Julie Owens's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | House debates
Yes, I did. So, again, there's this extraordinary capacity we have that we're not really exploiting yet. Fashion? Parramatta? What can I say! We really do have an amazing group of designers in...
Yes, I did. So, again, there's this extraordinary capacity we have that we're not really exploiting yet. Fashion? Parramatta? What can I say! We really do have an amazing group of designers in Parramatta that, again, don't have a pathway from being a microbusiness to a small business. They don't really have a distribution channel. The most common question I get asked is, 'Where did you get that?' And usually I say, 'At a market.' If you don't know the designer, you won't find her work. This jacket, for example, is made from a blanket from Africa. It is made out of a blanket. I've had some extraordinary—the garage sale is going to be enormous after I retire, by the way. Send me an email if you want to go! It will take me days to remove most of the stuff. We should be a leader of urban agribiz. There is a bit of research that for every car in a city there are about 13 parking spaces usually vacant, waiting for a car to arrive in a street, undercover, at Woolies—you name it. We know that in 10 to 15 years we will not have that many cars; there will be self-driving vehicles. There will be less. We already know that around the world there are countries trying to figure out what to do with their car spaces. It is the perfect opportunity for urban agribiz. In Parramatta it's a question of whether, when we do start our city agribusinesses—and Western Sydney is doing really good work on this—they're companies that come in from outside or whether it's us, whether it's perilla, tulsi, galangal, curry leaves, methi or sukuma wiki—that's the Kenyans' name for kale. The Kenyans will look at you and say 'You do what with kale?' because they've been eating it for years. They have several varieties. We have African heirloom vegetables. The question is whether, in 10 years time, when agribiz is big in Parramatta, it is ours or it is dumped on us from somewhere else. I'm hoping it's ours. Western Sydney is doing incredibly important work for that. I will briefly refer to solar panels. Parramatta has one of the lowest uptakes of solar panels in the country because it has strata. And what an opportunity that is. Whether it's business strata or house strata, it doesn't have solar because no-one has worked out how to do it. What an opportunity sitting right there in Western Sydney right now. We are at about 12 per cent take-up, by the way, as opposed to 30 per cent—so it's really, really massive. I'm going to move on, because I'm running out of time and I'm being a bit naughty! I'm going to ask the question of my community of what the system looks like that creates the networks that allow these opportunities to be exploited. How do you create that community brain, with the centres of shared knowledge, that allows communities to think—information flow, linkages, neurons et cetera—particularly in a world where funding support these days is increasingly based on projects piecemeal? Quite often, we still have governments deciding what the answer is and putting out a grant program. If you all fit in that box, it's fine. But we don't have grant programs that ask the big question: what would it look like if? What can you do? What would you do? We don't have those grant programs, and we don't have the coordinators and the people sitting in rooms with the capacity to think it through and make it happen. Over the decades we have had people in every community in the country lending their capacity to people in crisis. Capacity is one of those interesting things—at the time you most need it is the time you lose it. When you've got friends, money and security, and you need to change something, you can do it. But if you've just been ill or you've lost a family member or you've been wiped out by grief or loss, your capacity to make a difference disappears. At the time you need it most you don't have it. For years and decades we've had people in our communities loaning their capacity to people who need it to help them change their lives. And that is an extraordinary contribution. Now we need people to loan their capacity to solve some common good, to solve some social good. As the communities have changed, as our economy has changed, we are not all the same anymore. We don't have the same childcare needs. We have people on split shifts who work 16-hour days because of a split shift that are one hour from home. We have all sorts of people living different lives who work from home and who don't. Their needs are not the same anymore. One-size-fits-all solutions from the government down or grant programs do not necessarily deliver the range of answers that sit within communities like mine right now. We don't have enough parking at the stations; you have to get to the station at seven o'clock in order to get a parking space. The government solution is to spend $60,000 per parking space to take 250 cars and maybe save 15 minutes; I think I could do better with that, by the way! I think my community could do better with that. I think my community could find a range of solutions that don't fix the parking problem but make sure there are fewer cars there. The problem isn't that people can't park; the problem is that too many people are trying. We have so many solutions in us to that. We can do that right now. Get together, guys, and lend your capacity to people who are looking for solutions on a community-wide basis. Leaders are defined by who they empower, and my one hope is that when I leave this place in my community my legacy is that I have left a level of civility, that we don't play politics in Parramatta very hard at all. It's not wise in a marginal seat anyway, but we essentially don't. State matters—out of respect for the people who voted for that state member, I tend to leave the state issues alone. Not out of respect for the state member, by the way, but out of respect for the people of Parramatta who elected him. So there's a level of civility, and I hope that remains when I leave. I finally want to finish by thanking three groups. All the people in the electorate who've been in touch, and most have, by the way—every now and then I do a search on who hasn't; yes, it's like a KPI, a key performance indicator on how many still haven't!—thank you. It actually keeps me in touch with the things that matter to you on your ordinary day, and we build our lives in our ordinary day. Thank you also to the branch members and volunteers who have been extraordinary. I thanked them in my first valedictory, and I will be around to thank you all personally. I want to thank the staff in this place. Because of the all the places that I've worked, and I've been a manager of sometimes hundreds of people at a time, this is perhaps one of the best managed and staffed places I have ever encountered—really exceptional, exceptional recruitment, exceptional training and exceptional service. Without fail for me, I have to say that I have never been disappointed or dissatisfied with the service I have received from any level, whether it's the cleaner or the clerks, ever in this place. It's truly amazing, and I congratulate every one of the staff of this place and the people who manage them and do so so well. That's about all I have to say, but I promised a constituent that I'd end this way, so: 'That'll do, little pig. That'll do.'
on indulgence—I have just broken one of my fundamental rules, with my first word, in fact. That rule is: never start a sentence with the word 'I'. It's a rule that I have tried to live by...
on indulgence—I have just broken one of my fundamental rules, with my first word, in fact. That rule is: never start a sentence with the word 'I'. It's a rule that I have tried to live by since my election way back in 2004, and its purpose is simple—to remind me several times a day exactly who this position I hold serves, its purpose, who it's actually there for, and who actually does the work of building community. In the simplest examples, it's not, 'I had a great time at the event,' it's, 'You guys did a great job of organising it.' The positions we hold here are fundamentally and profoundly not about us. In an electorate like Parramatta, one that is so diverse, when you put it all together, it nets in the middle—it nets marginal—with such diversity in life experience, it is not only about what I believe and my perceptions of the world but also about finding a common path, quite often by using our different cultural perspectives and the skills we have at looking at the world from more than one perspective to find that path. When you represent a community where one in two people you see in the street do not share your view of the world sufficiently to vote for you—damn it—you learn very quickly that, when you unravel the knot of disagreement, we quite often agree on what the problem is. We're arguing about the solutions we have come up with, the solutions we're vested in, the path we're on, rather than the destination or the outcome that we seek. There are times when the person in me was quietly screaming, 'How can you believe that?'—and worse—but the position I hold was quietly acknowledging that a good person sits opposite me with a different view and is trying to find the middle ground. An electoral office is, or, at least, should be, a resource for democracy, of finding that common ground. The role our offices play in democratic processes, in finding common ground in local decision-making, in participatory democracy, in using the unique knowledge that, as members of parliament, we have of our electorates to empower us, is an important one, and one that I've seen decline in recent years as we have all stepped in to stem the bleeding in the NDIS, Centrelink and immigration. In many ways, we've become arms of government—or, in many ways, government failure—helping people in crisis. Of course, we'll always do that first. That's who we are. The reality for me, though, and my staff, is that we spend at least 60 per cent of our resources, and, at times, as high as 80 per cent, helping individual people when they have nowhere else to go. These people find my office: homeless pensioners; two kids who couldn't go to school because of their parents' visa status; two others who've been here since before they could walk, and even as teenagers they're about to be deported because their mother, who was a visa applicant, died; Centrelink delays; real issues with the NDIS; the crisis in Afghanistan; no internet connection for businesses for weeks; people who speak other languages trying to navigate My Aged Care; and people separated from loved ones, including their newborn children, for months or years during COVID. These are not unusual problems these days; they're common. These problems are not caused by a lack of care by public servants—and I want to make that clear—but by bad policy and under-resourcing. Similarly, we've been overwhelmed by the impact on people of bungled policy development on marriage equality and freedom of religion—government processes that left people afraid and feeling unable to participate in an informed debate, and with people on both sides of both debates personally hurt by things said and not said. My office is overwhelmed because people in the community know my amazing staff help. They really do. In fact, there are people who pretend they come from the electorate, when they don't, to come and see my staff. They really do. A school even told me they were in my electorate the other day. I said, 'No, you're not.' They said, 'Yes, we are!' 'No, you're not.' We are overwhelmed because people know that, if you come to my staff, they are there for you. I acknowledge the impact on my staff of working with people on the worst day of their life, day after day after day. Not all of them have done well with that. Some have struggled quite significantly. But I want to thank them: Launa, Paul, Alayna, Ama, Catherine, Katerina, Pauli, Hala and Durga. And I thank past staff, and I can't name them all: Himawan, Bela, Alison, Kallista, Semane, among the many others. I and my staff will always prioritise the person who comes to me for help. That's who we are. But there should be other solutions. There are examples in democratic systems elsewhere in the world—solutions not just for the people who manage to find my office for help but for the many others who didn't and who struggled without help. Running parallel to the failure in government policy that electorate offices are picking up, there's been a weakening in community cohesion over several years, due to structural changes in the economy that have reduced the capacity for communities to engage with each other and find common answers and opportunities. When I'm out talking to my community from individuals on their doorstep to community organisations working with youth, domestic violence or bush care, the common theme is a lack of community cohesion—of the connections that allow ideas to emerge, take root and grow. I suspect the rise of the Independents that promised their community greater participation is a reflection that many in our community know of that missing element—community led democracy and problem-solving. Our offices can do better if we refocus our attention on the role of an electorate office, which is democracy, not government. It's democracy—quite a difference. The community I've been privileged to represent is extraordinary in what it is and in what it can and should become. I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to them. To my community: over the last 18 years, I have come to know you as a community filled with opportunity and gifts, which speaks every language and which views the world from a range of cultural perspectives of people who have lived and found solutions in remote villages and in the world's biggest cities. We have the world in us, with all the perspectives and experiences and with concepts that are easily expressed in one language and have no equivalent in another. In a rapidly changing world that is shrinking in distance and separateness and, at the same time, expanding in opportunities and possibilities, we are exactly who you want to be in the modern world. We have everything we need to do well in a changing world, if only we could see ourselves clearly enough to exploit our strengths. Working with you now over 17 years, there is so much more to you than you know. I've been privileged to be invited in, so let me tell you what I see when I look at you. Let me start with some of the patterns that have revealed themselves to me over the last 17 years. I'm going to start by walking down the Parramatta River—not all of it, but between about one kilometre and 1½ kilometres. We start at the confluence of Darling Mills and Toongabbie creeks where the river starts, where Governor Phillip landed and began the walk that he documented in his diaries—the beginning of the dispossession of the Dharug people and a place that is largely neglected, unvisited and unrecognised. The first part of the walk was closed for nearly 200 years. It's government land—mainly health; mainly mental health—but you don't have far to reach the Crescent, which is part of Parramatta Park now—the first gazetted public park in the world. It was Governor Macquarie's domain and it was the meeting place of the Dharug people, including the Burramattagal and the Tugagal clan of Toongabbie. The male place on the hill became Old Government House but, across the river on the female sacred site where the birthing stones are, we built the female convict factory and then the mechanical institute for girls and the Parramatta Girls Home, where we incarcerated the stolen generation. It became a place of incarceration of women for over 200 years—a female sacred site. Go a little bit further and you see one of the last remaining colonies of endangered flying foxes, which a lot of people hate, but I kind of like them. Then there's Little Coogee, where, in early colonial times, people swam. Then you pass the stadium—some of us try not to look—and go under the Bernie Banton Bridge, named for the asbestos campaigner, an extraordinary man. Then you go under the Lennox Bridge, where you find the spot where the Buddhist community celebrates Loy Krathong. They let their flowers and candles float on the river. Loy Krathong is a beautiful festival. If you go 100 metres further, under the oar bridge, you'll find the place where the Hindu community celebrates the Ganesh festival. They're still seeking permission to immerse their clay model of Ganesha in the river. I'm sure they will get that soon. A little further along, there's the St Ioannis or St John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church. They're building a new one on the banks of the Parramatta River. Where else would St John the Baptist have his church? A little further along is a place that is sacred to the Maori community of Australia but also incredibly important to the Dharug people, which is Rangihou Reserve, where the children of Maori nobles were buried in colonial times. It's a very sacred site. If you walk down the Parramatta River as a whole and you don't know about or haven't been to all those events, you don't see it. You don't see this extraordinary history that unravels in that kilometre and a half. From the dispossession of the Indigenous people right through to the arrival of migration, it's all there. So is the first public school. It's all there in that first kilometre and a half. It's not the only thing that flows through Parramatta. The train lines are pretty cool, too. For food: Auburn, Turkish and Chinese; Granville, Nepalese and Lebanese; Merrylands, increasingly Afghani; Lidcombe, African; Harris Park, Indian in all its variety, including Telugu, Gujarat and Malayali—you name it and it's there; and Wentworthville, Sri Lankan. It's absolutely extraordinary food. Slightly outside of the electorate: Eastwood, Korean; and Cabramatta, Vietnamese. It's an extraordinary trip if you take that train trip and have a look at what is there. It's not just the food. It's the fashion. It's the cultural life. It's extraordinary. We live in this place where these transport lines flow from one community to another in the most extraordinary way. It's a gift. We also have creeks flowing through our community. In fact, in my first election, I counted them. There were 30. My electorate boundaries have changed, but it's just about back to that now. We have 30 creeks, but we built our cities with our backs to them in colonial times. They were drains. So, unless you go to the north part of the electorate, which was built later, where there are wonderful assets of trees and open space, they're essentially drains. But they flow from Blacktown to Parramatta. Toongabbie Creek flows the whole way. They are amazing assets—overgrown, undervalued and ignored. You can't pass through most of them, but they are still there waiting to turn this section of Western Sydney into the extraordinary green paradise that it actually is. It's just waiting to be done. It's not cheap. It's not easy. It can't be done with a one-off. It's hard. By—my God!—what an asset we have there. It is still there. We have the wisdom of every religion. On my first day in my new office, my Hindu community representatives came to me and gave me a small statue of Ganesha, which I still have on a table of its own, as it should be. They explained to me that Ganesha was the god for overcoming obstacles. I thought: 'Woohoo! I have a few of those.' They went, 'No, Julie—obstacles within.' I thought, 'Oh, okay.' I keep that Ganesha there to remind me that most of the things that we don't do are actually not because of barriers outside. They are actually choices we make to do one thing and not another. So I keep that. Not long after that, at the Buddhist temple down in Cowper Street in Granville, the abbess there gave me a small glass lotus flower and she literally said, 'The lotus flower, like politicians, grows in the slime and the mud, but the lotus flower remains pure.' I carried that little lotus flower hanging off my handbag until the string broke for about four years and touched it every now and again and went, 'Stay pure; stay pure.' I hope I did. I was talking to a Muslim friend of mine at Ramadan. His six-year-old son was learning to delay breakfast. Six-year-old kids don't fast. That would be ridiculous. But he was learning to wait just half an hour for breakfast. He really wanted to fast with his dad, by the way, but no. We were talking about it and he explained to me that the purpose of it and the purpose of Ramadan is to learn restraint. Children, as they get older, learn to say, 'I want that; so what?' They learn restraint. I thought how interesting that was. So I've learned so much. And it was my Hindu community, again, who talked to me at length about simplifying life. In some cultures, if you want to do better, you do more. In other cultures, religion says if you want to be a better person you do less, you simplify. They were talking to me about the difference between East and West where, if you want to lose weight, you go and do stuff—anyway, you know what I'm saying. So I tried it. And I thank them for it because the thing that I discovered, having spent some time in silence—and this might sound weird—is how extraordinary the floors of Parliament House are. I'm not kidding. You should all do it one time. Meditate and then take a walk around the halls, take a walk from the House of Reps across to the Senate and up the Senate side and down and have a look at the floor. The work that went into it is truly astonishing. In fact, I did that walk several times a day, for a number of weeks, just noticing the variation in it, the care and attention. It is the most extraordinary thing. For 17 years I hadn't noticed—and, suddenly, there I was, noticing that I'd been surrounded by it. That's probably the thing I'm going to most miss about this place—noticing that sometimes there's a bit of brass laid in the floor, sometimes the bricks go this way. It's a truly amazing thing. Have a look. Thank you, Hindu community, for showing me one of the most extraordinary things about this building. If you talk to the cleaners, you'll find the man cleaning the floor in the Great Hall, who has been cleaning the floor since the building opened. It is extraordinary. It is one of those secret things of the parliament that we miss. Going back briefly to our creeks: if you turn north at the confluence of Darling Mills and Toongabbie and go north about a kilometre, if you walk up Darling Mills and then Hunts Creek you'll arrive at Lake Parramatta. It's a beautiful place with 4½ kilometres of walk and a 25-kilometre-long walk. It's just gorgeous. It wasn't the first water source for the new colony but it was the first substantial one. You can't actually walk up that creek, by the way, because it is overgrown. But it links Parramatta Park, one of our great open spaces, with Lake Parramatta, one of our other great open spaces. In fact, I often wonder why the triathlon doesn't exist. They do biathlons at Parramatta Park and swimming carnivals at Lake Parramatta but the two do not join. There is about a kilometre of missing creek bank, that's all. It's still there, it's just the missing link. The possibilities of being able to walk from one great space to another is just amazing. We have cultural differences in the perceptions of time. This is a weird thing for me to talk about in this place. But one of the things about being a musician, learning music as I did from the age of three, is that you spend your life learning to manage the process of thought in real time. That's essentially what you do. You figure out what you have to think of and when, what you have to trust your fast brain to do without thinking. You design a process that allows you to play a piece that lasts 45 minutes, that takes a year to learn, in real time. So the process of thinking, and what you think of and when, is absolutely all I do. That is what I learned do when I was three and it is absolutely all I do. Back when I was at university doing my masters I did a paper on cultural differences in perceptions of time. That was about 35 years ago and there was virtually no writing on it at all except for abnormal psychology and perceptions of time among people who had been persecuted and, at the very beginning of perceptions of time, in advertising, on how long it takes a person to respond to an advertisement. But there was virtually nothing. It is an area that has intrigued me since then. In an electorate like Parramatta, where we have such a diverse range of people that come from different cultures, that come from different geographic areas, the perceptions of time are different and the way they experience time, and value events in time, is different. For me it has been endlessly fascinating. It has been endlessly fascinating in a positive way and also in the less-positive way of meeting people whose lives have been ripped apart so many times that they no longer believe they have power over time. They are no longer going to enrol in a university course that might take them six years to complete because they don't necessarily believe they have the power over their own time line. They expect that the ground will be ripped away at any moment. So they leave school at 15 and take six bucks an hour as a gyprocker—not because they are dumb, not because they are not smart, but because culturally they do not believe they have power over time. They don't believe, as I do, that they can spend 10 years doing something. I can spend 10 years saving. My world won't fall apart. Theirs will. There are extraordinary differences in the way people think and we as a parliament need to acknowledge that we have in our community people who have different ways of thinking about reward and punishment in real life. They don't have the capacity that most of us in here have, of a believing you can achieve what you want to achieve by working for it. In fact, the early work that I found 35 years ago said that in communities that are extremely persecuted the smarter the person is, the quicker they learn they don't have the power. These are amazingly important things. I've been lucky, being a person who cares about time and perceptions of time, to be surrounded by this amazing difference, but all of us need to understand just what that means. Western Sydney is by far the biggest food processor in Australia by economic impact. As the supply chains fragment, we know that the big companies are starting to use small businesses. CC doesn't make its own spice blends; it uses small businesses. We have an opportunity, at this point in time, in Western Sydney to become part of the global supply chains because our own sector is making that change, but we don't have temperature controlled warehouses. We have far too many fabulous small businesses that are stuck within their own cultural community. We have some of the best chilli makers, we have some of the best bread in the world—literally. We have idli batter. We have stuff that should be exported to the world because it's clean Australian food, but it's stuck within its own community. We have an extraordinary opportunity to take ourselves to the world, on food alone. It is amazing food—lucky me! Thanks to all the Indian aunties who gave me all their cheats. I was talking to an Indian chef recently—he was over from India—and he told me the book of recipes is this big and the book of cheats is like this! So thank you for introducing me to the ways to cheat when I'm cooking Indian food, because it's quite fabulous. Pickled beef, chutneys, Filipino milk candy—you name it, we make it. And we make it incredibly well, but we don't have a path to go from the microbusiness to the small business to the giant business, and we need to do that as a community. I'm going to talk about art, music, literature and poetry—again, my background. I used to manage the music grants program for the Australia Council. I'd go to four to six concerts a week. I've been to some of the best concerts in the world. Some of the best ones, the really extraordinary ones, were in Parramatta. Again, they're concerts that most people wouldn't recognise. In my first weeks in the job there I saw a sign on a lamppost for Sivan Perwer, a Kurdish artist. I went 'wow' and I went to the concert. There were about 2,000 people there. I was the only white girl there. It was entirely within its community. This man is one of the great artists of the world. I've been to see Sufi bands. I've been to Punjabi poetry. I was lucky enough to hear Mohammad Imran Pratapgarhi—a poet that none of you have probably ever heard of—and I could have sat there for days listening to Urdu poetry. Truly, truly amazing stuff. My community has introduced me to writers that I'd never heard of. We know the great speeches. Well we think we know the great speeches, but we don't know the ones that aren't in English. I've been introduced to the speech of Bangabandhu, for example. Just amazing speeches that the vast majority of people who stay within their own cultural worlds will never hear or see. I've been introduced to the music of Rabindranath Tagor. This is a gift for a person like me, a gift, but it should be a gift for more people. Again, we're staying within our own communities, when I know, from working in that field, that the Sydney Improvised Music Association would probably love to go and hear the improvisation of the Hindu temple that goes on for 12 days—I know I did! They probably would too.
Electoral Legislation Amendment (Foreign Influences and Offences) Bill 2022, Electoral Legislation Amendment (Authorisations) Bill 2022, Electoral Legislation Amendment (COVID Enfranchisement) Bill 2022; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
Before I call the member for Perth, I remind the House that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Authorisations) Bill 2022,...
Before I call the member for Perth, I remind the House that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Authorisations) Bill 2022, and the Electoral Legislation Amendment (COVID Enfranchisement) Bill 2022. The question is that the amendment be disagreed to.
Space Industry | Private Members' Business | House debates
The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. It being 1.30, the chamber stands...
The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. It being 1.30, the chamber stands suspended till 4 pm today. Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:00
Road Safety Program | Private Members' Business | House debates
There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
COVID-19: Morrison Government | Private Members' Business | House debates
There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
Juvenile Arthritis | Private Members' Business | House debates
Global Polio Eradication Initiative | Private Members' Business | House debates
The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
HMAS Parramatta II, Parramatta Electorate: Veterans | Statements by Members | House debates
Saturday was the 80th anniversary of the loss of the HMAS Parramatta II. Commissioned in 1940, her crew served in perilous conditions, escorting, patrolling and mine sweeping as part of the Red...
Saturday was the 80th anniversary of the loss of the HMAS Parramatta II. Commissioned in 1940, her crew served in perilous conditions, escorting, patrolling and mine sweeping as part of the Red Sea Force. In 1941, she began service in the Mediterranean, supporting the reinforcement of Cyprus and allied forces besieged in Tobruk. In the early hours of 27 November 1941 she was escorting a ship carrying much-needed ammunition supplies to Tobruk when she was sunk by a German submarine. The damage to the ship was so great that only those on deck had time to escape. Twenty-four crew survived the sinking; 138 lost their lives. On Saturday, I was honoured to attend the annual memorial service in honour of the men who served on the HMAS Parramatta II that was held at Queen's Wharf Reserve on the Parramatta River. I'd like to thank the Naval Association of Australia, Parramatta memorial subsection, and its president, Bruce Richens, for their work to commemorate the HMAS Parramatta II and her crew. I'd also like to thank the other organisations in my community that work tirelessly to support veterans and service men and women in the community: the Parramatta RSL subbranch—President Ron Grace; the Merrylands RSL subbranch—President Robin Grimley; the Granville RSL subbranch—Treasurer Alice O'Connor; the Vietnam Veterans, Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Association of Australia, New South Wales branch—President Frank Cole; and the Sydney Veterans Lodge—President Fred Mannah. Lest we forget.
GP Access After Hours Service | Private Members' Business | House debates
I remember when, in Parramatta, the Labor government funded the expansion of the clinic in Harris Park to allow for after-hours services. We actually funded the renovation of a building so that...
I remember when, in Parramatta, the Labor government funded the expansion of the clinic in Harris Park to allow for after-hours services. We actually funded the renovation of a building so that that service could be open essentially 24 hours a day. They had a whole range of specialists in that building, as well, so people were able to walk down the street, in this high-density area, to an after-hours clinic that profoundly made a difference. Rather than getting in the car and spending several hours at emergency—if they had a car; many don't in that suburb—they were able to get the help they needed. It reminded me of something that I've had discussions about with health professionals for years, which is that it is almost always true that what is best for the patient turns out to be cheapest for the taxpayer—early intervention and better primary health care, helping people not progress towards diabetes or liver failure by actually getting in early with calcium tablets, vaccinations, cancer scans, colon cancer checks and all those things. What is best for the patient is nearly always cheapest for the taxpayer. There can be no doubt that the issue that the member for Hunter has raised, which is after-hours GP clinics, is actually both best for the patient and—coincidentally!—cheapest for the taxpayer. It is better for everyone that people can take their families to an after-hours GP clinic and get in quickly rather than go to the emergency department where the costs are enormous because the safety checks and the protocols are horrendous—quite rightly in an emergency department. It is much more expensive, by thousands of dollars, to go to an emergency department and not as effective or as useful. In fact, there are many people that will not be able to take their three children under the age of five to be at the emergency department all night because one of them has a tummy ache. They will wait. It's not good for the patient and, in the long run, not better for the taxpayer either. Why on earth would the government do something which is worse for the patient and more expensive for the taxpayer? The answer, I suspect, is in the system where one part of the cost is paid by the federal government and the other part of the cost is covered by the state government. If the federal government cuts its GP after-hours services, it's cheaper for the federal government but more expensive for the state government, because the state government pays for the emergency services. They have to do that within their budget. So you take the money out of the federal government cost and whack it over to the state. That's what's happening here. It's worse for the patient, cheaper for the federal government, and more expensive for the state government And there are many, many examples of that. If primary health care isn't sufficient, people end up in hospital, moving the cost from the federal government to the state government. If people can't get the treatment they need in an aged-care facility, they end up staying in hospital for long periods of time because they can't get the treatment or the bandages they need at home or they don't live in an aged-care facility that will take care of them. That means the cost doesn't go to the federal government but goes to the state government. It's not blame shifting, it's cost shifting. It's profound cost shifting, and it's not good for anybody, because ultimately the taxpayer pays for it. Taxpayers either pay for it through federal funding to the states or they pay for it at the federal level. But the taxpayer pays for it, so it is worse for the patient and worse for the taxpayer in the end. But one section of government gets to look good and the other one tends to look bad. What we've got here is a really dumb decision. It's a decision born of the system that we have that allows for cost transfer between state and federal governments. It's a symptom of not having a holistic approach to health which actually considers the overall cost to the government and the overall benefit to the patient, and that's what we see happening here. This is a nonsense decision. If the government were closing down my after-hours clinic, they would be putting thousands of people's health at risk. The other interesting thing we're hearing about today is the loss of one in the Hunter, but, according to the member for Longman, gaining one in the Longman electorate, which means we're losing one from a Labor electorate and gaining one in a Liberal electorate. What is that about? How many times have we seen that pattern with this government? They look after the ones that vote for them and think, 'Stuff the others.' What we've got here is a transfer of costs from federal government to state government and, essentially, moving the cost from a Labor electorate to a Liberal electorate. It's just wrong, and we should all be outraged.
Tweedale, Mr Eric, Parramatta Mission | Constituency Statements | House debates
I want to talk about two very important milestones in my community in 2021: a man who made it through his first century and is embarking on his second and a local organisation that's joining the...
I want to talk about two very important milestones in my community in 2021: a man who made it through his first century and is embarking on his second and a local organisation that's joining the growing third-century club of Parramatta. Just before lockdown, I had the honour of joining the celebration of Eric Tweedale's 100th birthday. Eric is famously Australia's oldest living Wallaby. He was drafted into the Wallabies in 1946, after serving in the Navy in World War II, and played prop-forward—front-row forward—for Australia until 1949. In Parramatta, he is best known for inspiring generations of our young people to play rugby. Born in England, Eric moved to Australia with his family when he was three. They settled in Merrylands. He went to Guildford Public School and then Parramatta Intermediate School on the site that is now Arthur Phillip High School. He played his first game of rugby on Cumberland Oval in 1937, and at 17 he was selected to play for Parramatta, now known as the Western Sydney Two Blues. He would play for the club on and off for the next 21 years. When Eric retired from playing, he took up coaching and was instrumental in setting up junior rugby in Parramatta. As a coach, Eric wasn't focused on winning. It was all about having a go. The strength of the game in the middle of rugby league heartland is a testament to his influence on generations of Two Blues players. This year, their home ground in Granville was named the Eric Tweedale Stadium in his honour. I want to wish Eric Tweedale a very happy 100th birthday once again and thank the Merrylands RSL Club and the Western Sydney Two Blues for allowing me to join the celebrations earlier this year. The year 2021 is the 200th anniversary of Paramatta Mission. It's been an extraordinary two centuries. Parramatta Mission has been serving my community since Parramatta's first Wesleyan chapel was founded on Macquarie Street in 1821. Today, they do the work that nobody else does. No matter who you are or what you are going through, you can find a space at Parramatta Mission—a safe one. Their Meals Plus service provides hot meals Monday to Friday, more than 46,000 meals every year. Anyone who comes in for a meal can also access laundry and shower facilities and get help with legal and financial issues, Centrelink and housing. I've used their services many times when a person has walked into my office. They are the ones you go to for immediate help. Most importantly, they can find someone to talk to who will listen without judgement. I want to thank all the amazing staff and volunteers at Parramatta Mission, who do amazing work in my community every day. We would not be the community we are without Parramatta Mission. Congratulations on an extraordinary first two centuries. I know that you will absolutely rock your third century.
Corporations Amendment (Improving Outcomes for Litigation Funding Participants) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
Order! The member will address his remarks to the bill, please.
Kamban Vizha: 15th Anniversary | Statements by Members | House debates
I rise to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Kamban Vizha, the Kamban Tamil literary festival, which was held virtually from 29 to 31 October. I want to congratulate Kamban Kazhagam on staging...
I rise to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Kamban Vizha, the Kamban Tamil literary festival, which was held virtually from 29 to 31 October. I want to congratulate Kamban Kazhagam on staging this virtual celebration of one of the oldest languages in the world in a tough pandemic year, when so many other important cultural festivals have been cancelled. In particular, thanks to founder and chairman Jeiram Jegathesan, president Mr Shanjievan Gunaratnam and vice-president Ms Poorvaja Nirmaleswara Kurukka. Thanks so much for your dedication to the development of the three components of Tamil literature, in prose and verse, music and drama, through classes, workshops, competitions and events, including this fantastic festival. Thousands of people have attended over the years, to celebrate Tamil language and culture, including the works of the organisation's namesake, the legendary Tamil poet Kambar, author of the epic Ramavataram, also known as Kamba Ramayanam. I once again congratulate Kamban Kazhagam Australia on this significant milestone and on putting together such an extraordinary program of speeches, debates and performances. I have enjoyed them over the years. You do a great job.
Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I'm quite pleased to speak on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021 today, although I have very serious problems with it. In many ways, the issue the bill is...
I'm quite pleased to speak on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021 today, although I have very serious problems with it. In many ways, the issue the bill is trying to solve is a really interesting one and a really important one. We need a far more transparent process in our democracy. We need to know where money is coming from. We need to lower donation thresholds. We need to do a whole range of things so that members of the public who are voting can see where the money that is flowing through election campaigns comes from—no doubt. But this bill is a really bad answer and an absolute demonstration of this government's seeming inability to look at a problem, pull it apart and investigate what the actual question is, and, through broad consultation, come up with an answer that actually works. It's a government that doesn't consult, and, time after time after time, comes up with answers that are simply bad ones. I would also argue in this case that the government is even trying to solve the wrong problem. They seem to believe there's a whole range of left-wing organisations raising money from the community to campaign against them. I come from a marginal seat, and I can tell them that a lot of the people donating to the climate change advocates and the conservation foundations are actually Liberal voters. If the problem is that a whole stack of Liberal voters are donating to charities that are campaigning against the Liberal Party, then perhaps the Liberal Party should consider their own policies. If their own supporters are putting money into defeating them at the election, perhaps they should look at themselves. Perhaps they are looking at the wrong problem. Let's go back to the issue that we need more transparency, and have a look at what this bill does. I'll explain why I think it's a rather bad bill, and why it would have incredibly detrimental effects to some organisations in my community that do extraordinary local work in fighting for things the local community cares for. In the field of our democracy there is a group of people that spend money on campaigns and advocacy, and they're called political campaigners. At the moment, individuals or entities that spend at least $500,000 during the year or in any one of the three previous financial years—in other words, are spending a lot of money—or electoral expenditure of two-thirds their annual income must register as a political campaigner. If they do that, they can't accept foreign donations and they have a whole range of information they have to give to the AEC, like total receipts, value of gifts in kind, details of receipts greater than the disclosure threshold et cetera. So there's an incredible amount of red tape that lands, quite rightly, on people that spend more than $500,000 during the year on what might be seen as political campaigning but sometimes is just advocacy for a position or if they spend more than two-thirds of their annual income. This bill lowers the threshold to $100,000 or one-third of their annual income. My first thing when I'm given a number, because I'm a numbers person, is to actually figure out what the number is. Can I just point out that $100,000 wouldn't pay for many full-page ads in the major papers, so it doesn't actually buy very much. It's also, per electorate, $666.66, so this bill lowers the threshold to any advocacy or charitable organisation that is spending on average more than $666 per electorate. They now become what is known as a political campaigner and are faced with an extraordinary level of red tape—something that I know the government hate, but in this case they seem to be prepared to impose it on a whole group of organisations that are not particularly wealthy and are not necessarily spending very much, because the bill lowers the threshold to $100,000 or one-third of annual income—'or' one-third of annual income. So, according to this bill, as long as what you spend is more than $14,500 and more than a third of your annual income, you are captured by this political campaigners' tag and you face the full reporting requirements including vetting every single person that donates to you, making sure they're not a foreign entity, making sure they can make a donation. It's an incredible amount of red tape on a daily basis to meet the requirements of a political campaigner. In my electorate there are a number of organisations that I think do an extraordinary job. They don't always agree with me, by the way! Sometimes they campaign against me, but they are people from genuine local organisations that have a passion about something. They come together to make a difference and to persuade people on one point of view or another. One of them, for example, is Save Willow Grove, a campaign run by the North Parramatta Residents Action Group with its wonderful secretary, Suzette Meade. They worked incredibly hard over a number of years to save a heritage property called Willow Grove. They actually lost that argument, but I would be very surprised if through their crowdfunding they didn't spend more than $14,500, which would take them over the lower threshold of disclosure, and they would have spent far more than a third of what they raised. In fact, they probably spent all of it on advocacy. That's a local community organisation of volunteers, a mum with her kid, basically at home, working—when she's not at work—getting the community together to do something that they care about, and they will be potentially quite likely captured by this bill. I wonder about how many of the others might be too—Parramatta Park, for example. The New South Wales government has been moving ahead with a plan to move several parks in the Sydney Basin into a centrally managed Greater Sydney Parklands and take away the local control. There's a whole group of people who have come together and formed an organisation to fight that. Again, it's extremely unlikely that their fundraising would raise less than $14,500, so they'll be over the disclosure threshold, and they will spend all of it or close to all of it, so they will be captured by the political campaigners bill and they will be required to undergo an extraordinary amount of red tape. Again, these are little local organisations that come together because there's something they care about. That's a good thing. Our job in this place and our job in our communities is to make our communities stronger. I sometimes say our job is to make ourselves redundant in as many areas as we can, empower people, give them a voice and make it possible for communities to talk to each other to come to shared views, to argue things out in the community to work out what their common view is. That's our job, and a lot of these organisations, which will be severely hampered and many of which will disappear altogether, will be caught by this bad answer to a very real problem. There has to be another way to make sure we have transparency, without loading the full weight of the red tape of large political campaigners on small organisations that either spend relatively small amounts locally or spend, on average, $666 per electorate. That is what $100,000 is: $666.66 per electorate. They will be caught by this bill. With the Parramatta Female Factory, the campaigners there have ensured that we've actually kept the female factory. A number of times governments of various persuasions have tried to get rid of that extraordinary piece of heritage—the most intact female convict factory and the oldest in Australia. The campaigners have fought for years to keep the factory. Again, with their crowdfunding, the idea that their expenditure would be less than $14,500 or that they would have spent less than a third of their expenditure on making a case in the community that that venue should be kept—that's not going to be the case. It's quite likely they would be captured by this bill, as would, possibly, even Westmead Push for Palliative Care. This is an extraordinary organisation that realised that Westmead doesn't have a palliative care ward. They have campaigned for a considerable time with great effect. Again, this is a really important local organisation fighting for something really important locally and doing the job that we all want them to do: caring about something, getting involved, making a difference, making their case and engaging the community. That is the art of persuasion, which is the absolute definition of what politics is supposed to be. That's what they are doing. They are getting involved in a very real and valuable way, and it's hard to imagine that they also wouldn't suddenly find themselves, under these definitions, as political campaigners, subject to extraordinary levels of red tape: details of debts greater than the disclosure threshold and values of gifts in kind. Tell local organisations—that works with volunteers, that goes out and campaigns and hands out pamphlets and all the rest of the things, that gets on the phone, that letterboxes, that does all the things that volunteers do—that suddenly they will have to record all the value of the gifts in kind. Their total turnover through their fundraising might be $20,000 and if they spend it all on a local campaign that puts them over the disclosure limit. Surely that's not what this government intended? If it is, then, really, the entire country should vote against them. If they actually want to shut down small local organisations that care about the local park, that care about more trees in a suburb, that care about the number of birds, that care about the heritage in their area, that care about building a new childcare centre, that care about the things that we in this place want our communities to care about and get involved in, surely it's not the government's intention to shut down those organisations or bury them in red tape to the extent that they won't be able to do what we all want them to do, which is to build strong local community networks and put their efforts into building those systems and structures within our community that support good lives in our local community? I'm going to go back to that $100,000 threshold. If you're not used to campaigning, you might think $100,000 is a lot of money. Again, if it's a national campaign, it's a couple of full-page ads and not much more. If it's spent on the ground, it's $666 per electorate. I can tell the government, I'm not afraid of $666 flowing into my electorate from a national charity. I'm not afraid of that. In fact, I welcome the views in my electorate. I'm in a marginal seat. There are many of them. I don't always agree with the different voices, but what we need to be doing in this place is finding a way to balance the need for strong community voices and people getting involved in things they care about and building relationships and helping to persuade the community members around them and ensuring that our democratic system is transparent. There will be ways to do that through proper consultation over a proper period of time—talking it through with people who do donate, not just the charities that receive donations. Who is donating and why? What is going on out there? What do we need to address to make sure that this is transparent? What technology can be used? Donation thresholds, truth in advertising, caps on how much can be spent—all of those things would improve our democracy. This will not. It's a very bad answer to a very serious question. I would urge the government to rethink it. I know they won't, because they're not very good with answers. This government are not very good at all. They're certainly not very good at consulting. But this is an incredibly bad answer.
Member for Parramatta | Statements on Indulgence | House debates
Thank you, Mr Speaker. On indulgence: I am announcing today that I won't be re-contesting the seat of Parramatta at the next election. An honourable member: Oh! I didn't expect that! I am now in...
Thank you, Mr Speaker. On indulgence: I am announcing today that I won't be re-contesting the seat of Parramatta at the next election. An honourable member: Oh! I didn't expect that! I am now in my 18th year as the member for Parramatta and I can honestly say that I've loved every single minute of it. Parramatta is home to the most fantastic people and I've been blessed to meet so many of them. It has been an honour to represent this diverse and endlessly fascinating community since 2004. But I'm approaching retirement age and the time has come for me to spend more time with my family, particularly my grandchildren—who don't necessarily think that being a politician is the best thing in the world, because they miss their grandma quite a lot! To my community: I assure you that I will continue to work with you and represent you to the best of my ability right up to election day. My office will be there for you, just as it has been there for the past 18 years. It's not possible to thank all the amazing people and organisations that make Parramatta the best community in Australia in a short statement today, but I look forward to thanking you all properly before this parliament ends. We have much to talk about in coming weeks! My goal in this job has always been to make my community stronger, because no one is better equipped to solve the problems that we face in the community and to build a better future for Parramatta than its community. Our local community and volunteer organisations need support to do this important work, so a small service my office has been providing over the past 18 years, which is a regular grant bulletin that tells people what grants are about to close, has turned out to be particularly effective. In fact, there probably isn't an electorate that anyone here represents which doesn't have a subscriber to my great bulletin now! There are literally thousands of subscribers and, strangely, no one unsubscribes—ever. I see its impact in the increase in the range of smaller organisations that are accessing funding, and it has been a joy to watch so many of those see themselves for the first time being recognised for their value and unique contributions, and growing. This is a community asset that I'd like to see continued, so I will be holding one more grants forum, on 24 November at 7:30 pm, to outline how people can build their information systems in case, once the election is over, it doesn't continue. I will also be pulling together the figures on funding for various activities over a number of years as a baseline so that we can measure the impact of whatever we can set up after the election. I will pull together a group of people who can share the driving to build the information systems that can share the information on an ongoing basis. I happen to know how much it costs to do this and it's actually not very much. There are commercial solutions to provide this information to the community and I'm sure we can find one that will ensure this continues indefinitely. But today I want to talk briefly about what comes next for Parramatta. I want to talk specifically to the branch members who have been with me in the community which we have served for every day for every one of the 17-plus years that I have spent in office. I want to talk to the people who gave me the opportunity to stand for Parramatta in the first place, before I met the people of Parramatta and we got to know each other and they gave me the honour of representing their voices here. I often say in my office that we see people on their best and worst days. They come in on a day when they're full of enthusiasm and want to do something—they have a great idea. Or they come in on their worst day, when they've been evicted. But if you really want to serve your community you need to understand their ordinary days, because it's the ordinary day that contributes to your health, to your financial security, to your relationships with your family, to your bonding with your children and to your knowledge of your community. It's the ordinary day, and how that unfolds for you, which actually determines whether you have the best days or the worst days. I know there are exceptions, where we get hit by illness—and we've seen that in the last couple of years—but, generally, the ordinary day determines whether or not you have great ones. That, for me, is where I have put my attention. I have spent literally hours, outside my office, doorknocking 76,000 houses. For the first eight or nine years, I did 10 mobile offices a month; I did the train stations eight times a week, at 6.30 or 5.30 in the morning; and with me for every one of those houses and every one of those mobile offices was a branch member—or more. There were a group of eight of us that did 35,000 houses in 2004. We did more houses between us than the entire Queensland caucus did in the last state election. We did it every day. The branch members that most of my community don't know have been there with me on this journey, and I would not know the ordinary day of the people in my community if it wasn't for them. I wouldn't. It's literally hundreds of hours that they have given me, and some of them, as you know—six life members—have been doing it for 40 or 50 years. They are remarkable people and I can't thank them enough for what they have done for me and for my community over this time. Now, I also want to acknowledge that they gave me the opportunity to do this. At my preselection back in 2004, there were 165 of them that were voting, and I met 150 of them in their homes, and they gave me the opportunity to do this. Last year the 'toilet paper brigade of 2020' was branch members literally delivering toilet paper; phoning everybody over the age of 70 in the electorate and delivering food—extraordinary people. Traditionally, it's the branch members who choose who will stand for the election again, and they will decide who has the extraordinary opportunity to try to ask the community to give them the opportunity to represent them in this House, and it's a role they take very, very, very seriously. They've been out there for years, getting to know who in their ranks knows how to work, who's consistent, who's honest, who volunteers, who genuinely cares about the community, who has flaws that would negatively impact on their job. They staff the booths. They do it all. And they know the branch members. They know each other very, very well, and they are well placed to make a decision about who will represent Labor in the forthcoming election. And we do have remarkable people who represent the community so well, including a number of women, and I look forward to working with whoever the branch select and introducing them to the community. You might have known who that person already was, but, when the assistant secretary came to my office earlier this year to open preselections, I was still making up my mind, so we delayed for quite some time. But now I have made up my mind; I've spoken to the leader, who knows my preference for rank and file; I've written to the general secretary; and it's my fervent hope that we hold the rank-and-file preselection very soon. I hope we're on our way. The date of the election is firmly in the bailiwick of the Prime Minister, so I don't know how long I've got in this position now, but I guarantee that I'll be working every day until the election day, and I thank all the people of Parramatta for giving me the privilege of serving you all these years.
Aged Care | Grievance Debate | House debates
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety shone a light on an aged-care system in crisis. It showed us the tragic outcomes of eight long years of neglect by the Morrison government,...
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety shone a light on an aged-care system in crisis. It showed us the tragic outcomes of eight long years of neglect by the Morrison government, including aged-care residents suffering with maggots in their wounds and two-thirds of residents being malnourished or at risk of malnourishment. These stories were made all the more tragic by the fact that they weren't new stories. Families of older Australians in aged care, and the workers who care for them, had been sounding the alarm for years, but the government ignored them. In fact, they failed to act on 21 reports that showed older Australians were suffering in aged care. As then Treasurer, Scott Morrison even cut funding by $1.7 billion, while his government's response to the royal commission and the aged-care crisis has fallen well short. Today I want to talk about how this neglect of older Australians has been affecting people in my electorate. At the last census, close to half of the over-55s in my electorate spoke a language other than English at home. The rate is even higher among younger age groups. Parramatta is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Australia. The aged-care royal commission found there is a lack of understanding and respect for people's culture, background and life experience in Australian aged care. Again, this is not news. My community has been talking about this for a long, long time. But what does this lack of understanding look like? It looks like becoming isolated, because none of your carers speak your language, or losing the ability to communicate when dementia takes away your second language and you revert to your mother tongue. It looks like being served meat when you're vegetarian, or not being served halal food, and relying on loved ones delivering food to you twice a day to make sure you eat—something that wasn't possible in lockdown. It looks like not being able to connect with your religion or the activities or hobbies that you enjoy—the things that give you comfort and joy. The truth is that seniors from diverse backgrounds are hitting barriers at every step of their aged-care journey. It starts with information. Local aged-care services tell me that seniors from CALD backgrounds have trouble finding information in their language, which is usually only available online. Often, by the time seniors and their families find this information, the need is urgent. When you call My Aged Care, you need to know enough English to answer basic questions about yourself and request a translator in English. I find it hard to believe, but I've heard it now from so many people—that you have to ask for a translator in English in order to get a translator. This is a huge barrier for many CALD seniors and one they have to clear over and over again every time they want to access a new service or get reassessed for a higher level package. Take the example of a man in his 80s who called my office before the lockdown. He is deaf in one ear, partially deaf in the other, blind, only speaks Serbian and doesn't have a family who can help. As you can imagine, this man struggles to communicate over the phone. My staff realised this and arranged to visit him at home with a translator. During that visit we learnt that he hadn't had a hot meal in six months because his mobility had deteriorated and he couldn't cook for himself. He desperately needed help, but he couldn't communicate with My Aged Care over the phone. As a result of that visit, he was connected to My Aged Care and is now getting help, but it terrifies me to think of what might have happened if he hadn't managed to find my office. Even seniors who are able to overcome these barriers and get through to My Aged Care end up with services that don't meet their needs, in terms of language or cultural needs, whether it's at home or in residential aged care. Local aged-care services tell me that seniors want home carers who can understand their culture and language and who know what they're saying but that there are simply not enough carers with these skills and that the pay is so low that it's hard to attract people. This is not an outrageous demand. I'm sure it's the minimum we would all expect for our loved ones and for ourselves. For seniors who are isolated from family and friends, the carer who visits them at home may be the only person who ever visits them, and a shared language is central to that. Most residential aged-care providers in Parramatta claim to be multicultural; however, none of them specify what language they speak other than English on the My Aged Care website. Western Sydney is served by a small community of culturally specific aged-care providers, and I've worked with quite a few of them over the years to develop those services. They include the Australian Chinese Community Association, the Greek Welfare Centre in my electorate and Sri Om Care. But these are a rarity. According to a report by UTS for Seva International, there are only two services providing culturally specific care for South Asian communities in Western Sydney, where South Asian people represent 14 per cent of the population. Sue Advani from Seva says that South Asian seniors who go into residential aged care all too often find themselves unable to communicate with their carers, and, because of the language barrier, they can't participate in activities either. They rely on family members to deliver food they can eat—for example, vegetarian food. When you consider the rate of malnourishment among aged-care residents generally and the risk to seniors of being served something that is not suitable for their diet or religious beliefs, this is more than worrying. Even more worrying than that is that Sue says this is a common experience. For all seniors and families in this situation, culturally inappropriate care adds layers of complexity and despair. She wants to see a concerted effort from governments to not only support specialist services but make sure all aged-care services are equipped to care for their local communities. It's hard to imagine the Morrison government delivering on this, when the response to the royal commission has fallen so short and given they have neglected this area for so many years. They have fobbed off, delayed or outright rejected recommendations. Of the 148 recommendations from the royal commission, over half are not being implemented or aren't being implemented properly. They announced $17.7 billion over five years, which sounds like a big number. But it promises 80,000 extra home-care places, which won't even clear the existing backlog, let alone deal with the kinds of issues that I'm raising in this place today. CALD seniors are being locked out and left behind by a system that is already failing most of the older Australians in its care, and they deserve much better. I also want to talk about a brilliant campaign to help people in the community get the best possible care at the end of their lives—the Westmead Push for Palliative Care. Palliative care aims to give people who have advanced disease, with little or no prospect of survival, quality of life at the end of their lives. The care is provided by specialists who are experts in pain management as well as compassionate and spiritual support. Despite being one of the biggest hospital precincts in Australia, Westmead Hospital has not had a dedicated palliative care ward for many years. In fact, there is only one dedicated palliative care ward, with 16 beds, in the Western Sydney local health district, and it's at Mount Druitt. That's 16 dedicated palliative care beds in a health district serving close to one million people, which is expected to reach 1.3 million by 2031. This means that locals who can't receive palliative care at home because of complex needs are faced with a difficult choice: stay in a hospital where your doctors are based and where you may still be receiving treatment on a ward that's focused on providing care to recovering patients, or move to a different, unfamiliar hospital, which may not be able to provide the other treatments you need for specialised end-of-life care. Patients who choose the palliative care unit at Mount Druitt often have to shuttle back and forth to Westmead to see specialists or undergo surgery when they are frail and unwell. Those who stay at Westmead will share just one specialist palliative care nurse. Before lockdown and increased COVID-19 restrictions, oncology patients were sharing wards with end-of-life patients. Volunteers say this will happen until there is a dedicated palliative care ward at Westmead Hospital. This matters. Most Australians die in hospital—51 per cent in 2019. Many will need palliative care, and the demand for palliative care in hospitals is growing every year. Westmead Push for Palliative Care, an extraordinary local organisation, has been fighting to reinstate a palliative care ward at Westmead Hospital, and I'd like to thank them for their efforts, as well as the dedicated volunteers, including Dr Philip Lee, who is head of the former palliative care unit at Westmead; Caroline Raunjak; and Anna Pelle. The New South Wales government has just agreed to reinstate a palliative care unit at Westmead because of their extraordinary advocacy. But we still don't know when the unit will be open or what it will look like. Westmead Push for Palliative Care is keeping up the fight to make sure the unit opens soon and that it's a standalone dedicated palliative care ward with appropriate bed numbers and is staffed by experienced specialist palliative care nurses. Funding of this redevelopment by New South Wales Health is critical. Thanks to Westmead Push for Palliative Care for keeping up the fight.
Tax and Revenue Committee; Report | Committees | House debates
by leave—I'm really pleased to stand and speak on this report. It is an important one. As the chair has said, there are a number of recommendations in this report that ask the tax office to...
by leave—I'm really pleased to stand and speak on this report. It is an important one. As the chair has said, there are a number of recommendations in this report that ask the tax office to go further in a range of areas. But, before I go to that, I just want to add my voice to something the chair said, and acknowledge the work that the ATO staff have done over the last little while, not just during the COVID pandemic but before that. They are an institution in this country that has done remarkable work over many, many years. The last decade has seen extraordinary challenges as the world has changed and extraordinary opportunities as technology has made it possible for them to rethink entirely the way they interact with the general population. These are extraordinary times for any organisation. During these extraordinary times we've seen them also take on the Australian Business Register, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and the super clearing house. They have undertaken a digitising and streamlining process. They've introduced online tax professional platforms, Single Touch Payroll, activity statement financial processing, greater tax compliance and less tax avoidance, a training program for small business. Then of course came the COVID pandemic, and they were doing early release of superannuation, JobKeeper—extraordinary additions to what was their workload a decade ago, and, in many areas, the world was changing so fast and the opportunities and the possibilities were changing so fast that it wasn't really possible for anyone to be in front of that, particularly people that work in an institution that has to be as precise as the ATO. They did a really clever thing early on with their practitioner lodgement service, which allows software vendors and digital providers to sit on the back end and allows taxpayers great flexibility in the process that they use to engage with the tax office. That's a possibility that needs expansion, by the way, because, as the world changes and, around the world, the technology becomes more interesting and opens up more opportunities, we in this country want to be leaders. We want our software and software vendors to be leaders in finding those solutions for the full range of taxpayers, being there on the front line and exporting to the world. And congratulations to the ATO for what they've done there. There is one paragraph in this report that I want to come to next, and this is a statement made by the Inspector-General of Taxation. It is referenced on page 13: The IGTO noted in its submission to the Committee that while the ATO has had its functions extended over time, its workforce has experienced the opposite fate. The agency's 2018-19 annual report noted a reduction in the number of employees, both ongoing and non-ongoing, of approximately six per cent over the reporting period. So, while we had this extraordinary increase in opportunities and challenges, we had a reduction in the resources that the ATO had to apply to this extraordinary time that they find themselves in. The chair is also right that this chamber is responsible for the vision that the ATO follows. This chamber—government specifically, but all of us in this chamber—forms part of the process that guides the ATO and ensures the ATO has the resources it needs to be a world-class leader in change management for the change that is taking place right now in our tax systems right across the world. You have to remember that we have a tax system essentially that began in the agrarian age. A monk developed the accounting year, which was perfectly fine before you had industrial equipment and depreciation, perfectly fine when you had an annual thing. Christmas decorations would work under the same process. Then suddenly we had capital equipment, so we had depreciation. Then suddenly the business cycle wasn't a year, so we had loss carry-back, and we added to it. Then we had multinationals. Things changed. We had business. We had PAYG. Now we have contractors. The world has changed so much. We've added bits and pieces of tax law to make it work, until the tax act is like this. The chair is right: there are processes we could find that would simplify the law for sections, and that process that the ATO introduced that allows software vendors to develop software packages specifically for different sectors of the community is really important in helping to make that happen. But we are at an extraordinary time and I'd say again that, whether we're talking about multinational tax avoidance or compliance generally, there is much greater role for this chamber in providing the vision and the resources the ATO needs to lead. It is an organisation that has some amazing people and they are capable of much more than they are doing. Again, when they read this, they will probably notice that most of our recommendations ask them to do more. And, every time we ask them to do more, we then ask them to verify it with data, which means they have to do more to verify that they did it. They face quite a challenge at the moment. So we need to make sure that, if we ask them to do things, we in this chamber are standing with them and ensuring they have the power and the resources to do it.
Cybersecurity | Private Members' Business | House debates
There being no further speakers, 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 13:25 to 16:00