Monique Ryan's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Health Care | Constituency Statements | House debates
Australia's dream of universal health coverage has been lost. Australians now face an impossible choice, as they cannot access or afford to see medical specialists in this country. We know that...
Australia's dream of universal health coverage has been lost. Australians now face an impossible choice, as they cannot access or afford to see medical specialists in this country. We know that one in three Australians are postponing medical care because of cost, and that increases to one in two Australians in the regions, where markets are impossibly thin. Recent figures from RedBridge suggest that 75 per cent of gen Xers in the regions are deciding not to seek the medical care that they need, because they cannot find or access an affordable specialist. In a cost-of-living crisis, healthcare costs are increasing disproportionately to those of other parts of the economy. I hear constantly from constituents who tell me that they've had private hospital and extras cover for years. They've paid thousands of dollars every year for what they thought would guarantee timely access to care, choice of practitioner and protection from large, unexpected medical bills. Instead, they're encountering extreme out-of-pocket fees to receive specialist care, including costs sometimes multiple amounts more than the Medicare schedule fee. They're getting bills for surgery a day or two before. I heard this morning from a constituent who, as they entered the car park of a private hospital, had been contacted by the surgeon's assistant with a demand for a fee that they didn't anticipate they were going to have to deal with. They're being asked to pay full fees upfront, even those portions that will attract later reimbursement. Since 2010, private specialist fees have increased by 73 per cent. Over the last five years, out-of-pocket costs for common procedures have increased by 300 per cent. People who are vulnerable and seeking urgent medical care for sometimes life-threatening conditions should not be expected to deal with unexpected costs through the private healthcare system. They need to be able to put themselves in the hands of medical professionals they can trust, and it is heartbreaking when they realise that they cannot afford to do that. I'm asking the government to urgently commission a health committee inquiry into the cost of specialist care in this country. All Australians need to be able to access medical specialists, whether they live in the city or in the regions. They shouldn't have to wait three or four years to see a paediatrician or for a hip replacement or to see a cardiologist. All of us should be able to afford affordable care through the private healthcare system. It's a matter of urgency and something that this government needs to address immediately.
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
In 1974, Gough Whitlam made university in Australia free. In 1989, when Bob Hawke introduced our HECS-HELP system, Australia's higher education sector remained, even then, among the most...
In 1974, Gough Whitlam made university in Australia free. In 1989, when Bob Hawke introduced our HECS-HELP system, Australia's higher education sector remained, even then, among the most accessible in the world. It produced generations of Australians with the skills to strengthen our economy, to enrich our communities and to deepen our democracy. Effectively, those who aspired to go to university to study tertiary education could do so affordably. Today, the promise of fair and accessible higher education in Australia has become a mirage. Australians are being priced out of opportunity. Our higher education system that once opened doors is closing them. The bill before us today takes some commendable steps towards reforming our higher education sector and implementing recommendations of the 2024 universities accord. Establishing an Australian Tertiary Education Commission is a welcome reform and a step towards coherence and independent stewardship. Setting a national tertiary education objective will provide much needed clarity for our universities. Those reforms hold a promise, a promise to improve our higher education sector, and I support them. But I'm disappointed that this legislation fails to recognise and act on the structural failures that have created the current HECS crisis. Right now, three million Australians carry, on average, more than $27,000 in HECS debts. Student contributions for courses like commerce and law are nine times higher than they were when Hawke introduced the HECS system in 1989—a time when many members of this parliament were graduating. Graduate salaries have increased by about 2½ times since 1996. In that time, student contributions have increased sixfold. The average HECS debt for someone in their 20s is more than double what it was in 2006. How did this happen? Well, much of it can be traced back to the disastrous job-ready graduates scheme, which the Morrison government introduced in 2021. What was sold then as a way to channel students into priority fields instead delivered a HECS debt crisis—a crisis for a generation of many young Australians. Under the job-ready graduates scheme, students in disciplines like law, accounting, business, banking, finance, economics, communications and politics are contributing up to $17,000 a year in 2026. That means that those young Australians are graduating with $50,000 of debt for basic three-year degree and more than $80,000 if they undertake postgraduate study. They're then taking at least 10 years to pay it off. In popular disciplines like communications, humanities, society and culture, and human movement, student fees have more than doubled as a result of the job-ready graduates scheme. Two in three MPs in this parliament hold degrees in arts, humanities, law or business. These are not fringe pursuits. They're foundational pursuits, disciplines that we need for our economy, our public institutions and our civil life. In a world as fragile as today's, skills from those degrees matter more than ever. But the students who pursue those disciplines are being punished with often insurmountable student loan debts. The number of students affected is enormous. As of 2024, management, commerce, society and culture degrees accounted for nearly half of all enrolments at Australian universities. Right now, there are nearly 700,000 students enrolled in those courses, Nearly half of all university students in Australia, and a large proportion of them are women, First Nations students and students living with a disability. These are the Australians who are being unfairly and disproportionately penalised by the job-ready graduates scheme and who are bearing the burden of serial government policy failures, like those from my friend from the Right. Unfortunately, the effect of the job-ready graduates scheme has been magnified by the means of indexation of HECS. Repayments on HECS aren't deducted until after the loan has been indexed for the financial year, which means that the debt on already expensive degrees can grow further, while people are waiting for the impact of those payments to be reflected in their HECS accounts. Increasing student debt is a drag. It's a drag on the lives of graduates. It's contributing to our record-low birth rate and to the 20 per cent fall in rates of homeownership in 20- to 35-year-old Australians over the last 30 years. Young Australians who are struggling already with their increasing cost of rent and of groceries are finding themselves unable to buy a home, unable to start a family. In a country with an ageing population and a decreasing tax base, this is a demographic time bomb. It's not just an educational equity issue, it's a cost-of-living and a societal wellbeing issue. The universities accord report, which was received by this government two years ago, found that the job-ready graduates scheme and the expensive degrees it creates does not work. The accord recommended 'urgent remediation'—that's its words—to ease the rising and punitive student contributions. The government has publicly, on many occasions, conceded these issues with the job-ready graduates scheme. In 2023, the education minister said that job-ready graduates scheme needs to be redesigned before it causes long-term and entrenched damage to the Australian higher education system. I couldn't agree more. Professor Bruce Chapman, the architect of HECS, has said on many occasions that the job-ready graduates scheme is the No. 1 issue with our HECS system. But, two years on from the accord, students are paying more than ever before. This is no longer just a Morrison era issue. This bad policy was introduced under the previous government, but the job-ready graduate scheme has now been in place for longer under Labor than it was under the coalition. The government could have fixed this problem at any time in the last four years. Instead, it has delayed. It tasked the universities accord with looking into student contributions back in 2022. By February 2024 the accord's final report called for urgent action, and the minister said then that ATEC would look at the scheme and what change can happen. Now, we have legislation for the ATEC before us, but there is nothing in this bill that recognises the urgent need to ease student fees. Student contributions are not mentioned in this bill, not once. In 2025, I was pleased to successfully advocate for a 20 per cent reduction in existing student HECS debts, and I also supported the government's measures to reduce indexation and to increase the payment thresholds on student loans. Those measures have helped to decrease student debt, but they've only reduced debts back to pre-COVID levels, which, following an unprecedented inflationary surge, has done nothing to help those students who are now at university. The legislation does grant the Tertiary Education Commission the function of advising on Commonwealth contributions to the cost of degrees, but Commonwealth contributions represent only a part of the higher education pricing equation. It's alarming that the Commission has not been tasked with considering student contributions or even just considering the impacts of HECS debts on young Australians. It's important that the commission has the power to provide the government with independent and impartial advice on whether the current maximum student contributions are too high. A note to the commission: they are! This function, which is absent in the legislation, is important. It will help begin to reverse the damage that the job-ready graduates scheme has inflicted. The reality is that the government could act today. It could reduce the maximum student contribution amount under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 today, but the government has not put that legislation on the table in Canberra this week. What we can do is ensure that the independent statutory commission can give and will give impartial advice on the biggest cost-of-living factor affecting young Australians. The final report of the Universities Accord called for the ATEC to be an independent statutory authority 'to enable it to provide robust advice and support evidence based decision-making and planning'. It said the ATEC 'needs to be agile and responsive to immediate issues, while remaining future focused overall'. This was echoed in the minister's explanatory memorandum, which states that formal independence is a foundational element of the ATEC's design. However, there have been concerns from stakeholders and from experts about the ATEC's proximity to the minister. Many of the commission's advisory functions can only be performed at the request of the minister. This limits any policy agenda that the commission might want to promote independently of the minister's wishes, including, for example, escalating the question of the job-ready graduates scheme. So, while I support the establishment of an independent higher education commission to steward the sector, I would suggest very strongly that we need to ensure that the commission is sufficiently independent to be able to promote meaningful reform of our higher education sector. If we are serious about securing the future of Australian tertiary education, then we have to ensure that the systems that we build are coherent, transparent and generally capable of restoring public trust. Establishing an Australian Tertiary Education Commission is a step towards that goal. It offers the possibility of a sector guided by evidence rather than short-term policies by careful long-term planning, not piecemeal fixes. This bill will move us towards the implementation of the Universities Accord, but I urge the House and the minister to ensure that the commission is fully equipped to reform the higher education sector and to better tackle the cost-of-education crisis which faces Australian students.
Health, Aged Care and Disability Committee; Report | Committees | House debates
by leave—The NDIS is simply not sustainable in its current form and at its current rate of growth. The uncomfortable truth for those of us who care deeply about the NDIS is that it has to...
by leave—The NDIS is simply not sustainable in its current form and at its current rate of growth. The uncomfortable truth for those of us who care deeply about the NDIS is that it has to undergo reform or we risk losing it altogether. It wasn't designed to support all disabled Australians, but in recent years the loss of community based block funded supports has left a void for those with mild developmental delay and disability. Many participants can't find the help they need, particularly in rural and regional settings. In the absence of alternatives, everyone has had to fight for an NDIS package. We've got an unsustainable situation where 11 per cent of Australia's five- to seven-year-old boys now have individual packages. We have a demand driven scheme with no means testing and no limits on spending, which is projected to cost as much as $100 billion a year by 2032. That's a scheme for 700,000 people which will cost more than Medicare for 30 million. This is unsustainable, inefficient and inequitable, especially when we're still leaving many people with a disability without the support that they need. So it does make sense that, rather than limiting services to individual packages, we should create a system with defined packages for those people who have a more significant disability and community based programs for younger children with developmental delay and neurodivergence. Increasing community supports for children with emerging developmental delays should be more cost effective. It should increase capacity, and it should promote inclusion. The Thriving Kids initiative marks a commitment to a new system of evidence based early intervention services, which should provide equity of access for all young Australian children with emerging developmental delay and disability. We have to acknowledge that there has been very justifiable anxiety within the disability community about these changes. For Thriving Kids to be accepted by the community, it will only win social licence by demonstrating effectiveness, and that includes a real commitment from the states. It cannot be seen as a cost-cutting exercise which will decrease the scope and the quality of the services that are provided. At this point, the state and territory governments are not ready to roll out foundational supports, and so I support last week's announced delay in the launch of Thriving Kids. This was a short inquiry, and it has not been able to address all of the issues and questions around Thriving Kids, but some things remain clear. We have to make it easier for parents to navigate a system which has often proven hostile and defensive. Many parents told us in this inquiry that their caring responsibilities increased when the family member entered the NDIS. That's a fail. We have to collect better data about participants' experiences and outcomes and the quality, safety and effectiveness of their treatment. We heard repeatedly that the record keeping by the NDIS is inadequate. We have to ensure that the services are co-designed with peak bodies and with all stakeholder groups and that they reflect the needs of the child not the eloquence of their advocates. We have to determine that these services can physically be provided and we have to improve access to online health services as well. We have to improve the registration policy and compliance and funding system for the NDIS. We have to help providers to decrease red tape. We have to get them to improve their record keeping and we have to cut down on the fraud, which is unfortunately but inevitably a significant issue at this point in time. The Thriving Kids program has to be subjected to regular review when it's rolled out, and it should have an independent inspector-general. We need better workforce planning. We heard again and again about the deserts where people can't access the supports that they need, particularly in regional, rural and remote settings. It's inequitable and it's unfair. We have to have some better data about where the allied health and other healthcare professionals that we need are, and we have to support them. It's not acceptable that people are waiting years to see a paediatrician in our major cities and that they're paying a large amount of money to do that. We should help more young people join the healthcare workforce by immediately increasing financial support for practical placements for all healthcare students. The Thriving Kids program needs us to resile from the premise that disabled people should have to self-manage their care and that all should receive support individually. Some things are better done together for efficiency, for economy and even for enjoyment. Success of the Thriving Kids model demands that, as a society, we are able to and will accept our responsibility to include and support all children and to create a system responsive to their capacities and their needs and that we commit to creating and supporting the workforce and the infrastructure which are required to maximise those children's independence and inclusion. I'll finish by thanking the chair of the health committee. It's been a great privilege to work with Dr Mike Freelander on this inquiry. Mike brings decades of experience to this parliament. He worked incredibly hard with all of the committee and the secretariat, and the report that we have put together summarises very well the generous and considered contributions of almost 500 groups or individuals who made submissions or who came to the public hearings. I echo Mike in thanking our other committee members who worked hard with dedication, with interest, with maturity and with bipartisanship—a rare bipartisanship in this place. I thank the secretariat as well and commend our report to the House.
Ovarian Cancer | Statements by Members | House debates
Today is World Cancer Day, and February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Today, five Australian women will be told that they have ovarian cancer, a devastating condition with a survival rate of...
Today is World Cancer Day, and February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Today, five Australian women will be told that they have ovarian cancer, a devastating condition with a survival rate of only 49 per cent. Ovarian Cancer Australia's national awareness campaign is shining a much-needed light onto one of Australia's most challenging forms of cancer. Every year in Australia, 1,900 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In most cases, detection occurs at an advanced stage, rendering treatment much more difficult. Raising awareness is therefore essential to improving early recognition, timely care and survival outcomes. One of Ovarian Cancer Australia's primary priorities this month is to secure more research funding. The Medical Research Future Fund has allocated only $21 million to ovarian cancer since 2015. The NHMRC has allocated $64 million since 2012. It is, quite simply, not enough. Minister Butler could double that allocation today with the stroke of a pen. So, today, I call on the Albanese government to save Australian women's lives by releasing the money put aside for that purpose—funding life-saving research into ovarian cancer—in the Medical Research Future Fund.
Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 will enable qualified registered nurses to prescribe pharmaceutical benefits under the Pharmaceutical Benefits...
The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 will enable qualified registered nurses to prescribe pharmaceutical benefits under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It seeks to implement reforms identified as necessary by the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the subsequent scope-of-practice review. The amendments will empower nurses to work to their full scope of practice in primary care. It does make sense that we should do everything possible to ease chronic workforce pressures and provide more equitable access to treatment for people living in rural and remote areas of Australia, in particular. The prescribing of medications has, in the past, generally been limited to authorised health practitioners, primarily doctors but also some others, including dentists, optometrists, nurse practitioners and midwives, who have been given the ability to prescribe within their defined scope of practice. We have chronic workforce shortages across Australia in a range of healthcare craft groups, and these are generally more pronounced in regional, rural and remote areas. Factors contributing to these workforce shortages include the increasing demand associated with an ageing population, rising levels of chronic disease and barriers to education and training, including the financial barriers associated with the absence of paid practical placements for students taking undertaking training in all healthcare professions in this country. Nurses play a critical role in providing essential care for Australians. They manage chronic and complex health conditions and keep people out of hospitals. Nurse prescribing is a cost effective intervention which will offer continuity of care, can reduce the workload for other healthcare team members and improve patient satisfaction. Nurses are highly trusted. Australians trust them and consistently rank them as the most trusted profession in health, which I have a small problem with personally but which I get. And they are the single largest health profession in Australia, accounting for more than half of the Australian health workforce and registered nurses working in Australia—in particular, remote area nurses and rural and isolated practice registered nurses are commonly particularly experienced and skilled. Without access to the PBS, nurse prescribed medications would only be available to those patients who can pay for them privately, and that raises significant questions of equity as well as best practice health care. The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce report from December 2022 was supportive of altering regulatory arrangements to enable all parts of our primary care workforce to work to their full scope of practice. The subsequent review undertaken by the Albanese government proposed recommendations aimed at enabling healthcare professionals, including pharmacists, dental hygienists, nurse practitioners and allied health workers, to work at their full scope of practice. But it's important to note that we're not actually doing that with the legislation in front of the House. Key recommendations of the scope of practice review included the establishment of a national skills and capability framework for consistent legislation across jurisdictions and new funding models to support multidisciplinary and patient centred care. A major finding of that review is the fact that we have ridiculous but ongoing legislative inconsistencies across Australian states and territories which limit the scope of practice for professionals, such as pharmacists and Aboriginal health practitioners. For example, while pharmacists in some regions can administer vaccines, in others, they are prohibited by law from doing so. Similarly, Aboriginal health practitioners in Queensland are banned from undertaking immunisations even though they've had the necessary training. These sorts of discrepancies contribute to inequities in healthcare access. They increase strain on our workforce, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities, and they really make no sense. Basically, we need a commitment from the federal, state and territory governments to removing barriers, to streamline care across all Australian jurisdictions. I do note that this legislation expands the ability of registered nurses to prescribe schedule 2, 3, 4 and 8 medications under supervision. Under the new standards for nurse prescribing which came into effect in September 2025, designated RNs who are prescribers will have to have 5,000 hours of post-registration clinical experience and to have completed specific training. They have to prescribe in partnership with an authorised health practitioner and complete a six-month period of clinical membership after accreditation. A model in which a suitably qualified RN works closely with a doctor to try to titrate a medication to meet patient needs does seem reasonable, but it would be appropriate to limit authorisations for that sort of oversight to professionals who are free of commercial conflicts of interest. And it makes sense that nurses are given access to prescribable medications which have been carefully selected such as to secure that they're safe and appropriate. It is disappointing that this legislation extends prescribing capacity only to registered nurses. I note that the podiatry endorsement for scheduled medicines registration standard has been in place for years, but we still haven't given podiatrists the ability to be authorised prescribers under the PBS. There's no rationale for this anomaly. In order to optimise scope of practice for health professionals, we could act today to expand authorised prescribers under the PBS to include all professions which are currently endorsed to prescribe. It would be reasonable to expect that, if we did so, in addition to immediately enabling podiatrists to act independently, we could in short order allow optometrists to prescribe oral medications and potentially increase access to prescribing for physiotherapists and for other craft groups. There are some potential pitfalls to expanding the ability to prescribe to healthcare professionals who have not traditionally been given that remit. These include the danger of fragmented care, duplication of services, increased complexity, role confusion and poorer health outcomes. If the professionals who are prescribing don't have adequate diagnostic and clinical experience, of course there's a risk of inappropriate prescribing such as unnecessary antibiotic use and a greater chance of drug side effects in the context of multimorbidities and polypharmacy. This is particularly relevant for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who often experience multiple health conditions earlier in life, and for older Australians, who are often on multiple medications. Other recent concerns include the increasing use of telehealth and emerging online business models often focused on prescribing specific substances like medicinal cannabis or weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic. In that context, prescribing is often based on a single phone or video consultation, so it carries much greater risks than those associated with typical face-to-face consultations with a GP who knows their patient. Concerns have also been raised by stakeholders regarding the types of medications that can be prescribed by RNs. Specifically, the AMA and RCGP have expressed appropriate concerns around the prescribing of schedule 8 medications such as morphine and other opiates. Schedule 8 medications carry a significant risk of abuse, dependency and harm. It's my belief that prescribing of these should remain the role of the clinician ultimately responsible for patient care and management. There are real concerns not only for patients but also for prescribers with allowing nurses to prescribe schedule 8 medications without putting in place the appropriate legislative guardrails. For example, such designated RN practitioner prescribers will not necessarily have access to real-time monitoring programs, which is a real concern given the significant risk of misuse by some individuals of schedule 8 opiates. The expansion of scope of practice should empower our healthcare professionals. It should improve accessibility and efficiency in health care. Our first priority should always be patient safety and the protection of patient care. Given the increasing complexity of medical care in this country, particularly for older Australians and for those with multiple medical problems, the best model of care is that provided in a multidisciplinary team. I support this bill as I support increasing the scope of practice of all competent healthcare professionals in Australia, but I call on the government to ensure that these changes are appropriately scrutinised and monitored and then not instituted in a kind of band-aid solution in response to the—at this point—unaddressed issue of our chronic healthcare workforce deficiencies. Having said that, I commend the bill to the House.
Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
by leave—I move: (1) Schedule 1, heading, page 3 (line 1), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 7), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (3)...
by leave—I move: (1) Schedule 1, heading, page 3 (line 1), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 7), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (lines 8 to 19), omit subsection 6L(1), substitute: (1) Despite any other provision of this Act, subsection 6A(1) applies in relation to each CPI indexed draught beer rate as if the indexation factor were 1 for 1 August 2025 or a later indexation day. Note: This means the rates as they are on 31 July 2025 will be unchanged indefinitely. I propose amendments to the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025. The rising cost of living has challenged millions of Australian families for several years now, with inflation rising sharply since our economy bounced back after COVID. The government has a hand in setting the price of relatively few grocery items, but one of them is the cost of beer. The average price of draught beer has gone up by over 30 per cent in the last three years, an increase which is considerably higher than the rate of inflation. This has, at least in part, been driven by the automatic indexation of the beer excise every six months which has forced price increases above their annual CPI. This indexation is yet another typical anomaly in our unnecessarily complex tax system. It's pleasing to see the government's commitment to freezing indexation on draught beer for two years, but indexation of the excise over recent years has left those draught beer prices already too high. Indexation of the beer excise needs to stop, and that's why I'm moving that this freeze should be permanent. A permanent cap on the draught beer excise would help millions of Australians with cost-of-living pressures. It would also help support Australia's emerging craft beer industry. Despite rapid growth of small independent brewers, 85 per cent of Australia's beer market is controlled by two foreign owned multinationals. Our craft beer industry supports local workers and economies. The independent beer sector employs over 8,000 people directly, with many brewers also contributing to local hospitality and to tourism. Independent brewers face challenges with the rising cost of ingredients and energy, softening consumer demand and stiff competition from large retailers like Coles which are increasingly selling home brand beers and mimicking craft styles. Many small brewers deferred excise increases during COVID and are now struggling with that debt in a persistently tough economic climate. Alcohol taxation in Australia does not make a whole lot of sense. The wine equalisation tax taxes wine and other fruit based alcohol products based on their wholesale price, not their alcohol content. That has led to an oversupply of cheap wine products in Australia. It's decreased tax income, but it's also increased consumption of fruit based alcoholic products, flavoured ciders and cleanskins. The WET should be abolished. We should tax all alcohol products consistently with a volume metric tax based upon their alcohol content. That has been recommended by several independent reviews. There is a lot more that we could and should do to responsibly tax the alcohol industry. In fact, there is plenty that we could do and should do to reform our tax system overall. We could derive fairer income from fossil fuel and mineral exports by more effectively taxing resources that are owned by all Australians. We could get reasonable income from our digital services. We could stop subsidising fossil fuels by means of the diesel fuel rebate for mining companies. We could tax labour less and income from passive sources such as rent, interest, super and capital gains more. We could take a good hard look at every part of our tax system, and we could have the courage to tackle housing affordability as well as the significant challenges associated with the funding of health, education and aged care. But to do that, we would need to have a government which had both courage and vision. For the moment, those of us who do care about tax reform in this country have to push this government—bit by bit, issue by issue—to make things fairer and more equitable, and to restore some sense to a system which really does not make a whole lot of sense. And so I've moved this amendment to permanently freeze indexation of the draft beer excise to help thousands of Australian craft brew workers and to offer some cost-of-living relief to the millions of Australians who simply want to be able to afford one of the simpler pleasures of life. Question negatived.
This motion confronts us with a truth that should unsettle every person in this chamber. Racial violence against First Nations people in Australia is not hypothetical, it is not historical and it...
This motion confronts us with a truth that should unsettle every person in this chamber. Racial violence against First Nations people in Australia is not hypothetical, it is not historical and it is not isolated. It remains a real and present threat. The attempted bombing in Boorloo/Perth on 26 January was not just an attack on a peaceful protest; it was an attack on First People who were asserting their identity, their history and their right to gather on a day that to them marks a day of dispossession. That this incident is now being investigated as a possible act of terrorism is appropriate but also deeply alarming. It speaks to the seriousness of the threat that we are now all confronting. Violence motivated by racial hate has no place in Australia. Many of us spoke to this fact, and we tried to legislate to that effect in this place last month. But words of condemnation, while necessary, are insufficient. When acts of racial violence occur and are not met with immediate, visible, decisive action by police forces and by government, they don't fade; they metastasise. An attack against First Nations people is an attack on all Australians. This is not a political slogan; it is a statement of fact. Our country and our culture rest on the principle that no group should live in fear because of who they are. When that principle is breached for one community, it is weakened for all of us. For many First Nations people, 26 January is a day of mourning. As a country, we should have the heart and the maturity to respect that fact. To target a non-violent Invasion Day rally with an act of violence represents a deliberate attempt to intimidate and to silence. That's why this motion matters and why the response to it must be more than just the sum of the words that we speak here today. What happened in Perth on 26 January didn't happen in isolation. Months earlier, after the March for Australia rally in September, Neo-Nazi protesters in Melbourne openly attacked a camp which was asserting Indigenous sovereignty. These were not covert acts. They were carried out in public in broad daylight with symbols and chants that left no ambiguity about their intent. But the response from authorities from both Victoria Police and from the AFP has been slow and opaque. Five months after this act of violence, we're still waiting on investigations to be completed and charges to be issued. For First Nations people from Victoria and their allies, the message has been unmistakeable: expressions of white supremacist intimidation can occur in the open in the heart of our city without immediate consequence. That perception is corrosive. It emboldens extremists. It deepens fears in people who have already been subjected to entrenched racism for generations. The federal government has a duty to protect all people in this country from racism, discrimination, hate speech and the threat of racially motivated violence. That duty doesn't end in statements. It requires coordination with the states. It requires the enforcement of policing standards. It requires the disruption of organised extremist networks and a willingness to name Neo-Nazism for what it is: an ideology of racism and violence. First Peoples in Australia continue to face entrenched racism, threats and intimidation. This motion appropriately calls for urgent action in response. Urgent means now. It means ensuring that camps asserting sovereignty are protected, not ignored. It means ensuring that those who organise, incite or carry out racially motivated violence face consequences proportionate to the harm that they cause. This parliament has recently and rightly condemned racially motivated hatred and extremism. That condemnation has to unambiguously include the incitement of hatred and violence towards First Nations people. So I thank the member for Curtin for moving this motion, and I join my colleagues here today in acknowledging the significance of this event and expressing solidarity with all those impacted by it.
Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
I move the amendment circulated in my name: (1) Schedule 1, page 42 (after line 10), at the end of the Schedule, add: Part 8 — Reporting Criminal Code Act 1995 65 At the end of Subdivision...
I move the amendment circulated in my name: (1) Schedule 1, page 42 (after line 10), at the end of the Schedule, add: Part 8 — Reporting Criminal Code Act 1995 65 At the end of Subdivision C of Division of the Criminal Code Add: 80.2DA Annual report (1) The AFP Minister must, as soon as practicable after the end of each financial year, cause to be prepared a report about the operation of this Subdivision, and the rest of this Part to the extent that it relates to this Subdivision, during the financial year. (2) Without limiting subsection (1), the report must include the following matters: (a) the types and number of alleged offences reported to police; (b) the types and number of alleged offences referred to a prosecutorial agency; (c) of the alleged offences referred to a prosecutorial authority, the types and number that were finalised without court proceedings; (d) of the alleged offences referred to a prosecutorial authority, the types and number that were finalised by a court, including whether a conviction was recorded; (e) in relation to matters finalised by a court, details of any sentence imposed. It's clear that the Australian community has insufficient evidence based information in relation to existing hate speech offences. There has been a lot of misinformation about these offences, how they operate and whether they're successful in the prosecution of serious instances of hatred within our communities. To have respectful, fact driven conversations about hate crimes and about how well we are addressing them, we need clear and regular reporting about the incidents, nature and outcomes of those crimes in this country. That data can then guide assessment of the effectiveness of interventions such as the legislation that we are debating today. At the eleventh hour, earlier today the government agreed with the opposition to include reporting on new aggravated offences for hate preachers and listings of prohibited hate groups within this legislation. Those additions are welcome. But they relate to only two new hate provisions. They are too limited in scope, and they won't take effect for two years. The amendment I put in front of the House now requires the government to provide annual reporting on the effectiveness of existing hate offences under the Criminal Code—those reported to the police, those referred to prosecutorial agencies, those finalised with and without court proceedings—and the details of any sentences imposed. With this I call for anonymised reporting on the substance of those alleged or prosecuted offences and the reasons why some may fail to result in a prosecution. To date, the convictions, prosecutions and sentencing of crimes committed under the hate regime of the Criminal Code have not reflected the broader community's view on the seriousness of these crimes. I expressed this concern in this place in February 2025. Since that time the laws have been invoked to charge only a handful of people in the face of a very significant number of hate crimes that we know are ongoing within our communities. This is just disproportionate to the seriousness and prevalence of hate crimes in our communities. The reports that would be generated as a result of this amendment will provide a clear and accurate picture of whether a hate crime regime is effective or whether its threshold remains too high to enable meaningful outcomes. The amendment is based on recommendations of expert groups, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the office of Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. We need a better understanding of the effectiveness of this critical piece of legislation. This amendment would represent a constructive contribution to that effect.
Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
The terrorist attack in Bondi on 14 December 2025 shocked our country, and it utterly traumatised the Australian Jewish community. In its wake, our country needed our leaders to stand together...
The terrorist attack in Bondi on 14 December 2025 shocked our country, and it utterly traumatised the Australian Jewish community. In its wake, our country needed our leaders to stand together with resolution and unity. Instead, our leaders have largely failed us in the last four weeks. The immediate politicisation of a mass murder, by the opposition, which attacked the Prime Minister and which immediately chose to punch down on immigrants, disgusted many people in the community that I represent. The opposition's strident calls for the immediate return of parliament, followed very soon after by complaints about the early return of parliament, were confounding. The government initially vacillated on the need for a royal commission and then proposed broad, sweeping legislation on critical areas—the Criminal Code, migration law and gun control—without the judicious consultation and review that would ensure the confidence and support of our constituents. Civil liberty and community groups were given 48 hours to provide, to the parliamentary committee, submissions on a 144-page bill, with the final report being released just this morning. While I consulted constituents on the bill last week, the government decided to fold to pressure over the weekend, announcing wholesale changes without including our communities. The legislation now before the House was first seen by us less than an hour ago. We have been given five minutes to speak to it. This is unacceptable. Australians want us to get this right. Poor policymaking will not reassure our electorates. It won't make our constituents safer. Terrorism is not just an attack on our lives; it is an attack on our confidence, on our idea that the democracy we live in can remain both secure and free. Legislation on the run will never engender confidence in our processes or our government. In the last week, I've heard from many constituents who are rightly concerned that this legislation has been introduced and moved too quickly, with insufficient opportunity for community consultation or parliamentary scrutiny. They want us to undertake careful, rights based, non-reactive lawmaking. They want clear definitions, robust scrutiny and protections for democratic freedoms, including those for protest and advocacy. The concern from many in our community, and in the findings of the parliamentary report that was released this morning, is that the speed with which this bill has been drafted and the potential broad application of many of its provisions could have a chilling effect on legitimate debate on political, social and religious issues. The speed with which this legislation has been developed means that legal inconsistencies and unintended consequences seem inevitable. The bill does include measures that I and my community support. I support the government's move to include tougher penalties for hate crimes. I commend the government on taking action to constrain the radical hate groups that divide and harm us. I welcome new aggravated offences for community leaders who choose to incite violence. This morning I supported measures to improve the control of firearms in this country. But there are things that we're not debating today that we should be talking about. We're not protecting all Australians from serious vilification based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics. Hatred doesn't discriminate based on those characteristics, and neither should the law. The need for these protections was agreed on by the Jewish community, the Australian Human Rights Commission and Equality Australia, but the government has caved on this issue to a coalition that is in ethical and political freefall. The removal of racial vilification elements from this legislation renders it less likely to be effective in its aim of banning hate groups. The government has further watered down the bill overnight to ensure it can be passed today, but we don't have to pass this law today. We could consult with our communities, faith groups and human rights and legal experts and get this right. The government is letting politics be the enemy of policy. If the legacy of Bondi is a memory of division and inadequacy, then we will have failed this country. Yesterday so many of us spoke in this House of our great sadness at the tragic loss of 15 Australian lives. We have a unique opportunity with this legislation to make the greatest of differences on their behalf. If we don't do that, it will be a moment of darkness for this country, and it will reflect poorly on us all.
Bondi Beach Attack Victims | Condolences | House debates
The terrorist attack at Bondi on 14 December 2025 changed our country. What should have been an evening of sunlight and laughter, of faith and community, became a moment of national trauma. We...
The terrorist attack at Bondi on 14 December 2025 changed our country. What should have been an evening of sunlight and laughter, of faith and community, became a moment of national trauma. We lost 15 of our own to acts of senseless violence, and we lost some of the confidence we had as a country in our safety, our freedom and our generous diversity. In this place today we honour those lost by saying their names, and we say them with love, with respect and with grief: rabbi Eli Schlanger, Boris Tetleroyd, Boris and Sofia Gurman, Reuven Morrison, Edith Brutman, Marika Pogany, rabbi Yaakov Levitan, Peter Meagher, Tibor Weitzen, Alexander Kleytman, Dan Elkayam, Adam Smyth, Tania Tretiak and Matilda, the 10-year-old girl who broke Australia's heart. A central promise of our liberal democracy has always been that Australians should never have to live in fear of violence or intimidation because of who we are. In our most challenging hours as a nation Australians have drawn together. We've always been united against hate, against terror and against division. In moments as dark as these we are confronted by how much our society has changed in recent years. Antisemitism has accelerated. Racism and bigotry have become more virulent, their proponents more vocal and more violent. For many Jewish members of the Kooyong community the events of 14 December exacerbated their increasing fears that they're not safe here, they are not valued here and they do not belong here. I've heard from many of their devastation and their anger. Many are the children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Their families crossed the world to find safety and security but now find themselves vilified in our streets, their schools defaced and their synagogues and cars torched. I've also heard from dozens of constituents who are not Jewish but who want me to convey on their behalf in this place their profound grief at what happened at Bondi. They've asked me to acknowledge on their behalf the pain and tragedy of the lives lost, to express shame that this happened to our own on our own beach and on our own shores. They want their leaders to express their grief and sympathy without qualification and without partisanship, and they want us in this place to demonstrate sensitivity and respect for all as we seek to heal our communities and our country. Together we thank those who had the extraordinary courage to protect others, sometimes at their own cost—those who thought not of race or religion, not of themselves, but only of the humans around them. We thank the police officers, first responders, surf lifesavers and healthcare workers who saved lives while risking their own. We know that no-one who was there at Bondi on 14 December will ever be quite the same again. If we are divided by these acts of terrorists, the terrorists have won. We can't let them close our hearts against each other. We have to stand together—arm in arm, hand in hand—to mark our loss, to express our grief and our desire to protect all Australians from acts of hate, and to support all members of our communities so that they will always know that they are respected, valuable and equal. Acts of senseless destruction will never overcome our determination to defend the strength, beauty and generosity of Australia's democracy. Our unity as a country is our greatest strength. We mourn those lost at Bondi because they are our own, and we mourn the loss of innocence that we've all experienced because extremism and terrorists have brought hatred to our home. Let the memory of the 15 lives lost at Bondi be a blessing. Let our home again be the Australia that they chose to live in and to immigrate to, and let their light shine brightly in this hour of darkness.
Asylum Seekers | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. In the last three months the government has signed a secret MOU to pay Nauru at least $2.5 billion to house an undisclosed number of asylum...
My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. In the last three months the government has signed a secret MOU to pay Nauru at least $2.5 billion to house an undisclosed number of asylum seekers. Allegations of corruption have been made against multiple members of the Nauruan government, and it's been reported that Australian bikie gangs have won contracts to manage security on Nauru. Minister, is it your position that the opacity, wastefulness and cruelty of these arrangements reflect well on this country?
Science | Statements by Members | House debates
Australian scientists invented medical ultrasound, wi-fi, Aerogard and the cochlear implant. Our medical researchers developed penicillin, spray-on skin, cardiac pacemakers and vaccines against...
Australian scientists invented medical ultrasound, wi-fi, Aerogard and the cochlear implant. Our medical researchers developed penicillin, spray-on skin, cardiac pacemakers and vaccines against HPV. But in 2025, the Albanese government lacks the vision and commitment required to maximise yield from Australia's remarkable science, technology and medical research sectors. As inflation and the cost of computational requirements and cybersecurity rise, we are undersupporting science and medical research, and our institutes and research organisations are suffocating. While we await the government's strategic examination of research and development, the CSIRO is cutting jobs and programs; ANSTO is losing facilities and staff; the Medical Research Future Fund is underspent, while the financial capability of one in five medical research institutes is on the line; and grants from the Australian Research Council and the NHMRC have declined by 27 per cent over the last decade. Australian research and development is at risk of being stifled in the present and sidelined in the future, while we lose the talent and infrastructure that drive jobs, national security and technological strength. We have a choice: vision and transformation, or failure and loss. A defining decision awaits this government, and I urge it to choose wisely.
Commonwealth Prac Payment | Matters of Public Importance | House debates
The cost of tertiary education shouldn't hang over Australians' heads for the whole of their working lives, and, while they're studying, they shouldn't be anxious about where they're going to...
The cost of tertiary education shouldn't hang over Australians' heads for the whole of their working lives, and, while they're studying, they shouldn't be anxious about where they're going to sleep and what they're going to be able to eat because they can't cover the cost of their practical placements. Earlier this year, I welcomed the introduction of the Commonwealth prac placements for nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work students, but my position has always been—as the member for Indi's has, and I thank her for moving this motion—that this payment should apply to all courses in the care sector. When I was a medical student, accommodation was free. Caffs were cheap, but those days are gone. Medical students now have to cover the cost of professional registration, working-with-children checks, police checks, travel and accommodation, all while they are strictly limited in their ability to work to support their living expenses. Cost-of-living pressures mean that the proportion of students who have to support full-time study with full-time work has doubled, from one in 14 students in the 1990s to one in seven in 2023. In expecting students to undertake unpaid prac placements, we're therefore asking some of them to effectively work three full-time jobs. Medical students are required to undertake 2,000 hours of unpaid clinical placements, often well away from home in rural and regional settings. Occupational therapy students are required to undertake 1,000 hours of unpaid placement, including regional rotations with no travel support and no accommodation support. It's similar for podiatry students, who undertake up to 1,200 hours. The Australian Society of Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy recently found that placement poverty, which they define as experiencing significant financial hardship while on tertiary placements, affects 75 per cent of medical imaging students during their 56 weeks of placement. Nearly a quarter say that they cannot support themselves. Many consider dropping out. Others have already left their courses because the financial strain is just too great, especially for those students who are juggling work, study and care responsibilities. When Australia faces significant and ongoing shortages of GPs, medical specialists and virtually all allied health disciplines and mental health supports, it is inexplicable that the government is not doing everything possible to help all students complete their training. Education and training should be an opportunity available to every Australian. It shouldn't be a financial burden, but, for too many of our students, prac placements mean stress and anxiety more than they mean engagement, fulfilment, skills development and learning. Every time I raise this issue on social media, my DMs and my email inbox are flooded with stories from students from around Australia, which reinforces that prac-placement poverty is real and it is hurting our future workforce. I've heard from young women who are being forced to sleep in their cars, to skip meals and to then defer their studies so that they can save for a year so they can complete their prac placements. Some give up because of the stress and the financial burden; they never go back to study. Those young people will be left with debt and regret, but no diplomas or degrees. That is a failure of policy and it's a failure of government. Prac placements are also a question of gender equity because more students in the care sector are female than male, and it's a question of intergenerational equity. The young people who are now undertaking tertiary studies are the generation which in the middle of a compounding cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis and climate crisis are being burdened with unprecedented levels of personal debt simply through their desire to train and to equip themselves with the skillsets that they need for their adult lives. This is a generation which understands that Australian university students contribute more to government revenue than the oil and gas industry do in resources tax. What does that say about our government, what does that say about its principles, and what does that say about its priorities? I call on the government to recognise this education crisis for what it is. We owe it to the next generation to do better for these students. If we invest in them now, we invest in the future wellbeing of every Australian.
United Nations' International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women | Motions | House debates
I thank the member for Newcastle for raising the very important issue of gender based violence and our colleague the member for Leichhardt for his very generous contribution. But I really feel...
I thank the member for Newcastle for raising the very important issue of gender based violence and our colleague the member for Leichhardt for his very generous contribution. But I really feel that I need to draw attention to the government's failure to address one of the key drivers of gender based violence, that being gambling. Less than a month ago this parliament received the second yearly report from the independent Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission. The report noted that over the last 15 years there has been no shortage of royal commissions, inquiries, coronial inquests and reviews into the experiences of women and children facing violence. Those reports have come up with over a thousand recommendations—many repeated, many consistent, many overlapping. We don't lack solutions for gender based violence. They're well established. What we lack is coordinated action led by the federal government to implement solutions that will save women's lives. The 2020 report, commissioned by the Commonwealth Institute of Family Studies, into the relationship between gambling and domestic violence against women found a clear correlation between gambling addiction and financial abuse as well as other harms. It shared stories of women who'd had to support the family alone while their partners gambled away his wages, women who'd had their bank accounts cleaned out and their mortgage payments taken by a partner to spend on gambling, women who'd lost their homes and their assets and been coerced or defrauded into taking on debt, and women who'd been assaulted by partners angry because of their losses. Amongst the study's seven headline recommendations is the suggestion that we should tighten regulation of the gambling industry to prevent gambling related harm, including a reduction in gambling advertising—a recommendation clearly stated but as yet unimplemented. Another example, which will be familiar to MPs in this place, is the report produced by the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs into online gambling and those experiencing gambling harm. It's now 28 months since the You win some, you lose more report was released. It cited evidence from the Australian Gambling Research Centre that 69 per cent of Australians believe they see too many betting advertisements. The committee recommended banning online gambling advertising, in part due to the serious psychological, health, financial and relationship harm that is caused by gambling: another consistent finding, and another recommendation clearly stated but, as yet, unimplemented. Last year, the Prime Minister described family violence as a national crisis. He commissioned an urgent review of preventative measures. That review recommended, amongst other things, government intervention in the industries from which family violence gets its foundations and its means of escalation—notably, gambling and alcohol. The review recommended restrictions leading to a total ban on gambling advertising—another recommendation without action. Experts are imploring the government to develop a razor-sharp focus on coordinated, accountable delivery of longstanding recommendations to prevent family violence. All are wondering why a prime minister who called family violence a national crisis now seems more concerned about protecting the revenue of broadcasters and sporting codes than protecting women and children from abuse. We don't need more recommendations. Australian women and children need action. One of the best places to start is by banning predatory gambling advertising. In the words of the late Peta Murphy: We have a culture where sport and gambling are intrinsically linked. These behaviours are causing increasingly widespread and serious harm to individuals, families and communities. Police are called to hundreds of thousands of domestic and family violence incidents a year in Australia—as many as one every two minutes, or two since I began this speech. If we banned gambling advertising this week, we could save dozens or even hundreds of Australian women from family violence this summer. It's time for the government to stop talking and to do what it knows it needs to do. It's time to ban gambling advertising.
Tertiary Education | Private Members' Business | House debates
Australians are paying too much for their tertiary education. The recent changes to HECS by the Albanese government were welcome, but they were inadequate. We cannot condemn Australians to a...
Australians are paying too much for their tertiary education. The recent changes to HECS by the Albanese government were welcome, but they were inadequate. We cannot condemn Australians to a lifetime of working off debt in the face of ongoing significant skills shortages. We need to be a clever country, and that has to include the foresight to support our citizens to gain the skills that our society needs. In the 47th Parliament, I pushed hard on the cost of tertiary education. My petition signed by 290,000 Australians demonstrated the significance of this issue to so many students, graduates and concerned parents. We achieved a response from the government in the form of a change to the way that HELP indexation is calculated and a reduction in existing student debt of 20 per cent, backdated to 1 June 2025. Now, many constituents have told me that it was the first time that they have felt heard by the government in a way that had a meaningful and positive effect on their lives, but how we index HECS is still unfair. The cost of degrees is still far too high. We are not supporting enough young people in their practical placements—the most important time in their studies, when they get the hands-on experience which is vital for competence and quality in the care specialities in particular. We have to put a stop to back-to-front priorities, where we tax education but we subsidise pollution. For the last three years Australia has collected three times more revenue from student loan repayments than it has from the petroleum resource rent tax. At the same time, we've subsidised polluting industries to the tune of over $30 billion. At the same time, cost-of-living pressures are leaving many students in poverty. One in seven full-time students has to work full time to support themselves. That is too much of a burden for many, and it's no surprise that non-completion rates are rising. At the same time, arts students are still being forced to pay $55,000 for their degrees. Many of them will never earn enough to pay this off, because of their low salaries and the ongoing indexation of their debt. They are effectively incurring a debt for life. This is not the policy of a clever country. A clever country is not one where 40 per cent of year 12 students say that the cost of HECS is putting them off university. Almost half of Australians surveyed by YouGov recently believed that a worker on an average income should be able to pay off the debt for a standard three-year degree within five years; 58 per cent believed that a student should pay $5,000 or less per year, which is less than a third of what arts students are now paying; and just under one in five Australians believed that a standard degree should be free—listen to Gough Whitlam. But this government has resiled on its position. When in opposition, it said it said it would reverse the Job-ready Graduates scheme. The Universities Accord said that continuation of current arrangements risks causing 'long-term, entrenched damage' to the Australian higher education system and that if we do not institute change then the higher education system will 'rapidly become unfit for purpose'. That change has not been instituted by the Albanese government. This government's one-off decision to wipe 20 per cent off student debt will make a meaningful difference for graduates who are yet to pay off their debt, but it does nothing to address the problem with the level of fees in the first place. In particular, this policy offers no benefit to new students. Universities should not be sources of revenue. They should be centres where we invest in people, in skills, in nation building and in the pursuit of knowledge. This government is overseeing ongoing damage to our education system, the hollowing out of arts faculties, the loss of language schools, the defunding of science and education, and the progressive underfunding of medical research. I call on the Albanese government to act—with purpose, with courage and with generosity—to fix our broken tertiary education system and to fix it now.
Law Enforcement | Constituency Statements | House debates
Victoria is experiencing a youth crime crisis. In the last year alone, offences were up 15 per cent—25,000 incidents involved children aged 10 to 17. Two-thirds of robberies and a half of...
Victoria is experiencing a youth crime crisis. In the last year alone, offences were up 15 per cent—25,000 incidents involved children aged 10 to 17. Two-thirds of robberies and a half of our aggravated burglaries are committed by children, many from a core group of about 400 repeat offenders. Crime has hit hard in my electorate of Kooyong. I hear every week of car thefts, break-ins and aggravated burglaries in our suburbs. People are nervous, and those affected by these crimes are traumatised. The papers are baying for these children to be punished harder. The Allan state government has responded by banning machetes, tightening bail laws, reopening Malmsbury youth prison, abandoning a pledge to raise the age of criminal responsibility, and now threatening lifelong sentences for crimes committed by children. The thing is, throwing the book at children doesn't work. Almost 40 per cent of young people in detention are there for violent crimes. But children aren't born violent; they're born into poverty and abuse. As many as 25 per cent of children in our youth justice system have undiagnosed foetal alcohol syndrome, ADHD or other disabilities. Prison won't fix that. It will compound harm, sever family ties and provide a criminal apprenticeship. And it's expensive: a million dollars a year to lock up a child—for what? Most are released within weeks back into the same unstable housing, disrupted schooling and domestic trauma that contributed to their offending in the first place. Local and international studies are clear: harsher sentences do not reduce crime, and prison often increases re-offending. Children's brains are still developing. Under pressure, they act impulsively. Toughening bail laws and imposing adult sentences for kids as young as 14 won't make us safer, and it won't help vulnerable children. So what will help? Prevention, diversion, rehabilitation, stable housing, supportive schools, pathways to jobs, culturally safe services for Indigenous youth, youth centres, mentors, medical assessment, drug treatment and family support. Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit cut violent crime by 60 per cent using a public health approach. Victoria's new Violence Reduction Unit, announced last week, should do the same. It should invest in people, not in prisons. Children aren't born bad. They're born into social and economic disadvantage. If we want fewer crimes, fewer victims and safer streets, we have to break the cycle. We have to invest in housing, education, mental health and culturally safe social supports.
Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
When we think about what has shaped the cultural identity of most of the people fortunate enough to sit in this place, we think of the stories told on our screens. We recall with fondness Skippy...
When we think about what has shaped the cultural identity of most of the people fortunate enough to sit in this place, we think of the stories told on our screens. We recall with fondness Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, A Country Practice, Hey Hey It's Saturday and, particularly for those of us who grew up in Melbourne, Neighbours. Old people like me think of Seven Little Australians and The Sullivans. Some of us picked up career inspiration from shows like The Young Doctors, and some of the more wily members of this house likely picked up a few tips on how to win friends and influence people from Prisoner, Total Control, or even Underbelly. Those shows did more than just entertain us; they reflected who we are on screen. We recall films like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Getting of Wisdom and Breaker Morant, which captured our unique continent and our history. Those productions didn't just create memories; they created jobs—thousands of them—in writing, acting, directing and the trades that underpin our arts sector. Those stories mattered. They told us who we were and who we could be. They gave us Australian voices, Australian artists and Australian landscapes. They built an industry that trained generations of creative professionals, legends like Jack Thompson, Jacki Weaver, Kylie Minogue and Peter Weir, and they exported a unique talent to the world. Today, that cultural foundation is under threat. Australians are consuming less Australian content than ever before. For the first time, in 2023 less than half of Australians watched free-to-air TV, where local content has historically dominated. Last year, more Australians watched subscription video on demand services like Netflix than live free-to-air or broadcast video on demand. On the other hand, nine out of ten of us use an online streaming service, where global giants like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime dedicate only a small fraction of their catalogues to Australian content. The proportion of Australian-made drama and children's programming commissioned to these platforms has been steadily falling for years. Instead, our screens are dominated by high-quality, well funded, aggressively marketed overseas content, while local stories struggle to find a local audience. It's not because Australians don't want to see or hear Australian stories; in fact, well over two-thirds of us think it's important to have new and diverse Australian dramas and documentaries. We're not watching our own stories because the playing field on these global platforms is tilted in favour of global content. For years now, overseas streaming giants have operated here without any obligation to invest in our culture. They take billions in subscription revenue from Australian households but return only a fraction of that to Australian creators. Quotas for local content have long been mandated for commercial free-to-air television. We've also mandated that subscription television services providing drama channels must meet local drama expenditure requirements, and commercial free-to-air broadcasters have been subject to licensing fees, so it is by no means a novel that users of our airways pay for their use or are required to show certain forms of content. For some time, though, the outlier has been the subscription services, which are currently essentially unregulated in Australia. That is why this bill matters, but it's also why this bill is really disappointing. It sets a baseline of 10 per cent of program expenditure or 7.5 per cent of Australian derived revenue must go to the production of new Australian programs. This is not a content requirement; it is an expenditure requirement. Major subscription video-on-demand services are required under this bill to meet a certain level of expenditure on new, eligible Australian programs, but there is no requirement to carry or to provide a defined amount of Australian content. This is at odds with the government's own national cultural policy, Revive, released in January 2023, which recommended the government introduce requirements for Australian screen content on streaming platforms to ensure continued access to local stories and content, and that it do so no later than 1 July 2024. This requirement is at odds with the minister's claims in this chamber in the last half hour that a content quota is absolutely critical—we do not have one. The concern is that in the absence of content quotas we will see the odd big-budget production based in Australia, with lots of bucks spent here over a short time, but not the ongoing grassroots support of the industry that it so desperately needs. The government has set the bar very low in requiring a 10 per cent program expenditure or 7.5 per cent of Australian derived revenue for new Australian programs. That's not nearly enough. It's significantly lower than the level previously suggested as desirable by the Albanese government and advocated for by industry. The interim report of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications' inquiry suggested two models for local content requirements: a progressive model requiring up to 30 per cent obligation for services with more than five million subscribers; or a revenue model in which specified services would have to spend 10 per cent of their Australian revenue on new local drama. Many nations which we would consider to be our peers impose significantly greater levies or investment obligations than we are proposing in this bill. Compare the requirements set out in this bill to those of France, where streamers must invest at least 20 per cent of local revenue in French content. Across the European Union, catalogues must include at least 30 per cent European works. Those nations understand that local stories and local jobs matter, and that without strong protections local voices will be drowned out by global giants. Media reporting suggests the government believes that all but one current streamer already meet the expenditure requirements outlined in this bill. If that is true, it suggests that, rather than encouraging additional expenditure in Australian content, this legislation will act only to ensure that the current levels of spending are maintained. If those reports are accurate, it's inadequate and it's disingenuous of the government to project that this legislation is a step forward. That's why I and my crossbench colleagues called on the government earlier this year to deliver on its promise and to legislate for streaming platforms to invest at least 20 per cent of Australian revenue in Australian stories as a matter of urgency. I note that a 20 per cent requirement was also proposed by the Australian Writers Guild and by Screen Producers Australia. If we want Australian stories told and Australia's creative industries to thrive, it's absolutely critical that our most popular streaming platforms serve them up to Australian audiences. We have to stand up for what we believe to be important. Australian culture is important to us all. Our creatives are bold. They're adventurous. They're challenging. But this legislation is none of those things. We should double the requirement in this bill, to match the ambition of our peers and the expectations of our creatives, and we should improve the legislation so that there is no wiggle room for streaming services to apply Hollywood accounting to how they ascribe proportionate value to programs. The Senate inquiry heard from Screen Producers Australia of its concern that the legislation in this current form is unclear on how proportionate value would be calculated. The regulator needs to be able to see the platform's books. This can't be a matter of self-reporting and of self-regulation by the industry. This isn't just about culture; it's about jobs. Investment in Australian content supports writers, actors, producers and technicians. It sustains regional economies. It builds pathways for young Australians who dream of telling their stories on screen. But it's also about telling the world about us. It's about increasing trade and tourism to this country. Australians deserve to see themselves front and centre on their screens. We deserve shows that speak to our lives, our communities, our history and our country. Our creative workers deserve a fair share of the revenue flowing to global platforms, and because we and they deserve this, it is critical to set content production requirements that protect, promote and progress our cultural identity for this generation and for every generation to come.
Medical Research Future Fund | Questions without Notice | House debates
My question is for the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, Australian medical research saves lives. It boosts our economy. It improves our domestic security and it provides aid to our region. The...
My question is for the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, Australian medical research saves lives. It boosts our economy. It improves our domestic security and it provides aid to our region. The Medical Research Future Fund was established to support the sector with $1 billion dollars a year, but your government is spending only $650 million annually. Could you please tell the dozens of medical researchers in the gallery today why it is that you're withholding the support that we committed to, and that their sector needs and deserves?
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; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
I move the amendment as circulated in my name: (1) Schedule 1, page 12 (after line 18), after item 60, insert: 60A After Subdivision FB of Division 1 of Part 3 of Chapter 2 Insert: Subdivision FC...
I move the amendment as circulated in my name: (1) Schedule 1, page 12 (after line 18), after item 60, insert: 60A After Subdivision FB of Division 1 of Part 3 of Chapter 2 Insert: Subdivision FC — Clean air and water 24F Requirement for approval of activities that may affect air and water quality (1) A constitutional corporation, or a Commonwealth agency that does not enjoy the immunities of the Commonwealth, commits an offence if the corporation or agency takes an action that: (a) may produce an actual or potential adverse effect which may occur from air or water pollution, or from exposures to pollutants in other media, which pollutants originate as emissions to the ambient air; or (b) may affect the air and water quality in national parks, national wilderness areas, national waterways and marine parks and areas impacting other matters of national environmental significance. Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years or 420 penalty units, or both. Note 1: An executive officer of a body corporate convicted of an offence against this subsection may also commit an offence against section 495. Note 2: If a person takes an action on land that contravenes this subsection, a landholder may commit an offence against section 496C. (2) A person commits an offence if: (a) the person takes an action that: (i) may produce an actual or potential adverse effect which may occur from air or water pollution, or from exposures to pollutants in other media, which pollutants originate as emissions to the ambient air; or (ii) may affect the air and water quality in national parks, national wilderness areas, national waterways and marine parks and areas impacting other matters of national environmental significance; and (b) the action is taken for the purposes of trade or commerce: (i) between Australia and another country; or (ii) between 2 States; or (iii) between a State and Territory; or (iv) between 2 Territories. Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years or 420 penalty units, or both. Note 1: An executive officer of a body corporate convicted of an offence against this subsection may also commit an offence against section 495. Note 2: If a person takes an action on land that contravenes this subsection, a landholder may commit an offence against section 496C. (3) A person commits an offence if: (a) the person takes an action that: (i) may produce an actual or potential adverse effect which may occur from air or water pollution, or from exposures to pollutants in other media, which pollutants originate as emissions to the ambient air; or (ii) may affect the air and water quality in national parks, national wilderness areas, national waterways and marine parks and areas impacting other matters of national environmental significance; and (b) the action is taken in: (i) a Commonwealth area; or (ii) a Territory. Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years or 420 penalty units, or both. Note 1: An executive officer of a body corporate convicted of an offence against this subsection may also commit an offence against section 495. Note 2: If a person takes an action on land that contravenes this subsection, a landholder may commit an offence against section 496C. (4) Subsections (1) to (3) do not apply to an action if: (a) an approval of the taking of the action by the constitutional corporation, Commonwealth agency or person is in operation under Part 9 for the purposes of this section; or (b) there is in force a determination under section 79E that the action may continue to be taken and the action is taken in accordance with the conditions (if any) specified in the determination; or (c) Part 4 lets the constitutional corporation, Commonwealth agency or person take the action without an approval under Part 9 for the purposes of this section; or (d) there is in force a decision of the Minister under Division 2 of Part 7 that this section is not a controlling provision for the action and, if the decision was made because the Minister believed the action would be taken in a manner specified in the notice of the decision under section 77, the action is taken in that manner; or (e) the action is an action described in subsection 160(2) (which describes actions whose authorisation is subject to a special environmental assessment process). Note: The defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to the matters in subsection (4). See subsection 13.3(3) of the Criminal Code. 24F Requirement for informed public participation The Minister must be satisfied that that any decision to permit increased air or water pollution in any area to which this Act applies is made only after careful evaluation of all the consequences of such a decision and after adequate procedural opportunities for informed public participation in the decision making process. To ensure environmental protections and to underpin conservation, our ecology has to be protected as a whole. That's why I'm introducing an amendment to this bill to include clean air and water as matters of national environmental significance. Clean air and water are foundational to the health of our ecosystems, to human populations and to our planet at large. As the global community grapples with the escalating challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and public health crises, the protection of these vital resources has become more urgent than ever. Safeguarding air and water quality is not just an environmental necessity; it's also a prerequisite for sustainable development and for human wellbeing. Air and water are integral components of the planet's life support systems. Clean air regulates climate, supports plant photosynthesis and maintains atmospheric balance. Similarly, clean water sustains aquatic ecosystems. It supports biodiversity, and it's essential for agriculture and for human consumption. Degradation of these resources through pollution disrupts ecological balance and leads to cascading effects across our ecosystems. Air pollution, primarily from fossil fuel combustion, releases harmful substances, like particulate matter, nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide, which contribute to acid rain, smog formation and global warming. Water pollution introduces toxic substances into our rivers, wetlands, lakes and oceans. It affects aquatic life, causes algal blooms and harms biodiversity. Biodiversity underpins the resilience of ecosystems by supporting essential systems like pollination, nutrient cycling and climate regulation. Air and water pollution are among the leading drivers of biodiversity loss. According to the European Environment Agency, 73 per cent of ecosystems in the EU exceeded critical loads for nitrogen deposition in 2022. That threatens species diversity and ecosystem stability. Pollution induced by diversity loss is particularly severe in freshwater ecosystems, where reduced pH levels and chemical contamination, including with PFAS, disproportionally affect aquatic species. Airborne pollutants also damage forest and soil microbiomes; they weaken the ecological networks that sustain terrestrial biodiversity. The link between environmental quality and public health is well established. Exposure to polluted air causes respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Contaminated water contributes to gastrointestinal infections, to neurological disorders and to developmental issues in children. The WHO estimated that, globally, air pollution causes seven million deaths every year. Last year, outdoor air pollution was estimated to be linked to almost 4,000 premature deaths in Australia alone. Effective environmental governance is absolutely essential to protect air and water quality. Instruments such as the US Clean Air Act and the US Clean Water Act have already demonstrated the potential for regulatory frameworks to reduce pollution and to restore ecosystems. As it is, this bill offers inadequate protection for the water trigger that we've already legislated in this House. Under the current laws, it is specifically excluded from bilateral approval agreements and from regional plans; under this bill, it is subject to devolution. We don't yet have the promised national environmental standards for matters of national environmental significance, but these could, in any case, be bypassed by ministerial rulings or by the national interest loophole. And this bill's definition of unacceptable impact is so loaded with qualifiers and sets a threshold so high that it will not capture habitat essential to the survival of even the most critically endangered species, nor will it prevent the contamination of groundwater aquifers. So I propose this amendment, which seeks to raise clean air and water to the same level of national environmental significance as our most important environmental values. Australia's air and water would be protected from actions that would significantly impact their quality, and there would be civil penalties and offences in place to enforce those protections. I commend the amendment to the House.
Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025; Consideration in Detail | Bills | House debates
by leave—I move amendments (1) to (6) as circulated in my name together: (1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 4 (lines 5 and 6), omit the item. (2) Schedule 1, item 3, page 4 (lines 10 to 21), omit...
by leave—I move amendments (1) to (6) as circulated in my name together: (1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 4 (lines 5 and 6), omit the item. (2) Schedule 1, item 3, page 4 (lines 10 to 21), omit the item. (3) Schedule 2, item 41, page 16 (line 18) to page 16 (line 24), omit subsection 15AD(6), substitute: Multiple requests (6) For the purposes of this section, the agency or Minister may treat 2 or more requests as a single request if: (a) the agency or Minister is satisfied that: (i) the requests relate to the same document or documents; or (ii) the requests relate to documents, the subject matter of which is substantially the same; and (b) the details given in relation to the requests in accordance with paragraph 15(2)(c) are the same. (4) Schedule 2, item 53, page 20 (line 4) to page 20 (line 11), omit the item. (5) Schedule 2, item 54, page 20 (lines 21 to 31), omit paragraph 15(2)(e), substitute: (e) if the applicant is seeking to access, on behalf of another person, a document containing personal information about the other person or information concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of the other person: (i) state that the request is being made on behalf of another person; and (ii) include the full name of the other person; and (iii) be accompanied by all of the following that are provided in a form and manner specified by the agency or Minister for the purpose of requests under this section: (A) proof of the applicant's identity; (B) proof of the other person's identity; (C) proof that the applicant is authorised to access the document on behalf of the other person. (6) Schedule 7, item 3, page 61 (line 4) to page 61 (line 10), omit the item. (7) Schedule 7, Part 3, page 64 (line 1) to page 65 (line 5), omit the Part. The FOI Act enshrines a right to access information and protects individuals' rights by providing them access to the information held by government about themselves. The objects of this act are clear and they should not be qualified or restricted. My amendments (1) and (2) omit the government's proposed qualifiers to this fundamental statement of the objects of the act. What is proposed by the government is the introduction of the notion that promoting representative democracy must be balanced with efficiency. Representative democracy is not practised only when convenient. The objectives of openness and transparency should not be qualified. Similarly, the government has argued that departments risk being overwhelmed by FOI requests which are being generated by bots. It has sought to treat multiple requests for the same information as a single request, but this is irrational. If two or more requests for the same document are from different sources, they should clearly not be treated as the same request. For example, a matter of public interest might well be sought by more than one media outlet. The government's solution to this issue is unnecessarily restrictive. I therefore propose a solution in amendment (3) to maintain reasonable access, under which requests could be considered and treated as being different requests if different addresses are supplied under the section 15(2)(d) notification. The government has sought to prevent anonymous requests with this bill. To protect the privacy of individuals, it is appropriate that a person seeking their personal records should provide their name and their proof of identity so that personal material is not wrongfully given to another person. However, in seeking public interest material, there may be a reason—a very good reason in some instances—for a requester not to be identified. If release of the material is in the public interest, it doesn't matter who the requester is. It only matters that an address for response is provided to facilitate the actual provision of the information. My amendments (4) and (5) make this distinction, protecting the privacy of individuals and the anonymity of public interest requests. I now come to the more egregious parts of the government's bill: its deliberate move to keep Australians in the dark on this flimsy pretext of national interest. We see this pretext in this and other bills, including the environmental protection of biodiversity conservation bills currently being debated in the House, which reference the FOI Act as grounds for the minister not to publish decisions in the so-called national interest. If the government's decisions are lawful, sound, based on the best advice, in the public interest and, indeed, in the national interest, then they should be shared with the people. We need to stop the rot. If we let these provisions of secretiveness pass, if we hide who has lobbied the government, if we hide what information is before ministers and if we hide who is benefiting from government decisions, we are losing our battle for integrity and accountability in this democracy. Amendment (6) addresses the right to freedom of information. It changes the requirement for exempting cabinet documents from requiring a dominant purpose to requiring only a substantive purpose of being for cabinet consideration. I support the member for Mackellar in her related amendment to section 7 regarding the addition of new considerations for not releasing these documents. Those considerations, as given in this legislation, are too broad, too loose and too easy to misapply. The Freedom of Information Act 1982 is legislated as an act 'to give to members of the public rights of access to official documents of the government of the Commonwealth and of its agencies'. That is a worthy activity for any government. Any restrictions on those rights of access have to be limited and they have to be proportionate to prevent transgressions of those rights. I commend these amendments to the House.