Tony Abbott's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Herron, Hon. Dr John Joseph, AO | Condolences | House debates
I rise to honour the life of former senator John Herron, who yesterday in the House of Representatives chamber was generously eulogised, in particular by the Prime Minister. I want to make three...
I rise to honour the life of former senator John Herron, who yesterday in the House of Representatives chamber was generously eulogised, in particular by the Prime Minister. I want to make three points about the late great John Herron. First, he was a fine family man and he often said that his 10 children were by far his greatest achievement. Given all the other things that he did in his life, that was a great tribute to his wife, Jan, and to his children. He was a well-respected—even loved—minister for Indigenous affairs. Given the complexities of that particular portfolio, this was no mean achievement and a great credit to his character. Most notably as minister, he used the Australian Army to lead a sustained upgrading of the then appalling conditions of Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory and elsewhere. He was a wonderful friend of the most admirable character. I have known John Herron for the best part of a quarter century. I didn't know him as well as I knew other colleagues but certainly he never did anything low or mean. He was always as helpful as he could be to all of his colleagues, and, indeed, to all he came across. Perhaps this was an echo, if you like, of the Hippocratic oath which he took to heart as a doctor. As we all know, it begins, 'First, do no harm'. So many of us, even with the best of intentions, have done much harm. John Herron was one of those figures in this parliament who said what he meant and did what he said. He was always ambitious for the higher things, not simply higher office. We need more people like that in our public life. I recall, at the very beginning of my own parliamentary life, John took me aside and said, 'Tony, be conscious of this: it's what you don't do, not what you do, that will be your greatest regret in this place.' I very much took that to heart. I've never forgotten it and I've always thought that, if I was in doubt, I should have a go; I should give it a go. I know that has sometimes been to the dismay of my colleagues, but, having spent 25 years in the parliament acting in accordance with John Herron's advice, I don't intend to change. Also today, in the House of Representatives chamber, we remembered briefly another former member, Peter Coleman, a one-time member for Wentworth. There was no eulogy for Peter Coleman because he was never a federal minister, yet he was a more substantial figure than many who were ministers. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, I will detain this chamber to honour his life and work. Peter Coleman was a very, very big figure in our intellectual life as well as in our political life. He edited the famous Bulletin magazine for three years. He was a colleague of Donald Horne at that time. For over 20 years, in several stints, he edited Quadrant, then and probably still our foremost magazine of conservative ideas. He enjoyed a golden afternoon as a journalist in the guise of a columnist for The Spectator magazine. But he was a serious writer too, with academic biographies of James Macaulay and Barry Humphries to his credit and many other works. And he edited his son-in-law Peter Coleman's memoirs, which were one of the best-received political memoirs of recent times. Peter Coleman grew up in the shadow of war and he began his adult life as a man of the Left. But he was on a journey, as so many are. He wasn't just a Liberal in the sense that he belonged to the Liberal Party and represented the party in the parliament; he was a deeply philosophical Liberal, a deeply thoughtful Liberal. I would describe him as a Bourkean Liberal because, while he cherished freedom, he well understood that freedom can only exist in a context of order and respect for tradition. He was an intellectual of the first rank but he was one for whom the life of the mind was always tempered by courtesy, decency and respect. From 1968 to 1978 he represented Fuller in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, and he became chief secretary in the Willis government before briefly becoming Leader of the Opposition and losing his seat in the 1978 Wranslide. He was for some years the Administrator of Norfolk Island, and then from 1981 to 1987 he represented Wentworth in the federal parliament, following in the illustrious footsteps of Judge Bob Ellicott and being succeeded by my former boss John Hewson before returning to journalism and academic pursuits. But I was lucky enough to know Peter Coleman as a friend as well as a public figure, and as a mentor as well as a member of parliament. I first met him visiting the family home as a friend of his daughter, Tanya, now Tanya Costello. And, though there was a 30-year difference in our ages, Peter was never condescending. He never looked down on people because they were younger or because they'd read fewer books. Indeed, he did his best to inspire them to be their best selves. And, many years later in the late nineties, along with John Wheeldon and Piers Akerman, he acted as a kind of probity auditor in a campaign I was then waging against the One Nation party, which in those days was even cruder and coarser than the current version. I have to say that I greatly valued his wisdom and his common sense in those days and subsequently. Peter's life was marked by cultural self-confidence, personal integrity and human decency. We miss people like that. We often think that people like that are much rarer today than they were once. Maybe his times were easier than these but it's hard to avoid the conclusion, in contemplating the life of people like Peter Coleman and John Herron, that their characters were stronger in those days and their convictions deeper. Still, though Peter is gone, we have his life and his memory to console us and to uplift us, and his example to inspire us and to challenge us to be at least as good in our times as he and his colleagues were in theirs.
Closing the Gap | Ministerial Statements | House debates
It is good to follow the member for Barton. It is also good to see that there are number of strong Indigenous voices in this parliament. It is a sign of how far we have come, as a country, that...
It is good to follow the member for Barton. It is also good to see that there are number of strong Indigenous voices in this parliament. It is a sign of how far we have come, as a country, that that is the case. Obviously, we have got further to go, but we have come a long way. Modern Australia has an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation and an immigrant character. Indigeneity is one of the three pillars that constitute modern Australia. I was delighted to be asked by the Prime Minister to be his special envoy, with special responsibility for improving remote school attendance and performance, because if Aboriginal people are to fully participate in this country then obviously they have got to have jobs and they have got to have a decent education, because without a job it is hard to live decently and without an education it is hard to work effectively in modern Australia. I made a statement to the parliament late last year with a number of recommendations, and I was really pleased that the Prime Minister took up three of those recommendations in his Closing the Gap statement last week. First, the government is proposing to waive the HECS debts of teaching graduates who, after a couple of years of experience and appropriate training, go into remote areas and stay for four years. The government is going to considerably expand funding for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation. We are proposing to work with more communities that wish to take more responsibility for self-improvement by embracing measures such as the debit card or something akin to the Family Responsibilities Commission. I thank the Prime Minister for adopting those recommendations. It is absolutely critical that every Australian child go to school every day unless there is some absolutely compelling reason for their absence. It is also important that, when kids go to school, they are going to be well taught. We all know that schools with a high turnover of teachers and principals are not going to give the same quality of education as schools that have teachers and principals who are there for the long haul. We all know that there are difficulties associated with life in remote Australia; some people love it, but many people find it difficult; even those who love it find it difficult. That's why the more incentives we can provide to people who do have a real commitment to teaching in remote Australia the better. I am a huge admirer of the work of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation. I know that it is not easy for kids from remote Australia, kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, to suddenly bowl up to some of the best schools in the country; but, thanks to the mentoring which the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation provides, the vast majority of those kids have made a success of the schooling that they've got. I don't want to sound elitist but, frankly, why shouldn't Aboriginal kids be able to aspire to the very best of schools, why shouldn't Aboriginal kids be able to hope for the same kinds of networks that so many of us in this parliament enjoy, why shouldn't the government do what it can to ensure that this particular gap is well and truly closed? One of the things that impresses me about the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation is that, thus far, at least 50 per cent of the money they have spent has been privately raised. I hope that they continue to raise a very substantial sum from private sources. I think there are many Australians, individually and corporately, that want to support this cause. But if we are going to expect private philanthropy to continue to fund the education of so many promising Indigenous kids, I think it is only reasonable that the federal government provides at least 50 per cent of the funding on an ongoing basis—and I'm pleased that that is now happening. I know that Indigenous politics can be just as difficult as politics everywhere, but I want to say that there are few people in this country who are more deserving of our admiration than Noel Pearson. I don't say Noel is always right, but he is always courageous. And he has been incredibly brave in trying to insist that his own people don't just lament the manifest injustices that have been done to them over the years but are also prepared to take responsibility for their future—'our right to take responsibility'. It thrills me that Indigenous leaders at a number of communities in Australia, such as Ian Trust in the East Kimberley, have said to government, 'We are prepared to accept the debit card,' whereby 80 per cent of a person's welfare payments are, of necessity, spent on the things that are needed for life. I think any community that wants to embrace the debit card should find that the government is prepared to make that happen. As is reasonably well known, I've spent quite a lot of time in remote Australia. I've tried to make it my business to spend at least a week a year in remote Australia—even as opposition leader, and even as Prime Minister, I tried to do so. Over the years, visiting remote schools has been a pretty dispiriting experience—but much less so now, I've got to say. I am very impressed with the progress that has been made and the efforts that governments of states and territories of both persuasions have been making to ensure that remote schools are getting better. Every remote school that I visited had a data board in the common room where every enrolled child's progress and attendance was being tracked. All of the remote schools that I visited were insisting upon a rigorous back-to-basics curriculum, and all of the state and territory education departments were doing what they could to try to ensure that they got much more continuity with teachers and principals. So, while we have not closed so many of these important gaps, progress is being made. We should be encouraged, even while we urge ourselves on to more efforts in the future. Yes, I am certainly open to seeing new targets added. I would like to see crime reduced. I would like to see family dysfunction reduced, because then we would certainly reduce incarceration. Then we would certainly reduce child removal. But, in the end, in every community—remote, regional and urban—regardless of its ethnic composition, we want the kids to go to school, we want the adults to go to work and we want communities to be safe, because that is what happens in a decent community. We owe it to Aboriginal people to ensure that they, the First Australians, are also first-class citizens in the very best of countries. I think that the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap statement is a significant step towards that wonderful goal.
Warringah Electorate: Northern Beaches Tunnel | Constituency Statements | House debates
It doesn't matter what you are in this place or how far you might rise, we are all local members first and foremost, and our constituencies expect us to deliver. They want us to do the right...
It doesn't matter what you are in this place or how far you might rise, we are all local members first and foremost, and our constituencies expect us to deliver. They want us to do the right thing by them. I've often said that my constituency of Warringah is the best place in the world to live—until, of course, you want to go somewhere else. That's when you get stuck in some of the world's longest parking lots. Well, I'm pleased to say that the Northern Beaches tunnel looks like it might at last finally be happening, thanks to the convergence of a good state Liberal government with a good federal Liberal government. The state Liberal government has put several hundreds of millions of dollars into property acquisitions, into preliminary works, into planning and into designing, and it's only been possible because of the funding partnerships that the federal Liberal government has had with the state. These include the $2 billion plus for WestConnex, the half a billion dollars plus for NorthConnex and of course the Asset Recycling Fund, which was one of the features of the 2014 budget. But I've got to say that the tunnel will only go ahead if we keep Liberal governments, because the Labor Party wants to cancel it. The tunnel will only go ahead if it has a champion. And I'm pleased to note that the only federal candidate so far declared in Warringah who is 120 per cent behind the tunnel is me. This tunnel will cut out 17 sets of traffic lights between Manly Vale and the city alone. It will reduce travel times from Manly Vale to the city by about 10 minutes, and then of course, connecting on with the second harbour crossing, it will do a lot more good for the people of the Northern Beaches and also for people living in other parts of Sydney. It will also enable Military and Spit roads to go back to being suburban thoroughfares. It will restore Mosman, Cremorne and Neutral Bay to their residents. I don't say that the design can't be tweaked and improved. But no-one should let any small objections imperil this great project. If there are any issues, let's improve the tunnel design, not try to block the whole project, because, if we block the project, the whole area will choke on its own traffic. This is the one thing that could permanently improve the lives of everyone on the Northern Beaches. It can give us our lives back, and I am absolutely determined to make it happen.
Indigenous Affairs | Statements | House debates
by leave—I table a document from the Department of Education, 'Improving education outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children'.
They will welcome me back a second time now that the housing is in the process of being fixed. However long my public life lasts, in government or out of it, in the parliament or out of it, I...
They will welcome me back a second time now that the housing is in the process of being fixed. However long my public life lasts, in government or out of it, in the parliament or out of it, I intend to persevere in this cause. Some missions, once accepted, can never really cease. Of course, the future for Aboriginal people lies much more in their own hands than in mine; but getting more of them to school and making their schooling more useful is a duty that government must not shirk. An ex-PM has just one unique trait and that's a very big megaphone that I will continue to use to see this done. This is my first statement to the parliament on remote school attendance and performance, but it certainly won't be my last word on this vital subject.
by leave—Back when Prime Minister, I used to observe that to live in Australia is to have won the lottery of life—and that's true, unless you happen to be one of those whose ancestors...
by leave—Back when Prime Minister, I used to observe that to live in Australia is to have won the lottery of life—and that's true, unless you happen to be one of those whose ancestors have been here for tens of thousands of years. That's the Australian paradox. Vast numbers of people from all around the world would literally risk death to be here, yet the First Australians often live in the conditions that people come to Australia to escape. We are the very best of countries, except for the people who were here first. And this gnaws away, a standing reproach to idealists and patriots of all stripes. As long as many Aboriginal people have Third World lives and are on average poorer, sicker and worse housed by a vast margin than the rest of us, we can indeed be, as we boast, the most successful immigrant society on earth—except, ahem, for those who have been here the longest. Why don't the objective outcomes for Aboriginal Australians match those of everyone else—and what can be done to close this gap? Amidst all the glittering successes of our nation, this is the one question that's haunted us, almost since the very first Australia Day; and always will, until it's fixed. You can appreciate, Mr Speaker, my reservations, then, when the Prime Minister asked me to be his special envoy for Indigenous affairs. How could a backbench MP make a difference in six months to a problem that had been intractable for 200 years? Yet perhaps someone who's been wrestling with this for a quarter century and may have spent more time in remote Australia than any other MP, except the few who actually live there—but isn't dealing with every lobby and vested interest, as the Prime Minister, the minister and the relevant local member invariably are—can bring fresh eyes to an old problem and perhaps distinguish the wood from the trees. Amidst all the generally depressing indicators on Indigenous Australia, this one does stand out: Indigenous people who do finish school and who do complete a degree have much the same employment outcomes and life expectancies as other comparable Australians. And it stands to reason that to have a decent life you've got to have a job; and to have a job you've got to have a reasonable education. As prime minister for Indigenous affairs, this, always, was my mantra: get the kids to school, get the adults to work, and make communities safe. So the Prime Minister and I soon agreed that, as special envoy, my task was to foster better remote school attendance and performance because this is our biggest single challenge. Around the country, school attendance is about 93 per cent. That's 93 per cent of enrolled students, on average, are there on any given day. But for Aboriginal kids, school attendance is just 83 per cent. In very remote schools—where the pupils are mostly Indigenous—attendance is only 75 per cent, and only 36 per cent of remote students are at school at least 90 per cent of the time, which is what educators think is needed for schooling to be effective. Not surprisingly, in remote schools, only 60 per cent of pupils are meeting even the national minimum standards for reading. Now, it's not lack of money that's to blame. On average, spending on remote students is at least 50 per cent higher than in metropolitan schools. A key factor is the high turnover of teachers, who are often very inexperienced to start with. In the Northern Territory's remote schools, for instance, most teachers have less than five years experience, and the average length of stay in any one school is less than two years. Of course, every teacher in every school is making a difference. Even a transient teacher in a poorly attended school is better than leaving Aboriginal people without the means of becoming successful citizens in their own country. And even attending a struggling school is better than missing out on an education. Our challenge, though, as a government, as a parliament and, indeed, as a nation, is to do more to ensure that kids in remote schools are getting the very best possible education, because it's only once we're doing our job that we can expect parents to do theirs and send their children to school. Posing this simple question 'How do we get every child to go to school every day?' prompted one teacher, an elder, who had been at Galiwinku school since the 1970s, to sigh that she had been asked the same question for 40 years, and pretty obviously that's because after all that time the answer still eludes us. Yes, if there were more local jobs and a stronger local economy, if housing wasn't as overcrowded, if family trauma wasn't as prevalent and sorry business so frequent, if the sly grogging and the all-night parties stopped, if there were more Indigenous teachers and other successful role models, if pupils didn't have hearing problems or fetal alcohol syndrome and maybe if Indigenous recognition had taken place and land claims had been finalised, it might be easier. In their own way, these all feed into the issue; but, if we wait for everything to be fixed, little will ever be achieved. There are all sorts of reasons why a particular child might not be at school on any one day, but there is really nothing that can justify—as opposed, sometimes, to explain—the chronic nonattendance of so many remote Indigenous children. After this latest round of visits and discussions, I can readily understand the despondency which people in this field sometimes wrestle with; but there are more grounds for optimism and fewer reasons to be resigned to failure than ever before. Yes, some of the federal government's remote school attendance teams are a glorified bus service, but others are deeply imbedded in the school and in the community and can explain almost every absence. Yes, too many remote schools still have very high staff and principal turnover, but there are also hundreds of dedicated remote teachers who have made their work a calling or a mission rather than just a job or even a career. Yes, there have been plenty of policy flip-flops over the years as new governments and new ministers try to re-invent the wheel, but in most states and territories there are now 10-year strategies in place, with the stress on staff continuity, on closely monitoring every single pupil's progress and movement, on back-to-basics teaching, on community involvement and on getting mothers and their new babies straight into the school environment—strategies, I'm pleased to say, that have outlived changes of government and minister. In other words, there is finally broad agreement on what needs to be done, at least for schools, and a collective official determination to see it through for the long term rather than be blown off course by each you-beaut new idea. In all the remote schools that I've just visited, culture is respected—and, in many of them, teaching is bilingual, at least in the early years—while teachers still strive to enable proud Indigenous people to flourish in the wider world, not just in the community they are born into. Many fret that progress is stalled or is even in reverse, because the world only changes for the better, person by person, school by school and community by community. At this level, there can often be two steps back for every step forward. But, while little ever improves as fast as we would like, it was gratifying to see that the Opal fuel, which I introduced as health minister, has all but eliminated petrol-sniffing in remote Australia. The larger communities of the APY Lands, with just one exception, now have what they all lacked a decade ago—the permanent police presence that I tried to achieve as the relevant federal minister. The lands are still off limits without a permit to most Australians, but at least Pukatja now has a roadhouse. And at least some remote community leaders haven't shirked the 'tough love' conversation that is needed with their own people and have accepted restrictions on how welfare can be spent with the debit card in Kununurra, Ceduna and Kalgoorlie, and the Family Responsibilities Commission in many of the communities of Cape York. On my most recent swing through remote schools, all classrooms, every one of them, were free of the defeated teachers, the structureless lessons and the distracted pupils that were all too prevalent some years back on my stints as a stand-in teacher's aide, even if actual attendance rates still left much to be desired. In all the bigger schools there is now the Clontarf 'no class, no footy' program for the boys and, increasingly, comparable girls' academies too. Who would have thought that Kununurra, Coen and Hopevale schools would have concert bands that any school could be proud of? In Coober Pedy I helped wrap books as gifts for the quite a few children who regularly attended school. In Aurukun I handed out satchels to the quite a few students going on excursion to the Gold Coast as a reward for being at school all the time. I am much more confident than I expected to be that, left to their own devices, the states and territories will manage steady, if patchy, progress towards better attendance and better performance, but what will be harder to overcome, I suspect, is communities' propensity to find excuses for kids' absences and school systems' reluctance to tailor credentials and incentives for remote teachers. This is where the federal government could come in to back strong, local Indigenous leadership ready to make more effort to get their kids to school and to back state and territory governments ready for further innovation to improve their remote schools. While all states and territories provide incentives and special benefits for remote teachers, sometimes, I regret to say, these work against long-term retention. In one state, for instance, the incentives cease once a teacher has been in a particular school for five years. In others a remote teaching stint means preferential access to more-sought-after placements, so teachers invariably leave after doing the bare minimum to qualify. There should be special literacy and numeracy training, as well as cultural training, before teachers go to remote schools where English is often a second or third language, and there should be substantially higher pay in recognition of these extra professional challenges. Because it takes so long to gain families' trust, there should be substantial retention bonuses to keep teachers in particular remote locations. We need to attract and retain better teachers to remote schools and we need to empower remote community leadership that is ready to take more responsibility for what happens there. The objective is not to dictate to the states their decisions about teacher pay and staffing but to work with them so that whatever they do is more effective. It's not to impose new rules on remote communities but to work in partnership with local leaders who want change for the better. Where local leaders are prepared to accept measures that should create a better environment for school attendance, like the debit card or the Family Responsibilities Commission, the government should be ready to offer extra economic opportunities or better amenities. If local communities have a project, would like federal government support and are prepared to accept that with rights come responsibilities, they should make contact to explore what we might all do better. For instance, at Borroloola, when I wanted to talk school attendance, locals only wanted to talk housing. I well and truly got their point, once I had seen the near-shanties that people were living in. But new houses, I'm pleased to say, are now on their way. On future visits, no-one should have poor housing as an ongoing reason for kids missing school, because if government wants communities to lift their game, we have to be ready to lift ours, too. As the national government we should be prepared to make it easier for state and territory action to attract and retain better teachers and we should reinforce the self-evident maxim that every kid should go to school every day, not by taking away the responsibility of the states and territories for managing schools, not by imposing a punishment agenda, but by making good policy and strong local leadership more effective. After all, good government—certainly good, sensible, small-C conservative government—means a clear objective plus reasonable, doable means of moving towards it. As envoy my job is to make recommendations rather than decisions, but recommendations with a good chance of success because they are consistent with the government's values and policy direction. First, the government should work with the states and territories, whose responsibility it is to pay teachers, to increase substantially the salary supplements and the retention bonuses, if any, currently paid to teachers working in very remote areas. Obviously, that will cost money, and the government is working on that now. Second, and this is just a federal responsibility, the government should waive the HECS debt of teachers who, after two years of experience in other schools, teach in a very remote school and stay for four years. Third, communities ready to consider the cashless debit card or arrangements akin to it, in order to boost local pupils' capacity to attend school, should have fast-tracked Indigenous Advancement Strategy projects as a reciprocity measure. It would be a form of mutual obligation, if you like, between local communities and the national government. Fourth, the Remote School Attendance Strategy should be funded for a further four years, but with some refinements to obtain more local school 'buy-in' and better community 'intelligence' and to encourage more engagement with local housing authorities and police where needed. Fifth, the Good to Great Schools Program, which has reintroduced phonics and disciplined learning to quite a few remote schools, should be funded for a further year to enable further evaluation and emulation. And sixth, the government should match the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation's private and philanthropic funding on an ongoing basis. Officialdom never likes selective schemes that send people to elite schools, but this one is undoubtedly working to lift people's horizons, to open people's hearts and to create an Indigenous middle class with the kinds of networks that people in this parliament, for instance, can invariably take for granted. These recommendations will now be considered through the government's usual policy processes. I look forward to ministers' announcements in due course and, in some cases, before Christmas. In every state and territory, it's compulsory for school-aged children to be enrolled and not to miss school without a good excuse. For a host of understandable reasons—such as schools' reluctance to be policemen, the disruption that unwilling students can create in class, the difficulty of holding parents responsible for teenagers' behaviour and the cost to family budgets—these truancy laws are rarely enforced, even though there should be direct consequences for bad behaviour and not just the long-term cost to society of people who can't readily prosper in the modern world. Most jurisdictions are once more ready to impose fines on consistently delinquent parents and guardians, but fines are often ineffective when jail is the only mechanism for making people pay. Hence my final recommendation is that all debts to government, including on-the-spot fines—and not just those to the Commonwealth—should be deductible from welfare payments. Finally, I thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity he has given me. I thank the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and I thank the Minister for Education and Training, both of whom have magnanimously put up with an intruder on their patch. I thank the Prime Minister and cabinet staff who I've been working with in Canberra and the regional networks for the past three months. I thank the Northern Territory, South Australian and Western Australian education ministers and their officials, and Queensland officials, for their discussions and for facilitating community visits. In particular, I thank the schools and communities of Warruwi, Galiwinku, Nhulunbuy, Yirrkala, Borroloola, Koonibba, Yalata, Coober Pedy, Pukatja, Broome, Kununurra, Coen, Aurukun, Hope Vale, Palm Island and Cherbourg for making me welcome.
Family Responsibilities Commission | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Queensland government intends to abolish the Family Responsibilities Commission? Can the Prime Minister tell the...
My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Queensland government intends to abolish the Family Responsibilities Commission? Can the Prime Minister tell the House the impact this will have on the communities of Cape York, where this commission has done so much to improve school attendance and improve family cohesion? What is the government going to do to ensure that these communities once more have their right to take responsibility restored?
Family Responsibilities Commission | Adjournment | House debates
I rise tonight to lament the Queensland government's announced abolition of the Family Responsibilities Commission, an initiative originally of Jenny Macklin, the member for Jagajaga; Anna Bligh...
I rise tonight to lament the Queensland government's announced abolition of the Family Responsibilities Commission, an initiative originally of Jenny Macklin, the member for Jagajaga; Anna Bligh when she was premier of Queensland; and Noel Pearson, which has always enjoyed bipartisan support in this place and until very recently in the Queensland parliament, until what looks like an attempt from within the Queensland bureaucracy to sabotage it. The Family Responsibilities Commission has been associated with better school attendance, less alcohol-fuelled violence and stronger local leadership in all the communities where it has operated. A fortnight ago I was in Aurukun to talk school attendance, but all the locals wanted to talk about was the imminent threat to the Family Responsibilities Commission and to ask me to do what I could to save their community from the booze-fuelled bloodshed that they feared would happen if the Family Responsibilities Commission was abolished. The leaders of the school, the leaders of the police, the elders of the community all wanted the Family Responsibilities Commission to stay—and why wouldn't they? The Family Responsibilities Commission was never imposed on them. It was never imposed on anyone. It only operated in communities where the local leadership had specifically requested it. The Family Responsibilities Commission is not outsiders making decisions for Indigenous people. It is local elders, not white officials, talking to troubled families about how their welfare money might be better managed. And it is not taking anyone's money. The worst that can possibly happen under the FRC is that some of a person's welfare may be quarantined on the BasicsCard. So this is not a punishment agenda; it is quite clearly a responsibility agenda. It is actually empowering local people to take practical steps to improve their community. The Family Responsibilities Commission model should be extended to other communities that want it, certainly not abolished with no adequate substitute in the offing. I know that the intellectual architect of the Family Responsibilities Commission, Noel Pearson, is not universally supported by Indigenous Australians, even though in my judgement he's been a modern-day prophet for our times. He has provided courageous and inspiring leadership on welfare reform and on educational reform not just for Aboriginal people but for the whole country. It would be a tragedy of the first order not just for Indigenous Australia but for Australia at large if petty jealousy were behind this decision to undo a decade of steady improvement in the wellbeing of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge and, more recently, Doomadgee. So, Mr Speaker, through you, I say to the Queensland government: please think again. Do not scrap something which is working, something which is working for the benefit of Indigenous people, something which Indigenous people themselves have devised, until you are confident that you have a replacement that works better. And please don't change something that works just because some people might be jealous of the achievements and the justified national stature of Mr Pearson. Please, Queensland government, don't ever use lack of federal funding as an excuse, because the federal government is prepared to continue its share of the funding of this program. This is something good in a part of our country that really needs to be in charge of its own destiny, more in charge of its own destiny than it often is. How dare the Queensland government, in a fit of pique and misinformation, rip away from these good people something which has been doing so much for their wellbeing? They have a right to take responsibility. That is exactly what they have been doing. Let them keep it.
Warringah Electorate: Lifeline Northern Beaches | Statements by Members | House debates
I rise today to acknowledge the work that Lifeline does around the country, but in particular the work that Lifeline Northern Beaches does. Lifeline Northern Beaches has just celebrated 50 years...
I rise today to acknowledge the work that Lifeline does around the country, but in particular the work that Lifeline Northern Beaches does. Lifeline Northern Beaches has just celebrated 50 years of operation. Suicide is one of our greatest killers. It is the greatest killer of young people, and that's why we need Lifeline. Just five years after Lifeline first started at the Wesley Mission, Lifeline Northern Beaches opened at the Balgowlah Uniting Church. That service now handles close to 10 per cent of the one million calls that Lifeline receives around our country every year. But Lifeline is not just a vital phone counselling service; Lifeline Northern Beaches offers face-to-face counselling for people in financial trouble, people with gambling addictions, people whose families are under pressure and young people who are wrestling with the meaning of life. There are also a number of groups that people can join if they are grappling with particular problems. There is a Suicide Bereavement Support Group, a grief and loss group, a Being Mums group and a moods matter group for young people in particular. I want to thank the staff of Lifeline for making me and my wife, Margie, so welcome last week. I particularly thank Ian Farmer, the chairman, and the 180 trained volunteers who do such a great job. You are the unsung heroes of our country and our area. (Time expired)
Sir John Monash Centre | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise today to acknowledge the opening by our Prime Minister and the French Prime Minister on 24 April of the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux. This was announced in April 2014 by...
I rise today to acknowledge the opening by our Prime Minister and the French Prime Minister on 24 April of the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux. This was announced in April 2014 by the Abbott government, and the winning design was announced in April 2015, again by the Abbott government, and I'm delighted that this has now come to fruition. Much of the past four years has been spent remembering the service and sacrifice of our forebears a century ago. The Great War was convulsive for our country, just as it was for the wider world. From a population of less than five million, some 400,000 Australians volunteered, 330,000 Australians served overseas, 155,000 were wounded and 60,000 never came home. Gallipoli, understandably enough, has dominated our imagination, but it was the Western Front where the great Australian effort was made: almost 300,000 Australians served and almost 46,000 died. Nowhere on earth is more richly sown with Australian sacrifice as our Great War historian Charles Bean has said. In the last six months of the war—we don't normally remember this—it was the Australian Army, the first Australian Imperial Force serving together for the first time under the leadership of General Sir John Monash which turned the tide of war and changed the course of history. The Battle of Amiens, which was planned by Monash and largely fought by Australians, was the black day of the German army and it set up the victories to come. Over the last six months, Australian forces—less than 10 per cent of the total British army—secured more than 20 per cent of the gains in that decisive period. So it's good that Villers-Bretonneux will now no longer simply be a place of pilgrimage but it will be a place of learning, a place of understanding and a place of inspiration to generations of Australians yet to come, to do great things in a good cause. We say every Anzac Day, 'Lest we forget.' Thanks to this Monash centre, we will remember. It's important to acknowledge the fine work of the French government, which managed to speed the approvals necessary to get this project done in record time. Michael Ronaldson, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs who drove it, and Paul Kelly and Patrick Walters, the distinguished journalists from The Australian, who first reminded us we that we lacked in France an Australian museum like the British one near Pozieres and the Canadian one at Vimy Ridge. Most of all, we should remember John Monash and the Australian soldiers whose imperishable story will henceforth be much better known.
Crouch, Mr Michael Jenkins, AC | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise today to celebrate the life of Michael Crouch, Companion of the Order of Australia, who has just left us. We Australians don't often think of ourselves as a manufacturing powerhouse, but,...
I rise today to celebrate the life of Michael Crouch, Companion of the Order of Australia, who has just left us. We Australians don't often think of ourselves as a manufacturing powerhouse, but, thanks to Michael Crouch, Australia is the world's largest supplier of instant boiling water machines. Michael's great insight was that you wouldn't succeed merely by doing what others did. So he did something that no-one was doing then: he created a machine that would deliver instant boiling water, and now, thanks to Michael Crouch, there are billions of conversations right around the world every day at the Zip water heater in just about every workplace. Michael started exporting Zip products 35 years ago and now these products, still manufactured in Condell Park in Sydney, are sold in more than 70 countries. Michael Crouch wasn't just a great industrialist; he was a great philanthropist, too. The good causes he supported included the Duke of Edinburgh awards, involving more than 30,000 young Australians every year, Symphony Australia and the National Biography Award. He supported medical research. He supported water and soil conversation, technical innovation and higher education. He was unashamedly pro-business and unashamedly pro-Australian—not for him the black-armband view of our history. Unsurprisingly, this also made him a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. He wasn't just a friend in good times; he was a friend when you really needed one. The challenge for each generation is to be at least as good as our forebears, and in Michael Crouch we certainly have someone to look up to. His life should be both an inspiration and a reproach. It should inspire us to believe that our best days are still ahead of us, but it should reproach us to put service before self. He's gone but certainly not forgotten, and he deserves to be remembered on our country's most enduring record.
Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I am pleased to rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017, because, when an adult's right to unconditional welfare denies a child his or her right...
I am pleased to rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017, because, when an adult's right to unconditional welfare denies a child his or her right to sustenance, we have a problem. I don't think anyone who has looked at the situation in large parts of remote Australia and some parts of metropolitan Australia could possibly deny that we have a problem. The purpose of this legislation is to extend and expand some trials which have been going on now for a couple of years. This is a legacy of the Abbott government, and I'm pleased that the Turnbull government wants to extend and expand the trials that my government began. I should, in speaking to this legislation, commend the former Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, who has certainly been the principal architect within government of these trials. We do have a problem of welfare money being spent not on the essentials of life but on alcohol, drugs and gambling. We all know that there are many parts of Australia where, very regrettably, the booze, the drugs and the gambling are contributing to an epidemic of family dysfunction. For instance, in the Kimberley, which I'm reasonably familiar with from two trips to Kununurra over the last couple of years, the suicide rate is almost double the WA Indigenous average. In some parts of the Kimberley, domestic assault rates are 20 times the West Australian state average. This card is colour blind, although so far it has operated predominantly in Indigenous communities. I should say that, around the country, Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised from assault than non-Indigenous women, and almost 90 per cent of partner violence among Indigenous people is alcohol related. Even though in the Kimberley many Indigenous people don't drink at all, because they have seen the ravages of alcohol, per capita alcohol consumption is almost double the national average. So there is a problem, and I doubt that anyone in this chamber, regardless of his or her ideological preconceptions, could possibly deny that there is a problem. And it is reasonable for this parliament to say that, particularly in places where local people want this cashless debit card, we should put it in place so that we can be absolutely sure that the vast majority of welfare spending is for the necessities of life. It's not for alcohol, it's not for drugs and it's not for gambling. It's for rent, it's for food, it's for clothing, it's for education, it's for health and it's for transport. And, let's face it, if you are a welfare dependent person, wouldn't you need 80 per cent plus of your welfare income to spend on the necessities of life? It's true that a single person on Newstart only gets $650 a fortnight, but a single parent with four children in private rental gets almost $2,150 a fortnight. The problem is that in too many cases not enough of this money is being spent where it should be spent. The cashless debit card has a long history. You might remember that my government commissioned Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest to do a comprehensive report on ending Indigenous disadvantage. One of the principal recommendations of that report was the introduction of this cashless debit card. But, as members opposite were keen to stress, the government accepted that this should only be introduced where local leaders believed it was necessary for their communities. I want to congratulation the Indigenous leaders of Ceduna in South Australia and Kununurra in East Kimberley in Western Australia for their courage in saying that this cashless debit card would help their communities. I've heard a suggestion opposite that the cashless card is somehow punishing people. That is dead wrong. The cashless debit card is an acceptance by the relevant community leaders that there is a problem. I'm not saying that everyone is an alcoholic, a gambler or an addict. I'm just saying that in this community there is a problem of people spending money suboptimally—sometimes through poor choices, sometimes perhaps because of a poor local culture—and that this is necessary in order to do the right thing by the most vulnerable people in those communities. There is no proposal from this government—not then, not now—to extend the card beyond communities where it is wanted. Down the track perhaps it might be good to extend it further, but that is not contemplated by this legislation. It is absolutely required by this legislation that it can only go where communities want it, and even under this legislation new trials will be subject to disallowance by this parliament. So, Twiggy Forrest made the recommendation and the trials got under way in Kununurra and Ceduna. I saw Kununurra when the trial had been in place for just a couple of months. I was told by local police, local health workers, local community workers and local community leaders that the trial had made a very, very positive difference. In August last year back in Kununurra, when the trial had been place for 15 months, that message was repeated and reinforced. I perfectly accept that some members opposite might have had complaints from some individuals, but I have been there. I have spoken to people on the ground. I have spoken to welfare recipients. I have spoken to those who deal with the social problems that misuse of alcohol, drugs et cetera creates, and there is a near-universal view amongst the people on the ground that these trials must continue. In order for even the existing trials to continue, this legislation must pass, because if this legislation doesn't pass the existing trials will automatically terminate by law in the middle of this year. So it is essential for the continuation of the existing trials, let alone for new trials, for this legislation to pass. While there was a fair bit of gratuitous abuse of the government from the member for Herbert, it was encouraging to hear her concession that Labor had not yet finalised its position. May I say that this is the kind of legislation, the kind of issue, where we should put our ideology to one side and ask ourselves what we can do as a parliament in practice to solve problems. Let's forget about whether we are pro free market or pro big government. Whether we believe that people are victims who need government help or they are responsible citizens who need to stand on their own two feet, let's put all that stuff aside for a moment and be practical. The most practical thing we can do in this parliament right now is to pass this legislation so that the existing trials can continue and even be expanded in the months ahead. Yes, there have been some problems with the technology, but as we all know technology is improving all the time. I can't go to the petrol station with a government fuel card and buy anything other than fuel. It ought to be possible for technology to be further stroked and refined so that with the cashless debit card you can go to any store in Australia that takes a debit card and not be able to get out cash and not be able to buy alcohol or anything that is illegal or harmful. The technology will come good. It's better than it was and it will get better still, but the trial has to continue. It has to have the potential to be expanded. I should point out for the benefit of members opposite that none of this is about cutting spending. It's not about slashing welfare. It's simply about ensuring that existing welfare payments, existing Commonwealth spending, are as effective as possible, and that should be something that unites every single member in this House. This is important legislation. It's carefully targeted legislation. It addresses a real problem that everyone here would say does need to be addressed, so I really do hope that members opposite will give this particular piece of legislation the careful and generous consideration, in the spirit of goodwill, that it deserves. We cannot have rivers of cash, particularly rivers of taxpayers' cash, turning into rivers of grog in some of the most difficult, marginalised and vulnerable communities of our country. This is no panacea. Yes, there are all sorts of other problems that won't be addressed by this legislation, but it will make a difference. On its own it won't get the kids to school. On its own it won't get the adults to work. But on its own it will help to make communities more safe, and that is a big step in the right direction to a better life for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. One of the things that please me most about this particular legislation is that the next two communities in line for the cashless debit card are much less predominantly Indigenous than the first two. Yes, there is a significant Indigenous issue in Kalgoorlie, but in Hervey Bay and Bundaberg the Indigenous welfare population is by no means the largest component of the group that would be impacted by this card. If you are someone doing the right thing by your family, you have nothing to fear and much to gain from this card. If you are failing to do the right thing by your family, this card will help you to be a better person and to do the right thing by the people who need you. I commend the bill to the House.
Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
I'm very happy to support the amendment that's been moved by the member for Corangamite—very happy indeed. I thank her and congratulate her for bringing an amendment in such clear terms to...
I'm very happy to support the amendment that's been moved by the member for Corangamite—very happy indeed. I thank her and congratulate her for bringing an amendment in such clear terms to the House. Perhaps for the benefit of everyone in this chamber, including in the galleries, I might read the relevant protection of religious freedom very slowly, because what this amendment proposes is that nothing in this act should limit or derogate from the right of any person to manifest in a lawful manner his or her religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. I put it to everyone in this chamber this evening: is there anyone at all here who does not believe in the right of people to manifest their religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching? And if, as I am confident, every single person in this wonderful parliament tonight believes that it's right that people should have this fundamental protection, well, what possible objection could there be to including this in the bill before us? We have heard today contributor after contributor to these debates say that nothing in this bill will impinge on freedom of religion. Well, supporting this amendment is an opportunity to demonstrate absolute fair dinkumness when it comes to those statements. It's an opportunity to show that all the things that we've said—all the people who've objected to earlier amendments and everything they said about their desire not to impinge in any way on faith, on freedom, on religion—are fair dinkum. Yes, it's true that if we pass this amendment that the bill, as amended, would then have to go back to the Senate, and there may be an hour or so of toing and froing before it came back. And I know there are many people in the galleries this evening who are yearning for the completion of this debate, but I am quite confident that you would enjoy the hospitality of this House. We could provide some hospitality here in this House. There are many members who would be only too happy to open the bar for you, and then we could all come back and do this, but do it in the right way—in a way that doesn't just respect the eight million people who voted yes but respects the anxieties, the concerns and the beliefs of the five million people who voted no. Then we would truly have a wonderfully unifying moment for our whole country.
As the Treasurer said earlier, our society is absolutely unimaginable without the schools, the hospitals, the employment agencies and the drug and alcohol rehabilitation services that the great...
As the Treasurer said earlier, our society is absolutely unimaginable without the schools, the hospitals, the employment agencies and the drug and alcohol rehabilitation services that the great Christian charities have provided for hundreds and hundreds of years. And it's their faith that drives them. They do it because of their faith motivation, and part of that faith is that marriage is between a man and a woman, preferably for life and, usually, dedicated to kids. Once same-sex marriage is enshrined in law, on public policy grounds, organisations that don't recognise same-sex marriage could, indeed, be subject to some kind of official sanction. Overseas, this has happened. Catholic adoption agencies have been forced to withdraw their services. Orthodox Jewish schools have had their funding threatened. American Christian colleges have had registration refused to their law graduates because of their teaching on marriage. Don't think that it can't happen in this country; it already has. I recall, as employment minister, back in 2003 finding a Human Rights Commissioner threatening faith based employment agencies because of their own employment practices. If that threat had been acted upon, they would have had to withdraw their services. So these amendments are important. I stress: they are not against same-sex marriage. They are simply in favour of the rights of religious organisations to keep doing what they have always done in the great interests of the Australian people.
The problem that this House is wrestling with today is the absence of detailed consideration of freedom of speech, of conscience and of religion, which both the Prime Minister and the Leader of...
The problem that this House is wrestling with today is the absence of detailed consideration of freedom of speech, of conscience and of religion, which both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition promised would be given to us before this bill was finalised. That is the problem. A promise was made by the leaders of this parliament and the promise has not adequately been delivered upon, and that is why this parliament is now being called upon to deal with this on the run, as it were, because the promises made from the top were not adequately delivered on. Let me make a couple of observations. I have never before heard members of this House showing such supine respect to another place. Why is it that, simply because something has been passed in the Senate, these are tablets of stone handed down from the mountain top beyond any question or consideration or delay by this House? Please. What would Paul Keating think of the supineness of this House of Representatives in the face of those in the other place across the corridor? We have a problem now, and I would ask those in doubt about this amendment or perhaps inclined to oppose this amendment to consider the actual facts. The Archbishop of Hobart put out a pamphlet—he did nothing radical; he did nothing out of line. He simply asserted the traditional Christian teaching on marriage and he spent months being officially bullied and officially persecuted before the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal. A Canberra teenager who dared to place on social media her support for traditional marriage was sacked. Parents have been lied to about the content of curriculum their children are exposed to, and now that same curriculum is becoming compulsory in the state of Victoria. We have a problem and we must address it now. We must do what both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition said would be done but as yet has not been done. If that means a conference between the supporters of the Dean Smith bill and the supporters of the amendments to try to refine the amendments to something more acceptable, let that happen. If it means that things need to go back to the Senate for a couple of hours, let that happen. The last thing we should want to do is to subject Australians to new forms of discrimination in place of old ones that are rightly gone. We do not want to see politically correct discrimination substituted for old traditional discriminations, which this House is rightly rejecting. And we can't wait for the Ruddock committee to report. If there is a gap in our rights and freedom, if there is a gap in our protections, let it be filled now. Injustices are happening this day; let us deal with them now. Let's not kick it all off into the long grass, which is what I suspect some of the critics of these amendments would like to do. We need to ask ourselves this fundamental question: do we want today to be a day of unity, or do we want today to be a day of division? I accept that the Australian people have spoken. I accept that as a society we have moved on from the attitudes of previous decades. But we have not moved on, and we should never move on, from the fundamental rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and parental choice, and that is all these amendments are seeking to protect.
If I could just make a couple of observations following the contribution from the member for Melbourne: look, it's true that we've just had a plebiscite campaign, and it's true that some of us in...
If I could just make a couple of observations following the contribution from the member for Melbourne: look, it's true that we've just had a plebiscite campaign, and it's true that some of us in this House argued strongly for the 'no' case, but all of us in this House are respecters of the democratic process, and I think it would be wrong to say that there are very many people left in this House who are opponents of same-sex marriage. What there are left in this House—more, I suspect, than the member for Melbourne might think—are people who believe in freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and parental choice. These amendments are not designed to frustrate this bill. They are not designed to delay this bill. They are designed to improve this bill and to make this bill a unifying occasion—as unifying as it can be under all the circumstances. Almost eight million Australians voted yes; almost five million Australians voted no. All Australians, whichever way they voted, deserve to have their views respected and, as far as is possible, accommodated in the legislation. I suspect that many of the eight million who voted yes did not want to exclude traditional marriage; they simply wanted to embrace same-sex marriage too. And that's the beauty of the amendment proposed by the member for Deakin: it respects traditional marriage while allowing same-sex marriage to take place. In addition, it is extending to new celebrants the freedom of conscience that is given in the bill to existing celebrants. If it's right for existing celebrants to have this freedom of conscience, surely it's right for new celebrants to have this freedom of conscience as well. We all want this bill to proceed expeditiously through the House. We all want Australians to feel proud of the parliament this day, but I think we will feel prouder of the parliament this day if the parliament is capable of considering these amendments on their merits rather that coming into this chamber with a preconceived view. I was delighted in the course of the campaign when both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition pledged that, before same-sex marriage becomes law, there will be adequate freedoms of conscience, religion and expression in place. That is simply what these amendments seek to do—to make the words of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition a reality. I commend the amendment to the House.
Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I should begin by acknowledging the tireless efforts of the member for Leichhardt to bring about the change that we debate today. I should also note the passion and the commitment of the members...
I should begin by acknowledging the tireless efforts of the member for Leichhardt to bring about the change that we debate today. I should also note the passion and the commitment of the members for Brisbane, Goldstein and North Sydney and, indeed, of Senator Smith in the other place. I admire the commitment that they have brought to this long campaign and I accept that what they have fought for for so long should now come about. Yet almost five million Australians voted no in the recent plebiscite and their voices should be heard in this chamber, and their views should also be respected. They are not bigots. They are simply people who are respectful of traditions handed down from time immemorial and slow to change them. It's no secret that I haven't been a supporter of same-sex marriage. I won't be opposing this bill, though, because I respect the verdict of the Australian people as expressed in the postal plebiscite. When it comes to same-sex marriage, some countries have introduced it via the courts, some via the parliament, and others, Ireland and now Australia, by vote of the people—and that is the best way because it resolves this matter beyond doubt or quibble. To have a plebiscite was in fact an Abbott government decision. We opened the door to change but ensured that change would not lightly be made. I'm pleased that the plebiscite has been continued by the Turnbull government, and I'm also pleased that eventually all sides of this parliament participated fully in it. There were strong views expressed in the course of the campaign. Some of those strong views were mine. I'm proud of my fellow 'no' campaigners because they gave marriage the good defence that it deserved, but I do congratulate the 'yes' campaign on their victory. There was a lot said beforehand about how divisive this debate would be, but, from where I stood, there was little rancour, no hysteria and no abuse. Certainly there was none from the 'no' campaign. The overwhelming support for same-sex marriage that the plebiscite showed is a sign of the warm acceptance that Australians have for gay people. There may indeed be a few homophobic individuals lurking amongst us, but no-one should ever again claim that Australia is a bigoted or intolerant country. As the plebiscite abundantly demonstrated, we are as easygoing as any country on Earth, and, whatever your race, your creed, your gender or your sexuality, to be an Australian is well and truly to have won the lottery of life. And, if indeed same-sex marriage does turn out to mean that there are more stable and more lasting relationships in this country, gay as well as straight, then it will have strengthened our social fabric and become something that, once established, a conservative won't just accept but will actually support. So gay people, their parents, their siblings, their children, their wider families and their friends should savour this success, and again I congratulate the 'yes' campaign for its victory. Now, I would like this to be a unifying moment for our country, and the best way to make this a unifying moment for our country would be to acknowledge the continuing concerns that many decent Australians have about freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and parental rights. The best way to make this a unifying moment for our country would be to ensure that the antigay prejudice of the past is not replaced by a new politically correct bigotry. We certainly don't want new forms of division to replace old ones. And we did see, on the fringes of this recent campaign, some worrying signs of a new intolerance. There was the attempted prosecution of the Archbishop of Hobart for a booklet on the traditional Christian teaching. There was the sacking of a Canberra teenager for supporting marriage on her Facebook page, and there was the persecution of Coopers Brewery merely for hosting a Bible Society debate on the nature of marriage. More thought should have been given prior to the plebiscite to protecting rights, and that's why I'll be moving the amendment that's been circulated, not to stop this bill but to assert the principle that people should never be discriminated against because of their conscientious views about the nature of marriage. That's why there should be further amendments in the committee stage to protect freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and parental rights, and I'm pleased that the Prime Minister has indicated that he will support moves to better protect these rights. I hope these amendments will be supported, because surely these are rights and freedoms that all of us in this place believe in. And it should happen now, in the course of passing the same-sex marriage bill, because there should be no gaps in the protections of our fundamental freedoms. And I believe that the passage of the bill, as amended, will enable our country to go forward together, united in decency and in respect for the rights of all. Now I certainly don't pretend to be an overnight convert supporting same-sex marriage, but I am pledged to respect and to facilitate the verdict of the Australian people. Same-sex marriage should now be recognised. It will now be recognised. There should be a clear distinction between marriage as understood by the church and marriage as recognised by the state. On that basis, I am looking forward to attending the marriage of my sister, Christine, to her partner, Virginia, sometime early in the new year. I move: That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that it is vital that individuals and entities are not disadvantaged nor suffer any adverse effects as a result of conscientiously holding a particular view of the nature of marriage".
McPhee, Ms Anna | Constituency Statements | House debates
Too many people don't get the recognition they deserve. Even today, despite the wonders of modern medicine, too many people are cut down in their prime. Today I rise to pay tribute to Anna...
Too many people don't get the recognition they deserve. Even today, despite the wonders of modern medicine, too many people are cut down in their prime. Today I rise to pay tribute to Anna McPhee, a former Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency head; a former chief of staff to New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell; a business-group head; a constituent; and a friend, who has just lost her battle with cancer aged only 46. Her family were solid Liberals. Her grandfather led the party in the New South Wales parliament and served as a minister in the Askin government. Her father was a Warringah campaign director. Her great-great-grandmother had eight sons, three of whom became members of parliament. So Anna was part of a wonderful tradition of public service, and it was her decency and humanity that made her a concerned and active citizen. She respectfully disagreed with her local MP on the subject of same-sex marriage, but we were on a unity ticket on the need for more women in parliament representing the conservative side of politics through targets, not quotas, and on the need for more democracy in the New South Wales Liberal Party. Probably Anna's final contribution to public life was a wonderful speech that she made to a women's seminar at the recent Liberal Party people's convention at Rosehill, and I wish to quote what she said on that occasion. She said: Liberals … should be spoiled for choice at pre-selection, attracting the best and brightest to public service, we must have selectors who think for themselves and who select the best candidate on … merit … not gendered or factional, candidates men and women who know what they believe in … who can prosecute Liberal policy and debate [and attract] a majority of voters. Without that we will be condemned to a structural deficit of talent that will ultimately deprive the women and men of Australia what they need to get ahead—[that is to say] more Liberal governments. This is a sad moment for me, but I want to say here in our nation's capital we will remember you, Anna. We will try to heed your advice and we will try to live up to your ideals. Honourable members: Hear, hear!
Johnson, Mr John Richard 'Johno', KCSG | Statements by Members | House debates
I rise to mourn John 'Johno' Johnson, for 13 years president of the New South Wales Legislative Council—a fine Australian, a great servant of the Labor Party and a friend to many on this...
I rise to mourn John 'Johno' Johnson, for 13 years president of the New South Wales Legislative Council—a fine Australian, a great servant of the Labor Party and a friend to many on this side of politics too. Johno had four great loyalties: to his party, of which he was a life member; to his country, which he served indefatigably in many ways rather than merely in the parliament; to his church—a Papal knighthood was the only honour he ever accepted; and to his family, who have been by his bedside for months now. For years, Johno did his best to recruit me. After the 1993 election I was an unemployed ex-Hewson staffer. Johno called to say, 'It's time you came back to your true home.' 'I've never left the church,' I replied. 'No,' he said, 'the Labor Party.' 'I could almost be tempted,' I said, 'except for Paul Keating and his crusade to make Australia a republic.' There was a long pause, 'Comrade, there's no hope for you,' he said, and hung up the phone! There will always be hope for Australia whilst ever we have people in public life who epitomise the ideals of duty and service as Johno Johnson did so magnificently.
Papua New Guinea | Constituency Statements | House debates
The people of Warringah are broadminded and they have wide-ranging interests, and so this afternoon, with your indulgence, I want to talk just for a little about PNG, our nearest neighbour; our...
The people of Warringah are broadminded and they have wide-ranging interests, and so this afternoon, with your indulgence, I want to talk just for a little about PNG, our nearest neighbour; our only former colony; home to 10,000 dual citizens; our largest foreign aid recipient by far; and, along with New Zealand, one of only two countries in the world that have Australia as their largest trading partner and their largest source of foreign investment. Like Australia, New Zealand is passionately interested in the great sport of rugby league. It is a Melanesian superpower. It has close to 10 million people and in some years recently it has been growing at some nine per cent per annum. Australia and PNG have geography and history in common, but we also have a future to work on as well as a past to honour and respect. Here in Canberra, we tend to have our horizons fixed on countries like Indonesia, China, Japan, India, the United States and Europe, and because of the difficulties in the Middle East often we are focused there. These places are, perhaps, more important to us than PNG. But we are more important to PNG than those far-flung places are to them. We should focus on the places where we can do good, as well as the places where we hope good might be done to us. We should focus on the places where we can help, as well as on the places where we might be helped. PNG certainly has helped us. I am very conscious of the fact that but for PNG's help with the Manus boat people processing centre, we would have been in great trouble in 2013. It is funded by Australia but it is run by PNG, and the more obvious it is that this is a PNG centre then the more likely it is that people will go home. We have helped PNG, particularly with the 70 Australian Federal Police officers who we have had there since 2013 acting as advisers. The more operational responsibility that those AFP people can have, the better. It would be very wrong for funding not to be continued beyond the middle of next year, particularly with PNG hosting the APEC summit in 2018. To give them a more operational focus, I hope it might be possible for these officers to take leave from the AFP to join the Royal PNG Constabulary, and then, when their term expires, to go back to the AFP without loss of seniority. I hope PNG will look at Australia not as a big brother, but as a best friend. We will never let them down. (Time expired)