Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Defence Force budget is an important measure of its ability to fulfil its role, and there can be nothing more important than ensuring that the men and women who serve our nation in the ADF have the resources they need to do their jobs to fight and win our wars. But we know that, under Labor, defence always suffers. Defence spending is always lower under Labor, and this budget is no exception. No, this is not political spin—the very gifted minds at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have been crunching the numbers since the budget was delivered a month ago. They have identified that defence funding over the forward estimates period is lower than in the March 2022 budget of the former coalition government. In fact, this year's budget provides $1.5 billion less to defence over the next three years than our budget in March last year. This was confirmed by defence officials in estimates two weeks ago.

The budget papers reveal a cut to Army and a cut to Navy. It's disappointing but, unfortunately, not surprising. It makes it harder for our people on the ground, at sea or in the air to do their jobs, and there are already very specific examples of that. Cuts are being felt at the coalface right now. I know I've spoken about this a lot, but I want to raise again the cut to the order of the infantry fighting vehicles from 450 to 129 under LAND 400 phase 3. The reason I bring it up again is today I am hoping the minister opposite will take the opportunity to answer questions that are on the minds of every member of a mechanised battalion across the country, and particularly at the 3rd Brigade in my electorate: what is the future of our mechanised battalion? Which ones are going to be stripped of their capability? Which ones are going to have years and years of training and preparation go completely to waste? Which ones will see a raft of discharges as people feel their jobs mean nothing anymore at a time when we need all of our people? And specifically, on behalf of my own electorate, why won't the minister come clean about the future of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, and other Townsville units that use the infantry fighting vehicle?

This is hurting our people right now. I was at 3RAR the day before Anzac Day, when the Deputy Prime Minister—that part-time defence minister—made this announcement. There were Kapyong Day commemorations, and it wasn't long after the ceremony finished that I was receiving messages like this: 'Why is the minister denying the infantry soldiers and those in a combined arms environment the protection that they deserve? So much time invested into capability we cannot use. So many discharges because we have lost our identity.' Even the Chief of Army says that infantry fighting vehicles are needed to help our troops survive. Why won't this part-time defence minister listen to soldiers on the ground and listen to the Chief of Army?

The government knew this decision was so unpopular, they didn't even reference it in the budget papers. The government are so inconsistent when it comes to defence. They say they'll do one thing and they'll do something completely different. I'm sure the minister remembers the Prime Minister's interview with the Australian where he said that he would spend whatever was necessary to build a defence force that could defend Australia, but here today we're talking about a $1.5 billion cut to the defence budget. So why is the Prime Minister breaking his promise and making it harder for the ADF to keep our country safe? It's a question which didn't get a decent answer when the member for Canning asked him in question time and an answer which I don't expect to receive. But I hope that this part-time defence minister will give the men and women who serve our nation in uniform the common decency of a response to the above questions.

If I could venture briefly into the veteran space for a moment, the former service men and women who I speak to on a daily basis have become pretty sick of the politicisation of the portfolio under this new minister, who, clearly, doesn't want to be the veterans' affairs minister. So my final question is: when will this government stop playing politics and deliver for our defence members and our veterans?

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on our defence and veterans' affairs budget here today because, during the course of the last 12 months, the Albanese government has been making generational decisions in defence and veterans affairs: establishing the pathway by which Australia will acquire a nuclear-powered submarine capability, and re-tasking the Australian Defence Force for the first time in 35 years. Underpinning this have been difficult but real funding decisions, which have seen $7.8 billion of spending being reprioritised over the course of the next four years and a growth in the defence budget of 0.2 per cent of GDP above what we inherited from those opposite, over the course of the next decade. We are making the difficult but necessary decisions. We're making substantial, funded announcements.

When those opposite were in government and faced with a problem in defence, their solution was to make an announcement, but without any actual money behind it: $42 billion of unfunded defence announcements, which put an intense pressure on the Department of Defence to take action but with no actual money to take that action. In the Defence Strategic Review and as exposed through Senate estimates, we learnt that the former government regarded the defence budget as their piggybank—a piggybank that they were very happy to raid, with the effective outcome of a significant cut in defence spending: some $20 billion of effective cuts.

The same can be said for how the previous government treated the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and I'm proud that, after almost a decade of chronic under-resourcing and underfunding, the Albanese Labor government has now turned that around. We have invested in the Department of Veterans' Affairs, placing it in the best position it has been in in three decades. So Australians can have no doubt that supporting defence personnel, veterans and families is a key priority for the Albanese Labor government.

In September of last year, the claims backlog that we inherited was still on an upward trajectory and had hit 45,000 DVA claims. At the end of May, we had got that down to just over 34,000—that's a 23 per cent drop from its peak, and it is continuing to fall. We are spending $322.3 million, as set out in the last two Labor budgets, to employ and retain additional staff at the Department of Veterans' Affairs to get through those claims. We've budgeted $341.1 million to fund the modernisation and sustainment of the IT systems within DVA to support the processing of those claims. We've budgeted $46.7 million to fund the delivery of 10 veterans and families hubs in the areas where we have the highest concentration of veterans around the country. And we're rolling out a $24 million Veterans' Employment Program.

Now, unlike when we came into government, over 90 per cent—in fact, nearly 100 per cent—of invoices for in-home support for veterans and families are being processed within 20 days. That had blown out to over three months for most invoices when we came into government. We now have that under control. And we have increased the annual TPI payment by $1,000, to support some 27,000 of our most injured veterans. The Defence, Veterans' and Families' Acute Support Package was introduced by this government, expanded across the spectrum of veterans, and in the budget last month we expanded that to also include grandcarer veteran families. We've improved access to mental health supports. We're providing better access to GPs by tripling the veterans access payment. And we've now acted on all 13 recommendations of the interim report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.

Of course, we have also been building on our support for our Defence Force personnel. The legacy that we inherited after almost a decade of the Liberal Party was an ADF workforce over 10 years that only grew by just over 2,000 people despite the very real need to grow the size of our Defence Force. I say to the member for Herbert, who clearly does not understand anything to do with strategic imperatives let alone the content of the Defence Strategic Review, I think all of the members of the Defence Force in his electorate as well as around the country can have great confidence in their ongoing purpose and their ongoing role in our Defence Force. I am very clear that they have an ongoing purpose, an ongoing role and will continue to have that, because we are continuing to fund the purchase of infantry fighting vehicles but in a reprioritised manner and that is really important. Of course, what is important is that our Defence Force is able to do what is needed in the strategic circumstances that we face. If you want to not politicise the veterans' affairs budget, you would support housing for homeless veterans. (Time expired)

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry. He is not here but maybe the assistant minister or the Minister for Defence Personnel can answer. Earlier this year, on February 28, the Minister for Defence, Richard Marles MP, stated: 'In order to develop a strong, sovereign and internationally competitive Australian defence industrial base, we will need to leverage our collaboration with our close partners and likeminded countries.' But over these past few months, I have spent time visiting people in defence industry right around Australia, in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and in New South Wales. There are lots of great companies exporting some of what they make overseas to other defence forces but are finding it difficult to get orders here, so, sadly, they have been left to hang out to dry by this Labor government, with many telling me that they are not getting any orders and that, in fact, there have been no new orders from this government since they came to office.

So my question to the minister is: Where are the orders to sustain and develop this sovereign defence industry base that your minister spoke about and that you promised? Around AUKUS, where are the orders for the next five years? How are these defence industry companies around AUKUS in the next five years going to be fed? You are contributing to that by not putting one extra dollar in the forward estimates. Why are you not putting any new money into the next four years? You keep going on about the next 10 years. Well, that is great in years 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 if you are still in government but what about these next four years? If we are facing such a sense of urgency as stated in the DSR on page 17, 'Strategically we have already entered a decisive period for the Indo Pacific,' why are we not putting any new money in?

The minister continues to stand behind the microphone and deliver false hope by using sovereign capability as a buzzword, but when exactly will the minister step up and start to support Australian defence industry with orders instead of dishing out empty words, which results in empty bank accounts? Can the minister outline what orders the government has placed that directly support Australian industry? In case you need to be more specific, if you look up '155 millimetre munitions', over one million of those have been fired off in the Ukraine war resulting in a worldwide shortage. Can the minister confirm how many 155 millimetre munitions Australia has in stock currently. How many have we got? And if you don't know, why not? Can the minister confirm that the government has ordered Australian manufactured 155 millimetre munitions in the last 12 months during this worldwide shortage?

Before the minister tries to hide behind a bureaucratic process of CASG, let's go there. What is the minister doing to get CASG to place orders with Australian businesses manufacturing here? What has Minister Conroy done in the last 13 months to get CASG to order from Australian companies—not what you have told the department but three tangible things that you have done to bring change to CASG and, in turn, tangible change to defence industry? Unless the minister is driving these changes, it will be the same old, same old. Our defence industry in this nation can no longer continue to hold on waiting to be fed. So tell me, Minister, how many people within CASG have two levels of experience where they are ex-defence but are also working in defence industry? It's not one or the other but both, and, if you don't know, why don't you know? The Australian defence industries deserve better than what this government is giving them. They deserve more than ministers who say one thing but continue to kick key decisions down the road and deliver only review after review.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:15 to 10: 28

Perhaps the Assistant Minister for Defence or the Minister for Defence Personnel could answer those questions to the Minister for Defence Industry. To the Minister for Defence Personnel: the Australian Defence Force and the men and women who serve within it deserve the full and unrelenting support of your government and the whole parliament. So let's talk about Navy recruiting figures in the last 12 months. Information recently provided to me reveals that whilst the Navy has recruited 1,100 new recruits, we've lost 1,500—can the minister confirm that is correct?—and that the Navy now faces negative personnel attrition of 400 in the last 12 months alone. Minister, we want to see you do well in this area. We want to see more people, men and women, joining the ADF. Everyone on this side, on the opposition, wants to see you succeed. So maybe you can outline a little bit about what you're doing in that space as well.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regarding the member for Petrie's questions about the defence industrial base and the industry asking questions regarding contracts, there's a simple answer to those questions. That is because the previous government cancelled the Attack class submarine project. That was the big defence project that industry was gearing up to deliver. The contracts had been signed, the work in France had begun on construction of the submarine and industry here was gearing up to partner with defence.

On my first visit to Osborne shipyards in this role, I visited the facility that was built by industry in partnership with government to construct the Attack class submarines here in Australia, a purpose built, beautiful facility. Guess what's happening with that facility at the moment? There's plenty of work for industry. Industry is involved in taking it down—in deconstructing it—because of the previous government's cancellation of that project. Again, those opposite are all talk. They were big on announcement, but when it came to delivery the previous government were woefully inadequate in the defence space.

Now, of course, in the wake of that, they announced the AUKUS arrangement to build nuclear propelled submarines here in Australia. That was supported by the then Albanese opposition, and since we have come to government we have been delivering on that commitment. The optimal pathway has been announced, in conjunction with the United Kingdom and United States governments, and the government is getting on with delivering that. That will revolutionise Australia's defence industrial base. There will be much work that the Australian defence industry will be partnering with the government to deliver, creating 20,000 new jobs in the Australian economy—a project akin to the Snowy Mountains scheme in terms of its scale and its development for Australia's economy.

It's not true that there aren't contracts that the defence industry is undertaking at the moment with the Australian Defence Force. I've visited a couple of projects in my role, most notably the Ghost Bat technology that's being developed in a partnership between Boeing Australia and the RAAF to build uncrewed reconnaissance and surveillance vehicles. They are being constructed here, in Melbourne—Australian jobs for Australians. This has massive export potential for our nation. It's an Australian technology in the defence space that has big ramifications internationally as well.

Last week I was in Randwick, where OCIUS, a small- to medium-sized enterprise based in my electorate, handed over to the Royal Australian Navy their fifth BlueBottle vessel. This is wonderful innovative technology that uses solar power and wave power to propel, again, an uncrewed reconnaissance vessel. It's doing wonderful work off the coast of Australia for the Australian Navy and for Australian Border Force. This is Australian technology promoting Australian jobs in partnership with Australian universities in the renewable energy space, delivering for the people of Australia and the Australian Defence Force.

When it comes to AUKUS, we've announced some new projects to ensure that we speed up the development of partnership with industry. The Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator that was announced recently by the government will ensure that that partnership with industry delivers those jobs and those investments in the near to longer term, and $3.4 billion has been allocated by the government over the next 10 years to ensure that that partnership prevails. That project begins on 1 July. Later this year, the Defence Industry Development Strategy will be released as well, and that will provide the pathway for the opportunities associated with AUKUS and the delivery of the recommendation in the Defence Strategic Review where industry can partner with the Defence Force.

So the member for Petrie's claims are simply wrong. The new government is getting on with a partnership with defence industry, because we know that government can't deliver AUKUS alone. There needs to be a partnership with industry around Australian jobs, and that is what the Albanese government will deliver.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Veterans pay a high price for not having a minister at the cabinet table, and since that decision—which, of course, has been taken as a complete slap in the face and an insult to so many veterans—we have seen that the capacity for veterans to be properly represented in both the budget and outcomes has fallen away. In the 2022-23 budget, I noted that there was $12.21 billion, and in 2023-24, nearly $12.32 billion dollars. This is a vastly less amount—I think it's only about a 0.94 per cent increase—when we're up against seven per cent inflation.

The budget was also bereft of information. We noted during the budget estimates that not only did Minister McAllister have to do an opening statement but the department secretary had to do a 10-minute following clarifying statement. What the statement confirmed was that the backlog of veterans' claims peaked at 45,226 in September last year. That's a record, and it happened under the Labor government. It's also got a legacy that the largest veterans' claims backlog in the history of Australia was presided over by Labor. The coalition will keep the pressure on Labor to get that backlog down to zero. We will be unrelenting in this task. We will pressure this government to continue the coalition's plans to bring on more staff to clear the backlog. We will pressure the government to honour the commitments to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which was established by the coalition.

We note in Budget Paper No. 2, on page 92, it allocates $61.4 million in 2023-2024 for veterans' claims processing. We also note that the interim report of the royal commission confirmed that under the coalition government in 2021-2022 and 2022-23 DVA received increased funding to address the claims backlog. The royal commission noted on page 235 that the former government, the coalition government, committed $73.3 million over four years in supplementary funding—on top of what we did—for claims processing. The coalition supports the principle of consolidating the various acts that govern veterans' compensation, MRCA, DRCA and VA. But it is not a blank cheque. We will wait to see whether the results of the consultation are the visibility of a draft bill. Our concerns from Senate estimates are that we were given the impression that a draft would be put forward in the public domain for consultation, but that has been delayed. When the estimates panel was asked for a guarantee that there would be an exposure draft, they were told:

An exposure draft would be a matter for government, and I think that in this case it's likely that they'd give that very serious consideration.

They'd better give it more than serious consideration because of the promise. The coalition is extremely concerned about the performance measures on Page 39 of the portfolio budget statements that relate to processing the income support compensation payments under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act. Across the board the budget papers show that processing times got worst in Labor's first year in office.

I would like to move to veterans hubs, and I know the member for Braddon will latch onto this. But Labor made a deliberate decision not to continue the funding for eight veterans hubs committed to under the coalition. I ask the minister to be clear about when these sites will be reassessed and what funding will be put on the table. Labor scrapped the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Labor scrapped Wagga Wagga region, Labor scrapped Mackay region, Labor scrapped Wide Bay and Burnett, Labor scrapped the Sunshine Coast region, Labor scrapped the greater Melbourne region, Labor scrapped the Mornington Peninsula region, Labor scrapped the greater Sydney region.

Some things that are very close to my heart are World War I's unmarked graves. I note this was a great program that the coalition were a part of for those who did it tough when they came home from World War I, which both my grandfathers served in only about a mile away from one another. I am very suspicious that there is only $201,000 for the program this year, which includes a carryover of $100,000. The government says it has committed $1.5 million across four years. Where is it? The coalition is suspicious of government efforts to pressure the War Memorial into rewriting history. We see that right now, and it is a disgrace. In the last few months we've seen that what was absolutely indelible in regard to the frontier wars not being represented at the War Memorial, because Australian soldiers did not serve in any frontier wars in that period of time, will now be put into the War Memorial, or there's a push towards it. This means they've found new history in merely months, after years and years of noted history. This is something I would like the minister to explain to us. What is the new information you have now that was never there before?

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the ministers on the serious way in which defence is treated in this budget. We're still waiting for the apology we asked for last year in this forum from the opposition for the disgraceful preelection scare campaigns that somehow the government could not be trusted on defence. We knew the campaign was getting really bonkers when they were running the line with the Australian that somehow the now Minister for Defence and Deputy Prime Minister was some kind of Chinese spy or Manchurian candidate—a great 48 hours of journalism! They ran a scare campaign that Labor would cut defence. Again, these budget papers in the second year of this government prove that that was in fact untrue. We won't say 'a lie' in this forum, but that is what it was.

Defence spending will rise to the highest in decades, two per cent of GDP rising another 10 per cent to about 2.2 per cent over the next 10 years. But most importantly it's not just dollars; it's injecting a sense of urgency into defence which was lacking in the previous decade of drift and dysfunction and decay and denial and devaluation and dithering and disgraceful non-delivery, distraction, deception, dilly-dallying in defence under the previous government.

Our strategic circumstances are the most serious since World War II. The comfortable planning assumption on which the country has been able to rely for decades, of a 10-year strategic warning time, has gone, and we need a hard-nosed Australian approach to deter conflict by increasing the lethality, resilience and readiness of the ADF. This budget sets out the first steps to give effect to the recommendations of the Defence Strategic Review. More than $270 billion of investment is confirmed in the Integrated Investment Plan. The acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, critical for deterrence and protection of our maritime trade, is funded over the forward estimates. There is about $9 billion for AUKUS, of which the submarines are part. AUKUS is critical. It's a technology-sharing partnership with our closest allies. Frankly, it was overhyped but undersold by the former government. Running around with dozens of Australian flags did not actually explain to the Australian people the importance and the seriousness of the AUKUS partnership.

We are developing the ability to precisely strike targets at longer range and, importantly, manufacturing munitions—bullets and missiles—in this country. One of the key lessons from the Ukrainian conflict is the need to be able to manufacture and maintain the consumables of war and maintain your platforms with sovereign capability. We are improving the ADF's ability to operate from northern Australia, after a decade of the coalition doing nothing. Interestingly, back when Stephen Smith was the defence minister and Sir Angus Houston was running the defence forces, in the forward planning there were plans to upgrade the northern bases. But, under the decade of dysfunction of those opposite, those plans disappeared, leaving us a decade behind where we should be in terms of allowing those northern and western bases to be forward operating bases should the contingencies materialise.

Growth and retention of a skilled workforce—on this one I have to acknowledge that the economy is no friend of the defence forces. The fact is that the situation we've inherited has seen us going backwards in net terms this year again, by 900 personnel, rather than the net gain of 1,000 which we need to meet the increase of 18½ thousand personnel over the next decade or two. Interestingly, that was unfunded under the previous government. They had $42 billion of defence projects, including the expansion of the ADF, for which there were press releases, announcements and Australian flags, but there was no actual funding. As the Deputy Prime Minister rightly reminds the House regularly, you can't go into battle waving a press release or waving the budget papers or waving a flag—'Stop! I've got a flag! I've got a press release! I've announced this new capability!' You actually have to fund it and to deliver it. It's not even the funding, of course; billions of projects were simply not delivered. They were announced. They were running late. There were 28 projects running 97 years late—covered up.

This budget has a new technology and industry initiative, with $3.4 billion over 10 years for the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator for supply chain resilience. Importantly, it also commits us to deepening diplomacy and defence partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia is an island, but we're not alone. Rightly, DFAT, Foreign Affairs, should take the lead in setting national strategy, and Defence should bring to bear its capabilities for deterrence or, if the worst happens, for conflict, in support of that national strategy. But that does rely on tough decisions being made about priorities. This government is a complete contrast with the rabble opposite.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would appear that the government has no plans for any new veterans hubs, as was alluded to by Mr Joyce earlier. Two of the completed hubs recently announced were fully funded by the former coalition government, in Tasmania and South-East Queensland. The one that I will speak of most passionately is the north-west veterans hub, in the north-western part of Tasmania, which has been on the go for quite some time, and it has finally got its deed. Dr Andrew Clarke is the guy that heads that facility up—a former ammo tech, a bomb technician in the Army, a major, and now a GP on the north-west coast of Tasmania. He wants me to extend to the minister his thanks for finalising the deed—even though the minister probably took years of that doctor's life by stretching that process out. Nevertheless, it is up and running and it plays a pivotal role in the transition between the big family that is Defence and the new family which is civilian life. What I like about the north-west veterans hub—in fact, what I like about the veterans hub projects moreover is that they have a family-centric, positive, welfare-driven mandate as far as outcomes are concerned. They don't look over the shoulder, there is no time for pity parties. We expect our veterans to get up off the couch and do something for themselves, and we're there to stand by and support them in their new transition from military into civilian life and a way forward. I'm concerned, however, that there is no announcement of any future or subsequent veterans hubs from this government, and I'd like the minister to answer to that. I would also like him to answer why, in the home of the soldier at Kapooka in Wagga Wagga, there's no wellness centre or veterans hub. If anyone deserves a wellness centre or a veterans hub, I would have thought it would be the home of the soldier.

In 2018 the former coalition government introduced a program to maintain incapacity payments to veterans who were studying. The coalition improved the program to provide 100 per cent of veterans with pre-entry earnings for them to undertake full-time study as part of DVA approved rehabilitation plans. Without the coalition's 100 per cent subsidy, those payments would have phased out at 75 per cent over the 45 subsequent weeks. Not only has the 100 per cent subsidy gone but the entire program also is coming to an end. From 1 July, for all the veterans out there, it's over. What's the minister doing about this? I would request—in fact, our veteran community would like to see and to understand the minister's tabling of the analysis on which this decision was based. Additionally, the minister must explain what will happen to those veterans who are currently on courses and receiving the 100 per cent salary equivalent. What's going to happen to the courses? Where's their money going to come from? What does their future involve? Their future is unclear, and I would like the minister to clear that up for our veteran community.

Finally and importantly, Labor's first budget last year slashed more than $2 million from a dedicated program to mark the private graves of First World War veterans—the unmarked graves. I've been to some of these gravesites throughout Tasmania, and there is a lovely lady by the name of Andrea Gerrard who is heading up this program. She is an older lady, an experienced and dedicated lady, who has put her heart and soul into this, and $2 million from this program has been removed. This means that the blackberry-overgrown, sunken depression that holds a digger who served his country in the First World War hasn't even got a tombstone on it. The coalition put $3.7 million in forward estimates into this project. Labor is funding $1.5 million. They can't put these gravestones on these unmarked graves without that funding. What is the minister doing about it? In 2023-24 there is just $201,000 allocated for the program, and I would like to pass on from Andrea Gerrard in Tasmania that she can't do it without that increased funding. I'd like the minister to explain to me, the veteran community and Australia why our World War I diggers don't deserve a tombstone. Goodness me!

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we consider Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024, we have looked closely at the defence portfolio—a portfolio that is no mean feat to cover within the space of a mere hour on the floor. I acknowledge the contributions made by my colleagues. I observed some of the remarks in this debate by the member for Herbert, and I would simply say that as a nation we are best served when both of the major parties of government can work together and have our nation's defence be bipartisan—for the sake of our strategic continuity as well as our reputation and our standing within our region, and with our friends and allies abroad. Hearing from both the Assistant Minister for Defence and the Minister for Veterans' Affairs really has demonstrated—as is so often the case—that we have a government with adults at the helm, one that is ready to make responsible choices to safeguard our national security, our national strategic interests, our sovereign capability to defend ourselves and preserve peace and order, and—I would argue the most important duty among that list—safeguarding those persons who have accepted the call to safeguard and those who have retired from that esteemed calling that one can undertake in their lifetime.

Defence as a portfolio—for any that have read through even a fraction of those budget papers—is an extremely large umbrella, one which acts as both shield and sword for Australia's strategic interests, its sovereign capabilities and the preservation of regional stability. Forming spokes on the umbrella of the Defence portfolio are, of course, the Department of Defence and the ADF. Adjacent to them we also have the Australian Signals Directorate, ASD, who act as our nation's sword and shield—as their name suggests—with our signals intelligence and our cybersecurity operations. A well-funded ASD is a testament to a government that is cognisant of the fact that modern problems require modern solutions.

Another spoke on the Defence portfolio umbrella is Defence Housing Australia—an important part indeed. It's one that operates to ensure the other spokes are turning smoothly and one that ensures our Defence Force personnel have roofs over their heads for themselves and their families while they perform their duties in the service of our great nation. In fact, the Albanese Labor government committed to enacting lasting and meaningful reforms to defence housing as part of our election commitments and over the last year in the 47th parliament. There are so many examples of the Albanese government doing just that: manifesting election commitments as legislation and having them pass through the parliament.

One can, albeit naively, look at defence housing as mere shelter for our ADF personnel, but it's much more than that. This government improving the defence housing framework by introducing the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme Amendment Bill last year is the proof in the pudding of this being the case. The Albanese Labor government introduced this legislation in part as a measure to retain many of our highly trained and highly skilled ADF personnel by amending the scheme eligibility criteria, making it significantly more attractive to stay in our nation's service in the face of lucrative private-sector employment opportunities. The defence housing is there, and especially so after the reforms introduced by the government that aim to assist our veteran population.

That now brings us to the veterans affairs spoke of our Defence portfolio umbrella. I doubt a single member in this place would be shocked to know that protecting the interests and the wellbeing of our veteran population is something I'm extremely passionate about, not just because I'm a veteran myself but because I'm a member who represents over 6,000 veterans in my electorate of Spence, along with many of their families. These families can look towards a number of budget measures, some of which are moving forward from recommendations made in the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. In fact, $64.1 million is being put towards better resourcing the DVA not just to keep up with increased numbers of claims but also to clear the backlog of claims. This backlog causes many veterans anguish and rusts on an increasingly jaded outlook towards a government department that is tasked with assisting with the delivery of a number of services that assist veterans and their families. This commitment of funds goes hand in hand with the $254.1 million that is being committed across four years towards the modernisation of the ICT systems at the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Bringing claims further away from manual handling and processing can finally bring the backlog of claims down, just like what the minister for immigration has diligently achieved after years of administrative gutting by those opposite when in government. Very few portfolios are immune, but I'm delighted to continue to see our government make continued inroads to put things back on track.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

IE () (): This is a great opportunity to speak on a really important portfolio matter. There's nothing more important than the defence of our nation, and I thank the members for Herbert, Petrie, New England and Braddon for their contributions today.

Last year we began hearing the right things out of the defence minister's office about our defence and about the strategic challenges we're facing as a country. The DSR was announced, and with it the promise of generational transformation in defence, defence industry and the ADF. That's what was held out to the Australian public. Last November, the Prime Minister gave an interview to the foreign editor of the Australian, Greg Sheridan, where he said that his government would spend whatever is necessary to produce an adequate Defence Force that could defend Australia. We were right to expect a lot from the DSR. There was a great buzz about it, about the step change and the conversion of Labor from defence cutters to defence spenders. I think it was a great thing to be hearing all those words. But, alas, the signs were not promising when we were told that the DSR was going to be announced on the eve of Anzac Day. There was a nice window there where the DSR could be announced, there would be no media and the whole thing would sink without a trace.

The DSR has been a disappointment. There are more questions than answers. There are plenty of good things in the document. We welcome the clearer language about the threat and the strategic challenges that our country is facing. After all, it is rock cut from the same quarry as the former government used; with the DSU and the FSP of 2020, there is a lot of symmetry in those documents with the Defence strategic review. But the truth is there was no new money in the DSR. There was cost shifting and there was cannibalisation of capability, particularly of the Australian Army. The member for Herbert mentioned the cuts to the IFE program, going from 450 to 129. What that means in real terms for our soldiers is that they will go from three mechanised battalions to one mechanised battalions—a huge hit to morale and land combat power, which is essential for us to prevail in a close fight. We need to win not just the deep fight but also the close fight.

Interestingly, DFAT was the only department that got money out of the DSR, which I think is more telling about the internal machinations of the Albanese cabinet than the priorities of the minister. Even yesterday, in the Australian newspaper, defence industry voiced their disappointment in the DSR, saying it was 'slow, unfounded and vague', so there's a lot of work to do. There are more reviews, and we still don't have a strategy; a defence strategy document won't be released until 2024.

Now, all of this is really important because the elephant in the room, which we haven't talked about today, is AUKUS, and the clock is ticking. We have fewer than four years to get ready for the first submarine that will come from the US for Submarine Rotational Force-West. There is a whole series of bills that needs to come through both the House and Senate and pass into law to enable AUKUS. There has to be the uplift of HMAS Stirling from a conventional place to a nuclear base. We need to establish all the supporting industry and workforce around the base and we've got fewer than four years to go.

I want to ask the minister: does he still take responsibility for his failure to deliver the adequate funding for the DSR as he said he would in October? What's he doing about recruitment and retention? We are still below recruitment levels. We are bleeding people from the Defence Force. What's he doing to keep them in the Defence Force? The assistant Minister talked about growing the workforce to 20,000 people. How is that going to happen? We've still got no detail about how that's going to happen. How are we going to get sovereign ready by the end of the decade—a crucial precondition for us to receive our first Virginia-class submarine?

I've got to say I'm actually really worried about the state government in Western Australia. A couple of weeks ago, South Australian Premier Malinauskas gave a superb speech at the News Corp Defending Australia forum—probably one of the best speeches I've heard by a Labor figure on national security in the last decade. The member for Herbert was there. The member for Petrie was there. We all agreed it was an excellent speech. Here was someone who actually grasped the task ahead not just from a state perspective; he's leaving the parochialism of the pandemic behind him and actually thinking about this from the national interest perspective. Now that Mark McGowan has gone—and thankfully so, because he did nothing to advance all this, in fact running at cross-purposes to foreign policy and our national interest—the question I have for the minister is: what's he doing to motivate the new Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, to get AUKUS moving? We cannot fail at this first gate. If we don't hit the first gate and establish Submarine Rotational Force-West by 2027, the rest of AUKUS is in doubt. There's a lot of risk here, and I want to see some leadership from the minister on this question.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese government is investing in Australia's defence and national security to keep Australians safe today and in the years to come. The Albanese government is committed to lifting defence funding above its current trajectory so it will be 0.2 per cent of GDP higher by 2032-33 than on the current projections that we inherited from the previous government. We inherited an unsustainable defence budget. The DSR identified multiple examples of the former government announcing initiatives without allocating additional funding to the Commonwealth budget to support them. We are delivering immediate actions through the initial reprioritisation of the Defence Integrated Investment Program. We will rebuild the IIP as part of our first national defence strategy, to be delivered next year.

I'd like to address some of the issues raised by the shadow minister for defence industry. I want to commend him for picking up my talking points from when I was the shadow minister for defence industry and for making all of the same criticisms of the lack of work in this area by the previous government that I used to make when I was the shadow minister. He talks about a concern about no sovereign capability, when the previous government thought sovereign capability meant making sure we spent money on Australian security guards, Australian hotels and Australian real estate agents to support our submarine program. That wasn't a capability for defence, but the previous government didn't understand that at all.

So, yes, we have to clean up the legacy that we've been left when it comes to rebuilding sovereign capability in defence industry and across our Defence Force, and that's what we are getting on with doing. It's why we have had to reprioritise $7.8 billion across the forward estimates to make sure that our defence dollars are being spent in the most appropriate way to achieve the strategic outcomes that are required, as identified in the Defence strategic review. Recruitment and retention are, of course, a key part of that. It's why in the last budget we announced a $50,000 continuation bonus to keep more people serving in our Defence Force. It's why we are moving to a new contract arrangement for recruitment. It's why, as part of that arrangement, we are moving from, at the moment, a 300-day recruitment time frame down to a 100-day time frame, and we are trying to reduce that even further so that we can get more people into the pipeline.

I would like to thank the shadow minister for veterans affairs for his continued support of my role, unlike the member for Herbert in his contribution, which concerned me greatly; I'm deeply troubled. I thank him for his support. In particular, I thank him for his support in working with government, as we wish to work with all parties, on the veterans' legislation reform program. I completely understand his point that that's not a blank cheque, and that's why we will work collaboratively across the parties and with the veterans' sector to make sure that we get this reform right. But when it comes to the administered budget, that some $12 million that he referred to, that's, of course, demand driven. If more claims are processed and if people need more support, that money gets spent, and that's an important part of how that budget is acknowledged.

The backlog is also important. The reason the backlog peaked in September is that we inherited such a problem that we had to recruit hundreds of additional staff. We started doing that. It takes months to train those staff. It takes a while to have that effect, and we're now having a downturn in that backlog. But let me be clear: the evidence to Senate estimates at the end of last year from the then secretary of the department was that, under the resourcing provided to DVA by the previous government, the backlog would never have been gotten through. So when it comes to processing times, of course a consequence of that blowout in the claims backlog under the previous government, which we are getting a hold of now, is that those claims take longer to process. That is what happens. That's why we're trying to get through this backlog. I'm glad to have support for doing that, and we are going to keep doing that.

When it comes to hubs, the previous government, the opposition, have made a lot about the hubs that they committed to at the last election but didn't—

An opposition member: You opened the one in Darwin, but you—

And I was very happy to open it, because—the member makes a very good point—the one in Darwin was funded. The other ones you took to the election were not. We are rolling out eight additional hubs. We're very happy to fund that. We think that's a great program. We're working with other RSLs and organisations on similar types of programs to move forward.

Can I point out something very important on unmarked graves? The reason there's less money is that we cut the internal administration cost in the department. The money is going out the door now, and we're very proud to be able to deliver that important program and support that. In the process, we've identified graves that are going to get full commemorations, because that's what they deserve. We're happy to be delivering on all of these measures.

I'm happy to go on, if you would like me to, Madam Deputy Speaker Ananda-Rajah, because there's clear interest. When it comes to an important issue in response to veterans' support, those opposite have made the point about the desire to make sure— (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's resources sector makes an essential contribution to the Australian economy, supporting employment, investment and exports. The sector contributes $354 billion to Australia's gross domestic product of $2.4 trillion, which is just under 15 per cent, while providing high-paying jobs to more than 250,000 Australians directly employed by the sector. Many of these jobs are in remote or regional parts of the country. Australia's resources and energy export earnings are forecast to reach $459 billion this year, surpassing last year's record of $422 billion.

Our critical minerals and rare earth elements make up critical inputs to the solar panels, wind turbines and batteries we absolutely need to reach net zero by 2050, while our coal and our gas resources provide a stable energy source to Australian households, businesses and trading partners. To reach net zero emissions by 2050, we will need more mining, not less. The mobile phones we use each and every day contain nickel mined in Kambalda and refined in my electorate, in Kwinana, and electric and hybrid vehicles on Australian roads contain lithium and rare earth elements mined in WA and across the nation.

The Albanese Labor government supports the Australian resources sector, and we understand the vital role this sector plays in achieving net zero. Following a decade of inaction by those opposite, this government's second budget provides the leadership, investment and policy certainty that this sector needs to thrive. The government is developing its future gas strategy, recognising the important role of gas in supporting Australia's energy transformation. The strategy will ensure that future gas supply meets expected domestic and international demand by drawing on engagement with states and territories and existing analysis.

We're investing $12 million to review the environmental management regime for offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage activities. We're ensuring Australia's regulatory frameworks are fit for purpose and deliver regulatory certainty for investors. We'll ensure that our regulatory architecture is world class and that First Nations Australians are properly consulted on decisions that impact them and their lands. The government is investing $4.5 million to develop a road map for establishing a decommissioning industry in Australia so that we can recycle, reuse and dispose of materials here. The road map will add a clear vision on which to build a world-class decommissioning industry in Australia, which means new jobs and investment in regional areas. We have a multibillion-dollar opportunity to establish an onshore decommissioning industry for offshore oil and gas infrastructure to service demand in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, and we will not waste that opportunity.

This budget includes $14.3 million to partner with the Queensland government, supporting research and development to reduce emissions in Australia's energy resources sector. Those opposite buried their heads in the sand over climate change, embarrassing Australia on the national stage and creating unacceptable uncertainty across the resources sector. The fact is that the oil and gas sector committed to net zero long before the Australian government did so. The industry is already investing billions of dollars in deploying renewables, electrification, methane abatement technologies and carbon capture and storage, and this government will play its part in supporting the sustained research and development of these low emissions technologies.

Australia has enshrined our commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 into legislation, and we will meet that commitment with the resources sector. As I've said before, the road to net zero runs through the Australian resources sector. Our extraordinary endowment of critical minerals and rare earth elements will be essential to creating our new resources economy. That's why the government has committed $80.5 million to developing the sector.

Budget funding includes $57 million for the establishment of the Critical Minerals International Partnership program, which steps up our international engagement, attracts investment from like-minded partners and accelerates projects of strategic importance. This measure will build on the government's effort to connect with allies to build resilience supply chains and move into downstream processing. Over the last 12 months, the government has taken this engagement seriously, delivering a Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact with the US; a critical minerals investment partnership with India and a partnership with Japan; a US led Minerals Security Partnership alongside Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the EU, the UK and Sweden; and a Sustainable Critical Minerals Alliance alongside Canada, the UK, France, Germany and the US.

The government has invested $23 million to extend the operation of the Critical Minerals Office, ensuring we can keep coordinating, optimising and prioritising activities across the government to support Australia's critical minerals sector. This budget will continue to support the Australian resources sector and its enduring contribution to the energy transition, global security and national prosperity.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget has been yet another disappointing one for the manufacturers of Australia, as this hapless Labor government continues to fail them and break their promises to the Australian people. One year on, Labor have been all words and no action when it comes to supporting manufacturers. They are all excuses and no solutions when it comes to addressing the pressures industries face each and every day. Labor are all spin and no sincerity. With flawed policies, they continue to rush through without proper industry consultation. It has been one year since the election of the Albanese government and their policy scorecard remains woefully empty on the industry portfolio.

After promising the world to Australia's industrial sector before the election, the Albanese government has given our manufacturers an atlas in this budget. Manufacturers are still in limbo, dealing with rising costs, soaring inflation and the Albanese government's go-slow on manufacturing. Worse still, the budget has cut critical programs that Aussie industries have come to know and were utilising to their benefit. Politically motivated reviews cost our manufacturers time they simply do not have. Each lost moment puts them behind their international competitors. Like a bad sequel, the modern manufacturing initiative delay saga continues with endless reviews, which even ABC Fact Check have said were not needed. By the assistant minister's own admission, these reviews have added three to four months delay to critical defence, food and space projects as part of the MMI collaboration stream, with many projects yet to be funded. So, Minister, will you now provide a concrete time line for these businesses? When will they receive the money they were promised? Will you provide an ironclad guarantee that these outstanding grants will be honoured by the end of this financial year? And will you apologise to these businesses for the uncertainty you have created?

The successful Entrepreneurs' Program was also cut in the budget. In this government's ham-fisted attempt to insource industry expertise to the Public Service, the measure will instead cost 200 existing industry experts their jobs, as we learned in Senate estimates. Again, we see the tell-tale signs of a bad Labor government cut, with government websites noting that all applications submitted to the Entrepreneurs' Program prior to closure will be assessed and honoured if eligible. So, Minister, will you confirm that this commitment will be honoured without a lengthy three-to-four-month government intervention?

We also learned from this budget Labor's war on the space sector continues, with whole programs cut after the government ripped out millions of dollars from programs in this critical sector that supports defence and agriculture outcomes, just to name a few. Minister, could you please outline how you believe it is reconcilable that the Prime Minister specifically named the space industry as a critical sector in opposition but, now in government, this budget has stripped sector of crucial funding yet again?

When Mr Albanese announced his plan to create the National Reconstruction Fund as part of his opening speech at the 2021 ALP annual national conference, he made some bold promises. He promised that the NRF would support a nation that can stand on its own two feet. He promised that the NRF would see us export our Australian-made products to the world. He promised that we should not have to rely on other countries when it comes to protecting and providing for our people. Words are not enough. Well, one year on and, rather than standing on our own two feet, our manufacturers are up against the wall, suffering because of this government's failure to deliver on its key election commitments once again in this budget, commitments to bring down power prices and deal with the issues that our manufacturers need resolved. The only solution they offered to industry before the election was the NRF and they are yet to commit to a start date. So, Minister, when will the NRF fund its first project? Will you commit to genuine consultation with industry and not just with your union paymasters? Why have you still not seen fit to conduct inflationary modelling on this $15 billion off-budget funding vehicle?

Energy costs are spiralling and the only answer this government has given so far is to ruthlessly review and cut coalition programs that were working. One year on, and rather than standing on our own two feet, because of Labor's policies, Australia's copy paper industry has shut down. Because of Labor's policies, the cement industry is at risk of offshoring. Under Labor's watch, Australia's forestry industry is on life support, as they continue to be besieged by bad Labor policies. Under Labor's watch, more than a dozen large building companies have closed. This budget provides such little comfort for industry struggling with the cost of everything going up.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to let the house know in terms of some of the—

Opposition Member:

An opposition member interjecting

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No; there's genuine pleasure. It's right from here, and I will never miss the opportunity to talk about our plans, as we said when we went to the election, about a future made in Australia. We recognise that, post the pandemic, it was very important for us to learn the lessons of the pandemic—in particular, that the things that we were most concerned about as a nation and what we were expecting to be able to rely upon were there at the time we needed them the most. We know the impact of supply chains, particularly concentrated and broken ones. We know that we do need to build up capability. We know that geopolitically we cannot keep all our eggs in one basket in terms of relying upon where we source our products from and that we do, in key areas, need to build up. That's why, for example, we put forward the National Reconstruction Fund, where we target a number of priority areas. Based on CSIRO advice, we have shaped up those priority areas and we are focusing on delivering the development of manufacturing capability in those areas across resources, ag and medical science, in terms of energy, transport and defence, and we are also enabling capabilities, particularly in terms of critical technology.

This is all founded on the basis of what we think are those things that do confront the nation. We do have people who can help solve those problems. We need to be able to pair up the talent of our people with the resources that we have at our disposal and also make sure we have targeted capital available to be able to build up, through a co-investment fund of that nature, what we require. In terms of the budget itself, you saw advancements in terms of support for development following the passing by the parliament of the National Reconstruction Fund. It will support the set-up of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation. Those funds were allocated. We also put about $500 million into science and industry to ensure that, in particular, we have stronger businesses creating more secure work and helping solve some of those problems we talked about but also, obviously, advancing human knowledge and applying that in a way that improves national wellbeing.

We've, frankly, reprioritised poorly designed and badly administered policies of the last government, and we want to be able to do that with some of the new programs we announced, not least of which being the Industry Growth Program. We do appreciate that there will be people who are affected by the decision in relation to the Entrepreneurs' Program. The reality is that we have a different view compared to the opposition. The opposition believes the Entrepreneurs' Program worked fantastically, yet they really can't point out and never really pointed out how much it was able to support SMEs in this country. We recognise that there are some people whose work is affected, but we certainly do, through the Industry Growth Program, look to engage people to help us in terms of supporting businesses. What we are trying to do is turn great ideas into stronger businesses or new firms. We will be doing that through the Industry Growth Program, connecting them with advisers and a support network. I'm a firm believer that industry can partner up with others to help mentor them and guide them in terms of growth, and we do want to see that. There is a role for grants, in particular for firms that are lower on the TRL scale, where they're potentially in what is commonly referred to as the 'valley of death'. We need to see them grow and continue to grow. We do want to support commercialisation. We've retained some of those elements in there. So we do want to have a mechanism whereby, through the Industry Growth Program, connecting them up to the NRF, we can also make happen. We'll be consulting with industry around that.

As well, we have allocated over $100 million in the budget to support the growth of Australia's critical technologies with a focus on quantum and AI. I imagine we'll explore some of the issues that have been raised by the coalition in relation to quantum, but we also do recognise and respect that there are issues facing us around the regulation of quantum, and I do want to respect the fact that the coalition has engaged on that matter, and we're keen to work on this. People want to see the benefit come out of AI, but they also want to manage the risks as well. We cannot afford to stop development in terms of things like, for example, our critical technologies. We're establishing roughly $19.8 million for the setting up of the Australian Centre for Quantum Growth and another $40 million to deliver a critical technologies challenge program with a particular focus on quantum. We will also look at the allocation of just over $40 million to support the responsible deployment of AI in the national economy.

This is a start. We know we have a lot more to do. We're always happy to work with the coalition, but respect that there will be times when we just don't agree. We've got a job to do. We told the Australian people we would do it, and we will get on with it.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a budget which in macroeconomic terms of course fails to meet the needs of our nation, particularly as we face an extraordinary inflation challenge, which has only been fanned by the decisions in this budget. But when you look at the sector-by-sector impact, there are some pretty disappointing outcomes in this budget as well, and that is true in relation to science, for example. We've seen quite a lot of repackaging and rebadging in this budget, but we have not seen the kind of new funding that one would want to see and hope to see, consistent with the kind of rhetoric we have had from this government. For example, the measure 'enhanced support for small and medium-sized businesses and startups' and the measure 'growing Australia's critical technology industries' predominantly repurpose funding and are offset by redirecting funding from within the Industry, Science And Resources portfolio. There was no separate new funding for artificial intelligence in this budget. Instead funds were simply redirected from within the industry portfolio.

It is perhaps no great surprise that the reaction from stakeholders to this budget has been less than overwhelming. The CEO of Sapia.ai, Barb Hyman, said :'This is a massive missed opportunity from the federal government to surge ahead in what is fast becoming the race to not only pioneer but leverage new AI technologies. This information is time sensitive. By the time it is a focus globally, it will be too late.' My questions to the minister are: where is the new funding for science? Where is the dedicated new funding for artificial intelligence? Why isn't this government investing more in artificial intelligence to keep pace with the rest of the world? Why was there a national quantum strategy without the provision of any additional funding to back it up? Why is there no additional funding for quantum in this budget?

I turn now to the space sector and build on the excellent observations of the shadow minister for industry and Deputy Leader of the Opposition. In the space sector and under the growing Australia space industry program in the October budget there was $181 million over the forward estimates. A mere six months later nearly $70 million has been cut, with the savings partially redirected to fund other priorities. Of course, this comes at a time when developing sovereign space capability and satellite capability is key not only to business opportunities but also to strengthening our national security. Under the previous government very significant progress was being made in space. We established the Australian Space Agency, which has been based in Adelaide, and that catalysed significant industry growth with businesses like Fleet Space Technologies showing the remarkable potential of the space sector. Other entrepreneurial activities have been attracted to the South Australian Space Industry Centre, and companies like Q-CTRL and AltspaceVR have announced their involvement.

Certainly the Prime Minister has shown that he is happy to turn up for a photo opportunity at the remarkable Australian company Gilmour Space Technologies, but what is disappointing about this budget is the real lack of commitment to maintaining the substantial, long-term funding that had been provided and committed to under the previous coalition government. Of course we can all agree that the space sector provides significant opportunities for Australia, first, in fundamental research and then in commercialising that research and turning it into material business opportunities that will create jobs and growth for Australian businesses, Australian scientists and Australian workers at all levels of skill. But what is important is that the rhetoric be backed up with a detailed plan and backed up with targeted funding. On this side of the parliament we absolutely respect and cherish the central role of the private sector, but there is clearly a role for government in catalysing and stimulating.

My questions to the minister are: why has the growing Australia space industry program been cut? Why has $70 million for the Australian space industry measure been cut, and where did that money go? Why is developing a sovereign space capability not a priority of this government? Will you restore space funding to the levels it stood at under the previous coalition government? Will this government back its rhetoric with substantive support for the space sector? Why has it been, frankly, a characteristic of funding in this particular portfolio that, rather than material new funding being provided to pursue the economic opportunities that our nation faces, instead there has simply been a redirecting of funding and a cutting of many valuable existing programs?

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is a country which has a lot of minerals. We have been blessed with vast quantities of valuable and useful minerals and this has helped us to become the developed and relatively wealthy country that we are lucky to be in today. These minerals still have so much to offer us, and it is only a Labor government that will do what is needed to make sure that, with the help of our critical minerals, Australia continues to move forward and remains the prosperous country that we are now.

The recent budget again showed that this government cares about resources in this country, the sector itself, the way that the sector operates and those who work in the sector. In this budget, we committed $80.5 million to develop Australia's critical minerals sector to assist and support in the transition to net zero, drive economic growth and create high-value jobs. This builds on our announcement last year to develop a new national critical minerals strategy, which will be released soon by the Minister for Resources.

There is a true contrast between us and the lot opposite, and it is really a contrast between a sensible, capable and competent government run by the adults and a tired, incompetent government driven by its own motives. Unlike those opposite, we actually took the time to consult with industry, experts and communities, including traditional owners, and ensured they were provided an opportunity to have their say on what is important for this sector. That is exactly what the sector, which is so important to our nation, needed—a government which wants to hear from them, a government which listens to what is important to them and a government which actually cares. The result of this will be displayed when the strategy is announced. It will outline the government's priorities for the development of the critical mineral sector, including how Australia can create economic opportunities across the nation, seize the opportunities of the net zero transformation and establish robust, sensible and diverse supply chains.

We want to secure strategic and commercial partnerships to develop new, diverse and resilient supply chains underpinned by critical minerals processed in Australia. We also want to help grow and mature Australia's critical minerals sector through improved and increased access to high-value overseas markets. That's why we've announced $57.1 million for the international partnership program. This includes a $40 million grant program, which will leverage the co-investment between Australia and like-minded partners to support projects that can develop an end-to-end supply chain, and $17.1 million towards chain studies to attract investment, secure tangible strategic supply partnerships and shape emerging market rules and norms to ensure Australian projects compete on a level playing field. The Critical Minerals Office does important work to coordinate, optimise and prioritise activities and actions across the government in support of growing Australia's critical minerals sector. This work is extremely valuable, so we are providing $23.4 million till 2027 to extend the operation of the Critical Minerals Office to ensure it can continue to do the work it does to help us grow our critical minerals sector.

But when it comes to resources, it's not just critical minerals that this government helped to prioritise in the budget; it's also gas. We have committed $37.5 million through four measures to help the gas sector thrive. We are providing $12 million for a net-zero-ready regulatory framework to make sure that Australia's regulatory framework is fit for purpose to deliver certainty for our investors. We are investing $4.5 million to develop a road map for establishing a decommissioning industry in Australia so that we can recycle and dispose of materials here. This is a multibillion dollar opportunity and a chance to service demand in Australia and the Asia Pacific. This means jobs for Australians, and this government won't let that chance slip by.

Resources are important in all parts of Australia, and we are providing $14.3 million to support emissions reduction in the Queensland energy sector. We're also providing further funding to help decommission the Northern Endeavour floating Production Storage and Offtake facility. Resources are an important part of our country. They have always been pivotal and will always remain so—perhaps even more now going forward. If you want to see a region that's built on the value of our resources, come to the Hunter and look at communities like mine. What I say to my community is this: while people want to buy our coal we will always supply our coal.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Manufacturers across Australia are facing challenging times. Spiralling energy costs, severe labour force shortages and disrupted supply chains are pushing businesses to the brink of collapse. Everywhere I go and every business owner I speak to, the message is clear: import costs are going up and it's a struggle to fill vacant positions. Since I was appointed shadow assistant minister for manufacturing, I have heard from many businesses who are concerned for the future of the manufacturing sector under this government. Power prices are hitting record highs and we continue to watch the slow-motion trainwreck of energy policy under the current Labor government. The threat of energy disruption is increasing every day under this government, which seems more interested in renewable ideology than firming up the system with reliable and affordable energy supply. In fact, last month we learnt that electricity prices are continuing to spiral out of control under Labor, with increases of up to 29 per cent for small businesses from 1 July. This equates to a jump of $1,310 a year in their electricity bills. I ask the minister: what tangible solutions do you have to ease energy costs while ensuring supply remains reliable? Why the reckless race towards renewable energy when it's an unstable form of power set to drive up consumers' electricity bills?

Small business is the engine room of our economy, yet this Labor government has failed to effectively help industry continue to drive the economy forward. The budget was a missed opportunity for the government to support industry and business in tackling spiralling costs, workforce shortages and supply chain prices. Australian businesses waited with bated breath leading into May's budget for outcomes that would assist with easing the pressures they face, yet the Labor government chose to forge ahead with no plan for our business community. Again, I ask the minister: how will your policies assist the manufacturing sector to stand strong against the increasing cost of production? What plans do you have to rectify the deteriorating supply chain?

Labor's lack of action for Australian manufacturers will have a devastating impact on their productivity and will whittle away any chance of growth. This government has chosen to focus on making it more difficult for industry to expand their business and employ more Australians. Instead of creating a policy to bolster the manufacturing industry and continue the coalition's successful Modern Manufacturing Initiative fund, this government chose to redirect the Modern Manufacturing Initiative fund without having rolled out their own National Reconstruction Fund. This is a lost year for our manufacturers—12 months wasted for businesses to boost their productivity. Why did this government choose to cut the crucial Modern Manufacturing Initiative before the National Reconstruction Fund was established? Labor has promised numerous times that the National Reconstruction Fund will reinvigorate the manufacturing sector. I ask: why was there next to no funding in May's budget for the National Reconstruction Fund? If you stand by your belief that the National Reconstruction Fund is crucial to support industry, why are we seeing such delays? This government has done nothing but hold up crucial support for our industry.

The coalition government's strategy for manufacturing focused on creating the perfect economic conditions that are required for business—to make science and technology work for industry while focusing on areas of advantage and ensuring supply chains are more resilient. This is everything that the National Reconstruction Fund will decimate. When there is proof of a policy successfully boosting industry and the economy, why would a government tinker with a proven model? A time when industry is being confronted with energy prices skyrocketing, supply chain issues and workforce shortages, manufacturers need a government who will commit to a model which has been proven to work, not interfere with self-serving new policies that won't provide the industry relief. When will this government focus on delivering a policy that will reduce the damage inflation is causing the industry, and put forward a plan to deal with spiralling power prices? Labor's record on manufacturing is woeful, and it's concerning to think how much damage those opposite can do and will do to the industry.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

USIC (—) (): I know the member for Bennelong wants to make a contribution. I am happy to take on board any other points that he or other members of the coalition who are here wanting to ask but I just want to quickly touch on some of the points that were being raised either by the shadow minister or the shadow assistant minister. I can deal with the other issues the shadow minister for science raised separately. To the shadow minister for industry, we are obviously working to stand up the NRF corporation. You asked me a question about when the first investment will be made. Again, the big difference, philosophically, between us and the coalition is we are not going to be dictating funding thorough a grants process. Even the coalition know that at some point they do need to account for the way in which they made decisions based on colour-coded spreadsheets; they need to come forward and be accountable for that. We're not doing that. We are simply not doing that.

Shadow assistant minister, I will come back on MMI as a case in point, but we want a board stood up that will make those independent investment decisions guided by an investment mandate. We are going through that work developing that, and those details will be released in the near future. we are very determined to make sure that growth capital is available for firms to help them grow. If they want to onshore manufacturing, if they want to keep manufacturing in Australia and they have a way within priority areas to do that, we definitely want to back them up.

Even the shadow ministers for industry and science both reference space. We have said it will be included in a number of priority areas where they will have the capital. Levering off the shadow minister for science's respect for private investment and private market, with a co-investment fund where we can attract potentially support from VC, private equity or superannuation funds. Those propositions that stand up, that can deliver a rate of return and that will be able to demonstrate longer term viability will get that funding support. But it will not be for me to say 'you must' or 'thou shalt' determine when an investment will be made at what point. Those days of ministers making those calls are over.

To shadow assistant minister Ley, the big difference is we get the role of grants, but with the MMI, 85 per cent of these grants were announced in the weeks leading up to the election. This MMI program was set up in 2020. Why wasn't this steadily being provided grant support to businesses getting back on their feet through lockdown? What happened? The decisions were being made on the basis of political convenience rather than national urgency. This is the big difference between us and them. Any of our grant programs, we will build in. We want people to have confidence, and the general public are tired of grants programs that have been contorted and distorted under the coalition continuing in that way. There is a better way to do things, and we will do it.

Now, the coalition will say the MMI was fantastic. Well, look at the collaboration round. Theoretically, it sounded fine on paper, but trying to get that collaboration to work has been horrendously complex, and you are seeing proponents dropping like flies because they cannot stand these things up. Again, we have seen how the grant programs set up by the coalition have been executed—all out of political interest not national interest. We're just not going to go down that path of doing things in the way the coalition did. We respect and reflect community views about the way taxpayer funds should be used. On things like space, the money will be there. On things like AI and quantum, we have announced funds. For quantum, we have set up a critical technologies target fund within the NRF to make sure that that is backed in as well.

I will make this final point. Certainly, those opposite will point to things where we have repurposed or cut funds. You cannot tell us that we have to fight inflation, cut government spending and then, the minute we do it, pick out things and say, 'No, you cannot cut that.' We are trying to do the right thing by the economy, trying to take up the fight to inflation, put downward pressure on interest rates and make sure that the capital, particularly growth capital, that they voted against is available in the NRF to back Australian industry.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a few questions and I'm very pleased to see that we have a cabinet minister actually in the room this time around. It makes a nice change, as the member for Gippsland has pointed out.

In the recent budgets, the Labor party has committed almost $10 million to the Environmental Defenders Office. This is an organisation who continually takes on projects to delay, to distort, to stop and to frustrate projects which are in the resources sector in particular.

My first question to the minister is: can the minister guarantee that taxpayer funding in the federal Labor budget for the Environmental Defenders Office will not be used to conduct lawfare in the courts against gas and other resource projects—projects that deliver for our economy, projects that deliver jobs, projects that are critical to this nation's success, projects that Australians rely on to pay their bills. We have in the budget a federal Labor government that is funding an organisation whose sole purpose appears to be shutting down and delaying projects that matter.

We hear about cuts and we hear from the minister about how we can't have it both ways. The minister also can't have it both ways. The budget has an additional spend of $185 billion. You can't claim that you have reduced spending when you have increased it by $185 billion. What was cut out of the budget that matters are funding around development for the Beetaloo basin, funding for strategic gas plans and funding across the board to ensure that these projects come on earlier than we thought they would otherwise happen, because the projects are needed. They add to our GDP and they secure our nation. They make it more nationally secure, and that is important.

My second question to the minister is: how does the minister expect additional gas supplies to be developed when the Labor government has cut funding for strategic gas basin plans and the Beetaloo basin development and continues to support Victoria's prohibition of gas development in that state? You cannot have more gas if you don't develop any gas. You cannot rely on gas, for all of the things that they claim to rely on it for, if you don't actually develop any.

A CSIRO report in 2022 identified that carbon capture and storage in depleted gas basins could store literal gigatonnes of CO2. Why do the minister and this government continue to support the ridiculous position of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy but not utilise this type of technology for what those opposite claim is important?

In fact, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy went to the MAN Energy Solutions factory in Germany, with great hoo-ha and lots of pic ops. Guess what they do. They build multistage, super-high-pressure pumps for carbon capture and storage to do this type of work, and they have sold hundreds of them around the world. Whilst you'll celebrate in Germany, you won't utilise the technology in Australia.

We have seen from this government the most remarkable intervention in the resources sector in our country's history for projects that have been put in place for years under a set of rules and policies that they made decisions on for tens of billions of dollars. Now we see proposals where two ministers in particular can make a decision on a business-by-business basis as to whether those rules will apply to them. It is incredible. We have seen the ambassador of Japan say that there is now sovereign risk in this nation. This has never happened before. Can the minister name any other jurisdiction, apart from China, Russia and North Korea, where two ministers can arbitrarily determine whether a mandatory code, an intervention or a price cap can be retrospectively applied and applied on a business-by-business basis?

We continue to hear about the Beetaloo basin. The Northern Territory has made some announcements about that recently. What we have seen in the budget is a cut to the fund that helps develop that basin earlier than it might have otherwise been because it is important for jobs in the Northern Territory. It's important for driving the economy. It's important for the east coast gas market—if you can hook it up. So I say to the minister: what is the earliest possible date that Beetaloo basin gas is expected to be available on the east coast gas market, in particular given that they've cut the plans for developing the gas infrastructure program in Australia? If you don't have any pipelines of sufficient capacity, you can't transfer gas, so how is it that the minister expects to meet the target of increased gas by cutting gas and how he expects that it'll drive down the price of gas by having less supply and they'll have more development by intervening in markets where people have made decisions for tens of billions of dollars and now consider Australia to be a location of sovereign risk?

Finally, in the last seconds I have, has the minister been advised of any previously announced projects that have taken an FID, a final investment decision, which will now be delayed or cancelled because of the Labor's government policies and the decisions that they've made in their budget?

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hinkler. Before I state the question, I'd remind honourable members that this is quite a small room, and, if you could limit your interjections and conversation, it would benefit the member who has the call. The question is that the proposed expenditure be agreed to.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Manufacturing industries are fundamental pillars of our economy, creating jobs and delivering the products that Australia needs. We, in the Albanese Labor government, know that we cannot continue to neglect the manufacturing industry in our country as those opposite did.

The Liberals have often taken Australian manufacturing for granted and failed to grasp the reality of its importance. Don't forget that they were the government that dared the car manufacturers to leave, displaying a complete lack of understanding and respect for the invaluable work done by our manufacturing workers.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I was, actually. I remember it vividly: Joe Hockey on the front page daring GM to leave—I remember reading that paper; I might send you a copy one day, in case you've forgotten. And the consequences of their negligence were evident in the numbers. When they came to power, there were 922,000 manufacturing workers, and by the time they lost government—and thank goodness they did!—last year, that number had dropped to 856,000 workers. That's 66,000 manufacturing jobs that were lost by the negligence of the previous government. We know that they're happy to dress up in hi-vis but they're never prepared to back the hi-vis, as the minister says so often.

Thankfully, we now have a new government and a minister that have a different vision for the future of manufacturing in Australia. We have a government that understands that supporting domestic manufacturing is not just an economic imperative but an initiative that will help the future of our country. We recognise the immense potential for growth and the creation of secure, well-paid employment in this sector and that the decisions that this government makes today will shape the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow. That's why I'm proud to be a part of a government that puts industry and manufacturing at the forefront of its Industry Growth Program.

Innovation and industry are incredibly important in my own electorate of Bennelong, especially in the vibrant economic hub of Macquarie Park. Macquarie Park is part of Sydney's global economic corridor. It is Sydney's second-largest business district. And it is home to a growing community of residents and to global businesses and an emerging network of startups, scale-ups and innovators. Macquarie Park is testament to the potential and entrepreneurial spirit that exists within our nation. And good government policy supporting innovators will enable them to thrive.

Under the Labor government, Macquarie Park and similar regions will receive the support they need to thrive, through the $392 million invested into the Industry Growth Program. This substantial funding demonstrates our commitment to nurturing and expanding manufacturing industry. The Industry Growth Program will provide the necessary support and resources for startups and small-to-medium businesses so that they can grow and contribute to our national economy. With matched grant funding ranging from $50,000 to $5 million, we will empower emerging businesses to become the engines of future employment growth.

The program serves as a direct feeder into the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, targeting projects in key areas such as renewables; medical science, which is incredibly important in my electorate of Bennelong; transport; agriculture, forestry and fisheries; resources; and defence capability and enabling capabilities as well.

And let's not forget: this is a nation-building fund that those opposite voted against. They say they're for manufacturing, but they opposed the NRF. Shame!

For too long in Australia, we have dug up our resources, shipped them overseas and then bought them back, paying more at each and every step. By directing the focus on investments from this fund into priority areas, we are working to ensure a future for Australia in which we are at the forefront of innovation, so that we can create more well-paid jobs and drive economic growth.

The Industry Growth Program is just one part of what the government is doing for industry in this budget. We're also providing $14.8 million to establish the Powering Australia Industry Growth Centre, to help businesses manufacture, commercialise and adopt to renewable technology.

This budget demonstrates the government's commitments to supporting industry and leading the way towards a prosperous future for all Australians. In particular, the NRF has hit a chord with our growing, emerging innovation sector. They're excited to see what the NRF can deliver. Investment in small-to-medium businesses and emerging industries is something that we know will bring manufacturing home. We learnt during the pandemic that, with no manufacturers around, we weren't able to manufacture the medical equipment that we needed. We also had huge supply chain issues.

I have two questions for the minister: What is the government doing to ensure that programs like this are getting the best value for money? And how is this program delivering a joined-up approach to policies so that we're giving clear signals to industry about when they can expect support and how they'll get it?

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to remind the House how amazing and important the resources sector is. Unlike the members and senators of the Albanese Labor government, I want to acknowledge and thank the hardworking men and women in hi-vis who work in our resources industry. The Albanese Labor government has clearly forgotten to thank the hard workers in the resources sector. Instead, they slam them at every chance they get.

I often wonder what has happened to the Labor Party. The old Labor Party would never have given in to the green policies above what is right for the hi-vis worker. The old Labor Party used to stand up for the miners and stand up for the resource sector. Now, they just tax the life out of them. The Labor Party's constituency base used to be the worker. These days, they're in an identity crisis. It isn't clear what they stand for or what values they base their policies on. What is clear is that they no longer value the hardworking Aussie. Instead, they penalise those who work hard and those who want to get ahead without relying on government handouts.

Labor reward the loud minority groups and forget about the quiet Australians who just want to get on with the job without whingeing and complaining. Despite the billions of dollars of returns, wages, royalties and taxes that the resources sector provides the economy, this Albanese Labor government has refused to reinvest in the sector. The coalition has continued to warn of the risk to the future prosperity of the resources sector if it continues to be abandoned by this government. Unfortunately, these warnings have been ignored.

We are seeing the effects of the Queensland Labor government's coal royalties. Now, with the federal carbon tax 2.0, we're seeing what that's doing to affect Queensland right now.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We'll get to that. I'll get to that—thank you.

Labor's divided cabinet continues to send mixed messages to the industry. Some ministers are calling for the end of the coal and gas sector, and others are heralding its lengthy future. Why would companies invest with this unstable government? This unstable government's position is making our international partners very nervous. Japan recently expressed serious concerns to the Prime Minister regarding supply. It seems that these concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

The mining sector directly employs 286,000 people and indirectly supports over 1.1 million jobs. In 2022, the mining industry paid over $38 billion in salaries to Australian workers. In my electorate, thousands of hardworking men and women go out west to work. Their homes and families are in Mackay and other regional areas in Dawson. Not only is Dawson home to many mining and manufacturing workers but Mackay is a maintenance hub for the mining companies. It's not just the mine workers and their families that rely on their jobs. Small businesses rely on people having those jobs. Our house prices and investments rely on people having those jobs. The city folk need to thank us in rural and regional Australia for keeping their lights on, for keeping their houses warm in winter and cool during summer. We know how important the resource industry is to the economy. Australia exported $112.8 billion worth of coal in 2022, and it's given the Labor government the ability to spruik and take credit for their budget surplus. And yet the Treasurer could not even bring himself to mention mining, coal, gas or the other commodities that we export. He called them 'things' in the budget. So my question to the minister is: Do you see a long future for Australian coal? Will you personally support and assist in the development of new coalmines? (Time expired)

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the member for Dawson's contribution, I think the only thing he got right was 'Good morning'. It all went downhill from there. The apex of the asinine was the suggestion that ministers were divided and that we're arguing about the end of coal and gas, and yet he can produce no proof. In the world of the coalition, no proof is required. And yet I as a minister have said that there is a need for gas and coal, particularly as I have fought for industrial manufacturers, and there will be a continuing need for a period of time. But, as the rest of the world is, we are obviously trying to ramp up sustainable energy generation longer term, and you are seeing the huge investment in it. That's all being done. I know that there are talking points that need to be rolled out and I know that you're trying to build this theme, but at some point even a tenuous connection to fact might be helpful in making those points.

In terms of what manufacturers need—and we've had a number of people from the coalition talk about that—we are certainly thinking it through. The member for Bennelong asked about having a joined-up policy approach and ensuring value for money. Certainly we have been putting in place, apart from the NRF, the Industry Growth Program that you referred to, making sure we've got grants available for small and medium-sized enterprises and new firms as well. That's what we're hoping that we will get through the Industry Growth Program. We want consistency so that, from the starting point through to maturity, we have that level of support at different levels.

As we have often said, we want Australia to be a country that makes things. We want to rebuild manufacturing capability in this country. We have certainly looked at prioritising the needs of manufacturers—for instance, in terms of skills. Skills shortages are a big issue. Those opposite let it just drag on and did very little about it. We are trying to invest in people's skills here—for example, with TAFE fee-free places, the investments we're making in higher ed and making sure that those skills are available for manufacturers, as well as, where we need to, bringing in talent, reforming our visa system and making that a reality.

In terms of energy inputs, we have done what we have needed to do—and we'll always do more if we have to—to stabilise prices, bring them down and make sure those energy inputs are reduced. The growth capital that is available to ensure that firms that want to grow can do so is very important. That growth capital, particularly through the NRF, is really important. I like to help the shadow minister for industry. I'm very concerned about your repeated references to certain things, and I don't want them to ricochet. I am a nice guy. You just have to ask me. A number of times you have referred to our 'lack of consultation'. We had over 200 submissions with the NRF. We had a Senate inquiry process and we've been consulting with industry on it. They recognise that, at a time when it is hard to get that growth capital, it is there. I'm just concerned that you keep making those claims, and I don't want that to ricochet towards you, because, as I said, I'm a caring soul.

An honourable member: You're a nice guy.

I am a nice guy, but I also want to point out to the coalition that I'm just a bit worried about their constant hypocrisy. You can't say you support manufacturing and then vote against the National Reconstruction Fund. You can't.

Opposition members interjecting—

Let me come to that. You can't say you're for lower energy prices and vote against it.

Honourable members interjecting —

I might take that interjection. I note that the shadow minister and the other shadow minister have picked that up and pointed out our use of paper stock. They made inquiry about the paper I used because they are high flyers! We need them at a high level on policy; they're down here.

An opposition member: You shut down all white copy paper—

Honourable members interjecting—

No, no. Hang on. Now it gets inconvenient. I don't like wasting money. I use their paper stock. They bring it in. They want the fancy paper stock, the born-to-rulers, and then chip me about using their paper stock. But the reality is you had paper mills shut—in some of your electorates as well—during your time in office. Never heard that level of care!

As is often the case, the only time those opposite care about manufacturing is when there is a photo opportunity. The only time they care about blue-collar workers is when they're in opposition. We believe that they deserve more, and we are delivering just that. (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a very full and exciting agenda: the full implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, justice reinvestment, the Northern Territory homelands, replacing the CDP and closing the gap. A year on, we are delivering on our commitments. Our landmark First Nations Justice package is just starting to get going and beginning to roll out. We're investing in housing and services in the Northern Territory homelands. We've signed an agreement with the Northern Territory government to deliver on a $100 million commitment to improve housing and infrastructure in Northern Territory homelands. We're fixing the failed CDP and replacing it with real jobs, real wages and proper conditions. It was in a terrible state when we became the government, and it is going to take some time to sort through.

We will invest $97 million to support the New Jobs Program Trial. That is showing some early positive signs. We're making Indigenous Australians a part of the way we engage with the world through the appointment of a First Nations ambassador, Justin Mohamed. By working with the Coalition of Peaks on closing the gap, we are improving First Nations health infrastructure, including renal services in the city and the bush. There are 500 extra First Nations health workers being trained up, working in partnership with Aboriginal community controlled health services. We know that so much more needs to be done, but in our first year we've certainly hit the ground running.

Just last week I spent time with the member for Lingiari and others in the Northern Territory. I visited Darwin, Katherine and the remote communities of Barunga and Rockhole. We listened to elders, community members and service providers. Our plan, a better, safer future for Central Australia, is having an impact. In partnership with the Northern Territory government, we are tackling alcohol related harm by strengthening alcohol restrictions so that town camps and communities are once again dry zones. We are providing more opportunities for young people, giving them hope for the future. Importantly, we're working in partnership with local communities because we know the best solutions come from local communities.

Later this year, Australians will vote in a referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in our Constitution through a voice to the parliament so their communities can finally have a say on laws and policies that affect them. It's about making better, more effective policies that deliver practical change on the ground in areas like health, education and housing. The budget extends existing funding to enable the investment of $20 million to progress regional voices and local arrangements. Our commitment to Torres Strait Islander Australians is very real. We want to do business differently and we are. The beginning of a new chapter will make our nation proud.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor sold its federal budget as putting women at the centre, but a closer look merely shows a mixed approach to women's policies. Whilst the coalition has welcomed some of these measures, Australian women deserve more than this. Despite highlighting in the Women's Budget Statement that the workforce participation gap between men and women is largest in their prime child-rearing years, the government did not extend funding for the Career Revive program, which was introduced by the coalition. This program supported businesses to attract and retain women returning to work after a career break. Given the data shows that women are more likely to step out of the workforce when starting a family, what is the government's plan to support these women getting back into work?

Despite being highlighted by the government's own Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, the government didn't make changes to Paid Parental Leave or superannuation in this budget or make any changes to child care. Whilst the coalition isn't calling for these specific measures to be implemented, the government is ignoring the advice of their own hand-picked task force when it comes to achieving economic equality. Labor's budget was full of healthcare headlines, but it was almost empty on measures relating to mental health and women's health. According to Beyond Blue, around one in six women in Australia will experience depression and one in three women will experience anxiety during their lifetime. Women also experience post-traumatic stress disorder at higher rates than men; however, the Labor government cut the number of Medicare subsidised psychology sessions in half. These extra 10 sessions are critical for some of the most vulnerable people in our society, particularly young women. That is why the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, announced in his budget in reply speech that the coalition is committed to permanently reinstating the full 20 Medicare subsidised psychology sessions that we originally introduced in government. Why won't the government reinstate these sessions, especially as they'll predominantly benefit young women?

The government badged the increase of bulk-billing incentives and the Workforce Incentive Program as a women's health measure; however, there wasn't much in the budget to support specific women's health issues. That's why the opposition leader confirmed the coalition's commitment to investing $4 million to Ovarian Cancer Australia so they can continue their critical work. Further, the coalition announced it would allocate $5 million to review women-specific health items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule and corresponding treatments on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The review will identify what best-practice women-specific medical services are not listed and ensure clinically effective services and treatments remain affordable and accessible.

The coalition has welcomed the government's measures relating to women's safety in the budget; however, despite big promises, when coming to government, to end domestic violence in a generation, the Albanese government has failed to deliver single community worker through its election pledge to create 500 new frontline roles, despite funding the measure in the October budget, over seven months ago. When the measure was funded, the Albanese government promised to have 200 new workers employed this financial year. With just days to go and with no workers in place, this milestone is in tatters. We have also learnt that the government carved up the amount of funding for these workers based on electorates first, not by need. The government promised there would be 200 new community workers on the ground by now. Minister, where are these workers that you promised? Can you provide an updated timeline of when we can expect to see these 500 new community workers delivered as promised? We also urge the government to finalise the first action plan that sits under the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032. Given this action plan will detail the actions, investments and measurements of success, it is imperative that this action plan is delivered as quickly as possible.

The government has noted previously that this first five-year plan was expected to be released in early 2023. We are now more than halfway through 2023, and there has been no movement. Despite the importance of this policy, the government has once again failed to deliver on a promise on time. It has now been revealed that the first action plan will not be delivered until August. Minister, can you guarantee that the Australian public will see the first action plan in August? Whilst the coalition has welcomed some of the measures in the budget, Australian women of all ages and from all backgrounds deserve more than what this government is promising to deliver.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to say how proud I am to be part of the Albanese Labor government alongside Minister Burney and other colleagues in talking about how we are investing in a better future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people right across our country, from my home electorate of Robertson to the Northern Territory, where the member for Lingiari is from, right across our vast country. In particular I want to focus on our investments in First Nations health care. In First Nations communities Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people suffer some of the worst rates of chronic illness, not just chronic illness but also exacerbations of those chronic illnesses that are leading to presentations to emergency departments and requiring broad-based care or, even worse, in intensive care and beyond. Some of those healthcare investments in the First Nations space include tripling the bulk-billing incentive, which I will touch on in a minute, and the support to deliver dialysis units for First Nations communities in regional and remote Australia for people with end-stage renal failure.

End-stage renal failure, for those in the chamber who do not know what it is and want more information, is a debilitating chronic illness that will inevitably require dialysis or renal replacement therapy. We're talking about patients with advanced chronic kidney disease, and in First Nations communities that is normally the result of uncontrolled hypertension or high blood pressure and also uncontrolled type 2 diabetes that has not been treated with lifestyle modification or oral antihyperglycemics, which are tablets, or insulin therapy. That leads to irreversible kidney damage then requiring renal replacement therapy or dialysis. Part of this investment is making sure that our First Nations communities can access this dialysis and these medical treatments.

If we have patients with advanced chronic kidney disease that's left untreated, particularly those who have end-stage renal failure, we start to see what are called uraemic symptoms and volume overload. To break that down, volume overload is where the body cannot get rid of the fluid and therefore the fluid will build up in the legs causing what we call oedema, which can then cause infected wound and like and can track up to the lungs and cause pulmonary oedema, essentially meaning the patient drowns if that is not treated. The other aspect is the uraemic symptoms. There are three big symptoms that we talk about in renal failure. One is pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining of the lungs. That not only causes severe, debilitating pain when the patient is breathing at rest but also pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the lining of the heart causing severe chronic chest pain that is often unable to be treated. Finally, and this is quite a severe silent symptom of end-stage renal failure where the patient has not undergone dialysis or renal replacement therapy, there's encephalopathy where the toxins build up in the blood and the body and then the patient becomes delirious, which can result in significant harm to the patient and their family as well as the healthcare staff supporting the patient through the illness.

These are just some of the examples as to why dialysis is necessary in our community but, in particular, why dialysis is important in our First Nations communities. With higher rates of high blood pressure, higher rates of high cholesterol, higher rates of type 2 diabetes where tablets, insulin and lifestyle modification just do not exist, that is why we need access to these vital medical services because, if we do not provide those medical services, there will be significant morbidity and, even worse, significant mortality. We know that macrovascular complications, including heart attack and stroke, result from end-stage renal failure and diabetes, which is part of that disease profile.

Also, to move to the bulk-billing incentive, this will have a positive impact for just over 300,000 First Nations people with concession cards. I don't have to tell those in the chamber the benefits of primary care and general practice. It's all about prevention. It prevents disease from becoming an acute, exacerbated illness where someone is going to require the highest level of care in our emergency departments or in our intensive care units. That is just one way that the Albanese government is assisting our First Nations communities. I want to thank the ministers for their hard work and support in this area and the Prime Minister for his work in First Nations support.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Indigenous Australians come to Canberra to seek meetings with the government and the nation's leaders, why are the doors closed to them? Aboriginal Australians, just like all Australians, are currently not defined by race. But when Aboriginal parliamentarians brought in delegations of Aboriginal Australians who reject the new bureaucracy, neither the Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Prime Minister, any other assistant ministers or even their staff would meet with them. Earlier this year, Senator Nampijinpa Price brought a delegation for all parliamentarians to hear Aboriginal voices from all over Australia—Arnhem Land, Cowra, Ngukurr, Redfern and the ACT—who do not believe the solution is a Canberra based government body. Why did Labor refuse to listen to their voices?

Prime Minister Albanese's Voice is based on a false ideology that Indigenous Australians are inherently disadvantaged by race—that a university educated person of Aboriginal descent on a good public service salary in a leafy Canberra suburb faces the same challenges as an unemployed kid who didn't finish school in a regional or remote community. The Uluru statement speaks of high rates of incarceration within Aboriginal populations. While people are afraid to go to sleep at night in Alice Springs, should they take comfort that the solution lies in Prime Minister Albanese's proposed voice?

The government has also given us a $40 million commitment for on-country learning to encourage school attendance. When will the government tell us what on-country learning looks like and how it will be measured? The Labor 2023-24 budget includes a commitment to establish a national peak body for First Nations family safety. Is this not the creation of another Indigenous voice? In the absence of this new peak body, are stakeholders not really heard by this government? Will the government show us how Prime Minister Albanese's Voice will make a practical difference in the lives of disadvantaged Australians? It's long been held that this should be a bipartisan approach and that not doing that would be damaging to the cause. Why has the Prime Minister adopted a 'my way or the highway' approach to the establishment of the Voice?

National Indigenous Australians Agency documents from the original working group released under freedom of information laws state, 'Any voice to parliament should be designed so that it could support and promote a treaty-making process,' and:

Treaty must include:

…   …   …

The documents released by the National Indigenous Australians Agency say:

… the Dialogues discussed that a Treaty could include a proper say in decision-making, the establishment of a truth commission, reparations, a financial settlement (such as seeking a percentage of GDP), the resolution of land, water and resources issues, recognition of authority and customary law, and guarantees of respect for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Is it the minister's understanding that these are the elements that will form treaty, as per the government's position to adopt the Uluru statement in full? Why has the government funded the independent makarrata commission to the tune of $5.8 billion if this is not a pathway to take a percentage of GDP? Can the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister explain why the Labor government won't legislate the voice? Why does the government want to spend $360 million on a referendum when it could be legislated immediately for free?

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

SCRYMGOUR () (): I have watched for many years and listened from outside the halls of parliament while the former government grandstanded and did little more than pay lip service to issues relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I just listened to the last speech and that says all that we need to know. We have had many governments all completely unable to bring the attention and nuance required to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians portfolio.

Successfully managing issues relating to Aboriginal Australians and their communities takes tact, it takes integrity and it takes commitment. These are the qualities Prime Minister Albanese and Minister Burney have in spades. They understand the issues. They have the grace and respect to listen and to act on the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. They do not merely stand at the pulpit and preach self-determination; they embed it in government policy. Nowhere is this more evident than in Central Australia and the Northern Territory. The issues that are played out in the media, which the opposition have so shamelessly played politics with, are deep-rooted. Anyone with an understanding of the policy context knows that the foundations for today's troubles date back to the coalition's intervention in the Northern Territory. A mishmash of policy and funding investments, or lack thereof, have created the tsunami of problems in our towns, regions and communities. The crippling underfunding of infrastructure in remote communities and homelands, as well as the hamstringing of the Community Development Employment Program, have left our bush communities in a challenging spot.

Our federal Labor government has rapidly responded to the evolving and complex situation across Central Australia. Our response has many facets, but is centred on the $250 million Central Australia plan, a robust set of investments aimed at supporting our communities. The plan addresses several critical issues aimed at restoring safety and cohesion. This is done not only through more youth programs and better-targeted services but also by supporting high-visibility police and security operations. Already, the Lhere Artepe Aboriginal traditional owner patrols funded by the federal government have had great success in reducing the number of young people involved in antisocial behaviour. We are hearing daily from businesses and local community members about the difference these patrols are making. The plan incorporates the broader work of government on reforming the broken CDP program and bringing meaningful community-controlled jobs back to people on the ground.

An issue I am really passionate about that I share with the Minister for Indigenous Australians is fetal alcohol spectrum or FASD. We don't often talk about FASD. It is easy to pander to the right-wing base, as the opposition leader does, but what we really need is a health response. FASD diagnosis was sitting at 18 months when we came to government. The Central Australia plan will inject an additional $23.5 million into health services to support much-needed work in diagnosis and treatment services for FASD.

Another measure of the Central Australia plan is additional funding for justice reinvestment. Justice reivestment is real policy in action. It involves bringing the community together, building coalitions of organisations and affecting real change. By reducing the contact of young people within the criminal justice system, we can change the trajectories of our most vulnerable people. The Central Australia plan is also making much-needed investments in our education system. Education and our schools are at the frontline of solving the challenges of our young people. With a $40 million investment, our Central Australian schools will finally have the resources they need to do their valuable work. So you can see we finally have a government that is committed to real, tangible action on the ground, a government that understands the challenges on the ground. Aboriginal Australians, particularly those in the Northern Territory, have had to wait far too long, but finally we have a federal government that's committed to a better future for all our mob across the Northern Territory.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In October the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme announced a review of the NDIS to improve the wellbeing of Australians with disability and the scheme's sustainability, as we now find out. The independent review, we're told, was established to look at the design, operations and sustainability of the NDIS, even though the then shadow minister never claimed that there were any issues with sustainability and indeed criticised the government of the day for talking about the sustainability of the NDIS. NDIS participants and taxpayers eagerly want to hear how the government will specifically tackle the worsening challenges for the NDIS and sadly have been left none the wiser following the minister's address to the Press Club in April.

In Senate estimates we learned that the NDIS was not consulted—a stunning admission in the Senate estimates—regarding the imposition of the arbitrary annual NDIS growth cap of eight per cent. The government came to the conclusion that the annual growth cap on the total cost would be no more than eight per cent by 1 July 2026, without any explanation of how these cuts to the growth of the scheme would be achieved and indeed who would lose out as a result of those cuts. The independent review panel is to deliver a final report to disability reform ministers by no later than the end of October 2023, yet 12 months down the track the Labor government has shown no signs of progress or findings, sadly leaving hundreds of thousands of participants in limbo and in fear of losing access to their funding under the scheme, particularly families with a child with an autism diagnosis.

Since coming into government, Labor has made a serious habit of outsourcing problems, and, in this case, it seems that the independent review is doing all the heavy lifting. Since the announcement of the review, the government and minister have repeatedly used the review as cover for inaction. All we've heard is the minister making his usual motherhood statements, identifying issues and never offering any solutions. It was announced that the head of NDIS review secretariat, Mr James Kelly, a highly respected and regarded Treasury public servant, would lead the review secretariat. My questions for the minister in relation to the PM&C are as follows: please outline the selection process that led to Mr Kelly's appointment to the NDIS secretariat. Mr Kelly is no longer leading the secretariat, leaving very unexpectedly and surprisingly in March this year. What are the events that led to Mr Kelly's departure from the secretariat after only eight months? Who decided that Mr Kelly would be leaving his role within the NDIS review secretariat? Did the review co-chairs have any involvement in Mr Kelly's departure, and, if so, please outline that involvement? Was Mr Kelly given the opportunity to remain in his role within the secretariat? Please outline the process which led to the selection of Mr Kelly's replacement, Mr David Hazlehurst. How many public servants are working with the review, and what are their APS band levels? What appropriation has been provided for the review? Please also provide a breakdown of the costs associated with the review.

We are told the review is due to report in October 2023. Is it still on target to report in that time frame? As of 1 June, how many submissions have been received by the secretariat? Please provide a breakdown of the submission types between written, audio and video. As of 1 June, how many direct consultations have been held, and how many are still to be held before the review is set to conclude? For each of the consultations, please also provide details of where the venue was and the number of attendees that were involved. As of 1 June, how many NDIS webinars have taken place, and how many participants have taken part in each of the webinars? Mr Deputy Speaker, as you can see from all of these questions, precious little is known at this stage about staffing of the review and indeed the circumstances of Mr James Kelly's departure from the review. We want answers, and we want confirmation that the review, so much of which is being relied upon by the government, is set to deliver its findings by October this year, as promised.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What will you be thinking about when you take your last breath? This is what Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt asked people. She says no one ever says that they will be thinking about their cellulite or their thigh gap or lack thereof. In 2009, following the birth of her third child, Taryn Brumfitt headed off to a plastic surgeon. She wanted to 'fix' her post-baby body, as she puts it. But watching her young daughter play, she had an epiphany. How could she teach her daughter about positivity and to love her body if she couldn't do it for herself? She says this thought trapped her. She wanted to fix her body but she also wanted to set the right example for her daughter. So she tried bodybuilding, even competing, but found that it was a tough lifestyle to maintain and that she was always grumpy. More importantly, even though she now had the so-called perfect body, she still didn't feel any better about it. She worked out that it actually wasn't about what she looked like; it was about the psychology of how she felt about her body. From these beginnings, she started the Body Image Movement in 2012 and has been tirelessly advocating for body positivity and acceptance, particularly among young people, ever since.

Taryn happens to live around the corner from me in Boothby, and she is already doing Boothby proud with her unwavering determination on her body positive mission. We know that in Boothby, and all across Australia, the concerns raised by Taryn strike a chord with many. A national survey from the Butterfly Foundation, an Australian eating disorders not-for-profit, found that more than 40 per cent of Australians are dissatisfied with their appearance, and as many as 73 per cent wish they could change the way they look. Seventy per cent of Australian school children consider body image to be their No. 1 concern, and young people in Australia who have poor body image are 24 times more likely to be depressed or suffer from anxiety. This is a confronting statistic and one that tells us we need to do more to prevent the harmful impacts of poor body image issues, particularly in young people in Australia. That's why Taryn's recognition as Australian of the Year is so impactful.

Through her work as Australian of the Year, Taryn's mission and her Body Image Movement has been elevated to reach even more Australians, and Taryn has begun helping more people learn to embrace their bodies. Her goal of educating the global community has been off to a flying start with her documentaries Embrace and Embrace Kids being seen all around the world. Her books, Embrace Yourself and Embrace Your Body have also been great resources for people of all ages. The 'embrace' message is one of embracing your body as a superpower. As Taryn says, 'Your body is your home, and it's the most spectacular place to live.' Through her role as Australian of the Year, Taryn is spreading her important messages far and wide—that it is not our life's mission to be at war with our body.

Taryn is now setting her sights on yet another admirable goal: to reach one million kids, as well as their teachers, parents, sports coaches, early childhood workers and the whole village surrounding our children. With her evidence-informed resources and her tenacity, Taryn is well on the way to achieving her goal. She recently gave a keynote address entitled 'Supporting girls to embrace' at the 2023 Asia Pacific Summit on Girls' Education in Hobart, presenting evidence on how to reduce appearance pressure through improved health and wellbeing. She also spoke up for the need for diverse and different bodies to be seen by Australians on screen, as part of the Bodies On Screen panel at ACMI, alongside disability advocate Carly Findlay and other activists.

Added to a long list of advocacy work, keynotes and interviews, it is clear that Taryn has been fearless in her mission for us to rethink our relationship with our bodies as Australian of the Year. Her important work as an advocate for body positivity shows us how important the role of Australian of the Year is not only in recognising achievement but also in continuing the conversation and raising important social issues. I know Taryn will continue to do Boothby proud as she continues her vital work, changing the way that Australians think about their bodies. As Taryn says, it's not our bodies that need to change; it is our perspective. And I think I speak for all of us, certainly all of Boothby, when I say I'm excited to see how she changes even more perspectives throughout her journey this year as Australian of the Year.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question today is for the Office for Women under the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The 2023-24 federal budget contained record investment to end violence against women, and there is no doubt the additional $589.3 million invested in women's safety was welcome. That funding contributes to a total commitment of $1.3 billion over six years to support the implementation of the first phase of the new National plan to end violence against women and children 2022-2032. But, sadly, even at that level, this funding barely touches the sides of what is required to truly enable those facing violence to escape without ending up in poverty. As a parliament we cannot simply measure our efforts by what our government is prepared to spend. Rather, all of us in this place must hold ourselves accountable for genuine progress to end violence against women.

In 2022, 56 women lost their lives to domestic violence, and at least 16 more have lost their lives in the past six months alone. That's nearly one woman a week for the past 18 months. In this context, then, when the sector is asking for $1 billion a year, we simply cannot afford to just take what is given and we must continue to challenge ourselves, our society and our government to do better.

The extension of the escaping violence payment for a further three years is neither a new initiative nor an improvement of an existing one. As such, it is problematic for this to be claimed as a win. The rollout has been rough, with women waiting up to three months for the payment and with poor service delivery leaving many in limbo. This is then compounded by the fact that each woman accessing this payment is only entitled to a maximum of $5,000, which includes a maximum of $1,500 in cash to help establish a new home. This is $1,500 to pay for the bond on a property, to connect your internet and your essential services, to connect your power and to cover any other cash costs associated with leaving in a market where affordable housing is simply unavailable. The value of this payment has not kept pace with the cost of living, and by simply extending it we risk providing a cover that ultimately does nothing more than create greater distress.

To be trapped and to then think you see an exit, only to realise it's a pathway to another form of abuse through financial poverty, is a devastating experience. Family and domestic violence is the main reason women and children leave their homes in Australia, and it's the leading cause of homelessness for women in our country. While this budget includes $100 million over five years to extend the Safe Places program, which provides emergency accommodation for women and children escaping violence, services in North Sydney are struggling to even find accommodation they can rent to expand the shelters and help women. In the last 12 months alone, rental prices across North Sydney have skyrocketed, with the average weekly rent for a unit now $675, while it's $1,100 for a home. In this context, $100 million over five years will struggle to provide meaningful support for the thousands of women and children who need it.

In addition to the physical hurdles associated with leaving, there are often the additional hurdles that are intrinsic to navigating the justice system. While this budget provides funding for the national expansion of the Lighthouse project, which was a pilot initiative run in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia that used a confidential risk-screening questionnaire to triage family parenting matters to try to enable women and children to recover financially and move on with their lives, the numbers don't lie. Seven out of 10 women leave their assets behind when they finally make a break, and 90 per cent struggle to obtain a property settlement. I have heard firsthand from those who have experienced all sorts of abuse that the abuse does not end with the relationship. Violent partners use the family court system to continue to destabilise the lives of the ones who have left, compelling them to commit financially to court appearances and proceedings.

The National plan to end violence against women and children underpins the efforts of all Australian governments to end violence against women and children in one generation. It breaks my heart to say that, despite the record investment in this last budget, we are nowhere near the level of change that needs to be achieved to reach this lofty goal. I would like to ask the minister, then, why the government continues to offer such meagre investment in one of the most pressing issues facing our society.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start, as I wrap up this part of the consideration in detail, by thanking the public servants who work tirelessly to put our budgets together. These are genuine documents of teamwork, where thousands and thousands of people come together to find the policy solutions put forward to government and then to the parliament, where we get to both analyse and vote upon them. On that measure, I want to thank the officials I've worked with closely in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Australian Public Service Commission, the National Australia Day Council, the Office of Impact Analysis and, indeed, those at Government House and the Honours Secretariat, all of whom, amongst many others, do terrific work serving this nation.

I would also like to note that I'm really proud that we have seen the women's budget statement put back, front and centre, in the budget process. It was hard to understand why that went away, but it is very welcome that it is back. I will quickly say: on the speeches we've heard today, I think my colleague the Minister for Indigenous Australians outlined the government's agenda so well when it comes to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. I want to commend the member for Robertson in not just sharing what some of the investments in Indigenous health mean but also explaining a little bit more about the physical and social impacts of diabetes, and I think he did that incredibly well. The member for Lingiari showed her ongoing passionate advocacy for the reduction and addressing of FASD. And the member for Boothby did a terrific job of advocating and highlighting the terrific work of our Australian of the Year, Ms Taryn Brumfitt.

I will address that the member for Lindsay asked questions around a range of things in the women's portfolio space, and I'll simply say this: when we first came to government we appointed Senator Katy Gallagher as Minister for Women; when those opposite first came to government they appointed Tony Abbott. I need say no more.

When it comes to the contribution from the member for Wide Bay, nothing in his contribution dissuaded me one bit from this government's commitment to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, but it did make me realise why we are seeing high-profile resignations from the Liberal Party. It's because of how the opposition has chosen, unnecessarily, to politicise an important debate around the Voice.

If I go to the member for North Sydney, I will happily pick up—because I have a few other things I need to say—some of the contributions you've made, but I commend your advocacy for those who don't always have a voice in this place, or don't always have a voice in public policy debates, particularly when it comes to the important goal, which we all share in this place, of ending violence against women.

This budget delivers on what the Australian people voted for: to end a wasted decade and to get moving again. We are doing clear things like making child care cheaper; making medicines cheaper; increasing the minimum wage; making sure we fund a pay increase for aged-care workers; delivering fee-free TAFE places so more people can get the skills and the good, high-quality, secure jobs that they want; delivering 20,000 new university places, including 3,000 in Western Australia; making sure we deliver on our commitment for new energy apprenticeships, which I was pleased to announce alongside the Prime Minister at East Perth TAFE just a month or two ago; and making sure we do deliver on our commitments to support those tragically experiencing domestic violence, including the now legislated 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave. We initiated the robodebt royal commission to make sure that we increase integrity standards in government, and we are advancing a Voice to Parliament.

I will go to the contribution of the member for Deakin, who asked about appointment processes. To be asked about appointment processes by someone who served as a minister in the former government, which will be famous forever for one particular type of appointment process—the appointment process that those opposite presided over was the secret ministries scandal. Let's not forget that this was something that happened for years throughout the former government. We saw the advice from the Solicitor-General and we have seen an inquiry held into this, both of which are damning. We saw five departments with secret ministers, where the most senior public servants in those departments didn't even know they existed. The ministers didn't even know they existed—the minister for health, the Minister for Finance, the minister for industry, the Treasurer and the Minister for Home Affairs. As Solicitor-General Dr Stephen Donaghue KC said, 'The principles of responsible government are fundamentally undermined by the actions of the former government.' (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all the honourable members for their interest in this important portfolio area. I'm happy to be representing the Minister for Finance and Manager of Government Business in the Senate in this important consideration in detail of these matters. I commend her for the excellent work that she's doing as a part of the government's economic team and the extraordinary work that we've done in turning around a pretty parlous budgetary situation but also helping the government but, more importantly, Australians and small businesses to navigate their way through a cost-of-living crisis and very difficult economic circumstances. As they do that, they know that they've got a government in their corner.

There's targeted cost-of-living relief in the area of energy price relief, which honourable members across the other side of the chamber, the coalition parties, opposed. At the same time as allegedly championing the concerns of members and their electorates, they were voting against energy price relief, which beggars belief. There's the stuff we are doing in child care—the measures that will be coming into effect in a few weeks time—and the extraordinary leaps forward that we're making in restoring aged care from the mess that we inherited.

On medicines, we're on the side of people who want cheaper medicines and more affordable medicines and health care. The coalition are on the side of people who want Australians to pay more for their health care and medicines.

To the underlying fiscal circumstances: a year ago, the budget was forecast to be nearly $80 billion in deficit. Those were the circumstances that we inherited. Today, we stand here with a budget which forecasts a $4.2 billion surplus. There's been a lot of hard work that has gone into this and some difficult decisions that we've made that our predecessors refused to make.

In delivering an improved budget balance, we're making a down payment on what governments can do in the future, because every dollar that we take off our debt is a dollar less that we have to pay in interest payments, which is one of the fastest-growing areas of expenditure on the government's books. In taking action to rebuild our fiscal buffers, there are some key things in this budget that I bring to the attention of members. Eighty-seven per cent of the new revenue that we have received has been returned to budget repair—82 per cent in this budget, but 87 per cent over our first two budgets in our first 12 months in office. That's important, because it's saving us over $80 billion over the medium term on interest repayments. To put that in perspective for members in the House, that's about twice what we spend in our Defence portfolio every year. So that's a significant saving. It's building our capacity to reinvest that in paying further debt but also to invest in capacity in defence, in infrastructure, in education and in health, in child care and in aged care—all the priorities of the government.

We've identified $7.8 billion in spending saves and reprioritisations in this budget. That adds to what we already put away in the previous budget—close to $40 billion over the two budgets. Contrast that to the previous two budgets where the number was zero from the coalition. We're doing the hard work. I'd ask you to cast your mind back to about a month ago when the opposition leader gave his speech in reply. He criticised Labor for expending but added around $10 billion to coalition spending through a combination of new spending commitments and dangling things in front of the voters' eyes and then taking them away and dangling them again, saying, for example, that he would perhaps, maybe, continue but then saying, 'I didn't really mean that.' Those were new initiatives announced but uncosted, so roughly $10 billion in extra spending from those on the other side. Contrast that to what we have been able to deliver, significant savings and improving the budget bottom line.

There are a couple of other things. This budget is focused on ensuring that we can rebuild the capacity of the Public Service. There have been lots of examples lately of why that is needed, and I look forward to the opportunity of saying more about that in the near future.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Much as I like the member for Whitlam and his storytelling capabilities—and I would say he sought to excel himself a little bit today—it's interesting to note that, whilst they are patting themselves on the back, they are presiding over a budget that in the budget documents says that economic growth is going to fall and unemployment is going to rise. Really? Despite the fact they are spending $185 billion, this is a budget that says economic growth is going to fall, unemployment is going to rise and yet they are spending an extra $185 billion. I don't reckon that is a particularly good budget, and why it not a good budget? Because we are seeing everyday Australians hurting as a result of the inaction and failure of this government to address the issues that are facing everyday Australians.

Interest rates have increased again since the budget, for the 11th time since this government took office. We have seen grocery prices rising, fuel prices not coming down, grocery and electricity prices increasing. Despite all they want to say about electricity prices, the one thing they can't say and they haven't repeated since the election is that they are going to reduce your power bill by $275. It is nowhere—nowhere—to be seen. It has disappeared in a mirage. An increase is an increase, and maybe the increase wasn't as high as it would have otherwise been. But it is still an increase, and I can tell you that for people in Queensland their electricity bills are going to go up by another 20 per cent on 1 July. What is this government doing to deal with that? It is doing nothing.

It has been 12 months since they have taken office, and we are yet to see them roll up their sleeves and actually get stuck in and deal with some of the issues that are facing this country. Mortgage holders, renters, small businesses, all sections of our economy are facing the pressures of higher electricity prices and higher input costs, and they are struggling to make ends meet. First home buyers are seeing their dream of ever being able to own their own home slowly slip away. No matter how hard they save, it is one foot forward, two steps back. The Australian dream is slowly becoming a distant dream. Consumer sentiment and business confidence are sitting at recessionary levels. The NAB's monthly business survey along with the Westpac-Melbourne Institute's consumer sentiment survey both show that the household sector remains exceptionally downbeat. That is not a particularly strong endorsement of the budget that was only handed down five or six week ago. As I look at my local electorate, I see the work that our great community organisations are doing to cover for those.

My questions to the minister are: after three separate quarters of inflation, why did the government deliver a budget that included $185 billion of additional spending, rather than reducing spending to combat out-of-control inflation? With inflation out of control under Labor, why did the government decide to remove the words 'The immediate priority is to ensure fiscal policy is not adding to inflationary pressures and to begin budget repair' from the budget's fiscal strategy?

After repeatedly criticising the coalition for funding measures for a set period of time before a review or re-evaluation of the process, isn't it true that Labor's budget does exactly the same thing for policies including: the escaping violence payment; supporting families impacted by violence and at risk of engaging in the child protection system; funding for the Australian Breastfeeding Association's National Breastfeeding Helpline; and funding for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder prevention, among many others? As I said at the outset, this is a budget full of smoke and mirrors, a complete mirage, and does nothing to deal with the issues facing the Australian people. I look forward to the minister's answers to those questions.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's with great pleasure that I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024, given the strong budget that I'm able to speak about in this session. When this government came to office, it inherited a situation where inflation was on the rise due to a range of global factors. There was the illegal and immoral invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, which clearly had a significant impact on energy and food prices and their volatility, and of course there were also supply chain issues that were still impacting globally as a result of the overhang of COVID. What we inherited was a situation where inflation had already started rising—indeed, the largest single quarterly increase had already occurred—under the watch of the previous government. Interest rates had already started increasing under the watch of the previous government.

For those from the other side who want to ask questions about our budget, a little bit of self-reflection might be in order when, notwithstanding the fact that all of these issues were in existence, their last budget when in office had zero dollars in saves. They come in here and talk about spending when in fact there's been a gargantuan turnaround under this government—a projected $80 billion deficit turned into a surplus, which is the right response for the times. Under their last budget, there were zero dollars in saves. They handed over to this government $1 trillion in Liberal debt, and this government, through very responsible fiscal management, is paying that off, which will have benefits over the medium and longer term.

Oppositio n members interjecting—

Let's ask: what is at the heart of this budget? At the heart of this budget is responsible management of the fiscal position and, at the same time, reasonable, proportionate, well targeted cost-of-living relief. It's absolutely critical that we have both of those components to the budget. On the one hand, we have cost-of-living relief, which includes energy relief for households, rental relief for households, strengthening Medicare, a substantial increase in the bulk-billing incentive and a substantial pay increase for those working in the aged-care sector. We've also moved to strengthen industrial relations protections. We've seen increases in wages for those most vulnerable, which those opposite fought against tooth and nail. They said it would destroy the economy. It clearly hasn't. We have all of these critical measures that are absolutely essential at this time for the most vulnerable—a measured, appropriate, cost-of-living package.

At the same time as putting that in place, we've managed a substantial turnaround in the budget situation, a change in the fiscal position, which is absolutely critical if we're going to be successful in the fight against inflation. As I mentioned before, the forecast for 2022-23 was for a nearly $80 billion deficit, and now we have a forecast of a $4.2 billion surplus.

Opposition members interjecting—

How did we achieve that? Well, of the short-term fiscal upgrades, 87 per cent were returned over the past two budgets. Again, that's significantly more than those opposite. The volume of interjections reflects nothing more than their embarrassment at their time in government. I take it as a compliment that those opposite arc up when faced with the facts. It's embarrassing for the previous government that they returned so little to the bottom line, which is exactly what was driving the substantial increase in debt. But at an 87 per cent return to the bottom line, the tax upgrades over the last two budgets are going to significantly help in the battle against inflation, which is what we have at the centre of our policy, and what must be at the centre of our policy.

As I mentioned before, savings identified by this government are at the heart of the fiscal strategy. There were $17.8 billion in savings in the last budget. Added to savings in the October budget, this totals $39.8 billion over two budgets. As well, there is restraint, limiting average real spending growth to 0.6 per cent over the five years to 2026-2027. If we look at the budget in a holistic sense, it has the savings, it has the fiscal repair and it has the return of the short-term fiscal uplift to the budget bottom line. That has seen a massive turnaround in the bottom line of the budget but, at the same time, responsible, targeted, well-designed cost-of-living relief, which is absolutely critical for those most vulnerable. So the government is fighting inflation, as it should, but in a careful way.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I get into what I want to talk about, I should remind the member for Fraser that this government inherited $514 billion. ABC fact-checked budget papers will confirm that. Thirty per cent of that came from the Rudd-Gillard years, so there were lots of claims there that weren't true. I don't have enough time to go through them all.

The reality is that the future of work is changing and, as a nation, we need to invest in creating the jobs of the future. To get there, we need to create fertile ground for the entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow. Our small and medium sized businesses are contributing strongly to this entrepreneurial spirit. They are responsible for 57 per cent of Australia's GDP, for employing seven million Australians and for providing 70 per cent of private sector employment. They will play a key role in creating the entrepreneurially inspired jobs of the future.

The spirit of Australia attracts global talent. Investors appreciate our mix of hard work, friendliness and stability as a nation. We're also a tech-powered economy. Classified as a single industry, Australia's outsized technology sector is now the third-largest contributor to GDP in Australia, at $167 billion. We are tech-hungry consumers who embrace innovation. This makes us early adopters who are open to change. It also makes us a great market to trial and pioneer new digital services. Our technical skills and technological proficiency are evident in global rankings. We are ranked fourth in the world for digital consumption, and fintech is an ultrafast-growing sector. In addition, the Productivity Commission's five-year productivity inquiry this year found 'digital technology and data have the potential to significantly improve Australia's productivity'. This highlights the opportunity missed by this Prime Minister in not appointing a minister for the digital economy. It shows a prime minister out of touch with the modern Australian economy.

Not only have the government missed a huge opportunity in having no minister; the recent budget put the brakes on tech startup opportunities, with the government quietly pulling funding from programs that support innovation and entrepreneurship. The Accelerating Commercialisation program, which provided up to $1 billion in matched funding to commercialise technologies, has been shut down. The Entrepreneurs' Program, which provided expert advice, support and funding for startups and small businesses, has closed. All staff have been let go. The Boosting Female Founders Initiative, which provided $255,000 to $500,000 to female-founded startups, has frozen applications. This program provided targeted support on a coordinated basis to female founders of startup businesses to scale into domestic and global markets. The program also offered expert mentoring and advice to a select number of eligible applicants. It helped to stimulate private sector investment into innovative startups led by women and helped women entrepreneurs overcome barriers to accessing the finance and support necessary to scale their startups. The Manufacturing Modernisation Fund, which provided up to $1 million for SMEs to transform manufacturing practices with new technologies, has frozen applications. While some of the funding is earmarked to be redirected through a newly announced industry growth program, details are scant and the program won't launch until late 2023 at best.

A new program, a new executive, a new independent review committee and a new set of eligibility criteria are all very well for the government's desire to make its mark and cut ribbons. But it ultimately leaves startups and SMEs in the lurch. Startups don't have the luxury of time to wait around for governments to get their programs launched. Many were in the middle of application processes, only to be unceremoniously notified that the whole program was shutting down.

This Labor government just does not understand that, in a sector where uncertainty is a constant, governments are most helpful when they can provide stability—in policies, sources of funding and tax incentives to invest in entrepreneurship. It is clear that the Prime Minister and Treasurer don't understand the modern economy. It's not just the tech sector that suffers; all Australians do, through lost economic growth and productivity gains. The question for the minister is: 'Did the Department of Finance cost any new digital economy policies that the government did not proceed with?' because we have seen, with this budget, that there is no plan to support the digital economy, drive economic growth and drive productivity, to drive benefits for all Australians.

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak in relation to the Finance portfolio and the budget. In the course of my work as a member of the House Economics Committee, together with the member for Hawke and the member for Forde, I have had cause to seek the advice of many people and organisations, both within and outside government. I would like to reflect on some of those meetings and the importance of having that valuable input from people working at the coalface.

The Economics Committee, as part of its ambit, reviews the RBA, APRA, the ACCC and ASIC. A large number of organisations interface with one or more of those bodies.

I have met, a few times now, with people like Alan Kirkland, the CEO of Choice. Some of us only turn to Choice for a tip when we're buying a new washing machine, but the organisation is a fierce advocate across a broad sweep of consumer issues, including credit traps, personal data protection, the regulation of tech platforms and, saliently, the question of market competition, into which the committee has an ongoing inquiry.

Recently I met with Bruce Billson, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, who was previously the Liberal member for Dunkley and a minister, including the Minister for Small Business. Apart from his role ministering to small business owners, Mr Billson—and his organisation, too—is active in advocacy, with submissions across areas including bank closures, digital platforms and payment systems. Most recently, Mr Billson made a submission to the inquiry into promoting economic dynamism, competition and business formation. His bird's-eye view on the effect of the budget and of regulation on business is an invaluable input.

Earlier on in the term, I was fortunate to meet with Rita Battaglin of Financial Counselling Australia. It was important to have distilled for me the way in which difficult and different financial pressures are affecting people in their day-to-day lives. My own electorate of Hasluck has 53 per cent of residents paying a mortgage and a further 18 per cent renting, so any increase in financial pressure will quickly be felt by my constituents. Ms Battaglin was able to inform me of the difficulties caused by the lack of regulation in the buy-now pay-later space, among other matters, and has invited me to sit in with a financial counsellor in their workplace in Hasluck—an offer I'm scheduled to take up very soon.

Importantly, I have met with the unions—the SDA, the TWU, the AWU, the CPSU and others. If a union delegation wants to meet with me, I am there, and, if it's been too long, I get in touch with them. Unionists work every day with the difficulties faced by their members, across many industries. They know firsthand the needs and obstacles governments can assist with. There is power in the union, and there is also a wealth of experience. It is a great boon to the ALP, and I would recommend to all members in this place to have their door open to union representatives.

The reason I started by referring to a few of the outside organisations that I have taken advice from—and there have been many others—is that, when we seek to govern for people, we need to know what their needs are. We can't pretend to know. And we can't just read a book and adopt some flaky ideological stance. We are here to govern for Australians, and we must value the living conduits to their daily lives. Armed with these views, from people who are all working in different spaces, I'm better able to fulfil my role on the committee and to consider legislation as it comes to the House.

The government, too, engaged, listened and, both before and through the budget, has embarked on an impressive course of financial reform. Just yesterday was the announcement that the government will adopt most of the recommendations in the quality-of-advice review. This will mean better advice going forward and is particularly important as we see the average super amounts people retire with increasing over the next decade or so.

In the budget there is substantial provision for combating online scams, which are set to become only more insidious. There is $58 million to establish the National Anti-Scam Centre with the ACCC, $17.6 million and $4.4 million ongoing for ASIC to address phishing and investment scams, and $10.9 million and $2.2 million ongoing to establish an SMS ID register. I was very grateful to the minister for joining me, together with the member for Swan and Senator Fatima Payman, in Forrestfield, where we had a forum of over 100 people very concerned about this. Listening to, understanding and responding to those issues is exactly what this government is delivering for Australians.

We've also introduced payday super. I met with a number of representatives of the superannuation industry in recent months and, as a small business owner myself, I'm happy to support this long-overdue change. This change will take effect from 1 July 2026, allowing ample time to adjust and therefore reduce noncompliance. Again, the Australian government is listening and responding, and we're grateful for the work that you're all doing.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to ask a question of the minister. What measures, particularly included in the budget, are there for hardworking small business operators to make their lives easier and to address the cost-of-living challenges as they present through the agrifood supply chain? I think you share my view, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we hear too infrequently in this place from people at the coalface, and so I thought I'd read into Hansard a few emails I've received on this topic so that people can understand what is actually happening to the costs in the food supply chain.

The first email comes from Nigel Rollbusch, of Rollbusch Quality Meats at Barmera and Waikerie. 'Hi Tony. My power bill has increased 50 per cent within 12 months. At our Barmera shop, we have put a 30-kilowatt solar on the roof and we're trying to grow our business into small goods, but, as a high user of electricity, we can't afford this increase. We're trying to be competitive locally and nationally and even looking to export, but we need cheaper power. We currently employ 14 employees and are looking to grow this with four apprentices, two school based and two third-years, with another couple in sight. We're doing our best to support local kids with jobs, but our inputs are ever-increasing and I can't increase our prices without losing customers. If the current government want to reduce unemployment, how about giving higher-using businesses power relief so we don't fall over? Small business can't soak up any more. Small business needs help to grow.'

Then there's Stephen Noble. Stephen is part of a family business. They're private irrigators in the Riverland. He goes on to say: 'We operate a fourth-generation enterprise growing wine grapes, citrus and almonds in the Riverland. We did have an ongoing power supply agreement with Origin which expired on 28 February this year. The lowest off-peak rate is for a three-year term at 17.249c per kilowatt-hour. Tony, that's an increase of 542 per cent—totally unacceptable. For many irrigators, the power increases may be enough to send them "out the back door". The management aspect of timing when to irrigate becomes much more of an issue due to power cost spikes which can literally be eye-watering: up to $15,000 per kilowatt and higher.'

Finally, Josh Clark, a dairy farmer at Mil-Lel, said: 'I'm on a dairy farm just out of Mount Gambier. It's a family owned, third-generation business. Our two-year contract on demand was due for renewal in December last year. We use around 500,000 kilowatt-hours. We received a renewal offer and thought it was a mistake, with a massive increase in two years. Of course, I immediately went shopping around, starting with the big electricity players in South Australia. Both had a freeze on any large new business contracts. I asked why and they told me they couldn't say but suggested it had to do with unpredictable pricing. I was able to get some offers from smaller players in the market who had similar pricing to Momentum, my previous provider. I went back to them reluctantly and simply explained that we have seen significant increases not only in electricity but also in other inputs—diesel and fertiliser have all gone up.'

Finally, there was the much-publicised Nippy's Fruit Juices in my electorate, a third-generation, family-owned business from Barker facing a 92.5 per cent price increase for their energy costs. That's more than $900,000 that will need to ultimately be borne by consumers. That's the point. Each individual I mentioned here—Rollbusch Quality Meats in Barmera and Waikerie, Stephen Noble from Riverland Blocks, Josh Clark, a dairy farmer at Mil-Lel, and Nippy's are involved in producing things that end up on our supermarket shelves. They're heavy users of electricity, and the prices they need to pay are simply unsustainable. There are two options those opposite need to consider: either these small businesses go out of business and we eat food that comes from overseas, or the costs are passed onto consumers, which is why consumers are facing the pain they do as they wheel their trolleys down the supermarket aisle. So my question to those opposite is: what supports are in your budget for hardworking small businesses?

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is galling but unsurprising to sit here and listen to the Liberals opposite continue to crabwalk away from their own responsibility when it comes to a decade of economic mismanagement, waste, wasted opportunities, wasted public resources, wasted money and wasted taxpayer money. They have left Australian taxpayers with $1 trillion of Liberal debt. It is an utterly disgraceful circumstance and incredibly irresponsible fiscal management. The worst part about that terrible trillion dollars of Liberal debt that they've left is that there is no economic dividend for this country. There is no economic dividend for the trillion dollars that they wasted on car parks and regional pools in city areas. It's just so disappointing. They come in here after 12 months—the Australian public are not mugs. I know that those from the Liberal Party think that working people don't understand matters of complex policy—they're wrong. They might not have gone to the fancy schools that you lot went to, but the reality is that working people know full well that the economic challenges that our country faces are largely driven by overseas forces—specifically, a war in Europe that is a tragic and an illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And the Albanese Labor government has worked very hard to support our friends in Ukraine. The issue around energy pricing is driven by supply-side challenges as a result of the war in Europe. The Reserve Bank governor has been clear about this: those international pressures and those pressures that are beyond any fiscal policy control are responsible for roughly 75 per cent of inflation in our country right now. Seventy-five per cent of inflation in our country is driven by a war in Ukraine and other factors that are outside of our control.

The Liberals have been out of government for 12 months. They spent a decade in government, wasting $1 trillion of Australian taxpayer money, and they come in here and have the nerve to suggest that they have the answers, 12 months after being removed in office—rightly—by the Australian people. They have all the answers all of a sudden! No one's buying it, because it is the same old story from those opposite. It is all criticism and nothing constructive. There's nothing constructive to be put here. Australians are facing really significant economic challenges, and the member for Barker is right—the price of energy is chief amongst them. But the price of energy is being driven by an illegal war in Ukraine, perpetrated by Russia. Everybody across the other side knows that. Pretending otherwise does a great disservice to both our economy and the people that rely upon it. The 25 per cent of inflation that remains on the demand side is a complex challenge to face, notwithstanding that, in fact, in some instances the Reserve Bank governor has suggested that some inflation is requisite for a growing economy.

This is the Liberal Party who spent a decade suppressing wages. The Liberal Party are upfront—and I give that to them; they're upfront—about the fact that they fundamentally believe in lower pay for working Australians. They are now trying to make the case, along with their mates across the various shady right-wing corners of the universe, that growing wages are the issue with inflation in Australia. It is quite clear that the lowest paid workers in the Australian economy, who are getting modest pay rises, are not driving inflation. In fact, real unit labour costs are six per cent lower today than they were before the pandemic. So, for those who come in here wanting to make ridiculous arguments suggesting, after a decade of economic mismanagement on their part that left our country and Australians with $1 trillion of Liberal debt, that they somehow have the answers, that they are blessed with the public policy ideas that they had a decade to implement and couldn't: that suggestion is utterly ridiculous, and the Australian people can see right through it. (Time expired)

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question relates to the work that the Minister for Finance and her department are doing to futureproof our economy. With joint oversight of investment funds like the Future Fund, which is Australia's version of a sovereign wealth fund, I'm keen to better understand the work being done in the department to ensure a future focused economy for all Australians. To be in a position where Australia's social security system, unemployment and underemployment, the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis are pushing more and more Australians into poverty is not a proud place to be.

Disadvantage in Australia is very real, including in my electorate of North Sydney. Recently, I heard from a young person who can't afford ongoing help for their mental health because they are already having to choose between groceries and essential service bills. I've heard from a mother who is worried her daughter cannot afford to move out of home. I've heard from an unemployed person on the disability service pension and the National Disability Insurance Scheme who's unable to access a GP with little to no out-of-pocket charges. I've heard from a local pharmacist who is sincerely concerned that his business will need to close or that he will at least need to fire two of his three pharmacists. I've heard from a self-funded retiree who receives no concessions and only lives with cost increases.

These personal experiences, shared from within my community across all stages of life—whether it is a young single worker, working families, small business owners, social security recipients or retirees—paint a picture of policy settings which seemingly insist on pitting generations against each other so that one generation wins and the next generation loses. Like most developed countries, Australia's population is ageing because of sustained low fertility and increased life expectancy. This has resulted in proportionally fewer children in the population and a larger proportion of people aged 65 or over. Working-age Australians, as a group, are net contributors to the budget. They pay more in taxes than they receive in either welfare benefits or spending. The contributions support older Australians, who then, having contributed earlier in life, take a lot more out in spending and pension payments than they contribute in taxes in their later life stage. Today's working-age Australians then, of course, anticipate that the generation after them will support them in the same way as they age.

But support through the tax and transfer system from the working population to children and older people is no longer delivering generational improvements in living standards. Instead, we are seeing wealth becoming more concentrated in older Australians and younger Australians being weighed down by not just the physical burden of real debt but the mental despair that comes with that realisation. Because of the ageing of the Australian population, young workers are being required to shoulder an accelerated share of the burden of financing government spending, an increasing proportion of which will benefit the nonworking, low-tax-paying older generations. At the same time many in the younger generations are struggling to find secure, well-paid jobs and secure, affordable housing, while many in older generations risk not receiving the support they need because government after government has failed to plan over the long-term on an intergenerational timescale. Many young workers are also having to pay off student loans. They are finding it almost impossible to buy a home, and they are going to have to deal with the rapidly growing costs of climate change. In truth, there was very little in the budget for young working Australians. There was no relief from rising university debt, there was little support for those struggling with their mental health and there was underwhelming action to meet the challenge of climate change.

Through it all it is most often young Australians who feel the financial distress most acutely, and there is ultimately little in this budget for those who have finished studying and started paying taxes. To address this intergenerational inequity and keep our economy future focused, we must get our macroeconomic policy settings right. The government must revisit the long list of productivity enhancing reforms advanced by federal and state productivity commissions to boost the long-term living standards. Tackling intergenerational inequity and poverty requires a whole-of-system approach addressing activity, productivity and wages, and will require the government to do some heavy lifting. Instead, we have been given a budget that has done little to offend but even less to drive a future-focused economy through reform. My question to the minister then is: what work is the department doing to overcome the vastly different impacts the government's policy settings have on the financial security of different generations and plan for the long-term intergenerational timescale?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the members for their questions and their engagement on this important area of government expenditure. One of the things that has been raised in parliamentary debates but has also been raised outside of this building is in relation to government capacity, its contracting arrangements and what the government is doing to ensure we build up our capacity as a government but also that we draw down our capacity on outsourcing arrangements and revisit some of those relationships that we have of contractors and service providers. We got elected on a platform to bring more of the core work of the Public Service back inside the Public Service because we thought that over a decade the capacity of the Public Service had been run down, particularly in an area of core policy-making. But it was not just core policy-making; there were unacceptable levels of outsourcing and labour hire reliance, even in core areas of government service delivery such as the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Department of Defence and the Centrelink service delivery area. We have started to bring that work back in.

The PwC scandal has been an appalling shock to all of us, and Australians are rightly outraged at what has been revealed on that. In response, the Minister for Finance together with the Treasury portfolio ministers have initiated a raft of responses, some of them provided for within the budget. Within the Finance portfolio, the immediate and direct response was a request to PwC itself that any employees engaged directly or indirectly with the scandal in relation to the tax advisory matters be stood down from any Commonwealth government work. We have inserted new clauses into our contracting arrangements, which place not only a value for money but an ethics test in the contracts. It's pretty clear that an employee or a business that has been involved in the sort of abuse of information and privilege that was revealed in the PwC tax advice scandal would not be eligible for those sorts of contracts.

Thirdly, we are enhancing the capacity of the Tax Practitioners Board. An additional $30 million has been provided to build up its capacity to ensure that it can properly investigate the sort of unethical behaviour that was uncovered in the Collins matter. We are also enhancing its powers. There is a bill before the Senate at the moment. It hasn't passed through, and I urge the coalition parties to back the action that the government is taking to improve its capacity to go after unethical and rogue behaviour such as was involved in the Collins matter, to ensure that proper sanctions can be put in place in relation to that behaviour. All of this important job of work is responding not only to the over-reliance on outsourcing but to the rogue and abhorrent behaviour that was exposed in the PwC matter.

In the time remaining, I will respond to some of the questions that have been raised. The member for Barker asked what we're doing to support small business. He might have waited for the energy price relief. Over a million small businesses throughout the country will be receiving energy bill price relief. He voted against it. We voted for it. We think small businesses deserve this relief. The $20,000 instant asset write-off provisions and the Small Business Energy Incentive are, again, providing support for small businesses, together with, frankly, sound energy policy and sound workforce policy, with the training of more apprentices—something that they fell asleep on on their watch.

The member for Forde and the member for Casey asked us to spend more and tax less—to do more and to do less. They've supported every one of our spending initiatives—except for the energy price relief, I should say, and except for the very sound 60-day dispensing policy, which will save consumers and the government more and ensure that consumers are paying less for their medicines. It is extraordinary that they've decided to oppose that. I've been asked by the member for North Sydney— (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 13:31 to 16:00

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join the consideration in detail today for Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024. A centrepiece of the Albanese Labor budget has been an historic investment in health and aged care. But before the back and forth about the why and the how, I want to bring in the voices of those who are not in this room. In Wollongong, Dr Catherine told me: 'Because of this budget, it's perhaps the first time in a long time that we've had cause for optimism.' In Weston, Dr Yasas said: 'It's been a lifeline thrown at us with the budget.' Across the country there were practices that were on the verge of moving away from bulk-billing for good. This budget has halted that. But I'm even more pleased to hear already that many practices will now return to bulk-billing.

For many Australians it has never been harder or more expensive to see a GP. The cost of health care continues to rise, yet investment has not kept pace. Our budget changes that. The 2023-2024 budget provides an historic $6.1 billion investment in Medicare and a $3.5 billion investment to triple the bulk-billing incentive. It will support free appointments for 11.6 million Australians. The budget also includes indexation of more than $1.5 billion to boost Medicare rebates, delivering the biggest increase in 30 years. More than 300 medicines will now be more affordable for six million Australians. This will mean fewer visits to GPs, saving time and money. The investment in the budget will strengthen Medicare as the foundation of universal health care. It will boost bulk-billing and restore primary care.

This budget is another step towards the Albanese government's commitment to restore dignity in aged care. It will mean older Australians are treated with the respect they deserve, underpinned by an investment in aged care of $36 billion in 2023-24. Our government recognises and values aged-care workers, which is why we're investing $11.3 billion to fund the Fair Work Commission's interim decision for a 15 per cent pay increase. Aged-care workers deserve more than thanks. This budget continues our ambitious aged-care reform and puts the health, wellbeing and dignity of older Australians at the centre.

What we have seen is barriers for too many Australians seeking mental health care and support, including bottlenecks in the psychology training pipeline, with too few psychologist to meet the growing demands of our communities right around Australia. With a $586.9 billion investment, the government is addressing workforce shortages, extending critical services, addressing urgent gaps and laying the groundwork for future reform to the mental health and suicide prevention system. This budget continues support for Australia's culturally and linguistically diverse communities through a $134.8 million investment over four years for the world-renowned program of assistance for survivors of torture and trauma. Since coming to government, we have already made mental health care more affordable and more accessible, and these measures will mean that more Australians can access the care that they need and that they deserve.

Australia had some of the lowest rates of smoking in the world, but big tobacco has launched a concerted campaign to create the next generation of nicotine addicts. Vaping has become a gateway into smoking, even though vapes were sold to us as therapeutic products to help people quit. The budget funds strong action to reduce smoking and vaping rates, particularly amongst young Australians, through stronger legislation, enforcement, education and support. The measures in this budget will protect more Australians, particularly young people, from the addiction and long-term health consequences associated with smoking and vaping. Existing controls will be strengthened to reduce the significant health risks of vaping, especially for children and young people.

This budget is about the positive change to health that Australians have been calling for, that is long overdue and that Australians right around the country have desperately needed and wanted. It will improve the health care of Australians and reduce the pressure on their hip pocket. I am proud to support this budget.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the remarks of the assistant minister, but I'm very disappointed—we are very disappointed—that the minister is not here. When I was a minister, I always attended consideration in detail in the Federation Chamber; I think it's a critical matter of respect for the parliament and its processes, particularly around the budget.

We are, as a coalition, strongly committed to improving the health, safety and wellbeing of Australians and ensuring that all Australians have affordable access to the health care they need across the country. We understand that our healthcare system should be equitable and accessible to all Australians, no matter their postcode. As we stated, we will support good policy put forward by this government. But, equally, we will not hesitate to hold them to account when we think they should be doing better.

On that basis, a measure that certainly has our support is the provision of $16.8 million to introduce new MBS items for EndoPredict tests that determine a patient's risk of recurrent breast cancer. We know that genetic testing is a critical way to increase early diagnosis of breast cancer and to increase breast cancer prevention for at-risk women. So this is a great women's health item for the MBS.

The extension of the Medicare health checks was also a welcome inclusion in this budget. The coalition introduced these items to Medicare when in government, to ensure Australians had affordable and timely access to heart-health screening and advice. So I commend the government for listening to the sector, to the peak bodies and to the coalition's advocacy on this matter and deciding not to remove Medicare-funded heart-health checks for Australian patients.

However, we are concerned that, although there is significant funding that has been included in this budget for the health portfolio, the lack of an urgent or comprehensive workforce strategy puts the effective implementation of Labor's health measures into serious doubt. Workforce shortages are undoubtedly the most pressing issue currently facing our healthcare system, and we know that they are putting pressure on access in rural and regional and remote communities. Minister, do you accept that measures like increasing the bulk-billing incentive will not be effective if the current workforce crisis is not urgently addressed? How will Australians have access to bulk-billed consults if they cannot get access to a GP in the first place?

Another glaring omission was the lack of additional access to mental health support provided by this budget, which is particularly concerning given that the government has slashed Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions in half. Minister, what has your government introduced to increase affordable access to psychology sessions, since you ripped away this critical support from vulnerable Australians?

The absence of key funding for ovarian cancer is also a concern. We were disappointed to see that the government ignored Ovarian Cancer Australia's budget submission and didn't provide this support. So, Minister, can you confirm whether the government considered the important support that Ovarian Cancer Australia's budget submission would provide to Australian women battling ovarian cancer? Why did your government choose not to support it? Will your government commit to matching the coalition's $4 million commitment for Ovarian Cancer Australia, to support their critical work? Every woman with ovarian cancer should feel as though they're supported on their journey in battling this terrible disease. I sincerely hope that they get the funding to help achieve that goal.

The coalition government would also allocate $5 million to review women-specific health items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule and corresponding treatments on the MBS. This review would identify what best-practice, women-specific medical services are not listed and ensure that clinically-effective services and treatments remain affordable and accessible. As our opposition leader, Peter Dutton, stated in the budget reply, we, as the coalition, do have a proud record of committing funding for endometriosis, stillbirths, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. In continuing this strong support for women's health, the opposition leader committed to investing $4 million for Ovarian Cancer Australia. That, I think, is not a great deal of funding for an incredibly important outcome for so many women. We know, having seen the investment of funding to support ovarian cancer in the past, that it actually does make a difference. It's not just for the treatments for the disease; it's for support. It's for psychosocial support. It's for helping women who are at their lowest and most vulnerable, with respect to something that, 10 years ago, was completely unrecoverable from, in the short to medium term. But now there's hope; there's light at the end of the tunnel, and I think this government has an obligation, where they see that there is that light, to lend a modest amount of money to support it. I don't understand why this health minister has ignored women with ovarian cancer and their requests.

I also want, in the last 20 seconds, to mention pharmacy, Deputy Speaker Sharkie. I know that you actually asked a question in the House, and I know that Assistant Minister McBride is a pharmacist. I'm not going to give her a hard time about that, because I actually sense that she's not very happy with the government's position on pharmacy. I really want to say that every single pharmacist who sends me their experience and what they do for their patients and their vulnerable patients really breaks my heart.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just want to say how proud I am of being part of an Albanese Labor government that is resuscitating health care in this nation. In particular, I want to thank Minister Mark Butler and Assistant Minister Ged Kearney, but, in particular, Assistant Minister Emma McBride—not only the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, and Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health, and member for Dobell, but also one of Australia's greatest pharmacists and a proud member of team Central Coast.

Our government has committed to $3.5 billion in tripling the bulk-billing incentives. Let's go through that for a moment—the importance of primary care and our general practitioners, particularly on the Central Coast but right around the country. Primary care is about prevention, with the aim to prevent exacerbation of conditions and deterioration of a patient.

I want to describe two patient journeys of patients with type 2 diabetes, and the importance of primary care—that is, general practice—in this patient population. One journey will be of the patient that has access to primary care. The other journey will be of the patient that does not have access to primary care.

I know that most people in this chamber know what diabetes is. It's a chronic medical condition here in Australia. It's an abnormal process in carbohydrate metabolism leading to hyperglycaemia, which is high blood sugar. There is significant morbidity and mortality associated with type 2 diabetes. We can talk about the micro- and macrovascular complications, whether they be retinopathy, causing blindness; nephropathy, causing renal failure and then going onto dialysis; or neuropathy, leading to peripheral nerve damage, particularly in the legs, which leads to wounds becoming infected and then patients requiring amputation. Then we can go on to those macrovascular complications, where we look at an increased risk of stroke, increased risk of acute myocardial infarction, peripheral vascular disease and the like. Initial management of that patient will include lifestyle changes—including physical activity, weight reduction et cetera—and then, potentially, going onto antihyperglycaemics and then, potentially, insulin. So that's what the disease is and that's the initial management.

Now let's look at the impact that primary care has on this journey, from diagnosis to management. A patient who is able to access affordable primary care will be able to go to their GP, have a thorough history and physical examination undertaken and then undergo further diagnostic testing for diabetes. We look at things like the HbA1c test—that's a blood test that you get fairly frequently for diabetes—the oral glucose tolerance test and the fasting plasma glucose test. The patient will be recommended a treatment plan from there, whether that's the lifestyle modification that I was just talking about, or the oral antihyperglycaemics—metformin and the like—or insulin. All of this is prevention, so that the patient doesn't deteriorate, so that the patient doesn't become significantly unwell and then present to the emergency department or require high levels of care in our inpatient wards or, even worse, in intensive care.

Now let's talk about the patient—this same patient—if they are now unable to access affordable primary care. All those clinical encounters that I just mentioned won't occur if a patient can't get in to see their GP. A patient will continue going about their daily life, either knowingly or unknowingly having elevated blood sugar levels. So they'll experience all of those complications that I've just mentioned: the hyperglycaemia, the insulin resistance—all increasing the levels of morbidity and mortality for that patient. That's why investing in primary care is so important, and that's what this government is doing.

This is just one real-world clinical scenario, so let's do a specific example in my home electorate on the Central Coast, a local example of how tripling of the bulk-billing incentive will benefit local GPs and local patients on the Central Coast. The East Gosford Medical Centre is a local GP practice with a patient load of 3,000 people. With a tripling of the bulk-billing incentive it has been reported that they will be able to bulk-bill 50 per cent of their patient load. Without this incentive that practice would have closed, meaning that 3,000 patients would have been without a GP. That would have meant 3,000 not having medications reviewed, 3,000 people not having clinical reviews for chronic illness, 3,000 people not being screened for preventable illness and 3,000 people potentially requiring emergency department care or admission to hospital. That would have been 3,000 people without a doctor, and, now that they are able to bulk-bill, they will be able to bulk-bill 50 per cent of their patient population and that practice can now remain open. This is why our changes to bulk-billing and health care are so important, and this is a positive impact of Labor health policy.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all want our older Australians to have the care that they need and the care that they deserve. But Labor's ill-conceived plan to go against the advice of the royal commission and expedite the 24/7 registered nurses a year ahead of what was recommended by the commission is threatening the very viability of our aged-care sector. The most pressing issue facing aged-care providers—and this has been known for several years now—is of course workforce shortages. Surely Labor gets this, but the response of the Albanese government has been to introduce legislation to make the situation worse and then deliver a budget that fails to fund the comprehensive and multifaceted workforce strategy solutions that are required. Despite her acknowledgement that the sector is 'thousands of workers short' of the staffing requirements and that we are just one month out from the government's self-imposed deadline, the minister has failed to provide any additional support or flexibility to this crucial sector.

Providers are calling for an exemption or some of the criteria to be expanded while the current workforce crisis is ongoing. This would give them the assurance that they need in the time that they need it, but the Albanese Labor government continues to ignore their concerns. The minister must start to listen to those she represents in the aged-care sector itself. The government is directly responsible for the closure of aged-care sector homes right across the country. This is resulting in older Australians being forced from their homes, and those who are living in rural, regional and remote Australia are being forced to move miles away from their communities, families and friends. The safety and care of older Australians must be the main priority of this government, not politics. The question for the minister is: will the government start to listen to the concerns of the aged-care providers across the country and expand the exemption criteria for 24/7 nurses?

With an ageing population, the coalition understands the need for sustainable aged care for all Australians now and for the future. As stated by the opposition leader in the budget-in-reply speech, we are committed to working constructively with government to improve the sector's sustainability. The announcement of an aged-care task force to look at the sustainability solution is a welcome development. Fittingly, this task force will be providing advice to government. However, it is deeply concerning that this very task force will be chaired by the minister herself. Surely the government knows and recognises that this is not appropriate. It will not result in genuine consultation, and will have the government not the aged-care sector as its focus. Minister, if the task force has been set up to provide genuine consultation-driven advice to government on aged-care sustainability, why did the Minister for Aged Care think it was appropriate to appoint herself as the chair?

The minister's refusal to rule out an aged-care tax is deeply concerning and is concerning for wider Australia. The coalition stands ready to work constructively with the government on future sustainability of our critical aged-care sector, but increasing taxes is not the answer. This policy directly contradicts the government's election promise that there would be no new taxes under their watch. Minister, here's a question for you: will the government commit to keeping that promise and rule out a new aged-care tax imposed on our older Australians?

Finally, if you look through the latest budget papers, you'll see that $2.2 billion has been ripped away from residential aged care. This indicates that the minister's continual statements that the Albanese government is expanding the number of aged-care beds doesn't add up. Minister, can you please provide and outline why the government is ripping $2.2 billion from residential aged care at a time when we have an ageing population and a crisis?

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese government is committed to improving health for all Australians, and in my electorate of Lingiari many Territorians living in the urban centres like Palmerston and in towns like Alice, Katherine and Tennant will benefit from initiatives that have been backed in by the budget. What is being undertaken is broad systemic reform. We are making medicines cheaper and making it easy for our most vulnerable to see a doctor by tripling the bulk billing incentive and establishing two urgent care clinics—one in Palmerston and the other in Alice Springs. But I particularly want to speak today about measures which will assist First Nations communities. In the first 12 months of the Albanese government, there has been approximately $1 billion invested in First Nations health initiatives, and in this recent budget there were many commitments targeted specifically at First Nations communities. There were, of course, many other general health initiatives that will significantly benefit and assist First Nations communities. Instead of rushing through a shopping list of items, which are there to be noted and are welcome, I'm going to limit myself to four things which will resonate with most Aboriginal Territorians.

The first one is renal health. Indigenous people in this country suffer kidney disease and failure at significantly higher levels than the general population, in particular in the Northern Territory. The extent of this problem has substantially escalated since the 1950s, pointing to the negative impact of processed foods, alcohol and more sedentary, non-traditional lifestyles. But even in individuals who have led careful and health-conscious lives, it still affects too many. An important and timely proposal driven by my good friend and Northern Territory colleague the Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health, Senator McCarthy, is the allocation of $30 million for renal services upgrades across the nation. Already additional dialysis chairs have been announced in Atitjere, which is in Harts Range in Central Australia, and Borroloola and Ti Tree, also in Central Australia. These additional chairs will make a huge difference for those families. It means that dialysis patients can access treatment in their home community rather than travelling the hundreds of kilometres to urban centres. That is being complemented by a $15 million investment in clean water infrastructure. This is the first time that there has been any money in any federal budget for clean water infrastructure. Dialysis, as we know, cannot work without clean water.

Another issue is fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It is a tragic and insidious condition which blights the future of children without them having any say in the matter. A pregnant mother, often someone who is grappling with forces beyond her control like domestic violence or mental health issues, drinks alcohol regularly and to an excess. The child she is carrying is permanently affected, and while the sentinel physical characteristics may manifest themselves at or soon after birth, the mental and cognitive effects may take years to be fully revealed. FASD causes significant development, physical and intellectual impairment for young people, and it is disproportionately particularly prevalent in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

In Central Australia, through the Central Australia plan, there will be $23.5 million in funding for health services. This will particularly focus on diagnostic and treatment services for FASD. During a meeting with the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, the Minister for Indigenous Australians and I were told that congress were working with many families who are suffering. For the first time it has been identified that, for a lot of those families, it is their third- or fourth-generation iteration, which has never been picked up before. That is certainly going to do damage in the social services area and needs to be looked at.

There is money in the budget for aged care. I was particularly heartened by the funding that was in the budget that particularly will target mental health services for Aboriginal people. The budget measure to increase mental health support for First Nations people is important, particularly during this period of the referendum, which is going to have some serious impact, and its aftermath.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First and foremost, I want to touch on the government's commitment, or lack thereof, to have in place a program to assist those who had Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions ripped away from them. In December last year the government released the Better Access initiative evaluation. Recommendation 12 noted that the sessions should not be cut for those with complex needs, yet they were axed. Why, in the most recent budget, did the minister choose not to restore the full 20 Better Access Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions in line with the report that says they shouldn't have been cut? Has the minister formally rejected recommendation 12? Was this on a budgetary basis and therefore putting the budget ahead of the wellbeing of Australians?

Among a number of commitments made in the budget-in-reply speech by the Leader of the Opposition, he outlined that a Dutton-led coalition government would restore, permanently, the 20 Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions. When speaking with mental health stakeholders right across the country, I hear that they are happy the coalition has made this announcement and commitment to mental health in Australia. It is the right thing to do. We have a mental health crisis in this country, and this government is not listening to the sector and the Australians suffering mental health issues and their families—and I particularly highlight young people in Western Sydney, who I speak to every day on this issue. There is a petition going around with over 45,000 signatures, calling on the government to return these sessions.

Given the government took away the Better Access sessions without support in the interim until a full mental health reform plan is unveiled, why won't the government continue to bridge the gap for children, young women with anxiety, young men with suicidal ideation, mums and dads struggling to cope with cost-of-living pressures and Australians trying to move through after COVID and multiple natural disasters? Further on this, the Minister for Health and Aged Care said, on 12 May, that keeping the full Better Access sessions was 'lazy policy'. I wonder if he would characterise axing a program and not providing any support in the interim as lazy policy? That is exactly what he did. Page 140 of the 2023-24 Budget Paper No. 2 notes:

The Government has provisioned funding for future mental health priorities in response to the Better Access evaluation.

Why isn't the amount that has been provisioned available in the budget papers? When will the amount provisioned be made publicly available? Over how many years has the funding been provisioned?

It is pleasing to see in the mental health budget a further two years confirmed to extend the Commonwealth's support for psychosocial programs for those with severe mental health illnesses who are not part of the NDIS. I'm proud to have advocated on this important issue.

Health workforce is an issue for every government. It doesn't matter what side they are on. The retention of additional psychology placements is welcomed. However, we need to do more on this front to attract and retain those employed in the mental health sector who provide care. That is why I find it astounding that the federal government is not recommitting to small funding opportunities such as funding the University of Canberra's early mental health intervention program. They run a clinical program performed by master's psychology students which helps 14- to 21-year-olds with self-harming behaviour, suicidal ideation and early signs of borderline personality disorder. The Canberra Times today has reported the clinic needs just $300,000 to continue the program on a yearly basis. Under the coalition government, the program ran from July 2019, until June 2023. The Youth Coalition of the ACT has noted it is their No. 1 priority for the ACT budget. Given the Commonwealth didn't provide more funding, what are they going to do to support young people in the ACT and their commitment to skill masters students to benefit of all?

This isn't the only mental health program on the chopping block. Uniting's Continuing to be Me program and the related @home program that were funded under the previous coalition government aren't receiving ongoing funding. In particular, the service for elderly patients with mild to moderate mental health needs in south-western Sydney will cease on 30 June. Why is the government cutting programs that help senior Australians combat mental health challenges? In sum, the mental health budget needs drastic improvement by the minister and the government. It would be helpful if the health minister, Mark Butler, were here to answer this question, but I will ask: when is the minister going to start prioritising mental health?

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I am delighted to speak to the Albanese Labor government's truly era-defining investments in strengthening Australia's health system that we saw in last month's budget. There is no issue more important to voters in my electorate of Boothby than health care. Access to quality, affordable health care is fundamental to a thriving society. In Australia, we know that we deliver this access through the great Labor institution that is Medicare. That's why I'm proud to be a member of this government, a government that is prioritising strengthening our health system, strengthening Medicare, at every opportunity after a decade of cuts and neglect.

We are doing so many important things across the health portfolio. I've spoken about many already in this place. We are tripling the bulk-billing incentive, delivering the largest ever increase, meaning more Australians will be able to see a bulk billed GP. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners called this massive investment a 'game changer' for general practice in Australia and one that is certainly needed. We are delivering cheaper medicines for six million Australians. In fact, in Boothby alone, we've already saved people more than $763,000 on over 69,000 prescriptions. We're opening more than 50 Medicare urgent care clinics around the country, including one that I'm expecting to see established later this year in Boothby. These are all essential investments that will go a long way to strengthening our health system.

Today, I want to speak about one issue that has received less attention in our health-related budget announcements. That is the investment in preventative health. The truism in public health is that $1 of prevention saves $9 in treatment. In this budget, the Albanese government is reclaiming Australia's position as a world leader in tobacco and vaping control. Everyone in this place knows that the rates of vaping, particularly among young people, have increased dramatically in recent years. I have three sons aged 23, and I've been shocked at how prevalent vaping is among their friends and people their age. Latest estimates suggest that one in six teenagers aged 14 to 17 have vaped, and that figure rises to one in four for those aged 18 to 24. Much like cigarettes were marketed to young demographics as cool or fun products before the important reforms implemented by the Keating government and since, vapes are being pushed to young Australians because an addict is a guaranteed customer, and getting them early is the business model. We know that nicotine is highly addictive and poses serious health risks, and we have strong and consistent evidence that young people who vape are three times as likely to take up smoking compared to those who don't.

That's why the 2023-24 budget funds strong action to reduce smoking and vaping rates through stronger legislation, enforcement, education and support. The government has announced a total package of $737 million, which includes money for lung cancer screening, to tackle Indigenous smoking in a culturally appropriate manner and to support smoking and vaping cessation over four years. The government is working with states and territories to stamp out what is a growing black market in illegal vaping. We're working to stop the import of non-prescription vapes and to increase the minimum quality standards for vapes, including by restricting flavours, colours and other ingredients that are used to market them; requiring pharmaceutical-like packaging for all e-cigarettes and vapes; reducing the allowed nicotine concentration volumes; and banning all single-use, disposable vapes. Along with this, a new public health information campaign will be developed to discourage Australians from taking up smoking and vaping and to encourage more Australians to quit.

After a decade of neglect and undermining by the former government, we know that there is a lot to do rebuild and strengthen our health system, and that is what Labor governments do best. We invest in the things that improve the lives of everyday Australians to ensure that access to quality, affordable healthcare is determined not by your credit card but by your green-and-gold Medicare card. With our ageing population and the increasing prevalence of chronic disease, we know that we need our health dollars to go as far as possible.

A huge part of that is preventative health. Stopping the health problems before they progress means better outcomes for patients and helps take pressure off the health system. To do that, we need to ensure we have health services that are accessible and affordable to all Australians regardless of where they live and how much money they earn. That is the principle that underlies all of this government's investments in health.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

ER () (): As the shadow assistant minister for regional health, I have many questions in this portfolio—more than time will allow today—and my questions are unashamedly focused on regional Australia, where we have poorer mortality and morbidity rates than metropolitan and suburban Australia. That is only going to get worse due to the political changes Labor made to the distribution priority areas. Rural doctors constantly tell me this has created a vacuum effect. It is not just a vacuum created in regional Australia with filling positions but an actual suction of those who were filling those gaps in regional Australia to peri-urban or outer suburban distribution priority areas.

My question to the minister is: who did he consult prior to making the DPA change? What was the resulting impact that he saw in the regional health workforce and the subsequent increased cost to government in helping to fill the vacuum they created with locums and agency staff and the inevitability of higher—and atrocious, I might add—morbidity and mortality rates in regional Australia as a result? Was it a targeted consultation, or did they consult with, say, the Rural Health Commissioner or peak bodies representing doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, particularly those like the Rural Doctors Association of Australia and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine?

How can the government justify the DPA policy change when the number of international doctors moving away from rural and remote areas to regional cities or peri-urban suburbs increased by 57 per cent in the first six months of this policy change? The figures show that, in the last six months of 2022, there were 72 GP movements from rural and remote areas classified as modified Monash 3 to 7 to areas categorised as modified Monash 2, which includes the larger regional cities and peri-urban centres such as Frankston or Parramatta. This is compared to 46 movements in the same six-month period in 2021 or 40 in 2020. How does the Minister for Health and Aged Care plan to rectify this disastrous outcome for rural areas so that we receive our fair share of doctors? What is the shortfall of doctors in rural areas, and what is the minister's plan to resolve this?

The situation with the regional health workforce is so bad that in March I convened a regional health workforce summit in Mildura, where those at the coalface told their harrowing stories of the urgent need to mitigate the health workforce crisis. The DPA changes I mentioned earlier have only exacerbated the crisis. Will the minister for health ensure investment in regional training to increase the supply of doctors, nurses and allied health into the future?

The government is clearly aware of the Nationals' position on regulating vaping. Has the government modelled the human health and economic cost of its own policy versus that put forward by the Nationals?

The budget made significant changes for pharmacies, especially regional pharmacies, with a 60-day dispensing policy which drew pharmacists from my own electorate of Mallee, and beyond, here to Canberra in the last sitting to raise their distress about it. Did Minister Butler discuss the likely impacts of the 60-day dispensing policy with regional pharmacists? Indeed, who did the minister consult with, and where were they based? Did the government model the impact it would have on small businesses, given that regional pharmacists are telling me this policy could well force their closure, resulting in locals having to travel long distances to get their medications—if they can get them? Will the government enter a new agreement with regional pharmacists before the 60-day dispensing policy commences on 1 September, so that cost-of-living relief can be delivered without bankrupting community pharmacies?

Last, but certainly not least, how will the minister guarantee that aged-care residences in rural areas can remain open? What modelling has he completed to ensure the sustainability of these facilities? Noting that the government will not reach its pledged deadline on the royal commission recommendation for 24/7 registered nurses in aged care, will the government share its modelling on the impact of its approach for that policy in regional and rural Australia? (Time expired)

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My whole career was spent dealing with illness and disease in patients, and now that I am in this place I am very much focused, along with the Albanese government, on keeping people well. To that end, it means enabling people with chronic disease to take their medications. Approximately 50 per cent of the Australian population—around 11 million people—have a chronic disease, and that can range from asthma to diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, COPD, autoimmune conditions and now some cancers. It is a remarkable story of medicine that some cancers are now regarded as a chronic disease. But in order to maintain people in a state of wellbeing out of hospital, they have to be able to take their medications. These medications are costly, and it can be inconvenient to have to traipse into a pharmacist every month to get them. This is the feedback I've received from my constituents, which is why they and millions of Australians are welcoming the fact that we are determined to make medicines more affordable and more convenient for Australians, particularly those with chronic disease.

From 1 September, we will be expanding the dispensation interval of medicines from 30 days to 60 days. That means that, for around 325 medications identified by PBAC, patients will be able to go to their doctor and receive a script for 60 days. This is a policy from the last government that we have dusted off. It was a policy that was initially proposed by PBAC, and the previous health minister tried to enact it but was howled down by the pharmacy sector. As a result, Australians have been paying billions extra in costs for medications for years. Australia is an outlier in this respect, compared to other advanced economies, like New Zealand, where dispensing interventions are 90 days, Canada with 100 days, and three months in France. We have opted for the more conservative estimate of 60 days. We believe that this strikes the right balance for the community and for the pharmacy sector, who are concerned at the moment around the viability because they will lose their co-payments, which in my community amounts to around $180,000 a year for some pharmacists. That is a significant amount of money, and they are justifiably concerned. However, what this means for patients is a significant saving. Those who have a Medicare card will save approximately $180 per year per medicine. That is nothing to be sniffed at. It is a significant cost-of-living saving at a time when family budgets are under intense pressure.

I used to see patients who were deteriorating, particularly patients with heart failure, who often were on a fistful of medications to maintain their fluid status. They would come into hospital because they had stopped taking their medications—they had simply run out of their script. This is a common scenario. It is happening every single day in hospitals all around this country, both in regional areas where I have worked as well as in large urban centres, and it is completely avoidable. There are studies that show that, by extending dispensing for chronic medications, compliance increases by 20 per cent. That is a welcome benefit, because, when compliance increases, it means that we keep people out of hospital, and that is a positive not only for them but for our economy. There are economy wide benefits to this policy.

We are very keen to work with our pharmacy sector. Our pharmacy sector is a pillar of the health system, much like primary health care, community care, the hospital system and our aged-care system. I regard our aged-care system as being part of a wider health ecosystem. Our pharmacy sector, our community pharmacists, are a pillar supporting all of that. So every dollar of saving we make as a government will be reinvested back into the pharmacy sector to maintain their viability and to raise their scope of practice. We want to stop them from just spending their time behind that counter dispensing repeat after repeat after repeat and, instead, get them involved in more patient-to-patient care so that they can use their wisdom and their experience to help keep patients well and out of the hospital system I came from. We're also expanding the national immunisation program enabling pharmacists to vaccinate above five-year-olds, and the opioid program, which, again, will help keep people out of hospital.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find it passing strange that here we are talking about consideration in detail for health, aged care and sport, and the two senior ministers in this portfolio are nowhere to be seen. We have a government that have been carrying on about openness, transparency and accountability yet they can't be bothered to be in this chamber to answer the questions that the members on this side of the chamber are putting to them. I want to start off first by saying that the government made it clear in last May's budget that they are not supportive of the small-to-medium businesses, given the changes they have made to the dispensing arrangements for pharmacies.

I recently hosted a roundtable of several community pharmacies based in my electorate for them to voice their concerns about the expected impacts. I have heard the member's contribution earlier of a $180,000 impact on some pharmacies and that is about the figure these pharmacies shared with me. But the second part of that story—that is the one that the government doesn't talk about—is that these community pharmacies, in order to keep their doors open, are going to make a range of decisions that will impact on our communities negatively. They are either going to shed staff, many of whom are women, reduce services, which will impact on members of my community, they are going to increase the cost of items in the pharmacy or they will start charging for services they presently deliver for free. So for those opposite to sit here and say this is going to save people money, they are kidding themselves. They are kidding themselves, because the Australian people will now pay more or get less service as a result of their changes.

I think it is an absolute disgrace. In addition to that, as I have seen in my electorate from a discussion I have had with a non-PBS pharmacy around the opioid treatment program, again, there was no consultation—zero. These people are going to potentially close their doors and the several hundred clients they have on the opioid treatment program will have to go somewhere else or will not be able to find services. I have checked with most of my pharmacies around my electorate that do provide those services. Some will potentially take on some more clients, others will not.

For the other part that I want to address in this, I will ask a couple of questions on the health side. Firstly, can the minister guarantee there will be no supply issues, including shortages, to Australians for their chronic conditions? Can the minister confirm that community pharmacies will not be negatively impacted by this change? And, most importantly, will the minister provide a guarantee that no pharmacies will close because of this policy announcement negatively impacting my community?

I want to touch on another matter that these portfolios cover: sport. The Minister for Sport has been quite liberal in her use of the terms 'legacy' and 'leaving a legacy for the future' over the past 12 months. When I look at the funding allocations for sport in the budget, I wonder what legacy this government actually wants to leave. Why, on 27 May, did the minister refuse the AOC's pre-budget submission request for $18.3 million to assist Olympic and Paralympic athletes in their qualification for the Paris Olympics next year? There is less than a decade to go before the Brisbane Olympic Games, and our athletes' ability to maintain their high performance standards is critical to a successful team.

The government seems happy to provide $240 million for a vanity project in Hobart, but why hasn't the minister addressed the Olympic and Commonwealth games funding shortfall of $200 million per year identified across the forward estimates to 2032? It's our athletes that set the standard, and this government is letting them down. Why is the government not providing the funding necessary for our Olympians, our Paralympians and many of our other sportspeople in the minor sports to succeed and represent our country the way they truly want to?

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the minister for health and the two assistant ministers for health, my very good friend and colleague the member for Dobell, and my other friend and colleague the member for Cooper, for their support in getting excellent health policy into the Australian parliament after 10 years of neglect. This is a matter of philosophy. It's quite clear that the opposition does not believe in the fundamental benefits of the universal healthcare insurance program that we now call Medicare, which was originally called Medibank. Medibank was introduced by Gough Whitlam, destroyed by the Fraser government and then denied by ongoing Liberal governments until the advent of the Hawke government, who introduced Medicare, incidentally, on the same day that I started my private practice.

It is a matter of philosophy. I know there are members across the whole parliament who strongly believe in equitable access to health care and who believe in Medicare, but it's quite clear that those opposite don't. We have a Leader of the Opposition who introduced the Medicare co-payment, undermined the importance of bulk billing and undermined the importance of equitable access to health care, and this has continued. Ten years of neglectful policy has led to huge workforce problems in our general practices and huge problems in our ability to access equitable health care. I believe their neglect was ignorant and damaged Australians to a huge degree. The advent of the Albanese Labor government and the health minister Mark Butler, who are prepared to make hard decisions to act for patients to access equitable health care, has been so important.

I know the member for Mackellar, the member for Lyne, the member for Dobell, the member for Robertson and the member for Higgins understand the importance of Medicare as the basis for an equitable healthcare system. It's very important that this continues, and I'm so proud to be part of an Albanese Labor government that is continuing strengthening Medicare and providing access to health care for all Australians in an equitable manner. Bulk billing is so important. The tripling of the bulk-billing incentive in the last budget was hugely important, not only in providing patients access to equitable care but in encouraging our young doctors and our young medical students to go into general practice, which I think is most difficult health speciality, to provide that access to care for our patients. I think it's fantastic. This is just part of our $6.1 billion investment to strengthen Medicare and make it easier to see a bulk-billing doctor. It will also be easier for those with chronic health conditions to get the care they need, with the extension of the bulk-billing rates for people with chronic illness and the more prolonged consultations that they need for their health care.

The heart of our healthcare system is the workforce. We've seen that they've been through some really difficult times, with COVID and with the pressures that we've had on our economy, because of course these cost-of-living pressures impact our medical practices as well, with the increasing costs of materials, staff, insurance, rent, et cetera. The fact that the Albanese government is committed to strengthening Medicare has been so important for our general practice workforce and our other healthcare workers. There have been many ups and downs, particularly during COVID, and there's much work to do, and I'm very pleased that the Albanese Labor government is continuing that work—such as the work they have done to make medicines cheaper for all Australians.

Now, all we hear from the other side is talk from vested interests. We don't hear about patients. And patients are at the centre of the Albanese government's healthcare policy. It's about evidence based policy to strengthen health care for our patients—for the people who require health support—and it's just so important to be part of a government that is promoting that.

My parliamentary colleagues, particularly those with a background in health care, are working hard to boost the health workforce across the country. This budget that we just passed in May will unlock the potential of our nurses and our midwives to provide the care Australians need, with higher rebates for nurse-practitioner-led care, and thousands of new places for students of nursing and other allied health professions in our universities, to help our workforce cope with the needs of an ageing patient population—

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. The question is that the proposed expenditure be agreed to, and I call the member for Mackellar.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd also like to make note of my disappointment that neither the Minister for Health and Aged Care, nor the Minister for Aged Care, nor the assistant health ministers, are present for this consideration in detail debate. I would like to thank the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention for being here. But the point of this consideration in detail debate is to ask questions of those ministers.

However, the government's $5.7 billion investment in health care is very welcome. As a doctor, I know just how neglected and underfunded our health sector was over the last decade, and it led to a healthcare system that was stressed and stretched to its limits. In particular, as the health minister himself has declared, it led to a crisis in general practice. Bulk-billing rates declined rapidly in recent years, due to the Medicare rebate freeze in place since 2014, which simply meant that rebates did not keep pace with the rising cost of running a practice. So the government's injection of $3.5 billion to triple the incentive payments for GPs to bulk-bill children, pensioners and concession card holders is a crucial health equity measure and will provide cost-of-living relief.

Also welcome is the $99 million over five years for the new Medicare level E item number, for consultations over 60 minutes. As a GP, I know that this will improve access for patients with complex needs. These consultations are more commonly performed by female GPs, and, like many of the feminised roles in our society, until now this vital work has been undervalued and underpaid. These measures, along with a four per cent increase in Medicare rebates through indexation, deliver a desperately-needed shot in the arm for universal health care.

However, the budget does little to address the other key problem in general practice, and that is the shortage of GPs in Australia in both rural and urban settings. We know that people are waiting longer and longer to see a GP, and it is simply not safe.

The health minister himself previously dubbed the declining number of medical students pursuing general practice as the most terrifying statistic in health care. A diminishing number of young doctors are choosing to specialise in general practice because, despite being the linchpin of our health system, this profession is not valued or esteemed in the same way as other medical specialties. In response to this trend, General Practice Registrars Australia has urged the government to introduce a scheme for GP registrars to receive base-rate parity with their hospital based colleagues. So my question for the Minister for Health and Aged Care is: with GPs being the foundation of our health system and the cornerstone of multidisciplinary primary health care, will the government ensure GP registrars are paid the same as their hospital based colleagues in order to again grow GP trainee numbers?

I'd like to turn to the issue of disease prevention. We hear so often that prevention is better than cure. It is a hackneyed saying because it is so true and used so often. I do applaud the government's moves to crack down on smoking and the illegal sale of e-cigarette in this country. The targeted sale of illegally imported vapes to our children is a disgrace and must stop. I also welcome the allocation of funding for a new national lung cancer screening program. Yet the government's investment in preventive health in this budget is, at best, modest. Most strikingly, the National Obesity Strategy remains unfunded. This is despite overweight and obesity affecting two-thirds of our adult population and causing the vast majority of the chronic disease burden in this country. Each year, obesity is estimated to cost our healthcare system nearly $12 billion. Funding the National Obesity Strategy would be the most direct and effective way to improve the health of our Australian population and to relieve our stressed hospital system. My question for the health minister, then, is: will the government fund the National Obesity Strategy and, if so, when?

I would also suggest that expenditure on mental health in this budget is inadequate. We are facing an epidemic of mental ill-health in Australia. The task of treating such large numbers has overwhelmed our mental health services. My last question for the health minister is: will we start to fund prevention measures in mental health—firstly, initiatives such as having a social worker or a counsellor in every school in the country?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for this debate has expired.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to these very significant appropriations and, in doing so, to recognise the very significant work being done by my colleagues in the Home Affairs portfolio, Minister O'Neil and Senator Watt. Senator Watt, really, from day one, has been getting on with the very challenging work of his responsibilities in this portfolio, in addition to those in the agricultural space. We as a nation have been confronted with very significant natural disasters, and he has led from the front in coordinating the response. Critically, this has been a response that has combined dealing urgently, compassionately and effectively with Australians in need with recognising the longer term challenges. These challenges are, of course, compounded by nearly a decade of inaction when it comes to climate change. That is not something this government is continuing.

I want to recognise the significant investments that are being made to continue his good work in the portfolio and those that are the direct responsibility of the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Cyber Security. I think all of us in question time today heard from Minister O'Neil about how critical our government's focus on cybersecurity is. It is an issue that affects every Australian—an issue that needs to be at the forefront of our response. It is an issue this government, through these appropriations and more broadly, takes with the utmost seriousness, as it does the national security dimensions of the Home Affairs portfolio and, of course, the policy leadership that Minister O'Neil is providing through the work that she is leading on the Migration Strategy. This is long-overdue work that is critical to the national interest.

That work is meaningful in and of itself, but it is particularly so because it recognises the consequences to all of us of nine wasted years. There were nine wasted years and also the period of the pandemic. The consequences of this in a modern nation that has been built on immigration cannot be overstated. Responding to these challenges—families separated, a jobs and skills crisis and an immigration system not working in concert with our domestic skilling system—was the immediate focus of the Albanese government and all of us in the Home Affairs portfolio.

We have built a strong foundation in terms of responding to this critical question of having administrative functions within the immigration department that work. I'm so pleased that, due to the work of outstanding women and men, we have gotten on top of the visa backlog. We have got our immigration system moving again. Investments in this budget continue the good work. This rests on the fantastic work of Home Affairs staff—people who understand their role, people who are committed to it, people who are also committed to and recognise the national interest in efficient visa processing.

We are seeing some fantastic outcomes: in the temporary system, we're seeing turnarounds of visas in critical areas in the regions in a matter of two days; and we're also seeing very significant improvements in permanent processing, reflecting, of course, the emphasis of our government on promoting pathways to permanency, another important feature of this budget. Similarly, we have seen recognition of the critical importance of the citizenship function. I'm very pleased that now the citizenship backlog is at its lowest point in six years. Again, this is something that has come about not by accident but by focus and, of course, by considered investments, recognising the enormous value we must place on citizenship. I talked about pathways to permanency; of course, Australian citizenship is the ultimate step in that. It's something that I think all of us in this place regard as a great privilege—to be associated with that critical moment which is, often, for some people, the most critical moment in their life, that final step towards full participation in the Australian community. So I say with some pleasure but not yet satisfaction that this budget builds on those successes when it comes to enabling the pathway to citizenship.

In my portfolio responsibilities, there's a critically important third thing: it's Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. I'm very pleased that we are building, through these appropriations, a deeper conversation that goes towards really recognising and harnessing the benefits of our diversity. We are the best multicultural society in the world, but we can be so much better. We have so much more work to do, and we will do that through more effectively integrating the functions of immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs and doing more active listening with the diversity that makes up Australia. That is provided for in these appropriations.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the fact that the minister is here, because I have a number of questions for the minister in this consideration in detail of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024. The first goes to the fact that the Labor Party and the Albanese government are overseeing a record net overseas migration of 1.5 million people. They're adding those 1.5 million to the population this year and over the next four years. My first question to the minister is: given that there will be net overseas migration of 1.5 million, why hasn't he been able to take action on the case of the Mills family, who have lived in Australia for 13 years, paid taxes and contributed to the community? Their daughter, Daisy, is an Australian citizen. Their grandfather is an Australian citizen. Why can't we get a decision which would mean that they know they have the security they've been seeking to stay here in Australia? I ask the minister as a matter of urgency to look at this case which has been raised with him.

My second question to the minister is: Australia faces a housing shortage of over 250,000 homes over the next five years. At the same time, you're allowing 1.5 million people into Australia. Where are these people going to live? What is this going to do to rents? In particular, I ask the minister: has the Department of Home Affairs raised any concerns about the impact that this record level of migration is having on the Australian housing and rental crisis? That is the second question that I would like the minister to answer.

Then I would like him to answer, in truth and transparency: what is the cost of the government's New Zealand decision, providing permanent citizenship to 400,000 New Zealand citizens? It will see an increase in payments for government services and benefits of $1.3 billion over five years, increasing receipts by $795 million over five years. Where is the transparency around the cost of this decision, Minister?

There is then the cost of TPVs and SHEVs. In the budget the cost of making 18,000 temporary protection visa holders permanent residents is estimated to increase payments for government services and benefits by $732.5 million over five years. What additional services will TPV holders be able to access that will cost $732.5 million? And the reason we want some transparency about this is that if you add the New Zealand decision and the decision around TPVs and SHEVs, they will cost, together, $1.2 billion. Is that correct? And will you provide a breakdown of those costs?

My next question goes to the impact of the TSMIT on regional employers. I've been approached by a regional business in Victoria, with 15 overseas workers. With the TSMIT changes the wages bill for the business will increase by 30 per cent. Has the department done any modelling on the impact that these TSMIT changes will have, particularly on businesses within the aged care sector, and other care providers, in rural and regional Australia?

My last question is: is the minister going to replicate the aged-care industry labour agreement across the board, into other sectors? This agreement, of which we have never seen the like in this nation before, actually tells employers what they have to say when they meet with unions and employees and sets new precedents in destroying productivity in this nation. Will this be copied into other sectors, and will it be replicated in the same fashion in these sectors? They're the questions that I would like the minister to answer.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Reid.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister's not answering them!

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! In accordance with the motion that was passed in the House, it is now a government member's turn to speak. The member for Reid.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But this is consideration in detail.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is, and as per the motion that was passed in the House, it is now the call for a government member. The member for Reid has stood and is taking the call.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, when will I get responses from the minister?

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As per the motion that was passed on 22 May in the House, the minister may choose to answer those at the end of consideration in detail. The member for Reid has the call.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the member for Wannon for his extensive list of questions. It's a shame that he never asked his own government some of those questions. The family that you mentioned, and your desire to give them that security of being able to stay in Australia—it's just a shame that your government failed to do that for so many temporary workers. In a sense, you created a guest-worker system in this country with policies your government introduced. So why weren't you asking them the questions that you're asking now?

Australia is now a majority migrant nation, and for the first time in our history more than 50 per cent of residents were born overseas or have a parent that was born overseas. We are the first English-speaking nation to have a migrant majority. We are a beacon for countries around the world, and we are often described as a multicultural success story, albeit one with a painful and difficult past.

The dismantling of the White Australia policy and the embrace of multiculturalism in Australia was decades in the making, and in this federal parliament we have a new cohort of parliamentarians that better reflect multicultural Australia: me, as the member for Reid, a proud Chinese Australian; the member for Fowler, a refugee from Vietnam; the members for Holt and Higgins whose families are from Sri Lanka; Senator Payman, an Afghan Australian; and on it goes. This is the most culturally diverse parliament we have ever had, a parliament that truly reflects and represents the communities in which we live. That is only possible because we had policies that welcomed migrants from around the world, policies that allowed them and their families to settle down and build a life here, to become Australian citizens.

As the Minister for Home Affairs has previously said:

Australia's historic migrant success is rooted in permanency and citizenship.

But those opposite sought to whittle down our migration system, which was dominated by a large temporary migration program, workers who had no pathway to permanency or citizenship. It was a system that sometimes led down dark paths of migrant worker exploitation and the undercutting of wages for Australian workers. It was a migration system that let down businesses in need of skilled workers. It let down migrants, and it let down Australians. Under the previous government, we were left with an alphabet soup of various visa classes and subclasses. The complexity was a bureaucratic nightmare.

I am proud to be part of a government that is reforming our broken migration system so that it will make Australia more secure and prosperous. By the end of this year all temporary skilled workers will have a pathway to permanent residency. Let's be clear here: this is not an expansion of our capped permanent program. It will not mean more people. What it does mean is we will be giving temporary workers an opportunity to apply to be permanent residents. While we talk about migrants in the abstract, we should never forget this is a very human issue. This discussion makes me think about Charmine Acob from the Philippines. I met her at the Chiswick Manor Care Community, an aged-care facility in my electorate. She came to Australia more than a decade ago to study nursing. During that time she picked up part-time work as a cleaner at Chiswick Manor. She worked in various roles there throughout her degree, and, once she graduated, she continued working aged-care facility but as a qualified registered nurse. She is now a permanent resident in Australia, and we are better for it. Charmine's story demonstrates the best of our migration system, a system we are determined to restore so that the next chapter of the Australian multicultural story continues to be one of success.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My questions are directed to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs who has joined us here today in the Federation Chamber, and I think it would be unfair for another Labor member to answer these questions because they very much relate to issues raised by the Afghan community directly with me. Why is the government scrapping a crucial visa program, the locally engaged employee visa program, otherwise known as the LEE program, for Afghans who worked for Australia, including interpreters who supported Australian soldiers? Why is Labor betraying Afghan interpreters who put their lives and even their families at risk to support Australian soldiers during the Afghan deployment? Why has the government abandoned processing refugee applications for potentially thousands of people trapped in Afghanistan? Do they now need to flee Afghanistan and enter the neighbouring countries of Iran and Pakistan, for example, to have their visas processed? Does this mean that the thousands of Afghans currently trapped in Afghanistan must either face remaining there under the Taliban rule or undertake a dangerous trip across the border?

Just for background, the previous coalition government created this crucial LEE visa program to protect Afghans who supported our troops. After Labor promised the world to Afghan communities during the election campaign, this is how they are treated. The previous coalition government evacuated around 4,600 Afghan refugees in a few days and committed to a strong humanitarian intake of Afghan nationals with around 31,500 visas processed, and I understand this will also be hopefully honoured by the new government. Many Afghan families are still waiting to be reunited with loved ones, and Labor is crushing their hopes until they get some answers. The Department of Home Affairs has stated that anyone in Afghanistan it does not consider a priority—to be honest, everyone over there should be a priority—will have their applications refused. It says it cannot carry out background checks since the Islamic group reclaimed the country in August 2021. This leaves thousands of Afghans trapped in Afghanistan who now must either remain or flee.

My second minor question for the immigration minister is around the Local Multicultural Projects grant opportunity opened on 7 February 2023. Will the minister please explain the reason for the closed non-competitive process of this grant, considering there are many multicultural communities across Australia, other than those who were invited to apply, who are also deserving candidates for this grant? Will the minister please explain what consultation process was undertaken by the Department of Home Affairs to determine the eligibility criteria for applicants for the grant? How is it fair to the wider multicultural community to fund only those organisations who were invited to apply for the grant?

For some background on this, on 7 February 2023 the Department of Home Affairs opened Local Multicultural Projects grant opportunities via the community grants hub, and closed it on 20 February. There were only 13 days to apply. The total funding was just over $5 million over three years. The purposes and objectives of the program were to support organisations with grants, to develop new multicultural infrastructure, including places of worship, to upgrade existing multicultural committee facilities, and to celebrate key multicultural events and festivals, which we all agree are very worthy. But the eligibility of applicants was determined by their ability to identify and deliver to their local communities events, services and amenities which met program objectives. However, no further organisations will be invited to apply, so it was very much an open-and-shut case. The grant opportunities closed the non-competitive grant selection process. The department considers that is an appropriate type of selection process. Does the minister agree that is a fair way to conduct a grants process considering the previous Labor opposition was so scathing of programs under the Liberal government supporting, in particular, migrant communities and places of worship when they had been attacked? I respectfully request that the minister respond to these questions at the appropriate time.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cybersecurity incidents are on the rise and are a threat to Australia's national interest and safety. Cybercrime is thought to be the biggest threat facing any business with an online presence. It has cost Australia around $42 billion in the last financial year, according to the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the University of New South Wales. Many people feel you can't put a price tag on our private data—that is certainly true—our electricity grid or our online economy. They are so valuable. The wider community feels this investment and Home Affairs' work in this space is worth continuing. It's important to strengthen our protections across all of this space.

Over the 2021-22 financial year, more than 76,000 cybercrime reports were made via ReportCyber, with one cybercrime report made approximately every seven minutes. There are many factors that feed into the global cyber threat we are experiencing. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has increased this threat globally. We have seen many malicious actors—both state and nonstate actors—seeking to garner and capture the sensitive and private information of citizens. They do this by targeting Australians and their small businesses. Most incidents identified by the Australian Cyber Security Centre noted the use of very simple techniques, and a lot of this can be protected with very simple defences. People in my electorate of Wills have contacted me about the issues that they face. One woman was quite distressed about being called by scammers as well as contacted online, and she immediately reported this and came to me.

She immediately reported this and came to me. There are others who have been very worried about the security of their small businesses and their websites. They're worried about being prey to these malicious attacks. Of course, many contacted my office after being victims of the cyber incident involving Optus.

People are rightly worried about their data and their private information being in the wrong hands. As a government, we are very aware of this real threat to cybersecurity. We are aware that cybersecurity issues are prevalent and exceeding anything that we've seen before. Unfortunately, the previous government failed to deliver any leadership on cybersecurity. They abolished the role of cybersecurity in the ministry. They failed to mandate cyber incident reporting obligations to government. They failed to deliver on the need for stronger penalties to protect online privacy. They failed to report publicly on the effectiveness of the 2020 cybersecurity strategy. How can we improve systems if we don't even know whether our systems are working? As a nation, we were left woefully underprepared by those opposite when they were in government. Because of their failures, we were not able to be resilient when it came to the impacts of cyberattacks. We had poor data and security in this space.

On this side, the Albanese government is a responsible government. We are a government that supports the Australian people. If you fall the into a cyberattack or a data breach, we will support you no matter where you are in Australia. We've committed to making Australia the most cybersecure nation in the world by 2030. The other mob are all talk, no action. This government has already started doing the work, albeit quietly and effectively—but that's important. We've already set up the 'hack the hackers' task force. This is a 100-strong task force of ASD and AFP officers who are hacking back at criminals seeking harm Australia and Australians. We are delivering $19.5 million to protect our most critical infrastructure assets through the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre. We're working closely with industry to develop Australia's new national cybersecurity strategy and we're building a national office for cybersecurity within the Department of Home Affairs. We're working across multiple portfolios in delivering this new national cybersecurity exercise program.

At a community level we are supporting individuals, businesses and organisations in being able to report a cybercrime incident or vulnerability through the Australian Cyber Security Centre. There is more work to be done, but that is already underway. We want to build a capacity to ensure people are more prepared and work together towards this government's commitment to making Australia the most cybersecure nation in the world by 2030. I want to assure the Australian people to feel more at ease that this government, these ministers—the home affairs minister, the minister for immigration—are working day in, day out to secure Australians' personal information and keep them secure from cybersecurity incidents, which are a serious threat to our safety and our national interest. This government is taking action and doing the job.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a free and modern society such as Australia, the word 'slavery' is not one that generally comes up at the dinner table. As Australians, we believe that in this country workers are protected, that they have the opportunity to earn a basic wage and that no-one can be forced into a job that they don't want to do and doesn't meet our country's strict standards. For the most part, that's true. We have systems in place set by all levels of government and avenues that our citizens and visa holders can take to call out employers who do not meet those standards. Unfortunately, there is an uncomfortable reality that, in the peripheries of our day-to-day lives right here in Australia, modern slavery and exploitation are more prevalent than we would like to imagine.

These issues are particularly concerning amongst immigrant populations and affect more women than they do men. Where there are vulnerable people, there will be predators and predatory practices from those set to benefit from their exploitation, and it is our bipartisan role to provide adequate protections against slavery and, conversely, adequate penalties for those who abuse their positions of power. I would like to acknowledge the work of my colleagues, the former minister and assistant minister for home affairs, who successfully implemented the Modern Slavery Act 2018, further progressing the policy with the National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020-25 and then adding to this with the creation of the Support for Trafficked People Program. These were not small advancements in this space, and each who contributed to these policies and programs from all sides of the floor should be thanked and congratulated for their bipartisan efforts. But I do need to give particular kudos to the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for McPherson and the member for Mitchell for spearheading these initiatives during their time in their ministerial roles with the Department of Home Affairs.

This new government, in its second budget, has committed additional funding to this space—sadly, this has been driven by an increase in demand, and I don't sheet that home to the current government—continuing the work started by my coalition colleagues, and I thank them for their renewed commitment to these critical programs. I'd like to acknowledge the $23.4 million that will be provided over four years. It has been earmarked to increase the support provided in the original Support for Trafficked People Program from 45 days to 90 days. This was available as an extension in certain circumstances, but has been made standard through these measures. As well, there will be an 18-month pilot program to allow direct referrals from community providers without the need to engage with the AFP. It is completely understandable, when you see police agencies from overseas who are particularly corrupt, that some victims, particularly immigrants, are afraid to make a report to the AFP in case it affects their visa status or perhaps have a distrust of police in general. Having been police officer and a prosecutor, I've seen that firsthand, so it's good to have a trusted, internationally recognised brand like the Australian Red Cross involved. It's very pleasing to see that, and I'm keen to see the outcome of this pilot.

Having said that, when dealing with third-party organisations, and even with our own internal entities, there needs to be appropriate checks and balances in place, so my question to the minister is: what are the checks and balances that will be implemented to protect the integrity of the proposed 18-month STPP referrals pilot program, and can the minister ensure that a review of the program and the results and findings will be reported to parliament? My second question is: can the minister outline the role of the New South Wales Anti-slavery Commissioner, particularly with reference to the sexual servitude space in the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children? Finally I would like to ask the minister to provide a concrete commitment to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation to ensure that the important work that they are doing is adequately funded and resourced.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud to represent one of the most diverse communities in Australia. I acknowledge the member for Fowler, who probably represents a community that's a little bit more diverse than mine. But, I can tell you what, I'm very proud to represent a very diverse community in Bennelong. Sixty-six per cent of those who live in Bennelong have one or both parents born overseas. Over 50 per cent of my community speak a language other than English at home. That diversity makes our community stronger, and migration and immigration into this country makes our community stronger. Each and every month, I have the pleasure of going to a citizenship ceremony at one of the three local councils in my area. It's something I've been doing for nearly a decade now in my role as a councillor and mayor, and it's one of my favourite things to do is an elected official. I share that special day with locals who have been in the community for a little while, having come from overseas and having made that really hard decision to leave their homeland and move to Australia, just like my parents did back in the sixties and eighties. They make that really hard decision to uproot their families and move to Australia because it's a land of promise and hope. To celebrate that day with them is something that I really relish.

I'm so glad that this government has fixed up the mess that was left behind by the former government in immigration processing and visa times. Citizenship is exactly an area in which this government has made many, many inroads. In the last 12 months alone the backlog of citizenship applications has been reduced by 30 per cent, with the number of applications now sitting at below 93,000 the first time in six years. That is quite an achievement. In the past 12 months alone, over 173,000 people have received Australian citizenship through conferral. That's an 18 per cent increase on the year before. Average processing times have also undergone a substantial reduction of 40 per cent, with more than 90 per cent of applicants only waiting six months to attend a ceremony.

I have witnessed this feedback firsthand. I remember not that long ago, particularly when we had to do citizenship ceremonies during the pandemic, we had to do some of these processes online. I remember asking people: 'How long has the process been? Has it been difficult?' They would say: 'We've been waiting two, three years for our citizenship. It's been a difficult process.' I had feedback at the citizenship ceremony in Ryde only a few weeks ago that someone had their application processed and became an Australian citizen within six months. That is something that is a direct consequence of a Labor government, because we value immigration, we value citizenship and we value a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, which those opposite just did not.

When we came to government, over one million visas were left unprocessed. We had a previous government that told people to go home, to leave this country, rather than helping them to stay here. They said, 'Leave,' and they had no plan for reopening the borders. We had to employ 684 new staff to support the visa system to get through this backlog, because we on this side of the House understand the importance of migration to our social fabric and the importance of migration to our economy. The Liberal legacy was dire. They undermined Australia's visa system. They prioritised temporary immigration over permanent residency and citizenship, and they told people to go home during the pandemic and had no plan for when the border opened.

In the last few months, we've seen these attacks on immigrants and on migrants go even further. We've had questions in question time and MPIs blaming new citizens and migrants and those who choose to make Australia home for the failures of the past 10 years of their government. They're blaming migration for traffic jams in Sydney. They're blaming migration for the housing crisis that they left us with. Shame on them for doing that. We on this side of the House will never do that, because we know that a secure, transparent and efficient migration system makes this country strong. It is what our country was built on. It's what our economy was built on. I am very proud to be here as a son of parents who made that decision to move from overseas and come to Australia. They were welcomed with open arms, and never should that change. Never should migrants be blamed for 10 years of inaction on infrastructure delivery from the former government. We are tackling some of these issues that they raise, but we will not be blaming migration for them. I ask the minister to update the House on what improvements have been made to the visa processing system since forming government.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bennelong. I agree that our electorates are some of the most diverse in the country. I think mine is the most diverse; I have to claim that. Last week, we welcomed 500 new Australian citizens in a Fairfield City Council citizenship ceremony, so I share your view on the importance of this Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024. The government recently presented to us, the crossbench, and showed us the summary of what the migration review has revealed about our visa system. It is convoluted and complex and has a network of categories and visas that really looks like a web. I think it leaves the spiderweb for dead.

While I applaud the Minister for Home Affairs for taking on the challenge to review our migration process, I also encourage her to include in this review a look at what happens after migrants or refugees have settled. As I have previously said, my community has firsthand experience of the impact of migration and refugee settlement. We are a multicultural melting pot, with our country built on the shoulders of migrants and refugees, dating back as far as post World War II, with the influx of German and Italian migrants. Recently, we settled 12,000 Syrian refugees in Fairfield City Council alone—more than the rest of the state of New South Wales. However, we have not received the funding for basic infrastructure and services to match the settlement responsibilities our city took on. Our roads, public transport and hospitals aren't funded to support the increased population pressure and needs. Our schools are bursting at the seams with limited resources—human and capital. Now the cost-of-living and housing crises are acutely felt by everyone. I asked the minister: Will the review also take into consideration housing and infrastructure needs to support newly arrived migrants as well as current residents?

As part of the budget, I acknowledge the government will introduce an improved delivery model for the Adult Migrant English Program from 1 January 2025 to allow migrants and citizens to improve their ability to speak the English language, which I have benefitted from as a former refugee myself, so I know the importance of learning the English language. As well, it will help gain employment and other settlement outcomes. I welcome the improved delivery model; however, there is no additional funding allocated in this budget, so how will the model be improved with no additional funding? How will it get rolled out across the 300 locations in Australia? And which electorates will be prioritised? When settling into a new country, migrants need as much support as possible for them to feel secure and part of the community. It is imperative the government address these needs within the review.

The budget revealed that $75.8 million is to be allocated for improving visa processing over the course of two years. In the past decade, Australia has undeniably experienced an influx of visa applications with skilled and humanitarian migrants. I am sure I speak for many electorate officers when I say our staff and our officers feel the impact of the inefficiency and clogs within the current visa processing system. We are inundated with inquiries from our constituents about the delay in processing time, as the Department of Home Affairs is unable to keep up with the number of applications coming through. There is a human cost, as the delay to the application process causes anxiety for people having to wait for an outcome. I had a constituent who applied for a temporary protection visa who has been caught up in the process and delayed for approximately four years. Migration is by far one of the most significant issues in my electorate of Fowler. Just having a look at the last year, nearly 30 per cent of our cases are to do with immigration, visas or passports, the biggest portion of constituent work by a long shot.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure to join the Sabian Mandaean community for their remembrance day. Many were lucky to be settled in Australia after surviving trauma and atrocities of war in their homeland, but they have spent years waiting for answers as to why some of the family, friends and community members are still living in limbo in Turkiye. I ask the minister: What are the measures being implemented by the Department of Home Affairs to improve the efficiency of visa processing times? Can the minister clarify which visa application streams will benefit from this additional funding? For example, will humanitarian visa applications be prioritised over skilled migrant visas? As is clear when it comes to migration, many factors come into play. We need to ensure those who come to this lucky country have every chance to succeed in their new lives, whether they come as international students, skilled professionals or part of a humanitarian intake.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to respond to many of the issues raised by colleagues in this debate. I will start with the member for Fowler. I did touch on the improved processing times that we have achieved. Due to the hard work of staff and additional investments, they are significantly lower, and we have reduced the backlog enormously, if you look to particular visa categories.

Perhaps I will make the offer here in the Federation Chamber: obviously the member for Fowler knows how to find me. I would be very pleased to go through those issues and our vision for the AMEP with her. She would be aware in the previous budget there was an additional investment made to identify some of the efficiencies and some of the ways in which you can reach more people to ensure everyone gets the English language skills they need to be an effective citizen and to fulfil their potential in our country. I welcome her contribution, as always, and look forward to further discussions.

The member for Cowper made a great contribution which went beyond my portfolio responsibilities but I will convey his remarks to the Attorney-General and reiterate that everyone in this parliament stands against modern slavery and stands resolved to ensure that our legislative framework and our enforcement regime are fit for purpose. The same goes for migrant worker exploitation, which is within my direct responsibility. I was pleased to hear his reflections based on his experience in a former life. I said to him that we have heard from people like him who have said we do need a firewall so that people who have been exploited in the workplace can come forward without fear of their visa being cancelled. We have acted on advice that he has given me in this chamber now and advice others have been given, and I'd be very pleased to go through the details of that with him.

The member for La Trobe raised a number of issues as did the shadow minister for immigration, Mr Tehan, and I will respond to some of them; time doesn't permit me to respond to all of them. Can I ask both shadow ministers to reflect from time to time on some of the language which they use because on some of these issues we really need to think about how what we say impacts people's lives and their decisions. In respect of Afghanistan, I think this is particularly challenging. I acknowledge the member for Mitchell and the work he did at the time of the evacuation, which was an extraordinary time. I am proud as an Australian of the efforts of the Australian government and all of our forces, in Home Affairs, in the military and in other departments, to get people to safety. I acknowledge that here we disagree on many things, but I admire the work that he did. The challenge since then has been great for both governments, and we acknowledge that we have an enormous demand from people who are particularly vulnerable because of the work they have done for and with Australians.

We have around 160,000 applications before us from Afghans. We are determined to do what you did in government—you, the current opposition—and give effect to the priorities that were determined by the former government in consultation with the Australian Afghan community. Shadow minister Wood, I think you should reflect on the language that you used about the priorities. I think you should reflect on your language, and the reference you made to the current Australian government is unworthy of any member of this parliament.

I will answer that question to say that we have committed to implementing in full the Thom report. You should read it, and you should speak about it accurately. You should read it, and you should reflect accurately. You should stop misleading people, and you should tell the truth. That should not be too much to ask. These are very difficult issues that we are grappling with in government, as you grappled with these issues as a government.

You well know the answer to that question.

The member for Wannon also raised a large number of issues, and I will respond to a couple of them very quickly. Again, I ask him to reflect on the language he uses, the inflammatory and frankly wrong language that he uses, the divisive language that he uses about immigration and its impacts, particularly given the comments he made like, 'Well, we need to get our international students back, we need to get working holiday visa holders back and get all those people back as soon as we can.' He said that, but he seems to have forgotten about it, when these of course are the people who are returning after the pause in the pandemic and who are impacting temporarily the NOM. He should reflect on that. He raised an important individual case, and I will say this: as he well knows, I can't comment on the individual case in this place, and he should reflect on that. Secondly, he should know that I take very seriously every representation made by members of parliament, and I consider them on their merits in accordance with the law.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.