Linda Reynolds's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
type: channel
language: en-gb
creator: OpenAustralia.org, mprss.php script
date: 2025-09-15T23:05:12+00:00
items: Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | Senate debates
items: National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
items: Ukraine | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
items: Albanese Government | Matters of Public Importance | Senate debates
items: Answers to Questions | Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers | Senate debates
items: Department of Defence | Documents | Senate debates
items: Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
items: Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2); Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
items: Dental Health | Questions without Notice | Senate debates
items: Australian Parliamentary Delegation to 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly | Delegation Reports | Senate debates

Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | Senate debates
type: item
description: Thank you for everything you've done for me.
encoded: Thank you for everything you've done for me.
date: 2025-03-26T20:50:00+00:00

Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | Senate debates
type: item
description: Harry Truman!
encoded: Harry Truman!
date: 2025-03-26T20:12:00+00:00

Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | Senate debates
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description: Later! I know, and many of you here tonight know, that it has not always been easy being my friend, either. I'm so deeply grateful that year after year you have kept showing up to support me and...
encoded: Later! I know, and many of you here tonight know, that it has not always been easy being my friend, either. I'm so deeply grateful that year after year you have kept showing up to support me and be my friend. My staff are simply spectacular, but I'll have much more to say about you a bit later on. My journey into the Senate was not a particularly smooth one. In 2012, after long and successful careers in both the Army and the Liberal Party, I was deeply honoured to be preselected by the WA Liberal Party as a Senate candidate. Service defines who I am and what I do, and it always will. In my early 20s, I found my philosophical and ideological roots in the Liberal Party, as well as lifelong friends, many of whom are in the chamber here and also in the gallery this evening. I am a Menzies Liberal. I draw on both philosophical traditions of our great party. I'm as comfortable with supporting same-sex marriage as I am with boat turn-backs and rearming our nation in preparation for war. I've never been a member of a party faction. I understand them, but I find them distracting and often destructive. I left the Army as the adjutant general, the senior governance adviser with responsibility for reforming the Army's compliance and assurance processes to ensure capability and the safety of our people. So, after 35 years of military and political service, I felt very well prepared to serve my state and my country in the Senate, but it almost was not to be. After the great excitement of being elected in 2013, the election was voided by the High Court, as the AEC had lost the princely sum of 1,375 ballot papers, and Senator Cash remembers that well. As third on our Senate ticket, I almost lost in the 2014 Senate election rerun. I was then referred to in the media as 'one of the unluckiest people in Australian politics'. I've got to say, after the experience of the past four years, one could be forgiven for thinking that maybe they were right, but nothing—nothing—could be further …
date: 2025-03-26T19:06:00+00:00

Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | Senate debates
type: item
description: First and valedictory speeches are the bookends to our parliamentary careers. I'm deeply appreciative of the opportunity to do this valedictory speech tonight, to have the opportunity to reflect...
encoded: First and valedictory speeches are the bookends to our parliamentary careers. I'm deeply appreciative of the opportunity to do this valedictory speech tonight, to have the opportunity to reflect on the things that I'm so proud to have delivered in this place, and to thank the many people—many of whom are here tonight—who have helped me along the journey. I'm also very grateful to be leaving the Senate at a time of my own choosing—an opportunity I'm very well aware not all members and senators have. But let me be very clear about one thing. While I am leaving at a time of my choosing, the timing of my choosing has been expedited by events that are well known to all in this place. Those events have inflicted deep wounds on so many. However, my wounds do not define who I am. They have not distracted me for a second from what I was elected to do here as a senator and member, but they have made me stronger and they have made me wiser. More on that later. None of us succeed in this place on our own. We are at our best in this place when we collaborate to deliver meaningful and important reforms for our nation. It is a real shame that more Australians don't get to see this dirty little secret of ours—about how much we do actually work together across the aisle in this place. I've got so many people to thank, which I will do at the end. But I do have a few acknowledgements upfront. Foremost is to my family—my partner, Robert; my father, Laith; my brother Andrew, and his partner, Angela, and his daughters, Octavia and Anastasia; and my mother, Jan, who is so desperately sad that she could not be here tonight but is watching from home in Perth. To you, Mum, I say, 'Thank you,' and, 'I love you.' But I am somewhat comforted that my brother Cameron and his wife, Charlotte, and his two daughters, Olivia and Sophie, will be with her this evening. As senators, we choose this life, but our families are conscripts. I think it's safe to say that it's never really been that easy to be…
date: 2025-03-26T19:06:00+00:00

National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: It is with a great deal of sadness that I rise to speak on this motion for the 19th time. I rise with sadness because I reflect on the fact that, four years ago, as the Minister for the NDIS, I...
encoded: It is with a great deal of sadness that I rise to speak on this motion for the 19th time. I rise with sadness because I reflect on the fact that, four years ago, as the Minister for the NDIS, I saw very, very clearly that this was a scheme that needed significant reform because the original legislation was deeply flawed. The federal government, who was responsible for all of the cost overruns, not the states and territories, had no way of impacting the levers of the insurance scheme—that is, the number of participants in the scheme and the average cost per participant. We also needed to fundamentally reform the intergovernmental agreements with each state and territory so that they had the financial incentive to ensure that this scheme was sustainable. I reached out to Bill Shorten, the shadow minister at the time, and I said: 'These are the reforms that we need to do. Will you work with us?' He agreed to two tranches of reforms for participant protections, which were very important, as long as we didn't tell anyone that he'd actually agreed to them. I'm very proud that we got those pieces of legislation through, but I'm deeply saddened that Bill Shorten instead took the option that he always takes, and that is to play the basest of politics with the lives of the now nearly 700,000 people on the NDIS and their millions of family members. Had Bill Shorten and the Labor Party had the political courage and the decency to work with us to genuinely reform this scheme to ensure that it was sustainable, today, four years later, it would be a very different scheme. It would be a scheme for those it was designed for, the 350,000 or so Australians who had permanent and serious disabilities. They were treated appallingly, largely in state-run facilities, where they were abused. They weren't treated with dignity or respect, and they lived the most miserable of lives. The scheme was designed for those Australians. I think both sides of the chamber have responsibility for the fla…
date: 2025-03-25T13:18:00+00:00

Ukraine | Statements by Senators | Senate debates
type: item
description: Winston Churchill said in 1938 that an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping against hope it will eat him last. These words were quite prophetic five days after the disastrous Munich...
encoded: Winston Churchill said in 1938 that an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping against hope it will eat him last. These words were quite prophetic five days after the disastrous Munich Peace Conference in September 1938. It was true then, and it is just as true today. 24 February will mark the third-year anniversary of the illegal invasion by Russia of Ukraine. For 1,085 days, Ukraine has stood defiant and resilient against Russia's unlawful invasion. The cost is incalculable. Today, we reflect on the Munich Security Conference announcement that next week Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet to decide the future of Ukraine without Ukraine. The conditions of not returning Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and disallowing Ukraine's NATO membership, to my mind, is appeasement—appeasement in Munich once again. Despots and dictators never ever respect appeasement. They patiently and ruthlessly exploit it. If Vladimir Putin is appeased once again next week, it will simply buy him time to regroup and continue his relentless annexation. Appeasement did not work in 2014, when Russia illegally invaded and annexed Crimea, but yet the rest of the world sat by, Sudetenland-like, and said, 'We'll give him Crimea; he won't do anything more.' Well, clearly it did not work. It simply emboldened Putin to keep going. Ukraine's war is our war. It is the West's war. It is our war. Slava Ukraini.
date: 2025-02-13T13:30:00+00:00

Albanese Government | Matters of Public Importance | Senate debates
type: item
description: Despite all the bluff and bluster of those opposite, the facts are that, 2½ years ago, Anthony Albanese, now our Prime Minister, promised all Australians that life would be cheaper under...
encoded: Despite all the bluff and bluster of those opposite, the facts are that, 2½ years ago, Anthony Albanese, now our Prime Minister, promised all Australians that life would be cheaper under Labor. They would have cheaper mortgages. They would have cheaper electricity, and everybody would be better off. Those opposite can say black is white and sit there and talk about everything else but the cost of living, but, far from being Australia's saviour, I think the best analogy is that he is the emperor with new clothes. In fact, nobody on that side of the chamber, including the Greens, has got the courage to tell him that he has no clothes on. The tragedy for all Australians, including Western Australians, is the reality that hardworking families, hardworking households and small businesses are doing it incredibly tough. No matter how much those opposite refuse to tell the Prime Minister the truth, Australians are not stupid. They know exactly what has happened, after 2½ years, to their household budgets. Everything that they spend, every bill they have, has gone up around about 10 per cent or, in some cases, more. It never had to be this way. It hasn't just happened; it has happened because of the deliberate policies that those opposite have implemented. What are some of the facts? In just 2½ years, 27,000 small businesses, which are the backbone of this economy, have been forced to shut up shop. In Western Australia, small businesses make up 97 per cent of all businesses, but over a thousand went to the wall because they could no longer afford the cost of doing business. For average Western Australians, in fact for all Western Australians, whether it's a trip to the supermarket, opening up their power bills, seeing the mortgage rise and rise or the cost of their insurance, everything has been going up. We've also learnt, today, that Western Australia has endured the biggest fall in bulk-billing by GPs across the country under those opposite. For all of the rhetoric that i…
date: 2025-02-11T18:10:00+00:00

Albanese Government | Matters of Public Importance | Senate debates
type: item
description: Four times as many.
encoded: Four times as many.
date: 2025-02-11T17:58:00+00:00

Answers to Questions | Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers | Senate debates
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description: As a very proud West Australian senator, it is absolutely shocking what those opposites are doing in relation to the gas policy for this nation. Not only are they exploiting and paying the...
encoded: As a very proud West Australian senator, it is absolutely shocking what those opposites are doing in relation to the gas policy for this nation. Not only are they exploiting and paying the environmental defenders offices to do their dirty work for them, but we've seen in question time alone just how dirty that work is. But I am very proud to say that gas is good. In fact, gas is great, and those opposites speak with terribly forked tongues. You have the minister for minerals and energy in Western Australia saying how good it is, how important it is, but they do not back it up with action. Natural gas is a vital part of the energy mix, and the energy transition, over time, to net zero or zero energy. Government must not just say, on one side of the country, that we need gas. Whatever your view on the energy market going forward, whether you support nuclear energy or you want a heavier load of renewables, gas is essential. It is still going to be essential for decades and decades to come, so let's just have a look at the hypocrisy of those opposite. Now, it's not just me who thinks gas is good. Reece Whitby is the Western Australian Labor environment minister who gave the approval in Western Australia last year—after six years, mind you. They had to start the review process over again because a bureaucrat left. It took them six years to approve it. The Western Australian Labor state minister said that gas is the enabler of renewables, especially in Western Australia. If you want to use renewables, you must have gas. The whole of Western Australia is essentially powered by gas. It runs all of our industries. All jobs in Western Australia—tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in mining, manufacturing and mineral processing—are powered by gas, and they will continue to be so for decades to come. While gas is poured out of Western Australia, investment and jobs have poured in, not just into the gas sector itself but also into all of the enabling industries in Western …
date: 2025-02-11T15:33:00+00:00

National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: Former Minister Shorten has left prematurely and left every single NDIS participant and their family with an almighty mess, which is impacting on their lives in the most profound of ways. But the...
encoded: Former Minister Shorten has left prematurely and left every single NDIS participant and their family with an almighty mess, which is impacting on their lives in the most profound of ways. But the biggest of so many things in the mess that he has left behind, which Labor are now scrambling to make sure doesn't come out before the election, is that they've cut $60 billion out of the scheme. They've forced tens of thousands of participants through reviews. They've delayed plans. They're still hiding budget figures. They commissioned Redbridge and spent an enormous amount of money on how to spin this through. Let's have a look at what they're actually hiding. Total payments continue to increase due to both increased participant numbers and a higher average cost per participant—the two drivers of cost. That's despite everything they say—this mythical eight per cent, which is what is in the budget. Senator Hughes last week was talking about an $11 billion black hole. Well, I'll tell you what, when you have a look at the fiction of the NDIS figures you see it is far more than that. This is the fact: total payments continue to increase due to both cost drivers. In the first quarter it was $11.5 billion of expenditure. This total payment level is actually on track to exceed last year's expenditure on the NDIS, which has not been budgeted for in this year's budget. So now the government are desperately talking to the states and territories: 'Can you give us a loan?' They've had 2½ years and there is no agreement with the states and territories on foundational supports. Why would there be? They vacated the field, as Senator Steele-John said, for nearly a decade. Not only are they not going to find the money but it's already a thin provider market. Where are these people going to come from? Plan inflation also continues to rise, with the annualised inflation level at 12.8, not their mythical eight per cent. This is a fraud on people with disability and on all Australian taxpaye…
date: 2025-02-10T10:17:00+00:00

National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: I was mentioning him by his name. 'Former minister Shorten', then—I'll say that.
encoded: I was mentioning him by his name. 'Former minister Shorten', then—I'll say that.
date: 2025-02-10T10:17:00+00:00

National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: For 18 months, senators in this place have been coming to ask those opposite for the most basic of information on the NDIS. I heartily endorse Senator Steele-John's comments that this government,...
encoded: For 18 months, senators in this place have been coming to ask those opposite for the most basic of information on the NDIS. I heartily endorse Senator Steele-John's comments that this government, shamefully, not only have a complete lack of transparency but have basically given a one-fingered or two-fingered-salute to senators and to the over 650,000 Australians now on the NDIS. Apart from the colossal failure of those opposite to actually deal with the problems, time and time again in this place, when I approached Bill Shorten as the minister and said, 'We have some serious structural issues with the NDIS that we need to fix, and we need to be able to control both drivers of cost: the number of people on the scheme and also the average cost per participant on the scheme,' we heard Bill Shorten say, 'There's nothing wrong with the scheme; you're just making it all up.' He comes into government and says, 'Oh, dear; I never read the budget papers or any of the reports from the NDIS, and the scheme is in trouble.' Instead of saying, 'Oops, we got it wrong,' he just doubled down. He had another review that was completely unnecessary. He said, 'We can't really do anything until after the review's finished,' and 18 months later he said, 'Well, we're not going to make any cuts to the scheme.' Well, that was just a big fat untruth. I'll go through the numbers in a second. They have been cutting on this scheme as if there were no tomorrow, indiscriminately. What we haven't really heard—and Senator Hughes touched on it—is that foundational supports, as they're now called, are what was called tier 2 supports when the Commonwealth government went into interim intergovernmental agreements with states and territories. The states and territories were always responsible for community based support for those who were not going to be eligible for the NDIS. Don't forget that this was a scheme for Australians who had the most serious and permanent disabilities—those Australians who liv…
date: 2025-02-10T10:17:00+00:00

Department of Defence | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: I rise today to discuss the Department of Defence annual report 2023-24 and the subsequent committee inquiry. The report included five key themes, with the first theme focusing on Australia's...
encoded: I rise today to discuss the Department of Defence annual report 2023-24 and the subsequent committee inquiry. The report included five key themes, with the first theme focusing on Australia's assistance to Ukraine. It's important to note this month, on 24 February, is the three-year anniversary of Russia's unlawful and brutal invasion of Ukraine. For 1,078 days, Ukraine has stood resilient and pushed back in defence of their sovereignty and of global democracy. As a democratic nation that always stands up with other nations that face an existential threat to their very being, we have stood up and supported them and supported democracy. But I'm afraid that Australia, like many other nations, is doing just enough so that Ukraine doesn't lose, but also doesn't win the war. There are five recommendations from the report on Australia's assistance to Ukraine: (1) that the Australian government continue providing military assistance to Ukraine while exploring additional opportunities to encourage and support Australian industry and institutions to further contribute to the support effort; (2) Defence publishes a statement on its internal policy approach to Ukraine; (3) the Australian government establish a whole-of-government mechanism, a one-stop shop, potentially within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; (4) the Australian government review any legislation, regulations or policies that govern decisions around the placement of diplomatic personnel in high-risk locations; and (5) the Australian government reopen, finally, the Australian embassy in Ukraine, with a permanent military attache alongside it as soon as possible. So the first thing I would do is call on this government to provide a report back to this place on the progress and the timeline for each of the five recommendations. This ongoing war of aggression is a stark reminder of how fragile democracies can be, and how vital it is for Australia to do all it can to help others fight their wars, beca…
date: 2025-02-06T16:49:00+00:00

Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
type: item
description: I again rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. As I observed briefly last night, this is a typical Labor piece of legislation. It's...
encoded: I again rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. As I observed briefly last night, this is a typical Labor piece of legislation. It's got a catchy title—no doubt research driven—and those opposite have spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the broader policy in very generic terms. But the fact is that this is about production tax credits. From what those opposite have said, you'd think that this one small measure alone will actually address the challenges and barriers that are now facing our mining, oil and gas sectors. You'd think that this will fix it all. What they didn't actually talk about—and I don't think I heard a single Labor senator actually talk about it—was the production tax credits. They quoted a couple of people in the mining sector who are supportive of this. On its own, it's not a bad policy. It will help a very few in the mining sector. But, again, it doesn't address the big issues that are currently crippling new projects and, in fact, current projects, such as in the nickel industry, which I will come to very shortly. A number of people in the sector have said, 'It's better than nothing at all,' but it does nothing, as I said, to fix the problem. Instead of addressing the fundamental issues that are constraining our mining sector—and, in fact, there are ones that the bill itself has made worse—this government is putting forward this attempt to say, 'We are actually dealing with the challenges that face the critical minerals and rare earth industries which are so essential for the development of new energy technologies'—the so-called net zero technologies. We've got a lot of them here in Australia, but it's taking 15 years under this government from finding a deposit to actually producing it. That is absolutely outrageous. It is ridiculous. These commodities are actually not rare at all. There are vast deposits overseas—in Greenland, as President Trump has identified, and in ma…
date: 2025-02-06T10:13:00+00:00

Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2); Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
type: item
description: I, too, rise to speak on the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024, and I do so with a very heavy heart. I find it almost inconceivable that in this day and...
encoded: I, too, rise to speak on the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024, and I do so with a very heavy heart. I find it almost inconceivable that in this day and age this bill is necessary. I commend my colleague Senator Henderson for her leadership in this area. I participated in the hearings of this bill, and I was utterly dismayed to hear some of the responses of the chancellors, but particularly the Australian Human Rights Commission, who were completely blind to this most ancient and wicked form of discrimination. I start by making this observation—that there can never be security or safety in appeasement, where there is appeasement of dictators or antisemites or others who wish others harm. There is no peace and there is no security in appeasement. In fact, I have before quoted Winston Churchill, who in 1940 observed that—this is appeasers: Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their time comes to be devoured. In recent years, it's been shortened to 'An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.' Sadly and almost unbelievably, today in our nation this is what we are now getting from our Prime Minister. Whether it is standing up with our democratic allies and friends to fight back against dictators who hate us, who hate democracy, and who have formed an axis of evil to support each other's activities—Russia in the Ukraine. Remember, a decade ago, the West appeased him, Putin, and what did he do? He was emboldened by it and came back for more, and much more, of Ukraine. Today, here in Australia we are witnessing the most extraordinary acts of hate against Jewish Australians. Not only are we seeing it across the nation; we are now seeing it—and arguably it started—in our universities with the radicalisation of our students and the complete failure of leadership by a number of vice-chancellors, who turned to …
date: 2025-02-06T09:12:00+00:00

Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
type: item
description: I too rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. Here we go again, with Labor spending lots of money on Redbridge and other research...
encoded: I too rise to speak on the Future Made in Australia (Production Tax Credits and Other Measures) Bill 2024. Here we go again, with Labor spending lots of money on Redbridge and other research agencies to come up with these really trendy research driven titles that really bear no relationship to what is actually in the bill. Not only does that apply to Future Made in Australia, but one of the things those opposite have assiduously not spoken about is actually what the bill is about—that is, the production tax credits. We heard from Senator Pratt all about Peter Dutton and the nuclear energy issue, supposedly, in Collie, and about everything else except what this bill does and does not do. Future Made In Australia does sound good on the face of it, but this particular bill is about the production tax credits, and that's what I want to spend my time in this place talking about. Sadly, as to this bill, despite all of the rhetoric from those opposite—'This is going to help our critical minerals industry and our rare earths industry; this is going to fix all of the ills that currently bedevil the industries and now make it impossible for an Australian company, even when they find a critical mineral, a rare earth or any other commodity'—those opposite have now made things far worse, including with the Future Made in Australia—
date: 2025-02-05T19:28:00+00:00

Dental Health | Questions without Notice | Senate debates
type: item
description: It's gone down—
encoded: It's gone down—
date: 2025-02-04T14:19:00+00:00

National Disability Insurance Scheme; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
type: item
description: I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. Here we are again, at the start of a new parliamentary year, and we have had 18 months worth of the minister defying the will of the Senate...
encoded: I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. Here we are again, at the start of a new parliamentary year, and we have had 18 months worth of the minister defying the will of the Senate and not providing the documents that the Senate requires on the NDIS. If only Labor had put in a fraction of the effort that they used to hide all of these documents from not only the Senate but Australians and NDIS participants, we may have got a much better outcome for the NDIS than what those opposite have delivered in the last 2½ years. They're a complete failure in this area, in terms of not just transparency but the mismanaging of this scheme. They're just trying to eke out their time after this terrible legislation was passed and after the hiding of the budget figures and all of these figures. They have just one strategy. It is a strategy to get them through to the next election. Then, surprise, surprise, whoever is the minister, whoever is in government, shock, horror, will have access to the documents they've hidden and will find out just what a farce they've been perpetrating. So now we've got a new minister, and have we got something new? Nope. We've still got the same old Redbridge research marketing lines that Bill Shorten, with his half-a-million-dollar speechwriter, was trotting out. What are we hearing again? We're hearing: 'We're cracking down on fraud. There are "green shoots". We're working with states and territories to deliver foundational supports.' Well, what a joke. What a joke, coming out here and repeating these lines yet again. I'll tell you what: this debacle that those opposite have perpetrated on NDIS participants and their families is so emblematic of the complete systemic failure of those opposite to govern and their complete lack of standards of effective governance. When it comes to real action on the NDIS, those opposite have done nothing. Remember, before the last election, when I was the NDIS minister, I came to this place and publicly sai…
date: 2025-02-04T13:14:00+00:00

Australian Parliamentary Delegation to 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly | Delegation Reports | Senate debates
type: item
description: I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted.
encoded: I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted.
date: 2024-11-27T17:35:00+00:00

Australian Parliamentary Delegation to 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly | Delegation Reports | Senate debates
type: item
description: by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, which took place from 13 to 18 October 2024. I seek leave to move a...
encoded: by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, which took place from 13 to 18 October 2024. I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report. Leave granted. I move: That the Senate take note of the document. I seek leave to incorporate a tabling statement in Hansard. Leave granted. The statement read as follows— 149th IPU Assembly and Bilateral Visit to France—October 2024 Introduction r 149th Assembly Delegation activity The delegation was particularly active during this Assembly and the highlights of our contribution at the Assembly include: Committee on Democracy and Human Rights as well as her appointment as the President of the committee. The Australian delegation was active in a variety of other forums: Emergency debate and resolutions of the Assembly The Assembly held an emergency debate on the theme: Response by parliamentarians to the urgent plea by the UN Secretary-General to recommit to multilateralism for global peace, justice and sustainability. The debate culminating in a resolution on the same theme which calls on the international community, including the IPU membership, to end the "appalling impact of conflict on children" and take other action to protect vulnerable persons. The IPU membership also endorsed a resolution on the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Amongst other things, the resolution calls upon parliaments to: ...effectively and transparently adopt or maintain strong legal frameworks and policies for the responsible creation, deployment and use of Al technology, and to contribute to efforts to establish global standards and frameworks. Multilateral and bilateral meeting The delegation held meetings and discussions with parliamentary delegations from Albania, India, Israel, New Zealand, Timor-Leste, Ukraine and Zambia as well as the World Health Organisation. Bilateral Visit to France National Assembly and Sen…
date: 2024-11-27T17:35:00+00:00