Age verification software is part of trying to fix that problem. There are varying permutations of online child abuse. Having a roadmap for age verification seems like an eminently suitable initiative. Yet the minister is not following the advice of her own eSafety Commissioner. The government has refused to support the eSafety Commissioner's recommendation, and instead has backed the development of industry codes as a stop-gap measure. Industry codes sound good in practice, but these online platforms are a rule and a law to themselves. They would laugh at a roadmap. You've just got to see what they've done so far; for example, Meta have now refused to pay for all the media that they put on their platforms for free.
It's really counterproductive to not follow this advisory roadmap. During Senate estimates that was discussed. There is a range of software and apps that are ready to roll to do this. But we need to mandate it. We need to make it a regulation, not just a so-called advisory, if we are going to address the problem of young people being so distressed that they actually commit self-harm, up to and including suicide.
The digital world is with us and it's with our children and young people now. We really need to follow this train of practice, not just talk about it. We on this side are calling on the minister to reverse her position on an age verification mandate. Even if you're not going to do it, at least start a trial so you yourself can see it will be beneficial. The urgency of this is paramount. Every time I go home, throughout my time in parliament, telecommunications and IT issues always turn out to be one of the more common things. Amongst that IT-and-digital-world set of problems, this is palpable. Parents are worried about it. I'm worried about it. Many people on that side, on the minister's side, of this House are worried about it. It's not going to cost a fortune. It's going to be easy to implement. I just commend an age-verification process to be started as soon as possible.
]]>These are the types of vehicles that families, tradies and farmers are using in my electorate. The Ford Ranger, the Toyota HiLux and the Isuzu D-MAX are the top three selling cars in Australia. They are not for a run down to Pitt Street but to get kids into town for school, to take them camping, to get mum and dad to work, to get farmers out and about around their properties and to the sale yards or to get equipment in the back from the farm store. All of these occur over big distances. These are vehicles that people use in Australia to tow a caravan, a boat or horse floats. They're part and parcel of small businesses and family life in my electorate.
I've listened to the government's responses to questions asked by the opposition in question time about the impact on families of this policy. It is disappointing; the answers were absolutely not worth listening to. They're saying that you're going to save petrol money, maybe hundreds of dollars a year, when you're going to pay up to $25,000 more at purchase price for your vehicle. They don't get the practicalities of living in the bush or in rural coastal towns.
Last week I met with a number of car dealers and owners of businesses who have been operating for 40 and 50 years in my town together with my colleagues the member for Cowper and Senator Bridget McKenzie. These business operators are fair-minded and sensible people. They are not looking to score a quick political point, but the clarity they had on the impact of the new standards was very enlightening. They said the cost increases will be real and will be compounded by the challenges of living and working in regional Australia. The EV infrastructure in the regions isn't there, so it is simply not going to work. Early adopters have bought them, but most people have not. There is reasonable range anxiety. A trip around my electorate is 600 kilometres from top to bottom, and EVs wouldn't cut it. The batteries of EVs lose eight to 10 per cent a year. In five to six years an EV will only go half the difference. The cheapest petrol car is $18,300 and the cheapest EV is $46,000, and you will lose half the value of your car if you buy an EV because there is no second-hand market for EVs.
]]>Unfortunately, it will be another lame duck scheme that will attract very little interest. Why do I say that? I'm not trying to be pessimistic; I'm just trying to be realistic. There are multiple shared equity schemes already that the states run, quite appropriately, because under the Constitution the states have the head of powers and the responsibility for public housing and for housing regulation. New South Wales has 6,000 places on its scheme, with 30 per cent equity being offered for existing homes and 40 per cent for new homes. Victoria has a scheme as well, only it has 13,000 places. South Australia's HomeStart shared equity scheme is smaller but it is out there. Western Australia has a shared ownership scheme via their home loan lender called Keystart, and Tasmania has the MyHome shared equity scheme. What do they all have in common? They have in common very poor take-up by people who are meant to benefit from them, and the reason is people have done the sums. It's a bad deal, even with the initial concept of not having to pay interest on large amounts of capital. Who would feel comfortable with that? A family's home is their castle, but they wouldn't own it all! They're going to end up with as little as 60, 70 or 75 per cent equity, depending on what scheme and which state they're in.
The deal is that you pay 100 per cent of the transaction cost, the stamp duty and all the legal fees, but the government owns a sizeable chunk of it. Under the rules of the scheme, you also only get your portion of the capital gain and the government gets proportionally more because they don't share any of the stamp duty or legals. And it traps buyers with an income ceiling to remain eligible. If they earn more than $90,000 per year as a single person, or $120,000 as a couple, for two years in a row, all of a sudden they get 'please explain' letters and have to pay back some of it. And if you really get a wage rise, or your business takes off and you're doing well, you might have to pay up in full. So a lot of people who thought they were going to be in a stable situation with a long time to pay off their equity, paying increments slowly, could be short-changed. It's also a bit of a worry because a lot of people are going into a scheme when they don't really have enough capital behind them. If you're paying your own insurance for your loan, which is another thing that's insisted upon, that could cost you up to $30,000 over the duration of the loan.
For those of you don't understand it, a shared-equity scheme means that the government puts up some of the capital and has a covenant over a portion of your property. The reason that the states run it, as I mentioned, is because it's their constitutional duty to be involved in this. Community housing has become a bit of a hybrid situation, where philanthropic groups that build houses to rent have taken over from classic housing commission as the predominant community 'not owned, but rented space'. We have existing large schemes to give that section of the building industry low-interest loans. This government is continuing that great initiative, the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, which offered billions of dollars and developed and delivered thousands of cheaper homes for rent. And once you're in the community housing space, Commonwealth Rent Assistance kicks in from the federal government.
The other problem with this scheme is that it's not going to affect affordability favourably. In fact, it may increase the price of homes. As we know, there's a short supply issue, and this initiative is not addressing the shortage in supply. It will not curtail demand, it will probably increase demand—although the reluctance of buyers will limit that. As I mentioned, in our federal Constitution there is no mention of housing. That's why we also need to seek approval from the states for this system to go ahead. The state treasurers must be licking their lips and rubbing their hands together, thinking: 'Here we go! We can now cost shift some of our responsibilities over to the Commonwealth,' as they have done successfully in public education and public hospitals over the last 15 or 20 years. They used to be responsible and run it all, but now the Commonwealth is treasurer for many of the state responsibilities. That's a major problem for our Federation, because we have different responsibilities; we have welfare payments, the NDIS, Defence and all these other things, and the federal budget can't be expected to pay for six states and two territories as well. But, hey presto! Where we've ended up is that we're responsible for half of this.
Having the federal government trying to fix housing shortages is a bit of a moot point.
There were initiatives when former prime minister Morrison was the Treasurer and responsible for housing. He released some federal land in Sydney, Melbourne and, I think, Brisbane—I'd need to check the records. That is a great initiative because that's half the problem. The states need to release more land. Local councils need to rezone more land for housing. The federal government effect is accepted, and people take it, but it's not going to fix the fundamental problem, which is mainly in the domain of humble local councils and state governments. That's where I think we should be focusing to get these costs down.
As I mentioned, in a country town like the many I have, the rate-limiting step to getting housing developed is getting development applications approved by the council. It might take a year or more, let alone getting a construction certificate and getting new areas rezoned. It's laboriously slow. Builders in my region are tearing their hair out. There is money for affordable housing through community housing approval, and there are private landowners that would develop that in a flash for those community and affordable housing providers, but, again—hey, presto—it's not held up because of anything the federal government's doing or anything the state government's doing; it's the local council. That is what is really frustrating people around Australia. There is overregulation of simple development. Also, local councils are pretty much refusing to do any of the major headworks even though they end up getting an income stream of rates for generations to follow. They put it all onto developers.
Depending on which state you're in—in New South Wales, for instance—with a new area set aside for developing housing, often the land developer has to buy the same amount of land to offset clearing for housing, so poor land buyers or first home owners are paying for two blocks of property. The one that's offset is a cost on their property. The developer has to do the NBN development and telecommunications in the block, obviously, but, if there is major sewerage work or new water supplies, councils are now adding those responsibilities, which are in the DNA of local government to do.
We have all these other things barrelling down at the construction industry such as same-job same-pay and closing-loopholes bills, which are going to put many self-employed, subcontracting tradesmen in the situation of being looped into being an employee, which they are not happy about. They certainly don't want to be paying $17,000 more for their next ute or their light commercial vehicles, which is coming barrelling out of this Labor government. The states and councils really need to get their act together.
The other issue is that state governments and councils are allowing in our metropolitan areas this unstoppable urban sprawl, which is not good use of land. It's not good economics. I know a house-and-land package is everyone's dream, but, with the costs and the lack of infrastructure, we really need to do more urban consolidation. We need to re-assess the heights of domestic buildings. There are plenty of cities the size of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane that have houses quite regularly three storeys high. You might have several families in them. The quarter-acre block is a gone thing unless you're really moving out into the regions.
In the vein of consolidating valuable urban land, I suggest that the useless bits of land, maybe the size of these desks here in parliament, between each house to make them separated buildings, would be better used by making semi-detached buildings, taking that dead space between each house and putting it into footpaths or big urban squares over the whole development. Semidetached houses were a really effective use of land when they were built at the turn of the century. Many smart builders are looking at this, but we should be insisting on it.
The other thing we can be doing is hiding in plain sight. Regional Australia is crying out for more people to come and grow the regions. You can have an affordable house-and-land package. We need companies that pay above award, with high costs to get good workers moving to regional Australia, but we need state and local governments to allow for more water storage, land rezoning and land release and also to make sure that there are things set aside for services when they develop these lands. Those are things like community shops, petrol stations or a connection for bus routes or trains. One of the things that we were great at doing in the last two governments was getting up schemes like the First Home Super Saver Scheme, where you could put a maximum of $50,000 of your superannuation—not more than half your superannuation—into your first home deposit. There were 300,000 people on the first home loan insurance guarantee. Single mums, single parents and women who were going for their first home benefited from all those coalition policies. Some of them continue under a new name, with a bit more capital thrown in. But that's what we should be doing rather than this well-intentioned but half-baked and muddle-headed thinking about shared equity.
The states have shown it doesn't work. We need to fix the fundamentals, increase the supply of housing, make it easier to develop at the state and local government levels and insist on this from states at the equivalent of COAG meetings. Then we will see better things happening in land and housing prices. The other thing is that we must stop this rampant, unchecked immigration that is not sustainable while we're in the middle of a housing crisis. We need to really shrink it to highly skilled workers and refugees and leave it at that.
]]>I'd also want to congratulate Blake Stewart and Cali Elmer of the Crowdy Head Surf Life Saving Club, who have been named the Lower North Coast branch's Junior Lifesavers of the Year. You can be proud of yourselves. Your volunteering skills make our beaches safer.
Also, the incredible achievement of Domonique Wyse and Simone Ducker need to be shouted out. They both won their zone final in the Sydney Royal AgShows NSW Young Woman competition and will now progress to the state final. Domonique represents Taree and Simone represents Wauchope. At the Sydney royal in March we'll see them grace the final, and I wish them the best of luck.
Finally, congratulations to Gloucester local Di Relph. Di has been awarded Rotary's highest honour, the Paul Harris Fellow award, for her tireless volunteer work, most notably her service to the community op-shop, which has been part of Di's life since it opened in 2019. It's estimated that they've raised $100,000 since operations began. It's an incredible achievement for Di. Thank you for your service.
]]>Congratulations also go to the Taree Little Athletics Club for producing a record-breaking performance at the Little Athletics regional championship, held in Tamworth. Of the 64 Taree athletes who competed in more than 200 events, the club returned home with five regional records and a medal haul of 29 gold, 22 silver and 29 bronze. Twenty-five of these athletes have qualified for the March state championships in Sydney, and almost 50 personal bests were achieved. I extend my sincere congratulations to them. What a wonderful club.
Lastly, I would like to wish a happy 95th birthday to the Dungog CWA. For 95 years, the women of Dungog and surrounds have been tirelessly advocating for and supporting the lives of regional and rural Australians. Well done to all members, past and present, on this incredible milestone. I wish you all the best for the next 95 years. (Time expired)
]]>Our simpler tax plan was to get rid of that tax bracket altogether until your earnings were above $200,000. Now, 37c in the dollar is paid up to $190,000. I got the Parliamentary Library to go through the changes for my electorate. Silently and without any attention being drawn to it—except for people like me, who have a low-income electorate and who had lots of people saying: 'How come my tax refund has shrunk by over $1,000? I put in all the same claims last year!'—this government didn't enforce the low- and middle-income tax offset at the last budget. So the tax changes now are just returning some of the tax offsets that were in the system up until then. For instance: the first tax benefit that people in my electorate get is once they're above the $18,200, when they will save $78 over the year. And it maxes out at the princely sum of $804, less tax, up until you get to $135,000 of income. In the system that we had, that would have been $1,052 and, if the former Treasurer's announcements in our last budget had been regulated, it would have been $1,500. Because they are moving tax cuts that were destined, after we reformed the earlier stages of the progressive tax scale, for people who've worked hard and are trying to get ahead, those earning above $135,000 will be $246 worse off. They'll be paying more tax—up to $200,000, they'll be paying $4,500 more tax than they would have.
The economy is making the cost of living higher because of inflation. We've got interest rates that are up. People with mortgages are finding they've got $10,000 or $20,000 more in payments. We have housing shortages left, right and centre. And why is that? It might have something to do with the 620,000 people that have arrived in the country in the last year. That level of migration is inflationary in itself. The UK, with a population 2½ times that of ours, had headlines that it was absorbing 600,000 people, and they thought that was a massive increase. But with 25 million people, we have the same amount! That shows you how out of control migration is. We have to be sensible; we know we have skills shortages and that migration fills some of that, but if our own people can't afford to get a house, either to rent or to own, we really have to put the brakes on.
The other thing is: why is inflation being so resistant in this country? It's basic economics. We are spending too much money without getting productivity. We're not getting any wealth creation or efficiency in producing the same amount of goods with less money, or producing a whole lot more with the same money. But we have seen around this country an explosion in public servant administrative roles which aren't producing economic benefit. I'm not saying they don't go to work and work hard, but they're not creating a good or a service that we're exporting. We're just hampering the economy with more public wages.
We have an NDIS that is totally out of control; it needs major reform. It is a sacred cow that everyone thought was going to cost $12 billion a year. I was following very closely in 2012, when Prime Minister Gillard announced it, and it got bipartisan support because the deal seemed quite reasonable. Having worked in disability for most of my professional career in medicine, because they overlap, I could see there needed to be a change in the system. But the way it was designed, with the agreement of the states, has not been able to change it because no-one in the states would let the Commonwealth change it. But it is not sustainable. The member for Macarthur will appreciate this: the payments for the Medicare system, which are for 25.5 million people, are less than what the NDIS costs with 600,000 people. We have seen wages for unskilled people go through the roof because you can get a job working in the NDIS and be earning $32 or $33 an hour without any certificate—you just have to go through probity testing, turn up and work for a company giving personal care and assistance, or accompanying for outings. Everyone in my electorate is talking about it; everyone is saying it's outrageous.
I talked to other members in this House, and they said, 'Yes, it is pretty outrageous.' Is that not inflationary—spending more than $35 billion? I'm not trying to be angry at the people who are receiving the service, but it's the way it has been set up. It's uncapped, we've got hundreds of thousands of kids now—with a projected 160,000 more coming on—
Deputy Speaker Chester, it needs to be redefined. The minister responsible is talking about capping its growth at eight per cent. No, it has to be capped, and the definitions of who gets on it. The NDIA sets a lot of these costs—fixed equipment costs for catheters, colostomy bags, wheelchairs and disability aids. People with disability have said, 'How come my catheter now costs me three or four times what it was before the NDIS?' It's because there is so much money in the NDIS, and that's because it's uncapped. So all the suppliers are putting their rates up. Some of the ABN companies that have popped up have grown topsy-turvy, and it is not sustainable. So that is another inflationary thing where we are not getting value for money out of the spend. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who really need a big, expensive package. They are being limited because all these lower-level disability people are getting extraordinary packages.
All the philanthropic groups that used to run on a block grant have now had all their easy cases taken by these new pop-up disability service companies, which get all the low-hanging cases that are easy to provide and they get paid a motza. I've had a nurse leave nursing—an RN—because she can make $130,000, and she doesn't do night duty or weekend duty. I've had builders who've started an NDIS company. I've had teachers who've gone into NDIS companies. It's a gold rush, and the poor disability sufferers aren't getting the benefit. We really have to address this.
That's one of the reasons why we've got inflation in this country, and we wonder why we can't get people to work in hospitality and in other skilled and semi-skilled cases. It's because a lot of them think, 'Hey, why would I do that really hard job when I can get paid $12 more?' I've had nursing homes in my electorate with newly built wards for dementia, and they can't open them because their nursing staff ratios can't be filled. And they can't get regular assistance in nursing. That's because—guess what?—they can get $14 or $12 more working in the NDIS during business hours. I had an abattoir that brought workers over from the Pacific; within two months a group of 20 islanders had virtually vanished from the abattoir. The owner of the abattoir rang me up and said, 'We went through hell and high water to get these people in to keep our abattoir working and, I didn't know where they've gone.' They had gone to work in disability, because they could sleep overnight in disability housing for a significant amount more money than working in the job that they'd been brought into the country to work in.
Unless we really address inflation, these tax cuts will go nowhere. It's a sweet spot for a year or two, but we really need to get back and address the bracket-creep thing, because it's a big issue. It was so simple; there's no crime in working hard and paying more tax— (Time expired)
]]>If you recall, this is more like giving back some of the tax offsets that you removed at the last budget, rather than a tax cut. The actual tax rate has been reduced from 19 per cent down to 16 per cent in the $18,200 to $45,000 bracket. The flat $45,000 to $200,000 threshold that was to be taxed at 30c in the dollar has been abandoned, and that bracket has been split in two. The 30c rate will only go from $45,000 to $135,000, and then from $135,000 to 190,000 the 37 per cent tax bracket still applies. In our original tax plan stage 3, that whole 37c-in-the-dollar tax rate was going to be abolished until a person's income went up above $200,000.
One of the other features in our last budget was the low and middle income tax offset, which had been there for three years at $1,052 for earnings up to $37,000. It was significantly greater than what these tax cuts are now. Obviously, when we lost the election—and because we didn't announce that that was being increased from $1,052 up to $1,500 for people earning up to $90,000—we lost government, so of course we couldn't introduce that increase. But those opposite had the opportunity to help people at the last budget and continue that low and middle income tax offset. People have been worse off for a year. Lots of people came to my office when they did their tax returns and all of a sudden they weren't getting the refund that they had gotten for the two years before that.
These Dunkley tax cuts are not really as good as they were made out to be. No-one is ever going to object to a tax cut. I like lower taxes, like everyone. But you were getting a better deal out of the coalition's tax plan. There are people who, when this comes through, will be stuck on the 37c in the dollar rate. We had a holistic plan rolled out over several years so that the issue of bracket creep was addressed, so that people who are working hard, wanting to do overtime or getting promoted, would—
]]>I found it very interesting to have the formal dialogues as well as the informal dialogues. In Indonesia we met many very senior politicians who will be very prominent in the current election cycle. Accents were put on our comprehensive strategic partnership with ASEAN, and we also noted we give not just ASEAN nations but South-East Asian and East Asian nations aid to the tune of $1.24 billion annually. We do make, with our ASEAN-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, a contribution of $204 million and we've also been heavily involved in the Indo-Pacific endeavour since 2017.
Many people in this building don't focus as much on these really important ASEAN and Asian focused diplomatic events, but it is critical to our wellbeing that we foster deeper ties with all the ASEAN members. In meetings and in private conversations, Brunei Darussalam, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam thanked us for our help for them during the COVID pandemic—with both PPE and vaccines. I would like to thank Jeff Norris and the other members of the secretariat who accompanied us and made it such a smoothly run show from our side, and I thank the Australian embassy. Congratulations to Indonesia for putting on a really good meeting.
]]>In 2011, when it was first proposed, there were going to be 460,000 participants and the sum cost was to be, at the top end, $13.5 billion, with contributions of state budgets into the pool and the Commonwealth topping that up. Today, the NDIS is way over those numbers, with 610,000 people. As to what it costs the taxpayers, it's not $13.5 billion. They got the numbers wrong. So, when you add another 200,000, you might get up to $26 billion if it's at that pay rate. But no—it costs $35 billion annually, and it's growing. And that's from the NDIS review figures. The amazing thing is: that same review identified that there are 145,000 children under nine who are now participants. I didn't know that we had that many children who are so severely disabled that they need to go on the NDIS. The same review sets out that, by 2032-33, if the current policy settings remain, it will cost $92 billion a year. At the moment, it costs more than Medicare rebates for 25½ million people; Medicare itself was in that same price range. There is something wrong here.
I know that the disability ministers have got together, even though the states have abandoned their historical and constitutional involvement in it. And the ministers have committed to getting more non-NDIS services—the traditional community support that states delivered, that they seem to have totally abandoned—or foundational supports available outside the NDIS.
Looking at the details in the report of the review and the recommendations, it's just moving the costs of an incredibly expensive, unsustainable system into a different column. Part of the reason it has run this far is that it is an open-ended system, a so-called demand-driven system. But there is a huge industry that's grown up around it. When you look at the NDIA charge out rates by NDIA providers, you can see why it's having huge effects on other care industries.
People in my electorate have come to me over this issue. I've had to visit day-care centres, newly built centres, that can't staff their childcare centres. They've actually got rooms in mothballs because their workers have gone to be personal-care workers, earning considerably more than what they get after having done a childcare certificate II, III or IV course. We've got a shortage of nurses and personal-care workers in the aged-care system. It's the same thing: a lot of them are going over to work in the new—they're popping up all the time—NDIS service providers. I have had people being brought out to Australia from the Pacific island labour scheme to work in abattoirs, and after a month—and all these people had done heaps of work to get them out and get them housed—most of the 20-odd workers had ended up getting jobs in the NDIA. So there are people that lose a lot of, or have a shortage of, workers in the semiskilled space. All this work is now costing more, but all the people in it have moved over to the NDIS, and clearly it's unsustainable.
They need to do more. They need to cap the cost of it now and then start working out a way to make it more efficient. There are way too many people applying to get on it. Yet, at the same time, there are too many on— (Time expired)
]]>I'll give a shout out and congratulations to John Quinn of Forster, who has retired as the general manager of GLAICA House. For 20 years, Quinnie has championed quality aged care for the community of Forster-Tuncurry and the Manning. He will continue to serve as president of the Forster Surf Life Saving Club, and I look forward to catching up with Quinnie on completion of the new clubhouse, and to see him with his new hip replacement!
I would like to acknowledge the artistic achievements of Lake Cathie local, Gwen Roberts. One of Gwen's artworks has been selected as a finalist for the third consecutive year in the prestigious ModPortrait 2023 exhibition organised by the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain. Gwen, your selected drawing is simply brilliant, and I commend you on this significant honour and achievement.
]]>At today's rally against too many renewables, people came from around the country. I have people here today whose livelihoods, their own town's industry, are at risk. I met people from Port Stephens who I have met at huge rallies in Port Stephens and in Hawks Nest but there were also people affected by the Illawarra offshore wind farm which, like the Port Stephens, Hunter and wild coast proposal, will destroy the commercial fishing industry. It will destroy the blue water economy. The 1,400 square kilometre area of the Illawarra occupies half the fishing grounds of the South Coast fishing fleet. That's both for eating fish and for eastern rock lobster. It is the same with Port Stephens. It's a billion-dollar economy based around commercial fishing and blue water tourism. Both these areas are pristine—so much for saving the environment.
This is going to impact RAMSAR-protected islands and birds—kestrels and other sea birds. Some 40,000 giant whales pass through these offshore wind farms. There are a lot of electromagnetic fields—the mapping, the sounds—and there are 6,000 commercial ships going in and out of the Port of Newcastle and Port Stephens. The risk during storms and tempests for these massive 267 metre high wind turbines that are anchored by wires to cement blocks will be Pasha Bulka times 300 in each area—that's how many wind turbines there are. It will clash with the East Coast current and divert it because there will be so much turbulence.
The economic concerns of these areas are valid. If you're in these places that mums and dads own looking out to sea, the views will be destroyed. The Australian Property Institute has conservatively estimated that all these houses will decrease in value, as will all these jobs and industries that exist in these areas opposite them.
You've got the same environmental vandalism happening in Queensland. There are going to be 600,000 hectares in Queensland, along the Great Dividing Range, destroyed by these onshore wind farms that are popping up all over the place, with all these cowboy carpetbaggers who sign things up and get them approved by the local council without even councillors knowing. There are ridiculous leave passes for all the environmental checks and balances for these wind farms. It's the same in New South Wales, except they get a leave pass higher up the chain of government.
People on the other side are obsessed with talking about really expensive nuclear projects, but they never talk about the best-case-managed nuclear projects, like the one in the Emirates. We all know about Hinkley C; it's an example of how you don't do it; that's why people don't do it the way they've done it. But in the Emirates they have 5,600 megawatts—almost the same as the baseload of New South Wales—built and delivered and operating in the Emirates for US$22 billion. They started building it just as I came into parliament, in 2013, and, in the space of 10 years, they have built exactly what we need in New South Wales. It's cheap if you do it well.
]]>The other madness is that methane has a very short atmospheric life. CO2 is there permanently. If you have the same herd reproducing itself, it is a closed system. To have dairy herds and beef herds, you need pastures. If you look at the effect of improved pastures, you see massive soil carbon growth. Otherwise, you can't produce enough pastures to feed all these animals. So they are more than carbon negative. The whole cycle is a natural cycle. The animals themselves, the bovines, are about 15 per cent solid carbon. Each one of them is a sink, let alone the soils on which their pastures grow. As I said, biological methane is a very short lived atmospheric. Even though it is technically, scientifically, maybe a more powerful warming gas, it's only there temporarily, and it goes back down into the soil and into animals.
In the Lyne electorate and in Australia, we have a huge dairy and beef industry. The red meat and livestock turnover was $67.7 billion. In Australia 428,000 people are employed by this industry, 191,000 directly. The production of red meat provides protein for us and for our importing countries who can't grow that. We have 1.5 per cent of the global cattle herd and five per cent of the global sheep stock, but we are the fourth largest beef exporter. So most of our red meat is for other countries. Not only do we supply energy for other countries but we supply protein and meat. And we should reject any calls for methane pledges.
]]>That is really a red herring.
]]>The University of Melbourne, Princeton, the University of Queensland and the Nous Group have just spent two years looking at the cost of transitioning away to a renewables future by 2030, along with the other land use things. All we have to do in Australia, to get there by 2030, is spend about $1.5 trillion—that's all. That's a bargain, because the net present value of what we have to spend by 2050 is $5.5 trillion. If it's in the real world—you don't spend it overnight now and get it in 2050—it's $7 trillion to $9 trillion by 2050. We also only have to convert 5.1 million hectares of good agricultural land into native forest, and, depending on whether we've got a hydrogen based economy, we'll need up to 28,000 kilometres of new poles and wires. Considering the national grid is now about 3,500 kilometres from one end to the other, at least the main spine of it—the distribution network is another latticework of stuff, but, for transmission and distribution, if we're going to make hydrogen all over the place its 28,000 kilometres.
So we've got a problem with that. None of that is realistic, and that's why they did the study. It copied the same principles that they did on the net zero America study, which came to similar conclusions. But in that net zero study, they included nuclear because it's had a major renaissance and it's expanding everywhere. There's also a bit in this motion about giving a methane pledge, which I have big problems with because they're equating biological methane that comes from bovines with methane that's escaping from a coal plant. It's a closed energy system. Each animal itself is about 15 per cent carbon. So, if you're going to sacrifice a cow of 700 kilos, that's an awful lot of carbon. It's permanent.
Also, with this renewable plan to replace our fossil fuels, we don't have enough minerals. We are going to reach peak minerals before we reach peak oil. The amount of minerals in copper alone—and I'm quoting Professor Simon Michaux, University of Queensland trained, who now heads the highly respected Geological Survey of Finland, which is the equivalent of the US Geological Survey or Geoscience. He's highly respected. The amount of copper mined through history, to now, is about 700 million tonnes. The world's total reserves of copper are 880 million tonnes, and that's according to the US Geological Survey.
We will need, in the next 22 years, 700 million tonnes. If we're going to be recycling all the batteries, by 2050 we're going to need about 6.1 billion tonnes of copper, which is clearly not possible. We will have to mine 8.8 times more copper than has ever been mined since mining started. That is not realistic. Never mind all the rare earth batteries. It's just unbelievable.
With global reserves, we need a 12-week, 84-day buffer of stationary power storage to go off, and we don't have enough minerals to make batteries, let alone all the cars. Siemens, Orsted and CIP are all going broke, because the economics of wind power is only there if it gets huge subsidies. That's why they're all going broke. And none of the wind options are being taken up by anyone. So we really need to think that, if you're going to defossilise the economy, nuclear is the way to go. Everyone in Europe has worked that out. Everyone in America has worked that out.
]]>Golf is one of the biggest sports in Australia. The health benefits, both physical and mental, are extensive. It has many positive flow-on effects. It's an active, healthy lifestyle and it generates vital open spaces. Green spaces and environments are created by golf courses. They're also cultural hubs. They're a big employer. Annually, there are over $3.3 billion worth of benefits to the Australian economy from golf. The actual expenditure by households is quite staggering, and golf tourism is a major industry. Golf tourism generates $3.6 billion. Household expenditure, expenditure on the facilities themselves and payments by golfers is about $10 billion.
One of the things that many people are not aware of is it's a very egalitarian sport. Anyone can play it. And while the wonders of the modern world are many, one of them is the Stableford handicap, which means you can play with Greg Norman or Chris Smith or anyone. And if you've got a handicap of 41, you might catch him or her! It is a great game.
It is an environmental treasure. Did you know that open green spaces, golf courses, are right up there. There's greater thermal comfort, especially in city areas, like around Centennial Park, where they're trying to close down half a golf course and turn it into green space. So they're closing a golf course, which is full of green space, to create green space. Go figure that out. Connect the dots. Aha! There's real estate involved. That means, across the road, many more real estate developments can happen because if the golf course is attributed to a golf course and not to the owners of the land across the road then, hey presto, they can't build high-rises. So if you want to work out what's going on in Sydney, look at the real estate and follow the money.
There are also benefits for water filtration and purification. Many golf courses are part of sewage systems, natural sewage systems. Soil and vegetation benefit from it. There's reduced impact from flooding and management of storm water. Carbon reductions from emissions are absorbed by these golf courses. Each year, carbon sequestration services from golf courses total $6 million—I think some of the golf clubs need to get some carbon credits out of their business as well! There's enough oxygen produced by all those plants to support 85,000 human beings. There are also the local ecosystems. There are more insects per square 100 metres than there are in ordinary suburbia.
It is a great game. You can play it with your children, you can play it with your wife, you can play with total strangers and at the end of it you've got a friend for life on many occasions. And you perpetually have something to worry about apart from your job or parliament or anything like that. It's to be commended.
I support the golf industry because of all those benefits. It is not a game for rich tossers. There are more golf courses in Australia than in most other countries—1,600 of them in fact. That's why we have so many professional golfers. Look at the women's golf circuit; look at the seniors, or geriatric, golf circuit—it's a game for all ages and all causes. I thoroughly commend people to take up golf. And I ask the New South Wales government to keep the Centennial Park golf course as a golf course. All those people in high-rises all use it; there are 3,000 people every day on Centennial Park golf course.
]]>Also, regarding the industrial wind and solar complexes, more than 2,000 people turned up at the Port Stephens rally against the Myall Coast and Port Stephens wind farm that'll cover 1,875 square kilometres from Catherine Hill Bay up to about Seal Rocks, with wind towers up to 260 metres tall—and 312 of them will cover the area, with exclusion zones of 300 metres around it. It will put at risk, and probably destroy, the commercial fishing fleet and their fishing grounds, worth $1 billion. Whale watching and the whales themselves will suffer, with the acoustic testing to cite it. These commercial wind farms are destroying agriculture and amenities, and their economics rely only on large-scale renewable energy certificates. New base-load power needs to be planned now. We need to maintain our current base load or blackouts will occur.
]]>The stories and the verbatim reports I've seen from the US Secretary of State—stories about beheading—are true. Burning and beheading soldiers, children and defenceless people goes beyond the pale. Hamas should be condemned around the world. Those people who equivocate in that condemnation need to face up to the reality. If they don't condemn that, they are tacitly allowing it. You cannot go any lower than that. We see, too, that Hezbollah is to the north of Israel, trying to stir up another flashpoint. We know there are geopolitical actors behind both these organisations. But Israel has a right to exist, like any nation state, and has an obligation to protect its citizens. It is unfortunate that the only way they can do that, the only way they can get rid of Hamas, is to go into Gaza.
In Australia, our defence forces wear a uniform and are usually housed in our military bases, and the Army, Navy and Air Force defence systems are all clearly marked. But in the Middle East, Hamas and Hezbollah put a lot of their military equipment in civilian buildings, in the bottoms of schools, in educational facilities. They use human shields. They have threatened to assassinate each of the hostages they've taken if Israel sends more bombs to them.
I understand that the people of Gaza will be suffering. If they have the ways and means to get out of there—I can't see peace happening any time. I will just say that I personally condemn Hamas. I support Israel's right to exist. It's fundamental. We must not let this go unchallenged. We offer support. We feel for the Palestinian people who will bear the brunt of this. But they have to realise Hamas is doing this to them, to their own citizens. They have been misled by Hamas. Israel do not want to have permanent war. They want to have peace. Most people in the world get over conflict and come to a sensible resolution. But it's an interminable battle for survival. They thought they had it under control, but obviously we have to the north and the south support from other nations states. It is really interminable.
I wish to pass on my condolences to the many people of Jewish faith and Israeli citizenship who reside here in Australia and in my electorate of Lyne. It is a sad and horrifying day for everyone. I also have people in my electorate who have family in Palestine, and it's horrifying for them. That Hamas thinks this is going to end with some glorious victory just shows you how perverse and twisted they are. It's not Islamic to do that; it's just barbaric. That is the thing. These people are just evil, and evil begets evil. They have to be stopped.
So I would like to pass on my condolences to the people of Israel and say to the people of Palestine that, if you can move, please do, because it will be what it is. A war is a horrible thing. We hope for common sense and peace and that Hamas is toppled by the Palestinians themselves and that, likewise, Hezbollah, which appears to be trying to do a synchronous attack from the north, will be overthrown by their own citizens. I say to all those other nations that are standing behind Israel, 'Thank you.'
]]>The process for this bill has been incredibly disappointing. There was no inquiry. There was a webinar, and that was it—a webinar. People in the Murray-Darling Basin were ropeable. The coalition decided to do the work that the government should have done, and, over four days, the coalition backbench policy committee went out to these affected regions. Four days of meetings were held in Shepparton and Mildura in Victoria, Renmark in South Australia, Griffith and Moree. We heard in Renmark from an organisation representing the irrigators at the bottom of the basin, while in Moree we had representatives from Queensland shires at the very top of the basin. We heard from three members in separate locations and from a committee legislated by the government, called the Basin Community Committee—that is set up by legislation—which had not been consulted on this bill. The bill in itself is not compliant with its own existing legislation. The government has effectively torn up the bipartisan agreement about the use of water in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Just so that listeners have no misunderstanding: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan had a nominal value of around 13,000 gigalitres when full. It has, courtesy of a La Nina period, had healthy flows. But, since records commenced, the Murray-Darling Basin, during drought periods, has very low flows. It's not like the Mississippi, the Danube or any of these major great rivers in other countries and continents that have huge mountainous snowfields, glacier feed-in et cetera. It winds its way across thousands of kilometres of flat land, without any major feed-in mountain ranges. The first explorers recorded the Darling as a chain of ponds. Things dry out. People think that when you see the Murray-Darling Basin with low water levels it's because everything has been sucked out by farming, but that is not the case. Many of the water rights that exist aren't necessarily guaranteed extraction rights. They're water access rights. Depending on which state you're in, there are amounts that are only delivered pro rata to the amount of water in the river. During the millennium drought allocations were sometimes zero per cent, not the nominated face value of their water rights. But often for years in these severe droughts the farmers may only get three, five or 10 per cent of what is put on their water licence, depending on what state they're in and whether it's high-security permanent water or whatever.
But this legislation is doing multiple things that will totally set back that process. The impatience of the minister is quite obvious. It takes a lot of time to implement these efficiency measures on the river. It takes time, with the amount of regulation there is to go through, to get water saving infrastructure on-farm and off-farm. All the approvals take time. The critical thing in this legislation is that it aims to add the 450 back and facilitated by buybacks. We know that no-one wants buybacks because they ruin not just the agricultural production but the communities around it. An individual seller of a water right may be compensated, but the whole community—the whole agricultural output—goes down.
In towns like Griffith, Coleambally and down in Renmark, if there's no water for agriculture, there is no agriculture. You can have the best farm and the best soils, but, unless you have water to add to it, you don't have agriculture. And that's the wonder of the Murray-Darling Basin. It is one of the most engineered waterways. It is a working river. It's not a national park. It supplies water for communities and also for agriculture.
Forty per cent of the farms in Australia exist in the Murray-Darling Basin. It contributes $22 billion to our agricultural output. It is a matter of food security, for the nation and for countries that receive our food exports, that it flourishes. Communities that don't have farms that are active and producing will shrivel up and die. That is where we put in the socioeconomic neutrality test. By bipartisan agreement it has been working well. The 450 gigalitres can be achieved over time with those efficiency infrastructure gains. But the bill is going to facilitate open slather buybacks. The money's there. Historically, last time they did buybacks, they paid way over top dollar for a lot of licences that didn't even provide permanent or high-security water. They were actually buying thin air—water that only occurred when there was a flood—and it was paid for by the former minister back in the last Labor government. This is really going to remove the cap on buybacks for a start. The current Murray-Darling Basin Plan, with the 1,500 gigalitre cap on buybacks, hasn't even achieved what the plan outlined. There are still 225 gigalitres that the minister can buy back as part of the plan, before they go opening up another 450 gigalitres. There's potentially 760 gigalitres of water that could be bought back and flushed out to sea. That will be devastating for all those river and irrigation economy towns as well as cause a paucity of produce.
In August 2022 the Victorian government looked at what the costs would be in its report on the social and economic impacts of the basin plan in Victoria. If the buybacks were used to recover the long-term average of 450 gigalitres of water, this would mean 200 gigalitres of Victorian high-security water and would be expected to reduce annual water in northern Victoria by 216 gigalitres. That would devastate places like Shepparton and all those towns along rivers that feed into the Murray-Darling. The reduction in irrigation area would be 50,000 hectares. That's a staggering amount of productive land. Not having water in agriculture is like trying to drive an internal combustion car without petrol or diesel. Farms don't work without water, and that's the beauty of irrigation. The Egyptians and people living on the Tigris and Euphrates realised that, for their civilisations to make enough food, you need water. Dams happened in Ethiopia 3,000 years ago. The Egyptians were building dams thousands of years ago. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a solid plan, but to throw it all out with impatience and go hell for leather to start buybacks again will end badly.
Say there's a millennium drought mark 2 coming down the line. It may not happen because historically, following La Nina patterns, we generally don't have super El Ninos. The meteorologists I've sourced that information from are all professionally trained, so it's not likely that we're getting one now, although we're in an El Nino pattern now. The Victorian government worked out the economic impact in those areas would be a decrease of $500 million annually in the gross value of irrigated product. We need to think about those farmers and all the people that work on their farms. There was one farmer who had 15 employees at work, producing milk and products from irrigated pastures. If his water becomes too expensive, which it will when you take up to 760 gigalitres out, it's not economic to produce dairy as the inputs go through the roof. If there's no absolute water, well, for this 500-hectare farm—I haven't mentioned his name for privacy reasons—he'll be flat-out supporting just himself and his family. The northern Victoria gross value of agricultural production would be $270 million down per year, and agricultural employment down 900 farm jobs. But that's just an estimate for the agricultural jobs. All the town jobs that feed off agriculture would mean that number would multiply: the hairdressers, the shops, the retailers. Upstream and downstream there would be bad effects.
The other thing that's in this bill is the water market reform section. Reading through the explanatory memorandum there are fairly scary things for people involved in agriculture, and other documents coming from New South Wales, fed by this desire, show that they are changing the water access rights. They will be able to reclassify them as Commonwealth-held environmental water. That is a major change. It's not just irrigators that may have their water limited, but stock and domestic water in the basin may be affected state by state. What is also changing is that, rather than the Murray-Darling Basin Authority running the water trading, it would go to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission and the Bureau of Meteorology. We know the ACCC is capable, and market transparency is good in any market, but it talks about fixing up insider trading and implies a lot of things are happening that shouldn't be happening. It's not a feature that I had heard of because it's a pretty transparent market. Knowing a lot of people down on the Murrumbidgee and people I visited in these irrigation towns when I was in the health portfolio, water is life. Water is the economy in these areas. The Inspector-General will remain, but all of the hard regulations will come out of the ACCC.
I move:
That all words after "whilst" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"declining to give the Bill a second reading, the House:
(1) is concerned that the legislation represents the worst solution on national water reform;
(2) notes that the following is needed for national water reforms in the Basin to be successful:
(a) a cooperative and constructive approach with all Basin State Governments to assist water reform and investment in urban and rural water infrastructure;
(b) bipartisan support;
(c) proper face to face consultation with key stakeholders in the Murray Darling Basin, including all water users, farmers, water scientists, environment groups and the broader community to ensure the adoption of a Basin Plan which has at its heart a triple bottom line approach which optimises social, economic, and environmental outcomes.
(3) criticises the Government for failing to consult the Basin Communities Committee which is the legislated voice for people living in the Murray Darling Basin, on the Water Amendment (Restoring our Rivers) Bill 2023".
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