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

I want to spend a few moments reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the Uluru handback. I want to thank the Anangu traditional owners for welcoming the Prime Minister, the minister for the environment and me, including some of my colleagues from the Northern Territory parliament. I want to thank the Anangu for their grace, for their hope, for their strength. Uluru is a place of immense importance in our national fabric. This landmark is also known across the world as an emblem of Australia. It attracts tourists and visitors from all over the country and from all walks of life. People come because Uluru holds a unique power, and anyone who has visited can attest that it is a sacred place.

The Anangu have protected this place for countless generations. To them, their custodianship of Uluru has never been in question, yet their legal right to this ancient landmark was only recognised 40 years ago. This recognition under Australian law—or white fella law—took many decades of struggle and advocacy. It's incredibly hard to describe First Nations people's connection to their country. Severing First Nations people from their country is like a person going blind. You still exist in this place, but you are cut off from your senses. Your ability to understand and interact with the world around you is greatly impacted. That's why the Uluru handback was so important. It was an act to make the Anangu people feel whole again.

The Australian spirit I saw on display over the weekend was not a spiteful one. It was one where Aboriginal and a number of non-Aboriginal people came together to celebrate an important milestone. It was the first time a prime minister celebrated this important milestone, and having the PM there was an important symbol of this government's commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—to say, 'We are behind you in the fight for recognition.' As the Prime Minister said, this fight is not linear; it takes twists and turns and it holds successes and many failures. Going back to Uluru reminded me of this. It is a place I have been many times before, most recently in 2023 just before and prior to the referendum. While we all accept the outcome of the referendum, the journey forward is not over. The words of the Uluru statement still ring loud and clear.

I was at Uluru in 2017 with the hundreds of First Nations delegates from all over this great continent. I felt the hope and the resilience that was still in the air. That longing and desire to forge a better and more just country—a country that has reckoned with its history—has not diminished. As a representative of the dozens of remote communities which overwhelmingly voted yes, it is my duty to continue advocating for a path forward. To me, that path lies in truth-telling. As we saw at Uluru, celebrating First Nations cultures enriches all of us. It brings people together in a way we can be proud of, but this celebration has to be meaningful, and it has to be genuinely there to uplift First Nations people.

A recent example of what this celebration could and should look like unfolded in Alice Springs. Not enough is done to remind Australians what an extraordinary place Alice Springs is. For so many people throughout the country and the world who are interested in Indigenous art and culture, it is a place worth visiting and celebrating. Perhaps the best starting point is to understand that Aboriginal people and culture have endured in the heart of our mostly arid continent. Against all odds and on 23 May 2000, there was a determination that the rights of the Mparntwe, Antulye and Irlpme estate groups had survived the imposed establishment of an urban population centre on their country, although, by the mid-20th century, native title had been extinguished throughout much of that area. The determination made it clear that the significance of sacred sites and the authority of custodians to protect them were reaffirmed. The vulnerability of such sites under Northern Territory legislation had been revealed in 1992, when the Northern Territory government of the day would have destroyed the important Todd River sites if it hadn't been for Commonwealth ministerial override.

Consistent with results in the last federal election are the recent Alice Springs town council elections. The people of Alice Springs are progressive. They're multicultural and mutually respectful. They want to see business development and opportunities for everyone. But, at the same time, they recognise and, in fact, seek to leverage Alice's unique circumstances. It is a native title town which is the hub for a constellation of remote Aboriginal communities spread throughout central Australia. This aspect of Alice Springs's contemporary character features the interconnection of Aboriginal culture from different groups across various regions and adds value to what would be an otherwise extremely limited local economy.

Many tourists come to central Australia specifically because of this cultural context, and everyone loves Indigenous art. Most Indigenous art is sourced from the world view of what in central Australia they call jukurrpa. There are other equivalent terms throughout the country. This world view substantially links together particular living human stories about how the country was formed and shaped and obligations of ownership and protection. Understanding this art requires acknowledging how Aboriginal people have been impacted by history, both distant and recent. In other words, Aboriginal art is not a mere decoration, but a true appreciation of it involves opening up to truth-telling about ownership of country under traditional lore and custom and a willingness to understand the ongoing structural conflicts which arise as a result of that appropriation of that land. Discussions about these things should not be shied away from as divisive or uncomfortable. They are a necessary pathway to reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a destination where all Australians can embrace and celebrate the heritage which Aboriginal Australians have bequeathed to this nation, which is why it is disappointing to hear the current Northern Territory government treasurer and some others recently speak of—and remove—the partnership for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Gallery of Australia as if it were a Bunnings site, a box to be ticked in order to promote foot traffic through the Alice Springs mall. Concerns about sacred sites and the Northern Territory government's downscaling of the building, as well as the proximity of the proposed site to a commercial alcohol and gaming machine business which profits from Aboriginal people, were dismissively shrugged off.

Many years ago, many people in Alice Springs started a campaign for a national Aboriginal art gallery in Alice Springs. They pointed out that, if done right, this could be a magnet, and an important one, for interest and visitors, both nationally and internationally. There must be opportunities that we need to look at. We need to continue to work with the state government and also the community, and to see that we all need to come together. The commercial potential of Alice Springs for the establishment of such a centre is still high no matter where this could be. Tourists who go to the centre will always end up going up to the Todd more, even if we put it somewhere else, and would spend money. The whole town would benefit. The whole town would not benefit from the crash-through approach of the construction of a purported cultural attraction at a location which would see it damned as culturally toxic by senior Arrernte custodians.

Common sense, cultural sense and a commercial sense must prevail. These considerations do not have to be in opposition to each other. We have an opportunity here—federal, state, local and community—to all work together to advance a national agenda of truth-telling and reconciliation, and to significantly expand and enhance the economy of Alice Springs and Central Australia. Keeping faith with the vision of Aboriginal people will deliver for Alice Springs and for our nation, which is so important. The objective and the responsibility to this community will be to do what I can as their federal representative—a commitment to Alice Springs that respect the town, its history and its people.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to ask, what happened to choice in our country? When did we decide that Canberra knows best, that unelected bureaucrats who live far, far away from communities like mine are somehow best placed to decide what ordinary Aussies do in their homes, their businesses and their communities? It's a lens through which I come to look at most policies of government because I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy, after all. I honestly believe that an important part of the Australian psyche still holds that we simply don't want to be told what to do all the time. So when we come to the issue of emissions reduction, it seems that this government has decided that it knows better than every Australian—or, more egregiously, that perhaps it doesn't trust those Australians to do the right thing in their own circumstances. Rather than leaving it to each Australian to decide when an electric vehicle suits their needs—whether for commuting, recreation with a caravan or boat, or even to for their work, whether it be on the construction site or in the back paddock—this government decided to impose taxes on folks who chose internal combustion engine cars, pushing up the cost of a new Ford Ranger, one of Australia's best-selling cars, by some $14,000 by 2029.

Worse still, the assumed sales of electric vehicles are failing to meet the government's expectations. In the month of September, eight per cent of vehicles purchased by Australians were battery-electric vehicles, which is clearly well less than half of the expected base-case uptake of 20 per cent. It begs the question, will this government slug Aussies even more because they chose the wrong sort of car, as our net zero evangelists here in Canberra have dictated?

I think the truly criminal part of the government deciding that they know more about what sort of car you should drive is the fact that they have cooked up a scheme of subsidies that make a Tesla cheaper for a surgeon than a nurse. I thought Labor was supposed to represent the worker, but here they are running a scheme that gives high-income earners a bigger tax break to buy an EV through a novated lease, and taxpayers are the ones left to foot the bill. We're taking tax money off a nurse to make a surgeon's novated lease for a Tesla cheaper. Astonishingly, the Parliamentary Budget Office expects this rort to cost some $23 billion over the decade, and yet still the government stands by it.

So why can't we end all subsidies, taxes, penalties and every other way that bureaucrats here in Canberra are trying to direct Aussies as to what sort of car they drive, and just leave it to them?

We know that Australians will make the right choice when it comes to doing their fair share for the environment. We know this because we've seen massive uptake of rooftop solar panels, and the uptake was not due to the subsidies offered by the Howard government, the rebate schemes of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years or even the various schemes of the Abbott government. No, rooftop solar took off in Australia around 2017-18 because the capital cost after incentives finally made economic sense, falling below $1 a watt in terms of capital cost, and Australians rallied to open their wallets and do the right thing. So household installations doubled then, and they've continued at breakneck pace.

As an aside, in recent years some troubling questions have emerged that suggest that the manufacturing of solar panels in certain parts of China relies on slaves to achieve their incredibly low cost of production. These reports have come from reputable sources like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the BBC, New York Post and even Australia's Walk Free foundation. So I wrote to the climate change minister on 6 August this year to understand whether the government had satisfied itself that there was no risk of slave labour in the supply chains of solar panels coming to Australia. Eighty-three days later I'm still clicking refresh on my inbox, waiting for a response from Minister Bowen. It's pathetic that the government appears to be turning a blind eye to credible reports of slavery because it is so infatuated with its pursuit of net zero. Is the affordability of rooftop solar too good to be true? Mr Bowen's green dreams would leave a dark stain on our national history if these claims were ever validated.

Returning to choice, however, I recently sat in a room with 25- to 35-year-old folks from Bunbury and watched as the shadow Treasurer asked them a simple question: 'What do you like least about Australia today?' 'Red tape,' 'Overregulation,' 'Constantly going for the lowest common denominator,' and, 'A nanny state'—these statements are from young entrepreneurs who are horrified by the constraints that we've layered upon them. It started with forcing coffee to be sold in cups that say, 'Caution! Contents may be hot'—seriously?—and now the mind virus seems to have completely killed off the drive of Australians to build things, create things and do things.

Take my electorate, where a successful young business owner runs a shed-building company. He tells me that it takes at least four months to get the approvals in place to build a commercial shed and just seven to eight days to actually construct it. Just think about that. That's four months of plans being shuffled from one desk to another within bureaucracy, creating no value whatsoever, and then just a week for a crack team of tradies to actually build the shed. That's to say nothing of the truly catastrophic examples like the McPhillamys goldmine which, after years of planning approval work and with more than $1 billion ready to invest, was knocked back.

So it's no wonder that more than four in five jobs created in the last two years depend on taxpayer money, and, from there, it is also no wonder that we are already spending $50,000 a minute on interest that our kids will ultimately pay. It really is un-Australian to rack up debt on the credit card and then give the bill to your kids to pay, especially when we've spent their whole lives telling them what to do, think and say.

For another example where we could have embraced choice, take the government's mandatory climate reporting legislation, administered by ASIC, which started on 1 January this year. Businesses across the nation are now required to document, calculate and estimate their emissions and credits with a level of detail that, frankly, demands additional staff or compliance specialists. For a large multinational, it's simply the cost of doing business, but, for a family run operator, a manufacturer, a local trucking company or a regional retailer—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 13:19 to 13:43

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

The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Sitting suspended from 13:43 to 16:00

The Federation Chamber transcript was published up to 13.43 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.