But then Labor said, 'Oh, no, we've got five years to do that.' The trouble is that the Prime Minister didn't say that during the election campaign. He didn't say, 'In five years time I'll give you a $275 cut.' He just said, 'I'll give you a $275 cut.' It's sort of a reversal of the 'Mediscare' campaign from the previous election. It's a promise to say, 'I'm going to give you this,' but then they don't give it to you. You can understand that people are under pressure, and all the previous speakers have recognised that people are under pressure from power prices and a lot of state government costs, like your water and your electricity. When has the federal government come along and said, 'Here's what we can do for you'? It hasn't happened.
What happens in your new housing program, whatever it's called, which we just debated in the House and went through—it's another first home buyer type scheme; oh, it's the Help to Buy program—when the market intervenes, people can't pay for some reason, their interest rates go too high and they're under pressure?
I went to get a punctured tyre repaired, and the guy repairing the tyre said, 'You're the politician, aren't you?' And I said yes, but I was trying to hide it, with the way I was dressed. He said, 'Do you know my mortgage has gone up 1,500 bucks?' This guy is running and is part owner of a very good tyre business. They've always looked after me very well in Pakenham and always been great. He said: 'It's 1,500 bucks, mate. That's what it's costing me over and above what I was paying.' He said, 'I have to find that money.'
I recently had a very well-paid person come to me and say, 'Russell, you don't understand how high the mortgage is that we've got to pay.' Well, no, I don't understand how high his mortgage is, because when I took out the mortgage on the small farm that I'm on it was $30,000. Then, in the next episode, from others that I've heard about, their mortgages went to $60,000, then $80,000, then $150,000 and then $200,000. When I asked a young girl who worked with me for a while, Priscilla, what she'd borrowed to get into her unit in Parkdale, or wherever it was, she said $400,000. I was in shock. Now people are borrowing $1 million. For some of the people these days who have borrowed that sort of money, a tiny change in interest rates is catastrophic. And they all believed that interest rates wouldn't change for a long time. As we heard from the member who spoke before, people come up to you and say, 'I've just moved from a fixed loan to a variable loan, and the price has gone through the roof for me.' And this has happened to thousands of people across Australia. I learned very quickly that people are now relying not only on their income but also on their savings. They're using up their savings just to survive at the moment.
Governments should be very aware of the electorate when people are under pressure, because they will have regard for everything you say, all the time, about what you're going to do. And if you don't do it beware, because the people will be coming for you.
]]>Access to healthy, fresh food should not be a luxury in this country. We all realise the prices people are paying at the moment seem to be inflated beyond their control and beyond the household budget. What we're facing here is that the market dominance of the supermarkets is probably unprecedented in nations around the world. If we compare ourselves with the UK, the biggest player in their market is around 28 per cent. In the US the biggest player in the market is around 25 per cent. In Australia the biggest player in the market is 37 per cent. With our second biggest player having a larger nominal share than the share that the largest supermarket in the US has, just two supermarkets account for 60 per cent of the market share and prove how lacking competition is in the sector. You already know which two supermarkets I'm talking about.
Of course, there's a choice. In Melbourne you can seek out a retailer that may be a long way away from you but will give you a better price. I asked a customer the other day—I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to name names here—in the ALDI store, 'Do you believe you get a better price shopping at ALDI than you do at the major supermarkets?' She said: 'Absolutely. This is my major shop for the week.' It was about $275 for her major shop. She lives with her daughter. In that process, she said, 'Yes, I think I'm this many dollars better off by shopping at that particular store.' So in Australia you can still seek out, if you're prepared to look and travel, opportunities for independent supermarkets.
Where I have a problem with the bill put forward is that, even though the member for Hasluck a few minutes ago outlined all the programs that the government has in place to fight against the monopoly, the market happens very quickly. I'm a former retailer. The market happens on that day in that week in that time. By the time all the inquiries that you might have with the ACCC or any other body over price gouging are held and done, the damage is done. It's all over—it's finished—for the retailer. In my own area, when a major player in the market in my industry came in to my community, I knew that our retail model was over, finished, gone. It took a long time for me to explain that to my family—that we were now finished—because we couldn't compete in the marketplace with such an enormous organisation. Therefore, businesses like mine disappeared not just in my area but right across Australia because the big organisation came in and took over from the very small.
In the inquiry that's currently going on in Australia with regard to food prices—or whatever the inquiry is called—it was really interesting to hear the apple growers and what they're going through at the moment and the fact that many of them are ripping their plants out of the ground because they can't put apples on the shelf—you'd know this in South Australia—because of what it costs them to produce it. In fact, the gap is enormous. Some of their produce is perfect to eat, but, because it's slightly the wrong colour, it gets rejected, for heaven's sake. So 30 per cent of this beautiful product here in Australia is thrown out or sent back to the grower just to be ploughed in or thrown down the tip.
What I'm putting to the House is that it's good to have this discussion around how we deliver food into households in Australia but remember that we're dealing with a marketplace which is moving quickly every day and you've got to be a very big supplier to supply a very big supermarket. So the smaller man is left out. If you want that change, you have to change how you are supporting the smaller operators and the smaller growers.
]]>In the housing policies that emanated from there, from Menzies to prior to the election of this government, the coalition, as the member from Mallee has told us, has had a direct eye on getting people into homes. In fact, the nation's wealth from the Menzies years and his direction of bringing everybody into the housing market made the big difference in this country in getting us to the point where nearly 70 per cent of homes were owned by people who were workers, who were small-business people, who were managers. It was a direction of the egalitarian nature of Menzies to say: 'No, we are not going to have a class society where we've got the rich and the middle class and the poor. We're going to have the middle class getting all the strength that we can give them so we can look after the poor and so that the middle class can earn money, pay tax and own their own home.' That was the trust and that was the world that I grew up in.
Now, when people my age talk about paying up to 18 per cent interest rates, it means we always have an eye on the market and can say that interest rates, as you've seen them prior to the pandemic and post the pandemic, are not real. Of course, I've been wrong for a long time; they have remained low for a long time. Small businesses back in the nineties were paying 22 per cent interest, but, remember, at that time, my loan was $30,000. I was stunned a few years later, when Priscilla Ruffolo—who was a great help to me in the 2004 election campaign and worked with me and Senator Judith Troeth at that time—and her husband, I believe, went out and got a $400,000 loan. I nearly fainted! I didn't realise until then that that was the normal loan for people to go out and get.
I recently learnt of a couple that borrowed $1 million—well, it was probably five or six years ago—to buy their home and pay it off. Now, the problem with that is that one Reserve Bank governor said, 'We're not going to increase rates until 2024.' But 2024 came very quickly. Small interest rate rises, when you're on four and you go to six per cent—that's a 50 per cent increase in your outlays that you need to find out of your household budget. They say, 'It's only four to six.' No, it's a lot of money if you've borrowed a lot of money. Every intervention that I know of that governments have done since I've been around this place—in and out of it since 1990—has increased the price of the home by the value of the intervention.
I believe this policy from this government, the Help to Buy Bill—and it was stated by the member for Mallee, by the way, that programs like this already exist in each state. So why would you say, 'We're going to do that federally,' unless all you wanted out of a policy was something to talk about at a public meeting—so the Prime Minister can turn around and say in a public meeting, 'But we've got our Help to Buy Bill, which is going to help people to get into the housing market.'
What you've got to do to get people into the housing market, in my view, is get out of their lives as much as you can and get out of taxing them the way that you do. And don't forget state governments. The federal government can say, 'We'll give you a helping hand. We'll give you a first home buyer's grant. We'll find ways to get you into housing because it's very important for your wellbeing over your life span. We'll help you, and we're the best government to do it for you.' But then the state government comes along, and I think I've added up between five and nine new property taxes or interventions.
When I talk about interventions in the housing market, I'm talking about rentals as well, because a lot of people rent, and they choose to rent. They choose to rent. People that rent out those homes to those renters, the landlords—so condemned in this country so many times—have had restrictions put on them by state governments that mean their house has to meet a certain standard before they can rent it out. Some of those standards are onerous for an old home. The cost of renovating that house to bring it up to that standard may be too great—to conform with the new paradigm put in by the Victorian state government. Therefore the landlord has a dilemma, and so has the estate agent, because they can't break the law by renting out that house that hasn't got the facilities required.
The renter can't make a decision and say, 'No, that house will do me, it's fine, because the rent's cheaper and I can get into that house. I'll supply my own secondary heating source; I'll supply my own solar power or whatever is required by the Victorian state government. I'll do that and I'll have that house.' The problem is the estate agent is in trouble and the landowner is in trouble if they rent the house to the renter.
So what happens? The house sits vacant or is sold to someone who's going to live in that house, so it goes off the rental market. In fact, in one agent's area—a fairly large agent—150 homes have gone off his rent roll. A hundred and fifty homes disappeared off the rent roll for two reasons. One is that the owners of those homes were people investing in the property market. I've never been a big share investor. My family are not share investors; they're property investors. We always bought property. That was our focus. So these mums and dads, like me, would buy a property. They'd borrow to do it. But the recent increase in interest rates means that their costs have gone through the roof and they've got to hand that on to renters, so you're getting a higher cost of rental.
I heard in the Federation Chamber today from the member for Groom that in his electorate, in the town of Toowoomba particularly, the rental opportunity is only 0.9 per cent. That means there are practically no houses at all in Toowoomba to rent. Therefore, when there is a home to rent, what happens? You actually have a line-up of people bidding higher to gain opportunity to have that home as a rental. So they're paying more out of their income for their rentals because of the failings of governments previously, state and federal and local, that have held up property development, slowed down the opening-up of new land and slowed down planning permits. So people are struggling to get into the market.
There are a whole lot of pressures outside of what government's trying to do. It's like having a bucket full of holes. The federal government, with Help to Buy, wants to stand there with a hose and pour water into a bucket with a whole lot of holes in it. The holes are everywhere. That intervention by government at a local, state and federal level means costs and charges put on for every inspection of a new home. A friend of mine building his own home in the city said he couldn't believe the number of charges he had to face up to for every inspection on the home. Every time there was a stage completed in the home, the inspector came in and it was another $400, another $700 or another $1,000 for an intervention that, in the past, we wouldn't have had. My generation didn't face the property taxes we face today and a generation of developers didn't face the taxes they face today. So there are all sorts of barriers being put in place by government in the interests of the government's income.
I believe—I'm not sure, as I haven't checked with the Parliamentary Library ; I'd like to check with the library—that 60 per cent of Victoria's state government income is now coming from property taxes. Our generation didn't pay those property taxes. They didn't pay the land taxes. They didn't pay the increases in land taxes. There has been dramatic land tax increases in Victoria over the last three years, the last three budgets, and they're putting them up again. I've even had a member of parliament in this place who inherited a property from her parents complaining about the Victorian land tax bill that she has to pay and how it's risen. She has terrific tenants in there that have been there for years. She can't put up the price on those people. They're family to her.
So this bill, I believe, will not be a help-to-buy bill. I have a fundamental problem with government intervention. I hope I have made this point in this address—that is, when the government encourages a couple or an individual—
I hear from the member for Mallee that it's 52 per cent women. That's great. That never happened in my day. It's great women have the opportunity. But every time there's an intervention it puts another increase on the price that the individual pays either as a renter or as a builder. You can be encouraged to be in an arrangement that the Australian government is involved in where increases in interest rates or costs will leave you out of pocket and out of a house. The house will go back to the bank. For any of you who have never been here at a time when banks have gone to people and said, 'You can no longer afford to live in that house because we own more of it than you do and you're out and we've going to sell it off,' they have the right to do that. Anybody my age and a little bit younger would remember those days of people losing their homes. They'd remember the mortgagee auctions. You know who benefits out of that—only the wealthy. I pray that this bill does not lead people into an arrangement that will cost them dearly in the long run. A house and a home is very important to every family, from all the way back to Sir Robert Menzies. Put an 'h' in front of housing—that's what we have to do to concentrate our efforts on our next generation. Thank you for the opportunity to address the House.
]]>I'll leave you with this. I spoke with an independent grocer the other day, and he said, 'There's the real price of the product, and here's the majors' price of the product—'
]]>So it is rather interesting to consider. I have the greatest respect for the minister and Craig Emerson in his capacity and appointment. He certainly has the ability to come up with a very good inquiry. But I think also that, deep in his heart of hearts, he knows that he will not be able to make any difference whatsoever, as my mother used to say, to the price of paint. You won't make any difference to the price of groceries.
What we have is a market in Australia dominated by two main players. No government—not this government, not the three governments we had, under three different prime ministers, while we were in government, or before that the two governments, under two different prime ministers, on the Labor side—have made any difference to grocery prices. No. They just keep going up and up and up. And the sizes of the products—as the shoppers who are watching this debate will know—get smaller and smaller and smaller. My wife happens to like a certain brand of marmalade, and the jar used to be about that big. Then it went to that big and got dearer. Now it's down to that big, and it's dearer again. So we're losing at both ends. We're not only seeing the prices increasing, but the size of the product and the volume are decreasing.
After all the fine speeches here today around reducing prices at the supermarket, with investment by government to do that—so we will direct—I put it to you that not one thing will change with regard to the structure of the grocery industry in Australia. Things will only change when the buyer, the shopper, decides to be very clear and concise about their shopping and, rather than taking the convenient Woolies store or the Coles store—
]]>The voiceless and the troubled are our responsibility. We have heard you, and we have listened. Those workers at the coalface of the unemployed in this nation have our greatest respect and grateful thanks in that they are changing the lives of so many across this great south land. You are angels of the highest order, and I thank you for what you do. Each one of you knows who I'm talking to.
I particularly draw attention to two members of the committee: the member for Bruce, for his passion, his wisdom and his experience as a former public servant in navigating what was a most difficult place to navigate—and I thank him sincerely for the work that he did and the professional way he carried out his obligations—and the member for Mayo, who brought her lived experience working in this sector to the tables of the committee. The member for Bruce carried the load, and the member for Mayo brought her lived experience working in the social security sector.
I'm most appreciative of the secretariat for their professionalism and the way they went about supporting the chair of the committee, as well as those who were seconded from the department and all of the people who had any input into this excellent report. There is a dissenting report, which you can read; it speaks for itself. I'll leave that with the parliament.
]]>In recent years we've seen increasing research in and accessibility to testing in the field of genetics. This field has the potential to help us take significant steps towards understanding the nature of genetically linked diseases—diseases like cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's. In addition, this field has the potential to help us develop personalised prevention and treatment strategies, which would be a game changer for thousands of people across the world. Imagine for a moment, though, a patient who has had genetic testing done, whether it be for research or for personal preventative health measures, then being penalised by insurers for taking this step, through high premiums, lower insurance levels or not being able to access insurance at all. That becomes a deterrent to being tested.
Progress in the field of genetic medicine should not come at the cost of breaching the fundamental principles of privacy and confidentiality for individual patients. We must ask ourselves: are we truly committed to improving the health of this nation? If so, are we truly committed to protecting the rights of our citizens to privacy, confidentiality and the protection of their medical information? These are fundamental human rights. Australia's international human rights obligations demand that we do not discriminate on the basis of genetics. Article 6 of the UN's Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights requires a prohibition on discrimination based on genetic characteristics. Article 25 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities specifically refers to discrimination in the offer of life insurance. Meanwhile, Australia's Disability Discrimination Act 1992 prohibits discrimination based on genetic status. However, there is an exemption for insurers if an underwriting decision is based on reasonable data. How is that fair? How does that protect the confidentiality and freedom from discrimination of everyday Australians?
Australia is lagging behind our Commonwealth partners in numerous countries around the globe. Both Canada and the UK protect the genetic information of individuals more than we do and have taken significant steps to prohibit the use of genetic test results in life, income-protection, and critical-illness insurance. A review by the Geneva Association showed that 13 of the 20 listed countries protected the disclosure of genetic results to insurers in any circumstance. Australia is not part of that group. Who would have thought, in 2023, that Australia would lag behind the world on the protection of confidential patient information and the prevention of genetic discrimination?
This nation needs to, first and foremost, protect the privacy of Australians, eliminate genetic discrimination and give people confidence to be tested so that they can participate in research and remove the barrier to Australia providing targeted health measures in future planning. The first action must be to remove the exemption of insurers in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Regardless, our Commonwealth, state and territory governments must work towards protecting the confidential genetic information and prohibiting genetic discrimination of the Australian people. I cannot make the case more clearly than I have today on behalf of the people of Australia. Big business may not like this, but I am still here about this nation's people.
]]>There is an epidemic of obesity in this country and in developed countries around the world. Australia ranks fifth among OECD countries, with nearly a third of all Australians living with obesity—I said a third of all Australians are living with obesity. This problem is hugely embarrassing for a nation as wealthy as ours. Obesity is expected to cost this nation some $87 billion over the next 10 years. We'd have to question why we're not doing more to address this issue. I appreciate the previous speaker, the member for Higgins, giving a doctor's perspective on this.
I grew up in a community, a very small community, in country Victoria, where all of our food came from within 10 kays of where we lived. If anyone looked at me they'd say, 'That's a long time ago,' but in my school and realm, there were very few obese children—very few. What was different about them? Looking back, they were from poorer families that didn't have the access to food that people like myself and most of the community had. And it was hereditary; there were generations of people who were not wealthy and who were different because they had access to different types of food to what we were having.
Even today, 40 per cent of the food that we consume is coming packaged—not necessarily from a supermarket, but packaged food. That's 40 per cent packaged food being consumed by the community. Something happened to me not long ago—and I won't name the township I was in—when I went to polling booths on election day. This community had gone from a small country community to an outer suburban community where they had Hungry Jack's, McDonald's, Red Rooster and all those sorts of things that they didn't have before. When I went to that community, I noticed the difference from the sixties and seventies. Then, there were very few obese people in the community, but on that election day, as I was handing out how-to-vote cards for Russell Broadbent, I noticed that there was obese family, after obese family, after obese family coming into the booths. I had never seen that there before. This was phenomenal to me, because that community had never had the type of dramatic change that I could see presented in front of me that day. People who were obese were so hot, on a very cool day—when I had a jacket on—that they had T-shirts and shorts on.
It was very clear from the parents and the children that they had the same diet. What have we done over these past years that has made this dramatic change? Is it cheaper to stop in at McDonald's on your way past? Is it cheaper not to buy the fresh food at the supermarket? I don't know what we've done, but this nation desperately needs a change of focus, particularly in health care, to point to issues that have to start at the family level and at the school level—at every level we can. When you see little, active kids—where you see Nippers down the beach—you don't see obese kids. They're active and their families are active—that's generational as well.
So I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that on this day Australians should think very carefully as to how they're feeding this generation and the generations to come. This is a great opportunity for this nation to change its ways.
]]>There are no words to describe the horror that Australian people felt on hearing the news of the Hamas attack on the people of Israel. A terrorist organisation was sent to kill as many people as possible, with absolutely no care for age, for frailty or for youth. It's an attack that seems, in Australia, incomprehensible to us as a nation. I saw how it affected my own family and community—how distressed they were. I know they would have all gone and projected themselves into the situation in that kibbutz where people went to bed the night before and woke up to gunshots at their front doors and in their homes. We saw the killing of innocent people, young people in their absolute prime at a youth get-together for people who wanted to dance and sing. Each one of us thinks of our own grandchildren, friends and family. That could have been us. Who knows where the next attack will come from?
But there are two perpetrators of the pain and death that's happening in the Middle East at this time. Hamas have not only attacked Israel in such a heinous way but, worse than that, have purposefully attacked the Palestinian people. They use children in kindergartens as their shelter. They use sick people in hospitals as their shelter, knowing that the leadership of Hamas will not be attacked if they use that cover. Hezbollah are the same.
I have been to Israel on two occasions at behest of the government of the day, so it was incomprehensible to me that there could be a break in the defences as there were. That's because I know the ability of the Israelis to protect their borders. I've been to their borders and I've stood there and seen firsthand when they point out where Hezbollah and Hamas are. Using the Palestinian people in this way, virtually as human sacrifices for their bent and twisted cause, confronts us in this country, where we're so used to freedom of movement and freedom of activity—freedom of everything. It's not possible that anything like that could happen; but it has, and I think the response of this federal government has been totally appropriate.
As the member for Gellibrand said, people are dancing on the graves of those poor people who have fallen. Our sympathy goes out to them and to those who have been kidnapped or injured. Can we possibly put ourselves in the place of how they feel, where an Israeli father says to the world, 'I'd rather my daughter be dead than kidnapped?' He said, 'Yes, she's dead', and he went on to explain how horrific Hamas can be with hostages. They're holding those hostages, and we've seen a Hamas fighter standing there with toddlers in his arms. That brought tears to the eyes of many around me.
I stand with Israel, as this nation does. I stand, especially, knowing that there are Palestinians even in this country who wish for the end of the state of Israel. That is not going to happen. They have every right to respond to protect their border and to protect their people, and that's what they will do with all the force needed. But the tragedy of that is that Hamas will use thousands and thousands and thousands of Palestinians who will be sacrificed for their aims, without any care whatsoever of their health, wellbeing or safety.
This is happening right now as we speak. As we speak, the Israelis are prepared to go into the Gaza Strip, probably one of the most heavily populated areas in the world, with few opportunities for those people to escape from the Israeli incursion. None of us can understand what we would be doing, what decisions we would be making now if we were in the shoes of those in Israel and in Palestine. How would our heartache and consideration be if it was one of us? How would you think and feel if it was your wife, your father? A friend said over dinner on Friday, 'Two of my cousins have been called up by the Israeli army, and they have easily gone.' The way he said it was, 'My family is about to sacrifice these two young men to the cause.'
The Israelis have put together more than 300,000 men and women, reservists called in. As we stand, Australia will do its best, and, I believe, the government will do its best to support wherever we need to support, whatever we can do. There will be humanitarian aid from this country for the peoples of Israel and the peoples of Palestine. But let me say: we will fight with every breath and every energy we have against antisemitism and Islamophobia, because this nation is better than those demonstrations we saw last week in Sydney. We're better than that, and Australians will always stand up for the right—the right for people to speak out, yes, and the right to be heard in that freedom.
]]>Even under a Labor government, our own Commonwealth car drivers moved from being full-time drivers to casual drivers. Why? Because it suits them to be casual drivers. It means they can say at any time, 'I'm not available in the next two weeks. I'm off with my partner'—or 'my wife'—'to do something else.' There are people that choose to be paid as casuals.
When as an employer I had casual employees, they were paid at least a third more than my permanent employees because all the entitlements that are due to them are paid in their hourly rate. For their hourly rate, I had the federal award when I dealt with my staff, but we always paid over the federal award. Why did we pay over the federal award? Because we had good staff and we wanted to keep them. And I never wanted to be in a position where someone said, 'You underpaid me.' So the casual employees always received at least a third, if not more, more than the full-time employees.
Then the minister mentioned wage theft. Most of the wages infringements that have been found—big organisations like banks had underpaid and other organisations had underpaid—weren't by intention; it was by misreading the law of the land at the time in regard to industrial relations. It wasn't at any stage their intention. Now, there are unscrupulous employers and there are unscrupulous employees. This is the world we live in. However, for all of the employers that I remember dealing with, their most precious commodity was their employees. Not only would they pay them correctly but they would also be generous with bonuses around Christmas time.
In my industry, which was a small business, under the federal award when an employee went on holidays they got a 17½ per cent loading—to go on holidays. You get paid 17½ per cent more for your four weeks of holiday a year. I don't think that happens to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, because I know you don't get a holiday.
I'd say closing loopholes and digging potholes would be my framework for this bill. The Fair Work legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 is a perplexing, complex and unwieldy document that will not improve the common good. I repeat that: it will not improve the common good. On the contrary, it will reduce productivity and thereby cause hardship to many small-business owners and workers in the community; and it will shift power to unions who seek to control those who are part of the gig economy, which they have no claim on today. The bill might more accurately be called the 'Fair work legislation amendment (digging potholes) bill'.
Writing in the Australian this week, Robert Gottliebsen, who I've got a lot of time for, talks about the practical effects of the bill. He writes:
The operations of every enterprise in Australia ranging from the local gardener or plumber to BHP and the Commonwealth Bank will be caught in the incredible ramifications of the 784-page industrial relations legislation including the 500 pages of explanatory memorandum.
Given the complexity and the total powers being awarded to the minister and Fair Work Australia, no enterprise whether they be big or small will have any certainty as to whether they are obeying or breaking the law.
He also said:
And if they find that, unintentionally, they have broken these incredibly complex laws, they may suffer enormous penalties.
An accurate analogy can be applied to the roads. Imagine if, the road regulators quadruple penalties for speeding and then erect multiple speed restriction signs along those roads and cover each one with a hessian bag.
You drive along the road completely unaware as to whether you have broken the law, but still facing huge penalties.
They were his words.
The bill is anti productivity at a time when we need a productivity boost in this nation. In an address to the parliament yesterday, the member for Mitchell said:
When we look through the schedules of this bill and the explanatory memorandum of 500 pages, we learn even more about what the minister and the government are proposing, and it is perhaps the single greatest anti-productivity industrial relations bill in our nation's history. It is the word that cannot be mentioned by the Labor Party, productivity, and while they talk about pushing up wages, wages have to come with productivity or they are simply cost increases for consumers. That's what we're seeing in our economy, and that's what we see with this legislation …
I wholeheartedly agree with the member for Mitchell in his conclusion that, if this bill becomes law, there will be an increase in the cost of labour without even a thought about the anti-productivity measures that are contained within the bill.
Let's turn to the gig economy and the $9 billion cost. This bill is against those who work in the gig economy. I'll quote the member for Mitchell again—it was quite an impressive speech, I thought. He said:
… gig platforms mean people can create their own businesses faster, can do their own types of work faster and can provide their own benefits and set their own terms and conditions—
Not a bad job—
They're doing it without the need for the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to be involved. They don't need the government to be involved in this part. We have a huge industrial relations framework in this country that provides all the minimum protections—
That's true—
We are one of the most regulated industrial markets in the world. We are the highest wage jurisdiction in the world, and yet the government says they want to artificially put up the prices. That's the reason in this legislation when we see the attached costs at $9 billion in the government's own costings. I don't believe that's correct—
That's the $9 billion—
and industry is telling us that these costs are conservative because they don't model the changes to independent contractors and other forms of work that the government is proposing in the bill.
The minister should be acutely aware that we are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. I think there is consensus that our common good depends on productivity improving, and yet we have zero productivity growth.
What does the additional $9 billion in cost due to the bill mean for the community? What does it mean for those struggling with mortgages and high rents? It means an additional, unnecessary cost that will be passed on to consumers. Goods and services will become more expensive. Productivity will not increase; rather, it will decline. You could not think of a worse thing to do at a worse time for the Australian economy for our future productivity and employment. Not one in the electorate of Monash will thank you for this legislation. The minister has said that the bill will result in only $9 billion in costs—his own words—but the truth is that this could be twice or three times that amount. Astonishingly, the government did not even model the cost of changes in many parts of the bill. Why not do this? Perhaps the government just doesn't care about independent contractors, who are so important to our economy.
Casuals are a good thing for people who like to take them on. People want to be casual because it's a means of increasing their income. On that subject, the member for Mitchell said:
That's the truth, and the minister has to acknowledge that. He says, 'I know most people won't take up these things, so there is no problem.' But why change it if it isn't a big problem? Why at six months should you factor in 11 factors—four sections and seven subsections in this legislation—for something that isn't a big problem for most of the workforce? People are going to benefit. They want to be casuals because they want higher rates of pay—
Correct—
The minister knows this, but he acts as if it is a major loophole. He knows it isn't a major loophole. He knows that a fraction of the problem here doesn't warrant the solution he has provided. Again, the agenda is very different.
Big business organisations and small business organisations are sounding a warning to the minister and the government, who claim that small business is exempt from the bill, but this is not accurate. Many of the provisions in this bill are against increasing productivity. The bill won't close loopholes. It will dig potholes on the road. It won't improve the common good.
Yesterday the member for Mitchell said:
The truth of this bill is that unions are under threat by modern workplaces, and they're unable to gain the cachet they need in the workplaces, and therefore the government, in a whole range of sectors, are going to smash through what they describe as loopholes …
He also said:
There is a real sense here that the Labor Party is actually being the conservative party. They want to take our industrial relations framework back to the 19th and 18th centuries. They want to have the contest between capital and labour that Karl Marx spoke about.
Of course, it was another famous Marx—Groucho Marx—who said, 'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.' This is perhaps a good analysis of what is happening with the proponents of the closing loopholes bill. The member for Mitchell continues:
We have new emerging forms of employment, labour and industrial relations that need new frameworks—frameworks that recognise productivity, frameworks that take the opportunity of these new innovations and don't try to shut them down or feel threatened by them because of power based erosion in the union movement but actually recognise that new generations want new and different ways of working and that they should be available for people in new and different contracts.
In the Australian article yesterday, Robert Gottliebsen observed:
To their great credit, the independents have refused to rush the legislation through the upper house and have delegated it to a parliamentary committee which means there will be more time to expose the damage it will create.
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee will conduct a public inquiry and will report on February 1 2024. I note that Paul Karp in the Guardian says Senator Pocock has already suggested some views about breaking up the bill so some parts could be passed this year.
Pocock wants to deal with several parts this year, including: banning discrimination against employees experiencing family and domestic violence; the workers' compensation change; and provisions criminalising wage theft.
While employers may not agree with every item on the list, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Acci), AiGroup, Minerals Council and Master Builders agree in principle with splitting the bill, allowing the discrimination and workers compensation law changes to be dealt with immediately.
I end with a paraphrase of Robert Gottliebsen's article in the Australian yesterday. He says the Treasurer keeps expressing optimism about productivity and the future of the nation and continues:
But he has been completely gazumped by the Employment Minister who masks his massive legislative agenda with irrelevancies like paying a little more for pizzas.
I invite the Treasurer to take a day off and sit down with those 784 pages and try and understand what on earth it all means for someone trying to conduct an enterprise.
Maybe all ALP politicians should circulate the 784 pages among the small enterprises in their electorate so they "understand" the new rules that are to govern them.
This is 784 pages of new rules that will only offend the running of your business. We oppose this legislation for very good reason.
]]>Your account was restricted due to multiple violations of LinkedIn's User Agreement and Professional Community Policies against sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information.
What he did, his one crime, was share a post from Professor Catherine Bennett:
We only needed one lockdown, one test and one treatment for all.
Vitamin D test, Vitamin D treatment.
Did not appear in any of the modelling.
Australia failed as did the WHO and all its agencies.
Remind me again why we keep locking up the entire Australian population in the fight against Covid-19. A grand total of 21 people under 60 died with or of Covid in 2020.
Now she has no right to proffer an opinion across social media? I can go on and see what she said in the rest of the post, but it doesn't make any difference. The point here is: this misinformation and disinformation bill will only be a vehicle for those people who want to close down debate, and we've seen enough of closing down debate in this nation. What we need is conversation where it's free for all to discuss their opinions.
I put to someone today, 'The Australian people are not stupid with regard to finances, with regard to advice they're given by anybody.' They are not. My mentor at school, in commercial practice, was Jack Kroger, who was Michael Kroger's father, who's a Liberal Party stalwart. He said to me, 'Russell, caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.' I say let the people of Australia decide on what is misinformation and what is disinformation. Give them the authority to make up their own mind. With that, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, I thank you for the opportunity. I think there's another 40 minutes in me on this subject!
]]>Through the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments I saw a decade of determined, directed development in the training and TAFE sector. It's amazing how, in a few months only, governments can have a different opinion of the regime that went before them. How could it be that such a spin could be put on the Morrison government particularly? In my 25 years in this place I've not been into personal attacks, whereas the Labor Party spent all of their time denigrating the leader, so the things that were good about government just get passed by.
The Liberal and National parties—I always align myself closely with the National Party—have always supported the opportunity to upskill and re-skill. And we will always support Australia's skills system, which I note is much more than just TAFE. The old school of hard knocks comes into this too with some people leaving school at a young age and doing very well for themselves, thank you very much, especially in country Victoria where we don't have the opportunities for tertiary education as much as we would like—although we have put in a university extended campus in Wonthaggi, which is fantastic news. We have good TAFE colleges right across Gippsland. There always have been good TAFE colleges.
I have to address the misinformation that's being put out by the Labor Party and will continue in the addresses today. The Labor Party has, time and time again, falsely claimed that we underfunded TAFE when we were in government, and that is simply not the case. Vocational education and training is a shared responsibility between Commonwealth and the state and territory governments. State governments are responsible for running their own training systems and have direction over how much government funding is provided to TAFE and other training providers. For example, in the 2022-23 financial year, the Commonwealth provided the states and territories with $1.61 billion through the National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development. In other words, there were already agreements there before this government came to office. The work that they're enjoying now was put in place by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments working on behalf of the Australian people, putting the national interest first every time, having a great desire for our young people to be well trained so that they may not only improve the Australian economy and Australian society, but they also improve economies around the world. Our apprentices in Latrobe Valley, out of the old SEC, are now engineers around the world.
So I put to those who are going to be attacking the past governments of this day: no, there was an enormous amount of work done by Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. You should be standing up and patting them on the back because, if they weren't there, people wouldn't have the jobs and opportunities they have today. Thank you. I wish I had 40 minutes to speak on this.
]]>I had the good pleasure of being on Mim Hook's ABC radio program this morning. Mim has been following me through my walk with the Voice. As many of you would know here, for five years I have spoken on the Voice and promoted the Voice. I have written essays on the Voice and had them published. But one thing I said to Mim in an interview more than a month ago was that we must firstly listen to our local Indigenous people. I was contacted by Cheryl Drayton immediately after the interview. Cheryl sat me down and told me why she would not be supporting the Voice. It didn't matter what argument I put to Cheryl and the elders in my community, I lost the debate. It was very clear that she came and asked me not to support the Voice and to not be a voice for the Voice. I said to her, 'Cheryl, can I walk out of these meetings and say that my Indigenous people do not support the Voice?' She said, 'You can surely say that, Russell.' So I had to go back to Mim this morning and tell her the story of how, at the time, when talking about Indigenous people in my electorate, I said, 'You should be listening to what they have to say on the Murray-Darling Basin, fire management in our native bush and the issues that we've made mistakes on in this country,' and then tell her, 'I don't want to make another mistake by not listening to them on this issue.'
Is there another way to go about what we're trying to achieve here? I've got to tell you, I don't know. I know that what we have been doing hasn't worked and that it's insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again with no result, which former senator Gareth Evans made very clear in his document. Is there a way forward, at the moment, that is going to be beneficial for practical outcomes? I see, this morning, that both sides are arguing that there'll be no practical outcome for Aboriginal people if we follow the other side's arguments. I leave that with you.
We all get one vote, whether we be a parliamentarian or a dairy farmer like Cheryl.
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