Mike Kelly's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework | Ministerial Statements | House debates
I welcome this opportunity to address the situation that has emerged in the context of these terrible disasters beyond the scale of anything we have ever seen and it is, I guess, a concession...
I welcome this opportunity to address the situation that has emerged in the context of these terrible disasters beyond the scale of anything we have ever seen and it is, I guess, a concession that should be made that on disasters of this scale we do need to learn lessons and some things that may have been unforeseen need to be addressed. But there are so many things that have been so glaringly obvious about the failures of addressing this disaster that they do need to be highlighted if we are to move forward at all. Just to put it in context, in Eden-Monaro we saw over a million hectares burnt. That is greater than the entire extent of the damage in the Black Saturday fires in Victoria, larger than the famous Amazon fires recently, larger than the Californian wildfires of 2018, all just within the borders of Eden-Monaro. Associated with that too, we lost over 1,000 homes across the LGAs in Eden-Monaro and close to around 9,000 livestock. I guess when you stick out that raw number of 9,000 livestock, it doesn't mean a lot to people. But if you are a farmer—I have lived on dairy farms with my family—and you have go out there and see an animal that is suffering from terrible burn injuries and then have to go through the trauma of euthanizing them—putting them down—and having to do it on a large scale and then dealing with the corpses, it is traumatic stuff. One farmer from out Batlow way was telling us the other day how his kids had to be involved in that too. Because these animals were suffering so much, they didn't have time to waste. He was in tears when he was telling me this story. So the trauma and the tragedy out there has been just enormous. It certainly has been a big awakening about the future we all face if we done do something seriously about climate change and that is something that we can talk more about. We are now talking about the recovery phase and how we deal with that scale of damage, disaster, destruction. I have travelled all around Eden-Monaro meeting with chambers of commerce in Jindabyne, Merimbula, Eden talking to business communities, attending community meetings in Tumbarumba and it has been a common disturbing theme out there that the measures meant to have been put in place to help particularly small businesses haven't been. Some of these chambers of commerce have actually surveyed their members. For example, in Jindabyne they said that 71 per cent of the businesses that had applied for assistance had completely failed and they were mystified by the process. When I was talking to the Narooma Chamber of Commerce members, they were telling me that, looking at the Austrade package of event support, there is this 11-page document they have found absolutely impossible to navigate. When we talk about to assistance allocated to councils, it works out to be around $30,000 per LGA. They estimated that to stage the Narooma Oyster Festival this season is going to cost $85,000 and no business which normally would support that activity can afford to engage in the sponsorship that they usually do. So we have to completely revisit the scale of this assistance to these councils. I think in the context of some of the other things we have been hearing in the last few days, what has made them particularly angry are things like the story about the $10 million North Sydney pool project, which used regional money. To hear someone from that area saying, 'Yes, but people from the regions sometimes visit and use the pool,' just underlined how ridiculous that situation is. I've seen the Bega District News reporting on the anger of the Mayor of Bega Valley Shire Council, Kristy McBain, who had to deal with those terrible fires at Tathra only a couple of years ago, which destroyed 65 homes, killed animals—no people thankfully—and killed off a lot of businesses. We've just seen On the Perch Bird Park fold at Tathra—the double whammy of the two seasons. Mayor McBain is absolutely livid. In the past she's asked for $5 million to help get them through the infrastructure and repair challenges that they faced, and they weren't granted that money, and then she saw $10 million of regional money go to a North Sydney pool. They've had situations where the disaster recovery money won't cover the loss of infrastructure, like dressing sheds and cemeteries and town halls. The whole scope of that program needs to be revisited. In relation to this North Sydney pool issue, the Bega member, Andrew Constance, who's a Liberal government minister, described it as disgusting. This has to be looked at. We have stolen regional money from shires who are really suffering from the damage of these bushfires, and they're watching this money being frittered away in places where it just should not be. To go back to the effect on small businesses, I mentioned in questions to the Prime Minister that the Longstocking Brewery would normally be employing 24 to 30 casual staff at this time of the season but is now only employing four. The message we're getting from these businesses all around—because they do mostly employ casual labour based on the seasonal nature of their enterprise—is that these people are leaving town in significant numbers. In a country town, if you lose your job, you have no other option. There are no other jobs to go to and you're forced to leave town, and that creates this vicious cycle: you start to lose numbers and families and kids and then you lose your schoolteachers and maybe then you end up losing your local police officer. So it's a terrible cycle, which we have to intervene now to short circuit. Of course the Longstocking Brewery is not the only example. I've had feedback, as per the other question I asked the Prime Minister, from the President of the Merimbula Chamber of Commerce, Nigel Ayling. There are 140 members of that chamber. Mr Ayling surveyed them, and 90 responders basically said they got no help from the assistance packages that are out there. He indicated that there are seven businesses that could close in Merimbula within the next 12 months and that there are a further 20 that are on the edge of closing if they don't get some help. He said: When it comes to government assistance, it's a big fat zero with 100 per cent of respondents saying they have received no government assistance at all. This is in the face of them losing 60 per cent of their annual turnover. When I met with the Jindabyne Chamber of Commerce they highlighted that 71 per cent of their members couldn't achieve success in their applications and they just didn't understand the process. It was just too hard. This is a message that's emerging all around the region. It underlines the fact that, instead of having these travelling buses moving around only occasionally, we need on the ground in each significant town a small business adviser and a Centrelink representative to help navigate people through these processes. It has to happen. I've had a lot of constituent feedback about how these buses have failed. Someone from Tilba, for example, indicated to me they weren't even aware the bus was coming and, by the time they heard about it, the bus had gone and wasn't coming back. So we need people on the ground for these next few months through to the next summer season at least to help people to navigate this stuff. And those advisers need to feed back to government how those processes need to be adjusted and improved and streamlined to facilitate getting money flowing now. I know that there is hesitancy in the government because of the political capital that was made during the global financial crisis about so-called cheques to dead people and that sort of thing, but that immediate cash in the hands of people during that crisis saved us from going into a recession. The estimates of the government agencies that were advising us to do it that way were that we were essentially going to have 200,000 people on the streets unemployed, and that didn't happen. This is the issue: that money needs to be landing in the streets right now. If it doesn't happen right now, it's going to be too late. I know there is caution around this and you want to put accountability mechanisms in place, but there is this double mechanism now of things going from the federal to the state government and buck-passing that's going on. Minister Barilaro is saying this is unacceptable. The buck-passing has got to stop and the buck has got to land on the ground for the people that really need this to happen. I would beg the government to take a good, hard look at how this is working. There are shamrock measures that are being taken, where we've got a shingle on the door saying 'Bushfire Recovery Agency' and then we find there is actually no agency, and then we find there is no appropriation for the $2 billion that we've heard has been allocated. It has got to start happening now. The government has got to get off the dime. If there are issues with the New South Wales government, sort them out. In my community, this is burning holes in the government. The fires have finished but there is one fire still burning—a fire of anger, and I am not exaggerating.
Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2019-2020, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2019-2020 | Bills | House debates
In talking about appropriations, I would like to talk tonight about the investment that the nation needs to make in certain aspects of our national security. Whether many Australians recognise it...
In talking about appropriations, I would like to talk tonight about the investment that the nation needs to make in certain aspects of our national security. Whether many Australians recognise it or not, our democracy is under threat, and it is a serious threat. It's not just the threat of armed invasion, which is a distant one at this point in time, or the ongoing threat of terrorism; it is a more insidious, incremental and corrosive process, and one that I think we must urgently address with capability and mandates for our agencies. I think most people would accept that the quality of democracy can be determined by the educational standards of our people, the diversity and efficacy of the sources of information we have, and the facility with which high standards of debate and discussion take place. Whilst serving here, we get a unique perspective on that. Certainly being the member for a region that's so diverse and large, and also being a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, observing the evolution of the means, control and content in the communication of information, have given me a particular perspective on this issue. The one thing I would say initially is that our education system plays an important role in this. It's never been more important, and I think there are areas that need to be addressed fairly urgently. One thing that I've noticed is an increasing lack of knowledge about the nature of our democratic system, how it works and the different levels of government. I think we do need a civics component in our school curriculum to address this level of ignorance. Along the way, though, our kids need to be armed with the ability to be discerning in the sources of information they rely on and to learn the importance of critical analysis and thinking. That would also help our economic strength, I believe, as the driver of innovation is disputation and contestability. One of my favourite quotes is from Albert Einstein, who once said: 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, simulating progress and giving birth to evolution.' The wellspring of imagination is questioning what you were told and testing the basis of it. That's a critical skill our kids need in order to navigate a world that's now brimming with disinformation and to win and create the jobs of the future. Knowledge is transforming so quickly and the ability to access it has been so revolutionised that an early learning priority has to be on these cognitive aspects as well as the fundamentals. Armed with those skills and forewarned to question and test, our people can take on the information threats that I am referring to. The first issue that limits our ability to contest these areas in these spaces is the structure of our mainstream media at the present time. Studies have shown that we have the fourth-highest concentration of media in the world, with two of the countries in front of us being China and Egypt, whose media is dominated by government ownership, so that's not a very desirable space to be in. No doubt many had hoped that news would be democratised by the rise of social media, and there was some reason for this hope. But what we have seen is that social media has become a vehicle for information warfare by state intelligence agencies, like the Russian GRU, or self-selecting cycles of networked misinformation. This has now reached industrial scale, fuelled by sophisticated and highly produced 'deep fake' materials. Anyone who wants to understand the extent of this, I recommend reading the US Senate intelligence committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. The three volumes of that report deal with their involvement and penetration of the integrity of the IT system and social media, and also the government reaction to the information that became available. In the US election case study, what we've seen emerge is the unholy alliance between Russia and front organisations like Cambridge Analytica. Information is out there about their links to Russian finance, through Alfa Bank; the fact that they were drawing on assistance—to design and employ algorithms and materials—from those Russian sources; and, through Facebook, using personal data that's been compromised. In fact, Cambridge Analytica had about 5,000 data points on every US voter during the election and was able to then target that with algorithms to develop psychographic pictures of those 'persuadables' that they needed to influence to create an electoral outcome. As well as that Russian finance and Russian intelligence involvement, we've seen Russian private companies, such as the Special Technology Center and the Internet Research Agency based in St Petersburg, allied to the bot factory that is based in St Petersburg—and also using Eastern European organised-crime fronts to prosecute this information warfare campaign. Even in our own 2019 election, it appears that there may have been some sources of this type of information coming from organised crime elements in Eastern Europe. In the US, one example was the Vets for Trump Facebook site, which in fact had been taken over by organised crime elements in Macedonia. Conservative politics in the UK, the US and Australia have been plugging into this through Cambridge Analytica, and obviously there's an advantage to be gained from that, but I would caution all political parties to be very careful about how they embrace these materials. Some of it, of course, is based on aggressively pursuing a line of operation—as in the case of the GRU, which seeks to disrupt and discredit liberal democracy in general—and using social media to help network and fuel extreme-right-wing groups, but also manipulating confrontations with other social groups. In the US, this included the Black Lives Matter group. During the 2019 Australian election, we saw an adapted version of these techniques using the Facebook vehicle to purvey sophisticated material misrepresenting Labor policy, claiming that Labor intended to introduce a death tax and would tax pensioners, as well as a lot of character assassination material on Bill Shorten. That technique had actually been pioneered by the GRU in operations in Estonia, Georgia and the Ukraine, and against Hillary Clinton in the US—but also against other Republican candidates who were opponents of Donald Trump. So those pioneered techniques have been deployed in many cases, and it's a cheap and easy thing for the Russian GRU to experiment with. And, as I say, they are quite determined in their line of operation to undermine liberal democracy. If people want to get a better appreciation for that, I recommend they have a look at a couple of documentaries which have been aired recently—one that's available on Netflix, called The Great Hack; and a very extensive documentary called Active Measures, which explains the whole history of how Russian intelligence operations have evolved in this space. A key difference in Australia was that, instead of the money trail leading to Russian oligarchs or organised crime, there was the unholy influence of the $80 million that was injected by Clive Palmer, which we've learnt more about since that time. We also need more explanations as to precisely why Clive Palmer's spending pattern changed during the campaign and his relationship to, perhaps, these social media activities. That certainly does need more explanation and looking into. Of course, the Russians are assiduously trying to influence the current US election process; that has been highlighted. But their techniques have been carefully studied by other nations, such as Iran, who are similarly inclined to interfere in Western elections. The temptation is there for both sides of politics to turn a blind eye to such interference and tactics if they advantage them, but we have to resist that temptation lest we become witting, deliberately, or unwitting tools of foreign intelligence services. We've devoted a great deal of attention through our Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—I've seen a lot of this—to legislation designed to defeat malign foreign influence, but we are letting our guard down on these techniques. During the current disaster season, we witnessed more examples of this, with the use of bots to promote the lie that the fires were all started by arsonists and that the scale of the fires was the result of failures to do hazard reduction because greenies stop these from happening. Eden-Monaro was the epicentre of these fires, and it all began for us with the North Black Range ignition on 26 November, caused by dry lightning strike—as were almost all the subsequent ignitions in our region. There were a lot of characteristics of that bot campaign that suggested that perhaps Russians were at work in that one as well, but certainly these bot techniques are something we have to come to grips with, whoever is the source of them. Australians used to take pride in our bulldust and bulldust artist radar and our ability to identify and dismiss ratbags. This has become more difficult with the compromise of our sources of information and the highly produced deepfake material we can see on our Facebook streams. I'm talking here about actual digital manipulation, enhancement and creation of video and other photographic materials. We need to develop new skills to test what we hear and see without falling into the trap of becoming overly apathetic and sceptical. Having fact-checking and publishing capability within the ABC with their partnership with RMIT is one of the good ways that we can achieve this, as it is providing a place where people can go and depend on what they see and hear there. Regularly checking out Media Watch is also pretty invaluable. Beyond that, I urge people to take everything they see in their social media feeds and even what they see in the mainstream media these days with a massive bucket of salt. Try to cross-reference things that have sparked a reaction for you. In my view, we also need to engage in urgent legal measures to enhance personal data protection laws. We saw in relation to the US election in 2016 the Cambridge Analytica team sitting in an office space with Facebook and supplying all of that personal data without the permission or knowledge of those people who own that data or who are the source of it. In a building in San Antonio they ran Operation Alamo to great effect, but it was deeply misleading and misinforming information that was produced and distributed through those means. So there is a great responsibility also on those social media companies to be more active and to be more vigilant in working with our democracies to defeat those serious threats to the quality and the nature of our democracies. So I think we have to look at more rigorous requirements on social media companies, with very robust penalties. I think serious electoral reform is also required to prevent the financial manipulation of our democracy by figures like Clive Palmer or any other source, foreign or domestic, that would deploy resources that just completely distort our processes. But I also come back to appropriations and think that our agencies need to be mandated and empowered to track and defeat more effectively the sources and techniques that we have seen that the GRU pioneered but which, as I said, other nations are looking at very closely. We need to enlist the support of the technology companies in that effort as well. And there are some significant tools that have been developed there within the Five Eyes context that will help us to interrogate big data. The big challenge of modern times is big data and how we need the skills of those who write algorithms and interrogate algorithms to be available to our nations to defeat these threats and take seriously the potential impact of them. Noting, of course, what the Russians were able to do in relation to compromising US election IT, we do need a lot of infrastructure security as well not just for industrial espionage but to make sure that we continue our vital work on cybersecurity posture, notwithstanding that we're less exposed than the US system. The first volume after that report I mentioned that was produced by the US Senate intelligence committee focused on what was done with their IT systems. In fact, the Russians had managed to penetrate all 50 states of the United States with the ability to alter individual voter data without, at the time, any federal or state authority being aware of it. This can show you the scale of the problem that we can face. So we need to know what is going on out there, and our agencies are struggling to keep up with some of the demands of the sorts of industrial espionage and the activities that are stealing personal data right across the world. We have just seen revelations in the US of how sources from China accessed over a billion data points relating to credit and health issues, which we know can potentially be used in all sorts of circumstances: in creating intelligence operations, in creating pressure on individuals and creating influence in our societies. So that is absolutely critical. I also assert that, within the Five Eyes context, we have to work together. There's a lot of opportunity now to work together to crack the nut on quantum computing in particular. That is really the Holy Grail in dealing with the big data challenge. I was privileged to visit the quantum computing labs at the University of New South Wales and Michelle Simmons's wonderful team there. We have to also make sure that her work is secure. We know that, for example, in China they are building a complete university devoted only to quantum computing research and they're bringing back all of their talent to focus on that effort because they understand how critical this will be to our future. We do need to invest in these things and take them seriously, because the truth is worth fighting for if we are to preserve our democracy. (Quorum formed)
Eden-Monaro Electorate: Australian Bushfires | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the president of the Merimbula Chamber of Commerce, Nigel Ayling, has said that this members have lost up to 60 per cent of their annual...
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the president of the Merimbula Chamber of Commerce, Nigel Ayling, has said that this members have lost up to 60 per cent of their annual turnover. He said: When it comes to government assistance, it’s a big fat zero with 100% of respondents saying they have received NO government assistance at all. Prime Minister, my bushfire affected businesses want to know: why have you left them behind?
Jewish Australian Internet Radio | Private Members' Business | House debates
I commend the member for bringing forward this motion and heartily endorse his call for ACMA to issue a community broadcasting licence to J-AIR. This is important from two perspectives that have...
I commend the member for bringing forward this motion and heartily endorse his call for ACMA to issue a community broadcasting licence to J-AIR. This is important from two perspectives that have been highlighted: the cultural and security aspects. I was just at the Queanbeyan Multicultural Festival yesterday in Queanbeyan Park, celebrating the incredible rich diversity of that community. We are supported in that by community broadcasting and the wonderful work done by many people—for example, the work that Cveta Taleski does for the Macedonian community. But, on top of that, of course, our community radio stations right across Eden-Monaro played a vital role in the disaster response in relation to what we have just been through. It was great to meet with Jon Bisset, the CEO of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, to reflect on that and what more support could be brought to community broadcasting. I want to commend the work of stations like Braidwood FM—Barbed Wireless, as they call it—and also Sounds of the Mountains over in Tumut, who did a fantastic job during all of that. Reflecting on J-AIR, in particular, we have, as part of the wonderful cultural landscape, the contribution that the Jewish community of Australia has made—and the rich diversity of what is broadcast on J-AIR is a wonderful, living, breathing example of all that that community has contributed to this country. When you talk about discussions and opinions, I know that there is a joke in the community that, if you get two members of the community together, you get three opinions. So you will get a lot of lively debate and discussion, and it is a wonderful, vibrant part of our democracy. Mention has been made of the security aspects and anti-Semitism. Alongside the member for Berowra and the member for Kooyong, I have experienced some of those vile attacks myself, as my wife and son are Jewish. It is a scourge. We have just heard in this last week comments from the Director-General of ASIO about the rising threat of extreme right-wing violence in this country. It is important to get on top of that, and radio stations like J-AIR will make a tremendous contribution to that. But we all have a role to play. It is broader than I think many people understand. The sort of vile traffic that has been appearing on our Facebook timelines—and plugged into veterans groups, as I am, I see some of that floating around—and targeting police and other groups more broadly—is expanding as a threat that is supported by foreign intelligence. We have seen revealed in the US Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the Russian interference in the 2016 US election—which is ongoing for this 2020 election—that one of their lines of operation is to discredit liberal democracies and to undermine the social cohesion in those democracies. And one of the ways to do that has been to network and promote these right-wing groups. There used to be a time when these extreme right-wing people used to just sit in their lounge rooms and scream at the television. Now, they are being networked, feeding on their own vile propaganda, and being spurred on by this material coming from organisations like the special technology centre and the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, supported and fuelled by the bot factories there and their Eastern European organised crime fronts. This stuff is vile deepfake material, manufactured, and it is having an effect in this country. We have seen the tragic circumstances of the attack over in New Zealand. We must get on top of this. We need the protection of personal data in that space, but we also need to ensure that social media companies are playing their part and accepting responsibility in limiting that terrible, vile stain on our nation and on the international community as a whole. I know that members will endorse that, but we need a much bigger effort on how we deal with this technologically, and I hope that we can answer that call and heed the warnings that have been made by the Director-General of ASIO. It is a question now of making sure our agencies have the mandate and the means to fight that rising right-wing threat. Also, in helping these community radio stations, it is important that we open up funding resources. I know the New South Wales Labor Party took a policy to the last election of providing a million dollars in support, plus opening up sponsorship and advertising possibilities. We also need to look at that in terms of what federal support can be brought to this. I know the federal Labor Party took a policy to the last election in relation to assisting the peak body, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, and we should have a look at that as well. I know that mainstream media is largely withdrawing from regional Australia. It is really those community radio stations that are filling that hole. So I salute this motion and the member for Goldstein for raising it. Let's get behind J-Air.
Eden-Monaro Electorate: Australian Bushfires | Constituency Statements | House debates
We have seen a bit of an easing of conditions across New South Wales lately, but I want to reassure this chamber, this building, that I intend to keep the feet to the fire, so to speak, on the...
We have seen a bit of an easing of conditions across New South Wales lately, but I want to reassure this chamber, this building, that I intend to keep the feet to the fire, so to speak, on the recovery effort that is proceeding now. We still have fire issues in Eden-Monaro. If you look on the Fires Near Me NSW app, you will see that unfortunately we still have problems which we will probably be dealing with through to May at this rate. We have a big job ahead of us for this recovery, and it will take several years. Last Thursday I was down at Bemboka at the Colombo Park site, where the Rapid Relief Team were coming in. Ron Arkcoll and his crew are doing a fantastic job of getting fighters coming over from Western Australia and out to our farmers in the area. I saw how that was putting a smile on the dial of our farmers, who really feel reassured that people care about their situation. Getting that fighter resource is an enormous help to them. At the same time they set up a barbecue on site where people could socialise and share their burdens. They're really performing a wonderful service to that community. A big shout-out to the Rapid Relief Team, Ron Arkcoll and the crew. It's really great to see them in the community and doing this sort of stuff across our landscape. Getting feedback and sitting down with the farmers there, it's clear they are not happy with the support packages so far. They are just not seeming to be able to navigate those processes, and none of them could tell me of any farmer who had had success in applying for anything so far. We really do have to have a good, close look at the process, and refine it and streamline it. On Saturday I was at Tumbafest over in Tumbarumba. This is the first activity the community has been able to mount post-bushfire. There was a good debate about whether or not it could even go ahead, but it did. It was wonderful to see the response of the community; we'd been calling for them to turn out to these events, and they did come out in numbers. I was wonderful to see. Kate Ceberano was there, and she was responding to the calls of the community to assist in donating money. It was a wonderful day, and wonderful to see the community being resilient, reviving and staging that activity. I have to say again that we need better support for the festivals in our region. The $30,000 that is being issued per local government area is simply not enough to support these festivals and activities, and we desperately need that to fill in the gaps between now and next summer. A good example is the Narooma Oyster Festival, which would only get a tiny portion of the $30,000 across the whole of the Eurobodalla Shire for its specific activity; they really need $85,000. So that money would best go direct to the Narooma Oyster Festival if we really wanted to make sure that money arrived quickly enough that those events could go ahead successfully.
Health Care | Statements by Members | House debates
Many members will know that in recent months I've had some health issues which relate to renal and kidney problems. I want to refer to that in this opportunity, because of the lessons I've...
Many members will know that in recent months I've had some health issues which relate to renal and kidney problems. I want to refer to that in this opportunity, because of the lessons I've learned out of it. Effectively my conditions were caused by my service in the ADF, particularly my deployments in Somalia, Timor and Iraq, where I suffered some severe episodes of dehydration and had no idea what sorts of long-term effects that would cause. I was very fortunate to be in the hands of a wonderful doctor who has performed a magnificent service for veterans in our community here in Canberra, Dr Hodo Haxhimolla, and we all really support him for his dedication to looking after veterans. He's also pioneered some wonderful methods of treatment in this space. The key lesson from that is obviously the issue of keeping on top of this dehydration issue. I would really recommend that ADF veterans get out there if they've had dehydration episodes on deployment or in training. They should get baseline tests and scans done to make sure that they're on top of this and get in early because I can definitely indicate that it's not fun when it actually blows up on you. I also wanted to draw the connection to the situation with fireys through this disaster season. With the effects of climate change meaning longer periods of firefighting and the intense heat from that, fireys are all at grave risk from those sorts of dehydration issues and the long-term effects they can have. I would also recommend that we put a lot of effort into making sure we are putting a good management regime around our fireys to ensure they stay hydrated. One of the big factors in that, of course, is that they are overstretched at the moment. I had one firey telling me during this crisis that, with his brigade, the previous record for their teams being in continuous rotation was four weeks. They've been out there now for eight weeks at a time and not only are they completely buggered but it's very hard to stay on top of how you personally look after yourself in those sorts of conditions. So we have to look at how we get better numbers out there to respond to these mega disasters. During this period, I've put out some ideas about how we might do that. I think, in the first instance, that's going to need to involve some sort of incentivisation regime that hopes to draw in more volunteers. If you look at it, not only do we not have the numbers out there but, when you go to all of the RFS stations—as I do to go to their presentation nights, and I've been pleased to be with Shane Fitzsimmons on those occasions—the demography of those stations is not great. Effectively you've got people who are in their 60s and even 70s. A lot of those people have to be backroom operators, so people who are on the front lines of the fires are really stretched at the moment, and they can't stay away from their businesses and farms for as long as we're requiring them to now. There's not only a very serious health issue here but also a management issue of how we deal with these crises going forward.
Medicare | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Minister for Regional Health, Regional Communications and Local Government. Minister, can you explain why the government has cut Medicare bulk-billing incentives in my...
My question is to the Minister for Regional Health, Regional Communications and Local Government. Minister, can you explain why the government has cut Medicare bulk-billing incentives in my bushfire-affected electorate, making it harder for doctors to bulk-bill children and pensioners?
Australian Bushfires | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister advise the House how many loans to businesses impacted by the fires nationwide have been approved?
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the Liberal member for Bega, Andrew Constance, reflecting my own experience in the region, has stated: At the forums I've been at over the...
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the Liberal member for Bega, Andrew Constance, reflecting my own experience in the region, has stated: At the forums I've been at over the past two nights, the plea for help from business is about protecting casual employees and the need for a cash injection now. People are reluctant to take out loans. On Monday the Prime Minister ridiculed Labor for standing up for businesses that don't want to take on more debt. Does the Prime Minister have the same response to the Liberal member for Bega?
Youth Insearch | Statements by Members | House debates
Congratulations on your elevation, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a privilege to rise in support of the Youth Insearch charity organisation, which is doing such wonderful work in relation to youth...
Congratulations on your elevation, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a privilege to rise in support of the Youth Insearch charity organisation, which is doing such wonderful work in relation to youth suicide. I'm very proud to have in the chamber with us my fearless leader on the prevention-of-suicide friendship group, the member for Berowra, who has done such wonderful work in this space. This is a very important campaign that Youth Insearch is mounting at the present time. Suicide is the leading cause of death amongst young Australians aged between 15 and 24. They're very keen to launch a campaign involving social media—obviously very effective when we're talking about this particular demographic—and they really want to get the message out that it is a serious threat, that we need to raise awareness of prevention. Through our committee, which we've been working on for a number of years now, we've tried to emphasise the solutions out there that deal with things at the coalface. In particular we've had presentations from people like Dr Duncan MacKinnon from Bega and his Teen Clinic concept, which is proving very successful, and obviously we need to look at expanding that. But at this time, noting the Closing the Gap issue today, in my region we're dealing with a lot of Aboriginal youth suicide as well, which has a particular focus for us. Also, with these disasters that we've been experiencing, there's going to need to be a lot of effort in our region on those sorts of issues. Well done, Youth Insearch; more strength to your elbow!
My question is to the Prime Minister. The Longstocking Brewery in Pambula, in my community, would be paying 24 to 30 casual shifts a week at this time of year. Because of the bushfires, they're...
My question is to the Prime Minister. The Longstocking Brewery in Pambula, in my community, would be paying 24 to 30 casual shifts a week at this time of year. Because of the bushfires, they're currently paying four. Loss of wages for casual and permanent staff is hurting my community. We're losing jobs. They're leaving the region, and the government, they tell me, is not providing any help. Why is that, after bushfire-affected businesses were promised immediate relief, they're still unable to access that help?
Australian Bushfires | Adjournment | House debates
While we are still in the midst of fighting these fires, we really need to aggressively address the recovery issues now, and so there are a number of ideas that I've been gleaning from the...
While we are still in the midst of fighting these fires, we really need to aggressively address the recovery issues now, and so there are a number of ideas that I've been gleaning from the community that I want to put forward in this first instalment, as a suggestion to the government. We've been seeing a lot of this relief stuff come through but unfortunately now it is taking business away from those small businesses that really need to be getting back up and running. I would like to suggest that people adopt a voucher approach or a ticket approach to support those businesses and encourage people to come to them to buy their goods. We had a situation in Cobargo, for example, where the co-op there that sells poly pipe was being asked to distribute it for free—they did it, but we need to now start supporting those small businesses locally by channelling things through them. A good suggestion is tax deduction for accommodation in fire-affected areas. This would be a great way of getting an immediate impact by encouraging people to come now to take the holidays that they need to, particularly over the winter season when there's going to be some new activities and festivals introduced to try to bridge the gap between the summer seasons. It would be good if we could extend BAS relief to those businesses until next summer, because they really need to bridge that gap, as I mentioned, and that would be very helpful. I'd just like to pass on to the government: walk away from the decentralisation policy. It doesn't create new jobs in the regions. It's stealing from one region to create a job in another. My region depends so much on the lifeblood of the travelling and driving holiday-makers from the Canberra, Queanbeyan, Yass and Murrumbateman area, and it really needs them right now. So please walk away from this decentralisation policy. On the assistance that the government could provide, it would be great if through the next few months it could step in to supplement—and replace in many cases—the sponsorship that local small businesses would normally provide to festivals like the Narooma Oyster Festival, which they just won't be able to do for a number of months. In that vein the government could also temporarily fund project managers over this period to help implement these new festivals and activities that are going to be needed to keep these small businesses alive, otherwise many will fold. We need to have small-business advisers and Centrelink people in the field now, in temporary shopfronts, in a number of locations right around our region. It doesn't have to be permanent but the biggest feedback I'm getting is just how tough it is to navigate online and other processes to access the assistance—it's just a nightmare. A small-business adviser or Centrelink person in those key locations in towns around the region is very important. I want to see us double the number of Indigenous rangers so we can get them involved in the cultural burning program and also get our Indigenous youth employed. There are a lot of infrastructure projects we could be looking to bring forward like the Brindabella road across to Tumut, the rail project to Eden, the caravan park at Tumbarumba, the Tumut airport, the Bobeyan Road, B-double access from the port of Eden up to the Monaro Highway and the wave attenuator at Eden. These are quick-fix projects which would be real value adds to the economy in general and very good investments and would get work happening right now. We need to restore funding to the Destination Southern NSW organisation. Its funding was cut and we really need marketing support now, so restoring that funding would be terrific. In particular, I want to focus on the Carbon Farming Initiative and the use of climate change as part of this recovery process. We can't resuscitate our timber industry unless we enhance the Carbon Farming Initiative to allow international trading, because investors aren't going to get involved when they have to wait 11 or 25 years for a return. The Australian Forest Products Association and the Softwoods Working Group all really want to see this happen. An international trading regime would attract investors so they could start earning money from replanting forests from day one because the forests would be a carbon sink. That would be the short term fix they really need right now. In addition to that, farmers can come on board by offering up sequestration options on their properties. Our plan was to create a timber co-op so that farmers could assign less productive or marginal parts of their property to timber plantation and, similarly, earn money from the sequestration opportunities that offers for, potentially, local investors, because there's a lot of money sloshing around in our managed funds—$3 trillion. A lot of that could be directed and focused on the sorts of climate change options that create the new economy. The fifth industrial revolution is going to be about decarbonising and new energy sources and new farming techniques. We can get started on that right now. So I really urge the government to at least carve out the Carbon Farming Initiative as part of that effort.
Morrison Government | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
I withdraw. The bottom line is that there is a challenge out there right now to make sure that the right information is out there, and not to pile on the garbage we've heard about arson attacks....
I withdraw. The bottom line is that there is a challenge out there right now to make sure that the right information is out there, and not to pile on the garbage we've heard about arson attacks. The fire that started in Eden-Monaro on 26 November, at the North Black Range, was started by dry lightning, and the firestorms that are generated in these megadisasters create their own thunderstorms and further dry lightning, which light further fires. It is not arson attacks and it is not hazard reduction that have created this megadisaster. Hazard reduction has a role to play. It's issues like that that the Prime Minister needs to take a lead on in making sure that the right information is out there. I've been greatly disappointed by what we've seen in the regional joint infrastructure program rorts. I had to write to the Audit Office to get that looked into and their report was scathing. Of course, that's been followed up now by the community sports rorts report from the Audit Office, and added to that is what we've seen in the council drought assistance program. For a long time now I've been saying just look up the New South Wales DPI map on the website. Most of Eden-Monaro is in severe drought. And now I can't get Yass Valley, I can't get Queanbeyan, I can't get Palerang and I can't get Eurobodalla that assistance which they richly deserve. Why not? Why are we ignoring the standards that New South Wales DPI has set? It has to be the basis of this political decision-making that we've seen in these other programs. What I'm deeply disappointed about, going to the fire response situation, is it seems to have been treated as a marketing exercise and not a disaster response. I can't imagine the John Curtin cabinet in 1941 when Pearl Harbour was attacked saying, 'Quick, grab Russel Howcroft.' This is a situation where you had fireys and experts out there wanting to talk to the Prime Minister and being stiff-armed. We needed to talk to the experts. We needed an earlier fire response. We needed the Prime Minister, the defence minister and the emergency minister of New South Wales. We needed them here. I've known since I first came into this parliament in 2007 that in Eden-Monaro I can't leave the borders during the disaster season. I never go on leave during that period. We needed the Prime Minister to be on deck and he responded too slowly. We also saw a disgraceful politicisation of the ADF in using that political video. You don't have to listen to us. You don't have to take our word for it. The Australia Defence Association—not exactly a hotbed of communism—said: … milking ADF support to civil agencies fighting bushfires is a clear breach of the (reciprocal) non-partisanship convention applying to both the ADF & Ministers/MPs. This was clearly for party political advantage. Of course we've had the reference to the manhandling, effectively, of Zoey Salucci-McDermott. She refused her consent to shake hands. The Prime Minister grabbed her arm and shook her hand, and then to compound that he turned his back and walked away. I know all the members in this House deal with tough moments with their constituents and you have to stand there and cop it. You have to stand there and listen. I was just shocked that he turned his back on her and walked away. That's going to be the emblem. I make these points because the Prime Minister can either have the rest of his time categorised, classified and defined by those images in this disaster or he can change the narrative. He can show the leadership we need on issues like climate change. He can get out there and recast himself and respond to my request to reach out across this chamber, or he will forever be captured by those photographs, forever be condemned for his attitude and for the leadership that he didn't show. I'd just ask him to look across the seas to Jacinda Ardern, who during this very week that he exercised this failure was passing bipartisan legislation setting zero carbon emissions targets for 2050— (Time expired)
It's the job of the opposition to hold the government to account; that's what this democracy is all about. There is no more important issue to keep accountable than the issue of leadership,...
It's the job of the opposition to hold the government to account; that's what this democracy is all about. There is no more important issue to keep accountable than the issue of leadership, particularly the role of the Prime Minister. Obviously the Prime Minister has control over the fates of the Australian Defence Force, for example—men and women whom we expect to spend months and years, over the course of a career, away from their families—and so it was particularly shocking when we saw the way that this disaster season has been handled in that respect. The position of the Prime Minister is to set moral standards, to set the technical leadership that the country needs. All of us in this place are elected to challenge the bullshit artists and the ratbags out there who misguide, mislead and misinform the public, particularly in this day and age when all the forms of social media make that such a difficult challenge.
Rural and Regional Health Services | Adjournment | House debates
It was great this morning to be part of an event really drawing attention to World Suicide Prevention Day in conjunction with my good friend and colleague the member for Berowra. The Prime...
It was great this morning to be part of an event really drawing attention to World Suicide Prevention Day in conjunction with my good friend and colleague the member for Berowra. The Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and also the shadow minister for health were in attendance. We talked a lot about the issues that related to suicide, and highlighting the dynamics, particularly in rural and regional areas, was a particular focus for us. I'd like to take this opportunity to make a call to arms for a similar bipartisan approach to deal with the general issues of rural and regional health. There is a crisis going on in rural and regional areas, and we need to get a full-court press on both sides of this place directed at the effort of solving it. I had the opportunity to meet with the National Rural Health Alliance this week. They have produced good materials focusing on this issue. I'll give a couple of quick examples. Rural people are 47 per cent more likely to have diabetes, 50 per cent more likely to have cancer and 20 per cent more likely to have kidney disease. That is just a sample of the sorts of health issues we're confronting. I think a lot of this was brought home last night to anybody who watched the Four Corners report on the crisis in rural and regional health. One of the case studies they highlighted related to an incident that occurred in Bega hospital, which is in the electorate of Eden-Monaro. The program was a series of case studies; it didn't step back and look at some of the systemic issues we're facing. I could offer so many more case studies from my region that are even more tragic. Examples include the recent inquest into the death of young Naomi Williams. Naomi was a proud 27-year-old Wiradjuri woman from Tumut who was 22 weeks pregnant with a son when she died of septicaemia at Tumut Hospital in January 2016. Ms Williams had presented 20 times to Tumut Hospital, and her condition was not adequately dealt with. In the findings that were handed down in a packed courtroom in the Tumut local court on 29 July, the coroner, Harriet Grahame, said there were clear and ongoing inadequacies in the care that Ms Williams received and that she felt unheard by her doctors and staff. It was an enormous tragedy, which the community is still trying to come to grips with. Another example is that of an 18-year-old boy in Tumut who committed suicide. It was a tragic situation. When we were in government, under our health and hospital funding agreement, we put $50 million into Wagga base hospital, which allowed wonderful new pathology facilities to be established there. The only problem is that there is no pathologist, so the body of this young boy had to be taken to Newcastle for procedures to be conducted, adding weeks to the trauma and stress for his family. I recently had contact with a young mother in Queanbeyan who has a daughter who suffers severely from high-level autism. Her daughter is 13 years of age and has other issues presenting around her, as well. There is no facility within our region, the vast region of Eden-Monaro, to deal with that situation. There are two beds in the ACT to deal with kids in this situation, both of which were filled. Goulburn, the only health facility within reach of anybody in my region, is full of adults in difficult circumstances. Her daughter had to be held in the emergency ward at Queanbeyan hospital. She was finally moved to Goulburn temporarily, but the door of her room had to be locked because she was in amongst a group of adults. It took that girl's mother, who's a mother of three and a working woman, reaching out to politicians of all stripes to get something done. Finally, her child went to Randwick in Sydney. She lives in Queanbeyan. This is an enormous stress for people in our region. We have an accommodation crisis for patients from New South Wales who come to the ACT for medical treatment. I'm getting reports from constituents who say that the family accommodation in the ACT has now been closed. This is a terrible situation that I have been hearing in all the town hall meetings I did during the last break between sittings. We need the New South Wales government to sit down with the ACT and resolve that accommodation situation immediately. It's causing great distress. I've written to the Minister for Health to get the situation in Tumut addressed in terms of a health workforce, which is playing out around the region. In the short term, we need the Tumut area to be designated as a declaration priority area so that incentives can be used to get a medical workforce into the Tumut area. We need to get back to a health and hospital agreement in this nation that addresses this crisis, and we need to do it urgently. You want jobs in the regions? Get that health workforce issue addressed. There are 44,000 jobs out there, 25 per cent of them are health workforce jobs.
Forestry | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise this morning to talk about the importance of the plantation sector in the timber industry of this country and particularly how important Eden-Monaro is to that whole equation. The decline...
I rise this morning to talk about the importance of the plantation sector in the timber industry of this country and particularly how important Eden-Monaro is to that whole equation. The decline in the plantation industry in Australia is a dramatic issue that we need to get on top of economically as quickly as possible. It also has the sidebar synergistic aspect of contributing to our climate change efforts. I'm very proud to have worked with the Softwoods Working Group, particularly over in the South West Slopes area of my electorate—the Tumut-Tumbarumba area—and also the southern high country areas around Bombala and Delegate that play such an important role in relation to this issue. The thing is that we need policy to promote the growth and redress this decline in the plantation industry. I was proud during the election campaign that we made a commitment to actually put money into the timber hub concept for our area. There were announcements of timber hubs made by the government, but this was not supported by funding for the hub that was identified for our region. We made that commitment, and I'm pleased to see that that forced the coalition to end up matching that commitment during the campaign. That's important. One of the concepts we were pursuing with that was the idea of forming timber co-ops, with our farmers banding together to assign more marginal parts of their properties to dedicate to plantation resource and set up brokers to facilitate that. Beyond that, what we need is a more enhanced approach to the Carbon Farming Initiative. Without that ability to engage in the international trade around carbon farming, we will not get the investment that we desperately need flowing into the plantation sector. This will help managed funds and other funds to really get behind that, because this enhanced Carbon Farming Initiative will allow investors to get returns on plantations from day one, not at the 15-, 25- or 35-year mark, as is normally the case, which is why it's so hard to attract investment. So I urge the government to really revisit the Carbon Farming Initiative in that respect. I was pleased to sit down with John Barilaro, the member for Monaro and Deputy Premier of New South Wales, and he's very keen to also see that happen and pursue these issues. I got John to meet with Peter Crowe from the Softwoods Working Group on the South West Slopes to understand all the dimensions that are impeding this industry over there. So I'm pleased that John did that. Good on him. He's always been a good bloke for me to work with. But we really need the federal government now to step up and address not only this issue of the Carbon Farming Initiative deficiencies but also removal of the water rule. I don't have time to go into the detail of what that involves, but the water rule is a major impediment to further plantation development. The federal government really needs to look at removing that water rule. I urge our Minister for Agriculture to sit down and talk with Peter Crowe and find out what needs to happen to make this industry work.
Pensions and Benefits | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. I refer to the minister's previous answer. Can the minister then explain why 79-year-old widowed pensioner Norm Austwick from Mogareeka in...
My question is to the Minister for Government Services. I refer to the minister's previous answer. Can the minister then explain why 79-year-old widowed pensioner Norm Austwick from Mogareeka in my electorate was sent a Centrelink robo-debt letter this month claiming a debt from 21 years ago?
Krilich, Mr Max, OAM | Statements by Members | House debates
Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2019; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
Solomon Electorate: Cadets | Private Members' Business | House debates
I commend the member for Canning on raising this motion in tribute to the 26,000-odd cadets in Australia. It is a subject close to my heart. When we were in government I had responsibility for...
I commend the member for Canning on raising this motion in tribute to the 26,000-odd cadets in Australia. It is a subject close to my heart. When we were in government I had responsibility for the cadets in my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support. Unfortunately, we had some tragic circumstances during that time with the death of a young cadet, Nathan Francis, and the circumstances around that and what was revealed did highlight a number of issues and deficiencies around administrative aspects through Comcare inquiries and whatnot. It was an opportunity to go back and do bit of a root-and-branch assessment of what we wanted out of the cadets and what the cadets should be. I was very proud to have been able to institute in August 2008 an overarching inquiry into the cadets, headed up by an outstanding former officer of the Australian army, Lieutenant General Frank Hickling, who I had been fortunate enough to work with while I was in the Army. He did a tremendous job in doing that review. They took over 200 submissions from community organisations and produced that report on 24 November 2008. It was a very useful submission indeed. One of the things we were looking at, of course, was not only these technical issues around command and control, legal liability and accountability but also what should have been the overall purpose of this organisation. Is it just a vehicle for training people to move into the ADF or is it a personal development mechanism? I think the answer to that in the examination that took place highlighted that we should be focusing on the development of these kids in particular and that it's a wonderful opportunity to do that. We had about 27 different reviews and studies of cadets in the lead-up to this review by General Hickling, and they had all gathered dust on the shelves. Nothing had ever been done about them. So I was pleased to say that we collaborated with the coalition in 2011 to produce an amendment to the defence legislation to address some of those issues and to follow through on what General Hickling had done. In particular, there was an anomaly in the way that cadets were being managed in that the CDF actually had no ultimate command responsibility for the cadets. It was obviously a legacy thing that hadn't been picked up in the overall reform of the joint organisation of the ADF that had taken place in other areas. That was all about accountability and command and control, and an amendment that was produced in 2011 addressed that. Apart from making sure that that would happen from a practical point of view, we then moved forward to connect the cadets with the reserve command structure as well. That was quite appropriate because, as you'll find, nationally a lot of these cadet units are attached to or associated with reserve units, which helps to embed them within the community, often supported by RSLs and the like. So there is a wonderful synergy there in relation to their involvement with the community, and the support, as members have flagged, that they provide to commemorative events and the like is important. It's important for them to learn our history and our values and what those before them have stood up to defend. So that serves that purpose, but more to my thinking is the positive benefit we get out of teaching these kids that, yes, the nation should provide you with certain things, but you all owe something back to the nation. This is a way of encouraging that mindset. I think we still greatly need that and ways of revisiting that concept today. It also teaches them the concepts of leadership and teamwork, which are so important across several aspects of life—all aspects of life, in reality. It was also a wonderful mechanism for introducing kids to the concept of an ADF career. We have certainly had an amazing success rate of translating cadets into defence careers. In 2011, about 57 per cent of officers in the Air Force had come through the air cadets. That's an important contribution that it has also made. I would hope we can work on that model. The Young Endeavour program is another example of these sorts of activities. But I really do think we need a broader scheme. When we look at the issues we're having around the nation on disengagement of youth, apathy, youth suicide and these issues, we need to look at these kinds of frameworks and make them more ubiquitous and more national. We need to give our kids the opportunity to self-discipline themselves, make the most of themselves, look outside themselves and see how they can contribute to the broader society. I salute the cadet movement and those who have children in their care and as mentors doing a great job.