The fact of the matter is that under the Labor government, on 1 July this hardworking cohort of Australians are going to get good news. Thank goodness Labor changed the tax policy to make sure that disability workers and many other workers under $150,000 are going to get fair dinkum tax cuts! A disability support worker on about $75,000 a year is going to get $1,500 more back in their tax next year. An occupational therapist on $110,000 will get north of $2,000 extra because of Labor's tax cuts. When you look at how disability workers are faring under Labor, it's a successful trifecta. There are the tax cuts on 1 July, wages under Labor have moved 11.2 per cent for disability carers and, as an added bonus, the superannuation is going up. Disability workers are getting overdue recognition only under a Labor government for the hard work they do.
The member for Adelaide also asked what creates a more sustainable NDIS. Disability care workers deserve a more sustainable NDIS so they can have good careers in the future. One of the big challenges to a more sustainable NDIS is fraud. The Albanese Labor government has been taking real action to clamp down on fraud in the NDIS. Over the last year the crime taskforce that Labor established in late 2022 has been looking at the operation of plan managers in the NDIS. Unfortunately, whilst there are 1,500 plan managers, too many do not have the best interests of participants at heart. Some are very good—there's no question. But plan managers handle $22 billion of payment and they charge half a billion dollars for it. The problem is that once the NDIA and the taskforce forward to the tax office the records of the at-risk cohort of about 900 plan managers, 343 came back from the taskforce with problems. There were no records, they're not paying and they're not declaring their income. The Labor government is determined to make sure that we can keep this scheme sustainable.
]]>The award wage for a disability support worker level 2, which is one of the most common occupation categories, is 35 bucks an hour. Thank goodness Labor got elected in 2022. They've had about an 11.2 per cent movement in that award wage. They earn about $63,000 a year. Because of Labor's bigger, better, fairer tax cuts, they're going to get $1,292 extra in the next year.
If you're a disability support worker level 4, which earns you about $44 an hour, you're going to get approximately $2,000 in lower taxes. We're seeing that, for the disability sector, the vast, vast majority are very lucky that Labor has developed the tax cut plan that we have. The other group, who I haven't mentioned so far, are allied health professionals. Many of the allied health professionals, especially in their early years, don't earn much more than $120,000 a year if they're lucky, but an occupational therapist who might have been working for several years in the NDIS will get over $3,000 in tax cuts. This is all very good news, but this is on top of the changes we're making to the NDIS generally.
I do acknowledge that the opposition is making the right noises about working with us to improve the performance of the NDIS. We look forward to bringing forward the first tranche of the legislation in the autumn session. Our aim for the NDIS is to make sure that it's here to stay for future generations, that it is true to purpose and that every dollar gets through to the people for whom it was designed. We want to make the NDIS a more humane experience. We want to make it an experience which is less bureaucratic. We certainly want to evict the shonks from the industry. The NDIS was created to look after Australians with the most severe and permanent disabilities. What we will do by ensuring that it's true to purpose is, for the first time, to help start building out what we call foundational services, working with my colleague the Minister for Families and Social Services. The Prime Minister and the premiers had a real breakthrough where we got state governments to step up with us to provide services outside the NDIS. But one thing is for sure: if you're a disability support worker in Australia, the Labor tax cuts are the best way to go, and we thank you very much for your work for the disabled.
]]>She came to the job with a wealth of experience, both personal and professional. She believed in public service in its purest form. She was equal parts consummate professional and humanitarian. Her distinguished previous career as a solicitor, barrister and senior public defender meant that Peta came face to face with what she termed to be the 'corrosive effect' that intergenerational disadvantage can have on people, families and communities. She identified a deep need within her own community, where people struggle with mental illness, addiction, homelessness and family violence and breakdown. Peta understood that her skills could be put to good use in public life. She was motivated to make the move from law to politics by the understanding that Australians wanted to see people in parliament who could understand and would champion the needs of the people that they served. She believed in power for purpose.
I first got to meet Peta in her first foray into the world of Australian politics, as the candidate for Dunkley, in the 2016 federal election, when I was leader. I remember during that campaign that then Attorney-General George Brandis—at his performative, Brandis-esqe best—demanded the immediate disendorsement of the Labor candidate for Dunkley, over views that she'd expressed some seven years earlier, in the course of her being a lawyer, and had since rejected, as the national security climate changed. After discussion with Peta, we were able to politely point out to Senator Brandis that he may wish to look in his own backyard: the former member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, had criticised Senator Brandis's own antiterrorism laws not seven years before but actually a year earlier.
I was privileged to have Peta as a candidate in 2016; I backed her 100 per cent. We weren't going to fall for Senator Brandis's, or any other coalition minister's, disingenuous distraction tactics. She wasn't successful on that occasion, but in 2019, after being elected, her first speech to the House challenged us all here to do better, reminding us that we're not just participants in, but custodians of, the parliament and that, if we get so caught up with winning the daily argument at all costs and we stop listening and striving to understand what others are saying in this cauldron of national conversation, we are not only diminished in the eyes of the Australian people but diminished in our capacity to tackle the difficult challenges. They weren't empty words.
Peta's time in parliament was characterised by respect for the parliamentary process, an unmatched work ethic and unswerving dedication to her constituents. I got to see the connection she had with the people of Dunkley on the campaign trail and at NDIS forums that I attended with their local member. There was care and mutual trust between Peta and those that she represented. She genuinely wanted to make a difference in their lives, and they knew it.
She said she drew inspiration from the Hawke and Keating governments, which she grew up under, whose core business was, as Peta put it, not only enlarging opportunities for those without power or resources but enlarging the national imagination. She was the walking embodiment of Labor values. She felt a natural affinity with Louisa Dunkley, the feminist and trade unionist after whom the seat is named. She was proud to be part of the Labor family that had taken real action to address gender inequity and was prepared to take on challenges such as preserving our egalitarian society and protecting our environment.
Peta was one of those people who probably didn't realise how much she was loved by those around her, because she was so self-deprecating, humble, funny and smart. She loved sport, particularly squash. She represented New South Wales, the ACT and Victoria at junior and senior levels and won gold medals at the Australian masters, the US masters and the world masters games. But, gee, she loved her family and friends—especially her most constructive critic, most loyal supporter and greatest friend, her husband, Rod.
To those of us who worked with Peta, she was a light. She was warm and caring; she was a colleague and a friend. She said in a recent interview that she had the opportunity, as an MP, to be part of some big stuff and would do everything she could for as long as she could. True to her word—and I know every member of the House can remember—she was here less than a week ago. She was clearly unwell. She gave some of her much-needed energy to others by travelling to Canberra to advocate a national registry of metastatic cancer patients. She refused to be defined by her illness. Rather, she decided to put it to good use, saying her breast cancer establishes an authority on the subject, and, when she spoke about it, there was no space for people not to listen to her.
The fact was it didn't matter what the subject was; when Peta Murphy spoke, we all listened. We listened because her words came from her heart—a heart brimming with authenticity, compassion, courage, strength, wisdom, truth and integrity. It is a rare combination of attributes, and we are all conscious and keenly aware of what we've lost.
Peta, in her trademark humble style, said the people of Dunkley had bestowed upon her the awesome privilege of sitting alongside her colleagues and serving the Australian people. The fact is, Peta, the privilege was ours. The loss is, clearly, most keenly felt by Rod and her parents and her sisters and her family. But I'm grateful to all of my colleagues who are speaking in this motion about Peta Murphy, because one group of people who have lost, with Peta passing, are those who haven't had a chance to meet her, and I hope that these words of the members of parliament who have served with her can at least provide some sliver or fraction of insight into what a remarkable human being and parliamentarian Peta Murphy was.
]]>But today I particularly want to talk about the 30,000-or-so staff who work at Services Australia. Many were traumatised by having to follow and implement the morally bankrupt suggestions of their senior leadership and the previous coalition ministers. The Labor government says no more—never again—to robodebt. But what's important is that Services Australia staff feel that they are backed up on the front line, which they are by this government.
I want to acknowledge two Services Australia officers who exemplify the typical frontline worker. The first is Sean Donohoe, a member of my community. In the last couple of weeks, Sean has retired after 31 years of service to people who used to come through the office of the old DSS in Glenroy and at Broadmeadows Centrelink. For the last 10 years, Sean's focus has been working with and helping refugees and asylum seekers. He played an important role in establishing the national Refugee Servicing Network team earlier this year. For Sean, this is not just a job but also a vocation, a deliberate decision to be a true servant of the public.
Sean was and is a priceless asset. He generously mentored junior staff to ensure customers reaped the benefits of his experience and wisdom. What a great legacy, Sean; congratulations. I thank him for three decades of service, and I wish him and Natalie well in their next chapter.
A division having been called in the House of Representatives—
Proceedings suspended from 09 : 35 to 1 0 : 02
I'd also like to acknowledge another senior Services Australia frontline leader, Kim Henderson. Kim was the service centre manager at the Newmarket Service Centre for the best part of 21 years. She's worked at Medicare Services Australia, and she has built an exceptional team down there at Flemington near where I live and where my office is. She's been fantastic for my electorate office to deal with. I saw Kim in action last year at the Maribyrnong River floods. She and her Services Australia team worked tirelessly to help community members in their desperate need of support. Indeed, after the dreadful stabbing of respected team leader Joeanne Cassar at Airport West earlier this year, Kim helped pull together the response, and helped a lot of shocked and traumatised staff regroup to continue their services to everyday Australians. I want to express my gratitude to Kim for all of the work she's done, and I look forward to her contribution at the National Disability Insurance Agency going forward.
In summary, Services Australia staff work not only with their intellect and physical labour but also with their emotions. This is a tiring and thankless task. A lot of vulnerable people, who are doing it hard, walk through the doors of Centrelink and Services Australia offices, and they take their cues from how these staff are feeling and how the staff are responding. It can be very tiring working with your emotional, physical and intellectual energy every day, but that's what Services Australia staff do. Today I've just given but two of the stories, of Sean Donohoe and Kim Henderson. I want to thank all of the frontline staff of Services Australia, because you do a fantastic job and you extend human rights to all Australians.
]]>Two words summarise Labor's approach to the coalition's robodebt scandal: 'never again'. Never again should this be allowed to happen. Yesterday I said how the Albanese government is putting an extra 3,000 frontline support staff on to help tackle waiting issues at Centrelink and Services Australia. Today I can update the House that we're also learning another lesson from robodebt: we've established an advisory board to Services Australia for the MyGov and Services Australia rollout. This advisory board will be the place where ideas are tested before they head out into the world. It will be composed of ethicists, human rights experts, advocates and digital thinkers, and chaired by a very constructive, positive Liberal—I'll say that again: a constructive, positive Liberal—Victor Dominello. I thank Victor for stepping up to deliver better government services with this government.
The advisory board shows that Labor understands—we get the lessons of robodebt. One catastrophic failure of robodebt was that the previous coalition government couldn't be bothered to listen to anyone outside the bubble of self-serving managing-upwards senior public servants over highly-paid PwC consultants. Another was putting in disinterested, forgetful and negligent ministers. The coalition never liked to hear from those they couldn't control or bully.
But I've been asked about alternative approaches. I regret to say that the member for Dickson shows no insight or interest in learning the lessons of robodebt. Yesterday afternoon after question time he channelled his best sense of Stuart Robert outrage. Actually, I take that back—that's too harsh. It was more the member for Cook's outrage that he was the victim! The member for Dickson said that he was the victim of the political attacks on robodebt. But he went further. I'd overlooked a press conference on 8 July where he said:
… when the problems were brought to the attention of the government at the time, the program was stopped.
He said, on 8 July, that when the coalition learned there were problems they stopped it. But today's editorial—in the Australian, no less—says that the coalition government was informed at the end of 2016 of the problems. They were saturated in coverage. But this forgetful, evasive Leader of the Opposition has nothing positive to say. He wants credit for closing it when, in fact, he was there every time they expanded the scheme.
]]>We can say, 'Never again,' but Australians can't have robojustice until the opposition join us in a full-throated apology. To be fair, some in the opposition have shown courage. The member for Menzies said:
As someone who's a Liberal and believes in the sanctity of the individual, due process and the presumption of innocence, it offended all of those. It was illiberal, it reversed the onus and it hurt people.
The member for Flinders said:
… it is now apparent that the expanded compliance system … now known as robodebt, is one of the poorest chapters in Australia's public policy history and one that sits at the feet of the coalition in its time of government.
Senator Paterson said it was 'incredibly regrettable'. He said:
It should not have happened …
He also said:
We have to learn these lessons. It was a government that I was a member of, and I really regret that it happened.
But, so far, the Leader of the Opposition has not taken the high road, as some of his colleagues have. Rather, last August he took the low road and accused the royal commission of morphing into a 'witch hunt'. The victims of robodebt have noticed the deafening silence and the truculent refusal of a full-throated of apology by the Leader of the Opposition. You cannot have justice for Australians and the promise that never again will it occur when the potential alternative government doesn't own the problem. You cannot have justice for the victims unless there is a guarantee that it won't be repeated again and that the lessons have been learnt. However, the Leader of the Opposition, so far, has given no sign of fully owning the disaster which was robodebt.
We all know the difference between a standard politician's apology—'If you are offended, I'm sorry'—and a real one. So it's time, Member for Dickson, for a real apology today in the parliament—right here, right now. Copy your courageous backbenchers, own the sins of the coalition and stop airbrushing history.
]]>Joeanne is a senior and much-loved team leader at Airport West. She was stabbed in the back by a customer as she was filling in for a security guard at the lunchbreak so he could have his lunch. Joanne will live with a permanent injury forever. She has made a recovery, but nonetheless has sustained permanent impairment. The toll this terrible event has taken on Joeanne, her family, her colleagues and the customers who witnessed the attack is immeasurable.
When I visited the staff at Airport West the day after the assault, I listened to them and I promised I would do whatever I could to help them—and, indeed, all of the people who work in Services Australia and, indeed, all of the people who use their services—to be safe. That day I immediately asked the former chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Mr Graham Ashton, to use an experienced police officer's eye to review the adequacy of the safety of Service Australia's staff and users.
To put some perspective into Mr Ashton's task, Services Australia has 318 service centres across Australia, with approximately 6,000 staff providing face-to-face support to Australians. During the financial year 2022-2023, Services Australia had 10 million face-to-face interactions at their service centres. In the same period, there were almost 9,000 face-to-face customer aggression incidents.
Mr Ashton visited service centres across New South Wales and Victoria, including Airport West, and engaged directly with hundreds of staff in developing his findings. I asked Mr Ashton to make sure that the voices of the frontline Services Australia workers were heard and that the level of staff engagement undertaken was an integral feature of this review.
Services Australia staff do all they can to support Australians in their time of need and they rightly deserve respect in return. Not only in the day-to-day business of overseeing payments through Centrelink but through emergencies like fire, floods or the pandemic, Services Australia staff have been there. What we know is that a very small cohort of people who act aggressively or violently are in no way representative of the millions of Australians who come to Services Australia every year.
Services Australia has a range of ways it provides additional support to people in need. The agency has more than 650 highly skilled social workers who provide support and connect people to additional services in their local area. These social workers also play an important role in reducing customer aggression by providing tailored support to the most vulnerable customers.
The agency also has a number of community partnership specialist officers who connect people with payments and services in a place they already go for support from frontline homelessness organisations. A CPSO co-located service is preventing the need for vulnerable customers to attend service centres, and I think it also has a benefit in reducing incidences of customer aggression. Mr Ashton has noted that our social workers and CPSOs play a valued and important role in providing a wraparound service for vulnerable customers. I thank Graham Ashton for carrying out his task with professionalism and compassion and at a pace that reflected the urgency of this matter. I thank every Services Australia staff member who contributed their insights into the review.
Last Friday, on 13 October, I returned to Services Australia's Airport West service office to announce the Albanese government's response to the Ashton review. I'm pleased to advise that the Albanese government will act on all 44 of Mr Ashton's recommendations. As a result we have committed more than $40 million to strengthening security at the service centres in the agency. Importantly, the government will also prioritise stronger legislation to combat violence and aggression against Public Sector workers who deliver services to Australians. The changes we propose and will introduce into parliament in the autumn session will extend to public servants who deliver services in Commonwealth agencies, not just limited to Services Australia but agencies such as the National Disability Insurance Agency, the ATO, agriculture inspectors and departments like Home Affairs.
What happened at Airport West and has been an issue at other service centres around the country in that on this day there was only one security guard on duty. At some point that one guard needed to take a break. Joeanne was attacked under these circumstances when she was triaging customers as they entered the service centre. The reforms will include an extra 278 trained security staff at key offices, taking the total number to 513. Further, we will examine laws that deter and punish violence and aggression against all Commonwealth Public Sector workers who deliver services to Australians, and this will include a Commonwealth workplace protection order scheme.
There is currently a loophole whereby in most jurisdictions an individual who works at Services Australia and who is the victim of aggression or violence has to take out an apprehended violence order against the perpetrator in their own name, so the individual worker has to pursue the application. This is obviously a retraumatising experience for the victim, not to mention the unfair administrative burden it places on them. This work would scope reforms that would allow the agency to take out the intervention order in relation to the workplace. It means that individual workers should not need to seek an order and the whole workplace is protected from further violence. It means that if someone has felt threatened personally they do not personally need to take the intervention order against the perpetrator, who might be hanging around in the car park or displaying provocative behaviour. This would mean the agency, the employer, will have the power to represent the worker who is essentially only under threat because of the job they do. Frontline staff will receive additional training and there will be upgrades to customer systems, including kiosks and appointments. We'll enhance the design of service centres to improve staff safety whilst maintaining the welcoming customer environment.
I acknowledge the agency has been working hard over the past year to modernise face-to-face services with these contemporary designs. I acknowledge that more than 100 of the service centres have already been transformed, and that program will also continue, enhanced by Mr Ashton's recommendations. The people who work at Services Australia, in my experience, are fundamentally committed to working with everyday Australians to help them access government services. The people who work at the coalface are there when Australians need them. These are the people we need to look after so they can look after us. Just like nurses and firefighters and teachers and retail workers, no-one should go to work and have to experience aggression and violence. The Albanese government is putting our words of support for the Commonwealth Public Service into action, and I appreciate the support of the opposition.
]]>Eight hours to sleep
Eight bob a day
A fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
They're the words from the anthem of the eight-hour movement, which fought for reduced hours for workers as far back as the second half of the 19th century.
In the 1850s, the striking stonemasons in Melbourne ignited protests across the colony of Victoria and the other Australian colonies over unreasonable hours. They put three main arguments for an eight-hour day. The first: Australia's harsh climate demanded reduced hours. The second: labourers needed time to develop their social and moral condition through education. The third: workers would be better parents, partners and citizens if they were allowed adequate leisure time. Perspiration, aspiration and inspiration—the catalyst for the first laws to protect working people across the world.
With the advent of the eight-hour day, Australia became one of the most progressive labour environments in the world, a new frontier for a new world. Upon fair labour conditions, we established the foundations for a robust middle class. We've done so time and time again with laws that give people a fair go at work: workers' compensation, annual leave, shorter hours, equal pay for women, compulsory superannuation and Medicare which didn't need to be funded out of employers' pockets. But we're losing that edge. The great Australian dream of a large, successful middle class is diminishing into the bleaker reality of a two-speed society of haves and have-nots. Time and time again across the history of this country successive conservative governments have persistently chipped away at the fair go at work. Successive coalition governments did something that was inherently unfair: thwarting wages growth. They even admitted during the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years that it was a deliberate design feature of their economic management. Well, no more.
Productive workplace relations are built on the values of a fair go for all. Coincidentally, these are Labor values too. The Albanese Labor government doesn't believe it is fair that the lowest paid Australians should bear the brunt of the current global economic circumstances. We were elected on a promise to get wages moving. Our next set of workplace relations reform to parliament, the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, builds on the secure jobs, better pay bill that passed both houses of parliament last year. It will close loopholes that allow some, a minority of opportunistic businesses, to undermine job security and fair pay in Australian workplaces.
The loopholes bill has four elements. Much of this policy is not news. I should know; I took it to two federal elections in 2016 and 2019. The first element is to crack down on the labour hire loophole that's used to undercut pay and conditions. Labour hire has legitimate uses. It can provide much-needed surge and specialist workforces, and that will continue to be the case. But some companies bring in a labour hire workforce that is paid less in order to deliberately undercut existing fair rates of pay which have been negotiated in good faith.
The second element of the bill is criminalising wage theft. If an employee steals from the till, it's a criminal offence—fair enough. Stealing is a crime. But why is it not a crime when an employer intentionally steals money from a worker? We want to close that loophole and legislate to criminalise wage theft. To be clear, these laws will only apply to intentional cases of wage theft. Quite often, underpayments are not intentional. Our award system is complex. They can be just an honest mistake. The Fair Work Ombudsman will assist in educating employers on their responsibilities. There are pathways available for employers who self-report and take reasonable steps to repay the correct amount. We are not after the honest mistake. We're looking to stop deliberate, greedy, unethical behaviour.
The third element of the bill is aimed at preventing the exploitation of casuals. There are currently people who work permanent, regular hours just like permanent employees but don't get the benefits of job security. They are stuck classified as casuals. Just as there is a gender pay gap, there is a gender security gap. Women make up the majority of casual workers in Australia. Women make up the majority of workers who have been casual for more than two years. Women make up the majority of underemployed casuals. Women make up the majority of people holding multiple jobs. Women will be the major beneficiaries of the fairer workplace that the closing loopholes bill will create. People in insecure work just don't have the same certainty about their hours or their income. Yes, some people choose that lifestyle, but let's not pretend that we live in some sort of conservative utopia where every casual doesn't want to be permanent. That's not true. The bills that pile up on the kitchen table—the rent, the electricity, the internet, the phone, the insurance, the rego—keep coming even if your pay doesn't. We will legislate a fair, objective definition to determine when an employee can be classified as casual so that casual workers with regular work arrangements can get greater access to leave entitlements and more financial security—if that is what they want. We know that many casuals don't seek to take this up, particularly those who don't have the pressure of paying for the family's households expenses, but 40 per cent of casuals over the age of 35 are more likely to want a secure job. Let me be clear: no-one will be forced to convert from casual to permanent. This bill will give people choice.
The fourth and final element of the bill is to make sure that gig workers don't get ripped off. We know there is a direct link between low rates of pay and safety in place for the gig economy. We cannot deal with the safety issues until we have minimum rates and minimum standards. The government simply wants to legislate minimum standards of pay and safety. As Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I'm particularly interested in the proposed changes which will go to the responsibility to maintain minimum standards for disability care and support workers. Adhering to minimum standards not only builds a quality workforce and secure workforces but ultimately delivers higher quality, safer services for people with disability. I hear daily from participants and their families about the need for high-quality services, but participants and families should not have to choose between flexibility on the one hand and quality on the other. Many who choose this type of work value its flexibility. There's no intention of turning gig workers into employees, but just because someone chooses gig work shouldn't mean they end up being paid less than they would as an employee. We don't want to get to the destination other countries have, where workers rely on tips to make ends meet and we subsist on a two-class working system in this country.
There's been extensive consultation on the design of these measures. Business groups, unions and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations led two processes where some 160 organisations made more than 220 written submissions. The government's asked for feedback, and the minister's listened. Australians who need support and a fair go right now are not executives wondering if their bonus will be $2 million or $3 million this year. It's the people who wonder if their pay packet will cover their bills this week. The closing loopholes bill will put an estimated $9 billion into the pockets of workers who are currently being underpaid. This $9 billion represents less than one-tenth of one per cent of the national wages budget. It is a small percentage because most businesses do the right thing. They don't use the loopholes as a business model. For those workers being significantly underpaid, getting a fair day's pay for a fair day's work will be life changing.
To clarify, the money in additional wages does not come at a cost to the economy. None of this money comes to the government; it will go back to local communities. Low-paid workers tend to spend every dollar they get, which generates economic activity in the high streets of Australia's suburbs and towns. If we don't pass this bill, we will cement in a section of the workforce as a permanent underclass in Australia without any minimum standards—a whole section of Australian workers at the mercy of businesses who use loopholes to intentionally underpay them. That section of the workforce is made up of Australians who are just trying to make ends meet, meaning they're forced to keep working multiple jobs and to take risks with their safety to make that extra delivery. These are people who feel powerless to speak up because they know there's always someone else prepared to take lower pay in a race to the bottom. It's bad for Australians. It's bad for Australian businesses paying fair wages. Why should an Australian business be undercut by another business using an unethical business model?
Here is a dose of reality to those who sit in this place and think things can't be that bad for Australians being paid less than their worth. Have you ever had to swallow your pride and ask for an extension on the due date of a power bill? Have you had to go to the Catholic school and say, 'I can't pay the school fees for my kids this month'? Have you ever had to disappoint your children because you don't have that extra money for them to be able to take the camping trip with the school? Have you ever had to call upon the generosity of family and friends to mind your kids just because you cannot afford a babysitter or child care? Have you ever had to think about whether or not this is a pay week or counted down the days in a fortnight to that period of time when you get paid? If this is news to you then speak to someone who has. They're the Australians the Albanese Labor government is focused on with the closing loopholes bill.
Make no mistake: a loophole is not innocuous or trivial. My curiosity about the term 'loophole' led to me to understand why it has negative connotations. It comes from describing the narrow slits in the castle walls of medieval Europe through which projectiles can be launched at enemies without fear of similar objects making their way back through the slits. It was considered an unfair advantage unless you owned the castle. Some businesses in Australia are using loopholes in the law to exploit their unfair advantage and unethical approach to business, safe in the knowledge that the workers have no way of fighting back—well, no more. The Labor government has a way to stand up for people who don't have a voice. It's called the closing loopholes bill. Its goal is to ensure that good, hardworking Australians who do a fair day's work will earn a fair day's pay.
Finally, I want to address the falsity that somehow paying a low-paid worker a few more cents an hour and giving them some minimum rights so that they avoid being exploited will somehow trigger inflation. The reality is that this country has been experiencing supply-side causes of inflation, be it insufficient investment in energy, supply chain challenges overseas or the criminal and illegal war in Ukraine. But we have also seen some of the big food corporations, like Woolies and Coles, who've used the fog of supply-side inflation to camouflage rent-seeking behaviour. We're legislating for those people who shop in their shops. The strange thing is I hear the opposition always complain about a wage rise for a worker but never about the 'greedflation' of big corporations burdening the lives of all Australians. It perhaps make you realise where some people's priorities are.
]]>First of all, demand is up. There's no question about that. Between last financial year and the year before, the number of people seeking a childcare subsidy increased by 36 per cent; the number of Commonwealth seniors seeking a health card increased by 85 per cent; indeed, after the COVID debts, which were paused, they were then un-paused; and, also, the more generous treatment under this government of paid parental leave and childcare subsidy has led to more benefits. But it's not just on the demand side. It's also true that between 2017 and 2020 the number of people working in Services Australia was reduced by the then government by 3½ thousand people, and they commissioned IT projects which have significantly failed.
Let's have a thought for the people working at Services Australia. Let's think about the people who actually work on the front line here. Yesterday they answered 227,000 phone calls. Last year they answered 55 million phone calls. There are 5,000 people today working on answering phones. There are 6½ thousand people working in the service centres. Last year they saw 10 million people. There are 3,000 people processing payments. Right now, every day, there are 270 people just processing parental leave claims. There were 1.1 billion online transactions with Services Australia last year, and there were half a billion customer interactions. Last year Services Australia paid out $1.4 billion promptly to 1.2 million people who had suffered from natural disasters. Also, I just remind people here that Services Australia staff experienced 9,000 abusive incidents of which 1,200 were most serious.
What we've been doing is having the robodebt royal commission and rebuilding the culture of Services Australia. We've committed—
]]>Maple is a for-profit unregistered NDIS provider platform. It charges 17 per cent on every dollar transacted, 10 per cent from the worker and 7.95 per cent from the disabled person. Recently Maple has made some regrettable, arguably paranoid, comments to some NDIS participants about the new IR reforms. For me, the judgement about these reforms in terms of the NDIS starts with the principle that NDIS participants have a right to quality services and to safe services. Therefore, the industrial relations issues concerning people on these care work platforms are important. We need a fit-for-purpose industrial relations system to help the NDIS focus on participants receiving safe and high-quality services.
In addition, disability workers should have quality careers, secure work, basic standards, and they should not be underpaid. However, in evidence given to the disability royal commission, in March this year, Dr Fiona Macdonald, of RMIT, said that there are concerns that the care work platforms are controlling labour, setting prices, disciplining workers while avoiding the risks and costs and responsibility of employment. The proposed changes go to the responsibility to maintain minimum standards for disability workers. Adhering to minimum standards builds quality workforces and secure workforces and ultimately delivers higher quality, safer services for people with disability.
I hear daily from participants and their families about the need for high-quality services. But participants and families shouldn't have to choose between flexibility on one hand and quality on the other. The NDIS is driven by the principle of people being able to choose the service which best suits them. In a competitive market, service providers who deliver quality and flexible services will be absolutely attractive to NDIS participants.
The IR legislation reforms do not change any of the above. There is a place in the NDIS market for digital platforms, and, in some cases, Australians with disability find them convenient. The IR reforms are not changing the form of engagement or the technology; they're just providing guardrails to protect workers. For me, this is ultimately a debate about the safety of participants. So, I say to Maple: loopholes are not a business model in the NDIS. Intermediaries between providers and participants shouldn't be able to cherrypick the bits of the law they like and the bits they don't like.
]]>Of course, in the royal commission, the former coalition cabinet ministers' defence was essentially one of 'no-one told us'. But why did coalition ministers need to be told that some Australians are vulnerable? You can hear the 'woe is me' cries of the former coalition cabinet ministers asking, 'How can we be expected to understand what's happening to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens?' The former coalition ministers expect us to accept their threadbare response that they were just following the orders of their Public Service. They have to accept this—they don't read the newspapers, they don't go online, they don't talk to people in the street and they don't hear from the people complaining. It's interesting to note that in 2021 the entire Dutch government resigned after it was found that they had been instituting claims against 20,000 families in Holland which were based on a fraudulent proposition.
Before question time, the member for Deakin gave a speech which is destined for the liner of the kitty litter tray of history when he complained that our focus on robodebt is all politics. Let me explain to the opposition on my behalf and on behalf of Labor. Robodebt is political, but not in the way that's insinuated by those opposite. For Labor, for the Albanese government, for me, it is political when you bully the poor, when you pick on the vulnerable, when you demonise them, when you trash their reputations in the paper. That is political. It's political when you divide this country into those on welfare and those not on welfare. It is political when you seek to divide the country and say that some people are lesser than other people. I say to the coalition: this issue will never cease for you until you get up and accept what you did wrong, which was bully the poor in this country.
]]>What we've seen in response to the initiating resolution, which says that we accept the findings about the ministers, that we think that we should apologise and that we as a parliament also believe we should commit to making sure this never happens again, is the opposition's own amendment. They're entitled to do this, self-evidently. But I want to go to the core of their arguments criticising this resolution. It goes to whether or not the lessons of robodebt have been learned by the parliament.
The member for Bradfield is very punctilious with his words, so I listened to some of them. Essentially, his proposition was that the Public Service came the coalition government with this proposal. But what that glosses over—quite deliberately, in a calculated fashion—is the coalition government were interested in whether or not they could track down what they thought was a mountain of welfare fraud. This was deeply in the DNA of the previous coalition government, this sense of unfairness, that somehow people on welfare were getting something they weren't entitled to. They created this straw man, that somehow there is a lot of money being siphoned out of the welfare system by welfare recipients. They thought that they could turbocharge welfare compliance, drop out human oversight and reverse the onus of proof and that this would lead to rivers of gold for their budgets.
The royal commission exposes the fact that there wasn't an amount of gold there. This is like that explorer, in the 1930s, in Australia, Lasseter who went looking for an imaginary vein of gold but it never existed. The problem is, all Lasseter did was harm himself—he disappeared—but this was not a consequence-free proposition by the government. What they did, in their rush to have a war on the poor and demonise people on welfare as second class, is take away their rights. They reversed the onus of proof. It is truly ironic that the member for Cook bleats about how he feels that his onus of proof has been reversed onto him now that the royal commission has listened to him and formed a view. I just wish that he and his colleagues had shown some of the empathy they feel for themselves for everyone else.
Essentially, once the coalition triggered this runaway train of illegality, saying, 'Well, it's just the public servants', the member for Bradfield then glosses over 4½ years and says, 'We stopped it when we saw it was wrong'—it was as if they were never told. It was as if the AAT never existed. It was as if there weren't 19,000 internal appeals, 4½ thousand external appeals and at least 500 cases identified by the royal commission, where decisions are made on the use of income averaging. It's as if Pricewaterhouse never gave them a report, which they paid a million dollars for. It's as if Clayton Utz never gave them a legal opinion in 2018, telling them of the severe problems with the legality.
What we have is a coalition and opposition who haven't learned the first lesson of losing an election—you've got to show some contribution to the voters. Not on everything; you don't have to abandon your legacy. But sometimes, when a nation changes government, the party that was in government and is now in opposition needs to reflect on ways that they can demonstrate they hear some of the lessons. Those opposite are masters of using a word and pivoting off the word to create a totally different meaning. The member for Cook said that he regrets the 'unintended consequences'. What a minimisation that must be. What a sense of cold comfort that must be for the victims. Your harm was an unintended consequence. If you're just one person, you might say, 'Oh, okay.' But it wasn't just one person who had unintended consequences; there were tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. They were coming into coalition backbenchers' doors, too.
These masters of language also then seek to demonise the royal commission. They say it's not their fault. What is the point? What is the point of being a coalition cabinet minister if, every time the Public Service tells you to do something, you say, 'Thanks, where's my limo; where's my lunch?' That is not the job. The job of a cabinet minister is to interrogate the proposals. The coalition's defence is, essentially, 'We are glove puppets of the Public Service.' But then they move on to say, 'When it was wrong, we stopped it.' That's just an outrageous lie, and I'm calling it out as a lie. There were so many warnings on this—it's ridiculous. Then they say they stopped it. It's a bit like a pyromaniac setting fire to the bush and then, when the fire brigade puts it out, saying, 'Well, without me, it couldn't have been put out.' The point is that Deanna Amato and Madeleine Masterton—remember those names—showed more commitment to putting down this scheme than the coalition and the Victorian legal aid commission combined.
As for the member for Deakin's contribution, what a dishonest farrago of words. He couldn't even mention robodebt once. He's just beamed it out. But I also noticed the assault on the royal commission itself. I have to stand up for the royal commissioner.
The member for Deakin, bagging people for being politicians. Well, it takes one to know one, my friend. He says, 'Handpicked.' Well, yes, a government appoints a royal commissioner, but handpicked—it's the insinuation that we're all friends. That is not right. The royal commissioner has seen it all in the witness box. That's why she didn't believe the member for Cook. But then they get into what I think is the most shameless and incorrigible attack. The Greens made a contribution, but, as usual, they spent more time attacking us than attacking the Liberals, so I'll treat that sniper fire with the amount of time it deserves. We get to the attack by the coalition saying: 'It's just politics; it's political. Oh, the member for Maribyrnong, he's political.' Yeah, you got me; I'm a politician. I want to confirm one thing. My word, it's political, and my word, it's personal, but not in the way those refugees from the last cabinet of the coalition government would insinuate. It's personal and it's political to Labor, because you hurt a lot of people. For years we sat in opposition while you tucked your very important thumbs behind the very important lapels of your jacket, and you said, 'We believe in the rule of law.' Well, actually, you didn't! You hold yourself out in this cloak of sanctimonious conservatism—'We are the party of the law!' It's in the conservative DNA to be the party of the law and respect the law—but you didn't! When you say you believe in the rule of law, the klaxon goes off: wrong! If you believed in the rule of law, you would have checked if the scheme were legal. If you believed in the rule of law, Mr Morrison, when he saw in his first submission—
The member for Cook. Good point. I will call him the member for Cook. The member for Cook got a submission saying, 'You're going to need to change the law.' Then, in that marvellous, magical world that he lives in, of invisibility, the next submission says, 'No legal change required.' The member for Cook's far too smart to question his luck. He just goes on. 'Fantastic! That obstacle magicked away!'
If you believed in the rule of law, you would have listened to the AAT. If you believed in the rule of law, you would have paid attention to being a model litigant. The model litigant requirements of the Commonwealth say that, when you've got a series of decisions, you better report it to someone. In no fewer than 424 cases identified by the royal commission, these former 'masters of the rule of law' just never noticed. When you get a bad decision, and a series of bad decisions, and a conga line of bad decisions, you are obliged to either appeal the decision, because you think it's wrong, or change your policy. But you took the cowardly way, of ignoring it. There is no satisfactory answer to that in the minds of the Australian people.
It is personal to us when you demonise people on welfare and don't give them the same legal rights; when you ignore all the warnings; when you gaslight the victims; when you attack the advocates; when you use the power of your office to look up personal files to attack the critics in the media; when you take the pay as a cabinet minister; when you lecture year upon year, 'We're going to get these people,' and then it's wrong; and when you gaslight the royal commission, 'Yes, we are the messengers, and you can shoot us all you like.' If I were being really partisan, I would hope that you keep doing exactly what you're doing, because, at the moment, the way the coalition's handling this royal commission—with a few notable exceptions—means you've learnt nothing and you'll repeat the same mistakes again.
]]>That this House:
(1) accepts the findings of the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme regarding the former ministers involved in the design and implementation of the scheme;
(2) expresses its deep regret and apologises to the victims of the unlawful robodebt scheme, and to front-line Centrelink staff; and
(3) commits to ensuring this cruel, unlawful chapter in the history of Australian public administration is never repeated.
The reason why I'm moving this resolution and the government is supporting it is that we believe that the nation and the parliament cannot move on without accepting a genuine account of what went wrong.
It was Justice Murphy of the Federal Court in the resolution of the class action who described robodebt as a shameful chapter in the social security laws of Australia and a massive failure in public administration. The royal commissioner, Catherine Holmes, said, 'It's remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect the welfare recipients by ministers and public servants on a quest for savings.' She also said, importantly:
Where I have made findings against individuals that were liable to cause real damage to reputation … I have not reached those conclusions without a high degree of satisfaction about the evidence.
I'll come back to that point in this resolution.
The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme was established on 25 August 2022. The final report was delivered on 7 July 2023. There were 46 days of public hearings and more than 100 witnesses. I also state importantly at the outset that the commission applied rules of procedural fairness. Individuals liable to be affected by a finding were given a fair and impartial hearing before any such decision was made—indeed, they got legal aid support. In her conclusion, Commissioner Holmes said the royal commission illustrated what:
… can go wrong through venality, incompetence and cowardice.
I thank the royal commission for doing their duty.
First, I want to talk about some of the victims' stories in robodebt. There was one lady who chose to be anonymous. She was a refugee and not literate in English. When she got the debt notices, she hid her own children, afraid that the authorities would come for them. There was Anjuli, pregnant and living in a refuge after escaping domestic violence. She was working three jobs to keep afloat. She was told she had a debt and, even though she had reported her income correctly, it got garnished. At the grocery store, she had to leave groceries at the till because, when she went to pay using her own money on her card, the money had already been taken out of her account. Maddy received an $8,000 debt while studying at uni. She was so overwhelmed that she actually attempted to take her own life.
There was another young single mum who said: 'I cried myself to sleep for two weeks thinking about where my daughter would go if I went to jail. I contacted her father for financial help. He then applied for shared custody of the daughter. To say robodebt ruined my life is a complete understatement.' Kathleen Madgwick told how her only child, Jarrad, took his own life after receiving a robodebt notice. Jennifer Miller gave a profoundly moving account of her son Rhys's experience of the scheme before he took his own life in 2017. Ms Miller said she went to her son's apartment in Melbourne and found debt letters hanging on the fridge along with a drawing of a person shooting a gun in their mouth, with dollar signs coming out of the back of their head. For the record, his debts were later reduced to zero. I say sorry to the victims, and we want the parliament to say sorry to the victims.
I say sorry to the frontline staff, and we want the parliament to say sorry to them. The staff at Services Australia were victims too. Their concerns were dismissed. They were given code of conduct violations for trying to speak up. They had to console robodebt victims contemplating taking their own lives. I got an email the other day from a grateful Services Australia worker thanking the government for the royal commission. She wrote: 'It was a really distressing time to work in the Public Service then. I felt embarrassed and ashamed about where I worked. It also went against my values, the reasons I was working there. When I questioned senior management, I was made to feel like a second-class citizen.' There was Colleen Taylor, who actually stood up to the then departmental secretary, Kathryn Campbell, saying:
… as a Compliance unit, we should not be the ones stealing from our customers.
At the royal commission she said:
There were so many people complicit in it that I think we all have to hang our heads in shame for what was being done to people … it was just horrific.
I'm also sorry to the advocates. You were underfunded, but you fought tirelessly on behalf of the most vulnerable. I include Genevieve Bolton, Katherine Boyle and Catherine Eagle. They told the coalition what was going on. I include the Not My Debt campaign and ACOSS. They warned the coalition government over 4½ years that the averaging process was wrong, that the automated process was unreliable and that it was wrong to have victims chasing up former employers for info. Victims had to borrow money to pay debts. There were domestic violence victims and homeless getting debts. I also acknowledge many backbenchers, including Senator Rachel Siewert from the Greens, many Labor people and some coalition backbenchers, who spoke up at the time.
I acknowledge the economic costs that the royal commission has identified. These economic supermen of the coalition made us believe there was a $4.7 billion mountain of gold which had been stolen, effectively, by the others, those on welfare. There was not a $4.7 billion mountain of gold. It did not exist; it was fool's gold. Instead, the Federal Court found that the coalition, using robodebt, unlawfully raised $1.8 billion of debt against no less than 434,000 Australians. The robodebt scheme was budgeted to save $4.7 billion for taxpayers. In the end, it has cost a billion dollars, not counting the money refunded. What a shocking waste of money in pursuit of a war on the poor.
There were warnings ignored, and this really does go to the heart of lessons of robodebt. As one wit said on Twitter, 'There were more red flags than a May Day parade.' But the coalition government repeatedly ignored warnings. This is a very important point. If you create an unlawful scheme and you, for whatever reason, miss that it's unlawful, that is inexcusable. What is even more inexcusable perhaps is when you are warned by tens of thousands of internal reviews, thousands of AAT matters and hundreds of AAT decisions. When you are warned by legal academics or when you are warned by the parliament—parliamentary committees, the crossbench, Labor—it shouldn't take Madeleine Masterton, a student, Deanna Amato and the Victorian Legal Aid Commission to stop robodebt. They're the people who actually stopped robodebt, and the class action was the final nail in the coffin of robodebt. It shouldn't have taken whistleblowers from within the service.
The royal commission also made findings about ministers. For the record, coalition ministers—the best and brightest of a generation of coalition politicians, they would say!—said this on 140 occasions, after which I stopped counting: 'I don't recall. I don't remember.' There's a new collective noun for amnesia: it's called a coalition cabinet! There was Mr Morrison. I did say earlier that the royal commission had to be satisfied to a high level. This is not just someone in a press conference judging the Prime Minister; this is a former chief justice of the Queensland Supreme Court. The royal commission found that Scott Morrison misled the cabinet and failed his ministerial responsibility, and it rejected part of his evidence as untrue. It says:
Mr Morrison allowed Cabinet to be misled because he did not make that obvious inquiry. He took the proposal to Cabinet without necessary information … He failed to meet his ministerial responsibility to ensure that Cabinet was properly informed about what the proposal actually entailed …
That is not what any self-respecting member of parliament, much less someone who has held the great office of the Prime Minister of Australia, would want said about them, but it has been said. It has been put. Mr Morrison had the chance to make an accounting of what he said, and he just failed to convince an impartial inquisitor of the royal commission.
There was poor old Senator Marise Payne. The royal commission said about her evidence:
This series of disparate and unsatisfactory answers would have the makings of a child's nursery rhyme if it were not so serious.
No more needs to be said. On the former Minister for Human Services, Mr Alan Tudge, the commission said that he abused his power:
… Mr Tudge knew that at least two people had died by suicide, and that their family members had identified the impact of the Scheme as a factor in their deaths. Nonetheless, Mr Tudge failed to undertake a comprehensive review into the Scheme …
… … …
It was all the more reprehensible in view of the power imbalance between the minister and the cohort of people upon whom it would reasonably be expected to have the most impact …
On Christian Porter, the former Minister for Social Services, the commission found:
Mr Porter could not rationally have been satisfied of the legality of the Scheme …
The member for Fadden, who extended the doctrine of cabinet solidarity, giving permission to lie to the public about 'facts' that you know are untrue, rejected that as errant rubbish.
Then there was Michael Keenan, the Minster for Human Services, who I actually think came off less bad than some of the others, but Professor Carney, who was an eminent AAT member and, for the best part of 40 years, a professor of law, gave five decisions in 2017. He said, 'This is unlawful.' When it was picked up and put in the media and when our own Linda Burney raised this very point in 2017-2018, the minister dismissed Professor Carney with that trademark coalition arrogance. He just said 'What does the opinion of a former member of the AAT matter?' What arrogance. When you become a cabinet minister, it doesn't make you smarter than everyone else. You don't get a uniform that makes you better. They ignored this advice.
Given what's been said about the victims, the cost and the ministers, what's been the response of the opposition since the royal commission? Well, Mr Morrison said he doesn't agree with it. He dismissed the real harm it caused as 'unintended consequences'. The dangerous minimalism of dismissing the consequences to nearly half a million people and breaking the law for 4½ years is 'unintended consequences'. Then we had the Leader of the Opposition. I think he was a little ambiguous. He said the member for Cook gave a very strong defence, but the point about it is he just says he put a very strong case. We are still in the dark about whether not the member for Dickson actually agrees with the member for Cook or just thinks he's doing a strong job defending himself. Time will tell. We had the member for Bradfield create a new, creative scheme and proposition that public servants would be innovative and creative. This is jeopardised by the royal commission.
But I must say that not all coalition members have reacted with the same sense of denialism and lack of repentance. I acknowledge the words of Senator Dean Smith on the Q&A show. He gave straight one-word answers: 'Yes. It was wrong.' I don't mean to embarrass him, and his own words speak for him, but the member for Menzies, earlier in the week in the Federation Chamber, I think wrote the blueprint for how the coalition should handle the issue. I hope me quoting him is not the kiss of death for his career, because he does deserve a career. If you listen to the member for Menzies, you might just have a chance one day of getting back into government, because his words were very good. He described the scheme as 'illiberal, unfair and incompetent' and he went to the issue of how an opposition can't regain the confidence of the people unless it looks inwards at what mistakes it made. I commend people to go look at those words.
This resolution is not about Labor versus Liberal, it's about those who think that robodebt was illegal—unlawful, a shame, a stain, a war on the poor—and those who are so emotionally bound up in defending their term in government that they just can't hear anything else, and that is a challenge.
In conclusion, we commend this resolution, and we commend this resolution because the narcissism of robodebt needs to be replaced by the ethos of servant leadership in government. Ceasing the scheme after 4½ years is not enough. The royal commission is not enough. What Australians want to hear from the political class, the people privileged to represent them, is a promise that it was wrong—not just unintended, not just a chilling effect on the creatives in the Public Service, not just a strong defence by the member for Cook. The people of Australia deserve better than the coalition's response. This was a breach of trust. The Liberal Party once stood for the rights of the individual in terms of the state, but, in a Frankenstein-like reversal of roles, they actually stood in the last government for the rights of the state against the individual. True conservatives believe in the rule of law, and the previous government was a government of lawbreakers. It is time to apologise to the victims, time to apologise to the staff, time to show real repentance for the illegality of your actions.
]]>One procurement reviewed as part of the Watt review was a massive multimillion-dollar contract awarded to software giant Infosys. That was to upgrade the welfare payment software. It was called the Entitlement Calculation Engine. What has also emerged is that Infosys, who got this big contract, had a commercial relationship with Synergy 360. The ECE procurement was meant to transform the way welfare services were delivered in this country, and Infosys and its subsidiaries had been paid $126 million do this, but, after multiple delays and problems, Infosys never delivered what they promised. Services Australia has made a decision to stop throwing good money after bad and it's written off the former Liberal government's project at a total cost of $191 million to the taxpayer.
But today, in the SMH and Age, there are reports that Stuart Robert regally met with Infosys beginning in September 2018, when he was Assistant Treasurer, and then as a recycled cabinet minister after 2019. Furthermore, in documents tendered to Mr Hill's committee, the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, by Infosys, it's revealed that on no fewer than 11 occasions Mr Robert met with Infosys with no probity adviser or APS representative in attendance. At at least six of these meetings, miraculously, Synergy 360 was in attendance. We know from Infosys testimony at a public hearing that Infosys, who got $126 million from the former coalition government, paid Synergy 360 $16 million. Of course, the other thing that we've learnt here is that, somewhat decently of Synergy 360, in 2017 they gave Mr Robert's chief fundraiser in Queensland, Mr Margerison, whereabouts unknown, a free 20 per cent share of the lobbying company.
So this is where we're at now. Mr Robert's left the building. Mr Margerison's left the country. There's been $191 million of taxpayers' money splashed up against the proverbial wall. Now the question for the opposition and the Leader of the Opposition is: what steps have you taken to satisfy yourself as to the probity of Mr Robert's contact? Have you asked the Queensland LNP where Mr Margerison is, and is he still an LNP member? Will you repudiate Mr Robert's conduct? (Time expired)
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