Kim Carr's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
type: channel
language: en-gb
creator: OpenAustralia.org, mprss.php script
date: 2022-07-10T23:05:04+00:00
items: Kitching, Senator Kimberley Jane Elizabeth | Condolences | Senate debates
items: Macintyre, Professor Stuart, AO | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
items: Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee; Delegated Legislation Monitor | Committees | Senate debates
items: Selection of Bills Committee; Report | Committees | Senate debates
items: Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee; Reference | Committees | Senate debates
items: Temporary Migration Select Committee; Report | Committees | Senate debates
items: Fabian, Mr Garry, Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
items: Australian Research Council | Statements | Senate debates
items: Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Forced Labour) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
items: Economics References Committee; Reference | Committees | Senate debates
items: Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021; In Committee | Bills | Senate debates
items: Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021; Consideration of House of Representatives Message | Bills | Senate debates
items: Commonwealth Integrity Commission | Motions | Senate debates
items: COVID-19: Vaccination | Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers | Senate debates

Kitching, Senator Kimberley Jane Elizabeth | Condolences | Senate debates
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description: () (): The incorporated speech read as follows— For the second time in the life of this 46th Parliament, we mourn the death of a senator in office. It is also the second time in my...
encoded: () (): The incorporated speech read as follows— For the second time in the life of this 46th Parliament, we mourn the death of a senator in office. It is also the second time in my parliamentary career that I have had to mourn the death in office of a Victorian Labor senator. The first was the late Olive Zakharov, who died in 1995. I begin by saying about our former colleague Kimberley Kitching what I said about our former colleague Alex Gallacher: "The longer I serve in this place, the more I appreciate how you can come to see people differently . "A life in politics can be very isolating. You have many acquaintances but few friends." I was privileged to call both Kimberley and Alex friends. Kimberley was also a neighbour. She and her husband Andrew lived in my home suburb of Pascoe Vale in Melbourne. We spoke often. Kimberley and I, like Alex and I, came from different parts of the Labor Party. But that didn't matter. We shared a conviction that the role of the Labor Party is to build a fairer and more prosperous Australia. And we shared an understanding about the importance of the Senate in holding executive government to account, especially through the committee system. Unlike Alex, Kimberley served only a single term in this place. And her untimely death has made her a media sensation in a way that he never was. The spate of media stories continues. Some of those stories have been driven by malice, because some commentators have taken a position on what they imagine to be happening within the Labor Party. But their comments have indicated that they are not well informed, about either the Labor Party or about Kimberley. I have been mentioned in some of those comments, because speculation about my future in this place became intertwined with speculation about hers. It would not be appropriate to engage further with that commentary here. I will say only what I have already said ina committee hearing, which happened to be the first Senate proceeding after her tragi…
date: 2022-03-28T12:16:00+00:00

Macintyre, Professor Stuart, AO | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
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description: I'd like to speak about the passing of Emeritus laureate Professor Stuart Macintyre. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend his funeral, which was held in Melbourne yesterday. On 22 November...
encoded: I'd like to speak about the passing of Emeritus laureate Professor Stuart Macintyre. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend his funeral, which was held in Melbourne yesterday. On 22 November Australia lost one of its greatest and most prodigious historians and public intellectuals. Stuart Macintyre, who died of cancer at the age of 74, was pre-eminently a historian of the left but, as the tributes to him from colleagues of all political persuasions testify, his scholarship was academically rigorous and never merely partisan in its approach. That did not stop him being a target in the so-called history wars because he defended the discipline of history as an inquiry into truth, an inquiry into the events and attitudes of the past that have made us the people we are today, an inquiry that must be conducted without shrinking from those aspects of our past that cannot be raised. Conservative critics derided this as the black armband view of Australian history. Stuart was not intimidated by such a label; instead, he pointed to what those who used this term were actually doing. In his book, The History Wars, he wrote: 'In submitting history to a loyalty test, they are debasing it.' In his lectures to the generations of students and the numerous articles and books, Stuart taught that acknowledging the truth about the past is the first and most necessary step in building a better future. Graeme Davison, another celebrated historian, was quoted in an obituary in the Australian recently saying: Macintyre was first and foremost a scholar with a deep devotion to his craft. He read constantly and widely. He resisted dogma, political or intellectual. His friendships transcended political alignments and intellectual fashion. He dressed respectably and spoke courteously, weighing his words carefully. He wrote elegantly and with as much sympathy and insight about Victorian liberals as he did about communist trade unionists. Another obituarist, Michael Lazarus, who wrote in the Jacobi…
date: 2021-12-01T12:24:00+00:00

Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee; Delegated Legislation Monitor | Committees | Senate debates
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description: I would like to speak in support of the remarks of Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who is chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation. I emphasise to the chamber:...
encoded: I would like to speak in support of the remarks of Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who is chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation. I emphasise to the chamber: this is a committee that operates on a bipartisan basis. In my direct experience it has demonstrated a commitment to working through issues carefully and in a considered way. There has been—along with the other scrutiny committees of this chamber—a renewed emphasis on providing proper transparency and accountability to the work of this parliament through this committee's leadership. I can draw the attention of the chamber to the fact that the committee, after careful study and review—there have been a number of inquiries, changes to the standing orders and a number of mechanisms put in place to engage the executive on these questions—has advanced a bipartisan proposition that the biosecurity legislation should be amended by this chamber. There is a particular bill coming up, the Biosecurity Amendment (Enhanced Risk Management) Bill, that will provide the opportunity for that matter to be prosecuted. These are the simple facts: from April last year there have been—I've mentioned figures of this type before—some 591 decrees issued around biosecurity and the Biosecurity Act. In particular, because of the nature of the act, under sections 477 and 476 there is a set of circumstances where this act overrides all other law in the Commonwealth. It has the effect of being able to change all other law in Australia. You might question how it could be that such legislation was put in place? As Senator Fierravanti-Wells has pointed out, we did so after only five hours of discussion in this chamber back in 2015, in circumstances where the word 'pandemic' wasn't used. It was a bill we were led to believe was about flora and fauna, not about changing the law—any law—should a minister decree it. As I have outlined, there have been some 591 occasions where decrees have been issued, most of wh…
date: 2021-11-25T16:16:00+00:00

Selection of Bills Committee; Report | Committees | Senate debates
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description: I'd like to say a few words on this matter, since I am the deputy chair of the committee and there has been no consultation with the committee—none! I'm not known as a person who does not...
encoded: I'd like to say a few words on this matter, since I am the deputy chair of the committee and there has been no consultation with the committee—none! I'm not known as a person who does not commit fully to my job. I believe that my record throughout this last year of the pandemic has been equal to anyone's in terms of my attendance. This committee has a very heavy workload and we have, I believe, fulfilled it conscientiously and not sought to duck our responsibilities to this chamber. Now we're being told, without consultation, that irrespective of what we're doing at the moment we can do this bill over the Christmas break. It would seem that everyone else in this place, in this building, is entitled to spend some time with their families and is entitled to enjoy some respite from the hurly-burly of this place apart from the members of this committee, who haven't been spoken to. If anyone were to suggest that this was a simple matter, that this was legislation that can be dismissed with the papers, they would be sorely mistaken. Given that the government has taken the better part of three years, and many attempts, to get it into some sort of shape, I would have thought that they would at least have the courtesy of talking to the people who are now expected to actually undertake the parliamentary review of it on behalf of the chamber. An opposition senator interjecting— No, I haven't started on that! In the last two days that the documents have been available there has been a flurry of information being provided concerned with this bill. That's because it's not just a question of the rights of the religious it's also a question of the secular community, and we're discovering that there are different points of view about that. And what would we expect if we're going to start to prioritise human rights—if we're going to say that some people have rights at the expense of others? Of course there's going to be a major dispute about that! Do those opposite think they can jus…
date: 2021-11-25T11:20:00+00:00

Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee; Delegated Legislation Monitor | Committees | Senate debates
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description: This, as I say, has allowed the minister for health to change any other piece of legislation within this Commonwealth. The minister is seeking now to extend the powers of the human biosecurity...
encoded: This, as I say, has allowed the minister for health to change any other piece of legislation within this Commonwealth. The minister is seeking now to extend the powers of the human biosecurity emergency declaration for a sixth time, notionally ending on 17 December 2021. I don't think we know if that is the last time that he will be seeking that. If it isn't, there's nothing this chamber can do about that, given that these instruments are not disallowable. The committee has previously raised significant concerns about the exemption from disallowance of legislative instruments made under the Biosecurity Act. The committee has suggested: … amendments should be moved to the Biosecurity Amendment (Enhanced Risk Management) Bill 2021 to amend section 476 of the Biosecurity Act to provide that any future variations to extend a human biosecurity emergency period will be subject to disallowance— that is, subject to this chamber or the House of Representatives actually being able to address that matter. In correspondence with the committee, the minister replied that he thought there had been extensive and robust debate through both houses of parliament when the bill was introduced in 2015 and that therefore the possibility of disallowance was not necessary. That bill, as debated in 2015, was essentially about fauna and flora, not about pandemics. Neither the bill nor the explanatory memorandum even mentioned the word 'pandemic', so it's hardly received the extensive debate that the minister contended. The House of Representatives and the Senate both spent about five hours considering that bill, a bill which has fundamentally changed the regulatory regime in this country and had the effect of changing the way in which the states and territories have dealt with that issue, right across the Commonwealth. With only minor amendments, the bill passed both houses of parliament on 14 May 2015. As Senator Smith has pointed out in the chamber in a tabled statement, we're seeing more a…
date: 2021-10-21T18:14:00+00:00

Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee; Delegated Legislation Monitor | Committees | Senate debates
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description: I ask colleagues in the corner there if they could, perhaps, reduce it to a loud shout.
encoded: I ask colleagues in the corner there if they could, perhaps, reduce it to a loud shout.
date: 2021-10-21T18:14:00+00:00

Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee; Delegated Legislation Monitor | Committees | Senate debates
type: item
description: I would like to say a few words in support of the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation; I am the deputy chair of the committee. This is a committee...
encoded: I would like to say a few words in support of the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation; I am the deputy chair of the committee. This is a committee with a long history in this place. Throughout its 90 years of work, the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation has played an essential role in ensuring that there is effective parliamentary scrutiny of executive-made laws. It's a role that all of us in this chamber have a constitutional obligation to undertake. We are, of course, to quote Odgers, a 'house of review and reflection'. It is in this tradition that this committee has conducted its work on a bipartisan basis, with a focus on holding the executive's exercise of lawmaking powers to account. In its 90-year history, the committee has never taken the unprecedented action that we are seeing before the Senate today, in concurrence with a statement that's been made by the Deputy Chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills about matters rising from the Biosecurity Act 2015. Senator Dean Smith, as the acting chair of that committee, had a statement to the chamber incorporated into Hansard shortly before these remarks. Parliament's role in overseeing the delegated legislation made in response to COVID-19 has unquestionably been constrained since the beginning of the pandemic. The powers of the Biosecurity Act have been the government's main legislative vehicle, and this has allowed the minister for health to make a human biosecurity emergency declaration, with its provisions to take effect despite any other law.
date: 2021-10-21T18:14:00+00:00

Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee; Reference | Committees | Senate debates
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description: Before moving business of the Senate notice of motion No. 4, proposing a reference to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, I wish to inform the Senate that Senator Hanson...
encoded: Before moving business of the Senate notice of motion No. 4, proposing a reference to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, I wish to inform the Senate that Senator Hanson will co-sponsor the motion, and I ask that the name of Senator Hanson be added to the motion. I, and also on behalf of Senator Hanson, move: That the following matter be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 31 March 2022: The performance and integrity of Australia's administrative review system, with particular reference to: (a) the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, including the selection process for members; (b) the importance of transparency and parliamentary accountability in the context of Australia's administrative review system; (c) whether the Administrative Review Council, which was discontinued in 2015, ought to be re-established; and (d) any related matter. Question agreed to.
date: 2021-10-20T16:49:00+00:00

Temporary Migration Select Committee; Report | Committees | Senate debates
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description: I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned.
encoded: I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned.
date: 2021-09-01T17:30:00+00:00

Fabian, Mr Garry, Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
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description: We should be deeply concerned about the growth in right-wing extremism, in Europe and in this country. ASIO tells us that 50 per cent of its time is now spent dealing with the threat of fascist...
encoded: We should be deeply concerned about the growth in right-wing extremism, in Europe and in this country. ASIO tells us that 50 per cent of its time is now spent dealing with the threat of fascist groups. For me, this is a personal issue. Today I want to pay tribute to a great Australian, Mr Garry Fabian, who has recently been awarded the German Order of Merit by the Minister-President of Baden-Wurttemberg, Herr Winfried Kretschmann. Garry is a German-born Holocaust survivor who has been an Australian citizen for the past 70 years. I am proud to be his son-in-law. Like millions of European Jews, other minorities and opponents of Germany's fascist regime during the dark years from 1933 to 1945, Garry was deprived of citizenship. His human rights were routinely violated, and his boyhood was spent in a concentration camp. But, unlike the millions who died in the camps, Garry was fortunate to survive and to start a new life on the other side of the world. Since then he has worked tirelessly to rebuild understanding and to promote reconciliation with the people of his birth country. Born Gerhard Fabian in Stuttgart, Germany, on 11 January 1934, Garry's early years were spent moving from place to place with his family to avoid persecution under the Nuremberg Laws. In 1935 the family moved to Bodenbach, in Czechoslovakia, and later to Prague, after the German invasion in 1938. Like so many other refugees, they carried false documents and had to move every few weeks to avoid detection. Life was hard, but the worst was yet to come. In November 1942, Garry and his family were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Although called a ghetto, it was actually a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was not officially a death camp, like Auschwitz. But there was plenty of death as infectious diseases such as typhoid spread rapidly through the overcrowded barracks. The prisoners suffered malnutrition, exhaustion from harsh working conditions, and brutal treatment by the guards. Most of th…
date: 2021-09-01T12:25:00+00:00

Australian Research Council | Statements | Senate debates
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description: The Australian Research Council has an absurd new rule prohibiting the citing of preprints in grant applications. A preprint is a research paper that has been submitted to an academic journal...
encoded: The Australian Research Council has an absurd new rule prohibiting the citing of preprints in grant applications. A preprint is a research paper that has been submitted to an academic journal that has not yet been peer reviewed for publication. Preprints are stored on servers to make the latest research accessible to researchers around the world. But for some obscure reason the Australian Research Council has decided that citing a preprint is enough to make an application ineligible. More than 20 applications for this year's Discovery Early Career Research Awards have been excluded. The ARC did not inform applicants directly. Its claim that an appeal is possible is sophistry, because many are on the second application for their project and can't apply again. This rule change is a fiasco. It shows that the ARC is out of touch with international best practice and also domestic best practice, given that the National Health and Medical Research Council accepts preprints. As the President of the Academy of Science, Professor John Shine, said in a letter to Minister Tudge, the rule change will have a 'major impact' on Australia's research potential. Professor Shine wrote: It could easily be argued that a researcher not referencing material found in preprints is not using the full range of contemporary knowledge in a discipline. This is an integrity issue. If grant applications cannot cite all the information they have used, they risk being accused of plagiarism for treating the research of others as their own. The ARC needs to explain itself and fix this mess quickly.
date: 2021-08-24T13:34:00+00:00

Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Forced Labour) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
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description: That would be correct, on the basis of what has been indicated on the floor of the chamber.
encoded: That would be correct, on the basis of what has been indicated on the floor of the chamber.
date: 2021-08-23T11:46:00+00:00

Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Forced Labour) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
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description: by leave—On the basis of what's just been indicated to the chamber, it was clear that this division would be lost by the opposition. So long as our position in terms of the motion is...
encoded: by leave—On the basis of what's just been indicated to the chamber, it was clear that this division would be lost by the opposition. So long as our position in terms of the motion is recorded, I think it would be acceptable to proceed without a formal division on this particular question.
date: 2021-08-23T11:45:00+00:00

Economics References Committee; Reference | Committees | Senate debates
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description: At one level this is a very simple proposition that seeks to refer to the economics committee a proposal on how we can improve the scientific advice to this parliament. So I was somewhat...
encoded: At one level this is a very simple proposition that seeks to refer to the economics committee a proposal on how we can improve the scientific advice to this parliament. So I was somewhat surprised when I was advised that the government is going to vote against this proposition. I was surprised because I have represented the Labor Party on scientific matters for many, many years, and it's a matter of deep concern to me that we have not had an adequate level of investment and understanding of the importance of scientific advice to this parliament. As a consequence I've long held the view that the British model—followed by the American model, in terms of their advice to their Congress—is a model that we could adopt in this country. As a consequence we did look at this issue in the Senate inquiry into nationhood, national identity and democracy. That committee 'recommended that the Australian Government establish a Parliamentary Office of Science, modelled on the United Kingdom Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, to provide independent, impartial scientific advice, evidence and data to the Parliament, and all members and senators'. It was recommendation 14, and I chaired that inquiry. It was a recommendation that was bipartisan. So I'm particularly concerned that the government now finds this proposition dangerous, that it says that there's adequate advice and we don't need to have this reference. Somehow or other, this has suddenly become a contentious issue. If members and senators are going to debate and pass laws that govern Australians, they do need access to reliable and impartial information. They don't need to have ideologically loaded information. I acknowledge there will be differences of opinion about the nature of that information, but they do need access to the very best information. You simply can't rely upon the department to provide that on their own. It's possible that even fine organisations like our scientific agencies are able to present …
date: 2021-08-10T17:36:00+00:00

Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021; In Committee | Bills | Senate debates
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description: There are many fees and charges that universities strike against students. Show me where in this bill it says that any of these charges the government is now levying cannot be passed on to students.
encoded: There are many fees and charges that universities strike against students. Show me where in this bill it says that any of these charges the government is now levying cannot be passed on to students.
date: 2021-08-09T21:25:00+00:00

Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021; In Committee | Bills | Senate debates
type: item
description: It's a very simple question. Show me which clause in the bill will prevent a university or a tertiary institution from passing on any fee increases to students.
encoded: It's a very simple question. Show me which clause in the bill will prevent a university or a tertiary institution from passing on any fee increases to students.
date: 2021-08-09T21:25:00+00:00

Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Bill 2021, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Cost Recovery) Bill 2021; In Committee | Bills | Senate debates
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description: I thank the minister for her outline. I'm a member of the committee that she spoke of, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. I think she's probably been a little generous in her interpretation of the...
encoded: I thank the minister for her outline. I'm a member of the committee that she spoke of, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. I think she's probably been a little generous in her interpretation of the committee's response. The nature of this committee is that it is concerned—and had repeatedly expressed its concern—at the growing amount of legislation that now contains material that effectively allows the detail of policy questions to be left to subordinate legislation by way of these regulations. That was the thrust of the correspondence to the minister and the reason the questions were asked as to why these matters can't be contained in the primary legislation, to which the minister has responded, as is so often the case, that this is just an administrative matter and doesn't require a substantive amendment to the legislation. The committee has thanked the minister for his response because there has been some movement in the government's position—namely, to adjust the explanatory memorandum to explain the circumstances. But that's not to say that the committee is satisfied with the minister's response. The Labor Party is opposing this legislation, and we'll express our disappointment in the government's position in that vote. But it should not in any way be put to the Senate that the position that's been outlined is an acceptance of the government's position. When the committee says, 'We'll draw these matters to the attention of the Senate and leave it to the Senate to make a judgement call on it,' that's simply a mechanism by which the committee says, 'We're not happy with what's happened, but we acknowledge that there has been some movement by the government.' But it's not satisfactory because these are questions that should have been answered in the primary legislation, and it should have outlined clear guidance on the mechanism by which exemptions will be raised in the future for the direction to policy officers in the department as to the way in which they administ…
date: 2021-08-09T21:07:00+00:00

Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021; Consideration of House of Representatives Message | Bills | Senate debates
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description: It's vindictive.
encoded: It's vindictive.
date: 2021-08-09T12:49:00+00:00

Commonwealth Integrity Commission | Motions | Senate debates
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description: I move: That the question be put.
encoded: I move: That the question be put.
date: 2021-08-05T00:00:16+00:00

COVID-19: Vaccination | Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers | Senate debates
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description: The pandemic is, of course, one of the great crises that have been facing our society, and I think that, internationally, it's reshaping the way in which we live. Today, when Minister Colbeck...
encoded: The pandemic is, of course, one of the great crises that have been facing our society, and I think that, internationally, it's reshaping the way in which we live. Today, when Minister Colbeck indicated that the government acknowledges that it has challenges in terms of its capacity to provide sufficient supply for what it acknowledges to be the key to finding solutions to this pandemic, in terms of supply and the logistics of vaccines, I think he was underestimating the difficulties that the government has brought upon itself. It strikes me that the government has mismanaged this crisis at every level. From the very beginning of the crisis, the government has sought, effectively, to present this as a challenge to take political advantage and has sought to play favourites with the states. It has sought to underestimate the capacity of Australians to deal with the truth in regard to this matter. It has failed to acknowledge the importance of our own manufacturing capacity. It has failed to deal, in any real way or with any understanding of the international questions, with the pharmaceutical industry. It has failed to come to grips with the basic questions of the major health crisis faced in this pandemic. In fact, we had this protracted debate about whether or not we should concentrate on the economics of the country versus the health of the country, and that has been played out through the government's attempt to blame one state over another and, of course, its attempt—and failure—to deal with the personalities involved with this matter. I'm particularly concerned that we have not been able to develop our own manufacturing capacity. While I acknowledge how important it is for AstraZeneca, for instance, to be able to make vaccines in Australia, I find it extraordinary that the government is not able to provide us with even the most basic information on the supply contracts it engaged in on that matter, claiming, of course, that national security is involved. When und…
date: 2021-08-05T15:12:00+00:00