects in Central Queensland to provide hundreds of jobs. This investment in job-creating infrastructure includes: $428 million for the Mackay ring-road, which will create 600 jobs; $166.1 million for Peak Downs Highway safety works, 295 jobs; $136 million for the Yeppen floodplain upgrade, 200 jobs; $12.5 million for the Kin Kora roundabout, 78 jobs; $86 million for Bruce Highway pavement widening in the Flynn and Capricornia electorates, 46 jobs; $8.8 million for the Bruce Highway Sarina northern access upgrade, 32 jobs; $105.4 million for Bruce Highway black spots northwards of Sarina, 30 jobs; $110 million for Bruce Highway overtaking lanes in the Flynn and Capricornia electorates, 24 jobs; $9.6 million for Bruce Highway pavement widening in areas from St Lawrence to Bowen, 18 jobs; $320 million for the Bruce Highway safety pack, five new jobs; $46 million for Roads to Recovery and black spot funding to local councils, dozens of local jobs; and $115 million to local councils for local roads and streets under the Roads to Recovery program. This is clear evidence that our government is not failing to invest in Australian jobs and well-planned infrastructure.
It shows how badly this government is failing infrastructure that the last speaker could not go the five minutes on this important issue.
She just talked about our projects.
She had run out of Labor projects to announce—projects that we had not only announced but funded. But that goes to this whole issue. The four previous Labor speakers did an excellent job outlining the litany of failures around infrastructure planning by the current government. I would like to explore why this is so and why they have failed. While it would be improper to attribute blame to one individual, I think that there is one individual at the heart of this, and that is the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, the member for Mayo, who is a great adornment to the Liberal Party.
Very good with footpaths!
He is very good with footpaths. It is funny that you mention it, the member for Moreton; I might get to that in a moment. But why have they failed infrastructure? It is because their assistant minister is a failure as a minister. He is a failure because—instead of looking at infrastructure planning clinically and taking the best advice from independent experts—he goes on jaunts. We had revelations last week of his propensity to go to Norfolk Island. I have an article here labelled, 'Minister defends island trip to promote thrifty spending'. This is a particularly good one, I found, because the assistant minister spent $25,000 on VIP flights to Norfolk Island to give a speech urging the residents of Norfolk Island to cut their spending. Let me repeat that: he spent $25,000 of taxpayers' money to go to Norfolk Island to tell them that the government had no money. This is the calibre of the individual that we have.
Then, shortly after that, we had another article by the Adelaide Advertiser, entitled, 'Rocky path for Jamie on Norfolk'. This one is special. This one is my favourite, because he spent another 25 grand—that is, more than the equivalent of one person's annual pension—to go to Norfolk Island to do one thing: announce that they were going to build a footpath. Let me repeat that: 25 grand to announce a footpath. I see some smiles from members of the National Party over there. The National Party love pork-barrelling, but not even they would sink to these debts. At least they got a cheese factory that burned down, a railway line that went nowhere or something else. They got more than a footpath. The member for Mayo spent $25,000 to announce a footpath! There are a couple of problems besides the spending of $25,000. The footpath had already begun construction, funded by the local community collecting donations and built by volunteer labour. Only the member for Mayo—the brains trust behind Work Choices and the brains trust behind Steve Marshall's failed South Australia election campaign—could travel on a VIP jet and spent 25 grand to announce a footpath that had already begun construction and that he was not even funding! The community of Norfolk Island were funding it.
It is no surprise that the assistant minister's response to this embarrassing saga was not to cop it on the chin—even though there is the irony that he was the Liberal Party's waste watch spokesperson when they were in opposition and that he released this tome on supposed Labor waste. I would submit that his two trips would be No. 1 and No. 2 in that book, if he had any balance. He did not respond by copping it on the chin. He responded by putting a media ban on the Adelaide Advertiser. That is the maturity of the member for Mayo. He blamed the messenger. He blamed the journalist involved and said that he would no longer respond to the Adelaide Advertiser's inquiries. I am sure that the Adelaide Advertiser is greatly heartbroken about that! No wonder the senior minister does not even trust the member for Mayo to get his sandwich order right. No wonder those opposite do not even trust the member for Mayo to get ham sandwiches for Warren Truss.
This is a sad indictment of a government that has presided over massive infrastructure cuts. We saw $2 billion cut from infrastructure in the 2015 budget. In 2014, we saw a $925 million cut to financial assistance grants to local councils. Those cuts led directly to $13 million in cuts to my two local government areas, Lake Macquarie and Newcastle. We have seen an East West Link with a cost-benefit analysis of 45c. Let me repeat that: for every dollar of Commonwealth investment, it returns 45c. Only a minister who could spend $25,000 to travel to Norfolk Island to announce a footpath would think that returning 45c for every $1 spent is a good deal for taxpayers. This is the calibre of the government we have over there. We have had six months of good government! Well, God help us when they get governing really seriously, because this is a joke. They are an embarrassment and they need to be kicked out at the next possible opportunity.
The Abbott government has a comprehensive strategic plan to invest in nation-building infrastructure and assist the private sector to create jobs. Since the election in September 2013, a total of 335,800 new jobs have been created. This year alone, 163,000 new jobs have been created. Economic growth and job creation are being facilitated through a range of measures and policies including deregulation, small business tax cuts, free trade agreements, vocational education and training, and the repeal of the mining and carbon taxes.
The budget contained $5.5 billion in the form of a jobs and small business package designed to boost the small business sector, which is a major source of employment in our economy. In addition, $212 million was allocated in the budget for the youth Transition to Work program to assist young people who are disengaged from work and study and who are at risk of long-term welfare dependence to return to the workforce.
The government has developed and released white papers on agriculture and also on developing northern Australia to guide economic development and employment growth for the next decade and beyond. The future construction of roads, rail, bridges, ports, refineries, smelters, factories, water treatment plants, electricity generation and transmission infrastructure will see employment and living standards rise. It will create opportunities for the development of agriculture, aquaculture, domestic tourism, international education and health care, to name a few.
Furthermore, the government's recent free trade agreements, signed with Japan, Korea and China, will open up demand-driven markets critical for economic growth. Trade with emerging economies will also generate more demand for professional services in areas such as architecture and design, engineering, construction, project management, quantity surveying, legal services, contract administration, transport and logistics. Overall, these strategic free trade agreements will also be positive for Australian mining exports, energy exports—in the form of coal and liquefied natural gas—agricultural exports, agribusiness and food manufacturing. The government is currently engaged in six other free-trade negotiations. Those are: two bilateral free-trade negotiations, with India and Indonesia; four multilateral free-trade negotiations in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Australia-Gulf Cooperation Council Free Trade Agreement, the Pacific trade and economic agreement, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
The coalition has delivered an infrastructure budget which allocates a record $50 billion in funding over seven years to deliver vital infrastructure across Australia. In my home state of Western Australia, $4.7 billion in funding has been earmarked for major road projects. The Perth Airport Gateway has received $675 million. The project is designed to ease congestion, facilitate tourism development and facilitate commuting by the fly-in fly out workforce. The project is expected to be completed in early 2017. Near my electorate of Moore, $615 million has been allocated to the Swan Valley Bypass. It represents a new 40-kilometre highway from the Reid Highway and Tonkin Highway intersection in Malaga to the Great Northern Highway at Muchea. An investment of $866 million in the Perth Freight Link will provide improved capacity for heavy vehicle freight movements to and from the port of Fremantle. Funding of $307.8 million has been allocated towards the Great Northern Highway from Muchea to Wubin, with a further $174 million towards the North West Coastal Highway from Minilya to Barradale. In my electorate, the Mitchell Freeway extension from Burns Beach Road to Hester Avenue has received federal funding of $209 million.
The measures I have outlined indicate that the Abbott government has a comprehensive strategic plan to build the Australian economy, create jobs and invest in nation-building infrastructure.
The time for the debate has concluded.
I wish to make a personal explanation.
Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?
Yes.
Please proceed.
Today in question time the foreign minister claimed that I was 'attacking government policy on the fight against terrorism'. Mr Deputy Speaker, that is false. I, and Labor, have provided bipartisan support for Australia's intervention in Iraq against Daesh. Secondly, the Minister for Foreign Affairs claimed that I have said, 'I want Australia's defence forces to cease the airstrikes against Daesh.' Mr Deputy Speaker, that is also false. I support, and Labor supports, the current mission against Daesh in Iraq. Thirdly, the Minister for Foreign Affairs claimed that I had said, 'Syria is about the same size as Australia.' Mr Deputy Speaker, it is. The population of Australia is about 24 million. The population of Syria is about 22 million. Lastly, the Minister for Foreign Affairs also said that I want our fighter jets to drop food hampers over Syria—'a terrorist picnic'. What I have said is: around 11½ million people, just under half the Syrian population, have been forced to flee their homes, including millions of women and children. Australia can, and should, be doing more to help victims of Daesh in Syria and in neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. To say that this is calling for food drops to Daesh is a pathetic lie.
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition might withdraw that last word—lie—because you were quoting where you have been misrepresented.
Because of my very high regard for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will withdraw.
I thank you.
On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the committee's report entitled Human rights scrutiny report: Twenty-sixth report of the 44th parliament. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.
Leave granted.
Thank you very much to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the House. I rise to speak to the tabling of this report. The committee's report examines the compatibility of bills and legislative instruments with Australia's human rights obligations. This report considers bills introduced into the parliament from 10 August to 13 August 2015 and legislative instruments received from 12 June to 6 August 2015. The report also includes the committee's consideration of responses to matters raised in previous reports.
Of the seven bills examined in this report, six are assessed as not raising human rights concerns. One has been deferred, as it was introduced late last week. Accordingly, chapter 1 of the committee's report focuses on legislative instruments. It is often an area of the committee's mandate that is overlooked. However, much of the committee's work is scrutinising the large volume of regulations made each year. In this report, the committee examined 421 instruments and considered that 17 of those required further information from a relevant minister. This report covers eight instruments, while the remaining nine have been deferred. In looking at those statistics, the report indicates that less than four per cent of instruments made in the relevant period were assessed by the committee as requiring further comment. Expressed in another way, over 96 per cent of the regulations raised no human rights issues requiring further analysis and observations from the committee.
One of the regulations considered by the committee that has not found its way into the report is the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment (Prohibited Association) Regulation 2015. Australia's anti-doping legislation was changed in 2014 to bring it into line with the World Anti-Doping Code. That code introduced a number of new doping violations which raised human rights concerns, including a new offence of associating with a prohibited person. This new offence raised questions about its compatibility with the right to freedom of association, which the committee commented on in August 2014.
This new regulation further expands the prohibition on associating with prohibited persons by assessing prohibited conduct retrospectively. Prior to the committee examining the instrument, the Minister for Health wrote to the committee to explain the objective behind the regulation and all relevant safeguards. The statement of compatibility for the regulation also fully explained the rights engaged, and enabled the committee to conclude that the measure, while engaging human rights, was nevertheless compatible with those rights.
The key element of the committee's work is the scrutiny dialogue it maintains with executive departments and agencies regarding the human rights consideration in the development of policies and legislation. As this regulation demonstrates, the committee's ability to appropriately perform its scrutiny function in assessing bills and instruments for compatibility with human rights is greatly influenced by the quality of the dialogue it undertakes with the proponents of the legislation and their willingness to fully explain and to justify the human rights compatibility of legislation in the instrument of compatibility.
As always, I encourage my fellow members to examine the committee's report to better inform their understanding of the committee's deliberations. With these comments, I commend 26th report of the 44th Parliament to the House.
When we lost Alby Shultz we lost one of the most colourful, engaging and sometimes irascible members of this House. He was, of course, the longest-serving member for the federation seat of Hume. He was born in Melbourne on 29 May 1939. Alby, who died recently at the age of 76, had been ill for a long time and had retired from parliament at the 2013 election, following a diagnosis of liver cancer.
He was a very passionate liberal, and as many of us have noted the Liberal Party room, which is, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker—rather, as a member of the National Party the Deputy Speaker does not attend Liberal Party meetings!—the Liberal Party meets at the beginning of each two-week sitting of parliament for half an hour at nine o'clock on a Tuesday. The Liberal Party meetings, of course, deal with matters of great interest to the Liberal Party as distinct from the coalition. Since Alby has left us, there is not nearly so much to talk about. He was quite able to fill up the whole half hour with his observations on matters inter se—let us put it that way!—between the members of the coalition.
Indeed, when he was getting ready to retire from parliament he looked out for a successor and, of course, he was delighted to find Angus Taylor, who is now the member for Hume. As everyone knows, Alby had only two conditions—two critical, absolutely essential conditions—one was that his successor had to be somebody that had the capacity to be Prime Minister of Australia but, most importantly, they could not be a member of the National Party under any circumstances whatsoever!
Alby was a very forthright member of the parliament and of the party room. Of course, he was a member of the party room for many years. He came to this parliament in 1998, having served in the New South Wales parliament for 10 years prior to that. I have many exhilarating memories of dealing with Alby from when I was Leader of the Opposition—some of them more character-forming than others. He had the great characteristic of being always thoroughly himself. Of course, we have made the same observation about another much-loved member of our party, Don Randall, who died recently too. Indeed, in a rather sombre coincidence, Don died on the day of Alby's funeral.
Alby leaves his wife, Gloria, and his sons, Grant and Dean. Grant gave a really powerful and moving eulogy for his father at Alby's funeral. Being a man, I will just speak about men: it is always a very momentous time in a man's life when his father dies. Obviously, we all hope that our fathers live until they are very old—very old indeed. Some of us are fortunate enough for that to happen; others are not. Alby lived well past threescore years and 10, but 76 is not a very old age—at least in the modern world. Grant spoke so movingly of his father. Every person in that huge church in Cootamundra understood the grief of that family and the significance of that watershed event that occurs to most people. Of course, the vast majority of us, fortunately, have our fathers predecease us. Every father wants to die long before their children; no-one wants to outlive their children. Nonetheless, it was a very moving eulogy.
Alby was a real worker. I remember, when I was young journalist working at the Parliament of New South Wales, there were many members of that parliament on both sides who were what the poet might have called 'horny-handed sons of toil', and Alby definitely fell into that category. He started off working in abattoirs, moved on to a management position with a meat-packing company and then found his way into politics. He came from a working-class background, very much so. Indeed, he said in his maiden speech that his grandmother on his mother's side was a personal friend of John Curtin, and reflected that one of his uncles had said that his grandfather would turn in his grave if he knew Alby was a Liberal member of parliament. Alby seemed to think this was quite appropriate and confirmed that he expected that his grandfather would be doing that!
It is my submission to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, that he embodied some of the finest values of the Liberal party. He had a very, very big heart. I do not want to suggest that other parties do not have big hearts. But he had a very strong view that people should work hard and get on with their lives with as little interference from government as possible, and rise by their own efforts. He had a very sturdy, self-reliant philosophy and he lived those values.
Alby had many interests. One of them of course, being the representative of a rural electorate, was telecommunications, and he complained about inadequate telecommunications in his maiden speech. So it is good that in 2015, with the Mobile Black Spot Program, we were able to announce 18 new or upgraded base stations in that electorate, and 74 of the 139 black spots identified in Hume were addressed in whole or in part. Alby would be very, very pleased by that result.
On my behalf and on behalf of Lucy, we extend our sympathies to Alby's wife, Gloria; their sons, Dean and Grant, and their spouses; and their grandchildren, whom Alby loved so much.
I join the member for Wentworth, with the member for Kooyong to follow me, in commemorating with deep sadness the death of another very hardworking former member of this place. Alby Schultz spent over three decades in service of the public—first at local government level as a councillor in New South Wales, then in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the member for Burrinjuck and, finally, in the federal parliament as the outstanding, well-respected member for Hume.
As a former meatworker Alby knew the importance of hard work—and that is something that has been remarked upon in many speeches—an attribute that throughout his long and varied career was very much associated with him. It was also during his years as a meatworker that Alby discovered his political identity. In Alby's valedictory speech, he retold the story of when former Labor member for Burrinjuck Terry Sheahan questioned Alby about why he was a Liberal. As Alby told it:
I said, 'Terry, with due respect, I am also a worker, and I wanted to work and I kept getting sent home on strikes, so that turned me off Labor politics forever.'
In that brief response, Alby verbalised the value he placed on a fundamentally liberal concept—that is, reward for effort, the power of human aspiration and the belief in the right of the individual to determine his or her own priorities.
Alby was passionate about helping people. He was a strong voice for many in rural areas and always stood up for what he believed in. The story of how Alby was elected Chairman of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is well known in this place and highlights Alby's determination to ensure that people got the help and advice that they deserved. Alby was committed to ensuring proper representation by those who have a deep understanding of the land and rural life. When Alby discovered that a chairman with, in his view, limited knowledge or experience of the agricultural sector was to be appointed, he was less than impressed. He translated his values into action by enlisting the support of the Hon. Martin Ferguson, the then member for Batman, and with his vote secured the position. Through Alby's sheer determination, he won the ballot, and I suspect that the committee was all the better for it.
That episode demonstrates what is clear to all in this place—that Alby had many friends across the parliament. This was due to his warm personality and genuine and pragmatic approach to helping and to listening. To the younger members of this place, such as the member for Kooyong and me, he always gave very free and fulsome advice and he was keen to mentor.
For Alby, public service extended well beyond the corridors and halls of this place and through to the Australian community which he served for over 30 years. During this time, Alby worked with many different community groups across his electorate, providing assistance where he could. He did not shy from rolling up his sleeves and getting hands-on. He worked with the Trefoil Guild in Canberra, helping to purchase, pack and deliver tonnes of items, from food to schoolbooks and toys, to assist families still suffering the effects of drought.
It has often been said that the people of Hume got two for the price of one when they elected Alby. He and his wife of 53 years, Gloria—or Glo, as he called her—were very much a team. In fact, he often referred to them as 'the team'. I know that her continuous support meant a great deal to not just Alby but also their community.
To Alby's family—his wife, Glo, and their children, Dean and Grant, and their families—I extend my deepest sympathies. Alby, you will always remain, in the minds of those you helped, someone who was dedicated, passionate and, most importantly, a great bloke. We commemorate you. To Alby.
In his maiden speech to the federal parliament on 26 November 1988 Alby Schultz asked the rhetorical question: what can this parliament expect from me? He went on to say:
… I do not subscribe to political correctness. I intend to defend the mainstream family values which have been pushed aside for political expediency; and I will never compromise my principles, honesty and integrity, no matter the cost. I seek no favours and I ask only that my rural constituency be given a 'fair go'.
This was Alby to a T, and all sides of politics and his constituents would agree he delivered.
He was a man of courage, conviction, vigour and generosity. Alby Schultz represented the best of us and our vocation. In a humble way he exuded confidence in who he was and what he wanted to do. He did not seek fame or higher office or pretend to be someone he was not. He took people as they were and expected the same in return. This authenticity was the secret of his success and a reason why he was so admired, for in politics authenticity is a characteristic professed by many but found in very few.
My friendship with Alby really took shape during the life of the last parliament. I was his 'chamber mate', sitting side-by-side in the House during the tumult of those years. We shared many stories and laughs, and I learnt much from his wise counsel. While we played on the same team we were in many respects on paper polar opposites. I was a new kid on the block from the inner-suburban Victorian seat of Kooyong. Alby was a veteran of three decades in public life from the regional New South Wales electorate of Hume, which he boasted was bigger than Belgium. I was worried about the rise of the Greens and Alby was more focused on the Nationals, three-party contests and defending what he termed the 'lost legion of rural Liberals'. Despite these differences, Alby would never talk down to you or dismiss your views. He was interested in what one had to say, not who had to say it. This was reflected by the fact he struck up genuine friendships with a number of younger members of the coalition's parliamentary team as well as those from the ranks opposite.
In the Menzian tradition, politics for Alby was not meant to be a clash of warring personalities but a battle of ideas. Martin Ferguson, Simon Crean, Dick Adams and Tony Windsor were all good friends and, interestingly, sometimes political allies. Alby was fond of recounting the story about how his family had strong Labor roots. His grandfather was close to Prime Ministers Chifley and Curtin and, given his working-class background, some of his political opponents were surprised when he first put his hand up for the Liberals. But this said as much about the broad church of the Liberal Party as it did about Alby and his deep beliefs in the power of the individual and the broad appeal of Liberal tradition.
Alby was deeply committed to helping his fellow man. He was a remarkable advocate on behalf of fathers who had been driven to despair and sometimes suicide by the break-up of their families. He would constantly rail against the Child Support Agency and court system, which he felt let them down. He subsequently became patron of the Lone Fathers Association. His moral and political support provided more than just much needed comfort; it actually produced positive and tangible outcomes for thousands of men in their darkest days.
In all of his endeavours Alby was closely partnered by Gloria, who he confessed was the bigger drawcard at the ballot box than he was. Indeed, she was more than his partner for life; she was the love of his life and to the very end was influencing his thoughts. In his valedictory speech in 2013 he noted it was the second speech he had written and said:
I wrote one, and my wife … said to me, 'You're not seriously going to bring that into the chamber … You really do have to write something a little bit softer than that, love.' So I have succumbed to that wise counsel … as I have done for many of the 51 years that we have been married …
Amen to that.
But the last word should be left to Alby. In his final speech to the parliament he said, 'To say the past 15 years in the parliament have been a magnificent experience is an understatement.' Alby, we look back at your achievements and see that you were a man of principle and purpose, brave and bold and truly magnificent. We will miss you dearly and our love, thoughts and prayers are with Glo, Grant, Dean, Bec and Dev and their families at this difficult time. Farewell, friend. You will never be forgotten.
On 21 July, in the middle of the parliamentary winter recess, a number of parliamentary colleagues of Alby Schultz attended his funeral in Cootamundra. For those who were there it was a sad occasion, farewelling a friend and a colleague who had played an important role in the life of his party, the parliament and the nation. But it was also a joyous day to see so many of his family and friends and community representatives coming together to celebrate a life well lived.
It was impossible not to like Alby. As with so many people from the country, he was as tough as nails. He was proud of his working-class roots. He believed in hard work and self-reliance. He had little time for unnecessary formalities and even less for political correctness. Buried within him was a heart of gold. Alby was a fierce defender of rural Australia and the interests of his constituents—he shared in their joy and felt their pain. He was deeply moved by the social and economic impact that the loss of jobs, services and infrastructure had on rural electorates such as his. He spoke with passion about the devastating impact of falling commodity prices, high interest rates, inflation and the drift of young men and women away from rural Australia towards the big cities.
Alby and I were among a handful of Liberal members to enter the parliament in the GST election of 1998. Having grown up on an apple and cherry orchard in the Adelaide Hills, I identified with many of the things Alby said and Alby stood for. His words carried beyond his electorate, resonating with everyone who knows the pleasure and the hardship that comes with a life on the land. Alby was a consummate local member, and on visits to his electorate over the years of our friendship I was struck by the number of people he knew and for whom he had solved a problem or taken up their cause. And he was fierce in his defence of their interests. As Alby said in his first speech to the Australian parliament:
… I am not in the business of compromising my constituency expectations by concentrating my energies on self-interest politics. I am closely aligned to grassroots politics and, whilst that may at times create some discomfort to a number of my parliamentary colleagues, it is in line with what the bulk of Australians expect from their local elected representatives.
This was Alby Schultz in a nutshell—it is what made him such a respected and formidable politician and a cherished friend to many people on all sides of the House. Alby represented his community for 33 years, first as a local councillor, then as a state member and finally as the federal member for Hume. Outside of the office he devoted himself to helping the families in his electorate that were suffering the effects of the drought. He was also the patron of the Lone Fathers Association, an organisation supporting men following the break-up of their family.
There is a common expression that the two things you never want to see being made are laws and sausages. As an abattoir worker and a politician, Alby got a pretty close look at both. It was his experiences outside of politics, coupled with his passion for his community, which made him such a colourful and well-loved character. In his valedictory speech he recalled an incident in Melbourne where he 'shirtfronted' an individual who mistakenly, or rather foolishly, made a disparaging remark about rural people—and this was before shirtfronting went mainstream.
I join with other members of this House in offering my heartfelt condolences to Alby's wife Gloria—a remarkable woman, a beautiful woman, with whom Alby shared an extraordinary marriage of over 50 years—and to his two sons, Grant and Dean, and their families. Vale Alby Schultz.
I join others in farewelling Alby Schultz. He was a country man, and I mean that as the most sincerest form of flattery. He did not just wear the RM Williams boots and pretend—he was a man born and bred in rural-regional Australia and he understood the differences in representing a rural seat compared to a small patch of densely settled suburbia. He understood that when you become a member of parliament in a regional seat it is a vocation in every sense of the word because your anonymity is gone and you are expected to live and breathe 24 hours seven days a week the needs and wants of your electorate. In a rural-regional seat in Australia today, you face extraordinary hardship at every level. There are very high rates of youth unemployment compared to metropolitan Australia, and there are the vagaries of the seasons where, even when there is a bountiful harvest, prices can collapse and your whole year of effort can come to nought. He understood the emotional trauma of living through seasonal disasters like drought, and he and Gloria understood that you did not just put food on the table of those families doing it tough; you also took around pamper packs. Gloria and Alby would ensure that the most basic essentials like a jar of coffee or a bottle of shampoo were available in the kitchens of those houses. He understood the dignity and respect that needed to go along with those offerings—they should never have been seen as a charitable gesture.
I was so pleased to see a man of Alby's background and character in this place, and of course he is typical of Liberal members—we are a very broad church. We have people who are not just lawyers or officials from a trade union background but who have been, as in his case, an abattoir worker who has understood the problems of being a salaried man, of being someone who works on contract. Then, of course, he represented the three tiers of government—local government, state government and then the federal parliament. He spent over three decades in public life trying to bring about a better place for his constituents. I will always be grateful to Alby for the time he crossed the floor with Michael McCormack, the member for Riverina, and me to say no to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It involved a disallowable instrument, and Michael and I were not aware that Alby was going to vote with us. When he did come and sit with us, all by ourselves on the bench over on the opposite side to both the Labor and the Liberal parties, he was showing the solidarity which he understood was absolutely essential if the Murray-Darling Basin communities were going to survive. If he were alive today I am sure he would be looking on with consternation at the unravelling of that plan's best intentions.
Alby was a man with a marvellous sense of humour, and when tragedy struck and he lost his eye it took a while for his prosthetic eye to become available and so he would wear a patch into parliament over his injured eye. On different days of parliament, that patch would be a different picture from a school. Sometimes it would be a union jack on his eyepatch; sometimes it would be a picture of an animal or a bird. Alby wore them proudly as representations of his school students. What a marvellous gesture that was, when someone else would probably have been cringing and hiding their injury, perhaps being embarrassed by the affliction they were bearing in a very public place.
To say that Alby had honesty and integrity is an absolute understatement. He also had extraordinarily strong views, and it was not unusual for him to lose his temper, but I believe he always did so for a cause that was just. Sometimes you have to throw rocks to draw attention to an issue before it can be solved. Alby certainly understood that, if a matter was of significance and people were not paying attention, you had to draw attention to that issue, and he did. The issues were invariably about rural and regional Australia.
He also championed the business of fatherhood, which he saw as under threat in Australia due to the way our welfare system works and the very sad outcomes of the dissolution of many marriages. We have heard from others about him as the leader of the Lone Fathers Association. I understand exactly where Alby was coming from, and so do many of my fellow members in this House, because we have so many grieving fathers come to us in our constituency offices asking for support as they seek to see their children or seek not to have their children used as a weapon in battles about financial arrangements. Alby understood all of that very well, even though in his own family he did not have any shadow of the marriage strife that he was dealing with in the lone fathers movement.
His sons, Grant and Dean, loved and respected their father. Somehow Alby managed to be a good father despite the incredible days, weeks and months that we must live removed from our families as we serve the nation as federal members. No doubt that was in part due to the extraordinary mothering by Gloria, his wife for more than 50 years. When Gloria became terribly sick, Alby supported her and took up causes related to her cancer. Then, of course, we were all so saddened to hear that Alby had cancer himself—an incurable and inoperable cancer that meant he only lived to 76. Alby was the youngest looking 70-plus person you could imagine, with his dark hair and his rugged country looks. But he was gone by the age of 76, a cruel shortening of his life. I always imagined him living to a great old age with Gloria and his grandchildren. It is farewell to a great country member; he will be sadly missed.
It is my privilege to join my colleagues to speak of Alby. Unfortunately, I did not have a long time to know Alby. I cannot say that I was his best friend or that we shared many times together, but you did not have to know Alby for a long time to know him very well. He said exactly what he thought; he did not beat around the bush. When he said he was willing to fight for something, that was actually literal—he did fight for things.
He was a great character and, as the previous speaker said, a complex person in some ways. While he enjoyed the very best of marriages, he had great sympathy and worked hard for those who did not have such good fortune. The story of his valedictory and his consultation with his lifelong partner Gloria was a typical Alby story. He was full of fight and feistiness and he was going to tell everybody what he really thought, and then he sought that good counsel.
In many ways you would think they were opposites, and it is often said that opposites attract, but, as I understand it, when you delve into it more deeply, you seek an opposite to become a whole—you seek in your partner what you do not have. Alby and Gloria made a great whole—they made a great team. Our thoughts go to Gloria in this time of loss; it is a terrible loss. Alby loved people and people loved him; he loved Gloria and Gloria loved him right back. I have often said that the best fortune of coming to this place is the colleagues you engage with who become your friends. This was certainly the case with Alby. He will remain in our thoughts; his spirit will remain here. We will treasure his memory and his spirit.
I take the opportunity to put on the record my condolences to Alby Schultz's family. I was one of the class of 98 who was elected at the same time as Alby. He was one of those truly defining characters in this place. I do not think we get to see as many anymore—a man who was truly dedicated to his electorate, his constituents and his family, but his family always came first. You could not have known Alby without knowing everything about his wife and kids and the great extended family that he considered his electorate. He will be missed in this place. I was sad that I did not get to hear the feisty speech he was going to make at the end; I thought there would have been some lessons to be learnt. The one thing with Alby was that you always knew where he stood.
I move:
That business intervening before order of the day No. 8, government business, be postponed until a later hour this day.
Question agreed to.
This bill follows the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Bill 2014, 'the principal bill'. That bill, amended to accept one recommendation made by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, passed the parliament with Labor support on 5 March 2015. The principal bill implemented the recommendations of a statutory review of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, carried under the former Labor government in 2008. That review was led by an eminent committee, comprising Mr Anthony Blunn AO, Mr Ian Govey, the Australian Government Solicitor, and Professor John McMillan AO.
That bill made a number of reforms to the arrangements for delegated legislation under the Legislative Instruments Acts 2003. The Legislative Instruments Act 2003, now renamed the Legislation Act, sets out a comprehensive regime for the registration, tabling, scrutiny and repeal of legislative instruments.
This bill makes a number of consequential technical, machinery and drafting changes. The bill: updates references across the statute book to the Legislative Instruments Act to reflect the change of name to the Legislation Act; compiles the list of instruments exempt from sunsetting and disallowance, presently found in various locations, into one central list in a regulation which is to be made under the Legislation Act; clarifies the status of rules of court under the Legislation Act; and, finally, repeals spent provisions and makes various technical and drafting corrections to the Legislation Act. These are minor and technical changes.
As Labor indicated when the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Bill came to this place, we support any measure which makes Commonwealth instruments easier to locate and understand. I commend this bill to the House.
I thank honourable members for their contribution to the debate on this bill. The Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2015 supports reforms made by the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Act 2015 to improve the operation and clarity of the legislative framework for Commonwealth instruments and acts. It makes consequential amendments to enhance accessibility of the law by ensuring the statute book does not contain incorrect references and provisions are correct on their face. The bill also clarifies requirements for administrative forms and that court rules are not legislative instruments.
These amendments support the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Act in its contribution towards the government's deregulation agenda. This bill was prepared on the initiative of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. I commend the office for the quality of the bill and its commitment to maintaining the accuracy and clarity of the Commonwealth statute book. I commend this bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister's motion. On Anzac Day this year we commemorated a particularly significant anniversary. On 25 April 100 years ago two divisions of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed at a small cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, now named Anzac Cove in their memory. In the campaign that followed those landings, we would suffer some 26,111 Australian casualties, including 8,141 deaths. The men who survived the Dardanelles campaign would go on to the even greater horrors of the Western Front.
It is sometimes said that this nation was born at Gallipoli. We must remember, though, that at the outbreak of war in 1914 Australia already had its own unique identity. Fourteen years before the landings at Anzac Cove, six British colonies had freely voted to create a nation. It is not often that a nation-state is formed in an exercise of democracy rather than violence. Though it was only just over 100 years since Europeans had occupied Australia—to build a penal colony, no less—by the turn of the 20th century Australia was thriving.
Our capitals bustled with activity. Sydney was a booming city of well over 600,000, with its own culture of business and beaches. Melbourne had, by the latter part of the 19th century, become the richest city in the world, a fact still reflected in our architecture. When the Commonwealth parliament met for its first sitting in 1901 it was in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne which had 20 years before hosted the Melbourne International Exhibition, showcasing Australia to the world. Australia had its own culture. In 1915 Melbourne, Carlton had just defeated South Melbourne the year before for their fourth premiership in our very own sporting innovation—Australian Rules. We had our own arts. Banjo Patterson's iconic The Man from Snowy River was already 25 years old.
And, of course, while Australia might have been a young nation-state when it was caught up in the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, this continent was and is home to the world's oldest continuing civilisation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had lived on this land for many thousands of years. They, too, would be caught up in the maelstrom of global war. Hundreds of Indigenous Australians served in the Great War, and many more would serve in the conflicts to follow.
We did not need to send tens of thousands of young men to the killing fields of Europe to prove ourselves or to forge a national identity. We were not born at Gallipoli. No, on the Dardanelles—and, later, on the Western Front—the young Australian nation suffered a grievous loss. It is a loss that profoundly scarred our nation, a loss that resonated through the decades that followed and a loss that we still mourn now, every year, on Anzac Day.
It is hard now to imagine the scale of that loss. Australia was at that time a nation of just five million, yet we sent 416,809 men to war—around 40 per cent of all Australian men of fighting age—and 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. The dreadful loss of Australian men and boys—for very many were only teenagers—is to be remembered for what it was: the wholesale killing of Australians in their prime.
Australia, blessed as it is to be an island nation and far from the cultural and ethnic nationalism that plagued Europe throughout much of the 20th century, could have left the killing fields to the Europeans. But, as war approached, soon to be Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher declared, 'Australians will stand behind the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling.' We do not now understand this loyalty to the Empire, a sense of Britishness which saw Australia so readily enter a British war. It would be a mistake to apply a modern Australian world view to events a century ago. Those were different times. As LP Hartley wrote, 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'
Indeed we should remember that at that time, as a matter of law as well as practice, Australia did not have its own independent foreign policy. Australia did not itself declare war in 1914 and we could not have done so. Not until the enactment here in 1942 of the Statute of Westminster did Australia have the constitutional power to declare war independently of Britain. In 1914 when Britain declared war she did so on behalf of the Empire. Even mindful of the times, the loss of life we suffered in the Great War was completely senseless and our entry into a war on the other side of the world was a great folly. The mindless and bloody Gallipoli campaign we commemorate on Anzac Day, the first major combat operation of the war in which Australian forces took part, illustrated that folly.
On the Dardanelles, Australians fought on a hostile battlefield nearly 10,000 miles from Melbourne. After eight months of grinding stalemate, allied forces withdrew. It was a great strategic failure. The greatest success of the campaign was a cunning evacuation. Nonetheless, even in that doomed campaign the Anzac forces distinguished themselves fighting ferociously and bravely against impossible odds.
On 25 April this year I joined thousands of residents of my community at Anzac Day services in my electorate of Isaacs. As with every year I was touched by the diversity and number of attendees. Australians of all backgrounds and ages turned up in droves on a cold wet day to remember and pay tribute. A constituent of mine, Mrs Margaret Diggerson of Chelsea, was successful in obtaining an Anzac Centenary grant to write a book about the men of Chelsea and Carrum who fought and died in the Great War. Titled The FallenMargaret's book examines the lives of 59 men tragically cut short. They left the townships of Chelsea and Carrum for the Great War and never returned.
I would like to read from the entry for Private Henry Deering Mossenton, who fought for the 8th Battalion and later for the 59th Battalion. Private Mossenton was a farm labourer at Carrum, which 100 years ago was a small farming community outside Melbourne, not the densely settled suburb it is today. On 27 September 1915 Private Mossenton wrote to his sister Maud about his experience in the Gallipoli campaign:
Dear Maud,
Just a few lines to say I have been at the front and been under fire at last. It seems a long while since I left home. We were at a place called ANZAC but were only for about two weeks and were shifted back to Lemnos again. I was not in the trenches but was working a good bit on the beach. Two of our chaps got wounded there with shrapnel, one pretty badly poor chap. My mate and I had a narrow escape.
In the same letter Private Mossenton mentions Anzac Cove. He wrote:
It is wonderful when you have a look at the place where our boys landed, for it is just a mass of hills. When you get out of the boat there is only about 20 yards of a sandy beach and then the cliffs start. How our chaps got to the top and took them, well I don't know, for it has been a wonderful piece of work. No wonder they praised our chaps up. I think when I look around all the boys who landed there they ought to get the V.C.
Private Mossenton was evacuated from Gallipoli on 7 January 1916 and went on to fight on the Western Front, where he was reported missing, presumed killed in action, on 19 July 1916 at Fromelles. Henry Mossenton is remembered on honour boards at Chelsea Council, Carrum Fire Brigade, Carrum RSL and the Carrum War Memorial. On reading Private Mossenton's letter to his sister I was struck by his line 'all the boys who landed there ought to get the VC'. I am sure that many soldiers who fought in Gallipoli or on the Western Front felt the same. I think the line really encapsulates the genuine camaraderie and selflessness of the Australian character—then as now.
As a farm labourer in what was then rural Victoria Henry Mossenton would no doubt have little knowledge of the destruction threatening to take over Europe. He would have signed up, along with most of his mates, totally unprepared for the inhumanity and butchery of the Dardanelles and the Western Front campaigns. What Henry Mossenton did understand was the importance of community and of recognising his mates and acknowledging their work.
The Great War was a conflict of little value. It was a war of necessity for allied powers in Europe and a war of imperial loyalty for Australia. It was a war where tens of thousands of young Australian men signed up with little idea of what they were getting themselves into. Australia has entered many wars since, though none as blindly. The Great War was not, as some of the men who suffered through it might have hoped, the war to end all wars, but it was certainly the last war in which Australians would enter with anything less than dread.
I said earlier that Australia was at the outbreak of war in 1914 already a young nation with its own character and cultural identity, but that identity shone through in our wartime experience. Ours is an egalitarian nation. We have no time here for aristocracies and stuffy class distinctions. Australians have a great sense of camaraderie, a loyalty to the collective and a keenness to pull together in the face of adversity.
The Anzac legend has become such a touchstone of our national folklore, not because of the death and destruction at Gallipoli and on the Western Front—a most pointless and despicable waste of youth—but because those Australians who fought and died at war encapsulated what was already in Australia's soul: a generosity, honesty and decency that can only come from the roots of a community formed by a history like Australia's. The diggers at Anzac Cove distinguished themselves above all through their loyalty to their mates, which, despite the passing of a century, Australians today still relate to.
It is important that we commemorate the sacrifice of our diggers but it is just as important to learn the lessons of war and to remember the horrors of conflict. It is my hope that today's Australians never have to live through another world war or the tragedy of losing a generation in its prime. This is not the occasion to glorify violence but the occasion to remember the mindlessness of war and the grievous damage it can inflict on an entire nation. Lest we forget.
The story of Gallipoli will always have a special place in the hearts of Australians—the tragedy, the tales of courage and mateship, the true horrors of war. We know that, through all of this, the Anzac spirit is woven into our history, embedded into our identity and will never be forgotten in our future. This year, the Anzac legacy has an additional point of significance—100 years since the landing at Gallipoli; 100 years since Australian and New Zealand soldiers landed on the shores of Turkey; 100 years since 8,141 Australians fell on that soil, their youth stolen in battle.
While Australia was at that point just 15 years old, from the devastation of our losses arose a distinct unity in Australians to never forget the sacrifice our soldiers made, and 100 years later I am proud to say that the spirit of the Anzac is stronger than ever. I imagine it would have seemed unbelievable back then that a century after those horrific events we would be standing in the national parliament marking them, but we can say that we have truly honoured the phrase 'lest we forget', and we are showing that through this motion in the parliament today. It is hard to imagine what our soldiers faced when they landed at Anzac Cove on the morning of 25 April 1915. In front of them lay a brutal battle, but behind them was the courage to fight for their country. They made the ultimate sacrifice, and it is now our duty to keep their spirit alive, both those who did not return and those who came home bearing the scars of conflict.
Each year I am consistently humbled by the way Australians pay tribute to our Anzacs. Nearly 417,000 men fought in World War I, including almost 35,000 men from South Australia. One of these young men from my electorate of Adelaide was Captain Harold Edwin Salisbury Armitage. Captain Armitage was 20 when war broke out. At the time, he was studying an arts degree at the University of Adelaide. Like everyone who fought in the war, his life and livelihood were put on hold to serve Australia. Captain Armitage enlisted on 24 March 1915 as a private, but quickly received a commission as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 10th Infantry Battalion. He departed Australia on 20 April 1915. It is noted that it was unusual that he was allowed to embark overseas as military regulations at the time deemed that no officer under the age of 23 years could be taken into active service, but, like so many of his comrades, age was not a barrier and the war awaited him. Armitage arrived on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 2 June, and only two months later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant—a testament to the respect he commanded and his ability to lead. Unlike so many others, Gallipoli was not the last sight that Armitage would see. He was transferred to a new battalion where he was promoted to captain and given command of his own company. By mid-2016 the battalion was located in Northern France, but the horror of war did not subside. His first action as part of the battalion was in the battle at Mouquet Farm, where, after five weeks of fighting, Australia had suffered 23,000 casualties—its worst ever total in five weeks. The battalion was rested, but the war continued. In February 1917, Captain Armitage was killed during an attack.
From humble beginnings in the suburb of Norwood, Captain Armitage became a respected and distinguished leader and friend to his comrades. He is one of the more than 5,500 South Australians killed in World War I. Sometimes it is hard to think of the best tribute when faced with such momentous loss. Nothing can bring back the sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, wives, sisters and daughters lost in the war. But, as members of parliament, we are privileged to see the best in our local communities right around Australia who play such a vital role in bringing the Anzac spirit to life, renewing and refreshing the memory of those who gave so much to our country.
In my electorate of Adelaide, which I am so proud to represent in this place, I was overwhelmed with the variety of ways which our local community marked 100 years of Australian service. There were amazing tributes showcasing that the spirit of mateship is as vibrant as ever. I would particularly like to congratulate the 15 schools and organisations in the electorate which received Centenary of Anzac grants to commemorate the anniversary. From the City of Prospect's A City At War exhibition, showing a snapshot of the city during World War I, to Gilles Street Primary School creating a history trail of sites in the city of Adelaide, these projects will mould the way that our electorate understands and marks Anzac Day into the future. Ultimately, the best tribute comes in the form of our children, in our future generations nourishing and enlivening what the spirit of Anzac means to modern Australia. As parliamentarians, we have an opportunity to ensure that our children are educated in Australia's history and how these events have shaped Australia into what it is today. As shadow minister for education, this is a responsibility I take seriously. I want to see that every student has an understanding of these important events going forward.
Earlier I spoke of Captain Armitage, who in a letter home from Gallipoli wrote that he had seen many sights. He wrote:
... pleasing, horrible, awe inspiring, hellish, but as far as I can say, the effect has only been to broaden my experience, [and to] make me a little more serious.
I think that this resonates with the impact of this war on Australia in general. It changed us, it devastated us, but through the pain we saw stories of courage, stories of mateship and stories of pride. On the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, I am proud to say to those who fought so bravely, who supported so selflessly, and who lost so much: the light of your memory has not dimmed, and will not dim, in the lives of Australians. We continue to remember. We continue to reflect on the importance of this campaign and we continue to ensure that the role in forging a modern Australia will never, ever be forgotten.
Other speakers have gone into some detail about the Gallipoli conflict itself. But I would like to reflect on the way that Australia remembered the conflict, because that in itself I believe, has been what has more than anything shaped the national character.
Prior to Gallipoli, the general pattern around the world had been that war memorials, when built, would honour the great generals; they would commemorate those leaders in battle. It is also the case today, in the battles where we do honour each and every member of our armed services, that when we lose somebody we have a commemoration here in the parliament. We then go on to a particular form of military honour when the plane returns home. And then, when the military funeral takes place, the most senior people from government attend.
Gallipoli occurred at a time when even had we wanted to return the remains of each of our soldiers the sheer scale of the carnage made it impossible. For family members, there was nowhere to leave flowers. For family members, in a world where travel was nearly impossible, there was no prospect of ever being able to go to visit the gravesite—and, if it were visited, it was extraordinary difficult to know which gravesite was the right one. It was out of this is that the tradition of suburban war memorials completely took off.
We need to remember that the previous conflict, the Boer War, resulted in a total of 109 war memorials around Australia, but at the end of the First World War there were 1,455. These provided the places where people could leave flowers. These provided the places where family members could stop and reflect, and hope and pray.
But these were also the places where Australia decided that we would not simply remember the generals; we would not simply remember the politicians or the national leaders who sent people into battle. We would remember each and every life. For each and every one of those individuals, the memory was very much of the soldier citizen—of the digger—of the ordinary Australian, who was not necessarily somebody who had chosen to devote their entire life to the armed forces but was somebody who had been willing to risk their entire life for their nation and for everything at that point in time that they believed their nation stood for, both within our own national borders and around the globe.
When we talk about the national character—the Gallipoli spirit and spirit of mateship—it is true that that was there on the field. But what must also be remembered is that the way we remembered Gallipoli changed our national character. Very early on ceremonies began around Australia, and very early on monuments started to be built. And at that point Australia started to recognise a number of things. In the first instance, Australia decided that the egalitarian nature of our society would extend to the egalitarian nature of our memory, and that every single person whose life had been lost would be remembered with the same authority and dignity. We also made a decision at that point that there would be a place for that memory wherever Australians lived. You cannot find a town—and often you do not have to look for anything that you could seriously call a town—where you are not able to find a local war memorial. Almost without exception, those war memorials carry the words: lest we forget. It was said at the time with a level of hope—hope that people believed we would in fact never forget those who had risked and given their lives. But that hope could never be proven until we got to the point where no-one who had fought there was left among us.
In remembering the centenary of the Anzac we do not simply remember the battle. We do not simply remember the way the nation changed and the way we decided to commemorate the battle and the individuals. A century later we also proved one further thing and that is that when we hoped with the words 'lest we forget' that their sacrifice and their memory would forever be part of the national character, we were right.
On Anzac Day this year I was in Royal Melbourne Hospital, having undergone a double bypass following a heart attack, and I was horrified to be missing out on the Anzac centenary. I was, however, very glad to be in Melbourne, and in Australia, where we have outstanding cardiac surgeons, like Professor James Tatoulis, and specialists, like Dr Rod Warren, who did an outstanding job of looking after me.
On Anzac Day 2012 it was a very different story. I was at Gallipoli. It was quite something: cold, though not as cold as I had been warned to expect; at times silent, eerie, calm, quiet, tranquil—a far cry from the noise and chaos of 97 years earlier. The place has vegetation that is a bit like inland Australia, with those prickly, spiky acacias and needlewoods that we have. But its topography is different. Where our coastal dunes are gentle, Gallipoli has steep, abrupt climbs. Soldiers making the trek up had bloodied hands from grabbing the spiky vegetation as they climbed the slopes. But if they abandoned the vegetation for the open areas they were easy targets for the Turkish marksmen firing from the tops of the hills.
Winston Churchill had resolved on a land attack on the Ottoman Empire after his naval forces were rebuffed and unable to penetrate the Dardanelles. According to the Allies' plan, British and French divisions were sent to the south of the Gallipoli Peninsula and simultaneously the Anzac corps would land to the north. As is well known, the Turkish troops succeeded in defending the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Dardanelles. The loss of life was unspeakable. By the time the Gallipoli campaign ended, more than 44,000 Allied soldiers had died. This included 8,500 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders—one in four men who landed on the peninsula died there. The Turkish losses were even greater—almost 87,000 Turks died during the conflict. If Gallipoli was a defining moment for the Australian nation, it was an even more defining moment for the Turkish nation.
I remember very vividly the warmth of the welcome we received from our Turkish hosts. They have done a remarkable thing by naming the landing place Anzac Cove, but it is consistent with the great words of reconciliation from the Turkish commander and leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, uttered after the war, and consistent with the battlefield stories of soldiers fighting by day and exchanging food and cigarettes by night, and returning wounded enemy soldiers to the other side—stories of great courage and mutual respect.
The Australian parliamentary delegation which I was a member of received a tour of the battlefield sites two days before Anzac Day. On 24 April we attended the Turkish international service and many other services besides. We attended the Turkish centre which tells the Gallipoli story, which is both high-tech and poignant. We visited cemeteries. I am sure the House knows that war is not an orderly business, so you end up with a lot of unmarked graves. At the French memorial at Morto Bay, a lot of the headstones did not say much more than 'Mort pour la France': Died for France. Indeed, but dead all the same.
I saw many unmarked headstones 'Mort pour la France'. I was overcome by the senselessness of it all, the waste of so many young lives. And I know that the survivors of World War I from Australia and other countries did not come away enthusing about war as noble and wonderful, as romantic adventure. Most came away thinking it evil and terrible—the stench of death, of decaying human flesh, hard to erase from their nostrils. Many could not bear to talk about it. And those who did, did so as much as anything because of their instinctive understanding that people who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it.
I have been particularly impressed to see the interest of younger generations in keeping the Anzac spirit prominent in my electorate of Wills and right around Australia. Young people have played a key role in Wills Centenary of Anzac events. I would also like to acknowledge Wills veterans, like Wal Appleby, who organised an Anzac Day morning service and breakfast at the St Alban's Anglican Church in West Coburg. He did that for many years. During the Second World War, Wal had been a confidential personal assistant to the founder of Legacy in 3rd Division headquarters. He was awarded the British Empire Medal. At the age of 94, Wal visited Papua New Guinea to reminisce and visit some of the places he had seen in active service in the 1940s. He recognised the importance to ex-service men and women of the younger generations' interest in maintaining the traditions of Anzac Day. It is great that young people acknowledge what was done during the war, and their desire to continue this tradition is a most generous and welcome gesture. I hope and believe that the St Alban's Anglican Church will be able to continue this tradition into the indefinite future.
My electorate of Wills made a profound contribution to the First World War. In Brunswick over 3,000 men and women enlisted in the AIF and Navy to serve. A number won prestigious military honours, including Lieutenant William Symons of the famous 7th Battalion, who won the Victoria Cross at Gallipoli. Over 500 Brunswick locals are buried far from Australia's shores. The loss of so many locals had a huge impact on the community. Their names are recorded in bronze in the Soldier's Memorial Hall at the Brunswick Town Hall. Of the Coburg enlistments, many won battlefield honours, including the local parish priest, Father William Devine, who won the Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for bravery.
Of those who returned to Brunswick and Coburg, many were severely wounded, broken and traumatised by their war experiences. They made terrible sacrifices and many never recovered. After the First World War memorials, thousands of them rose up around Australia in a tidal wave of unparalleled public tribute. Here Australia moved away from the notion of the classical hero. It is not the great individual who we remember. Australia remembers the men, and above all their character, not the individuals. There was no statue to any individual soldier before 1936, when Simpson was unveiled in Melbourne. Even then, the work is titled The Man with the Donkey, and what is honoured is not so much warrior prowess but rather selfless service.
Deputy Speaker, our generation has a responsibility and a duty to remember those who served in that first worldwide conflict of the 20th century that changed the face of Europe. Our Australia and the world that existed in 1913 was no more when the fighting ceased in 1918. It was a great honour and privilege to commemorate Gallipoli at Gallipoli. I have also had the honour on quite a few occasions to represent my parliamentary leader at the shrine on Anzac Day, at the dawn service or at the Anzac Day parade. I know that the important thing is not really where we commemorate Gallipoli and Anzac Day but that we do it. Whether it is at Gallipoli or at the shrine or here in parliament or in Coburg at the Coburg West Anglican Church, the thing is that we do it, that we do not forget. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude not just to the Anzacs, who helped forge the identity and character of a young nation, but to people like Wal Appleby and the other men and women of St Alban's, who year in, year out, have done their bit to make sure that we do not forget.
When we gather every year to retell the Anzac story and the crowds who gathered to hear it get larger rather than smaller, I think it is because this story defines us as Australians. It tells us who we are and where we have come from, and each generation needs to hear it and to retell it. I think there is a second reason also. It is that each generation has its own battles to fight, its own challenges to confront, and, in facing those challenges, courage and character are just as important as they were at Gallipoli. In the face of modern threats like terrorism, it is very easy for people to be passive, to throw their hands up in the air and say: 'What can I achieve? The challenges are so massive and I am but one person.' But this was precisely the situation facing the Anzacs at Gallipoli. I believe the courage and character they showed back then is not some museum piece to be taken down, dusted off and admired once a year and then put back on the shelf. It should inspire us to fight the battles of our own time. The Anzac legend endures because we have need of it today and because our children will have need of it tomorrow.
Leon Gellert, aged 23, signed up to fight in the Australian Imperial Force 18 days after the outbreak of the war. He did so, as he put it, dancing and singing. Like so many other young Australians, Gellert reacted to the idea of war with a mix of naivety, confusion and courage. He was inspired by the romance of collective purpose and the adrenalin of combat. And, even after experiencing the chaos of the battlefield, traces of that enthusiasm persisted.
Gellert translated his experience into poems that some have celebrated as the best English language poetry of World War I. Here is his Before Action:
We always had to do our work at night.
I wondered why we had to be so sly.
I wondered why we couldn't have our fight
Under the open sky.
I wondered why I always felt so cold.
I wondered why the orders seemed so slow,
So slow to come, so whisperingly told,
So whisperingly low.
I wondered if my packing-straps were tight,
And wondered why I wondered……Sound went wild………
and order came…… I ran into the night,
wondering why I smiled.
It is plain here that the experience of war made Gellert curious to himself. He could record his thoughts and sensations but not entirely understand them or understand even what it meant to be a man who was smiling in the midst of the chaos of battle.
That experience of confusion in the heat of battle is one which is common in stories of warfare. As Captain George Mitchell of the 10th Battalion recorded in his diary:
My breath came deep. I tried to analyse my feelings, but could not. I think that every emotion was mixed—exultation predominating. We had come from the new world for conquest of the old … The price of failure we knew to be annihilation, victory meant life. But even so whispered jests passed around.
Captain Mitchell shared Gellert's puzzlement at the odd mix of paradoxical inclinations ratcheted up under the conditions of conflict.
Gellert was eventually evacuated from the theatre of war, after a shrapnel wound led to septicaemia and dysentery. He later revisited the field of battle, at this time an abandoned scene of an epic struggle—a veritable graveyard. He writes:
The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, "What of these?" and "What of these?"
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully
And he speaks of the great battalions who sleep by the shore. This mourning for the dead men opens up to include the entire natural landscape. There is a romance that lingers, and there is a place for that. But, as the journalist Charles Bean saw, there is a need to remember the individual soldiers in their particularity. As military historian Jay Winter has observed:
States do not remember; individuals do, in association with other people. If the term "collective memory" has any meaning at all, it is the process through which different collectives, from groups of two to groups in their thousands, engage in acts of rememberance together.
On the 100th anniversary of the landings of Gallipoli, we are remembering those who have fallen silent—a generation none of whom are with us today. But we remember through the great institution of the War Memorial. It was set in train in 1918 when Charles Bean recognised a need to conserve and curate the wartime experiences of our troops.
Bean's account of the Gallipoli landing was delayed by official approvals. Reports of the English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett became the defining account of the landing. He was not present for the landing, but his account has had a major effect on the myth making around Gallipoli and was the focus of many re-enactments which became the footage that featured in newsreel reports of the landings. In Ashmead-Bartlett's accounts, we see the happy young warriors, exhilarated because they had tested themselves and not been found wanting:
No finer feat has happened in this war than this sudden landing in the dark, and the storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on while the reinforcements were landing.
He speaks about them as 'raw colonial troops'.
Bean, by contrast, would not allow himself this overstated rhetoric. He felt the need of telling things straight. He fought the desire to embellish, much to his credit. But even Bean did not think his readers would tolerate an entirely frank account of soldiers under fire. He wrote privately:
The success of an army like ours chiefly depends on what proportion of these strong independent-minded men there is in it. And in the Australian force the proportion is unquestionably undoubtedly high—may account to 50 per cent or more. I have seen them going up against a rain of fire and the weaker ones retiring through them at the very same time—the two streams going in opposite directions and not taking the faintest notice of one another.
By Bean's calculations, if one in two of your troops were sufficiently resolute to advance under fire, you had the markings of an unusually successful army. He could see that a proper report of war would register human frailty and heroism in equal parts. This is, of course, reflected in the way in which we now look back upon World War I, where we see the errors of Winston Churchill in the landing, the success of Kemal Ataturk in anticipating the landing point, the great enduring sadness that echoes down the ages and the knowledge now that the terms of the 1918 armistice were largely available two years earlier, in 1916.
As we mourn the men who were lost due to the mistakes that were made, we remember those individuals through the War Memorial, inspired by Charles Bean. As he wrote in 1918:
… on some hill-top – still, beautiful, gleaming white and silent, a building of three parts, a centre and two wings. The centre will hold the great national relics of the A.I.F. One wing will be a gallery – holding the pictures that our artists painted and drew actually on the scene and amongst the events themselves. The other wing will be a library to contain the written official records of every unit.
Bean had hopes from the beginning that the memorial would incorporate a roll of honour, listing all of the Australians who died in war. The list was to have been arranged by town of origin so that visitors to the memorial—which is the No. 1 place for visitors to Canberra—could easily find the names of the dead from their own town. But the scale of the casualties and the cost constraints imposed on the building defeated those plans.
Bean urged that the memorial not refer to 'trophies'; he preferred the term 'relics'. He urged that the captions and text should not use derogatory terms; it should refer to 'Germans' not 'Huns' and to 'Turks' instead of 'Abduls'. The avoidance of sloganeering and stereotyping ensures that, in the words of Professor Winter: 'States do not remember; individuals do, in association with other people.'
In Canberra, we remember Michael Scannell, who attended Gungahleen School in Lyneham. He landed in Gallipoli in May 1915 and served there until September when he was admitted to hospital with dysentery and diarrhoea. We remember Charles Lee, who was born in Canberra. He enlisted in Pound Hill, Queanbeyan, previously in Weetangera. He served in Gallipoli with the 7th Light Horse Regiment from May 1915 until he contracted appendicitis. We remember Ernest Murray, who enlisted in Canberra and who received a bar to the military medal for actions on 30 October 1917 when he set about clearing comrades of his who had been wounded by the bursting of a shell. We remember Standish O'Grady, who attended St John's in Canberra and served at the 18th Battalion, which landed in Gallipoli on 19 August 1915. He was killed while charging up Hill 60 on 22 August, just three days after landing.
We remember of course, too, those extraordinary words of Kemal Ataturk:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.
I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about the 100th anniversary of landings in Gallipoli. It is, in fact, one of the real privileges in my two years in this House to be able to make such a contribution. I say that because I very genuinely believe that Anzac, and the story of Anzac, matters, and that Gallipoli very much matters. I will speak about some of the reasons why I really believe that.
I also believe that it is very important that, when we talk about war, we do not gloss over the horrors and the realities of the experience of being in a war. As members of parliament, in particular, I think it is important for us to really reflect on the realities of this experience because we, in this chamber, hold the power to send our young men and women off to war. In thinking about making some remarks today, I have been reflecting about what it must have been like for the young men. There are some accounts that I want to share with the House. They are diary entries from soldiers who were there at the Gallipoli landing. The first entry is from an anonymous soldier. He said:
Arrived with the rest of the fleet. It was pitch black … everyone is in a state of eager excitement. Transport boats are lowered, all men are lined up on deck and the orders issued … At 3:10am countless numbers of small craft push off shore … the whole side of the mountain seems to be sending forth tongues of flame and bullets rain upon us—seven in our boat are killed and God knows how many in the others. Fifty yards from sand and to wade ashore with the feeling that you are one of the first to put foot on Turkish soil … silent forms lay scattered on the beach everywhere …
In reading through the accounts of these young men—and they are mostly men—one of the great tragedies is how different the sense of expectation about landing at Gallipoli, which they had been led to believe, would be from what actually happened. Another young soldier, Athol Burrett, says:
Imagine our surprise when instead of finding open trenches we saw only holes in the ground at intervals of 10 yards or so … a few men managed to get down the holes into the trench. Many of us just rushed over the front line and got into the rear trenches right among the Turks. Then started the most gruesome, bloody, and fierce hand-to-hand fighting of the whole war.
For foreigners who come to Australia and hear us talk about Anzac, I think it is often a source of real confusion to them—that we could, with all of the absolute horrors that were occurring on the shore in Turkey, celebrate this as a national event and as a foundation moment for our country. But when you read on further and look more into other accounts, the way that the young people at Gallipoli responded to what must have been the most shocking adversity that any of us in this House could imagine is something so extraordinary to behold.
I will read now a letter from Private Roy Denning. He says:
In the early hours of the morning of the 26th April 1915 I heard the officers going along amongst the men, saying ‘stick to it lads, don’t go to sleep’ and the cheerful reply would be ‘No sir, we won't go to sleep’, and my heart swelled with admiration. I knew what the ordeal of the strenuous day before had been, and knew what pluck and determination was necessary to keep awake and alert throughout the long weary hours of the night, therefore I thought I was justified in being proud of being Australian … give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls.
Many of us in this House have had the privilege of studying Australia's history at some of the great universities around our country, and I am one of them. As history students we are taught constantly that romanticism is to be avoided at all costs. I completely agree, because if we do not really understand how events occurred then we cannot learn anything from them.
But when you look into the history of Gallipoli, one of the most exciting, happiest kinds of feelings that you get from it is that all of the romanticism that we associate with this event in our history actually has a foundation in truth. These accounts really speak to that. The sense of egalitarianism that we so celebrate amongst one another as Australians really was there at Gallipoli, whatever account you read—whether it is Australians reporting on how Australians treated one another or soldiers from other countries talking about how the Australians related to one another in the trenches—there is this constant theme of mateship and friendship, and the fact that there was never the vast chasm between officer and soldier that we saw in so many foreign armies.
You hear and you read real accounts about the incredible bravery shown by these soldiers in the face of extraordinary bad luck and adversity. In a way, I think, when we look back on Gallipoli, the idea that this was the moment when these qualities were infused with what it was to be Australian really is true; this is really actually what happened there.
One of the other things that I felt, reading a lot of these letters and accounts, is that while we can reflect with good feelings about the Australian spirit when we think about how soldiers treated one another, there is no doubt that so many of these soldiers did not come away with a great love of war. That was really the feeling that you got from these letters; that there was a real sense of sadness about the loss that they saw around them. I think we saw that with the conscription debates that were had in 1916 and 1917. Something historians often comment on is that they believe one of the big differences between the 1916 vote, which was very narrowly lost, and the 1917 vote, which was much more strongly lost, was that so many soldiers had returned to Australia and shared their experiences of what it was like to be in war, and they did not want to see other young Australians have to go overseas and fight like they had. There were many marks left on these young men that stuck with them for life, and we owe them something very significant for that. What we owe them, of course, is never to forget their service.
I was lucky, like all in this House, to spend a great deal of time commemorating the event of the 100th anniversary of the landing in Gallipoli with my local community. One of the things that we did was to go to our local RSLs and talk to veterans about their memories and recollections of war. They were not World War I veterans, but they were still great servicemen. We talked to Francis Meyer, who is 98 years young and full of life, who is a founding member of the Clayton RSL. He talked a lot to us about how Anzac Day, on which he recalls his own service record, is a real time of reflection for him and a moment when he can pay tribute to his fallen mates. I want to mention Tom Dusting, who was 92 years old and, very sadly, lost to this world just a few weeks ago. We talked to Tom and you could hardly come across an Australian with such a keen sense of humour and such a fighting spirit. Again, Tom told us that on Anzac Day he often thinks about his fallen mates. It was a really important opportunity to pay respect to the people in my community who had served their country in military service.
I want to mention the really strong feelings of bipartisanship in my local area in how we commemorated this event. I have lots of people from different sides of politics who represent my local area. In all of these events we shared the wreaths that we laid in front of the memorials. I hope I speak for everyone when I say that when we are commemorating service and thinking about war and our nation's history, these are things that all of us on all sides of the House can celebrate together.
I say again that, as members of parliament, it is important for us to understand this history, to think about it and to really realise the enormity of what we are doing when we send young Australians off to war. Gallipoli is important for lots of reasons, but one of them is that 8,000 young Australians lost their lives fighting on a foreign shore, and we should never forget that.
I will finish by again quoting from a letter that a young soldier wrote after the war. He said:
Thinking over the times I have been through, and of the pals I have fought with and whom I have lost, I feel proud that I was one of them in the big venture, they laid down their lives in. I need hardly say, that this life being as it is, devoid of all that a man holds dear in life, and that makes life worth living has not altered me. I have witnessed joy at its highest, sorrow at its deepest, my views on life, comradeship etc has broadened. I think I am telling the truth when I say that I also know the principals on which a man's life can be based … It is easy enough under normal conditions to live rightly, but on active service, a man being months at a time among horrors unspeakable, and away from the soothing influences of home life, it is very hard, and one must learn by experience and I am sure it is the best way of forming the base to the life one wishes to live.
This is the Anzac spirit, which I am so proud has become synonymous with all that is Australian. Lest we forget.
It is a great honour to follow the member for Hotham in what was a very eloquent address to the parliament. She is correct: it is impossible to speak of the Centenary of Anzac without thinking very carefully about our losses and with great sadness. At our very infancy as a nation it was the very flower of Australian manhood that was thrown into what was the slaughterhouse of a European war—a war that was produced in large part by a failure of statesmanship, a failure of diplomacy and a failure, I think, to avoid war at all costs. There is a phrase that Europe 'sleepwalked' into a war.
We know that Anzac holds a dear role in our nation's history, because we became aware of the great cost of war. When you hear about Lone Pine or the Nek, you know that those battles preceded the terrible battles that occurred on the Western Front—like Pozieres and Fromelles—terrible days in Australian history.
The most successful part of the ANZAC landings was actually the withdrawal, the evacuation, of the troops on 19 and 20 December. But that was only after 26,111 Australian casualties and 8,141 deaths. So we are very aware, I think, of the true costs of war and we are very aware of those ANZAC values of liberty, justice, mateship and democracy that were exhibited every day of our time at Gallipoli. Whenever I have had to speak at welcome home parades or, indeed, farewell parades for 7 RAR or 92 Wing, both at RAAF Base Edinburgh in my electorate, I have always talked about those Australian values, which run from the Gallipoli landings right through every military engagement in our history.
We know that this was a very important time in our nation's history, so it was important that its centenary was marked with respect and, under the auspices of the Australian government, in a bipartisan way that included the community. In my own community, I was very fortunate to have a great Anzac Day 2015 committee: Tony Flaherty and John Allen from the Two Wells RSL, Bill Chappell from the RAAFA, Matthew Reschke from the Salisbury RSL, Bruce Naismith from the Barossa Light Horse Historical Association, Roy Crabb from Stanley Flat Soldiers Memorial Hall Inc. and Graeme Pulford from the Auburn/Clare Districts RSL sub-branch. All of those individuals helped me. In fact, they really ran the show and made sure that we had respectful and well-attended Anzac Day events in my electorate. I had the great pleasure of going to the Salisbury RSL, who always run a great Anzac Day event. This year it was so well attended, there was a very big crowd of people paying their respects.
I was lucky enough later on to go to the Freeling versus Kapunda footy match, which is always a grudge match. I used to play footy for Kapunda, for the Bombers, so it was great to be there with some of my old friends, likes Dominic Shepley, who plays a big role in the Freeling Football Club and helped to organise the events there.
I was lucky enough to go out to Wasleys to attend their event as well. That went off without a hitch, except during the minute's silence, when a rabbit ran through the middle of the crowd. It was very Australian, particularly as the rabbit ran straight past my blue heeler, who was sitting in the crowd with my wife—a very Australian experience.
Over the last year, we have all been educated about not just Gallipoli but World War I, and about all of the different stories in our electorates, including the personal sacrifices that were made. One of the most interesting stories that I came across was about a fellow called Charles Yells, who was a labourer in Kapunda, my home town. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 29 September 1914, joined the 9th Light Horse Regiment and, on 11 February 1915, embarked for Egypt. Charles Yells's fame came from the fact that he was assigned special duties: instructing Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab squads in the use of the Lewis gun. So he was instrumental in the early Arab insurrections against Ottoman rule in Egypt and across the Arab world—a very important contribution, I think, from someone in my home town. There was also James Woods, born in Gawler, who joined the AIF in 1916. For his actions while on patrol near the Hindenburg line, he won the Victoria Cross, a great honour.
I had the great fortune to go to the parade of the 3rd/9th Light Horse, the South Australian Mounted Rifles. The Barossa Light Horse Historical Association were there in exactly the same garb as our WW1 soldiers and with their horses, like those our soldiers would have departed with. It took you back to a different type of Australia. The 3rd/9th Light Horse's origins can be traced all the way back to those Gallipoli landings, and they are very proud of their heritage.
I was reminded of some of the great contributions made by Australians. We have talked about the backgrounds of the Anzacs, about how they were shearers and bushmen; but they were also members of the Australian Workers Union. In Charles Bean's The Story of ANZAC, he recorded:
The newspapers stated that by April, 1915, there had been enrolled 12,000 shearers and station hands, members of the Australian Workers Union …
Among them was Albert Jacka, a member of the Victorian Riverina branch of the Australian Workers Union, who won the Victoria Cross. It is said that an Australian Workers Union ticket was found on the Pozieres battlefield. When the 1917 annual convention of the AWU came around, of the membership of 70,000, almost 30,000 were enrolled in the armed forces. So we remember those bush workers, farmhands and station hands—really, as I said before, the flower of Australian manhood—and we wonder what might have happened, what contribution they might have made, if their lives had been unspoiled by war.
It is natural, I think, at these times to ask, 'Was it all worth it?' As I said before, World War I was a failure of diplomacy and a failure of statesmanship. But we have to ask ourselves: would Europe have been in better hands had it been dominated by Prussian imperialism, the Kaiser and the rules of aggression rather than the rule of law? That is the question we must consider whenever we ask ourselves: was that great sacrifice worth it?
It is important on Anzac Day to not be blind to the losses and to remind ourselves of the words of John Gorton, who, when he came home from World War II, made a very famous speech at an event for returned servicemen. He said:
I want you to see an army; regiment on regiment of young men, dead. They say to you, burning in tanks and aeroplanes, drowning in submarines, shattered and broken by high explosive shells, we gave the last full measure of devotion. We bought your freedom with our lives. So take this freedom. Guard it as we have guarded it, use it as we can no longer use it, and with it as a foundation, build. Build a world in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence. If you see and hear these men behind me—do not fail them.
That is a fitting epitaph to all our servicemen who have fallen in battle, and we owe it to them to use the freedom that they have bought us as they have paid a bitter price to build a better world for all Australians.
It is a privilege to be able to add to the very thoughtful and poignant remarks of my colleagues on this motion commemorating the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. The motion acknowledges this significant landmark. It is an anniversary in the formulation of our national character as much as anything. It also pays its respects to those who fought so gallantly, to the 9,000 who died, to those who were wounded and to those who continued with their service to head to the Western Front and other areas, where they saw tragedies that no eyes should have to see. It also recognises that we were collaborators with the brave military personnel from Great Britain, France, India and Newfoundland. They fought alongside our Anzacs as our allies. This motion also acknowledges what a profound time this was for our then-combatants and now collaborators—the people of Turkey—who also suffered greatly during these episodes.
This motion draws attention to what was a terrific day when our nation commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landings. My own community of Dunkley participated in full measure. There were thousands of people at Frankston Park, the home of the Dolphins, for a dawn service. There were hundreds and hundreds of people at other dawn services, including the one I attended in Mornington in my own community. Even later on in the day, the follow-up service at Frankston was extraordinary because of the number of people who attended and the respect and thoughtfulness with which they participated. We were inviting people to think back 100 years to 4.29 in the predawn on 25 April 1915 when the Turkish outpost signalled the alarm, which was barely discernible in the dark waters off Ari Burnu, a small plateau jutting out into the Aegean Sea. Rowboats were carrying Australians and New Zealanders to the Gallipoli shoreline. A minute later the first boatloads reached the rough shingled beach and courageous, patriotic and expectant men clambered out. They faced a steep cliff and were immediately under fire.
It is hard to imagine what they experienced but I have seen what they saw. As a former Minister for Veterans' Affairs it was a great honour and a privilege to represent Australia at the 91st Anzac Day commemorations in 2006. I saw the landscape and imagined the extraordinary challenge that confronted those courageous men and the great passion that the Turkish soldiers had that drove them to protect their land. I traversed the extraordinary memorial park, a landscape where each step could have been part of a burial location, for so many lives had been lost and such was the chaos that the orderly laying to rest of remains was not possible. It is quite an extraordinary place.
It was an extraordinary honour and a privilege to attend the Turkish international ceremony at Mehmetcik Abide, the French service at Morto Bay and the Commonwealth service at Cape Helles on Anzac Day. I also attended the dawn service at the Anzac commemorative site. I was very fortunate and quite blessed to be able to deliver a reading there. I then attended and made a contribution at the Australian service at Lone Pine and followed that up with the Turkish 57th Regiment service and the New Zealand service at Chunuk Bair. It was an incredible story of many nations' history and the legacy interwoven from so long ago but still respected with such reverence each year.
I should acknowledge the work and the collaborative efforts of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Turkish officials and the Governor of Canakkale, His Excellency Mr Orhan Kirli, who I was able to meet. They worked to make sure that erosion was not causing an extraordinary impact on the Gallipoli Peace Park. They worked together—once combatants, now collaborators—to make sure that the Anzac battlefield is properly cared for. It was extraordinary to go into the communities around the Peace Park and see the story of one nation's history playing out through the eyes of Turkish men and women—some young and some old—and to know it is such a huge part of our national story. That is something I will never forget.
Our own community turned its mind to that story and our commemorations started long before the 100th anniversary. We effectively had a genealogy expo at the site of the mechanics hall. We held the expo on the very same day that 100 years earlier the local newspapers and civic leaders had encouraged and extolled young able men to offer themselves to serve. At that very hall people had come together to sign on for what was understood to them to be their patriotic duty and potentially an adventure. Our nation contributed to that in a most extraordinary way. That was very moving.
Not many people realise that the first act of war was on the Mornington Peninsula, in our own state of Victoria a year earlier than the landings at Gallipoli. On 5 August 1914, just hours after World War I was declared, the first shot in the British Empire was fired from Fort Nepean. We still search for that shell in the mouth of Port Phillip Bay—it is a local endeavour that many are turning their minds to, to see whether they can find it. There we were on the Mornington Peninsula to prevent the German merchant vessel SS Pfalz from leaving Port Phillip, thankfully with no loss of life. The seamen on SS Pfalz turned around and that was one less ship available to the enemy. If anyone is wanting to get behind a great philanthropic enterprise, we are still searching for that shell.
The story that followed was that, from a population of 4.9 million, by the end of the war 417,000 men, many from our community, had volunteered and enlisted, and there were many women as well, in support of the war effort. There are great stories; there was extraordinary service. When you look back on the personalities that are remembered not only from that anniversary of the Gallipoli landing but from our military service that followed, it is incredible how we honour those who have displayed their compassion. Even to this day you see images of Australian military personnel with their weapons upturned; they are leaning on the butt of their firearm in a moment of reflection—it is not a moment of triumph; it is one of lost mates and compassion. It says a lot about our engagement in military activities when we ask for no more land than enough to bury our dead. It is an interesting part of our history.
We have Simpson and his donkey—Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 2015 as a field ambulance stretcher-bearer. He previously had been shovelling coal in merchant ships, and he remade himself after making some probably less than spectacular choices earlier in his life. For 20 days he did nothing other than show care and compassion to wounded Australian soldiers before he himself was struck down. We think about John Monash, another great Victorian and a great Australian. His wisdom, his civil engineering background and his understanding of tactics and technology brought what could have been long and bloody battles to a very quick end. The genius of Monash was confirmed on the Western Front on 4 July 1918 in the Battle for Le Hamel. As the Minister for Veterans' Affairs I think I was the first Commonwealth minister to put finances in behind the Anzac Day commemorations on the Western Front, understanding its importance. Boy, hasn't that taken off, with the participation and commitment of this government to create a John Monash interpretive centre. He said the battle would take 90 minutes, and it took 93 minutes, bringing to an end what could have been a horrible conflict. Again, compassion was the story of 'Weary' Dunlop.
This was part of what we commemorated in the Dunkley community on that 100th anniversary—not just what happened at Gallipoli but the characteristics and the statement of who we are that emerged from that contact, and then we reminded ourselves of our commitment to all those who have served and our desire to celebrate them for their care and compassion, making sure that what they gifted to us we do not give away.
This year marks 100 years since the landing at Gallipoli, a day that history will never forget. On 25 April 1915, thousands of Australians, some quite young, landed on the shores of Turkey at Gallipoli. It was a place then unknown to most Australians but it is one of great significance today. There were 60,000 men who went off to war and never came home. Today, in this place, I take this time to remember those men who made the supreme sacrifice in the service of the nation. I remember their families too—parents, siblings, wives, husbands and children who lost someone they loved. It is also important to remember the ones who returned wounded or carrying the hidden scars of the traumas of war. Their story, their Anzac story, will always be our story, a part of who we are. The First World War shaped our identity as a people and as a nation.
World War I, and the Gallipoli campaign in particular, has come to exemplify powerful Australian values of mateship, sacrifice, loyalty and pride in being Australian. The Anzac Centenary is one of the most important commemorative events to take place in the lives of current generations. It is important to pause and reflect on the courage and immense sacrifice of those who fought in defence of our nation It was an honour to join the Melton community for the dawn service on Anzac Day to pay tribute to those men and women who have fought and died in the service of our nation, during not only the First World War but all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. It was encouraging to see so many people there—around 500, with hundreds and in some cases thousands at other events around and beyond my electorate— to pay tribute to our Anzacs, particularly during the Centenary of Anzac, a time of special significance.
I spent the remainder of the morning at the Caroline Springs RSL, enjoying a breakfast with veterans and the families of veterans from my electorate as we remembered the brave individuals who have served, and continue to serve, our nation during times of war and peace. Both in my local community and in services like these across the nation, Australians gathered together to give our eternal gratitude to the sailors, soldiers, airmen and women, past and present, who have given so much for us and our country. Particularly on this 100th anniversary we remember the bravery and sacrifice of all who served in the First World War. To honour those men and women, I held a morning tea in my electorate office to honour local veterans from my community. I was able to recognise 20 local veterans and relatives of veterans to honour their service to Australia and remember the sacrifices they have made and the courage it takes to defend our nation. I was able to present certificates to the veterans and their relatives that have served in the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Indonesian Confrontation and peacetime operations in Timor Leste. The military experiences of the recipients spanned across decades and continents, but the constant is the honour, recognition and gratitude their service deserves.
I was also proud to be able to provide 12 organisations from my electorate with grants to commemorate the service and sacrifice of Australian service men and women in the First World War. I was pleased to be able to open and launch some of these projects, funded through the Australian government's Anzac Centenary Local Grants program, with more still to come. Several local schools have built commemorative garden, and I was able to open the Anzac memorial garden at Brookside Primary last month.
I will be launching a DVD, entitled Our Community Remembers, put together by the Partners of Veterans Association of Australia, Victoria, Melton Sub-branch. I will also be launching the website 'Just Another Pair of Socks' by the Melton Family History Group, which provides information on those from the Melton area who enlisted during the First World War. And just last week I opened a new war memorial in the appropriately named Diggers Rest. The name Diggers Rest for this community came from the prospectors who were heading to the Goldfields in the mid and late 19th century. What an appropriate term, Diggers Rest, and how appropriate to have a memorial there to reflect on the sacrifice and to provide an opportunity for people to visit that memorial. The names of those who were lost are enshrined on that memorial. We had a remarkable day; I was privileged to be part of that.
I would like to note that one of the people inscribed on the Diggers Rest memorial is Nurse Helen Bowie, born at Jacksons Creek, Diggers Rest. She was one of the first women to join Lady Dudley's first Australian field hospital in France. She was a surgical nurse and, I am told, a golfer of repute. The Age from 21 December 1915 quotes her as saying:
We all worked at top pressure.—
This is in the field hospital in France.
We all worked at top pressure.
We scrubbed, swept washed and polished without any thought of rest or food...
We did over 70 major operations in the hospital in the first week. We began work at 8 o'clock in the morning, and worked until one o'clock the next morning. There was no time to leave the theatre to have a meal, so we had to be content with cocoa and sandwiches which were hastily eaten at the door of the operating theatre.
Her story forms part of our shared history. And the story of the others noted here—their Anzac stories—will always be our story, a part of this nation's history.
This year, we remember not only the original Anzacs who served at Gallipoli and the Western Front, but commemorate more than a century of service by Australian servicemen and women in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Australians have fought and fallen in Europe and Africa, in Papua New Guinea through to Korea, Malaya, Vietnam and, more recently, Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, defending nations and keeping us safe. We salute their service. We honour their memory. And, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we repeat Australia's solemn promise: we shall remember them. Lest we forget.
It is one hundred years since the First World War and it is, in particular, the defining moment of our nation. When I speak at schools and when I have the opportunity to discuss Australia's history with constituents at various commemorative services, I often reflect, as many Australians do, on the role that Gallipoli played in defining our nation. The fundamental values that were etched in the blood that was spilt on the soil and in the sand at Gallipoli are the values of loyalty, mateship, service and sacrifice; and they are the ideals that are still held high today.
Out of a small population of around 4.9 million back in 1914, a total of some 417,000 men volunteered and enlisted to fight with the Australian Imperial Forces. Of those, around 323,000 served overseas and, for those who served overseas, there a casualty rate, tragically, of 64.8 per cent. That was one of the highest casualty rates of all the Allied forces. From the spilt blood, from the injuries and from the mental anguish that was endured by a generation of early Aussies, this great nation in so many different respects was forged.
Especially on Anzac Day this year, we were able to come together in our millions across this great brown land to reflect on the service and sacrifice of our forefathers. On the Gold Coast, in my electorate of Moncrieff, the reports were of tens and tens of thousands of Gold Coasters who took time to pay their solemn respects to those in World War I and every subsequent conflict—to those who put their lives and bodies on the line so that we as a nation can continue to enjoy the many liberties that we do.
I had the tremendous honour this Anzac Day of representing our nation at the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore. Even there, there were thousands of Australians who came to the dawn service to reflect on the sacrifice made by Australians and others. In the heat of the pre-dawn in Singapore we were able to reflect on the many theatres of war where Australians lost their lives or paid the high price of injuries in defence of our nation and in defence of our way of life. It was a privilege for my wife Astra to be able to represent me in my electorate and to fly the flag, so to speak, at the various commemorative services.
Whether it was at the Southport RSL, Surfers Paradise RSL or Nerang RSL, the fact is that across the coast and across my electorate people came together to reflect, as I said, and to solemnly consider those who have gone before us. I have been particularly pleased on this, the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, as part of the government's program to provide support to local communities, to have been able to provide some funding for a number of local ex-service organisations and other groups that have had ideas and initiatives about how we can instil in the next generation of young Australians a great respect for what it was that our forefathers went through on the battlefront as well as the very heavy payment that was made by their loved ones who remained here in Australia.
I was particularly pleased to have been involved in a number of initiatives. The Nerang RSL moved to provide a service that involved an educational immersion experience for young Gold Coast children. I know that it has been a popular exhibit as Gold Coast kids have had the opportunity to experience what it was actually like to be in a trench. They have been able to experience the darkness and the sounds of shelling and artillery as they walk through a replica trench and can pause to reflect and consider what others went through.
Likewise, the Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum have an outstanding exhibition that reflects both a display on quality horsemanship and other historical artefacts that students can look at and can learn from. They also have engaging activities, a dedicated booklet and other initiatives like that which enable them to reflect what our forefathers went through.
One of the more well-known schools on the Gold Coast is the Southport school, or TSS. I was pleased to be able to support TSS's initiative with respect to the compilation of a book that was produced in part with funding that I was able to deliver. It reflects on the contribution made by a number of former TSS students. Out of the 61,500 or so young Australians who were killed in action in the First World War, approximately 52 were TSS students or old boys from the school.
One of them was 24-year-old Private Arthur Beresford. He wrote of the excitement and sense of adventure the troops felt when leaving Australia. He said:
The ship was the S.S. "Omrah" of the Orient Mail Line, was fitted up perfectly for us and throughout the whole voyage, we all had a good time …
He was wounded at Gallipoli after landing on 25 April and evacuated to England for a lengthy period of hospitalisation, treatment and convalescence. His service eventually spanned almost the entire period of the First World War, until his death in Europe in 1918.
Southport born Lieutenant John Hockin was one of the many to fall during the first charge in France. Others, particularly Private William Robertson, wrote saying how brave he was. Only a few got to the German lines, and they never got back—he was among them.
Captain Leslie Blake wrote to his brother Will:
One is like a mole in this dammed country nothing but live in dug-outs—they get on your nerves after a time … Hell! I'll have a dug-out instead of a house when I get back, I hope to live and never see one again …
Leslie was fatally wounded on 2 October 1918 by shellfire when in charge of ammunition wagons near the railway between the villages of Nauroy and Estrees. Another Gold Coast born and raised student who was killed was Lieutenant Norman Freeman. He grew up in Southport and was killed in action in Messines, Belgium, at 21 years of age.
I want to commend and congratulate all of those who were involved in the commemoration that took place on the Gold Coast across so many different RSLs, providing the opportunity for tens of thousands of Gold Coasters to pause and reflect. We will build off that solid platform with a number of initiatives that are focused, unapologetically, upon ensuring that the next generation of Australians—the young, impressionable minds of Australian students today—have the opportunity to learn so much more in a very real sense about the contribution that our forefathers made in various campaigns and on various battlefronts around the world.
We are still a relatively young country. We have a small population. Unlike so many other countries, the fact is that one of the unique traits of Australian culture is that we do not celebrate outstanding military victories. Instead, we solemnly commemorate an outstanding military defeat. That is not because it was a strategy we can necessarily be proud of but because of the blood that was spilt, the injuries that were felt and, most importantly, the values that were forged on the sand that day at Gallipoli. These are values that all Australians hold near and dear to their hearts. These are values that represent our entire nation. Lest we forget.
This year marks the 100th year of remembrance of the Gallipoli campaign. We ask, 'Why do we remember Gallipoli over so many other events?' Many more Australians fought and died on the Western Front in Belgium and France later in the Great War, as the First World War was known at the time. So why remember this event? Some say it was the birth of our nation on the battlefield—a place where Australians began the long-held and long-revered Anzac legend. What happened to the first Australian volunteers who landed at Gallipoli helped form attitudes and beliefs about our nation and national character. The campaign became a symbol of Australian national identity—honour, sacrifice and pride—as a reference to those who gave up their lives so we may live ours.
The landing in Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 was catastrophic, as was the entire Gallipoli campaign, which claimed the lives of 8,709 Australian men. Out of this campaign, the Anzac legend was born. The battle of the landing itself lasted from 25 April to 3 May, when Australians and New Zealanders, assisted by Indian Army troops and the British Royal Naval Division, drove back a number of strong Turkish counterattacks and formed a defensive line in the unhospitable terrain.
In the official history, Charles Bean, an Australian war correspondent, wrote about the rough country of the Gallipoli peninsula. He described confusing slopes, perpendicular crags and gorse-like scrub. He said:
The growth was stubborn, and, in the steep gravelly waterways with which the hillside was scored, it was as much as a strong man could do to fight his way through it, to say nothing of carrying his heavy kit and rifle.
By the end of the first day the Turkish defenders held the high ground. Charles Bean went on to say:
Bullets struck fireworks out of the stones along the beach. The men did not wait to be sent, but wherever they landed they simply rushed straight up the steep slopes.
After his experience of Gallipoli in the First World War Charles returned to Australia determined not to let the sacrifices of the men be forgotten and he became a driving force in the development of the Australian War Memorial.
The Gallipoli Peninsula saw other fierce battles, such as Lone Pine, or what is known to the Turkish soldiers as the ridge of blood. Australian soldiers so far from home were fighting for their lives and for those few acres of precious advantage. In three days of hand-to-hand combat more than 2,000 Australians and 5,000 Turkish had died there. Seven of the nine Victoria Crosses awarded to Australians at Gallipoli were won there alone. For a young nation this is why 25 April has become the focal point, as we remember all those who have served this country throughout all wars.
My electorate of McEwen has a long, rich military history in the Mitchell Shire. I am honoured to represent the Puckapunyal Army base, which was used as a mobilisation and training area during World War I. It is the home of the famous Light Horse Park, the Military Heritage Weekend and of course the Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Walk. This year was a special year as our communities paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Great War and the Anzac landings. We launched the book There was a soldier who wandered far away, which was written by talented local Karen Christensen. It talks about, for example, the story of Lieutenant Leslie Cecil Maygar, the very first Australian to win the Victoria Cross. He was born in Wandong. It is the stories of our local men and women, as written about in this book, which really show our inherent and strong connection to the Anzac story. With this year's marking of the centenary of the First World War it is especially important for our generation and future generations to remember our Anzacs.
The last of our veterans from the First World War have all since passed on, but their story will live on through us. I am extremely proud to say also that my electorate has a large Turkish population, who have made Australia home. Every year I attend the Turkish community's Anzac dinner. We sit together and remember not as enemies but as brothers and sisters. I believe something unique came out of Australia's conflict with Turkey. We did not go away seeking revenge, full of hatred. Instead, a mutual respect grew that blossomed into a friendship. So today we break bread and we remember those who fought the infamous campaigns. We gather as two strong friends with a 100-year history of strong and committed friendship, forged from mutual respect and a shared desire to better the lives of our nations.
For two different reasons Gallipoli became important to both nations as a means of nation building—Australia forged its identity through loss and sacrifice and Turkey, through its success, provided support for the commander who went on to found modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk wrote a tribute to the Anzacs at Gallipoli—the famous words: 'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace.' The words of Ataturk have lived through the ages, probably the strongest words of reconciliation to a former foe ever spoken.
My own family has a strong connection to the battles at Gallipoli. My hometown of Whittlesea's honour rolls list the names of family ancestors who served in World War I and II. Thanks to Brian Membrey, who compiled the Shire of Whittlesea's Great Honour Roll, I can read some of the names. Frank Kummer was killed on 25 October 1917 of wounds in France. He was the brother of Harold MacNee, DCM and Military Cross, who also fought gallantly throughout the First World War. Then there is Kenneth MacNee. Kenneth MacNee's death in casualty lists appeared under Whittlesea, where the memorial has another variation with incorrect spelling. It was noted that he was a nephew of the Mitchell boys. Research later revealed that they were the sons of Councillor Charles Mitchell. MacNee was wounded in the head and the right forearm in August 1916 and repatriated to England before rejoining his battalion in February 1917, when he was killed in action.
Keith Mitchell died on 25 April 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsular in Turkey. An eyewitness said that he was shot through the neck on the first ridge around 300 yards inland. He was originally classed as missing in action until a court of inquiry held in January the following year claimed that he was digging trenches for the stretcher bearers leading onto Anzac Beach, and he was taken to a dressing station but he passed away.
Victorian RSL President Major General David McLachlan says the Turkish were an honourable enemy. The Turkish RSL subbranch was put in place because of the special relationship between Australia and Turkey. David says that First World War veterans saw the Turkish soldier as being an honourable enemy. That is why we proudly meet every year with the Turkish subbranch of the RSL, chaired by my good friend Ramazan Altintas.
There are many stories. Anzac was our first story in a long history of Australian battles. Let us go forward and look at the Korean battlefield. Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal commissioned officer in the Australian Army, led his company of diggers down from a bloody Korean battlefield. 'At last,' Saunders wrote, 'I felt like an Anzac and imagine there were 600 others.' The 3rd Battalion Royal Australia Regiment was gallant in retreat at Kapyong Valley. It had played a magnificent part in the battle. It made sacrifices: 32 diggers were dead. On a hill across from Kapyong Valley the 2nd Battalion fought the Chinese onslaught. There were many people there on that day but, importantly for me, there was Leo Whidbourne who, along with the other four Bren gunners, received an American citation for the work that they did in defying the 10,000-strong Chinese onslaught.
The Korean War was largely overlooked in the 20th century. It is remembered only as the forgotten war. In recent times, however, there has been a remarkable change. On the veterans' calendar is Kapyong Day. PM Gillard rightly described it as a crucial battle, placing it alongside Tobruk in the annals of Australian military history. Leo Whidbourne was the grandfather of my family friend Sharon Dopper.
We go on to those in Vietnam. We pay our respects to the 62,100 men and women of this country who put their hands up to fight in the Vietnam War. Over the past few years I have come to know and appreciate many of their stories. It reminds me of the sacrifices that they made. It was one of the poorer episodes in our nation's history. Our young men and women who responded to the government's call to arms were somehow held responsible by many for the political decision to enter that war. The protests that should have been aimed at the government did hurt our men and women and also their mates who had returned home. There is no escaping that, even if it was not the intention of the Australians who protested at that time.
I have read a lot of books in relation to the Vietnam battles and one of the things I appreciate was a story by David 'Stretch' Bryan. Inside Northcote High School is a small brass plaque dedicated to the memory of a former student. That former student, Les, was a good friend of David and was the first Nasho killed in Vietnam. 'Stretch' wonders today whether present students even notice the small plaque or know about the life it represents—the life of a former student, a brave soldier, a friend and a Nasho. We owe the families and friends of all those who fought in our name a great deal of honour. Every year I remind crowds at our service: 'When you see a person with medals on their left breast, go up to them, shake their hand and say thank you, for without them and their courage and sacrifices we may not be here to do what we do today.' The story of Anzacs on the beaches of Gallipoli is the first chapter in the stories of our fighting men and, as much as we would like to close the book on conflict, sadly each and every day new chapters are continuing to be written.
I rise this evening to add my words to the motion recognising a significant milestone in our nation's history: the 100-year anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. There have been many fine words spoken in this place and others about that milestone. It is interesting to note that the battle at Gallipoli, while ultimately unsuccessful, is the defining moment in time when Australia became an independent nation. The reputation of the Australian soldiers was laid down and has been built upon in generations since.
I would like to speak on behalf of the constituents of the Parkes electorate who contributed much in that conflict. The men from the bush were ideal candidates to be soldiers. At that stage they had great skills in horsemanship, bushmanship and survival in the bush, and they were mostly crack shots, so they were ideal people to sign up and, indeed, did so in large numbers. Right across my electorate, in towns, villages and in places where villages have disappeared, their memorials still stand. Some of the more significant incidents that happened in the First World War started in my electorate and are now legends. I cite the Cooee March, which started at Gilgandra. About 36 local men started walking towards Sydney to join up. Along the way, where they camped and stopped and at public ceremonies and meetings, other people joined them. By the time got to Sydney, their numbers had swelled to over 200. I ask people to go back to that time. Can you imagine the son of a family one day, as the Cooees came to town, joining up on the spot and marching off to war, basically with that much notice? Many of them did not come back. The Cooee March will be re-enacted in a month or two. I recognise the work of Brian Bywater and others in Gilgandra who have worked so tirelessly on this re-enactment. The Lions Club of Gilgandra organised fundraising to purchase a statue—a wonderful work of bronze by Brett Garling—to commemorate the Cooee March. It now stands proudly in the town square of Gilgandra as a permanent reminder of the great significance that Gilgandra and the Cooees had in the First World War.
Right across western New South Wales and the area I represent, on memorials there are sad reminders of great sacrifice. In my home town of Gravesend, a small village where I grew up, there are the names of the three Heath brothers who were all killed in the First World War. Can you imagine in this day and age having three brothers going off to war and none of them coming home? In Bodangora, which 100 years ago was a much more thriving mining community—now there are just a couple of houses—is a memorial with 60 names of people who signed up for the First World War. Nineteen of those men lost their lives. Can you imagine that, in a small rural community, 19 of the people who signed up did not come back?
With a grant from the federal government, the people at the Great Cobar Heritage Centre wrote a book about the soldiers from the Cobar area. Once again, like stockmen, miners made ideal candidates for soldiers in the First World War. Several of the miners from Cobar who joined up ended up joining the tunnelling squad that was made famous in the movie, Beneath Hill 60, a couple of years ago. Some of the soldiers who tunnelled and were part of that infamous World War I history came from Cobar. There are stories of the effects on those men from the battlefield and the issues that they had when they returned home.
Some got on with their lives and thrived and got married and raised families. Sadly, many of them could not adapt. Many of them came back without any real support. Sadly, many of them became victims of alcoholism and other things, and quite a few of them took their own lives in the years after the First World War. It is a salient reminder that we need to keep in mind when we are talking about our current returned veterans.
The other group of soldiers that we do not talk much about are the Aboriginal soldiers. There was a large number of Aboriginal people who joined up in the First World War. It is interesting, because 100 years ago these men had no rights as Australian citizens. They were classed as 'fauna' by the country at the time. But during their time as soldiers, for the first time in their lives they were treated as equals. In the accounts that I read, there was no colour barrier in the armed forces. These men were well regarded as very good soldiers. Sadly, when they returned things had not changed, and it took many years after that before we got some form of equality.
In Bourke there is the grave of a decorated Aboriginal soldier. I think his cousin, who did not make it home, is buried in a cemetery in England. I would like to commend the work of Councillor Vic Bartley, himself a Vietnam veteran—an Aboriginal man—who has worked tirelessly to recognise these soldiers of the First World War and to restore their graves to the prominence that they deserve.
This was a tragic moment in Australia's history. Out of a population of 3½ million, 60,000 deaths and 160,000 casualties are statistics that are hard to comprehend. How, as a nation, we got back on our feet when the cream of our young people were taken from us in a faraway land is another story in itself. It has been my privilege to speak here tonight on behalf of the people of western New South Wales and to acknowledge the sacrifice of previous generations.
It is a great honour to rise tonight to speak on the Prime Minister's motion on the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. What prompted me, in particular, to speak at this late time was the fact that, as I understand it, the speeches and the names of those who spoke will be taken to the War Memorial and bound. There is a particular reason that precipitated me to speak, which I will touch on later.
This motion that commemorates and honours those who served our country at Gallipoli and in other theatres of conflict, and the speeches I have heard, is a key to understanding what makes us Australian. The Gallipoli story, the story of our Anzacs, is part of the Australian story—the Australian narrative, an ongoing narrative. When listening to the speeches of many of my colleagues I reflected on how Anzac Day has been viewed over time and how it is being viewed now. I am very heartened by how it is viewed now because it is somewhat different to how it was viewed when I was going to school at Christian Brothers College in Adelaide in 1979.
There was a particular book that had been written about Anzac Day, called The One Day of the Year. It was a pretty dark book. It framed Anzac Day as a day where war was being glorified and war was being commemorated. To our family, the Mackereth family—my mother's family—the fact that that was how Anzac Day would be portrayed was quite disheartening. It was disheartening for my mother's family, because my mother's father had served on the Western Front and had been gravely injured.
My reflections of Anzac Day are informed by a picture on the mantelpiece of my grandmother's home in George Street, Parkside. As a young man—my grandmother died in 1979—I used to wander into the lounge of a very small two-bedroom home in George Street Parkside, and there above the mantelpiece was a picture of a young man, a very well-put-together, handsome young man in the Australian uniform, before he went overseas. He was 22 years old when he left these shores. He was a young man with a very bright future—he was staring into the future as an optimistic young man. I have recently been looking through the National Archives records of his service. The person I am talking about is my grandfather, William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth, who served in the 16th Infantry Battalion. He served and was gravely injured in 1916. He was blown up, effectively, in Pozieres in the Somme valley.
I heard from my mother the stories of what happened to this young man who went over there. My grandfather died in 1949. I never met my grandfather. I know my grandfather only through the stories of my grandmother and my mother's brothers: Bill Mackereth, who has passed away, Lancy Mackereth, Maxy Mackereth, Johnny Mackereth, Terry Mackereth, Shirlie Mackereth, Betty Mackereth and my mother, Coleen Mackereth, now Byrne. I heard about a wonderful man. My grandmother Kathleen Winnifred Daly married him in 1920, after he had been repatriated, having spent 12 months in a hospital in England as a result of being gravely injured. There was no glorification of war from my grandfather. He was a young man that had served his country and had spent 12 months in a hospital in Britain after he had been blown up in 1916. When that person came back, he was a very different person to the one that left the shores to embark on, I guess, that great adventure. I looked at the oath to be taken by the person being enlisted. This is the certificate of the attesting officer:
I, William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth swear that I will well and truly serve our sovereign Lord the King in the Australian Imperial Force from 5th August 1915 until the end of the War, and a further period of four months thereafter unless sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed, or removed therefrom; and that I will resist His Majesty’s enemies and cause His Majesty’s peace to be kept and maintained; and that I will in all matters appertaining to my service, faithfully discharge my duty according to the law.
SO HELP ME GOD
That was in Adelaide, South Australia. I wonder what was going through that young man's mind, basically 100 years ago, having signed a copy of this piece of paper. Then I wonder what was in that young man's mind when he came back a shattered individual. He had 13 operations on an arm that they wanted to amputate, but he refused to allow it to be amputated. I used to read about books like The One Day of the Year and others that were said to have glorified war—not to my family they did not, not to my family at all.
When I told my mother that I was going to speak about this today, she wanted me to say to this place, for the Hansard and therefore for history, that he was a very good man. Notwithstanding the very grave injuries that he had to his upper and lower body, he was a good husband to his wife and a wonderful father to his children, but he suffered. The previous speaker, the member for Parkes, spoke about how people dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder and what happened. My grandfather would basically lock himself away for three days and drink and drink and drink until he got through that episode, and then he would walk out. Funnily enough, when you asked, 'Did my grandfather ever talk about it?' like a lot of people that served in the First World War in Gallipoli and elsewhere, he never spoke about it. He never spoke about what he actually went through—bits and pieces perhaps to my grandmother, but that is it. The sons and daughters of this man never really knew. We have had to find out, through research, exactly what he went through.
It is important for me, on behalf of my family, to say how much we valued his service to our country. We are sorry in a sense that we are not there to be able to pay appropriate respects. But I hope, through this contribution that I have made the behalf of the Mackereth family, that we do, that he will be remembered. He never really fully secured ongoing employment post his return to Australia. For the Mackereth family, I hope that this statement offers them some comfort and some gratification that their father and grandfather will be remembered.
The story of our servicemen in the First World War is an essential part of the story of Gallipoli. I give credit to former Prime Minister John Howard for the work that he did in reshaping the country's narrative; we have landed in the right place when we have a discussion about what Gallipoli means to the Australian people, to our country and to our country's future. When I look through the prism of Anzac Day and the legend of Anzac, I remember a couple of incidents. I had the privilege of being invited to fly onto the deck of the USS Carl Vinson in 2003. I flew on with a gentleman that was in battle fatigues. After five attempted landings we finally got onto the deck of the Carl Vinson. It is a 340-metre ship, a big ship, which can carry 75 aircraft. The USS Carl Vinson launched the first strikes on Afghanistan from its decks post September 11. It has significant meaning for the American people.
When we finally landed, we got off the plane and the gentleman in battle fatigues was surrounded by the Americans. That gentleman was Duncan Lewis, then Brigadier General commanding the SAS, with whom we had troops in Afghanistan, and now Director-General of ASIO. The warmth and regard that the Americans had for the Aussie soldiers, for the Anzacs—as the commander of fleet said—for the Anzac spirit, says everything about the incredibly rich legacy that our Anzacs have given to our country, and now we remember them appropriately.
From me to the Mackereth family, thank you for the service of William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth. The Anzac spirit animates our discussion about what it means to be an Australian. He was part of that, and I know now that we can give him appropriate memory for the service that he gave to our country.
Gallipoli 1915: a campaign often credited as being the birth of our nation. April 25: the day our soldiers stood tall, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. It was the day our soldiers created the legend and a reputation as formidable foes in battle. Many men from throughout my electorate of Dawson, from the towns of Mackay, Proserpine, Bowen, Ayr, Home Hill and Townsville, answered the call to serve their country. Many made the ultimate sacrifice and many were inflicted with physical and psychological wounds that had a huge impact on their lives. But every man and every woman who served deserves the highest respect.
Tonight I would like to honour the memory of but one man, Billy Sing, a young man from Proserpine, who used his bush skills to carve out a fearsome reputation at Gallipoli as the crack sniper of the Anzacs. The Australian War Memorial tells his story. It notes that a fellow soldier who was often Billy's spotter described Billy as:
… a little chap, very dark, with a jet black moustache and a goatee beard. A picturesque looking mankiller. He is the crack sniper of the Anzacs.
Billy, who was born William Sing in 1886 to an English mother and a Chinese father, had a tough life on the land, but he became a talented horse rider and shooter. When the war broke out, word has it that, like many young men, he rushed to sign up. He would have been about 28 years old at the time. Later in the war, there was a resistance to recruiting non-white Australians, but, as Billy was one of the first men to enlist, he did not face any discrimination, and he was promptly accepted into the 5th Light Horse Regiment. The Australian Light Horse Association also note the great contribution of Trooper William Eddie Sing. They note:
William Edward Sing, like most of his fellow members of the Regiment, had grown up and worked with horses in the Australian bush. Part of their cumulative stock-in-trade was an ability to ride well, estimate distance carefully, track strayed stock and animal pests, and to fire both rifle and shotgun accurately.
The Light Horse Association note that Billy Sing's considerable skills with a rifle were well-known locally long before the outbreak of World War I. I note that Billy was a member of the Proserpine Rifle Club and a leading kangaroo shooter in the region.
He was sent to Egypt in December 1914, and then he went on to Gallipoli in May 1915. It was at a position that was called Chatham's Post that Billy Sing began in earnest to earn his lethal nicknames: 'the murderer' and 'the assassin'. Every morning, in the darkness before dawn, Billy would find a place to hide and watch over the Turkish soldiers in their trenches. The Australian War Memorial says that once Billy and his spotter were in position and had settled in the true discipline of rigidly maintaining a quiet and motionless patience began. This was not a job for fidgeters. Snipers rarely get a second shot at a specific target. To avoid becoming the target of the Turkish snipers, the Australians would stay in their position until nightfall.
The ANZAC war diary for 23 October 1915 states:
Our premier sniper, Trooper Sing, 2nd L.H., yesterday accounted for his 199th Turk. Every one of this record is vouched for by an independent observer, frequently an officer who observes through a telescope.
Billy's fame spread beyond the soldiers at Gallipoli, and his tally was written about in the Australian, British and American press. The Turkish army were also well aware of Billy's reputation. In an effort to eliminate him, they brought in their own crack shot—a man who became known to Australians as 'Abdul the Terrible'. It has been reported by wartime journalist Ion Idriess that Abdul the Terrible claimed the life of Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, or 'that man with the donkey'.
Abdul came very close to fulfilling his mission of wiping out the little Aussie sniper from Proserpine. In August 1915, a single bullet fired from the Turkish side passed through spotter Tom Sheehan's telescope, and through his hands, mouth and cheek, before hitting Billy in the shoulder. In the end, it was Billy who shot and killed Abdul. The Turkish army immediately retaliated, aiming its heavy artillery at Billy's hiding position and completely destroying it. Fortunately for the little Aussie sniper and his spotter, they had already evacuated to their unit trenches. For his efforts on Gallipoli, Billy was mentioned in dispatches by General Sir Ian Hamilton. He was awarded the British Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916, as the inscription on his medal states, for:
Conspicuous gallantry from May to September 1915 at Anzac as a sniper. His courage and skill were most marked and he was responsible for a very large number of casualties among the enemy, no risk being too great for him to take.
The Australian soldiers were evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, and Billy was sent first for training in England and then to fight in France as part of the 31st Battalion. The type of warfare on the Western Front was very different to that on Gallipoli. It is unlikely that, as a sniper, Billy spent much of his time on the battlefield; nevertheless, his skills were put to good use. In 1917, he was recommended for, though not awarded, the Military Medal for his actions leading an antisniper fighting patrol at Polygon Wood, in Belgium. He was again mentioned in dispatches for gallantry, this time by the Commander of I ANZAC Corps, General Birdwood. In 1918, he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
Billy's health suffered during his service, and he was frequently hospitalised to treat ailments ranging from serious infections to influenza. He was wounded on a number of occasions. One gunshot wound to the leg caused him problems for years. In 1917, while recuperating from his illness, in Britain he had a stroke of luck. Billy Sing married Elizabeth Stewart, a 21-year-old waitress from Scotland. Little is known about her or her marriage, and it is not even certain that she accompanied him back to Australia.
Billy returned to Australia in July 1918 as a submarine guard on board the troopship SS Boonah. Shortly afterwards, he was permanently discharged as a result of being unfit for duty due to ongoing chest problems. He returned to that little town of Proserpine this great hero of the ANZACs—this crack sniper; 'the murderer', as they called him. He came home and it was to a hero's welcome, which included the presentation of a purse of sovereigns from well-wishers.
Whether or not Elizabeth had accompanied Billy back to Australia, it is known that they were permanently separated by the time he took up a soldier settlement farm a few years after his return. Sadly, that farming venture failed for Billy, as did an attempt to strike it lucky in the Miclere gold fields that were near his property in Clermont, which is west of Mackay. I suppose for our region, sadly, that is where the story of Billy Sing ends. Having no luck with the farm and no luck with mining, he moved to Brisbane in 1942 to be near his only surviving sister, Beatrice. A year later, he died of heart failure at the age of 57—in poverty, as I understand it. This hero of the war—the crack sniper of the Anzacs—died in poverty.
All that remained of this one-time famous sniper was a miner's hut, worth around £20, and five shillings found in his room in a boarding house. There were no signs of medals or awards. Billy was buried at Lutwyche Cemetery in Brisbane. His headstone highlights his skills as a sniper. It reads:
His incredible accuracy contributed greatly to the preservation of the lives of those with whom he served during a war always remembered for countless acts of valour and tragic carnage.
It is fitting that, during the Centenary of Anzac, Billy Sing has been honoured again. His story has been carved and gold plated into a black granite slab at the Brisbane cemetery where he lies. The memorial was unveiled on 19 May this year, the anniversary of Sing's death. It recognises not only Billy but also all Chinese-Australians who served their country. Whatever the future holds for us, as Australians we owe a great debt to the original Anzacs. We honour them on this day, and we remember them. Lest we forget.
I am honoured to speak on this motion regarding the Anzac Centenary. I rise to pay my respects to the 60,000 Australians who fought in the Gallipoli campaign, the nearly 9,000 who died, the 20,000 who were wounded and the thousands more who carried the unseen scars of war for the rest of their lives.
At dawn on 25 April 1915, some 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders—the first Anzacs—surged ashore at Gallipoli in a place we now call Anzac Cove. We were an infant nation—the federation of Australia born just 14 years prior. As Paul Keating has reflected, the bloody battle at Gallipoli helped to 'distinguish us, demonstrating what we were made of'. He said:
Our embrace of a new sense of human values and relationships through these events, gave substance to what is now the Anzac tradition …
Those Australians fought and died not in defence of some old world notion of competing empires and territorial conquests but for the new world – the one they belonged to and hoped to return to.
On Anzac Day this year, tens of thousands gathered at ceremonies and memorials across the electorate of Newcastle to pay their respects to our past and present servicemen and women. At dawn, some 43,000 people packed on to Nobbys Beach for the region's largest service, hosted by the Newcastle City RSL sub-branch. The service had a very special guest—a woman who was almost recognising her own centenary of Anzac. Elva Nairn, of Adamstown Heights, took up her usual position in the front row at the service for her 99th Anzac Day. Born just six days after our men stepped foot on the shores of Gallipoli, Elva rose again this year at 2 am to secure her treasured spot in the front row at Nobbys Beach, wrapped in a woollen scarf and beanie with a knitted poppy fastened to her coat. Of those gathered, she said:
… you could have heard a pin drop. You only have to look at all those people and know that the spirit is still alive, especially the younger people.
Elva celebrated her own centenary just six days after the service, and I look forward to seeing her in the front row again next year. Dawn services were also held in Shortland, Stockton, Hamilton and Beresfield, where large numbers of Novocastrians gathered to pay their respects. Other services were held at Cooks Hill surf lifesaving club, Merewether, Adamstown and Lambton. Many observed that the City of Newcastle was 'alive' all day and, as Elva recalled, so too was its Anzac spirit.
It is often the personal stories, however, that draw the deepest connection to the sacrifice of war. I would like to share with the House a remarkable story that was told at an Anzac service I attended at Callaghan college, Waratah, a high school in my electorate. The story was told by a teacher at the school, Julie Woollard, in loving memory of her father's cousin. John Woollard, known as Jack to most, enlisted in 1916 in Maitland, alongside Captain Clarence Jeffries VC, who was awarded a Victoria Cross. With the 34th Battalion, Jack headed to the battlefields of Europe. I would like to read an extract from a letter that young Jack wrote to Julie's grandparents from somewhere in Belgium, dated 2 August 1917:
Dear Uncle,
Many thanks for the long and interesting letter of May which I received yesterday.
I can imagine you all comfortably settled in your new home and wouldn't mind if I could drop in for an hour of two but I hope to call on you some day after the war.
Remember me to Edith and your bonnie boys. I am sure you will train them up to be good honest men who will never bring dishonour on their father's name. I am doing my bit to keep the name good.
I have just come out from a spell behind the line after 32 days in the trenches. I spent 9 days in the front line which I entered for the first time exactly on my birthday and I have had the good fortune to come through all without a scratch and apparently none the worse for this stint, although I was in many a hot "strafe" by the enemy's artillery and under shellfire all the time, while I suffered no small amount of hardship and bad times generally because of the frequent wet weather we had to put up with.
I was surprised to find how much a man can stand without serious consequences in the way of loss of sleep and wet feet with his nerves at high tension continually.
I fancy you learnt some of those hard lessons in your droving days.
I was on a Lewis gun team so I was stationed at the most advanced parts of the line in our sector, and for periods of 24 hours on three different occasions, our team with another and some bombers, held a strong point about 50 yards in advance of the front line. One night there was a strafe on by Fritz's artillery when we had a hot time but he missed us all, although his high explosives, pineapples, Ninnies, shrapnel and whizzbangs dropped very close. Although the bursting shells have a way of putting the wind up men yet there's a grand thrill in it all which makes the blood run as long as you don't get hit.
A few of our men were killed and a large number wounded, and put out of action with shell shock as Fritz kept up a continual bombardment of our own sector as it was more advanced than the rest of the line.
Two days after we came out there was a big advance along our front extending from the river Lys to the coast so we just missed out on the 'hop over the bags'. As far as we know we will have a few weeks rest before going back into the trenches.
Today I commenced a course in Signalling, learning the Morse code, so I suppose the next time I go into the trenches I will go, not as a Lewis Gunner or rifleman but as a signaller which will be more in my line as all messages are sent by telephone while the wires remain unbroken, and by Morse lamp if the wires are out.
The weather here has for some days past been unpleasantly wet and rather cold, in spite of the season. I am afraid we are in for a cruel time if we have to spend a winter here.
No one will hail the day of peace with more real joy than the boys of the front and I know it now. So, in the hope that that glad day will soon come and that He who watches over all and slumbers not, nor sleeps, will care for you and yours and me and mine and shortly bring us all together again in peace and happiness.
I am,
Yours fervently, Jack
Tragically, Jack was one of 25,000 men who died during the Battle of Passchendaele, in Belgium, just two months after writing this letter. He never got to see his uncle's new home or those bonnie boys or rejoice in that day of peace he and so many others longed for. I thank Julie and the Woollard family for kindly sharing Jack's story. It is the personal stories of men like Jack that help shape the Anzac legend as we know it today. As Paul Keating, many years later, was to so astutely observe:
What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity.
We liked the lesson about supposedly ordinary people; we liked finding that they were not ordinary at all. Despite the fact that the military campaigns were shockingly flawed and incompetently executed, those ‘ordinary people’ distinguished themselves by their latent nobility—
people like Jack Woollard. Lest we forget
We are fortunate to live in a land of peace and freedom, a country of wealth and prosperity, which is home to a profoundly multicultural and diverse community. During the one hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli Cove it is important to remember that the things we can now take for granted did not come without a cost or sacrifice. We are not a country born out of war, we are not defined by war or our involvement in it, but we are also not a country that has escaped the loss and horror of war. Too many men and women have fought and died to protect our freedom over the last century and, sadly, too many still do. While there will always be differences of opinion about what Gallipoli means to our nation's spirit and identity, the landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli Cove, the tragic loss of life that followed and the conduct, camaraderie and fortitude they showed is forever etched into the Australian story. While not Australia's first participation in a conflict overseas, it was the beginning of sacrifice on a scale we had not yet endured.
This year, in the Centenary of Anzac, it is important to recognise the significance of the Anzac spirit, which also infuses every part of our commemoration for every fallen soldier in every conflict. The Anzac spirit belongs to every Australian, not just to those who trace their origins to the early settlers but also to those who contribute to make our country great and who freely embrace the whole of the Australian story as their own. Many are actually over in the great hall, tonight, celebrating the story of settlement—now—in this country.
In Anzac Cove in the worst of circumstances, against the greatest adversity, the Anzac soldiers found the best in themselves and each other. Like many in this place, I have travelled to Turkey and Gallipoli—not on any delegation, but as a backpacker after my university years. I have stood on that beach and looked in amazement and thought, 'Why? Why would anyone think of landing on this tiny strip next to that amazing hill?' It was quite a moving experience to be there, to see the row of graves and to actually be part of that journey. And again, to marvel at why we did it.
But the story of the Anzacs is just the first in a very long list of deeds of valour performed by the servicemen and servicewomen of Australia's military since that fateful landing—deeds of valour performed in the world war that came after the war to end all wars and repeated over and over again in the regional conflicts that have plagued us in every decade since. The length of that list of deeds is at once a source of great sadness and great pride—sadness for every occasion we have had to call upon the men and women of our armed services to put their lives on the line for our country and pride that every time they have been called their courage, dedication, camaraderie and compassion have shown no bounds. But through it all there are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children who have lost the person closest to them. Those young men who never came home left a hole in the family and the country they fought to protect.
Like many Australians, I have a personal connection with the story— my grandfather, Edward William James Burke, served in both World War I and World War II. Luckily for me, he returned from both. Many years ago my cousin Peter Crook went to the War Memorial and got my grandfather's war records. It was amazing to read that my grandfather was borne in 1891. I had the records but I could not make head nor tail of them. They are quite difficult to decipher. Much to my chagrin, they sat in a drawer. I promised my cousin that I would try and work out what it was all about. Unlike everybody else, we do not have a letter, we do not have a medal and we do not have a picture. There was nothing left of my grandfather's service. My grandmother, whom he met in England at the demobbing at the end of World War I, a very short and unsentimental Irish woman, had thrown everything out. So, during the Centenary of Anzac I asked a very good friend of mine at the Box Hill RSL, Brian Tateson, if he would read and decipher the records of my grandfather from both World War I and II. He went off to World War I. He was not at Gallipoli—he did not sign up until 1916. But he saw the whole conflict and was at the demobbing in England. He then came home, had his 10 children, and left behind my grandmother to run the milk bar, with said children, and signed up for World War II. I don't know why he signed up for World War I, but I have a pretty good idea why he signed up for World War II!
But we had nothing, so Brian Tateson at Box Hill RSL and Gail Robertson took it upon themselves to decipher the war records and get, on behalf of my family, my grandfather's medals. Sadly, I forgot to bring them with me. I would love to be able to display them, because not only have the RSL given me my grandfather's medals, but they have had them mounted in a magnificent case for me. We are now working out who is the best person to look after my grandfather's medals. Sadly, my father is gone, but the eldest of 10 is still with us, as is the youngest. So there are four of the 10 remaining and there are something in the vicinity of 40 grandchildren, over 60 great grandchildren, and we are not sure about the great greats at this point in time. But we are incredibly proud of this service to our nation. I am incredibly grateful to the Box Hill RSL as we now have a replica of the medals, beautifully bound, so that we can reflect upon that service—not to glorify it, but to say thank you for that contribution.
One hundred years on and I am proud to say to my community of Chisholm that the commemoration of the Anzac spirit saw thousands upon thousands of local residents turn out to local services and RSLs to honour the fallen. As always, I attended the dawn service at the Box Hill RSL. It was a chilly morning but there were over 10,000 people in attendance, this at a small suburban occasion. There was another great occasion at Oakleigh RSL—I could not get there—and other great ones at Clayton and Glen Waverley. I went to some services they had held the Sunday before, and it was just an amazing experience. Both my children actually got out of bed at the crack of dawn to come with me, which was just delightful, as well.
The community also took full advantage of the Anzac Centenary grants program, which funded some important local projects. I am pleased to announce that all of these have been beautifully done and wonderfully handled. Box Hill RSL commissioned Steven Cooke to research and publish The Sweetland Project, a book chronicling the life of Stephen Sweetland and 26 other soldiers from the shire of Nunawading who lost their lives in Anzac Cove. One of the RSL members had gone around and noticed that all of the streets in Box Hill had certain names and he could not work out why until he looked at the World War I memorial and realised they were the names of all the fallen in our area. They commissioned historian Steven Cooke, who put together a great collection of those stories.
Oakleigh and District Historical Society undertook enormous research to uncover the long-forgotten Avenues of Honour, which were once prominent throughout the City of Monash. This is the pretty Melbourne tradition of planting trees to remember the fallen. They found out where they all were, and the names of the individuals.
The Friends of Wattle Park and the Wattle Park Heritage Group received funds to make significant improvements to the Wattle Park Patriotic area and Lone Pine precinct, where the annual Anzac service regularly gets one of the largest turnouts in my electorate. It is home to the original lone pine—the original cone that was brought back from the First World War. So if you are in Wattle Park please get on down and see the memorial.
The Box Hill Historical Society restored, framed and put on a display of nine historical photographs of local men who served in the First World War. The Rotary Club of Mount Waverley constructed a new arched walkway and garden area commemorating local soldiers who lost their lives. It is a wonderful community effort and I really want to thank the student from Mount Waverley Secondary College who actually designed it for the group.
Wattle Park Primary School students and mosaic artist Deb Cotter will be working two days a week during term 3 to create a First World War Commemorative Trail at the school. I am looking forward to seeing the end product. Whitehorse Council will be joining with local primary school students to create a field of ceramic poppies on the lawn in front of Box Hill Town Hall, in time for Remembrance Day. It is a historic town hall and this will look magnificent. Oakleigh Carnegie RSL has completed a major restoration of the Roll of Honour at the RSL. I encourage everyone to take a moment to appreciate the newly restored board. One of the fallen from the area was actually left off the original board, which was an oversight as his family are still connected to the area. So his name has been honoured as part of this. If you get a chance to go down to the Oakleigh RSL drop in for a look. There is great music and food to be had there, as well.
These are important local commemorations. Each will tell stories of individual sacrifice and heroism by people whose names might otherwise be lost to history—something that we can never let happen. There is no glory in war, no victory that does not feel hollow and no price paid that was not too high. Every life lost, whether friend or enemy, is a tragedy. We yearn for the day when such tragedies need not occur.
If we are to take any solace from these tragedies, it is that in most cases, nations who once met in war can now call each other friends. There is no better way for us to continue to honour the sacrifices of our service men and women than to appreciate and nurture our way of life right here in our community, contributing to it with our energy, our vision, our time and our care. Now and for all time, we will remember them. Lest we forget.
One hundred years on—just three generations in human terms, it is still hard to come to terms with the tragedy and the triumph that was Gallipoli. As a strategic initiative it was a tragedy—a failure in almost every military sense. As a marker of the courage, fortitude, and sheer determination of the human spirit it was a triumph, one out of which so much which is unique to us as Australians was forged.
In June 1915 ANZAC troops were poised between the great events of the Gallipoli campaign. Their minds must have gone back to those days in the previous November when they had set forth from the port of Albany, escorted by three warships—HMAS Sydney, HMAS Melbourne and the Japanese cruiser HIJMS Ibukion what they expected to be some sort of great adventure fighting in Europe for King and country. They had enlisted in their thousands.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were farewelled by parades in every town, village and hamlet, all of which were to suffer from their loss and none of which would ever be the same again. They did not expect to be landed on the beaches of an unknown and barely heard of land but, true to their oaths and their honour, they landed and they fought. It did not take long for them to come face to face with the realities of war.
On 25 April they had struggled up from the beaches into the scrub and the gullies and the fierce terrain. They had heard that Albert Jacka had won Australia's first Victoria Cross at Courtney's Post on 19 May. Then on 24 May they had paused for one terrible day in an armistice so that they and the Turks could clear the dead from the field to make it easier to resume the fighting. The staggering British losses at the three battles of Krithia were fresh in their minds, and their own extraordinary tests at Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair and the Nek, where seven more Victoria Crosses were to be won, lay but a few weeks ahead. It is staggering to recount the casualties of these few brief months: 44,150 Allied soldiers lost their lives and 141,547 became casualties. Of the dead, 8,709 were Australians and 2,779 New Zealanders. They now lay alongside the British, Irish, French, Indians and Newfoundlanders who had fallen. They had mixed for the first time with trenchers from Newfoundland, not then part of Canada; with a large contingent of Indian soldiers of the King-Emperor; with the French, about whom they had heard many curious tales; and even with a mule corps composed entirely of Zionists fighting under the Star of David flag—the first such corps for 2,000 years. Across but such a little space were to lie 86,692 Turkish dead out of a quarter of a million casualties. If anything, they were even younger than the Anzacs who fought them. But they were fighting for their fatherland and had no understanding of the forces or comprehension of the politics which had brought so many enemies from so far away to their home shores. On all sides the killing was brutal, the suffering indescribable, the courage exemplary and the camaraderie magnificent.
One feature of the Great War was the number of serving parliamentarians who were accorded leave of absence from their seats and who went to fight. Nine sitting members of this parliament served. One of those was Granville de Laune Ryrie, later Sir Granville Ryrie, the then Liberal member for North Sydney—my predecessor. Born in 1865—exactly 100 years before my birth—in Michelago, Ryrie had served in the Boer War. He landed at Gallipoli on 19 May 1915. On 29 April he was severely wounded and was evacuated. He returned to duty and was wounded a second time in December. Again he returned to duty, serving in Syria, taking part in the battle of Beersheba, where he rode a horse provided to him by the people of North Sydney. He went on to serve in Egypt and rose to the rank of Major General. It is ironic that my own grandfather, who had reportedly been a spy for the Catholic church, was sent by the British to rebuild Beersheba after the member for North Sydney had taken it as part of the everlastingly great charge of the Light Horse on Beersheba in 1917. Granville Ryrie served this House as the Liberal member for North Sydney from 1911 to 1917. He then sat as a Nationalist until 1922, when he was elected to the new seat of Warringah—currently held by the Prime Minister. He served as Assistant Minister for Defence and later as High Commissioner in London, and then as the Australian delegate to the League of Nations. He died in 1937.
Two future prime ministers served at Gallipoli, Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Clement Atlee—as, of course, did the founding president of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That Australia and Turkey have, since those bloody and terrible days, forged a close relationship says much about the men who fought and the men who made peace, which they hoped would prevent the carnage ever happening to their children and those beyond. That they were disappointed in this hope should remind us to be ever vigilant to ensure that there is no recrudescence of the precursors of war: hatred, intolerance, economic despair and political tyranny. It is sobering that but a stone's throw from the shores of Gallipoli we are witnessing such a conflict again in our time—one which contains within it so much to put us in peril once again.
Despite its centrality for us as a nation, Gallipoli was but a sideshow in a far greater and utterly more terrible conflagration caused by an act of fanaticism and a failure of statesmanship. Before peace was restored, 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians had died and 20 million had suffered as casualties. In that time, old, great and historic nations and dynasties ceased to exist. New and fragile nations were born, and millions of colonised people —without their consent—gained different destinies and new masters, including Australians. A way of life that had developed and been sustained for generations was obliterated and a new paradigm settled across the face of the planet. All the old truths ceased to be true. Class and gender relationships were changed inexorably and forever.
A young nation—ours—lost its sense of innocence. It committed itself to the conflagration—to the last man and the last shilling—because that is what it meant to be part of the great Empire. It poured its blood into the soils of the Dardanelles, the sands of the Middle East, the jungles of Papua and the mud of the Western Front. It rose to the challenge with heroism based on mateship and stout hearts. It produced soldiers, nurses and commanders of rare courage, tenacity and true grit. It is that spirit and those men and women that we remember and we honour today. It emerged scarred, shaken and changed. But as a nation we had a new sense of self and a new confidence in our destiny.
In a time when we are reminded that fanaticism and irrationality still lurk like some evil and malign demon all too close, all too willing to take life and all too threatening to the skills of statesmen and stateswomen and politicians, we should more than ever proclaim: never again!
I know these speeches will be marked in history. I say to those that follow me both as the member for North Sydney and through the generations beyond: for so long as we have breath as Australians, we will never forget.
It is a pleasure to follow that excellent speech from the Treasurer in responding to this issue. On Anzac Day we stop to remember sacrifice. It is a day on which we mark, as Sir Isaac Isaacs said, the loyalty, faith, courage, skill and endurance of those who served and of those who continue to serve. And it is a day to recall the terrible lessons of war and the pressing imperative for peace and security.
One hundred years ago, more than 20,000 Australians and New Zealanders went ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula. The four infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade, Australian 1st Division, made the dawn landing. More than 620 Australians died on that first day of what was to become an eight-month battle. Two-hundred-and-five brave local men from the south side of Brisbane landed at Anzac Cove that day: 131 from South Brisbane, 17 from Bulimba, 15 from Kangaroo Point, 11 from East Brisbane, 11 from Woolloongabba, nine from Coorparoo, seven from West End, two from Morningside and one each from Hawthorne and Norman Park.
In Queensland, 57,000 young men signed up to serve in the 'war to end all wars'. Two out of every three who served died or were wounded. At the time, Australia was a country of barely five million people. In the First World War, nearly 400,000 wore the uniform, of which 152,000 were wounded and 62,000 died. The men who went to Gallipoli gave themselves for the sake of others. In the hundred years since, many more locals from my electorate and from the south side have joined the Australian Defence Force. In doing so they have followed the Anzacs' example.
So many Australians have given their lives in our nation's defence. Their names are inscribed on local war memorials and honour boards in every community across the country. The trees that were planted around the memorial park at Bulimba were planted in their honour. On Anzac Day this year, as we have done every year, my community and I gathered together to honour the sacrifice of the Anzacs. It was a real honour for me to be able to give an address—upon which this address is based—to those gathered at the Bulimba Memorial Park. It was an honour to attend the dawn service at Morningside. It was an honour to attend the service shortly after dawn at the Greenslopes Private Hospital. It was also an honour to have been able to attend the Coorparoo RSL event that was held to mark 100 years of Anzac, to have attended a small but beautiful ceremony that is held every year at the Balmoral memorial bowls club at Bulimba on Thyme Road and also to be represented at a range of other Anzac ceremonies. We lost count of how many I participated in along with my office, but we bought in the vicinity of 20 wreaths.
There were certainly thousands of people across the south side who commemorated the 100th year of Anzac on that day, and I know that the same is true in your own electorate of Bonner, Mr Deputy Speaker. As our community gathered together on those days we remembered those who were lost and we thought of those who had returned but who would never be the same because of their injuries and what they had endured. And, of course, that was particularly noted at Greenslopes Private Hospital, which has a long association with an organisation that deals with those who have post-traumatic stress as a consequence of war.
As I said, in remembering the Anzacs we remember how ardently we desire peace, to borrow another expression from former Australian Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs. We remember that war stokes our desire for peace, because in remembering men and women's sacrifice we necessarily remember death, horror, pain, and suffering. War shatters families, but not only families. Every loss leaves a hole in our community, and every war injury carries consequences not just for those injured but for the communities to which they return.
George Harry Storey was a clerk who lived on Bulimba Street. He was just 19 when he left for Gallipoli, where he arrived as part of the 5th Light Horse Regiment on 16 May 1915. Twelve days later he was in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. Amazingly, he rejoined his unit, only to be back in hospital again by Christmas with frostbite. He was admitted to hospital three more times before returning to Australia and being medically discharged just three years following his enlistment. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for his valour. He served in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine. He died as a result of his war service at just 34 years of age. He is buried in the Balmoral Cemetery in the electorate of Griffith, which I have the honour of representing. George had enlisted just 12 days after his older brother, Fredrick. Fredrick was killed at Gallipoli on 8 August 1915.
You can imagine in that community, as well as in every other community around the country, the uncertainty and the grief and the suffering of the families and of the communities when they met, maybe at church—like the churches on Oxford Street, for example—to gather together as a community, and you can also imagine the community spirit as people rallied around those families who had not heard from members of their family who were at war. On Anzac Day we mourn with all of those families who have lost people and we mourn with all of those communities who have lost those who made the ultimate sacrifice. We mourn for the lives lost and for what could have been if not for war. And on Anzac Day we also give thanks for those who have returned and for those who still serve—like all those veterans who attend the commemorative ceremonies that we hold and that the RSLs and services groups around the country hold each year on Anzac Day—the people who march on Anzac Day and the people who are unable to march but still attend.
When Isaac Isaacs observed in 1937 our nation's ardent desire for peace, he also spoke of what is needed—clear vision, a resolute heart and a strong arm. It is true today. That is why we owe everyone who has served and everyone who continues to serve a debt that cannot be paid. They serve so that our nation's ardent desire for peace and security has a chance of being fulfilled.
So, though we cannot repay the debt we owe, we can gather together each year, not to glorify war but to make sure that past sacrifices are never forgotten—as my community has done, in the local area, for many years. As you know, the first Anzac Day commemoration committee came about from a public meeting in 1916. The community wanted to honour the fallen and all who had served. It was under Canon David Garland's energetic stewardship that the first Anzac Day was commemorated. My friend and sometime opponent Dr Bill Glasson is a leader in the community who seeks to make sure that we remember the work of Canon David Garland.
As you know, the Colmslie Sub-Branch of the RSL has led commemorations in the local area in my electorate for many years at Oxford Street, and our community was very grateful to them for that leadership. They had faced some challenges before this Anzac Day and the community rallied around those people, including all of the other RSL sub-branches—and there are quite a few in my electorate—to ensure that the Morningside dawn service went ahead for the 100 years of Anzac. There are so many—I have mentioned some of the RSL sub-branches. I have mentioned Coorparoo. There is also a sub-branch that you and I share, which is Holland Park, which has a strong naval contingent. There is the Cannon Hill District and Vietnam Services RSL Sub-Branch, the nashos at Norman Park, the Hellenic sub-branch down at west end, and I have mentioned Colmslie and the groups that coalesce around the memorial bowls clubs. There are so many services organisations. I should mention St Stephen's; I should mention Yeronga Dutton Park. There are so many that work so hard to ensure that we adequately, properly and respectfully commemorate the work, contribution and sacrifice of all members of the armed services, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice or those who have been injured at war. Our community also owes a great debt to those people who continue to stoke those commemorations.
I conclude by expressing my gratitude to those organisations for ensuring that this year our community held wonderful, appropriate and dignified commemorations of the Centenary of Anzac. I express my deepest condolences to all who have lost family and friends to war, armed conflict or dangerous peacekeeping missions. I also offer sympathy to those survivors who have been wounded or have been affected by injury, whether seen or unseen. I know that my constituency would want me to express its gratitude to all of those who have served.
My grandfather, James Albert Lees, enlisted in the York and Lancaster Regiment from his home town of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, in the early days of World War I. He was signed up in what they called the Pals recruitment, or a Kitchener recruitment process. He belonged to his local sporting club, and as a young athlete he and his friends, his pals, signed up for the York and Lancaster Regiment. They served their war beginning at the Somme, and my grandfather, James Albert Lees, served most of his war in either hospitals or in prisons. But he survived his war, and for that we give thanks to the Lord. He had a good war; he got through it.
The Anzac legend was born on the shores of modern day Turkey, on 25 April 1915, when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps invaded the Gallipoli peninsula. This daring but ultimately unsuccessful campaign ended after eight months with over 25,000 Australian casualties and over 8,000 deaths. War creates loss, uncertainty and unending devastation for families, communities and countries.
The troops involved in the Gallipoli campaign came from the length and breadth of Australia and New Zealand. Each state and New Zealand supplied a quota of troops who made their way by sea to their designated rendezvous point. For many that was off the southern port of Albany, off Western Australia. The ships began to assemble from 24 October 1914. When they arrived in King George Sound, Albany, the troops were not allowed ashore, although many did get a trip to land to take part in marches or other organised excursions. For many of the troops who fought and died at Gallipoli, Albany was therefore the last that they ever saw of Australia.
The people of my electorate of Brand hold deep ties to World War 1 and the Gallipoli campaign. Rockingham, which is in the heart of my electorate, holds, I believe, the second-biggest Anzac morning march-past west of Adelaide. Rockingham is home to the Royal Australian Navy's Fleet Base West. It is also home to many of the thousands of young Australian men and women who, tonight, will serve in our forces overseas. Rockingham was also home to some of the brave young men of Western Australia's own 11th Battalion, whose distinguished service began when they received enemy fire as the first ashore, at Gallipoli, providing cover for the Anzac landings. The 11th Battalion had practised on the beach at Rockingham.. The 11th Battalion had called Rockingham their home.
The Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program, administered by the Commonwealth government, was used recently to fund a local project at the Rockingham War Memorial. The grants were to support projects honouring Australia's servicemen and servicewomen as part of the Anzac Centenary national program. This particular project involved the purchase and installation of eight commemorative seats and plaques around the war memorial cenotaph in Flinders Lane, Rockingham. The project was directed through the RSL City of Rockingham Sub-Branch, which is currently headed by the very capable Lyndon Jackson as president and Jennifer Sciortino as secretary. The grant was for around $25,000. The first plaque on the chairs reads:
These commemorative seats are in memory of the sons who were born and/or resided in Rockingham whose courage and sacrifice defended and preserved our freedoms. WW 1 1914-18 Lest We Forget
The names listed on the plaque are as follows: Alford C, who died; Armstrong RJ; Bell RR; Barter GM; Barter RD, who died; Carroll HJ; Colledge REL; De San Miguel C; Evans FW, who died; Fry GW; Hanretty RH, who died; Hanretty TP; Mead WE, who died; Hymus HA; Hymus WJ; Northover CE; Parkin CE; Sloan LT; Smirk WJ; Stokes HJ; and Stokes FH.
Many of these names are familiar to the people of Rockingham. They are names that can be seen today on street names. They name our local reserves. They become part of our local history and lore. They live on in modern descendants and families.
The De San Miguel family name remains prominent in the Rockingham area. Charles De San Miguel joined the Army on 9 March 1916, and was in the 1st Australian Division, 11th Battalion. He was captured at Tagnicourt on 20 March 1917, reported missing on 26 March 1917, and officially recorded as prisoner of war on 26 September 1917. He was registered at Limburg Camp, Germany. On 10 December 1918 he was repatriated from Germany to England, and he returned to Australia per the Lancashire,on 21 March 1919.
Charles was the son of Angel and Mary De San Miguel of Hope Valley, Rockingham. His father was originally sent to New Norcia Mission, north of Perth. However, he left and that is how he met his wife, Mary. Their son was a prisoner of war for most of the war.
The Hymus family was one of the first to settle in East Rockingham. The Hymus family name now adorns streets and, again, has become part of the living culture of Rockingham. Wesley John Hymus—'Jack'—joined the Army on 4 February 1916 and embarked on 31 March 1916. On 3 October 1917 he was wounded in action. He was gassed in France on 15 November 1917 and hospitalised at the 3rd General Hospital. He was hospitalised again on 21 and 31 March 1917, suffering the effects of gas. He suffered from paralyses, on 31 March 1918, and was sent to hospital in Newhaven, England. He suffered a haematoma to his spinal cord from administration of medication. He was returned to Australia, paralysed, on 30 June 1918. His father, Daniel Hymus, ran the Rockingham pub until the 1920s. There is a street in Rockingham connecting the esplanade to Safety Bay Road, which is named after the Hymus family.
Parkin is another name which has been given to Rockingham streets and Rockingham landmarks. Charles Parkin went to war underage and his father wrote a strongly worded letter to the Army asking where his son was. Charles Edward Parkin was the son of Charles Parkin and Annie, nee Burns. Charles Sr was the first chairman of the Rockingham Road Board. Charles embarked on 22 November 1915. Illness plagued him and, after being hospitalised with influenza and bronchitis, he became a military policeman and then a munitions worker. He was discharged on 27 November 1919. 'Parkin' lives on as a local street name.
The Sloan family have a reserve named after them—Sloan Reserve. It is on the corner of Sloan Drive, which is also named after the family. Sloan Cottage, an original soldier's settlement house, is an important heritage feature of Kwinana. The family farmed land near the corner of Day and Mandurah Road, East Rockingham. They farmed here until 1953, until Kwinana began to be developed.
Leonard Thomas Sloan was the son of George and Emma Sloan, nee Smirk, of East Rockingham. The Smirk family are another famous local family. He joined on 4 February 1916, aged 27 years, and embarked on HMAT Suevic on 6 June 1916. He was sent to France on 25 November 1916 and was wounded in action at Ypres on 10 January 1917. On 24 June 1917 he was awarded the Military Medal. He was wounded, again, on 4 October, suffering a gunshot wound to the right side of his chest and was hospitalised in Portsmouth, England. On 15 February 1918 he returned to Australia aboard the Llanstephen Castle, arriving 9 April 1918.
His grandfather was a whaler and his father was a convict, who farmed near Kwinana and taught Sunday school for 20 years. His grandfather, James Sr, was in the Navy and jumped ship from HMS Driver for which a price was placed on his head. His father, James Jr, established the Port Hotel, now called the Rockingham Hotel.
Raymond Harold Hanretty joined the Army on 12 January 1916 and embarked on 6 June 1917. Raymond went to France on 22 November and was wounded on 1 June 1917. Ray rejoined his unit on 14 June 1917 and, on 31 May 1918, was killed in action in France. He was buried originally at Petit Blangy and then re-interned at Villers-Bretonneux.
The Hanretty family had a street named after them in Warnbro. His mother's maiden name was Thorpe. The Thorpe family also had a street named after them in Rockingham and a way named after them in Kwinana. Raymond's mother planted pine trees near where the Kwinana marshalling yards now sit. His father worked at the port of Kwinana.
William Ernest Mead joined the Army on 1 February 1916. He was 29 years and five months at the time of his enlistment. He was a farmer and grazier at 'Lealholm,' East Rockingham. William was the son of Charles and Hannah Mead.
He embarked from Fremantle aboard the HMAT A9 Shropshire, on 31 January 1916, to Suez and from there to Alexandria, then to Marseilles, arriving on 2 June 1916, joining his unit at Etaples on 7 June 1916. On 7 July 1916 he joined the 11th Battalion in France. On 23 July 1916 he was wounded in action and suffered wounds to his arm, concussion and shellshock. William died from his injuries at the 44th Casualty Clearance Station, in France, on 23 July 1916. He was buried at the British Cemetery, plot 1, row F, grave 49. William's father and his two uncles owned much of the land around the Kwinana Strip and Mundijong. The family also owned land near the corner of Gilmore and Mandurah Road up until the 1980s.
I would like to thank Wendy Durant from the Rockingham Museum for her great knowledge of my local area, its families and its history and for her assistance with the research for this speech. I of course encourage the locals of Rockingham to call into our local museum to learn of our local history and how it relates to the events of World War I and how that war helped shape our community and our nation. Lest we forget.
I am honoured and privileged to rise to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. World War I was a conflict that divided the nation, communities, political parties and even families. Even the cause of the war is still debated today—whether it was purely German aggression or a product of balance-of-power politics. But what is beyond dispute is that the honour and sacrifice of all those who volunteered for service must be honoured and commemorated, because it was a tremendous act of sacrifice that our community should be exceedingly grateful for.
Like every other community in this country, the Hunter region was deeply touched by this sacrifice. Over 11,000 served and 2,072 men lost their lives. In the Lake Macquarie region, which I predominantly represent, over 1,000 men served and 167 died. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 47. I would like to honour all those from Lake Macquarie who served in World War I by reading their names into Hansard, because I think that is a greater honour than having a politician like me talking about their sacrifice a hundred years later. I think it is much more important to record their names. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will attempt to do that in the time I have remaining:
Thomas Abell of Fassifern; David Absalom of Catherine Hill Bay; Charles Adams of West Wallsend; Albert Aley of Dora Creek; Sidney Allen of West Wallsend; Andrew Allison of Teralba; Leonard Amourous of Catherine Hill Bay; Alexander Anderson of Seahampton; Arthur Anderson of Belmont; Edward Anderson of Dudley; James Anderson of West Wallsend; Joseph Annoni of Speers Point; John Anson of Mandalong; James Antcliff of Teralba; Edward Ardron of Redhead; Walter Armitage of West Wallsend; Stanley Ashdown of Morisset; Ernest Ashman of Teralba; Paul Askew of Charlestown; John Atherton of West Wallsend; Edward Atkins of Toronto; George Atkinson of Cardiff; Thomas Aylward of Morisset; Daniel Baccus of West Wallsend; Samuel Bailey of Cardiff; Vivian Bailey of Cardiff; Wilfred Bailey of Cardiff; John Bainbridge of West Wallsend; John Bainbridge of Edgeworth; Arthur Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; Ernest Baker of Fassifern; Robert Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; William Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; John Baldwin of West Wallsend; Edwin Balkham of Dudley; Frederick Ball of Boolaroo; Thomas Ball of Toronto; Sydney Banfield of Dudley; Alexander Barbour of West Wallsend; Rupert Barnett of Boolaroo; William Barnett of Teralba; Peter Barrass of West Wallsend; Walter Barrell of West Wallsend; Benjamin Barry of West Wallsend; Percy Barry of Corranbong; Arhur Bateman of Boolaroo; John Bateup of Wyee; Timothy Baxter of Toronto; Frank Beattie of Toronto; Athol Beck of Teralba; Charles Beck of Teralba; Claude Beck; George Beck; Victor Beck; Eldred Belford; Ernest Bell; Walter Bennett; Sydney Benton; Charles Bice; Arthur Biggers; Roland Biggs; Gregory Bills; Edward Bird; William Bird; James Black; Robert Black; Samuel Black; Charles Blackett; John Blackford; Andrew Blackie; Alfred Blackman; John Blackwell; Angus Blakely; John Blakely; Edward Blatchford; Enoch Blek; George Bliss; Peter Bloomfield; Thomas Bloomfield; William Boekenstein; William Bookless; Frank Botham; Herbert Bowen; Samuel Bower; Frederick Bowers; James Bowie; William Bowles; Peter Bowling; Alexander Boyd; David Boyd; Herbert Bradley; Thomas Bradley; James Brady; Harold Branscombe; George Breakwell; Enoch Brennan; John Brennan; Joseph Brewer; Joseph Briddick; Cecil Bridgett; James Brierly; George Broadbent; John Broadbent; John Brogan; Charles Brooks; Henry Brooks; David Brown; Ernest Brown; George Brown; Harold Brown; Hugh Brown; John Brown; William Brown; James Brownlee; William Brownlee; John Broxom; Edwin Bruce; Frederick Bruce; Albert Buckley; Alfred Bull; Alexander Bull; Rupert Burchell; Harold Burgin; John Burn; George Burns; Charles Burrows; William Burt; James Byrne; Henry Cadell; Edward Cain; John Callender; Wesley Callender; Samuel Cambridge; Alexander Campbell; David Campbell; Donald Campbell; James Campbell; John Campbell; Norman Campbell; Richard Campbell; William Campbell; William John Campbell; Charles Cannon; Frederick Cantelo; Roy Cantelo; Donald Carney; Joseph Carney; Robert Carpenter; Herbert Carr; William Carr; James Carter; Arthur Cartwright; Richard Casey; Archer Castleden; Cyril Castleden; James Castleden; Wilbie Chalk; Arthur Chapman; Clifford Chapman; Edward Chapman; William Chapman; Harry Charlton; Thomas Charlton; Elijah Chenhall; Herbert Cherry; James Cherry; Oliver Cherry; Eric Christian; Arthur Cima; Albert Clapham; Bernie Clapham; William Clapham; Herbert Clark; Alfred Clarke; Patrick Cleary; Leslie Clouten; Athol Clyde; Stanley Coates; Frederick Cockburn; George Cockburn; Henry Cockburn; Leslie Coleman; Edwin Collins; John Chalmers Collins; John Donald Collins; Thomas Common; John Conn; George Connelly; Arthur Convery; Robert Convery; Charles Cooch; Thomas Cook; Frederick Cooke; Arthur Cooper; John Cooper; Harry Copeland; John Copeland; James Corbett; George Cornish; Leo Cornish; Stanley Cornish; John Cornwall; Augustine Cotter; William Cotter; Peter Cousins; Arthur Coventry; Alexander Cowie; Edward Cox; Robert Cox; Norman Cragg; Alexander Craig; John Craig; Samuel Craig; Arthur Crampton; Frank Cravos; William Cresswell; Edward Cressy; Henry Cressy; William Crisp; Thomas Crittendell; Wilfred Crittendell; George Croft; Robert Croker; William Croker; Henry Crowe; Vincent Crosbie; Aloysius Culla; William Culla; David Cummings; William Cummings; Denis Curan; Alexander Curry; John Curtin; John Dallas; Harold Dalton; John Davidson; William Davidson; Robert Davey; Wallace Davey; James Davies; John Davies; Llewellyn Davies; Thomas Davies; Thomas Davies; William Davies; James Davis; Holles Dawes; Cecil Dawson; Henry Dawson; John Dawson; Adolphe de Sylva; Edward Dean; Roy Deaves; Charles Dedman; David Deeprose; Arthur Deighton; John Dempsey; Samuel Denney; Samuel Denny; Walter Desreaux; John Dever; Thomas Dial; William Dick; John Dickinson; George Dickson; William Dickson; Samson Dimmock; Andrew Dodds; John Dodds; Richard Donaghy; Andrew Donald; Patrick Donaldson; George Doncaster; Herbert Donnelly; James Dormer; Joseph Dorrington; George Douglass; Horace Douglass; Edward Douthwaite; Leslie Doyle; Herbert Drew; Thomas Drinkwater; Thomas Driscoll; Daniel Drough; Frederick Dudley; William Duers; Edward Duffy; Percy Duncan; Robert Duncan; Horace Dunford; Robert Dunn of Belmont; Robert Dunn of Homesville; Thomas Dunn; Claude Dunshea; John Durie; Archie Eade; Sam Earnshaw; Thomas Easton; McAlpine Eather; Reginald Eather; Richmond Eather; William Eather; Archibald Ebbeck Samuel Egginton; William Eller; Joseph Elliott; Stanley Elliott; Amos Escott; Samuel Etheridge; Joseph Etherington; Tom Evans; Walter Evans; Reginald Everitt; (Extension of time granted)Lindsay Fairmington; Charles Faith; Robert Fallins; Thomas Farinden; Victor Farr; Arthur Farrar; George Farraway; John Farrell; John Farrindon; Alfred Farroway; Thomas Featherstone; Foster Fennell; Edwin Fenwick; James Ferguson; Fabian Fernie; Earl Ferris; William Fiedler; Leslie Field; Matthew Findlay; William Findlay; Benjamin Finney; Charles Firth; Arthur Fischer; Louis Fisher; Percy Fisher; Cammeles Fitzsimmons; Robert Fitzsimmons; Thomas Fitzsimmons; Walter Fleming; Harry Flowers; Ernest Ford; James Forrester; Henry Forsythe; Robert Foster; Warwick Foster; Spencer Fowler; Joseph Fox; Arthur Francis; William Francis; Michael Freeman; Arthur Freestone; Michael Freestone; Richard Frith; Herbert Froome; William Frost; Henry Fullick; Edward Gain; Albert Gardiner; Claude Gardner; Thomas Gardner; Wilfred Gardner; Harold Garfoot; Horace Garratt; William Garrett; William Gawn; Charles Geary; George Geary; Thomas Geary; William Geary; James Gemmel; David Gibb; Harold Gibson; Joshua Gibson; William Gilchrist; Thomas Gill; William Gill; Thomas Gillons; Victor Gilson; Robert Goldie; Frederick Goldsmith; Albert Goodsir; Harry Goodsir; Hugh Goodsir; James Goodsir; William Goodsir; Bertie Gordon; William Gore; William Gourdin; Alexander Gracie; Albert Graham; John Graham; Harold Grant; Lewis Grant; Charles Grey; William Grey; Gordon Green; Owen Green; Ronald Green; Thomas Greener; Albert Greenfield; Peter Greenfield; Stephen Greenfield; Ernest Greenwell; George Greenwell; Joseph Greenwood; William Griffiths; Victor Guest; Cecil Guilfoyle; James Guilfoyle; Aaron Haddon; Sergeant John Haddow; Private John Haddow; Thomas Haddow; William Haddow; Sidney Hafey; Charles Hailes; James Hainey; Andrew Hall; Arthur Hall; Albin Hall; Cecil Hall; William Hall; Andrew Halme; Walter Ham; Richard Hamilton; Walter Hancock; William Hancock; Leslie Hansen; Harry Hanson; Archibald Harden; William Harden; William Harding; Charles Harradine; Edwin Harragon; Frederick Harragon; Herbert Harrington; Arthur Harris; James Harris; John Harris; Albert Harrison; Francis Harrison; William Harrison; Reginald Harrower; John Hart; Albert Hartland; Edward Hartland; Benjamin Haworth; Ernest Hayward; Ernest Healey; John Heaton; Charles Henderson; Jack Henderson; John Henderson; William Henderson; Richard Hepplewhite; Kenneth Hill; Robert Hill; Oscar Hillery; Henry Hills; Alexander Hincks; Alfred Hindley; Albert Hindmarsh; Phillip Hoare; John Hodge; Eveleigh Hodges; Joseph Hodgetts; John Hogan; Percy Hogan; William Holden; John Holland; Frederick Holmes; William Hooey; Matthew Hopkinson; George Hopwood; William Hopwood; Daniel Horgan; Gordon Horgan; Joseph Horgan; Charles Horn; James Horn; John Horn; Clarence Horne; David Horne; John Horne; William Horne; Arthur Horsley; James Howard; Roy Hoyland; William Hoyland; John Hubbuck; Jonathan Huddart; Victor Huddleston; Anthony Hughes; Edmund Hughes; William Edward Hughes; William Victor Hughes; Richard Hugo; David Humphreys; Hugh Humphreys; Percy Humphreys; Thomas Humphreys; William Hungerford; Albert Hunt; Robert Hunt; Frederick Hunter; Robert Hunter; Charles Hyde; Robert Hyslop; Oswald Iles; William Innes; Edward Jackson; Alfred James; Frederick James; William James; William Jarvie; Edgar Jarvis; Henry Jenkins; William Jenkins; Charles Jess; Raymond Johnson; William Johnson; Alexander Johnston; Mark Johnston; Robert Johnston; William Adolphus Johnston; William Henry Johnston; Private David Johnstone; Lance Corporal David Johnstone; Alexander Jones; David Jones; George Jones; Herbert Jones; Pearce Jones; Robert Jones; Robert David Jones; Tacey Jones; William Jones, born in Stafford; William Jones born in Sydney; William Joseph Jones; Arthur Judd; Daniel Judd; Garnet Judd; William Judd; William Jury; Thomas Kane; Harold Kay; Michael Keane; Frederick Keen; James Keen; Thomas Kelly; Thomas Francis Kelly; Augustus Kembrey; Thomas Kilshaw; William King; Thomas Kirk; Carl Knudsen; William Koos; Peter Kusmin; Robert Laidlaw; Edward Laidler; Gordon Lane; Rufus Lansdown; George Laverick; Charles Laverty; John Lawson; James Leckie; Charles Lee; James Lee; William Lee; Herbert Lenham; James Lennox; Alma Lewis; David Lewis; John Lewis; William Lidgard; Albert Lindsay; William Linsley; Alexander Lochrin; William Locke; Ambrose Lockett; Harold Lofts; George Lovett; Henry Lovett; Joseph Lower; Herbert Lunn; Walter Lunn; Frederick Lyle; James MacKenzie; Allan MacLean; Horace Hector MacLean; Thomas MacLean; Alexander Main; John Mainey; Arthur Manbey; George Mansfield; Cecil Marks; Cyril Marks; John Marks; Joseph Marks; Leslie Marks; Thomas Marrion; Christian Marshall; Charles Mason; Joseph Massey; Francis Masters; James Masters; James Masterton; Frank Mathers; Donald Matheson; Edwin Mathews; William Mathews; Thomas Matthews; William Matthews; William McAllister; Guy McClintock; James McCracken; George McCurry; Leslie McCurry; Michael McDade; Evan McDonald; Hector McDonald; Malcolm McDonald; Thomas McDonald; Archibald McDougall; George McDougall; John McDougall; Joseph McDougall; William McDougall; George McDowall; Thomas McEvoy; David McGeachie; Robert McGeachie; Charles McGuiness; Leo McGuinness; George McIlwraith; Andrew McIntyre; Andrew McIntyre; Colin McIntyre; Magnus McKay; Donald McKellar; George McKenzie; John McKenzie; William McLachlan; John McLaughlan; Joseph McLaughlin; Patrick McLaughlin; Allan McLean; William McLean; Daniel McMillan; John McMillan; William McMillan; Edwin McNaughton; Dougall McNeill; Norman McRae; Jack McVea; James McWilliams; Thomas McWilliams; William McWilliams; Herbert Meaton; James Melanophy; Albert Melling; William Merritt; Kenneth Middleton; Ernest Milburn; Robert Millar; James Miller, born in Miami; James Miller, born in Northumberland; William Miller; Alexander Mills; John Mills; John Roy Mills; James Milne; Albert Minslow; Robert Minto; Abraham Mitchell; Herbert Mitchell; Edwin Mittendorf born in North Brighton; Edwin Mittendorf, born in Baltimore; John Moffat; Robert Moffatt; Albert Moffitt; Peter Moffitt; Sylvester Moffitt; John Monagle; George Moncrieff; Thomas Monks; Ernest Moon; Montague Moon; Harold Moore; James Moore; William Moore; Albert Morris; James Morris; Reginald Morris; Robert Morris; William Morris; James Morrison; Hugh Morse; John Mowbray; Cecil Muir; Thomas Muir; Edward Murphy; Hugh Murray; Lester Murray; Robert Murray; Winsleigh Murray; William Mussen; David Mutton; John Mutton; Leslie Myers; George Naylor; Robert Naylor; John Neilson, born in East Maitland; John Neilson, born in Mount Kembla; John Nelson; George Nesbitt; Amos Newell; Stanley Newell; Samuel Newton; Thomas Newton; George Nicholls; Charles Nickson; George Noble; George Norman; Charles Nugent; John O'Brien; John O'Connell; Albert O'Leary; Timothy O'Leary; James Oliver; Arthur Olsen; Henry Olsen; Andrew O'Neil; John O'Neil; Wesley O'Neil; John Oro; Francis Osborne; Henry Osborne; Bertie Osland; Arthur Oswald; Collins Oswald; Hughie Outram; Samuel Outram; Aaron Owen; Percy Owen; David Owens; Thomas Padgett; Eugene Paillard; George Palmer; Herbert Parker; Joseph Parrish; Thomas Parrish; Francis Parry; John Parryman; John Paterson; James Patterson; Robert Patterson; Frederick Payne; John Peacock; William Pearce; William Henry Srodinski Pearce; Francis Pearson; Annaniah Pellow; William Pellow; Sydney Pemberton; Edward Penfold; Percy Penfold; George Perry; John Perry; William Perry; George Pike; Hugh Pillans; Edward Plummer; James Pobje; Herbert Pocock; Robert Poole; Charles Porter; Robert Porter; William Powell; William Power; Edwin Price; John Price; Samuel Price; Sidney Price; George Pritchard; John Pritchard; Joseph Pritchard; Thomas Provan; William Punton; John Purvis; George Pyke; George Raby; Benjamin Rae; James Rae; Robert Rae; Frank Randall; Frank Randle; Lyle Ranger; Robert Raw; Francis Redman; Frank Redman; Samuel Redman; Edris Rees; Harry Rees; John Rees; Leonard Reynolds; Bernard Rhode; Clifton Rhodes; Henry Rhodes; Lawrence Rhodes; Robert Rice; William Richards; Edward Ridley; Simon Ridley; William Ridley; George Robbins; Thomas Robbins; William Robbins; Albert Roberts; Ernest Roberts; George Roberts; Robert Roberts; Herbert Robertson; William Robertson; Joseph Robinson; John Robson; James Rochford; George Rockwell; Anthony Rodgers; Ernest Ross; Harry Rowan; Edwin Rowe; George Ruddy; Cyril Rundle; Reuben Rundle; Sydney Rundle; John Rutherford; Arthur Ryan; David Edward Sault; David James Sault; William Sault; Joseph Schmitt; Alfred Searle; George Seers; Thomas Sevester; William Sevester; James Sharp; Thomas Shaw; Alexander Shepherd; Hugh Sherry; Thomas Shields; William Shiels; Edward Shillabeer; Alexander Short; Donald Short; Edward Short; Charles Simmons; Robert Simpson; Archibald Skelton; Thomas Skinner; Martin Slater; George Slavin; Peter Slavin; William Smailes; Charles Smith; Clyde Smith; Cyril Smith; David Smith; Ernest Smith; George Smith; Gordon Smith; James Smith; John Smith; Oliver Smith; Oscar Smith; Peter Smith; Robert Smith; Robert Smith; Robert Smith; William Smith; William Smith; William Smith; Robert Snedden; Andrew Sneddon; Thomas Sneddon; Henry Spatz; John Speirs; Walter Spicer; Archibald Spowart; Cecil Stainer; Harry Standing; John Stanley; Thomas Stanley; William Staunton; David Steel; James Steele; Richard Steele; James Stenhouse; William Stephen; Robert Stephenson; Charles Stewart; David Stewart; George Stewart; John Stewart; Joseph Stewart; Robert Stewart; William Stewart; William Stockdale; Henry Stoker; Joseph Storer; Robert Storey; William Stott; Francis Stout; John Straker; William Stray; Arthur Streeter; William Sturt; Edward Sullivan; Reginald Sullivan; Percy Summerscales; William Sumner; John Swadling; John Sweeney; William Symington; Hugh Talbot; Leslie Talbot; James Tarrant; James Taylor; Linus Taylor; Wilfred Taylor; William Taylor; John Thain; Frank Thomas; Henry Thomas; John Thomas; Walter Thomas; Charles Thompson; Ernest Thompson; George Thompson; Henry Thompson; James Thompson; James Swan Thompson; John Thompson; William James Thompson; William Walker Thompson; Bruce Thomson; George Thomson; James Thomson; Keith Thomson; William Thomson; Sydney Thornthwaite; Victor Thornton; Walton Thorpe; Sidney Thoroughgood; Robert Thurston; William Tidball; Michael Toner; Frank Tong; John Tonner; Richard Toomey; Adam Towers; Arthur Towers; Thomas Towler; Herbert Traynor; William Treay; John Trueland; Harry Tudor; Peter Turnbull; Robert Turnbull; Christopher Turner; George Turner; John Tutin; Ernest Urwin; Roy Urwin; Alexander Vallance; David Vallance; Robert Waddingham; Richard Wakeham; Reginald Walker; William Walker; William Cecil Walker; William Waller; Charles Walls; Albert Walters; Charles Walton; Garforth Walton; George Walton; Horace Walton; James Walton; Joseph Walton; Mark Walton; Percy Wand; Walter Wappett; Albert Ward; John Ward; Joseph Wardle; Thomas Wardle; John Waring; Alfred Warren; George Warren; Ernest Watkins; George Watkins; Robert Watson; John Waugh; Eric Webb; William Webb; Reginald Wegg; Thomas Weir; Frederick Weiss; Aage Westergaard; William Weston; Edward Whale; Ernest Whiley; Charles White; David White; Thomas White; William Whitehead; John Whitelaw; Norman Whiteman; Alexander Wickham; Charles Wickham; William Wiggs; Thomas Wilcox; Vincent Wilkinson; Alfred Williams; Algernon Williams; David Williams; Francis Williams; Roy Williams; William Williams; Sydney Williamson; Harry Wills; Charles Wilson; Frederick Wilson; George Wilson; Robert Wilson; Thomas Wilson; Thomas Crookston Wilson; Thomas John Wilson; Theodore Windross; William Wingrave; James Wood; William Wooderson; George Woodman; Charles Woods; Thomas Woods; Alfred Woodward; Francis Woodward; Frank Woodward; Charles Worsnop; Frank Worsnop; William Wotton; Alfred Wright; Cecil Wright; John Wright; Norman Yeates; Charles Yorgensen; Andrew Young; David Young; James Young; Joseph Young; Thomas Young; William Young and Thomas Younger.
I honour their sacrifice and their contribution to this country. I say thank you again on behalf of the people of Charlton. Lest we forget.
I congratulate the member for Charlton on his marathon exercise.
Tonight and over many days in this parliament and across Australia and New Zealand in 2015 we are commemorating one of the most significant events in our nation's history. Like I believe every other member of this parliament, I too want to add my voice to commemorate, to remember and to ensure that the legacy of our great Anzacs is never forgotten.
On 25 April 1915, 100 years ago, Australia and New Zealand soldiers landed on a small beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey—that is well known. Many of these personnel were only teenagers at the time, some as young as 16 years of age and I understand there were even a few that were younger still. They were not professional soldiers nor a battle-hardened army. Many of them were volunteers willing to take great risks and for many pay the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and quality of life we value so much today. Like the soldiers, our nation was also young. There is no doubt that the experience of Gallipoli has shaped our national character through the decades since and is still influencing the idea we hold of ourselves in 2015.
If I look back over just the last decade at events that have affected my electorate of Oxley, such as the 2011 floods that devastated so many of my local communities, it is clear that the Australian way is to stick together in hardship and to support each other. Australians have earned a reputation for courage, self-reliance and mateship, and these characteristics have been derived from our nation's history and will forever remain in our heritage.
Tonight I would like to acknowledge all current and former members of our Defence forces for being the brave and resilient representatives of our country—those currently serving, those lost in training and on operation, the wounded, the injured and the ill. It is important to acknowledge each and every one of the members regardless of the time they served as war does not discriminate on time served but on price paid. Today I also want to acknowledge that it is Vietnam Veterans' Day and honour all veterans who served during the Vietnam conflict.
In commemorating 100 years since our nation's involvement in the First World War I am not going to recount the statistics of those who served, were wound or killed at Gallipoli—those facts and figures are well known and I know they have been recounted many times in this place. Tonight I would like to make special mention of the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander soldiers who have served in Australia's armed forces. The soldiers on the front line during the First World War included Indigenous Australian personnel who managed to get their way through the recruitment process during a time when they had few rights, low wages and poor living conditions at home. Many of these personnel could not vote and none were counted in the census. The men who enlisting risked arrest and those who managed to sneak through were passed as Italian or Maori or knew the local recruiters. Sadly in many respects, it was the first time these men experienced anything approaching equal treatment in their lives and many saw this as their chance to gain education and employment opportunities previously denied to them. They also saw it as a chance to prove themselves as equal with other Australians and to campaign for better treatment after the war. In commemorating the Centenary of Anzac, we must continue to recognise the Indigenous Australians who served. Their service significantly shaped the development of Indigenous families and communities and likewise contributed to the development of the modern Australian Defence Force.
Wars are won or lost by nations but they are fought by individuals. Tonight I wanted to recount the extraordinary story of an ordinary Queensland soldier, so I went to the Australian War Memorial website and came across the story of Billy Sing, who served at Gallipoli and the Western Front. I know Billy Sing will be familiar to many Queenslanders, and I believe he has been mentioned by others in this place. William 'Billy' Sing was born in 1886 to an English mother and Chinese father. He and his two sisters were raised in rural Queensland. Billy grew up helping his parents with their market garden and he became skilled at shooting. Billy enlisted in 1914 and he was accepted into the 5th Light Horse Regiment. The Australian War Memorial website reports that as one of the first to sign-up Billy was not subject to some of the resistance towards non-white soldiers that came about later in the war. He was sent to Egypt in December 1914 and onto Gallipoli in May 1915.
On Gallipoli, Billy developed a fearsome reputation as a sniper, earning the nickname 'The Murderer' or 'The Assassin'. I want to relate to the House the kind of bravery and dedication to duty that Billy went through in his daily service. The Australian War Memorial describes it:
Every morning in the darkness before dawn Billy would find a place to hide and watch over the Turkish soldiers in their trenches. Waiting patiently with a "spotter", usually Tom Sheehan, or lon ldriess, he would wait for an enemy soldier to come into view. To avoid becoming a target of the Turkish snipers, the Australians would stay in their position until nightfall. The ANZAC war diary for 23 October 1915 states:
Our premier sniper, Trooper Sing, 2nd L.H., yesterday accounted for his 199th Turk. Every one of this record is vouched for by an independent observer, frequently an officer who observes through a telescope.
So famous did Billy become that the Turkish Army brought up their own elite sniper to try and kill him. And it is believed they nearly did. No-one can be sure who fired the shot but Billy was wounded by a single bullet fired from the Turkish side. However, the records show that in the end it was Billy who shot and killed the Turkish sniper. For his efforts at Gallipoli, Billy was Mentioned in Despatches by General Sir Ian Hamilton and awarded the British Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916.
After the Australian soldiers were evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, Billy was sent to fight in France as part of the 31st Battalion. On the Western Front, Billy continued to serve with distinction. In 1917, he was recommended for but not awarded the Military Medal for his actions leading an anti-sniper fighting patrol at Polygon Wood, in Belgium. He was again Mentioned in Dispatches for gallantry, by General Birdwood, and in 1918 he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. Like so many soldiers, Billy's heath suffered and he returned to Australia in July 1918 and shortly afterwards he was permanently discharged as a result of being unfit for duty due to ongoing chest problems. He returned to Proserpine as a war hero.
But Billy's story does not end at the end of his war service. He took up a soldier settlement farm a few years after his return. This venture unfortunately failed, as did an attempt to strike it lucky in the goldfields near his property in Clermont. In 1942 Billy moved to Brisbane, and sadly a year later Billy Sing was dead. He died of heart failure at the age of 57, living in relative poverty. When he died he owned a miner's hut, worth around 20 pounds and five shillings, found in his room in a boarding house. There was no sign of his medals or awards from the war. Billy Sing's story is like the stories of so many other ordinary Australians, ordinary Queenslanders, who showed amazing bravery in achieving extraordinary feats during the Great War.
We look back on the First World War with pride and honour. As a nation we come together to remember the Anzacs and their achievements and losses, and not to glorify war or to praise victory but to appreciate how our history was derived from their sacrifice and derived from the sacrifices of men like Billy Sing, of our Indigenous soldiers and of the thousands upon thousands of ordinary Australians, from all backgrounds, who have served to protect our freedoms.
The spirit of Anzac is as relevant to us all today as it was 100 years ago, as it was being created. May the Defence Force personnel who have served this country and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice rest in peace while the spirit of Anzac continues to live in each and every one of us. Lest we forget.
Today, 18 August 2015, is the 49th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, a battle of the Vietnam War. Why would I bring that to the attention of the House, when we are debating the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli? Because, as a former military man myself, I believe it was, above all else, the attitude that was forged in Gallipoli that has set the standard for our Defence Forces—men and women, Army, Navy, Air Force, as well as the Nursing Corps, as it used to be called, and the Mercantile Navy. Whatever branch of the Defence Forces people have been a part of, they all look to the traditions, the standards and the attitudes that were forged on 25 April 1915.
The names I am about to read out will be familiar to some, and one in particular will be familiar to most, but I would conclude that all of them, if given the opportunity, would have one thing to say. They are Private Albert Jacka, Captain Alfred Shout, Private Leonard Keysor, Lieutenant William Symons, Private John Hamilton, Lieutenant Frederick Tubb, Corporal William Dunstan, Corporal Alexander Burton and Second Lieutenant Hugo Throssell. All, of course, are Victoria Cross winners from the Gallipoli campaign. As I said, I feel confident in knowing that if they could be asked today or any time after being awarded the Victoria Cross, they would say that there were many more who were more worthy than they. That may not be true, but it is a reflection of the attitude, the mateship, the camaraderie and the collective passion they had for the tasks that they were undertaking, not to say the love and support of their comrades in arms.
Every one of the Australians who participated in that campaign forged a tradition that all Defence Force men and women strive to uphold. It is an attitude; it is something that becomes part of you when you join the Defence Forces. In my time at Kapooka, I learnt about these things. You only hope that if you find yourself on the occasion of having to face the battle and the enemy that you would find the strength that those young men did 100 years ago.
Today as I stood before the memorial, hearing from a former Governor-General and a current Governor-General, both of whom are decorated Vietnam veterans, I could not help but reflect that the survival of Delta Company 6 RAR was owed in some small part to the traditions that were formed 100 years ago—never giving in, making the best of a bad lot, facing the enemy and, in doing so, doing your mates proud.
In the 238 days there were on average 109 Australians wounded each and every day. That is a dreadful price to pay. I recall having the honour of speaking at a Maleny Anzac Day ceremony some years ago and, as I looked across the Obi Obi Creek, the scene came to me of a young man on horseback crossing that creek for the last time, heading down the Blackall Range to get on a troop ship—perhaps as part of the Light Horse—heading away for the last time. I thought too of the way families were torn apart and of the great excitement of leaving on this adventure and then the reality of the torn bodies, the death and destruction came home. One can only imagine the horror for those families.
My wish, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that this debate we have had over the past few weeks is replicated in 100 years' time. That will be the true testimony to the legend of the Anzacs. As they say:
Age will not weary them nor the years condemn.
It is up to us the Australian people, and not just the Defence Forces, not just the families of Defence Force personnel but the whole nation—our schools, our universities, our community associations—to live the spirit of Anzac, to commemorate their sacrifice, to remember and honour those men who forged a place in the world that only the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps has been able to provide in the decades since. On behalf of the people of Fisher, I say: 'Lest we forget and may they all rest in peace. We thank them for their duty to the nation.'
Question agreed to.
I have received a message from the Senate informing the House that the Senate concurs with the resolution of the House relating to variation of appointment of the Joint Select Committee on Trade and Investment Growth.
I rise tonight to support these bills, which establish the Australian Defence Force Superannuation Scheme, as well as introduce a new death and disability scheme and make the changes necessary for workplace flexibility within the ADF. They are in keeping with Labor's vision to modernise the Australian Defence Force. This modernisation was the key focus of Project Suakin, initiated by Labor when we were in government. In fact, I remember when it was launched by the member for Batman. Project Suakin aims to deliver a contemporary workforce with a range of full-time and part-time service categories and options. These form a service spectrum that allows ADF members to continue to serve as their circumstances change across their working lives. This flexible model benefits those seeking part-time work and aims to increase the participation of women in the ADF.
Absolutely fundamental to this is the portability and modernisation of the Australian Defence Force superannuation scheme. That is why this legislation has bipartisan support to move away from the current scheme, the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, or MSBS, to an accumulation scheme, ADF Super. By moving away from the restrictions imposed by the current defined benefits scheme, flexibility is enhanced. Crucially, these bills will provide encouragement and support for women's participation in the ADF as well as accommodate those members who might wish to engage in other work but then return to the ADF. Australia needs to be constantly on the lookout to ensure that the employment conditions of the ADF are in line with changing requirements and life paths of its members. We must continuously work to ensure that those who serve this nation, those who put their lives on the line in defence of this nation, have access to best-practice systems—and that includes superannuation.
That brings me to this legislation, the Australian Defence Force Superannuation Bill 2015. This legislation establishes a new, modern and more flexible superannuation system, to be known as ADF Super. The new scheme applies to any Australian Defence Force members joining after 1 July 2016. Personnel who are currently members of the MSBS can choose to opt in to the new ADF Super, but it will not be compulsory.
ADF Super has an employer contribution rate of 16.4 per cent. This rate is higher than that applied to the Public Service in general and we believe it clearly recognises the unique nature of military service which arises from a number of factors. These include: liability for combat operations; a military discipline code; a regimented way of life; long and irregular working hours; statutory retiring ages well below the community norms; high standards of physical fitness; frequent relocation; and separation from family.
We believe this higher contribution rate also recognises the generally shorter periods of service in the ADF compared to the Public Service. According to 2007 census data, the average service period for ADF members is 6.8 years. This is down from 10 years in 1997. I am proud to say that Labor worked tirelessly with the government on this scheme to secure the 16.4 per cent contribution rate. In fact, I have been working since February this year to negotiate a single-tier system after the government originally proposed a two-tiered superannuation system. The initial proposal would have seen ADF personnel receive a government contribution rate of 15.4 per cent which would then increase to 18 per cent for those engaged in warlike operations. However, Labor had significant concerns with this type of two-tiered system, especially the fact that it would undermine the team ethos of the ADF.
But it was not just Labor who had concerns about a two-tiered system. The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, raised concerns with the government's approach at Senate estimates. He said:
My preference would be to try and do a flat rate which is a mid-point that actually doesn't have the clunkiness between the war-like operations and the peacetime.
The President of the Defence Force Welfare Association, David Jamison, also criticised the government over its lack of consultation on the new scheme. He said:
… the consultation has more been information sessions on what the administration is coming up with rather than listening …
Aside from the clunkiness of the two-tiered system, as described by the Chief of the Defence Force, Labor felt it would have been administratively cumbersome and confusing—for example, the difficulty of determining at which point an ADF member entered a 'warlike' operation. Also, imagine the administrative nightmare if a particular operation was retrospectively declared 'warlike'. Given these concerns, Labor was pleased the government backed down from its two-tiered proposal a few months ago.
ADF Super deals with some of the concerns with the current MSBS system—namely, the lack of flexibility and the lack of portability of a member's superannuation benefit when they leave the ADF. I will go first to the issue of flexibility. The new ADF Super scheme recognises that members of the ADF may want to move in and out of the ADF. It will help facilitate movement across the different job streams in the ADF. It will also allow for permanent part-time work to reflect different needs at different stages of life. These are all elements of a modern, flexible superannuation system, elements that the MSBS system lacks. Under the MSBS arrangement, members of the permanent force who wish to work other than full time are required to take part-time leave without pay. The period of part-time leave without pay cannot exceed 21 days for any particular period without having adverse superannuation consequences by creating a break in service.
I will go secondly to the issue of portability. ADF Super recognises that military service is no longer for life, as members are serving shorter periods before moving on to outside employment. The new scheme enables personnel to take their superannuation with them upon leaving the ADF, giving them the option to roll it into another super fund, an option not available under the existing MSBS. Under the MSBS arrangement, it is impossible for members of the ADF to move in and out of service without incurring costs and rigidities in their superannuation.
Under the new ADF Super, there will also be no requirement for members to make employee contributions to their super. This differs from the current scheme, which requires a minimum employee contribution of five per cent of salary. The removal of compulsory employee contributions not only brings the ADF in line with other modern super arrangements; it gives ADF personnel greater choice when it comes to their income management. For example, members of MSBS who opt in to the new ADF Super will immediately receive a five per cent increase to their take home pay as there is no longer a need to make compulsory employee contributions.
To give a better understanding of how the new ADF Super will enhance flexibility and portability, I would like to introduce Sally, whose case illustrates the change being made. Sally is in MSBS having joined the ADF in 2010. She is on part-time leave without pay and, although she is being paid on a pro rata basis, she has to contribute to MSBS at the full-time rate in accordance with the conditions of MSBS. Sally will move to a permanent part-time arrangement in August 2016, after the new military superannuation arrangements have been introduced. Moving to ADF Super will enable Sally to stop making mandatory contributions of five per cent of her pay, which will offset some of the financial loss of not earning a full-time wage. She will also be able to move her super benefit accrued in ADF Super when she leaves the ADF in the future.
Although this is one specific case, there are many like Sally in the ADF who will benefit from the enhanced flexibility of the new scheme. Under ADF Super, members will for the first time be able to choose which superannuation fund they belong to. I also note that the introduction of the new scheme is also in line with the move in the public sector away from defined benefit schemes to accumulation schemes.
This legislation also provides for stand-alone statutory death and invalidity cover for members of ADF Super, to be known as ADF Cover. That is because it is difficult for ADF members to obtain death and invalidity cover at a reasonable cost under group insurance arrangements. ADF Cover ensures a replacement for the existing scheme. ADF Cover is designed to be consistent with the death and invalidity benefits provided under the current MSBS. It will ensure that ADF members are properly looked after for the rest of their life, if required, in the event that they are injured during their ADF service.
Both sides of politics can be proud of the work that has been done in government in recent years to increase flexibility, inclusivity and diversity within the ADF. The introduction of this legislation enhances this flexibility, inclusivity and diversity. These three bills introduce important and necessary reforms for the modernisation of the ADF workforce and bring about important changes. ADF Super brings the ADF into line with the rest of the government sector in not having a defined benefit scheme with its long-term unfunded liabilities. It means for the first time that ADF members will be able to transfer their super scheme to new employment when they leave the ADF. This means that employer contributions can be carried across to new employment, which would not be possible under the old defined benefit scheme.
ADF Super also enables members to move in and out of service without incurring costs and rigidities in their superannuation. This in particular will provide encouragement and support for women's participation in the ADF as well as accommodate those members who might wish to engage in other work but then return to the ADF. Flexibility, inclusivity and diversity are each crucial to Defence's ability to operate at peak performance and demonstrate maximum capability.
At the handover ceremony in the middle of last year the current Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, said that we should not be shy in talking about the very real advances we are making across Defence as we seek a culture of inclusion and not of exclusion. Just as the former Chief of Navy and now VCDF, Vice Admiral Ray Griggs, said at the Navy change of command ceremony:
We can only fight and win as a team and to do that we must respect all elements of the team; if we don't have an inclusive culture we can never reach our full potential.
These bills go some way in achieving this inclusivity and I commend them to the House.
Today is a particularly important day to be speaking on this Defence Force legislation. Today, as we know, is Vietnam Veterans' Day. It is appropriate to be describing the beneficial changes to the legislation surrounding superannuation and other death and disability considerations. There are three parts to this current legislative change relating to our Defence personnel. The first is the Australian Defence Force Superannuation Bill 2015, which will apply from 1 July 2016, establishing the ADF super scheme and the ADF super fund that the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation will be looking after. It sets out the functions and the powers of this corporation and makes the rules for the administration of ADF Super by the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation.
It sets out those who will be eligible to be members of this ADF Super. It will be new members of the permanent forces, new members of the reserves on continuous full-time service, members of the permanent forces who are Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme members and elect to transfer to ADF Super, members of the reserves who are on continuous full-time service who are MSBS members and elect to transfer to ADF Super, and former DFRDB or MSBS members who wish to transfer lump-sum amounts received from either of those schemes for the purpose of buying into an account based pension.
Over time our Defence Force personnel have saved our nation. They have protected us from nations at war with us and worked and fought alongside our allies, showing true grit and courage. They are famous for their efforts. Very often their service rewards can be seen to be compromised. This legislation has been developed after considerable negotiation and conversation. The process has been done in such a way that it is fair and so that a bipartisan agreement could be reached. It gives appropriate recognition to our Defence Force personnel. The Australian government is resolutely committed to supporting our ADF members throughout their service and in their retirement. As part of this commitment, landmark legislation was introduced in June this year.
We recognise that military service is unique so accompanying legislation was also introduced to establish ADF Cover, a new scheme that will continue to provide members of the ADF with death and invalidity cover. Ground-breaking legislation enabling ADF members to seek part-time work, subject to Defence capability requirements, was also introduced. ADF Super fixes one of the longest-running grievances of the veteran and ex-service community—namely, the lack of flexibility and portability of a member's superannuation benefit. The government has worked with stakeholders, such as the RSL, the Defence Force Welfare Association and the Australian Defence Association, in developing these policies. All major stakeholders support these important reforms and so does the other side of the House.
The legislation introduces new, modern and flexible superannuation arrangements for those joining the ADF after 1 July next year. The current Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, unfortunately, will be closed to new members from that date, but this new policy will perfectly suit the new serving ADF members. For the first time they will be able to join the superannuation fund of their choice. Although there will be this default military superannuation scheme, they will still be able to choose should they so wish.
The second part of the legislative change is the Defence Legislation Amendment (Superannuation and ADF Cover) Bill. It amends a number of other acts to facilitate the new arrangements. As far as is relevant to external bodies, the bill amends the Defence Act 1903 and sets out the rate of contributions that Defence must make to ADF Super or a member's chosen fund as 16.4 per cent. This amount is based on their ordinary time earnings, which is the salary and various allowances that are paid in recognition of the unique nature of their service. As an aside, this base is generally higher than the base that applies to accumulation scheme members in the Australian Public Service, mainly because they have such a unique duty in our space.
Members of the ADF will get this generous contribution rate irrespective of the fund they choose. The rate is higher than that offered to the APS, at 15.4 per cent, but significantly higher than the 9.5 per cent available to the majority of Australians through the Superannuation Guarantee. There will be no requirement for ADF Super members to make employee contributions. As a result, serving MSBS members who currently contribute a minimum of five per cent of their salary who choose to become ADF Super members will immediately receive a five per cent increase to their take-home pay.
It is likely there will be a number of questions that may come to mind when the bill is first mentioned. The most common is centred around just who can join ADF Super. It will apply to those joining the ADF after 1 July. It could be for those who choose to transfer their dollars across and it will be available to others in the way they investigate it. Importantly, currently serving MSBS members will not be compelled to move to ADF Super. Those DFRDB members receiving retirement pay who re-enter the ADF full-time as a reservist or on continuous full-time service must make an election to become either an MSBS member or not or must try to again become a DFRDB contributing member before commencing further service.
Superannuation is often a complex set of choices, but the following reflects some of the simplified applications of change introduced by this bill. If a person elected to become a member of the MSBS, their retirement pay was suspended until such time as they completed their period. If they elected to become part of DFRDB contributors, their retirement pay was cancelled. Many of these aspects have been changed in the new ADF Super. ADF Super has a number of benefits specifically for ADF personnel who serve for fewer than 15 years. Approximately 80 per cent of ADF personnel leave the Defence Force having served fewer than 15 years and will gain a financial benefit from the new scheme. In addition, the government's commitment to redress the issues of the DFRB and the DFRDB will not be affected and the new indexation, as committed by the government, will continue. Additionally, both the ADF Financial Services Consumer Centre and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation will be able to provide a list of recommended financial advisers for ADF members, and they should be encouraged to seek their own independent advice. The recommended advisers are named because of their understanding of military financial matters and ability to give a better source of relevant information to the ADF member. This is particularly relevant when you talk to exchange personnel who are in parliament at this time. They think that only military advisers who have military experience can do a proper job.
The third part of this legislative change is related to the Australian Defence Force Cover Bill and establishes a statutory death and invalidity benefits scheme that applies to ADF Super members and to people who would have been ADF Super members but for choosing another scheme to which Defence is going to contribute. It does not require contributions from those covered. All benefits are met from consolidated revenue. The government recognises that, as a result of the unique nature of military service, it is difficult for ADF members to obtain death and invalidity cover at a reasonable cost. ADF cover addresses this issue by ensuring all ADF personnel who are members of ADF Super have full death and invalidity cover. The cover provides the same level of death and invalidity cover as is provided to members of the current MSBS.
There are special capacity measures that will be reflected as different classifications and resulting pension payments. If an ADF member's capacity is reduced by 60 per cent or more, they will be classified as class A and will receive a commensurate pension. If their capacity is reduced by 30 per cent or more but less than 60 per cent, they will be classified as class B and will receive an appropriate pension. If an ADF member's capacity is reduced by less than 30 per cent, they will be classified as class C and their superannuation will be preserved in the fund of their choice. If an ADF member dies in service or if an invalid dies while receiving an invalidity pension, the benefits will be paid to the dependents of that member or invalid or to their estate. During informal discussions with some members currently serving in our Defence Force, this change is being greatly welcomed. There is a sense of financial security in this matter.
Coupled with the well deserved pay increases, the benefits and flexibility of ADF Super and ADF Cover, these members feel respected again as being a significant sector in Australia. Reinvesting not only in our Defence Force personnel but also equipment, our long vision, capital investment and planning reassures all of our Defence Force that this government values their contribution for Australia's national and international security. We have introduced groundbreaking reforms that for the first time will enable our ADF members to seek part-time work subject to defence capability requirements. It is all part of the respect that we bear for our Defence personnel, the security of our nation and, altogether, the security of every Australian citizen.
The Australian government is resolutely committed to supporting Australian Defence Force members throughout their service and in their retirement. All three branches of the ADF have bases in my electorate of Riverina. Indeed, Wagga Wagga is the only inland city in Australia with all three arms of Defence. The Kapooka Army Recruit Training Centre is quite justifiably the home of the soldier. We have the Royal Australian Air Force base at Forest Hill, which recently celebrated a magnificent milestone of service dating back to World War II. Even though Wagga Wagga is many hundreds of kilometres inland, we have an important training base of the Royal Australian Navy, with strong connections to HMAS Albatross at Nowra. I am proud to represent these soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen in the parliament and to put forward the case for improvements to their service conditions. As part of the government's commitment to the ADF, these bills establish a new military superannuation scheme for ADF members to be known as ADF Super and a new insurance scheme to be known as ADF Cover, and introduce for the first time flexible service to allow ADF members to serve part time.
The Australian Defence Force Superannuation Bill 2015 was introduced on 25 June 2015. The bill introduces new, modern and flexible superannuation arrangements for people joining the ADF on and after 1 July 2016. The new military superannuation scheme will be a fully funded accumulation scheme.
When we know of past atrocities we have a duty to recall them and to remind the world of them and their implications. If we let historical crimes slip into the stream of forgetfulness, then not only do we fail the victims and their descendants but we also fail future generations by diminishing their opportunity to learn from the past.
In July 1995 in Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnian Serb forces, led by Ratko Mladic, committed horrendous acts against Bosnian Muslims, including murder, rape, cruel and inhumane treatment, terrorising of civilians and destruction of property—acts for which the dreadful term 'ethnic cleansing' was coined. What happened in Srebrenica and its surrounds have been formally recognised as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by the International Court of Justice.
On 12 July I represented the opposition leader and Australia—and I thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs for the diplomatic note—at the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. Former President Clinton and numerous European heads of government were also present at the commemoration inside the dreadful brick factory where many of the 8,000 innocent Bosnian men and boys were murdered by the invading army.
Between 6 and 11 July 1995, units of the Bosnian Serb army attacked and captured Srebrenica. This was despite a UN Security Council resolution declaring that the enclave was to be 'free from armed attack or any other hostile act' and despite the presence of a UN force comprising a Dutch battalion. Within a few days nearly 30,000 Bosnian Muslims, most of them women, children and the elderly, were uprooted and, in an atmosphere of terror, loaded onto overcrowded buses by the Bosnian Serb forces and transported to Bosnian Muslim-held territory. The Bosnian Muslim males, however, met a different fate. As thousands of them attempted to flee, they were taken prisoner, detained in brutal conditions and then executed. More than 8,000 were never seen again.
At the international criminal tribunal, in the judgment against Radoslav Krstic, the Bosnian Serb commander in Srebrenica, this was part of the testimony:
As evening fell, the terror deepened. Screams, gunshots and other frightening noises were audible throughout the night and no one could sleep. Soldiers were picking people out of the crowd and taking them away: some returned; others did not. Witnesses recounted how three brothers—one merely a child and the others in their teens—were taken out in the night. When the boys' mother went looking for them, she found them with their throats slit.
On the 20th anniversary of the commemoration in the brick factory, I heard the Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Jan Eliasson, representing the Secretary-General, say:
Let me be clear. The United Nations and the international community failed to protect the people of Srebrenica. This will, and should, haunt us forever. It has fundamentally affected us and is, in many ways, altering our work.
When the UN Security Council tried to adopt a resolution recently to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, it was vetoed by the Russian Federation at the request of Serbia, because the draft resolution had said:
… acceptance of the tragic events at Srebrenica as genocide is a prerequisite for reconciliation.
To its credit, however, in 2010 the Serbian parliament condemned the massacre, and three years later the Serbian President, Tomislav Nikolic, made a personal apology. But Serbia's leaders, including its Prime Minister, Aleksandar Vucic, have refused to acknowledge that the massacre was genocide.
All people who care about the prevention of human suffering and the triumph of evil in this world bear a responsibility to remember the terrible events that took place at Srebrenica in July 1995. We need to gird ourselves and have the courage to do what we can to prevent similar tragedies happening again. But to do the latter we need to understand what happened in the past, why it happened and to tell the story, because the perpetrators of evil rely on us forgetting history in order for them to be able to repeat it.
In 1939 an evil man—secretly, he thought—incited his minions at Obersalzberg and urged a war of genocide. He said in secret testimony to those minions, 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' This is the lesson of history. My presence at Srebrenica was a powerful message that Australia remembers those lessons of history, that Australia remembers those genocides and that we are determined, as an important, free, democratic, strong and wealthy country in this world to make sure that those kinds of events do not happen anywhere else in the world as far as it is in the power of this great country to achieve that.
Recently I was privileged to visit the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson in my home state of Western Australia and to tour the world-class facilities that are operating in that precinct—and I do mean world-class. The complex has grown to be a major centre for maritime operations with the capacity for everything from sustainment and maintenance through to fabrication of complex, large-scale modules, construction of naval and commercial vessels and major project management. It has generated over 26,000 jobs and delivered over 373 major projects since 2003. Presently, over 150 companies are operating out of the complex, delivering capabilities that are respected throughout our region and the rest of the world—companies such as BAE, ASC and, of course, Austal.
Austal is a little-engine-that-could story, if ever there was one. From humble beginnings in WA, Austal has not only gone on to deliver some of the most critical naval capabilities in our contemporary history but they have grown to the point that their customers now include the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. I have not had the pleasure of seeing one of their littoral combat ships, but I was lucky enough to tour one of their recently commissioned Cape class vessels. All I can say is that I was awestruck by both the complexity and the quality of the vessel, and incredibly proud to know that it was Australian-made.
We are a maritime nation. Indeed, we are girt by sea, and our prosperity relies heavily on our maritime trade routes and lines of communication. For a nation such as ours to throw away our capacity to build the vessels required to grow our prosperity and safeguard our sovereignty is folly; yet it is precisely what the previous government did.
For six years the previous government stood idle as our domestic naval capabilities were eroded. For six years our Navy and supporting industry watched in dismay as the knowledge and manufacturing bases they relied upon were allowed to wind down and stagnate to the point that domestic naval shipbuilding capacity teetered on the brink of being lost completely. Perhaps most shamefully of all, for six years they made it clear that they expected our allies to bear the burden of ensuring our maritime security—they expected others to protect us.
But, as I saw in Henderson, there is a new feeling of hope in the shipyards of Australia. After languishing under a former government that failed to order a single naval warship, finally we have committed to what our nation desperately needs: a sovereign shipbuilding capacity. The Commonwealth government is investing in a commitment of over $89 billion over the next 20 years. It is a commitment to a continuous build program for naval warships that will ensure we have the capacity and the capability to secure our prosperity and our sovereignty.
This government's commitment means that for the first time in Australia's history there will be a permanent naval shipbuilding industry. I strongly believe in the skilling of our people, and this commitment will allow us to train generations of new professionals, both in industry and the Navy itself, providing countless jobs over the coming decades. Not only will it deliver real capabilities for our Navy, real opportunities for industry, real jobs and very real economic stimulus; most importantly, it will be sustainable. As part of the fully funded Defence white paper to be released later this year, the continuous naval shipbuilding program is backed by genuine funding commitments and is a key component of this government's broader commitment to a safe, secure and prosperous Australia.
The first step is to get the SEA 5000 future frigate program and the SEA 1180 offshore patrol vessel program back on track. By bringing these programs forward, we will not only mitigate some of the risks associated with undertaking a continuous build program for the first time but also save almost 1,000 jobs that would otherwise be lost. There have been those who said that, given Australia's performance on other large-scale shipbuilding programs, what we are suggesting is impossible. It is not. We believe in Australian workers and we believe in our domestic potential. To anyone who doubts, I challenge them to go down to Henderson and see what can be done. Rolling production will allow us to retain and grow the pool of skilled naval industry professionals, ensuring we have the talent and the ability required not just to build the next fleet but to develop the fleets that come after.
I certainly enjoyed the incredible privilege of being on one of the vessels built for the border protection program. From the quality of that ship, even I would love to spend time on it and enjoy the facilities accorded to those who serve on it.
Tonight I am pleased to speak about some of my favourite topics—food, farming, agriculture, education and research, and the end game: strong, sustainable, prosperous rural communities alive with opportunities for everyone. I will outline a case for an electorate-wide approach to agricultural development led by research, innovation, extension and education. The way to do this is via an inquiry into innovation being undertaken by the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry, announced last week. I call on farm families, businesses and agri-organisations to make their submissions. The opportunities are great, the time is right, the people are ready and the need is huge.
In Indi we grow grass, pasture—beautiful rain-fed, nutritious green grass. We grow animals, fibre, fruit, vegies, nuts and honey, and we produce milk. And we do it with some of the best practices in the country. Our agricultural research and education, our food manufacturing industries and our agricultural services industries are world-class. And I believe we have not yet reached our potential. The best is yet to come!
I will give a few statistics to set the scene. Based on boundaries for the Hume region, which covers most of Indi, seven per cent of the workforce work in agriculture, forestry or fisheries. There are approximately 4,671 farms. In 2012-13 the gross value of agricultural production was $654 million, approximately six per cent of Victoria's production. The main activities in Indi are cattle and calves, milk, sheep and lambs, wool, and fruit and nuts. And there is enormous potential to grow these industries.
Take the dairy industry as an example. The North East Dairy Regional Growth Plan and Workforce Development Strategy outlines a bold vision to increase the production of milk from sustainable dairy farms in the alpine valleys from 220 megalitres to 400 megalitres by 2025. This will be achieved by lifting the mean farm performance for farms to the current level of the top 25 per cent of farms as measured by lifting overall milking cow numbers, lifting stocking rates, lifting per cow production, targeting home-grown fodder, maintaining cash costs at less than 70 per cent of income, targeting a greater than seven per cent return on assets, increasing the amount of high-quality land in dairy, and improving working arrangements on farms so that wealth creation and lifestyle expectations can be improved across the region.
The plan is that the industry in 2025 will be generating $160 million of farm-gate returns to the 200-plus dairy farms and supporting approximately 550 to 600 full-time jobs on-farm. With the dairy industry leading the way, the Indi agricultural growth strategy has begun. But we need more—more education, more innovation, more infrastructure—to enable this dairy model to be duplicated in other industries right across the electorate.
In June in Wangaratta, an agrifoods forum was sponsored by Charles Sturt University and AgriFood Skills Australia to better understand the current and emerging skill needs. There were three key findings: the importance of selling the positive story around agriculture and food; the need for education and training providers to incorporate into their courses new skill sets, agility and information about career paths, to provide informal as well as formal education opportunities, and to place emphasis on partnerships; and the need to work on a regional growth cluster/cooperative model.
There are so many people in Indi who are ready, willing and able to help—people like Andrew Farrington, Loretta Carroll, Linton Vogel, Tony Jarvis, Philip Szepe, Sharon Roberts, Jan Beer, Don Lawson, Paul Tobin, Stuart and Sarah Crosthwaite, Mark Ritchie, Mark Foletta and Lindsay Rapsey.
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry has set up an inquiry to examine technological advancements in agriculture; improvements in efficiency due to new technology; emerging technology in areas such as telecommunications, remote monitoring and drones, plant genomics, and agricultural chemicals; and the barriers to adoption. Now is the opportunity to make submissions to this inquiry, before the closing date of 25 September. To the people of Indi, to the people of regional Victoria and Australia: share your vision of what needs to be done to help our communities reach their agricultural potential. Put in a submission.
It is always wonderful to rise in this place and take the opportunity to talk about many of the good things that are happening in my local community of Forde. Today, with Vietnam Veterans Day, we paused to remember all those who fought in the Vietnam War. We also mark 49 years since the Battle of Long Tan. I would like to sincerely thank all of our veterans for their courage, service and sacrifice. More than 60,000 Australian servicemen and servicewomen were deployed to Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, with some 521 killed in service. Many who survived the Vietnam War endured great hardship, returning home with physical and emotional scars.
To commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day, the Beenleigh RSL held a ceremony, so too did the Springwood Tri-Service RSL Sub-Branch, along with the Beenleigh Logan Branch of the National Servicemen's Association. The members also had the dedication of a new national servicemen's memorial plaque at the cenotaph at Springwood Park. I look forward to visiting them in the near future, when I return to the electorate.
I also recently had the opportunity to attend the official launch of a new project in Logan, Logan Together. It is a long-term whole-of-community campaign to create the best life opportunities for every child in Logan. I would like to thank the government and, in particular, the Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, for providing $750,000 in funding for this project and for his strong commitment to, and support of, this program. It was my pleasure to represent him at the launch.
The launch of Logan Together marked years of hard work and planning by the Logan City of Choice Leadership Team. It is a team that I am proud to be a member of. It was formed to help address the many challenges facing our community, and it is tremendous to see this hard work coming to fruition. Logan Together is a true partnership between all three levels of government, the community and the business sector in order to improve the wellbeing of Logan's children. As we see the next generation grow and develop, it is so important that we provide the support they need in order to become the best versions of themselves. A recently released report, called State of Logan's children and young people, highlighted a range of wellbeing measures that need to be better if Logan children are to grow and reach their potential. The Logan Together initiative coordinates action across every level of government, across the non-government sector and across the wider community in order to address the underlying drivers of children's vulnerability.
We have around 40,000 children in Logan under the age of eight years and, while most are doing fine, around 30 per cent will need extra focus and support. By age eight, we want all Logan children to have the same healthy outlook and the same literacy and numeracy skills as other Australian children. The Logan City of Choice Leadership Team and the Logan Together initiative will reform the system of support for children and families in Logan. I believe it is a groundbreaking initiative that could become the pilot for similar programs in other communities across Australia that are dealing with similar social issues. I thank all members of the Logan City of Choice Leadership Team and the Logan Together Working Group as well as Griffith University for being part of this tremendous initiative. I look forward to informing the House of its successes in the years to come.
Finally, I recently had the pleasure of taking part in the official sod-turning ceremony for the exit 54 upgrade at Upper Coomera—a vitally important project for the Forde electorate and also for the neighbouring electorate of Fadden. I take this opportunity to thank the minister at the table, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Jamie Briggs for his assistance and support in securing the funding for this project. In the past 10 years, the Coomera and Upper Coomera area's rapid growth has led to the current interchange reaching capacity. This upgrade will improve pedestrian and cycle safety, reduce the number of crashes, provide better access to the new Coomera Town Centre and provide major productivity improvements for local business. I also thank the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, Warren Truss, for his support of this project. I congratulate Seymour Whyte Constructions on being awarded the contract. Construction is already well underway, and I look forward to seeing the results at the end of 2016.
I rise in the House today to speak briefly about the recent release of the Global Peace Index for 2015. Members may or may not be aware of the Global Peace Index. It is an attempt to measure the relative position of nations' and regions' with respect to peacefulness. That, in itself, is something which is obviously incredibly complex and fraught with analytical and intellectual questions. The index itself, though, I think, is a very useful tool for looking at what is happening across the world in an attempt to try and understand, statistically, what is occurring.
More than 20 indicators are utilised, running across three broad themes: the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarisation. As I said, it has more than 20 indicators. It goes to a qualitative scale between one and five around a range of issues—such as terrorist activity and political instability—and then on to actual raw numbers with respect to the number of external and internal conflicts fought, the number of deaths from organised conflict et cetera.
Obviously, there are criticisms to be made of the index. For example, one of the areas focused on is the issue of military expenditure, and one of the criticisms is the fact that those who do not spend militarily in order to ensure that they have a level of security for the future, in fact, look better than those who do. So the argument is that some countries are having a free ride when it comes to security. I have some sympathy for the fact that that is the case. There are also indicators around violence, particularly towards women and children, which are also not necessarily taken into account.
Having said that, I still think it does provide some interesting points for the future. Let me turn to some of the points that come through. Peace is correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration. Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption. Small stable countries which are part of regional blocs are most likely to get a higher ranking. Certainly, income, schooling, the level of regional integration, transparency of government and low corruption are all factors that you would expect would indicate the existence of a peaceful society, but I think it is worth mentioning yet again that these are, in fact, indicators and goals that societies should work to achieve in order to have the benefit of a peaceful society.
As I said, the rankings the index produces are interesting. For example, this year four of nine geographical regions experienced an improvement in peace—Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Caribbean—but the other five regions, I am afraid, became less peaceful. It is no surprise, given recent world events, that the region with the greatest problems was the Middle East and North Africa. The upsurge of violence there is well known to all.
There were other highlights. Since last year 81 countries have become more peaceful, whilst 78 have deteriorated. Many countries in Europe—the world's most peaceful region—have reached historically high levels of peace. Fifteen of the 20 most peaceful countries are in Europe. Due to an increase in civil unrest and terrorist activity, as I mentioned, the Middle East and Northern Africa is now the world's least peaceful region for the first time since the index began. Globally the intensity of internal armed conflict has increased dramatically, with the number of people killed in conflicts rising over 3.5 times, from 49,000 in 2010 to 180,000 in 2014. The economic impact of violence reached a total of US$14.3 trillion, or 13.4 per cent of global GDP last year. Terrorism, obviously, is an issue on people's minds, given the events of recent times. Last year alone, it was estimated that 20,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks—up from an average of 2,000 a year only 10 years ago. Only two indicators have markedly improved since 2008—UN peacekeeping funding and external conflicts fought. The number of deaths from external conflicts has fallen from 1,982 to 410 over the last eight years.
The fact is that we live in a changing world and a difficult world. We also live in a great country. I think it is worthwhile remembering how good this country is, but there are still external threats that need to be faced. Focusing on the Global Peace Index gives us an opportunity to think about the world, where it is up to and where it needs to go.
From time to time 'vision' is raised by commentators, usually as a criticism against politicians, yet this slap is quickly replaced by issues of the day—juicy morsels substantiated by 'unnamed members of cabinet' or 'a source close to the PM' on travel rorts, royal commissions, leadership whispers and endless debate on same-sex marriage. Would a determination to develop a great vision for Australia and a commitment to its realisation see these side issues find their rightful place?
Government aims to find the right proportion of caring for today, planning for the future and divining the pathway and the pace of evolution. It is important for the visionary to have had experience in the trenches and on the battlefield prior to elevation to a position where the forces can be assessed, the challenges seen clearly and the best course of action agreed and implemented. We are a country that honours and reveres our war heroes and sports men and women for their bravery and willingness to have a go, yet when our freedom is secure we pursue cautious strategies, strangled by the fear of a gotcher moment. In the national debate recently more time has been spent on both a helicopter trip and an invitation to a royal commissioner to speak at a dinner than matters of far greater importance to Australians. If we were at war, not one moment would be spent on such trivia.
Historically low interest rates have seen an unsustainable rise in house prices largely driven by investors advantaged over the homebuyer, with unfair tax laws allowing them to amass great holdings at the expense of the Australian dream for many. What of the flow-on effects when interest rates rise and investors, unable to fund their losses, are forced to sell? Homeowners can also get caught in the debt trap and also be forced to sell. Yet, are we preparing for the battle? Are our forces fully deployed? What are our fallback positions?
With no great vision or strategic plan, over many decades Australia's development has been random, inefficient and littered with lost opportunity. It is time to take stock, to be honest with ourselves and to get out of the petty skirmishes that distract. The people elect us to climb out of the trenches and up to a position of commanding view to assess the challenges and the opportunities, and to have a go. If we fail to make an honest assessment, our cities will continue to be burdened with the enormous deficit in infrastructure and cost of living, while our regions will quietly die of neglect. It is absurd that a country whose greatest asset is land is suffering housing shortages and some of the most expensive housing prices in the world. Infrastructure must have purpose and not be driven by politics.
We need to strategically plan settlement that is created by appropriate infrastructure in both our cities and our regions. The current imbalance between our cities and regions, and the disparity in house prices, combine to create a perfect storm of opportunity. Cities must now be master planned, with the retrofitting of infrastructure combined with appropriate zoning to drive affordable supply convenient to the workplace. Regions must be provided with high-speed rail services to deliver decades of sustainable growth that is not limited by the capacity of just a few cities.
Master planning must have a companion of master funding. The government must be more actively involved in development. The world is now funding infrastructure through a simple concept of value capture. Regrettably, this is not yet part of our strategy of funding growth and infrastructure, leading to recent infrastructure projects in Sydney where extraordinary unearned benefits have been taken by homeowners located close to the planned transport hubs. With no capital gains tax applicable to the sale of privately owned homes, these fortunate few are walking away with millions as a result of expensive infrastructure projects—value escape, if you will.
It is overdue for federal, state and local governments to unite to capture all unearned benefits that arise as a result of infrastructure and rezoning in order to fund the infrastructure that is actually driving the uplift. This is both logical and fair. Why should the taxpayer fund entirely the infrastructure that is making some very rich? And for those fortunate few who stand to benefit, will they really mind paying capital gains tax on their windfall? In my mind, no fair-minded Australian would.
Order! It being 9.30 pm, the debate is interrupted. The House stands adjourned until 9 am tomorrow.
Hou se adjourned at 21 : 30