Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unpaid superannuation is a significant challenge for Australia. Labor is pleased that the government is—belatedly—taking action on unpaid super. Industry Super Australia, not the government's favourite body these days, has previously estimated that 2.4 million workers are losing $5.6 billion in payments every year. That is the equivalent of those workers losing $2,000 a year. That is money that should be going into their retirement savings. Unpaid superannuation is wage theft—pure and simple—because superannuation is delayed compensation. If you're not paying superannuation, that is as bad as not putting money into the worker's pay packet. It is as bad as the scandals we have seen over recent years of employees being paid in cash and being asked to hand some of that cash back to the employer—that is, it is morally equivalent to that behaviour.

Superannuation theft is wage theft. That's why in December 2016, Labor moved to establish a Senate inquiry into the nonpayment of superannuation. That inquiry heard many cases where employers weren't meeting their superannuation obligations. It made a series of recommendations about strengthening compliance to ensure that workers received the superannuation to which they were entitled. The government—spurred on by that important Senate inquiry—finally set up their own cross-agency working group, and the bill before the House today includes some of the recommendations from that cross-agency working group. The bill includes changes that would allow the tax commissioner, in cases where employers failed to comply with their superannuation guarantee obligations, to issue directions to pay unpaid superannuation and to undertake appropriate education courses. Failure to comply with those directions can lead to criminal charges. It allows the tax commissioner to disclose more information about superannuation guarantee noncompliance by affected employees. It extends Single Touch Payroll reporting to all employers, facilitates more regular reporting by superannuation funds, improves the operation of the commissioner's collection and compliance measures and streamlines employee commencement processes. Labor supports the measures in this bill. They will go part of the way towards addressing the significant problem of unpaid superannuation in this country.

At the same time as the government are moving these measures, they are proposing a superannuation guarantee amnesty for employers who haven't paid the workers their superannuation guarantee. That would give employers who haven't paid superannuation to their employees a penalty holiday. It doesn't just cover the last year or two; it goes back 25 years. If you believe that superannuation theft is as bad as wage theft, why would you have an amnesty going back 25 years? Why would you just let those who had ripped off workers to get away with it, to be given a tax break, to not be subject to appropriate penalties? When welfare recipients do the wrong thing, the government comes down on them like a tonne of bricks but, when dodgy bosses do the wrong things, it's a few feathers floating down on their shoulders. The government just can't help giving more and more to businesses. As we see today, the government are not supporting penalty rates. They are taking away penalty rates from low-paid workers but, at the same time, are trying to push through a tax cut for big business.

That amnesty was a complete surprise. There wasn't consultation that preceded it. It wasn't recommended by the Senate Economics References Committee's inquiry into superannuation guarantee nonpayment. Indeed, it wasn't even recommended by the government's own cross-agency working group. The Turnbull government's proposed changes would mean that an employer who hadn't paid superannuation entitlements for 25 years could pay it back during the amnesty, without a single penalty. The government want to give such employers a free pass. Labor believe they should be subject to significant penalties. Those penalties would normally include an SG charge—the SG shortfall nominal interest and the $20 employee per quarter administration component—and penalties of up to 200 per cent of the amount of the SG general interest charge where the superannuation guarantee charge or penalties aren't paid by the due date. But, under the government's proposed amnesty, the administration component of the superannuation guarantee charge and the penalties would be waived. Even worse, the superannuation guarantee charge and contributions offset against the superannuation guarantee charge would become tax deductible for employers. So dodgy employers who hadn't paid superannuation for their workers would get a tax break under this proposed amnesty. Indeed, this is obviously something that was dreamed up in a dodgy back room, because, when we asked the Prime Minister about it during question time, he clearly had no idea what was going on. There was no announcement of it in the budget. It was presumably a decision taken but not announced. It was only when the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services mentioned it that the public first got wind of what was going on.

Labor believe in cracking down on unpaid superannuation. Labor believe that employers who do the wrong thing should be subject to appropriate penalties. That's why we've had a strong package for dealing with dodgy phoenix activity. That's why Labor believe that we need adherence to the law, not one set of laws for regular Australians and a different set of laws for employers that rip off their workers' superannuation.

The bill also includes changes in schedule 8 that will tidy up changes made in previous government bills. This does, unfortunately, remind us of the debacle in 2016 when the government announced a rushed and flawed superannuation package in the 2016 budget and then, after concerns over retrospectivity, scrapped the flawed package and announced a revised package. It rushed to legislate, and this schedule 8 is engaging in some necessary cleaning up of that second package. The bill that's being cleaned up only just passed the parliament in February this year but already the government is needing to tidy up the transitional agreements. It is not clear why it couldn't get it right in February 2018. Labor will support these measures.

Finally, the bill allows three entities to become deductible gift recipients. They are Australian Philanthropic Services Ltd, Foundation 1901 Ltd and Sydney Chevra Kadisha. As the shadow minister for charities and not-for-profits, I am pleased to say that Labor will be supporting these organisations receiving tax deductibility status. They are among many great charities and not-for-profits in Australia doing important work in our community.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to talk about this bill because, in my area, unfortunately, there are too many instances of people paying their workers but not paying their superannuation. As someone who's worked as an itinerant worker at times when I was somewhat younger, somewhat fitter and somewhat buffer and better looking, doing lots more physical work—

Dr Aly interjecting—

Am I embellishing? Am I misleading the House? When I was somewhat younger and working in shearing sheds, I was always conscious that there were times when people would be doing that sort of work and their employers wouldn't be paying them their superannuation.

This bill, I think, does have some merit. I know there's always been some angst about, 'Are we letting some people who have been doing the wrong thing off the hook by giving them a 12-month amnesty?' The first thing I want to say is that what I want is for people who haven't been paid to get paid. That is probably more important to me than seeking a prosecution early. But, of course, an amnesty is not letting them off the hook long term. It just means we want to make sure Australians who have worked hard get their full entitlement and benefit from their work and that their work and their wage does include their superannuation.

There's a misconception, perhaps, by some in small business. It's a misconception there is really no excuse for anymore, considering that superannuation has been around for a very long time. That misconception is somehow that the money that is paid to superannuation is the employer's money, not the employee's money. I want to make sure that people in my electorate know that isn't the case and that, if you work, part of the money you earn is superannuation and you are due that superannuation. You should be paid that superannuation. That superannuation is for your benefit, particularly in your retirement.

I will also say that, whilst there's always some controversy around superannuation—I know there was when it was first introduced—it has proved to be a very wise political and economical way of dealing with an ageing population. The fact that we can look into our forward liabilities with our senior Australians and know that we've got close to $2 trillion worth of money sitting in superannuation I think has been a very wise thing.

I take a view that I also want to allow people, particularly some of the poorer people in my patch, to afford houses, and I think that there is value in some superannuation being allowed to be a deposit on a house, particularly where wages are low and housing prices are low but rents are high and there's capacity for people in my patch to service a loan on a house. For example, they might be able to service a loan on a house for $270 a week. The price of a house in my patch can be as low as $185,000, but the difficulty is getting that deposit to get started; therefore, they're precluded from eventually becoming homeowners and are stuck being renters for too long. I think that superannuation should be broadened to that, but that is, I guess, a sideline to this particular piece of legislation.

The disclosure of information will be clearer under this bill so that the Australian tax office will be able to look in a lot more detail to ensure that a person who should be paying superannuation is actually doing so. I think that's always been a little bit difficult, and I'm pretty pleased that there are some additional provisions around ensuring that there's clearer disclosure of information.

Can I also say that the government is making it easier for small businesses with the Single Touch Payroll for employers of 19 or fewer employees. I note that many of the breaches by not paying superannuation are by some of our smaller businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million. I think that's probably the example in my patch as well. We don't have many big multinational companies in the electorate of Mallee; we have smaller, family-owned businesses, and there are examples of some of them just not getting their bookkeeping right. Making it simpler is part of the answer, as well as making it known.

I think that's something that we also need to be thinking through. There also needs to be a big-stick approach. Of course, employers must pay an employee's superannuation. But, for those smaller businesses, it also needs to be made easier, and that's what we're trying to do in this piece of legislation as well. For those small businesses that have a turnover of $2 million or less, we need to be very clear on this: that's turnover. Many farming businesses might only employ two or three people but might easily have a turnover of $2 million or more. People have a perception sometimes, if they haven't run a business, that $2 million is a lot of money. Well, $2 million might be what you spend, and what you get back in the actual take-home pay might only be $50,000. I think that making it easier for those businesses that have small turnovers is essential, and it's a complementary part of this legislation.

One of the things that I have been very mindful of is the tax cuts that have just recently gone through this chamber and the Senate. Can I say that 73.8 per cent—if you look at our statistics—of people in the electorate of Mallee earn under $87,000 a year. We're not a high-wage-earning electorate. They have been very mindful that there has not been a lot of opportunity recently for significant pay rises in their pay packets. Cost-of-living pressures, I think, are very firmly felt by people who live in my patch, because public transport is not readily available in many of our country towns, so having to drive is an extra expense, with fuel at 160c a litre, so $1.60 a litre. People have to travel. Most of my electorate are going to get $530 a year as a tax refund. That will, I think, be very beneficial for them. It's just a small way of saying that, wherever possible, we want to make sure that you keep your money in your pocket rather than us taking it.

I note that on my Facebook page some people have said to me, 'Keep your $10 a week and spend it on hospitals and schools.' Whenever I've then contacted them and said, 'There are some really good schools and health services in the electorate of Mallee that would happily receive a donation of $530'—the Wimmera Cancer Centre is being built because of donations—those people have gone all quiet on me. Ultimately that's not a bad argument. If they want to give away their additional savings, they can do that, because it's their money to spend. In my view that's how a government should run—that is, we should provide essential services, but ultimately wherever possible we should ensure that the Australians who make money have a say on how their money is spent.

The principle that you make a country wealthier by making its citizens wealthier is a very sound one. You create a framework for those who get out of bed earlier than others and for those who take a risk as opposed to those who don't. If those people receive more in doing so, you can lift their—and, ultimately, the country's—standard of living. You do not create wealth by taking away from the rich and giving to the poor; you create wealth by creating incentives across a broader economy so that those who get out of bed get more.

Ultimately that gives us a strong economy, but the economy itself should not be the end point for anyone in this place; the economy is simply the engine to deliver the type of society that you want. In my patch I want a very fair society where people have opportunity. With your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas—I have been very pleased to see prosperity in the township of Mildura as a result of free trade agreements. That has been a good thing. There are jobs and money. You know what else I've seen? I've seen small-business people say, 'We do not want a town where our young people and our Indigenous are going to miss out.' Some small businesses in my town have been very proactive about Indigenous employment. If you walk around Mildura, you don't see people in our Indigenous community sitting on the river, drunk with nothing to do; you see young Indigenous fellas saying, 'I'm going to do an apprenticeship,' or, 'I'm going to go to university.'

Businesses—one of them formerly Fishers Supermarkets—have worked out how to be culturally relevant workplaces, and people are engaged in ensuring that the economy is the engine for us to deliver the type of society we have in our region. Some exciting things are going on. When you introduce economic growth into a regional town the outworkings of that initially become an incentive for financial gain, but after that they very quickly become opportunities for ensuring that regional Australia addresses some of our societal concerns. I also point out that we have seen this with a group called Sunassist, volunteers assisting people in our region who have mobility issues. People who have a strong economy can also develop a good society.

This bill is about ensuring that a person who works hard, puts in and thinks they're getting paid superannuation actually gets paid superannuation. This bill is about ensuring that those who have not been paid superannuation, be it because of neglect or because of oversight, get their entitlement over the next 12 months. It is a fair warning to any employer that, whilst there's patience for a short period of time to ensure that we can collect the money, that patience from the federal government's perspective will run out. If you're not paying your superannuation guarantee to your employee, you will receive the full wrath of the law: up to 12 months imprisonment.

I also say that we want superannuation funds to be transparent. One of the things that concerns me—as a young man with very small amount of superannuation, having been not a very good shearer and not a very good farm worker, I remember having $6,000 worth of superannuation—is the fees that went on that superannuation. It seemed that it was going backwards faster than it was going forwards. That meant that I wasn't going to be able to retire until I was about 485 at the current savings rate I had on my super. We also want transparency in our superannuation funds for those who have small balances. We want to make sure those balances are protected and that they're protected for the young.

I think that, ultimately, even more needs to be done in the space of ensuring that people can compare like with like when it comes to superannuation funds. For many people, superannuation funds are too complex, and I want to ensure that, when they come to working out where they're placing their money for their future retirements, it's clear what the earnings are, clear what the fees are and clear how they can access it. I think we are getting to that space, but I don't think we're quite at that space now.

This is a good bill. It's a step in the right direction. Superannuation is your money; you earn it. I say to those employers in my patch: not paying workers' superannuation will no longer be tolerated. Too much of it goes on in my region, and this is a step in the right direction to ensure that you will get caught if you do the wrong thing. You will get prosecuted, and those prosecutions are very, very firm: up to 12 months in jail. People are working hard for their money. They deserve to keep it. They deserve to be able to make provision for their retirement. This is a good bill. Thank you.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to rise again today to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2018 Measures No. 4) Bill 2018, the latest in a series that the Turnbull government has introduced over the past 18 months, which shows so clearly that working Australians and retirees have only one true friend in this 45th Parliament: the coalition government. Our side of politics in Australia today is fighting to secure a job for everyone, ensuring workers do not have their pay stolen by employers or by their unions, ensuring that they get to keep as much of that pay as possible with lower taxes and ensuring that they are defended from threats and intimidation in the workplace. The Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party members are fighting tooth and nail to protect the privileged sectional interests of the lawless unions against the workers they claim to represent, resisting every job-creating measure and trying to take hundreds of billions of dollars more out of peoples' pay packets.

Our side of politics in Australia today is working hard to ensure that workers can save for their retirement, that retirees' pensions are protected and that they can earn some extra money on the side through meaningful employment. The Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party members, in contrast, simply want to slug our older Australians with a massive new retiree tax and make them pay for Labor's addiction to spending other peoples' money.

This bill is all about young people like those up in the gallery today. This bill is all about the young people of Australia. We were all young once—even you, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, all that time ago! We all know that young people in particular are at their most vulnerable in relation to the nonpayment of superannuation. Young people up in the gallery, listen to this because this is very important for your future. You might think superannuation is so far off into the future that you don't have to worry about it, but let me tell you those 30 or 40 years creep up on you very, very quickly. Trust me on this.

The bill before the House today is part of a consistent and coherent strategy from the Turnbull government to protect workers' pay and conditions. The bill's place in that strategy is to protect workers' superannuation benefits especially and ensure that workers are paid the super that they are entitled to. It will do this by first introducing tough new penalties for employers who are breaking the law and ripping off their employees and by providing new enforcement tools to the ATO. Schedule 1 of the bill gives the ATO the power to direct employers to pay unpaid and overdue superannuation amounts where that has been identified. Employers who do not pay the superannuation guarantee are already breaking the law, but with this bill the ATO will be given the proper power to direct employers to comply. Where they don't, it will back up this power with new criminal penalties. If an employer fails to comply with the ATO's direction to pay, they will have committed an offence under this bill with a maximum penalty of 50 penalty units, up to 12 months imprisonment or both. These are substantial penalties that are in line with how seriously this government takes the issue of underpayment of workers.

In schedule 5, this bill introduces new debt collection powers for the ATO on behalf of employees. It will minimise directors' ability to take advantage of the gap in timing between estimates of the superannuation guarantee charge and withholding liabilities and of the underlying liability to which the estimates relate in order to avoid paying their obligations. It will also prevent directors using the penalty notices regime to buy time, and allow the ATO to apply for a court order to compel employers to provide security for outstanding amounts.

These provisions are complementary to the government's Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Act 2017 as part of the government's comprehensive strategy. Where this bill seeks to stamp out the underpayment of workers' superannuation benefits, the central object of that act was to stamp out the practice of underpaying workers. When it was confirmed to the government through the Fair Work Ombudsman's inquiry into 7-Eleven that there is systemic underpayment of migrants and other vulnerable workers in Australia, this government acted to protect them. We found that underpayment had been in some cases straightforward and direct; in others, it had been done through the creation of false pay slips and employment records and, most worryingly, it'd been done by coercing workers by way of threats or intimidation to wrongly give money back where they were rightly paid.

Like today's bill, the Turnbull government's Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Act helped to stop these practices by imposing stiff penalties on offenders and by giving the Fair Work Ombudsman the power it needed to find and punish unscrupulous employers. The bill before us today and its counterpart in the protecting vulnerable workers act make it clear in no uncertain terms that the coalition considers exploiting workers to be entirely and utterly unacceptable. It makes it clear that this government will ensure that unscrupulous employers who engage in this type of conduct are punished. This government is steadfast in supporting small businesses that are doing the right thing, and the vast majority of employers do the right thing. But we believe in fairness and the rule of law, so we are also very tough on any business that is failing to respect its employees' rights.

The Leader of the Opposition's record on protecting workers' pay and conditions is in dramatic contrast. As national secretary of the AWU, he gleefully and repeatedly signed up to agreements that left the workers he supposedly looked after receiving less than their lawful entitlements. The workers at Cleanevent, for example, found themselves stripped of all penalty rates with no compensation. Under a 2006 agreement for which the Leader of the Opposition was responsible and which he approved in 2001 and 2003, the Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust's agreement stripped workers of almost all penalty rates and overtime. The Leader of the Opposition hasn't given away workers' entitlements alone. For many years, the union movement all over Australia has been hard at work reducing workers' pay and conditions, often in return for benefits for the union itself. It's because of union negotiated enterprise agreements, for example, that workers at many five-star hotels are paid $10.24 an hour less than those on the Fair Work Commission's penalty rates. It's also why workers at David Jones, Dan Murphy's, McDonald's and KFC get $8 less than their counterparts on award rates. We are protecting workers' pay and conditions; those opposite are giving them away.

Another of the central objects of this bill is ensuring that the relevant authorities have the information and the power they need to investigate and catch corporate wrongdoers. Schedule 3 of the bill extends Single Touch Payroll to all employers from 1 July 2019. That is where 70 per cent of noncompliance occurs. This will give the ATO almost real-time information about all employees' superannuation guarantee entitlements, what liabilities have been paid and what liabilities have been withheld. Where before the ATO was dependent on employee complaints in most cases to identify examples of shortfalls and was unable to accurately identify how much super was in fact owed, this extended scheme will give the ATO full visibility over all of the amounts paid and owing which are relevant to the calculation.

The bill will also provide the ATO with timely information from the other end of the transaction by requiring that, from 1 July 2018, superannuation funds provide event based reporting. This will deliver the ATO nearly real-time data about the contributions received by funds on employees' behalf and reduce the burden on employers to report this figure. In combination, the measures will ensure the ATO has up-to-date and complete information, which will allow them to detect underpayment of employees' entitlements quickly without input from the employee. It will facilitate rapid and decisive action against employers who are not paying what they owe.

Schedule 2 of the bill gives the ATO the ability to tell affected employees about the efforts it is making on their behalf to recover unpaid superannuation. As it stands, the ATO's inability to tell employees what action, if any, they are taking to recover their underpaid superannuation guarantee leaves employees completely in the dark as to what their next steps should be. Following the passage of this bill, tax officers will be able to disclose the action they are taking on an employee's behalf. That will not only increase confidence in the system but also ensure employees have the information they need to decide how to pursue their unpaid entitlements further. Real-time reporting and transparency are critically important, as unscrupulous employers will sometimes seek to tailor their records to avoid exposing their misdeeds, while others destroy them when an investigation begins—just as the CFMEU did when under investigation by the Heydon royal commission.

The coalition government is ensuring, through this bill, that the ATO has the power it needs to find the truth and expose wrongdoing. What a contrast this is with the Labor Party's record when it comes to protecting the workers. Given the opportunity, they took key investigative powers away from one of the most important regulators protecting workers today. They abolished the ABCC in 2012 and with it the power for the regulator to compel witnesses to attend in cases of union exploitation of workers. They also took away the power for that regulator to enforce the law if a secret settlement had been reached. In an effort to protect their union mates as they ripped off the workers, Labor replaced the ABCC with a toothless tiger. Evidently, the Labor Party don't like real-time enforcement action.

There is no doubt that the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues read the same court decisions as the rest of us. When it came to the test for eligibility under section 44 of the Constitution, for instance, they knew as far back as October—like the rest of us, after the Re Canavan decision was handed down—that four of their members of parliament were dual citizens and ineligible to sit in this place, yet for six months the Leader of the Opposition sought to avoid proper scrutiny and swift action by maintaining a self-evidently fallacious interpretation of the law. That was while my colleagues on this side of the House did the right thing by resigning or referring themselves to the High Court immediately.

Members opposite claim that Labor is the party that fights for workers' rights. As real working Australians know, that claim has been nothing less than ludicrous for many, many years. As the Labor Party is led by a man who has dedicated much of his life to trading away workers' pay and conditions for the benefit of his union mates, it is becoming a genuinely nauseating deception.

In contrast, the bill before us today is another important plank in the Turnbull coalition government's coherent strategy to stand up for working Australians and ensure that they get the pay and conditions that they deserve. Along with our industrial relations reforms, our fantastic tax relief just announced successfully last week and legislation like the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Act, it will make a big difference to thousands of working people and let them know that the government is ready to protect them. For that, I commend it to the House.

Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've just had the most extraordinary contribution from my friend. He must live in an alternative reality if he honestly and truly believes that the coalition is the workers' friend. Clearly, if you judge them by their actions rather than their words, the coalition are no friends of workers in this place. If they were friends of workers, they would vote immediately for restoration of penalty rates.

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2018 Measures No. 4) Bill 2018. Whilst Labor is broadly supportive of the measures in this bill, we will reserve our position as to whether any amendments are required until after the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into the bill has reported. There are some important issues addressed in this bill. Chief amongst these is this government's response with respect to the problem of unpaid superannuation. There are many within our communities who have been ripped off by their employers. Unpaid super is a massive problem which affects all of us in that, if employees are not receiving their full pay and entitlements, this means that families and communities miss out. This, of course, disproportionately affects the low paid and those in insecure work. There is an estimate that 2.4 million workers are losing a combined $5.6 billion in payments each year. That is equivalent to a worker losing $2,000 per year. This is money which should be applied to their retirement savings. The practice which has arisen of not paying super despite a legal obligation is to be absolutely condemned. This amounts to wage theft. Superannuation is part of a worker's pay and conditions, something that was fought for by a Labor government. In fact, those opposite argued against it. Employers are required by law to pay superannuation. This government could have taken action earlier. It is disappointing that the government has taken so long to take action.

The bill contains nine schedules. Schedules 1 to 6 deal with superannuation guarantee integrity. Schedule 7 deals with information sharing. Schedule 8 deals with miscellaneous matters. Schedule 9 deals with deductible gift recipients. Schedules 1 to 6 and the measures in those schedules implement several recommendations contained in the Superannuation Guarantee Cross-Agency Working Group's report to strengthen compliance with taxation and superannuation guarantee obligations. The package implements changes to allow the tax commissioner, in circumstances where an employer fails to comply with the superannuation guarantee obligations, to issue directions to pay unpaid superannuation guarantee and undertake superannuation guarantee education courses. Failure to comply with a direction can result in criminal penalties.

There is also an important amendment to facilitate the disclosure by the tax commissioner of information about superannuation guarantee noncompliance to the employers' employees—that is, the person or people who are affected. It also extends Single Touch Payroll reporting to all employers. It facilitates more regular reporting by superannuation funds. It improves the operation of the commissioner's collection and compliance measures and streamlines employee commencement processes. The power to issue a direction to an employer either to pay an outstanding superannuation guarantee liability or to undertake an approved course is new, with no existing equivalent. The power to disclose information about superannuation guarantee noncompliance to affected employees is likewise a new provision. There is an appropriate limitation upon sharing of information in that it cannot relate to the general financial affairs of the employer. The extension of Single Touch Payroll reporting is to extend—

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member for Bass will have leave to continue.