Julian Leeser's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Jonceski, Mr Ljupco (Luch) | Condolences | House debates
It's an honour to follow Minister King in her contribution and the member for McPherson, who not only worked with Luch as a parliamentarian but as an attendant as well. There have been so many...
It's an honour to follow Minister King in her contribution and the member for McPherson, who not only worked with Luch as a parliamentarian but as an attendant as well. There have been so many beautiful speeches made in this debate, and I agree with the minister that Luch is the sort of person that we would have had a series of speeches for had he lived to retire; he'd have had a particular retirement farewell speech. Luch is one of those people that is so vital to the character of an institution like this. One of the things that he didn't do towards the end, because I think the parliament had dispensed with it, was this. In the first two terms that I was here in my 10 years of service, Luch would greet you at the airport on a Sunday evening. Like a barista knowing your coffee order, he would remember what time your car was going to pick you up and where it was going to pick you up the next morning. He brought a great smile, and, after a flight that could sometimes be unpleasant, he was a wonderful person greeting you and bringing the good humour that he brought to all of the work that he did. My office is opposite Zoe McKenzie's, the member for Flinders's, and in her office window she had a beautiful picture of her and Luch, when the parliament resumed in January for those important sittings to deal with the aftermath of Bondi, and I said, 'That's a beautiful picture of you and Luch in your office window.' And then she told me that Luch had passed, and, like so many, we just couldn't believe it—that somebody who's been so vital to this place, who's been so important for the good humour of this place, had. Some days in politics you have days where the highs are very high, and other days you have days where the lows are very low, and Luch was always there to inspire, to welcome, to greet—to just remind you, with his good humour and good nature, of the importance of the service role that you're giving here. To those of us in partisan politics, it's often hard to imagine what it must take—an idea that the member for McPherson knows well—to be engaged in an impartial position in this House. So many of us join our political parties because we feel so passionately about our democracy and about issues to do with our democracy, or we stand for parliament—as you do, Deputy Speaker Sharkie—as a crossbencher, because you have a set of values that you want to impart onto the parliament. But our attendants don't do that, and the staff that work in the parliament don't do that; they are here as servants of our democracy, and they take a dispassionate view. And Luch was such a great ambassador for the parliament. He was such a great ambassador for the idea of service. I will never forget, when I was on the back bench, sometimes you'd only just need to wave at Luch and he knew exactly what you wanted, whether it was a water or the big lectern or the small lectern, and there were other days where perhaps the only thing you did, in terms of walking into the House, was walk in just to get your name marked off and see him. But his service, his decency, his remarkable connection with people right across the parliament and right across the building is something that is very much worthy of celebration. To his family, who will have been shocked at his untimely passing, as we all are: I hope they take comfort from the fact that so many people from across the parliament who've served here for many years are paying tribute to this wonderful man who really touched so many people's lives. I wish I'd had the opportunity to say to Luch how much he mattered to me, as he mattered to so many of the colleagues here. To his family and to all those who knew him: may his memory be a blessing.
Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025, Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) (Consequential and...
I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. These are the bills which establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, known as ATEC. Let me say at the very outset that these bills are very troubling. They establish a new regulator for an overregulated sector. They fail to articulate a clear vision for tertiary education in Australia but, at the same time, they tie it to inappropriate objectives. They don't deal properly with the independent or vocational and technical education centres and their links with universities. They are replete with problems of a technical or operational nature, and they've been criticised across the board. It's a turgid technocrats' policy that entrenches more bureaucracy. Labor loves to write its own hagiographies and they love to talk about education. When they go to write the next chapter of their own history, I fear these bills will be an unfortunate footnote. They are, to put it bluntly, not what Australia needs right now. I want to start at the top with the policy objective. The Universities Accord started with the point that the roadmap for Australian universities needs to start with a vision and a shared objective. That's unobjectionable as a statement of general principle. Of course, if you're going to embark on reform, you should have a sense of where you're going. But the accord process then made two extraordinary leaps. First, it produced an objective for the tertiary education sector as a whole. I pause here to make this critical point. The higher education sector is more than just about our public universities. In fact, public universities make up only around 20 per cent of the higher education providers in Australia, and the tertiary education sector, which includes both higher and vocational education, is broader still. There are 4.86 million student enrolments in the independent sector. In our tertiary sector, more than 71 per cent of the enrolments are not in the public universities. But having just completed a consultation centred on the needs and demands of Australia's public universities, the accord set an objective for the remaining 71 per cent of tertiary students who arguably weren't adequately accounted for. This was the first extraordinary leap. The second was to seek to define that objective in a way that seems completely divorced from the needs and purpose of our higher education sector and, worse still, to try and entrench it in legislation. The Universities Accord proposed a national tertiary education objective, and that's the objective which has found its way into the bill in section 13. And it's not just the objective of our tertiary education sector as a whole. It is an objective that ATEC will be required by law to take into account in the performance of every function and the exercise of every power. It's the iron rod that will guide this new regulator. So what does the objective say? The legislation says: … the National Tertiary Education Objective is the objective for tertiary education in Australia to: a. promote a strong, equitable and resilient democracy; and b. drive national, economic and social development and environmental sustainability. It's quite extraordinary. The words 'teaching', 'learning' and 'research' simply do not appear. There's nothing in there about the quality of our institutions. There's no consideration given to the way in which our tertiary system can align with or support our national interest. There's no reference to student experience. There's nothing about fostering dynamism, competition, innovation or efficiency. In fact, there's nothing at all which sets out the things you'd ordinarily expect in a statement setting expectations of an educational institution or a critical sector of our economy. But according to this government, this is the unifying objective or vision that's meant to shape our higher education sector out to the 2050s and an objective it wants to set down in law. Let me be clear. This government's national tertiary education objective says nothing about tertiary education, and why on earth not? If you were to stop the average woman or man in the street and ask, 'What do you think should be the objective of our tertiary education system?' they'd probably say something about teaching students or doing research or the other things you generally associate with education. These considerations simply do not make their way into the definition in this bill. That omission is bad enough in its own right. It is what the government has included that really makes the stick in the craw. Instead of talking about teaching, learning and research, the government says that our ATEC should be governed by vague and inappropriate references to 'social development and environmental sustainability'. What does social development even mean? It's an extraordinarily loaded term that goes to fundamental beliefs about the way our society should be shaped and the direction it should take in the future. It is a deeply, deeply political idea. It is the core focus of this parliament, the function of this place, to debate and contest the way our society should develop with ultimate accountability to the voters who ask us to represent them here. This is an undefined and heavily contested and entirely inappropriate function to confer on a bureaucratic body entrenched by law in the Department of Education. Take, for instance, the ATEC's role in providing for domestic and international student allocations. Does driving social development affect those processes? Those are questions for the parliament and the people, not the ATEC. And why, regardless of the decision or the topic, is environmental sustainability shoehorned into the ATEC decision-making processes? It's a naked attempt to introduce cultural and political considerations into the decisions about our tertiary education sector. If environmental sustainability is relevant to the performance of ATEC's functions, it will be taken into account. That's basic administrative law principle. And if it's not relevant, it should not be taken into account. That is common sense. But under this bill, regardless of context, the ATEC is required to have regard to environmental sustainability. Quite simply, that is not the appropriate focus of our higher education sector. It means that this is a bill about ideology, not improvement. To those opposite who say, 'Well, all we've done is adopt a recommendation of the Universities Accord,' I say that's not good enough. Governments accept and reject recommendations all the time. They're expected to have the intellectual curiosity to engage with those recommendations. They're expected to weigh consequences. They're expected to look carefully at proposals that are put to them and make decisions in light of the interests of all Australians and the electors who choose them to be in this place. Once it's in legislation, you own it; it's your policy. It's not just me making these criticisms. The National Tertiary Education Union has slammed this ham-fisted attempt to ram more ideology into our universities and tertiary providers. It said: The NTEU believes that this objective does not adequately address the character, nature and purpose of higher education; it makes no reference, for example, to the importance of critical inquiry, academic discovery and discourse, institutional independence or even to academic freedom. Instead, the objectives seek to define tertiary education as part of broader Government policy and could apply to virtually any sector. Deputy Speaker, you know that, when a member of the Liberal Party is quoting the National Tertiary Education Union in its criticism of a Labor bill, the bill is in real trouble. Deakin University, in a submission that included a detailed paper from its Vice-Chancellor, Professor Iain Martin, about the social licence of universities, emphasised the need for universities to maintain their social licence and to consider the way they are seen by the public at large. He said, 'Either through action or inaction, we are readily accused of being politicised; the playthings of left-wing, inner-urban cultural elites, who possess social and economic capital.' He specifically described education, teaching and learning as the 'core responsibility' of university and specifically argues for excellence. It's a point well made and one the government has missed. In setting its legislative objective for the entirety of the tertiary education sector, this government has missed the mark. The point of our tertiary education sector is not social development and environmental sustainability. It's education. It's learning. It's teaching. It's research. It's a dynamic, vibrant, competitive sector. It's support for our values and alignment with our national interests. If we are going to have a national tertiary education objective set out in legislation, it cannot be the one set out in clause 13. I want to say something about the second major flaw of this bill, which is that no serious commentator has looked at our tertiary education sector and concluded that it needs yet another regulator. Perversely, though, that is exactly the situation which this government has now found itself in. In a submission to the universities governance inquiry last year, the existing regulator, TEQSA, specifically highlighted the complex governance and regulatory environment in which our institutions operate. It listed 13 different bodies which exercised some kind of oversight, influence or control of our universities. And that number rises to 14 once TEQSA itself is included. As Western Sydney University said, Australia's universities now operate under more than 300 pieces of legislation and regulation, a system it describes as a 'Frankenstein system'. This bill adds to that system. Submissions to the inquiry have made absolutely clear that the ATEC will be a regulator in all but name. Describing ATEC's function as 'stewardship' is not an answer. Stakeholders have specifically rejected the government's denials through Senate estimates that ATEC will be a regulator, saying that attempts to do so rely on an overly technical definition of the term. I go further. it's disingenuous to say that ATEC will not be a regulator. It will exert policy influence. It will shape resource allocations. It will have the power to enter into compacts with universities, suspend them where it decides to do so and replace them with standard-form agreements. That is a suite of powers that is clearly designed and intended to regulate behaviour within a very important sector of our economy. It will operate alongside but distinct from the Department of Education, which oversees general education policy; the Department of Home Affairs, which governs international student intakes; the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which has responsibility for skills and the VET portfolio; TEQSA, which is the specific higher education regulator; ASQA, which regulates the remainder of the tertiary sector; the National Student Ombudsman; the Australian Research Council; the National Health and Medical Research Council; Jobs and Skills Australia; state and territory regulatory bodies and designated state authorities; professional accreditation bodies; and all of the other bodies which exercise oversight, influence, control or otherwise shape the tertiary education environment. ATEC is a new regulator, and no disinterested observer would look at the constellation of higher education and VET regulatory and governance bodies and say, 'What we really need right now is yet another regulator.' Let me move to issues of duplication, cost and lack of harmonisation. These issues of excessive regulatory burden raise the related issues of duplication and cost, because, as has become clear in Senate estimates, the department, as a department of state, will retain policy oversight over all matters within its policy remit, including higher education. Inevitably, with all of the regulators, there will be overlap and there will be duplication. Translated, that means there will be cost to taxpayers. But there's a broader problem, because the $54 million that's allocated to ATEC does not create a single additional student place. It does not improve student experience. It does not add value for those who make sacrifices to attend universities. The $54 million could be allocated to fund $1 million research grants for each one of Australia's universities, with more than $10 million left over. And when it comes to harmonisation between higher and vocational education, these bills don't achieve what they're meant to do. ATEC is intended, in part, to reduce the barriers between VET and higher education, to allow students to move back and forth between the two freely. However, the ATEC legislation appears to be focused on Australia's 43 universities, largely ignoring the 166-odd non-university higher education providers and the 3,700 tertiary education businesses. It is unclear how the ATEC can achieve harmonisation and mobility across the whole of the higher education sector in these circumstances. And at a time when interest rates are rising as a result of Labor's poor economic management, which has seen education costs balloon by 5.4 per cent—higher than the core inflation rate—there's no justification for yet more government expenditure which doesn't add to productivity or reduce the cost of education for Australians. Yet again—when Labor spends, you pay. But the criticism of the bills doesn't stop there. Extraordinarily, there seems to have been incredible disquiet about this bill even among the very institutions that championed ATEC in the first place. Universities Australia has said: As currently drafted, the Bill does not deliver on the Australian Universities Accord's … aspirations for an independent body to design and drive the longer-term reform agenda for Australia's tertiary system. Independent Tertiary Education Council of Australia said: ITECA supports reform aimed at improving the long-term clarity and cohesiveness of Australia's tertiary education system. However, the ATEC Bill as currently drafted, does not align with the stated ambition of creating an integrated and equitable tertiary framework. The ATEC Bill suffers from drafting that is based on there being no clear needs case for the tertiary system, especially the more than 4.8 million students and over 3,700 tertiary education businesses that will have little or zero engagement with this new bureaucratic fancy. It seems clear that the ATEC Bill before the Committee is not at a stage where it is ready for consideration by the parliament and the Commission is not ready to be established. It is far preferable to ensure that an agency of this importance is ready, and its enabling legislation is not compromised by eagerness for speed. ITECA strongly urges the Committee to deeply consider the need for this Commission, as its core functions can, and in many cases already are being undertaken by existing agencies of the Commonwealth. Independent Higher Education Australia said this: The Bills establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission … as the central system "steward" for Australia's tertiary education sector. It is in fact a regulator in all but name. … in practice, ATEC's functions, including allocation of domestic and international places, establishment and oversight/monitoring of compacts and influence on the Threshold Standards, give it a regulatory role. … Without [expertise in the independent sector], there is a real risk that ATEC's work will default to a public-university-centric view of the tertiary system, overlooking the contributions, challenges and operating environments of independent providers. This would undermine the Commission's ability to function as a genuine system steward and would diminish the accuracy, balance and relevance of its advice to Government. Deakin University, having described itself as a firm supporter of ATEC, said: However, though supportive of an ATEC, and already engaged with the interim body in a productive and meaningful manner, Deakin holds several concerns regarding the proposed legislation. We posit that addressing these concerns, which range from a lack of clarity to missed opportunities to truly achieve the ambitions of establishing such a function, should be a priority. The Tasmanian government, in diplomatic language, fired a warning shot about the introduction of unnecessary and duplicative compliance mechanisms. Referring to such mechanisms, it said: These mechanisms should be demonstrably necessary and proportionate, avoid administrative burden and ensure that reporting requirements contribute directly to improved educational and research outcomes. Integration with existing data collections and reporting platforms is essential to minimise duplication. Compliance obligations should, at their core, add value for students by generating actionable insights that improve equity, participation, and completion rates, rather than diverting resources from teaching and support services. Science and Technology Australia, the peak body for the nation's science and technology sector, said: Science & Technology Australia is concerned that while the Bill states the proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission's … powers will extend to university research and research training … there is insufficient clarity in the proposed legislation and no evidence of sufficient capability or resourcing built into the ATEC to properly support university research. In short, ATEC does not support Australia's national research agenda. Regional Development Australia picks up on the failure of the legislation to address the needs of regional communities. Under the heading 'Concerning gaps for regional communities', it says: The Bill and its settings make welcome progress towards access equity for cohorts who are currently underserved, particularly at an individual student level. However, at a structural level there remains a risk that these settings may entrench or amplify existing inequities affecting regional institutions and communities, with implications for their capacity to contribute to the nation's long-term prosperity. That's extraordinary. And it's not just bodies who are impacted by the change that have criticised the bill. Dr Ant Bagshaw, a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education in Melbourne, broadly supports the diagnosis that Australia needs a system steward in its higher education sector, but he said this: The Senate should recommend that ATEC not be established in its current form, and that the Department of Education be legislatively required to discharge the stewardship role with strengthened transparency, consultation and capability. … … … … system stewardship is not the same as creating a new agency. Professor of higher education policy at Monash University Andrew Norton, one of Australia's leading public policymakers and commentators on higher education, asked, in the first question in his submission, whether an Australian tertiary education commission should be created at all. He said this: The government's policies imply a belief that a more bureaucratic approach will improve higher education outcomes. Even if we accept this assumption, it is not clear that ATEC will improve matters significantly compared to current Department of Education arrangements. His principal recommendation is simple—that the bills should be rejected—and the criticism he gives is devastating. Before dissecting the legislation in detail, he says this: The following chapters— in the submission— identify numerous flaws in the ATEC proposal. They include recommendations to improve the bills, should they have in-principle parliamentary support. But the ATEC bills should be rejected. They would narrow higher education's purposes. As they stand, they offer universities nothing but additional government control and bureaucracy. Due to ATEC's design flaws, we can have little confidence that it will improve on the current policy framework. Professor Mark Warburton, a highly influential academic, a respected public servant and a former adviser to the Australian government during the Hawke and Keating years, said this: The Government has announced its "three important structural reforms that are central to setting the tertiary education system up for the future". These are the ATEC, Managed Growth Funding and Needs-based Funding. It has not provided adequate detail on how any of these proposals will advance the objectives the Government has set for them. In his second reading speech for this Bill, the Minister declared: the ATEC is the Accord. … It is a national project and it needs a steward that is there for the long haul. … To get the sector to work more like a system. … And to help drive real and lasting reform. Unfortunately, the direction of change for the system is articulated only in the most broad and high-level terms: Warburton goes on to say: There is no satisfactory detail on how ATEC is going to achieve any of these things. Given the magnitude of ambition for ATEC, it does not seem unreasonable to ask for some detail on precisely what changes it will be making in the short term, how it will go about making those changes and what leverage it will have to enforce those changes. Many of the claims made about the Government's response to the Accord are inflated … This person was a higher-education adviser during the Hawke and Keating governments. He goes on: In Higher Education Attainment Under the New Managed Growth Funding System it's one of his papers— I show how both the claimed expansion associated with Fee-free Uni Ready places and the claimed additional funding provided in the 2024-25 MYEFO changes are overstated. I provide evidence that planned government funding will most likely result in lower higher education attainment in the 2030s, than in 2021. … In his Second Reading Speech, the Minister stated of ATEC that "Its operations will be transparent". The Bill does not provide for this. It's pretty damning criticism. Many others criticise the ATEC's perceived lack of independence and its failure to deliver on what was originally conceived of when ATEC supporters first pitched the idea to government. The list of critics is extraordinary. Unions, government bodies, universities, independent providers, experts—all of these are saying that the ATEC legislation currently before this parliament is not fit to pass. Before I go further, let me be clear. There is a committee process that is underway right now in the other place. We respect the committee process, and I hope it is an extensive committee process. There were 60 different submissions made to that committee—powerful, insightful and careful analysis from across the sector. We need to hear from those witnesses, and the committee will fail in its duty if we do not hear from them. If the government doesn't call the witnesses I've mentioned today, it will fail, because the Australian public deserves to hear from the authors to understand where this legislation is good and where it is not. They deserve to hear from the experts in the field and those with a stake—witnesses like Professor Mark Warburton, a highly respected academic from the University of Melbourne who wrote a penetrating and insightful analysis that deserves recognition and careful consideration, and bodies like the Independent Tertiary Education Council of Australia and Independent Higher Education Australia. They have the most skin in this game when it comes to this legislation, because tertiary education is more than just our universities. As IHEA said, Australia's higher education system consists not only of public universities but of a broad range of independent higher education providers, including private universities, university colleges and both not-for-profit and for-profit non-university higher education providers, or NUHEPs, and the range of providers is much broader once VET is added. ITECA covers both, and it points out that the independent sector accounts for 77 per cent of all higher education institutions in Australia and 92 per cent of registered training organisations. Of course we should be hearing from those types of bodies. Doing otherwise is a disservice to the parliamentary committee, and it's a disservice to the Australian people, who expect us to properly scrutinise legislation. So I hope that this committee in the Senate has the opportunity to properly scrutinise the legislation, to ask questions of expert witnesses and to understand from bodies who operate in the field how this bill will affect them in a practical way, and I hope that the government would support me in showing this basic respect for stakeholders and the parliamentary process in having a proper inquiry. Let me finish by saying this. There are bigger questions about our tertiary sector that need to be solved and where, in the last couple of years, government policy has not made any real inroads. How long can we continue with one third of our universities struggling? Does the current balance between vocational and higher education really suit Australia's long-term needs? What is the process and methodology that should be adopted for international student intakes? How do we deal with low volume, expensive but strategically important skill sets and capabilities that are taught in our universities but which are expensive to maintain? How do we maintain the presence of those regional campuses that feed activity and meet the needs of communities outside the big cities? How do we provide and promote competition and dynamism between the public and independent sector? What is the long-term trajectory of Australia's standing on the international stage, given the growth of its campuses in South-East Asia, China and in our region more broadly and their ability to offer comparable quality at a lower price point? Are our universities losing their social licence? What is the impact of AI, which right now can develop and sequence information almost to a university level and almost for free turn it into a package or a podcast that I can use to educate myself? What does that mean for our sector? What steps do we as a nation need to take right now in terms of our policy settings and longer term development to best position ourselves to train and educate future generations? These are big questions, and they should be answered by the Australian Department of Education as the minister's principal policy adviser. Otherwise, what's the department doing? It doesn't run any schools. It doesn't run any childcare centres. It doesn't run any vocational or higher education institutions. If it's not answering these questions, what is it doing? Regardless, none of these questions are answered by these bills. Those opposite will say that the purpose of ATEC is to answer them. That's not a good answer. It doesn't explain why the department can't or won't do it, and it doesn't explain what the department will do going forward. It doesn't even explain why the sector needs yet another regulator. In any event, the gap between answering those questions and the options put forward in this bill is just too wide. Even if you support ATEC in principle, this legislation is too problematic. So, in summing up, let me say this. If forced to vote on this legislation before the committee completes its inquiry, the Liberal Party will oppose this legislation. That is the holding position. We will join the very large chorus of stakeholders and interested parties saying these bills are not fit to pass, and we will continue working on those bigger questions in the interests of all Australians. In closing, I thank the House and move the amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: (1) notes with concern that: (a) Australia's tertiary education sector is significantly over-regulated; (b) providers report to multiple competing and overlapping bodies; and (c) some providers are required by law to deal with more than 300 different pieces of legislation and regulation; (2) affirms that the objective of tertiary education in Australia must focus on teaching, learning and research, and should otherwise be aimed at promoting a dynamic and innovative sector that provides a positive student experience, delivers value for money, improves Australia's productivity and supports Australian values; (3) further notes widespread concern among the tertiary sector and expert stakeholders about the drafting of this legislation; and (4) calls for this legislation to be the subject of proper and thorough scrutiny".
Australia Day Awards and Honours | Constituency Statements | House debates
I want to acknowledge the local recipients from the Berowra electorate in the Australia Day Honours List. Jan Childs was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the...
I want to acknowledge the local recipients from the Berowra electorate in the Australia Day Honours List. Jan Childs was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the community of Berowra. Her contribution showed sustained, hands-on work for many years, particularly through the Berowra Rotary Club—which she led in the annual arts and crafts exhibition that celebrates local creativity and raises funds for good causes—and amazing contributions through girl-guiding through the Trefoil Guild and Girl Guides in Berowra, leaving a lasting mark on our community. Tony Morgan, whom I know through his work with the church communities in Hornsby, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service in insurance. His career is a rare combination of technical excellence, professional leadership and a commitment to developing the next generation. He spent decades helping individuals and businesses recover after some of the worst days they'll face. Within the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance he made an extraordinary contribution to professional standards and education, including long-term development of the diploma of loss adjusting. Tom Parker is a legendary greenskeeper. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to sport. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— The legendary Tom Parker is not a household name, but he is someone from whose work we have all benefited. Tom Parker was, for 20 years, the head curator at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for helping maintain one of the most iconic sporting venues in the world. That stewardship requires knowledge, judgement and an uncompromising commitment to standards, and that's what Tom always provides. I know his family, especially his wife, Teresa, and his son, Jack, would be taking a full measure of pride in his award. The late Stuart Pittendrigh was recognised for service to horticulture and landscape architecture. He was a leader in his field for decades, combining his contributions to the Institute of Landscape Architects and the Institute of Horticulture, and was widely respected for the authority he brought to projects, professional standards and education. His work also touched major public spaces, including Barangaroo. Marilyn Chilvers was awarded the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service to New South Wales in data research and analysis. Ms Chilvers's careers shows what it looks like when public service combines rigour with purpose, using evidence to provide outcomes and improve those outcomes, strengthen evaluation and help government better understand what works. Her work in human services outcomes and data linkage has helped inform investment decisions and improve service delivery for vulnerable people across our state. Finally, RAAF Air Commodore Kaarin Kooij gets the CSC and Bar for her outstanding devotion to duty as Director General of the Joint Transition Authority. Transitioning from military service is a major life change, affecting not only the veteran but the family as well, and Air Commodore Kooij's work is focused on building a more responsive and integrated transition system. I want to congratulate all these people who were honoured in the Australia Day honours list and encourage Australians to nominate their fellow Australians for similar recognition.
Sydney Youth Musical Theatre | Statements by Members | House debates
The Berowra electorate is home to some extraordinary young performing talent, and that talent will be on display at the Sydney Youth Musical Theatre's production of 9-5, which will be running...
The Berowra electorate is home to some extraordinary young performing talent, and that talent will be on display at the Sydney Youth Musical Theatre's production of 9-5, which will be running from 7-15 February at the Glenn Street Theatre. The SYMT's production will have lots of Dolly Parton's wonderful and famous songs. SYMT provides not only a place for entertainment for people but also a very important training ground for young artists and musicians. People go on to study at NIDA, WAAPA, the VCA and become recipients the Helpmann and Rob Guest awards. Some of the people involved in this production include director Adam Haynes, music director Jono Simpson, choreographer Caitlin Dennis, assistant director Lachie Donlevy and assistant choreographer Bella Speranza. The incredible president of the SYMT and production manager is Chrissy Stimson. The cast includes Erin Pacholke, Danijela Novakovic, Jessica Bate, Nathanael Sherlock, Liz Grant, Aiden Hall, Sascha Masjuk, Eliza Pascoe, Hayley Mathie, Chloe Gardener, Harry Little, Karl Willison and Alex White. I got the privilege of seeing some of the rehearsals over the summer, and I encourage everyone in the electorate—indeed, everyone in the parliament—to buy a ticket to see this fantastic production by some outstanding young Australian musicians, actors and performers in the Sydney Youth Musical Theatre's production of 9-5.
International Relations: Australia and Iran | Questions without Notice | House debates
on indulgence—Can I associate the coalition with the remarks of the Deputy Prime Minister. The Iranian regime is a criminal regime that commits human rights abuses against its own people,...
on indulgence—Can I associate the coalition with the remarks of the Deputy Prime Minister. The Iranian regime is a criminal regime that commits human rights abuses against its own people, as we have been seeing, and they export terror and violence abroad, as we have suffered in our own country. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the government in the condemnation of the Iranian regime, in the support for those people seeking to change the regime and with the Persian community in this country.
Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion | Questions without Notice | House debates
On relevance: my question was not about the other things the Prime Minister was doing but about why he argued against a royal commission.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, if a Commonwealth royal commission is such a good idea, why did you spend 25 days arguing against it?
Antisemitism | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, New South Wales Labor Premier Chris Minns has said sorry to the Jewish community for his handling of the antisemitism crisis that led to the...
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, New South Wales Labor Premier Chris Minns has said sorry to the Jewish community for his handling of the antisemitism crisis that led to the murder of 15 people at Bondi. The Jewish community wants to hear their Prime Minister say sorry. For the third time: why won't you say sorry too?
Point of order, Mr Speaker, on relevance: the Prime Minister wasn't asked about the history of antisemitism in Australia; he was asked whether he apologised for his government's failures to do...
Point of order, Mr Speaker, on relevance: the Prime Minister wasn't asked about the history of antisemitism in Australia; he was asked whether he apologised for his government's failures to do enough to deal with the antisemitism.
Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
Yesterday I stood here and said that the Bondi terrorist attack represented a moment of choice—a choice about the type of country we are and the type of people we want to be, a choice about...
Yesterday I stood here and said that the Bondi terrorist attack represented a moment of choice—a choice about the type of country we are and the type of people we want to be, a choice about whether we stay in the political cul-de-sac that we've been in for over 800 days or, instead, tackle the sources and causes of antisemitism in this country, a choice about whether to continue to treat antisemitism as just another political issue or to treat it as the moral and cultural problem it is, a choice made by people in this place about whether to drag heels or to deal with the issue with priority, alacrity and zealous determination, a choice by each member of this place about whether to change. The sad reality is that if we don't change then Bondi won't have changed anything. Until recently Australia had an exceptional and unique story to tell about its Jewish community. Jews have been part of the story of Australia since the First Fleet. Australia came to be seen as a unique place good to the Jews. In turn, Jewish Australians have contributed to their country—famous names, like Monash, Isaacs, Lowy and Jessica Fox, and everyday people, with acts of service and gratitude that come from people living lives of peace and security. The grief from Bondi is twofold: it's not just the innocence lost, the families broken and the children scared and afraid; it's also the loss of the precious truth that Australia is good to Jews and the bitter sense that Bondi was predictable—we were warned. There were 800 days of warning signs between October 7 and 14 December, starting on 8 October in Sydney with the public rally where the day of kidnapping, murder, rape and torture of Jews was called 'a day of pride' and 'a day of victory', and exemplified in the occupation of the opera house the next day with chants of 'gas the Jews'; in the incidents where people drove around Melbourne looking for Jews to kill; in the countless acts of graffiti in our capital cities calling for Jews to be gassed and murdered; in the encampments at our universities where Jewish students and staff were harassed; in the endless week-after-week protests in our cities calling for the destruction of Israel and occupying our landmarks; in the sophistry and lies of the academic and intellectual class, who justified abuse by saying that it wasn't antisemitism but anti-Zionism and that they weren't enabling antisemitism but just arguing for peace; in the doxxing and deplatforming of Jewish artists and creatives; in the smashing of Jewish shops and businesses; in the physical assaults on identifiably Jewish people; in the firebombing of cars; in the attacks on the synagogues at East Melbourne, Caulfield, Perth, Hobart, Newtown and Allawah; and, of course, in the firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue. The Jewish community has seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. It ends in murder at Bondi after 800 days of failure. Antisemitism is an old hatred that wears different masks. First it was about religion. Then it was about race. Now it is about the Jewish state. But the hatred is always the same, and the result is always the same. And now that hatred has come here, to our country. The government has been warned about these things by its own antisemitism envoy, whose report was untouched for six months. We know that antisemitism is found in three groups—among Neo-Nazis who revel in the atrocities of the Holocaust, in the radical Islamists who take pride in October 7, and in the cultural left who foster and enable breeding grounds for hatred in our writers festivals, in artistic circles, on university campuses and in the so-called progressive organisations usually pretending to be about Zionism but mixed in with platitudes about human rights. As I said, Bondi represents a moment of choice, and the choice the Liberal Party makes this morning, as we have always done, is to stand with the Jewish community and law-abiding Australians. It's the choice to be constructive, to pass this legislation as a step in the right direction. That's the choice the Liberal Party has made. But the choice for the government of the day does not end today. The choice for the Albanese government is in the implementation. The test for the government is how it uses these new laws. It must expel or jail hate preachers. It must list Hizb ut-Tahrir and its prayer halls. It must protect our borders from radical Islamists and the insidious propagandists who use Jews as a way of attacking Australia. It's a choice that doesn't end with these laws. The government must root out antisemitism from our schools, from academia and the universities, from the arts, from the trade union movement and from its own political base. Unless we do that, Bondi will not be the end of the story; it will be the midpoint of a story that gets so much worse.
Bondi Beach Attack Victims | Condolences | House debates
Today we gather to remember the victims, to support the injured, to comfort the mourners and to praise the heroes. We gather to reflect on the choices before us as a country. As a...
Today we gather to remember the victims, to support the injured, to comfort the mourners and to praise the heroes. We gather to reflect on the choices before us as a country. As a sixth-generation Jewish Australian I have always felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for what this country has given my community. Jewish and Australian stories are deeply intertwined. My grandfather Sam served in the Australian Army in World War II. He was taken as a prisoner to the Thai-Burma railway. In that terrible place he drew strength from the freedom of the Australia he loved. Every week, no matter where the Australians held camp, Jewish services were held. Even in the horrors of the Changi prison camp, a place was consecrated as a synagogue. It's why, when my first child, my son whom I love, was born, I wrote: I want James to understand the particular perspective that comes from being a Jewish Australian, a religious minority that never numbered more than one per cent of this country, in a land which almost uniquely in human history has been good to the Jewish people. That same concept was so beautifully encapsulated by the wonderful words of the Deputy Prime Minister earlier today. There's much I grieve for today: the innocence lost at Bondi, the survivors of Bondi and the things they cannot unsee, the synagogues torched, the Jewish artists doxxed and frozen out, the university students harassed, the small businesses shut down—all of this pains me. But it is the loss of the truth that Australian is good to Jewish people that crushes me. The loss of this idea is felt by every Jewish Australian, particularly when we see our children confused and scared about what is happening in this country. Bondi alone did not do this, but it has been accelerating in the 800 days between the Hamas attack on Israel and the Bondi attack—800 days of failure across our national life. The feeling in the Jewish community right now is visceral. It's of disappointment, of anger and of betrayal. The Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku at the end of World War II left Europe for Australia because he couldn't resolve the question: where were my neighbours? Increasingly, Jewish Australians are asking the question: where are our leaders? Today is not about day-to-day politics; it's about the type of country we want and the type of people we are. The sad reality is, if we don't change, then Bondi won't have changed anything. Bondi represents a moment of choice: will we stay in the political cul-de-sac we've been in for over 800 days, or will we tackle the sources and causes of antisemitism in this country; will our leaders continue to treat antisemitism and violence against Jews as a political problem to manage, rather than the moral and cultural problem that it is; and will our leaders drag their heels or deal with the issues with priority, alacrity and zealous determination? If we are to change, it starts with tackling the three groups where antisemitism has taken hold. The first group where Jew hate is festering is violent neo-Nazi groups. They move in small cells which must be disbanded. They're best tackled with more funding and stronger powers for our security services. The second group is the radical Islamists. They are a danger to our Australian community, and they are a danger to Muslim Australians. In my community the Persian community have for years stood against the mullahs of Iran and all their extremism, and I honour them. We must shut down the hate preachers and their extremist prayer halls. We must proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir—in fact it should have been done years ago—we must jail and expel the vile propagandists and their violence and we must be vigilant about those who seek to come here. The third group where antisemitism is rife in the cultural left. It's in the writers festivals that celebrate people who say their mission is to make Jews feel culturally unsafe. It is in the theatres where keffiyehs are donned and Jews are catcalled. It's in the universities where Jewish students are harassed and Jewish academics are deplatformed. It's in the conferences where Jews are silenced, shut down, humiliated and called 'mutt' and where the term Zionist is used as an insult. In all these places we have witnessed failure of moral leadership, we have seen antisemitism excused with the word 'but' and we have seen hatred framed as artistic expression. It would be tempting to conclude with something poetic or sacred—a call, as it were, to give us hope. I can't do that today, but I will finish with a warning. We cannot continue the 800 days of neglect. Bondi will either be the crescendo to a bad chapter in our history or the midpoint to a story that gets worse. Without change—without political change, without cultural change and without a reprioritisation of antisemitism as the foundational threat to this country—what we have seen will get worse. It's naive to think parliament could sit for two days and then move on as if that's enough to deal with this issue. If we have to, we need to deal with antisemitism every day this parliament sits to get the job done, until we restore an Australia that is good to the Jewish people and free and fair for all. Our times require leadership and goodwill. If we show it—if we work for it—then we can reclaim the Australia we remember and love and, in so doing, provide some comfort for all those who have lost so much. That is the choice before us today.
Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
I move the amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the...
I move the amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that: (1) the Coalition has been an unwavering supporter of the Australian screen industry for decades, and is responsible for: (a) establishing the producer offset, the location offset, the digital and visual effect production offset—which have underpinned support for the sector for almost two decades; (b) introducing the location incentive, which attracted billions of dollars of investment into Australia in the film industry; (c) providing in excess of $100 million in financial supports to the Australian screen production industry throughout the Covid pandemic; and (d) first proposing an Australian content guarantee for streamers in February 2022; and (2) after almost four years of inaction, the Government has asked that this Bill be passed in just four sitting days, having taken the industry by surprise and despite significant concerns about potential unintended consequences". This amendment relates to prominence, with 'prominence' meaning that Australian content is actually accessible to those who wish to watch it. It means it's easily found, visible and discoverable so that viewers can effortlessly choose Australian content if they want to. I've spoken to people in the sector and I know that this is a real issue for them. In the old days, prominence was built into the content requirement. Prominence and local content were a package deal. You couldn't have one without the other. The subscription video-on-demand model breaks that link. Just because you commission an Australian show doesn't mean it will be easily found. No-one wants that outcome. Streamers don't want that outcome. Streamers say they don't do this; the commercial imperative is otherwise. Overwhelmingly, the streamers I've spoken to say that they do the right thing. They say that, if they're going to invest in a show, they want to give it the appropriate prominence so that it's seen and successful. They want a show that will come up on the carousel when you log on to Netflix or Amazon Prime as a selection that you can easily choose, and that's great. As I said earlier, no-one has a crystal ball. We don't know how the market will change in coming years. We don't know what the market impacts of this bill, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video on Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025, will be. We don't know how the market will change. We don't know what new players in the market will do with their catalogues. We can't guarantee that the Australian content that will be commissioned when this bill passes will actually be easy to find for ordinary Australian families. That's why I'm moving this amendment today. This is about futureproofing the bill. It's a simple, light-touch regulatory model. It simply gives the minister a power—a power which frankly I hope the minister never needs to use. But the mechanism is straightforward. The amendment says: The Minister may, by legislative instrument, prescribe requirements relating to the prominence and accessibility of eligible Australian content on major SVOD services if the Minister is satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that it is appropriate to make the instrument to ensure eligible Australian content is readily accessible to Australian users. If you listen carefully, you'll hear the safeguard's built into that mechanism. It has a clear purpose. It requires reasonable grounds. It includes an obligation to consult with the major streamers who'll be subject to the requirement. It says that the instrument will be disallowable. That means parliament has oversight. The amendment says that the instrument is time-bound. It can only last three years. But there's a clear power to amend or remake it. There's a requirement to comply, which is enforceable by civil penalty provisions, along the same lines as the civil penalty provisions that apply to prominence for television. There is also a requirement to review the prominence framework. I say to the minister: pass this amendment. Pass this amendment and vote for the prominence of Australian content. Don't vote against prominence for Australian content. Why not have a mechanism to give the minister the ability to deal with the prominence of Australian content on streaming services as a safeguard to futureproof this bill? Why not make this bill deal with more than just reporting an investment and do better as a cultural policy? After all, it's in the interests of all Australians that they can easily find Australian stories. It's in the interests of the Australian screen production industry that their stories are easily found. The ramifications of this type of measure are far-reaching. They affect the screen production industry, which we support. We want Australian content to be prominent and discoverable in an on-demand world. But there will be other industries in the cultural sector that will also take note. It's in their interests too. So, again, I say to the minister: don't vote against the prominence of Australian content. This is a simple measure, with the wellbeing of the Australian screen industry at its heart. It's not a restrictive legislative formal obligation. It's a flexible, light-touch approach that leaves the platforms with the flexibility to determine the best way to give prominence to our stories, with a safeguard if necessary. The prominence and discoverability of Australian content should be front and centre together in this discussion. They are natural partners. I commend the amendment to the House.
Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025, a very important and long-overdue...
I rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025, a very important and long-overdue bill. I move the amendment circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that: the Coalition has been an unwavering supporter of the Australian screen industry for decades, and is responsible for: establishing the producer offset, the location offset, and the digital and visual effect production offset, which have underpinned support for the sector for almost two decades; introducing the location incentive, which attracted billions of dollars of investment into Australia in the film industry; providing in excess of $100 million in financial supports to the Australian screen production industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic; and first proposing an Australian content guarantee for streamers in February 2022; and after almost four years of inaction, the Government has asked that this bill be passed in just four sitting days, having taken the industry by surprise and despite significant concerns about potential unintended consequences". Speaker, I want to start by directing my comments, through you, not just to those in the chamber, those in the gallery or those who are reading the Hansard for posterity but to the Australian screen industry—the producers, writers, actors, directors, camera men and women, sound engineers, postproduction specialists, set decorators, storyboard artists, costume designers, hairstylists, editors, musicians, animators, drivers, caterers, agents, publicists and everyone else who derives their living and their entertainment from the Australian screen industry. I want to say that we back you. The coalition supports you. We want your industry not just to survive but to thrive. The coalition is the party of small business, and we know that hundreds upon hundreds of small businesses work in and around the screen industry here in Australia. We want the Australian people to hear and see Australian stories on Australian screens. This is the cultural argument. It's about forging a unique national identity. It's about pride in our country. The coalition is the party that has never taken a step back from the pride in our country and in our identity as Australians, whether that is the ancient and living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, our British foundations and the institutions and structures that guarantee the freedom and equality we enjoy today or our multicultural character, a triumph that has brought to this land the gifts and culture of people from all around the globe. These are the three great strands of our history, these are the markers that make our place in the world unique and these are the stories that should be seen and heard by Australians. That means that we support the Australian screen industry. We back Australian content. We back the screen industry. We want the Australian screen production industry to be supported, and we don't accept that they should wear the financial hit that the government has built into the legislation if it is not rammed through in the next couple of days. Support for the screen industry in this country is in the coalition's DNA. This is an area where we have an enviable track record going back more than 50 years. In the sixties and seventies, it was the coalition under John Gorton who established the Australian Film Development Corporation, and Gough Whitlam followed in the coalition's lead with the National Film and Television School. In the 1980s, it was the coalition under Malcolm Fraser who made a 150 per cent tax concession on the investment risk for Australian made film and television production. That incentive was whittled away under Hawke and Keating. In 2007, it was the coalition under John Howard that first introduced the Australian Screen Production Incentive. This was the birth of the producer offset, the location offset and the post, digital and visual effects production offset. When Peter Costello introduced that measure, he described its purpose as being to build stable and sustainable production companies aiming to increase private investor interest in the industry. These three measures are the legacies of the Howard era, and, again, Labor has followed the coalition's lead. Indeed, in 2020, the Office of Impact Analysis estimated that, as at 30 June that year, the Australian Screen Production Incentive had produced $2.9 billion to support the Australian screen industry since its introduction. It's a coalition policy that has been the backbone and linchpin of government support to the screen industry over the last two decades. It was the coalition that provided critical support to the Australian screen industry throughout the difficulty years of the COVID pandemic, including more than $100 million through the modernising Australian screen content and the Temporary Interruption Fund measures. In 2018, it was the coalition that introduced the location incentive program with funding of $140 million, which was expanded by $400 million in 2020. Analysis in February 2022 by the Bureau of Communications, Arts and Regional Research made clear that that measure stood to generate more than $4.3 billion in production, with economic, employment and skills in the metropolitan and regional areas through to 2026-27. In February 2020, it was the coalition that first proposed an Australian content guarantee, a vision of Paul Fletcher, who was then both the Minister for Communications and the Minister for the Arts, who consulted deeply with industry and designed the light-touch framework to ensure that five per cent of the revenue that streamers derived from the Australian market went into local investment. Paul Fletcher had done the work. He had done the heavy lifting in this policy space. He commissioned the ACMA and Screen Australia paper to develop options for supporting Australian stories on our screens. He distributed the policy papers on streaming services, reporting an investment obligation. He worked alongside industry to develop something effective and functional. Labor was left flatfooted, and, typically, Labor followed the coalition's lead. They followed us by promising an investment obligation in the lead up to the 2022 election. They backgrounded industry and media about the now minister's plans to introduce a 20 per cent investment obligation. But it was a rushed and unworkable response, and it wasn't ready to go. These days, Minister Burke will say that he's been calling out this issue since he was last arts minister in 2013, but the fact of the matter is that he didn't do anything about it. There was no action in the 43rd Parliament. There was no action in 47th Parliament. Indeed, by May 2024, the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications noted in an interim report on the national cultural policy that the government was still considering two different models and was progressing with different drafting. Embarrassingly for Minister Burke, a status update on the issue prepared by the Parliamentary Library records, for posterity, that around this time last year, on 5 November 2024, Minister Burke told the Labor caucus: … that the interaction of any new local content rules with the US free trade deal was a stumbling block. That is the ABC article dated 6 November 2024 entitled 'Federal government quietly shelves plans for local content requirements'. Now, after almost four years of delay, we have this bill—a bill which is a weird combination of being long in the making and rushed in the delivery. It's worth saying a few things about it. What does this bill do? There are two main parts to it. The first is a reporting obligation on major streamers called 'major subscription video on-demand', or SVOD, services. The second is an investment obligation. I'll say that again—a reporting requirement and an investment obligation. As we head into 2026, I invite you to cast your mind back to the policy papers released by Paul Fletcher almost four years ago and the commitment he made in the lead-up to the 2022 election which spoke about a reporting requirement and an investment obligation. That's a tick there for the coalition on the headline issues. Again, they're following the coalition's lead on the broad policy measures. There are some differences of approach, of course, and, with Labor, the devil is always in the detail. There are notification and reporting obligations, which differ depending on the size of the streamer in terms of its subscriber base, and there's a dual-track investment obligation. The default position in the bill is that streamers have an investment obligation that amounts to 10 per cent of the total program expenditure for Australia. There is an option to instead elect for an obligation amounting to 7.5 per cent of revenue derived by the service from Australia in the relevant year. This selection can be made once every three years in advance. In terms of the scale of the difference, we understand that most streamers easily meet that requirement already and that what this bill does is put a floor under the level of investment and provide a steer for future players entering the market. There's a three-year acquittal process for each year's obligation, which the government says helps smooth some of the lumpiness inherent in screen production expenditure. Those are the headline features of the bill. I want to turn to the process now. The way that this has finally come before parliament, with a level of urgency that's entirely within the government's power to control, means there are missed opportunities. My initial concern is that, after almost four years, the government is asking that this bill be passed in three sitting days. I'm doubly concerned that the bill has been drafted in such a way that the Australian screen industry stands to lose if the parliament takes the time to examine the bill. That's because the bill has been drafted so that, unless it is passed by the parliament in this calendar year, the investment obligation will not commence until July and those who support the investment obligation will be made to wait. The risk is that, if parliament doesn't pass the legislation now, the screen production industry stands to lose financially. That's something that we on this side of the House do not accept should be the case. There is no reason to draft the bill in that way. It's a matter that is entirely within control of Minister Burke, both as the responsible minister and as the Leader of the House. Minister Burke writes the sitting calendar for this chamber. He's the Leader of the House. He decides how many days we sit each year. He's the one who decides when the bill is slated for introduction, and, as the minister responsible, he's the one who decides when the investment obligation in this legislation would commence. In other words, the urgency in relation to this bill and the potential financial penalty to the screen industry have been created entirely by this government, and that is a matter of deep concern. If the parliament decides to scrutinise this legislation to ensure it's fit for purpose, Minister Burke has a range of options to ensure that the screen industry is not disadvantaged. He could draft the bill to ensure the obligation commences on the day after royal assent. He can draft transition provisions so that, even if the bill is passed in the first sitting week of next year, the obligation is taken to commence on 1 January. He can even recall the parliament if he wants to, to allow time for a committee hearing. The point is that this is a problem that is entirely within the government's hands to fix. The reason for making these points is not just that the bill may have problems—which are within parliament's power to fix—but that there may also be missed opportunities in this bill to benefit the screen production industry in Australia. We've been told by industry that the government is not prepared to consider amendments to this bill. That's a shame because it's clear that there are questions on all sides which warrant answers. The screen producers association, for instance, has made clear there are both positives and negatives to the bill. A number of streamers have proposed amendments to the scheme that they say would make the scheme more workable, with a view to ensuring there's a sustainable industry in Australia. There are issues that the bill should include but doesn't, which should be ventilated through closer examination. One of those is the issue of a prominence framework for Australian content. In the old days of broadcast media, content requirements and prominence were two sides of the same coin. Prominence means Australian content actually being accessible to watchers—being easily found, being visible and discoverable—so that watchers can effortlessly choose Australian content if they want to. In the old days, this was built into the content requirement. Broadcasters were required to play a certain amount of local content in given timeslots. Anyone who tuned in at a timeslot would see a certain proportion of the Australian content presented to them. Prominence and local content were a package deal—you couldn't have one without the other. The subscription video-on-demand model breaks that link. Just because you commission an Australian show it doesn't mean it will be easily found. In theory, it would be possible for a major streamer to fully acquit its investment obligation under this bill by commissioning a range of Australian content and hiding it in the back catalogue where it wouldn't be seen. Let me be clear, this is not what the streamer say they would do, and I do not say that they will do that. The commercial imperative is obviously otherwise. Overwhelmingly, the streamers that I have spoken to do the right thing. They say that if they are going to invest in Australia, they want to give it appropriate prominence so that it is seen as successful. They want the show to come up on the carousel when you log on to Netflix or Amazon Prime as a selection that you can easily choose from, and that's great. But no-one has a crystal ball. We don't know how the market will change in the coming years. There will be new players coming into the Australian market, and we don't know what their approach will be. We don't know what new pressures will influence the major streamers in the years to come, and we can't guarantee that the Australian content that will be commissioned when this bill finally passes will actually be easy to find by ordinary Australian families. We know that the size of the Australian content catalogue is patchy. For some streamers in the Australian market, it is less than one per cent of their overall catalogue. So if you don't have much Australian content, why doesn't the bill deal with that? Why not have a mechanism to give the minister the power to deal with the prominence of Australian content on streaming services as a safeguard to future-proof this bill? Why not make this bill deal with more than just reporting an investment and do better as a cultural policy? After all, it's in the interests of all Australians to be able to easily find Australian stories, and it's in the Australian screen production industry that their stories are easily found. That's why I am moving a amendment to the bill. It's a very simple amendment, modelled on the light touch but highly effective approach of Paul Fletcher, which is to allow the minister to set requirements for the prominence of Australian content on streaming services. It's not a formal obligation; it's a power to take action in the future. That's why I described it as future proofing a few moments ago. It puts the prominence and discoverability of Australian content front and centre. This is the natural partner of an investment obligation. Why not have a proper inquiry into that type of issue in the context of the bill? I want to turn to other questions about this bill. As we said when the bill was first introduced, we back Australian content, but there are questions about how this measure will work. The first one is the question the minister reportedly described as a stumbling block in his own caucus room when he delayed the bill over a year ago. That question is: does this bill breach the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement? Chapters 10, 11 and 16 of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement deal with electronic commerce, investment and cross-border trade and services. Under John Howard, the coalition had the foresight to include some reservations to those chapters. We included specific carve outs for audio-visual and broadcasting sectors. They are recorded in annexure 2 to the agreement. But the question is whether this bill fits within those carve outs and whether there are broader impacts on our relations with other countries. This is an issue which should be explored in an inquiry. Another question is: is the content requirement appropriate? When this bill passes there will be three different standards for Australian content depending on whether you're a broadcaster, a subscription TV provider or a streamer. What does the introduction of this new third standard mean for the market? How will it affect competition between the players? What impacts does it have on investment in the market? What impacts will it have on pricing when it comes to commissioning new shows? The third question is: does this bill make any difference at all? We're led to believe that most streamers already meet the investment thresholds in the legislation. Will this bill actually change the current state of play, or does it only place a floor under the current investment levels, as the government has said, and shape new players considering entering into the market? A fourth question is: what are the unintended consequences? Do those unintended consequences adversely impact the Australian screen industry? Amongst the focus of the US-based streamers there is, of course, Stan, the only Australian owner streamer, which is an offshoot of Nine, a free-to-air broadcaster. Will this bill hobble Stan's ability to commission local Australian dramas and documentaries? Will it mean that an Australian company could be outbid by global streamers, forcing them to acquire low-quality content or pay inflated prices or both? Will the bill inadvertently put more local content behind pay walls? Will the bill damage local broadcasters, who have local drama and documentary quotas but provide that content for free, by driving up prices in the marketplace. Will this bill do harm to the services and platforms that are the backbone of local production? These are important questions, and important questions that should be ventilated in an inquiry. Let me be clear about the coalition's position. Our position on this bill is simple: we support Australian content, we support the Australian screen industry, and we support Australian content being accessible, visible and easily found on Australian screens. In the ordinary course, this bill would be the subject of an inquiry. We don't accept that the industry should face a potential financial penalty if this parliament conducts such an inquiry. This is an issue within the government's power to correct, and we ask them to do so. I thank the House.
Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
Berowra Electorate: Medicare | Constituency Statements | House debates
When the Prime Minister declared that you'd only need your Medicare card, not your credit card, he told one of the greatest untruths in Australian politics. Australians are entitled to expect...
When the Prime Minister declared that you'd only need your Medicare card, not your credit card, he told one of the greatest untruths in Australian politics. Australians are entitled to expect that, when the Albanese government pledge to help their household budgets, they'll actually follow through. Whether they're the household budgets of parents with sick children or older Australians, they're all stretched to breaking point, and the cost of seeing a GP is an added pressure families simply can't absorb. The facts are clear. Out-of-pocket GP costs have blown out to over $50 on average nationwide. That's an eight per cent jump in over one year. Bulk-billing rates have collapsed across the country. Under the coalition, the bulk-billing rate in my electorate of Berowra was over 90 per cent. Under Labor, this has fallen to just under 82 per cent. That's almost 17,000 people in my community who are now having to pay a fee to see their doctor because of the Albanese government's failed policies. What's this led to? Australians are avoiding 10,000 GP visits every single day, with 930,956 fewer services given in the last quarter alone. That's more than a policy failure; it's a broken promise from this Prime Minister. On over 70 occasions, Mr Albanese said that 'under Labor all you will need is your Medicare card, not your credit card'. But the reality on the ground tells a very different story. Let me tell you what Australians from my electorate are saying. They show up with their Medicare card and are hit with enormous gap fees. One pensioner was charged $211 for a single appointment. Another paid $44.66 for a telehealth call lasting barely three minutes. One person seeing a psychologist now faces a reduced rebate and must pay $275 per session. Another's had to cancel their mental health sessions entirely because their clinician was forced to introduce a gap fee to keep their doors open. A concession card holder is paying $109 a visit. And even last Monday, when I attended a GP myself, I was charged $96 following my consultation. Bulk-billing rates haven't just plunged in Berowra. It's happened in 32 electorates across the country, many in outer metropolitan communities like my own, where families are already under significant cost-of-living pressure. Many facing these rising fees are the ones that can least afford to pay. They're the communities Labor claimed they would help. Instead, Mr Albanese and his government have abandoned them. The government can't continue to blame whoever they want for these failures. The truth is it's their policies that have failed. They cannot continue to recklessly spend, impacting inflation. Their failed energy policies keep energy prices high. They expect small businesses, including GP practices, to magically absorb those costs. They can't ignore spiralling workforce shortages and expect practices to bulk-bill just because the government want them to do so. They can't tell Australians their Medicare card is 'all they need' while delivering a system where the card is no longer getting them through the door. Labor needs to listen to patients, to doctors, to communities and to the reality that its policies are driving up costs and driving down access. It's become harder to see a doctor. It's become more expensive. Australians know that Labor has caused this. When Labor spends, you pay.
Horne, Ms Nancy Irene Oakley (Nan) | Statements by Members | House debates
The Berowra electorate is what it is today because of the people who dedicate their lives to making it a better place to live. Nan Horne is one of them, and next week she celebrates her 100th...
The Berowra electorate is what it is today because of the people who dedicate their lives to making it a better place to live. Nan Horne is one of them, and next week she celebrates her 100th birthday. Born in Albany in 1925, she grew up near Cranbrook, Western Australia. A scholarship took her to Albany High, where she found her passion for teaching—a profession which she pursued until her retirement in 1980. In 1962, Nan and her husband, Ray, moved to Cherrybrook. In the eighties, a meeting about what is now Greenway Park drew Nan into the progress association and then public life. When parents needed early learning, she also led the effort in 1987 to establish the Cherrybrook Community Pre-School. That same year, Nan was elected to Hornsby Shire Council. For the next 21 years, Nan guided a place of dirt roads and green-belt paddocks into a thriving suburb for families, with open space and amenities the community needed. During her time on council, Nan was the first and is still the only woman elected President or Mayor of Hornsby Shire Council. Nan carries a strong local story through her husband's family connection to Samuel Henry Horne, the ex-convict turned hero-policeman after whom Hornsby is named. Nan's legacy is still visible today, from Cherrybrook preschool to Greenway Park. Public life is never easy, but Nan Horne made such a difference to our community. Happy 100th birthday, Nan. Our community is the great place to live, the great place that we love, because of your legacy.
Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, National Environmental Protection Agency Bill 2025, Environment Information Australia Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Customs Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Excise Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (General Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Restoration Charge Imposition) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to speak on the government's latest attempt to rewrite the approvals framework that underpins jobs, investment and certainty in our economy. In 2024, I had the honour to deliver the...
I rise to speak on the government's latest attempt to rewrite the approvals framework that underpins jobs, investment and certainty in our economy. In 2024, I had the honour to deliver the Garfield Barwick oration. Barwick is a hero of mine, a former member of this House, former Liberal attorney-general, former chief justice of Australia and the founding president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. In my address, I spoke about Barwick's approach to the environment, which was balanced, prudent and realist. Recognising the complexities of modern life and the demand for raw materials, it envisaged that advanced development and conservation could exist peaceably. When Barwick was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, he commended the foundation at that time for doing a great deal to introduce a sense of balance into the consideration of the protection of the environment. Explaining what he meant by 'balance' in 1970, he said, 'We realise this generation must have access to resources and must use the technologies which are available to make the life of the ordinary man better, but resources can be used and technologies employed without doing avoidable damage to the environment.' This balance is what the Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 should be about, but unfortunately it's not, and it gets the balance wrong. This bill doesn't make small changes or amendments. It's almost 1,500 pages of legislation and explanatory materials that reaches into every corner of the economy that builds, digs, grows and manufactures. It will determine whether projects are approved in months or in years. It will determine whether capital comes here or goes somewhere else. It will determine whether Australians get a system that's workable and provides certainty to the private sector or one that is slower and more complex. What has the Albanese government chosen to do with something that's this significant? We heard the Prime Minister say it just then. They want to rush it through the parliament in one week. The bill was introduced into the parliament on 29 October. Stakeholders have immediately asked for more time to consider the bill. The Senate has already had to step in and refer it to an inquiry reporting on 24 March next year. According to the Prime Minister's timetable, the bill will be passed in the Senate before the Senate has had a chance to even consider this properly. This is outrageous, because 1,500 pages takes time to read, weigh and consider. The member for Watson has carriage of the bill in this chamber, and he knows this. When he sat on this side of the chamber, he regularly decried rushed legislation. In 2014, in relation to a piece of legislation, he said: The timing of this bill has precluded members of parliament from doing their job … Is the timing of this bill precluding not only the parliament but stakeholders from doing their job to ensure the final bill passed is in the best interests of all Australians? Or should we look to 2019, when Minister Burke said, 'There's only one reason the government have decided that they want this legislation to be rushed through tonight, and it's because they've decided to play the game.' So, this is now the game that the Albanese government is playing: acting in the same vein that they accused the former government of doing. Today they're doing precisely what they used to decry, and on such a large and far-reaching piece of legislation from their own government. This matters because rushing this legislation will have real consequences for Australians. This bill updates the 1999 EPBC Act. As environment minister, the Leader of the Opposition commissioned Professor Graeme Samuel to undertake an independent review. The former coalition government introduced reforms, including streamlining pathways. It's no surprise to anyone that Labor, in opposition, blocked them at the time. The Labor government now has presented its own model, but at what cost? Minister Plibersek attempted to make these reforms in the last parliament. They were withdrawn under internal pressure. Labor promised an environmental protection agency at two elections, and four years on it hasn't delivered what it promised. This is all too familiar from those opposite when it comes to energy and the environment. Let's not forget that they promised that Australians would see a $275 reduction in power bills. Four years on, they haven't delivered. The Prime Minister said that life would be cheaper under his government. Four years on, the government hasn't delivered. The issue I particularly want to speak about in relation to the bill is very simple. It's about the transparency that this government is allergic to, and it's about scrutiny. The bill, as I indicated at the start of my remarks, is the perfect exemplar of this government's approach to transparency, scrutiny and allowing the parliament to do its job. Dumping 1,500 pages of legislation sight unseen, with economy-wide ramifications, and then demanding that the parliament pass them without properly looking at them is not the action of a government that wants the parliament to do its job. Indeed, we as legislators would be failing in our job if we didn't scrutinise the legislation properly. Many of my colleagues have already made this point. The legislation contains a range of extraordinary changes that need to be properly weighed. Instead, we heard this petulant demand from the Prime Minister just a few moments ago to pass this bill—more reminiscent of a toddler than of a government acting in the national interest. More importantly, this bill says something very important about the government's approach to transparency and accountability. This is a government that talked a big game on transparency before they came to power. They promised to be so much better. Prior to the election, the Prime Minister promised the Australian people that, if they elected him and the Australian Labor Party to office, he and his ministers would deliver transparency, integrity and accountability in everything they did. Those are the standards he told the Australian people he would uphold and that he wanted them to judge him by if he was elected as Prime Minister of Australia: transparency, integrity and accountability. Now we know that these standards are not the standards that the Albanese government and the ministers are holding themselves to. The former Attorney-General, the member for Isaacs, loved preaching about accountability and integrity, but his government has done the exact opposite. He said that : appropriate, prompt and proactive disclosure of government-held information informs community, increases participation and enhances decision-making, builds trust and confidence, is required and permitted by law and improves efficiency. The point they made in opposition was that transparency actually promotes better government. But that's not what we're seeing in the bill. What about the Minister for the Environment, who's responsible for the procedural mess we're dealing with today? What did he say when he was in opposition? He said, 'We deserve answers and transparency.' He also said it was not negotiable, and should not be negotiable, that the Prime Minister comply with the standing orders and properly answer questions. Clearly he's changed his tune in government. And what about the Prime Minister? In his foreword to a Code of Conduct signed personally by him, we get this sort of sanctimony: Australians deserve good government. The Albanese Government is committed to integrity, fairness, honesty and accountability and Ministers in my Government (including Assistant Ministers) will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australian people. In making all the fanfare that he did in relation to his Code of Conduct, at clause 4.4, under 'Responsibility and accountability', he said: Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide enquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee. That's exactly what we should be seeing with the bill. Instead, we've seen a very different tune from this government. Instead of transparency, accountability and openness we've seen the approach demonstrated by this bill, where we have a government that is demanding that it be rammed through without proper consideration. More important than that, the approach to this bill is part of a very disturbing pattern around secrecy and opposition to scrutiny. There's overwhelming evidence that the resistance to scrutiny that we are seeing in the approach to this bill is endemic. We've seen it in other areas, such as the surge in FOI refusals. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the watchdog of the FOI system, said that the proportion of FOI requests being completely refused shot up to 27 per cent in the December 2024 quarter. By 31 March this year the proportion of requests that had been completely refused by government had, according to the OAIC dashboard, shot up to 31 per cent. We've seen it in this government's approach to consultation, which, extraordinarily, made nondisclosure agreements a condition of participation in too many areas. We saw it in the secrecy in relation to workplace relations reforms. They gagged small business, employers and industry groups that were directly targeted. They got people to sign legal gags and tried to enforce them because they wanted to lock them out of consultation. This government should hang its head in shame. This is the same government that drafted a secret manual directing officials on how to avoid answering questions in Senate estimates, called 'Approaches to SEQoNs asked of all (or multiple) agencies'. The government was exposed because of a leak. The document was circulated among agencies, and the involvement of the Prime Minister 's Office is very murky. This is a government that has repeatedly flouted orders for the production of documents. In fact, this government is now so egregious that the Senate has been forced into extraordinary procedural steps, like extending question time just to ensure basic standards of transparency. The Centre for Public Integrity has made clear that compliance with Senate orders for the production of documents has fallen to the lowest level since 1993. For whole generations of Australians, no government has been worse than this one in actually producing documents for scrutiny. Claims of public interest immunity, a claim that is used to oppose the release of documents, have tripled among this government, and we're seeing them made every single week. We're seeing this in the malicious and petty slashing of staff from all those in opposition and on the crossbench, whose job it is to help hold this government to account. This government broke with decades of bipartisanship to reduce the number of staff. And we're not talking about electorate offices; we're talking about staff whose job it is to help us scrutinise the government. That brings me back to this bill, which, as I've said, is just one more data point in a long line of data points that illustrate this government's addiction to secrecy. It's the sort of petulant approach that, as I said, you'd expect from a toddler. This government has now brought this bill into this House. The Senate, rightly, sent it to committee. Stakeholders want time to look at it. They want time to consider it. They want the chance to tell us, as legislators, how it will affect them. Instead, this government tried to rush it through. The Business Council of Australia has been clear: … without significant changes … we risk embedding a system that's even slower, more complex and lacking the clarity and certainty needed for investment. That's the Business Council, not the coalition. It's a serious concern. We should be examining those concerns in committee. Are those concerns borne out by evidence? Are changes required? What do the changes look like? Does this bill actually provide a solution to a productivity problem, or does it do the opposite, as industry has been telling us? I want to be clear: there are reform options that the coalition supports, but there are also serious issues with the legislation that we're being asked to consider. My colleagues have spoken at length to those issues. I want to talk about scrutiny in this government's approach. As I said, this bill has already been referred to committee. Those opposite should be well aware of the importance of the committee's procedures and why we have committees in this place. It's worthwhile reminding people what Practice says about the importance of committees in the function of our parliament. It says: The principal purpose of parliamentary committees is to perform functions which the Houses themselves are not well fitted to perform, that is, finding out the facts of a case or issue, examining witnesses, sifting evidence, and drawing up reasoned conclusions. Because of their composition and method of procedure, which is structured but generally informal compared with the Houses, committees are well suited to the gathering of evidence from expert groups or individuals. In a sense they 'take Parliament to the people' and allow direct contact between members of the public and representative groups of Members of the House. Not only do committee inquiries enable Members to be better informed about community views but in simply undertaking an inquiry committees may promote public debate on the subject at issue. The all-party composition of most committees and their propensity to operate across party lines are important features. This bipartisan approach generally manifests itself throughout the conduct of inquiries and the drawing up of conclusions. Committees oversight and scrutinise the Executive and are able to contribute towards better government. They also assist in ensuring a more informed administration and policy-making process, in working with the Executive on proposed legislation and other government initiatives. So, this is what the purpose of the committee is in our system. This is why a committee inquiry into this bill has been established. This is why, because of the complexity of this bill, a reporting date for this committee has been listed as March next year. Instead, as the Prime Minister said, we have a rushed attempt to bring this bill into this House and have it debated today, without the benefit of a committee inquiry. The Prime Minister is standing over the Senate and saying to the Senate that they will pass the bill in the next week of parliament sitting without the benefit of that sifting and weighing process which is vital to the committee processes of this parliament and vital to the legislative scrutiny that all of us who are not part of the executive—and this includes members opposite—have an absolute responsibility to do in regard to a bill with such economy-wide ramifications as this one. It is about whether the parliament should be allowed to do its job and whether all of us should benefit from the deliberations of the committee process and the weighty consideration that such a committee would give to a bill as complex and economy-wide as this. What we have, in this bill, is an arrogant government that is instead trampling all over the committee process. It's clear that, by suspending standing orders to rush the debate today, the government has abandoned the longstanding position of the importance of proper consideration of legislation. It has also abandoned due process that must take this matter through a committee process. It has ignored the community benefit and the national interest in scrutiny and transparency and the use of the parliamentary process to deliver the best possible legislation in the national interest. Labor has taken this silly and entirely political approach, attempting to ram 1,500 pages of law and explanatory materials through the parliament without notice and with urgency. I want to make a couple of closing comments to put the bill in context. Australians are dealing with a productivity problem. We can't afford to hardwire delay, confusion and litigation into our approvals system. The bill before the House is being sold as a productivity measure, but there are clear and present concerns that, far from improving productivity, this bill as presented would actually do the opposite. Parliament's duty is to write laws that work. Australians expect us to have genuinely considered the legislation that the government has put before us. They expect that laws are clear, proportionate and practical. This government does not respect that understanding. It does not respect the parliament and it does not respect the Australian people.
Youth Voice in Parliament | Constituency Statements | House debates
It's not every day that you get a wonderful idea from a young person in your electorate that is a reminder that you're never too young to make a difference. That's what happened to me recently...
It's not every day that you get a wonderful idea from a young person in your electorate that is a reminder that you're never too young to make a difference. That's what happened to me recently when Ashleigh Dewhurst, a year 4 student from Pennant Hills Public School, reached out to me with a thoughtful and practical proposal to address some of the challenges young people face in schools. Ashleigh explained that many young people feel too shy, embarrassed and afraid to speak up about the worries on their mind. They might not want to tell a teacher face to face. They might worry that their friends will think they're different. They might not have the words to explain what they're feeling, or they might think that their concerns don't matter. Ashleigh wanted to change this. Her idea is simple, inexpensive and powerful. It's the concept of a letterbox in schools. Students can write down their worries, or draw a picture, if that's easier, and place it in the letterbox. The principal then collects the notes, shares them with the student's teacher and makes sure those concerns are taken seriously. Ashleigh gave me some examples. The student might be anxious about an upcoming maths test, they might be feeling left out on the playground, or they might be struggling and don't know what to do. Her idea also brings our community together. I've been speaking to some of our local men's sheds about helping build these letterboxes so that they can be rolled out across our community. Ashley is here today in the parliament with her family: brother, Miles, and parents, Blair and Erin. They'd been meeting earlier today with the new CEO of Lifeline, Graham Strong, who's also in the chamber, and Emma Carr from Lifeline, to talk about the inspiring proposal. What I love about Ashleigh's proposal is that it's not just practical but it's wise. We often talk about the importance of student wellbeing and mental health. Ashleigh's proposal provides an appropriate way for people who might be too anxious to speak up but who need others to know that they're struggling to get support. As the shadow minister for education, I know that children face pressures inside and outside the classroom, and sometimes that can be overwhelming. If those feelings are bottled up, they become barriers to learning and friendships. But, when children feel safe enough to share their feelings, even through a folded piece of paper, we can continue that work to normalise conversations about mental health and ensure young people can get early support. Ashleigh's letterbox idea has the ability to be another tool for schools to help create an environment not just for education but for care, support, resilience and trust. I want to commend Ashleigh for her creativity and her courage. She saw a problem in her own world and came up with a practical solution. I told her that I would bring the matter to parliament and that I would continue to champion the need to improve mental health and resilience outcomes in schools in our community and across Australia. Giving children a safe and practical way to express their worries isn't a small thing; it's a vital step in ensuring that every child feels safe and supported. Sometimes the biggest ideas for change come from our youngest voices. Ashleigh, you have one of those voices. Congratulations, and keep going.
Brain Cancer | Statements by Members | House debates
Today I met with Philippa Ryan, who told me the story of her husband, John. John was an award-winning builder working across residential and commercial construction and a local in our community....
Today I met with Philippa Ryan, who told me the story of her husband, John. John was an award-winning builder working across residential and commercial construction and a local in our community. Only recently retired, John love golf and, more than anything, he loved his family. John was a husband, a father of three and a grandfather to seven. Last year, John passed away from glioblastoma, after being diagnosed only four months earlier. John's story was devastating to hear, and I thank Philippa for taking the time to share and acknowledge him today. Brain tumours don't discriminate; they can impact anyone at any age. In my own family, my grandmother Ruth died of a brain tumour at 49. The survival rates is confronting—just 22 per cent, and for glioblastoma it's only five per cent. Each year 1,528 Australians die from brain cancer and another 1,896 are diagnosed. This should concern each and every one of us. If we're serious about changing outcomes, we need to do more to support patients, families and research. In Berowra we have dozens of families who have lived through or are currently going through the devastation of brain tumour diagnosis. That's why the Brain Tumour Alliance and its wonderful event Head to the Hill are so important today. I want to acknowledge others in my community—in particular, Ben Murray, Christine Whittall and Danielle Ballantine—who, along with Philippa, shared stories with me and helped me bring awareness of this important issue to the parliament today. Your message is being heard, and I'll continue to advocate on your behalf and on behalf of other families across the Berowra community.
Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. This bill does four things: first, it deals with issues in the international education sector;...
I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. This bill does four things: first, it deals with issues in the international education sector; second, it lifts the caps on Commonwealth supported places for Indigenous medical students; third, it gives new powers to TEQSA to regulate the delivery of higher education on offshore campuses; and, fourth, it introduces powers to compulsorily obtain and publish information in relation to pricing and service delivery in child care. There are also some other technical amendments. In a sense, this is a bill that bookends the education system. It deals with education in the very early stages of life—in the early childhood education and care sector—as well as in the higher education field. It's arguably quite targeted in that respect. But education is a journey that continues through life. When you make changes to one part of the system, there are always downstream consequences. So, when we talk about changes to the early childhood education and care sector, we should also necessarily be talking about the downstream impacts on schools and eventually on vocational and higher education. When you talk about changes that have downstream impacts across our education system, you're talking about millions of Australian students, from very young children through to adult learners and their families. This is the systemic viewpoint that's necessary for this sort of bill, and it would be remiss of me not to put these changes in a broader context. So I want to take the opportunity to say a few words about the education system more generally so that there's a proper understanding of this bill in its context, because one of the most profound shifts in our country in the last 30 years has been in the way in which we educate children. There are major demographic changes that have altered the shape of our country. These are grand demographic, cultural and lifestyle shifts which have really only become apparent through multiple censuses and public policy datasets over 20 years or more and are now reshaping our society. The trends are slow, but they're profound. My approach to these things is shaped by the great Sir Robert Menzies, who was a tremendous believer in the transformative power of education. In 1966, whilst speaking at the University of Melbourne campus, Menzies was heckled by an angry student who wanted him to put more money into education. Menzies shot back: 'No government has ever put into money into education than I have. After listening to you, I can understand what vast amounts we still have to spend.' Menzies's own life had been transformed through scholarships and educational opportunities. In fact, so much of his education policy reflected that biography and background. He wanted to give other Australians the same opportunities he'd had. Menzies promoted a liberal education through the universities as a public good that benefited the whole of Australian society. Two years ago, Michael Wesley told the Robert Menzies Institute about the catalytic role Menzies played in taking a marginalised and in many ways moribund university system in Australia and breathing into it a grand vision and ambition. He spoke about how Menzies's vision for the universities laid the foundation for the world-class education sector we have today. Menzies understood the transformative power of learning, and if we are to understand the Australian population today we also need to appreciate how higher education has transformed our society. In 1996, the year John Howard was elected prime minister, 42 per cent of the population aged 15 years and over had at least one postschool qualification. By 2024, the proportion of Australians aged between 15 and 74 with a postschool qualification had jumped to 63 per cent. In 1996, 10.8 per cent of men and 10.1 per cent of women held a bachelor's degree or higher. In 2024, that number had more than tripled, with 33 per cent of Australians holding a bachelor's degree or above. Beneath that massive change is another social story, about women's education. In 1996, similar proportions of men and women had degrees, with slightly more men than women. By last year, 37 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 74 had a degree at bachelor's level or higher, compared to 30 per cent of men in the same bracket. If you drill down to the 25 to 34 age bracket, 41 per cent of men but 54 per cent of women had a bachelor's degree or higher. That's an extraordinary change and an extraordinary positive reflection in relation to women's education. Returning to the specifics of the bill, the bill lays the groundwork for major future changes to the early childhood education and care sector. The impacts of those changes may flow through to other parts of the education sector landscape as it stands today, so it's worthwhile spending a moment or two outlining what that landscape looks like. The June quarter report from this year showed that there were more than a million Australian families using a childcare service, and many of those families have more than one child in child care. We're talking about a total of more than 1.4 million children attending around 15,000 different approved childcare centres. That's just under half of all Australian children aged five and under, or just over a third of children aged 12 and under. For those who use care, the majority attended centre based care, but around 40 per cent were in outside-school-hours care and just under five per cent in family day care. In 2024, there were 341,000 four- and five-year-olds enrolled in a preschool program. There are over four million school students in Australia today. Around 63 per cent of them are in government schools, 20 per cent in Catholic schools and 17 per cent in independent schools. The non-government education sector is now the fastest growing sector, with independent schools growing by more than 18 per cent in the five years to 2024 and Catholic schools growing by more than six per cent. In higher education, there are now 1.6 million students enrolled in our tertiary education institutions. Of those, more than 1.1 million are domestic students, and there are 589,000 international students. Student numbers are recovering from the pandemic, but men are less likely to commence higher education than they were 10 years ago. In the 2023-24 financial year, international education was worth $51 billion to the Australian economy, with $30.2 billion paid in GST and $20.6 billion paid in tuition fees. It is a major export industry and a major asset to our country. What does this data tell us to date? There are stories in all of these figures. Take, for example, the extraordinary growth in independent and Catholic schools over the last five years. To me, that data shows broader trends. It shows that, in our society, parents want choice, and they will make sacrifices to choose the option that is right for them. It's not my job to tell parents what is best for their children. Parents know what's best for their children. It's my job to make sure that parents have the greatest range of options so that they can choose what's best for their family. The education system needs to be set up to allow parents to make that choice. My role is to do everything I can so that whatever choice they make is a good choice. I only need to look at my own electorate, where we have outstanding government, Catholic and independent schools. As shadow education minister, you will never hear me attack our teachers. Australians love their schools. They know that their schools bring communities together. They know their teachers work hard, and that they care deeply about their students. They know their teachers are trying to give students the foundational knowledge that is so crucial to setting them up for success. I'm a strong believer that students need to develop deep foundational knowledge to set them up and to help them understand the world around them. I want to say to Australian parents: the bases of a strong education, in reading, writing, maths, science and a proper and deep understanding of our history, are non-negotiable. These are the foundations of learning. It's only when these foundations are right that we can properly prepare our children for the future. Without those foundations, we are failing to equip our children with the tools they need to build successful and productive careers. We should expect that our education system will set high standards and drive excellence in these fields. We never want to fall into the trap of low expectations. We owe it to our children to deliver explicit teaching wherever it's needed and to empower our teachers and our principals to combat classroom disruption. The fitness for purpose of our education system is not only in what it teaches; it's in how well it prepares the next generation for the years to come. Foundations are meant to be built upon. What's clear to me is that Australians need to be lifelong learners. There's a phrase often attributed to the American thinker Alvin Toffler, who said, 'The illiterate of the 21st century won't be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.' Ironically, it appears the quote may have been inaccurate or misattributed—but it's a good line and it makes a clear point. We're moving into a world where the ability to adapt will be definitive of success, and there's a growing unease that our education system is just not there. While the data tells a story of the stunning success in women's education, it also tells of the decline in men's education. In 2015, 168,000 young men started their higher education journey. By 2024, that number had dropped to 158,000. This was all while our national population increased by almost 3.4 million over the same period. What's driving this trend? Is it a trend we will see continue into the future? Do the changes that we're making in bills like this one contribute to that trend in our higher education sector? These are the types of concerns, among others, we should be thinking about. In some areas the concerns are immediate. Parts of this bill are designed, the government says, to inform future policy work in the childcare sector. That's good, and it's necessary. But it's also time for immediate action. Last night I watched the revelations on Four Corners about the way that paedophiles have been operating in Australian childcare centres. It was horrific; it's one of the most bloodcurdling and disturbing things I've ever seen on Australian television. We've treated this with the utmost seriousness. Our approach as the opposition has always been to put children first. We've not taken a partisan view on this at any point. We supported the government's response to the horrific incidents we saw this year in Melbourne. We supported the actions of attorneys-general in relation to the working-with-children checks and even called for it to be sped up, which the Attorney did. Just this week we sought to introduce a bill to deal with the sentencing of child sex offenders and made it clear that this isn't partisan but it is urgent. We repeat our request for government support for these initiatives. When it comes to child care, safety must be the No. 1 priority. This morning I wrote to the education minister making clear that, in our view, further action is needed to restore confidence in the sector. I was informed a moment before speaking here that the education minister has written back to me just now. I look forward to reading his letter. We're not interested in taking a partisan line on these issues. Yes, I do urge the government to support coalition moves to strengthen our laws to remove child sex offenders from our streets and to protect our communities. That is not partisan, but it is urgent. As I said to the minister, I'll countenance any serious proposal to further improve safety in our childcare centres. I want to turn to some of the specific mechanisms in this bill, because some of these measures have been before the parliament previously in the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, which was never put to a vote in the Senate. This is not just a reheat of previous policy, because the parliament has not seen more than half of the measures that are in this bill that is currently before the parliament. The debate in the last parliament was dominated by Labor's bungled handling of the overseas student caps issue. Those caps are not part of this bill, but that doesn't mean that the other provisions of the bill are without flaw. In the last parliament, coalition senators who looked at elements of this bill in the course of the Senate committee inquiry raised a number of concerns about missteps and overreach. For instance, parts 1 and 2 of the bill are about education agents, commissions and information sharing. They're intended to address integrity concerns across the education sector following the release of the Rapid review into the exploitation of Australia's visa system by Christine Nixon. The Nixon review cited the fact that approximately 75 per cent of international students seek the assistance of an education agent. The review also deals with the current regulators for the education sector, being TEQSA and ASQA, who play no role in the supervision of education agents. Instead, the onus is on the education provider to ensure that the agents they deal with do not engage in false, misleading or unethical recruitment practices. When this bill was last before the parliament it included definitions of the terms 'education agent' and 'education agent commission' and inserted a 'fit and proper person' test for providers engaging with education agents. Some stakeholders raised concerns about the breadth of the new definition of 'education agent' that may have had unintended consequences. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry submission stated: … the broad definition of 'associate' may pose logistical challenges for providers, potentially deterring valuable investments and complicating compliance. To mitigate these issues, it is crucial to carefully consider the unintended consequences of these broad definitions before progressing the Bill. In the last parliament, the submission from Independent Higher Education Australia stated: While IHEA supports clarity through the definition of an education agent, the references to people who "provide advice or assistance" to overseas students or are "otherwise dealing with overseas students" seems quite broad, far-reaching and may capture people who are not engaged in a financially beneficial relationship with a provider. While we understand the intent is to capture all situations where there are monetary and non-monetary agreements and benefits to agents, it is not clear how a compliance regime will support the identification of non-monetary benefits. These are real challenges. Will part 2 of schedule 1, in effect, drive up commissions in the education agents sector? This warrants careful consideration and I am concerned that consideration has not yet been given. All these concerns remain in relation to the bill before the House. I note that the government's approach here is a very long way removed from what it said it would do. Recommendation 13 in the Nixon review proposed regulating onshore and offshore education agents and adopting a model similar to that of the United States. In response, the government said: The Minister for Home Affairs will consider expanding the remit of the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) to include education agents as providers of visa advice. An expanded OMARA role would be complemented by increased accountability of education providers, without requiring separate regulatory infrastructure in the Department of Education. What about other parts of the bill? Other parts of the bill dealing with education integrity also raise concerns. For instance, the minister's power in schedule 7 to wake up and cancel any course in Australia is completely unchecked. He can do so one day simply if he is satisfied that there are or have been systemic issues in relation to the standard of delivery of the courses included in the class; the courses included in the class provide limited value to Australia's current, emerging and future skills and training needs and priorities; or if it is in the public interest to do so. That power is essentially unchecked. It's a massive power. It's arguably duplicative of the functions of the regulators, and I am worried that this might result in administrative law litigation. There is a measure in this bill as well in relation to Indigenous medical students. This is a modest measure which we understand will only affect a very small number of students and which, given the size of the measure and the way that admissions are regulated currently, has no material impact on admission standards or supply and may help to address a small area of unmet demand. Under this bill, TEQSA also is given additional powers. The powers it is given are to regulate offshore campuses. Why? Why put this ahead of the review that's going on right now into TEQSA's powers and functions? Why is it that, as one stakeholder put to me, institutions are self-accrediting when delivering courses on Australian soil but not when delivering those same courses offshore? The only explanation we have here is that TEQSA has asked for these powers, and we need more explanation than that. Finally, I come to the question of child care. As with school education, parents and families and children come in different shapes and sizes. It's important that we as legislators don't tell parents how to run their families and don't mandate a one-size-fits-all system in relation to the way we undertake child care. We need to provide choices for families to meet families where they're at, and that is the thing that will underscore my approach to the question of child care more broadly. The government's explanatory materials to this bill make it clear that the measure relating to child care will be a measure that is sensitive for the sector. We understand that the information collection will start later this year through a secure platform being constructed by Deloitte. The purpose of the childcare provisions is to compulsorily acquire information about pricing in order for the government to undertake a policy project. We understand this policy project will be initially done on a voluntary basis but that the secretary will be able to use compulsory powers if necessary. There's an obvious concern about the publication of information that may be a pricing signal. We have asked questions about who will be targeted, who decides who will be targeted and who obtains the information. As it stands, the answers are unclear. What is clear is that this pricing project comes after the Productivity Commission's June 2024 report on child care and the ACCC's childcare price inquiry, which was released in January 2024. But the powers have been introduced essentially without consultation or visibility from the sector, and we don't know what the impact will be. This is why we are seeking to have this bill sent to the Senate committee for a short Senate inquiry—in order to unpack and scrutinise the measures in this bill. It's important that the parliament does its job in scrutinising legislation and hears from stakeholders to understand the full effects before passing the bill. It behoves us as legislators to understand the impacts before we pass this bill into law. I thank the House. Debate adjourned.