Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Customs Legislation Amendment (False Trade Marks Infringement Notices) Bill 2026 and, in doing so, congratulate the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs, who has done a lot of work to make this bill happen—a lot of work that is typical of this government's approach to getting on with the job and fixing up the mess that we were left with after so many years of the former government's neglect. This government is, in many ways, dealing with stuff, and in this case it is dealing with something which industry and stakeholders have been calling on for years. It is only this government that has been able to do it. That's because of two things. We have a philosophy in this government that is about lifting up the living standards of people and making it easy for business to operate, but I think we also have a very sharp managerial edge to our team, where we are just methodical, calm and deliberate in that approach.

Here we are dealing with what is really an insidious problem for small business but also an insidious problem for consumers, who have every right to expect that the product that they buy is genuine, quality, warrantable—they can take it back if the product needs repairing or is faulty in any way—and, most importantly, safe. This is not just about products which you might typically expect to be counterfeited. This is about medical devices. This is about children's toys, where the bits can break off in a baby's mouth. This bill very much deals with a commercial problem for business, but it also deals with a safety problem for consumers, as part of that philosophy that this government brings and part of that skilled management as well.

I'd like to remind people that I came to this place after spending quite a lot of time in small business myself, having a contract mustering business, where I had a pack of dogs and a ute and a motorbike and the will to win. I would go around and help farmers muster their sheep and cattle. But, when we moved to the city 20 years ago, I ran a construction company in Beenleigh. When working in business—and that's why something like this is so important—people really put their heart and soul into creating a product and creating intellectual property. The thing that I really learned about business is that quite often the business person is not doing it for the money. As somebody put it to me once, the money is a way of keeping score. They do it because they've got this idea, they've got this passion for something which generally solves a problem in other people's lives or brings joy to other people. In many ways business is so fulfilling because the most fulfilling thing that you can do is make a contribution to your community. That's what good business people do. That's what good entrepreneurs do.

So it was that that I ran a construction company in Beenleigh. When I say I ran the construction company, I didn't own it, so I regarded myself as chief lackey. There was one family in particular, the McDonalds, whom I would very much like to give a shout out to here today. Ian Macdonald and Grant MacDonald took me under their wing and really showed me the ropes but then let me run the company as if it were my own. When I first met Ian, who was affectionately known as 'Macca', he was in many ways the quintessential Gold Coast entrepreneur—not the one that you might think of in the white shoe brigade, or the flashy type. This guy was really somebody that embodied small business. He was somebody that didn't holiday overseas, didn't eat out, drove the late-model car. When I met him, he was 70 and well and truly a character and a half. He was so passionate about this system that he had developed of sheet-piling—and, Deputy Speaker Boyce, with your engineering background you may have come across what sheet-piling is. Essentially, the idea is that if you need to dig a hole—say, to build a basement in a high-rise building—it's the shoring which is designed to stop the hole from falling in on itself. That's the theory—it doesn't always necessarily work in practice.

Ian's son was Grant MacDonald—who I'd also like to give a shout out to. He was somebody who really understood the business. When you're working underground, the really good people get this sense about when the ground is moving, and Grant had that sense. Grant was so skilled in business and in construction that he took me under his wing and taught me so many things about business. They had actually developed this product which was designed by them, which had been tested at Griffith University and by a local engineering firm, Howl Engineering. They had this Australian designed, Australian-made, Australian installed product, which they had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars patenting and trademarking.

By the time I came along, their business had been running for 20 years or so, and one of my jobs was to sit in the meetings with the patent attorneys and with the lawyers to try to work out how to stop the competition from ripping them off. They had the sheet-piling and, without going into too much engineering, they also had an anchoring system where they had this 20-centimetre-diameter screw head, which would tie into the sheets and pull them back into the ground as an anchor. They had these cowboys ripping them off and copying their exact design, but not only was it poorly counterfeited but it was also poorly installed. I remember the consequences of their competitors doing exactly that. There was a job in Sydney where they were digging a hole next to a post office, and the wall collapsed. The post office started to move and the customers and the workers in the post office were fleeing for their lives as the glass was breaking all around them. That was an example of what happened when their product was poorly counterfeited and poorly installed.

My job was to sit in those meetings with patent attorneys and with the lawyers to work out how to stop the competition. Because the only way to do it was through civil action, it would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to take that action, with no guarantee of there being success. That is the sort of example of what companies in Australia that have a trademark have to do under the current system. They have to take the civil action themselves—something which the estimate from the legal stakeholders who took part in this quite extensive consultation process estimated at somewhere between $200,000 and $500,000. And so this government is doing the right thing by relieving that burden, and we'll be able to fine the companies which are caught importing counterfeits, which is, as I say, something that industry and stakeholders have been calling for for years, but it is only this government that has been able to deliver it.

As I say, it is typical of this government's philosophy and its managerial skills that we're able to do this. The one thing that I learned by running a business, which I don't think the member for Goldstein has ever done, is that there are two—in fact, I love the saying that you run a country like you run a company, because there are two ways to run a company. One is to invest in your plant and your people, and the other is to delay the maintenance, to strip out the profits and to run it into the ground. The latter is exactly what the opposition does. That's why, on detail like this, it was just left to go. It's not just on detail like this. It's their opposition to free TAFE. It's their opposition to bulk-billing. It's the fact that they don't want to invest in the people or the infrastructure of this country that has created the problem that we're dealing with now. And so it is that, through this sort of work, the government is really getting on with the job that was left to us to do.

The first point to make about this legislation is that it is not about somebody getting off the plane in Bali with a fake Hermes bag. That's not what this legislation is going to capture. Some of the examples are where organised crime and, effectively, illegal operators have brought in something—for example, Ozempic. There's one case study here where the TGA and Border Force intercepted fake Ozempic pens, believe it or not. They were stopped before they could reach consumers. But there was one case, reportedly, where an individual had used this Ozempic and almost died because it was full of insulin.

There was another example last year where counterfeit Labubu dolls—anybody who has a child would probably know exactly what a Labubu doll is. I'm not sure why anybody would want to counterfeit them, but they're attractive. Attractive may be looking like Labubu dolls perhaps, but when the child imagined—because of the poor stitching and because of the poor construction of these dolls, they broke apart. They would break apart literally in a child's mouth and become a choking hazard. There were examples where these dolls also contained harmful chemicals because of the way that they were constructed.

There's another example where, amazingly, somebody thought about counterfeiting a STIHL chainsaw. You've got to hand it to organised crime to even come up with these things. I've often also said that, if criminals spent as much time being imaginative in a legitimate pursuit, then they would probably make more money than they would be in illegitimate pursuits. They made these counterfeit chainsaws, believe it or not, which were sold online for just a little bit cheaper than what you'd buy the genuine article for, to make it even more convincing. When they found one of these counterfeit chainsaws and unwrapped it, the safety handle actually snapped off as they were unwrapping the chainsaw. Extraordinarily, somebody almost got this into the country, and people would have been able to buy it. As I say, it's not just that gut-wrenching feeling that you would get when you realise that the Hermes bag you bought is not actually Hermes. This is not only something that you can't take back when it breaks; it is something which literally could kill you.

This government is to be commended for doing the work that the previous government didn't do. It is part of an overall strategy to lift the living standards of all Australians and to do it in a methodical and deliberate way, which stands in stark contrast to the utterly chaotic way the government was run under the now opposition. As I say, because of the philosophy that we have of investing in our people and in systems and our philosophy of managing properly—just as I would have learned in a construction company—it is important to get those details right. That sort of approach, through consultation and through listening to what industry and stakeholders want and making it happen and delivering, is a hallmark of this government. The assistant minister is to be congratulated for his work. I commend the bill to the House.

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