Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Translating and Interpreting Services Bill 2025. This legislation is technical and administrative. The legislation provides a statutory basis for the provision of important translating and interpreting services. It addresses an issue raised in the Auditor-General's report No. 28 of 2014-15 with respect to authorisation for the charging of fees.

Translating and interpreting services in Australia have a long history. The first Commonwealth translating service was established in 1947, and the idea of a national telephone interpreter service was developed and announced under the government of William McMahon. Subsequent governments have continued to invest in and expand language services. In 1977, the Fraser government provided an additional $200,000 to expand interpreting services, extended the telephone interpreter service beyond capital cities to regional centres, starting with Wollongong, and introduced measures such as identifying bilingual Public Service staff and displaying multilingual signage. In 1977 in Wollongong, I was born, Deputy Speaker. I just note that, while this interpreting service was rolled out in that same town—

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