The National Redress Scheme was established almost six years ago, in 2018. It came about following one of the most extraordinary cases of public information sharing, public education and trauma informed historical review. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Commissioner McClellan, is a case study in how we can do things right. After decades and decades and decades of not listening to survivors of abuse and after decades and decades of prioritising the institutions over the survivors and the individuals who were abused and broken by those institutions, the royal commission showed how as a nation we could show empathy, compassion and understanding, and how finally we could put the interests of those individuals ahead of the interests of the powerful institutions that all too often abuse them—powerful institutions like the Catholic Church, the Scouts, the Anglican Church and institutions run at the state and territory level. I thought we had finally changed politics so that even the worst tendencies of this place, the worst tendencies of partisan politics, would be put to one side and that, finally, we would listen to the stories of survivors, listen to the truth of the survivors and respect them.
We got the 2018 National Redress Scheme and there were always concerns about it. It remains a very secretive scheme. Many survivors say they don't know why they received often very modest compensation payments out of it. The reasons are not articulated for them. The process can be incredibly long. Indeed, some institutions are still resisting signing on and being part of the scheme, despite us knowing that they were responsible for the abuse of significant numbers of children. But with all those faults, I thought our politics had improved. And part of that has been the ongoing review of the Redress Scheme.
I acknowledge the work of all members on the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme and the work of the chair. Indeed, from my observation of the members of that committee, no matter their political party, they have been survivor focused, and they have been seeking to shine some transparency on the Redress Scheme. But there have been these ongoing concerns with how it operates, and one of those concerns is the fact that the bill effectively excludes any person who is in jail or any person who has been the subject of a serious criminal conviction from access to the scheme, unless exceptional circumstances are identified. A serious criminal conviction is serving a sentence of five years or more.
Let's remember who this scheme is meant to serve—individuals who were taken from their families when they were infants at a very young age. Many of them have suffered some of the most horrific abuse you could imagine at the hands of an institution or institutions such that it is hard to comprehend how somebody gets their life back together again after that. Tragically, many didn't. For many survivors, their lives spiralled out of control after the appalling abuse that they suffered. Some went down the path of addiction, while many fell into the juvenile justice system and graduated into the adult criminal justice system. Through no fault of their own but through the damage that was caused to them by the abusing institution, their lives have been off-track for decades. Many have served repeated stints in jail. Of course, not all sufferers of abuse had that pathway. Some of them managed to keep their lives on track. Some of them managed, through a strength that I can't comprehend, to succeed in work, education, in holding their families together, and we should celebrate those extraordinary achievements of the survivors who could do that. But let's also acknowledge the pathway that many others travelled down. It is a dark and hard pathway. At its start and at its cause is the abuse that happened to them.
There has now been a review of the redress act. That review finally acknowledges that the reason why many of the survivors and victims have been excluded is because of this provision that says that 'if you have been convicted and sentenced to five or more years in jail, you are excluded'. The review said that provision is cutting out many survivors who absolutely need the support, who absolutely deserve the support and whose incarceration has, at its core, the abuse they suffered. It is effectively punishing them twice, and the review made this clear. Indeed, the review report noted that those restrictions constitute a significant bar, discouraging applicants and deterring other potentially eligible applicants from applying. It recommended, effectively, removing this exemption except in cases of unlawful killing, a sexual offence, a terrorism offence or related offences, leaving the exceptional circumstances assessment for that core of the most extreme offences.
As I said, I thought we had moved on as a nation. I thought we had understood the pathway that survivors had come through. And yet, to its eternal shame, the coalition is now seeking to move an amendment to this bill to retain that double punishment of survivors, reaching into their playbook of attacking the government or any other political party that shows even a shred of compassion to somebody who suffered institutional abuse and then incarceration. They are now seeking to weaponise this legislation against survivors of abuse, and they absolutely know the pathway of many of these survivors of abuse that happened. They know about the abuse that those people suffered at an institutional level. They know how that impacted those people and often drove them down that pathway to juvenile detention and then into adult prison. In fact, that pathway through prison is part of the pain and the suffering they had from their childhood abuse at the hands of an institution that should have kept them safe.
The coalition now come into this chamber and want to protect the institutions from those claims again. The coalition come into this chamber and want to again punish those survivors and, in the lowest politics you can imagine, beat up on the government about this because the government is showing a shred of compassion. It's the vilest politics you can imagine coming from the coalition here. We should be contemptuous of their position. How could they not have listened to the royal commission? How could the coalition be seeking to weaponise the abuse suffered by survivors of these institutions, seeking to drag it into their ugly gutter politics and weaponise it against the government? How low can the coalition go? The answer is that we're getting a sense tonight with them weaponising this against survivors of institutional abuse and trying to harm the government that is showing a shred of compassion here.
I thought this country had grown a little with the royal commission, but the coalition haven't .The coalition remain in that vile position of supporting the institutions—because that's what they're doing here. They're supporting the institutions and saying the institutions that abuse these children shouldn't have to pay, because the children went through a pathway of going into the criminal justice system. The coalition here are trying to ensure that the Catholic Church keeps the money—the modest amount of redress that they'd have to pay to children that they abused or let be abused in their care. They're saying that state and territory governments can keep the money and don't have to pay survivors modest compensation. They want to protect state and territory government institutions and literally take the money away from survivors of institutional abuse. They want to protect the Scouts, the Girl Guides and the Anglican church. They're again putting all those institutions ahead of survivors of abuse. It is contemptible politics. It should be beyond the shame of any politician, let alone a political party that pretends that it could form government at some point.
I call upon the coalition to withdraw their amendment, to actually have a small shred of public shame in what they do and not weaponise this bill against a government that's actually trying, after six years in this space, to do something decent for survivors of institutional abuse.
There are two amendments to this bill that the Greens will be pressing for. The first is to ensure that a class of women who were abused as children can get fair access to compensation under the redress scheme. We heard this evidence in the redress committee. I want to thank CLAN for their advocacy in this space and Leonie Sheedy for her advocacy for these women who, when they were taken, often as state wards, were often repeatedly abused by the medical profession for so-called virginity testing. Virginity testing has now been criminalised in other countries such as the United Kingdom because it's seen to be inherently abusive of women.
I'll read briefly from one of the submissions we got from a state ward about this issue. She said: 'I was made a state ward in October 1966. I'd been charged with truancy. I don't deny missing a lot of school due to my childhood circumstances, but effectively I was institutionalised for being poor. I was a frightened little girl removed from my family. It was traumatising being sent to a government home. I was extremely afraid being transported to a city I'd never been to before. Still, to this day, I have trouble sleeping, with recurring nightmares, and feel the trauma of that time. Shortly after arriving at this government girls' home, I was sent to a room upstairs where two strangers—a man and woman—were waiting. The man asked me a lot of questions. The lady didn't speak. I was just a little girl with no idea what was happening. I was very scared and confused.'
I won't read on about what happened to her after that in the virginity testing. This appalling medical abuse, this trauma and violence against this young girl that happened repeatedly. But then she says this: 'I was encouraged to apply for redress when I contacted CLAN in 2021, and I lodged my application in May 2022. All members of CLAN, particularly Leonie Sheedy, have been extremely supportive, with their help and understanding of the trauma I suffered as a little girl.
'My application has been refused on the grounds my state sanctioned rape has been considered a medical examination. I feel totally devastated and discriminated against. Other women in the same situation as I was placed have been granted redress. It's very distressing for me. I feel ripped apart in the same way I felt when I was a little girl taken from my mother a few short years after my father committed suicide in March 1959. The Labor government has always respected rights and equality for all Australians, without discrimination. I can't help but feel re-traumatised and assaulted a second time.'
That's the now-older woman's story about the abuse she suffered. We have an amendment that will make it clear that no future redress application which relates to the abuse that happened in virginity testing can be refused because it says, 'to avoid doubt, sexual abuse includes the examination of female genitalia, with or without consent, for the purpose or purported purpose of determining virginity'. We'd ask all parties in the chamber to support that, to listen to the voices—and that's not an isolated case—of these woman who are now in their 60s and 70s who have finally come forward and sought redress. Many of them have been refused for this reason. It shouldn't happen again.
I'll speak to another amendment we have in the course of the committee debate, but, again, I'd urge all parties to remember the royal commission. (Time expired)
]]>That the Senate take note of the documents.
I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
Leave granted; debate adjourned.
]]>Just look at the more than 50 refugees who were deported from Australia to PNG by the last government. They're still trapped with no home and no protection. Denied their basic rights and a home to rebuild their lives, they're subjected to violence on almost daily basis. Nurul Chawdury told the Guardian that he'd watched fellow refugees die through murder, medical neglect and suicide. 'Things are very bad at the moment. It's very hard,' he told the Guardian yesterday. 'Some days we eat, some days we don't eat.' Nurul Chawdury, his wife and their two young children are going hungry as the ALP and coalition play their games out in this chamber.
This MPI is asking entirely the wrong question. The real question is: who's protecting refugees from this government—who's protecting refugees from the ALP-coalition alliance of cruelty?
]]>That was the financial year in which the Australian Federal Police decided to issue a major covert operations order against a 13-year-old boy with autism and an IQ in the low 70s, whose family had come to them seeking help. On examining the evidence that was eventually presented when the AFP sought to prosecute that boy for very serious terrorism offences, a magistrate found that, instead of helping, the AFP drove that child towards extremism and put in his mind the very concept of becoming a sniper and a suicide bomber. The AFP taught that child about radical Islam—a 13-year-old boy with autism. That happened in the financial year of 2022-23, which this annual report covers. The magistrate threw the case out—they were so disgusted by the evidence presented that they made the highly unusual step of issuing a permanent stay. And we have not heard a whisper from the government about that conduct. We've heard nothing from the Attorney-General—and the AFP lies in his portfolio—nothing from the chair of the oversight committee, nothing—not one word about it. How could any government who has responsibility for the oversight of the police allow that conduct to go unmentioned?
By not seeking accountability of the Australian Federal Police, by not mentioning that here today, by the ongoing silence on it of the Attorney-General, they are effectively giving the green light for further such conduct by the AFP. What is deeply troubling is that, in the last budget estimates session, when I challenged the Australian Federal Police about their conduct and asked them how they could justify the behaviour of their covert operative that was so comprehensively rejected and criticised by the magistrate, and when I asked the deputy commissioner who issued the major covert operations order against the child if he would do it again, knowing what he knew now, he said yes, he'd do it again. The reason he can say that is that this government has delivered no consequences to the AFP and permitted no consequences for that kind of behaviour. That's a deep failure of the government: to be silent on it, to permit no accountability on it and to require no accountability on it. And it's not just the AFP of course. The same lack of accountability applies to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who insisted upon this prosecution having been in the public interest and wasn't even undertaking a review.
Yes, let's acknowledge some of the important work the AFP does. I particularly want to acknowledge the staff in the AFP who are largely based in Brisbane, who are identifying child exploitation and child abuse material, and seeking to keep those kids safe and hold perpetrators to account. They do extraordinary work and I want to acknowledge that work. But in doing that, in just celebrating the good work, which is what we heard from the chair of the committee and what we hear from the government, and not holding them to account when they so obviously fail, ultimately does no favours to the Australian Federal Police, and it definitely does no favours to the public.
On one final matter: we heard the chair of the oversight committee talk about the surveys from the Australian Federal Police. Annually, the Australian Federal Police have done surveys which assess how the staff feel and what the staff attitude is to senior leadership and to the direction of the Australian Federal Police. Year after year after year, those surveys, which are published, show an incredible lack of faith in the senior leadership. Only a tiny proportion of the people who work in the AFP are supportive of the senior leadership. They complain of nepotism, of favouritism, of an unhealthy culture, about not being supported, of not having the systems in place to support them doing their work and of not being listened to. It's year after year after year. When you hear the opinions of the people who actually do the work in the AFP—not the senior management but the people doing the day-to-day work of policing—they have been viciously critical of the leadership.
Those surveys have been deeply embarrassing to the AFP. So what did they do last year? They changed the survey. They removed almost all the questions asking for an opinion about the senior leadership. They removed almost all the questions asking for opinions about how the systems worked. They just pulled them out of the survey. It's the most blatant example of self-censorship you could possibly imagine.
But, even though that had been done, the 2023 survey is still an indictment on the senior leadership of the AFP. Again, only 19 per cent of staff surveyed actually have faith in senior leadership. That's less than one in five who give a tick to the senior leadership. When it was put to them by a journalist at the Canberra Times about how they had deleted all the critical questions from their 2023 report, we got this verbiage from the AFP: 'The AFP has taken a pro-active approach to better understand psychosocial hazards in the workplace by focusing on those matters in the 2023 'In Focus' survey. This data is key to building a safe workplace in an environment of increasingly high-risk work.' It's a word salad, no doubt because they're deeply embarrassed that somebody pointed out the fact that senior leadership took all of the hard questions out of the survey.
What's really offensive about it is that, in responding to the deeply critical 2022 survey, which had that trend of criticism of senior leadership, Commissioner Kershaw sent an email out to all of the staff comparing them to cattle, with a big picture of a cow, saying: 'You have been herd. We've heard what you had to say.' It was some sort of play on words, comparing his staff to a herd of cattle and the use of the word 'heard'. I don't know who thought that was a good idea. Commissioner Kershaw obviously did, because he sent the email out comparing his staff to a herd of cattle and saying he'd heard them in 2022. It turns out that he did. He heard it so loudly that he never wanted to hear it again, so he chopped all of the critical questions out of the 2023 survey. So I'm sure that the thousands of staff in the AFP are feeling really heard by Commissioner Kershaw right now—so heard that he's silenced them.
Again, there's been nothing from the chair and nothing from the government. This is all business as usual. You couldn't make up some of this stuff about the AFP. It's like the Keystone Cops parading around as the senior leadership. They parade around as an elite squad, but they act like a bunch of amateurs—and worse. They should be held to account.
Let's acknowledge the good work of thousands of largely lower ranked members in the AFP who do that amazing work—I can't imagine how they do it—looking at child exploitation and abuse material, bringing offenders to account and protecting kids. Let's celebrate that work and acknowledge the work that those staff do in the AFP. But we do them no favours, we do the public no favours and we ultimately do the AFP no favours by failing to hold the senior leadership to account.
Question agreed to.
]]>That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
The need for the Government to cease using one of the most secretive military export systems in the world to hide from the public the export of Australian military equipment to the State of Israel, particularly as the Chief Economist of DFAT has acknowledged that DFAT data showing millions of dollars in 'arms and ammunition' being exported to Israel is credible.
We know that Australia exports military equipment to Israel, but the Albanese government is determined to mislead the public to avoid accountability. Previously, when I revealed that Australia was exporting military equipment to Israel, Minister Wong accused me and the Greens of misinformation. Keeping this in mind, I want to start by reading from a statement issued in the last few days by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, urging countries to stop exporting military equipment to Israel:
The United States and Germany are by far the largest arms exporters and shipments have increased since 7 October 2023. Other military exporters include France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
… … …
State officials involved in arms exports may be individually criminally liable for aiding and abetting any war crimes …
Is the UN also spreading misinformation? And, as this motion mentions, the chief economist of DFAT, Penny Wong's own department, said of DFAT's data, which shows that Australia has exported millions and millions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition to Israel in the last five years, including as recently as October, 'I would say there has been no question or challenge to the credibility of any of the data we publish.' When he says that, is DFAT's chief economist accused of misinformation?
What about the Australian companies bragging about the military equipment they sell to the Israeli arms industry and the Israeli Ministry of Defense? These are companies that many Labor MPs have visited. They have taken photos amongst the production lines of the military equipment that has been exported. Are those companies spreading misinformation? What about the glossy government brochures trumpeting Australia's role in the production of F-35 parts, including the mechanisms that open the bomb bay doors of F-35s used by the Israeli military to rain bombs on Gaza? What about those glossy brochures from Defence that were mysteriously scrubbed off Defence's website since October? Is Defence lying too and spreading misinformation?
When a Palestinian in Gaza sees an Australian-made drone drifting over their home and highlighting them or their family as a target, are they not understanding what they see? When a spike missile from Rafael demolishes a Gazan hospital, guided by one of the integration kits Australia pumps into the global supply chain or when an Israeli military armoured vehicle drives over the rubble of a home in Gaza, literally protected by Australian steel, are the Palestinians who are experiencing this right now and who are facing these weapons that we exported just imagining it? Is that the line from the government? Far from stopping the arms trade with Israel, the Israeli government won't even acknowledge it's happening. It won't even own up to the violence that they are permitting with weapons that Australia sells. But the public knows and the public sees what has been done, and they can see they've been gaslighted by this government.
Today, a two-month-old baby in Gaza died from malnutrition—just one of thousands and thousands of Palestinian children. The thought that the last thing that that child might have heard was the faint buzz of an Australian drone circling above them is an appalling thought. People want Australia to be a force for good in the world and a force for peace, and instead the Albanese government has tied itself to the harm industry, just like the coalition before them. Today we saw that the Albanese government has given Australian weapons company Elbit Systems a billion-dollar contract for Australia's infantry fighting vehicle. This is the same company that announced its expectation of superprofits from the war on Gaza due to 'the increase in demand for our solutions by the Israeli Ministry of Defense'. Make no mistake; Elbit is using the brutal assault on Palestinians to sell its weapons, actively experimenting on—and then working with the Israeli military to celebrate—how effectively they kill Palestinians, and the Australian government is buying hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment from it. How on earth could any government with a moral compass do this?
I urge this chamber to support this motion. I urge the government to admit not just to the public but to the world Australia's complicity in what's going on in Gaza. Why hide? Why gaslight? It's because the government knows that the public is against it on this. The government is trying everything it can to disempower the millions of Australians demanding a better world. But enough is enough. It's time for the government to stop the two-way arms race with the State of Israel. It's time to call for an immediate ceasefire. It's time to— (Time expired)
]]>But perhaps most shockingly, the Albanese government decided to keep the Hunter frigates program. They cut the number from nine to six but kept the budget at $45 billion—almost $7 billion a boat! Each boat could build 325 primary schools. Each boat would effectively see millions of Australians get access to dental care. Seven billion dollars per boat—that's the same amount that it cost the US to launch a nuclear submarine, and we get a frigate for it! You couldn't make this stuff up!
But next time you can't drop your kids off to school, or you're talking to their teacher about the huge class size, or the classroom's not air-conditioned, think about the fact that this money that the Albanese government is spending on six frigates is enough to fix all of that and more. It's enough to fix pretty much any problem that you can fix with money. And so, next time Labor cry poor, as they do, on how they 'haven't got the money' for public housing, they can't raise JobSeeker and they can't improve Medicare—but they can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear submarines and tens of billions of dollars on frigates, and not even put any of them in the water?—ask your Labor MP why that's the case.
Finally, in this last week, we've seen Julian Assange trying to get his freedom—trying to get his government, and the UK government, and the US government, to finally see that he's a political prisoner and should be released. As Duncan Campbell wrote in the Guardian:
Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing—
allegedly—
illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed?
Which is the bigger crime?
]]>A criminal investigation will not be pursued in relation to the AFP member involved.
They won't even do a criminal investigation of the matter.
Apparently, a professional standards investigation has now been finalised, and it is 'now in the administrative phase'. The spokesperson for the AFP also said that the findings of the investigation will not be released publicly. How can we let this stand? Hamid is still in significant pain. He is still extremely distressed at this lack of action. He had his ribs fractured and his spinal disc damaged by this unprovoked assault by a member of the AFP when he was in a public place, exercising his right to peacefully protest.
Indeed, none of that core information is even disputed by the other side, but the other side is the Australian Federal Police. They've done their internal investigation, and the outcome is what? In any other situation this unprovoked assault would surely be considered a sackable offence and a serious crime. But, instead, it's just swept under the carpet because it's the AFP.
All Hamid wanted to do was peacefully protest. He was standing in front of the embassy of Iran, raising concern about the death of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the brutal regime over there. He shouldn't have been assaulted by the Australian Federal Police. They should've been protecting him. Having been subject to that assault, though, surely he deserved a fair investigative process. Surely he deserved a system that would take what happened to him—the violence and the injuries that he suffered—fairly assess it and deliver a measure of justice. But, let's be clear, whilever police investigate police, there will be no justice for Hamid or whomever else is relying upon some kind of accountability, and this vacuum of accountability allows misconduct to become the norm in police officers.
If you want a further case of that, think about what's happening at the moment in New South Wales, where a police officer who has now been charged with brutal murder was, just 12 short months ago, investigated by police for tasering somebody in the face. Again, that was caught on film. Again, it was investigated by police. Police investigated police, and they let him keep his taser; they let him keep his gun. When will we acknowledge that it's not just one bad apple. Allowing that lack of accountability rots the whole barrel. It's time to end police investigating police.
The coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker has heard evidence that the Northern Territory police have an ingrained culture of racism. It's making front-page news now because of evidence that has come from former NT officer Zachary Rolfe. But, let's be clear, First Nations Territorians have been calling this out for years. Indeed, what we have heard from that officer in the last 24 hours should send a shiver down our spines. But the NT is not unique; officers in a Brisbane watchhouse were caught making the most sickening racist comments. There is page after page of them. I won't read them onto the record, so offensive are they to First Nations people. And do you know what? None of them got sanctioned. Why not? There was an internal investigation. What a coincidence! Police investigated police and said it was all fine. Something that in any other job would get you fired on the spot is not just excusable in Australian policing; it appears to be part of the culture.
It's the same in New South Wales, and there's is data to prove it. Data from the Redfern Legal Centre shows that, between 2018 and 2022, First Nations peoples were significantly overrepresented as victims of police violence. Of a total of some 28,800 recorded uses of force against people in New South Wales, 13,161 were against First Nations people. Forty-five per cent of the use of police violence was against just 3.4 per cent of the New South Wales population. Police systemically visit violence and abuse upon First Nations peoples, and whether it's in New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory or Western Australia, the story is the same across the country. Why am I saying this in the Senate? It's because, during 11 years as a New South Wales MP, I saw up close how state and territory police had such political control over governments. They're never held accountable by state or territory governments. If anything, governments pander to them with law-and-order politics, and the end result is that communities are less safe—much less safe.
It's time for the Albanese government, the federal government, to step up and take account of this plague of police violence and racism across the country and deliver a national response, not just be silent.
It's the federal government, the Commonwealth government, that's a party to all of the treaties about Indigenous rights, about civil and political rights and about preventing torture. And what have we heard in all of these instances from the federal Attorney-General and the Albanese government? Not one word. When racism is normalised in police forces in territories and states across the country, something needs to be done. And silence is not an option.
Last week, the Albanese government unveiled the Navy surface fleet review, after it had gathered dust on the defence minister's desk for nearly six months. It seems like the only thing the defence minister changed during that time was the name of the review. The review itself, and the government response, is little more than a shopping list for Defence. Indeed, the same Defence leadership who've overseen failure after failure—multibillion-dollar failure on procurement—have been given, by defence minister Marles, access to billions more dollars to effectively piss up against a wall. Worse than that, they're expected not to just clean up the mess that they created, but they're now given—
]]>For comparison, let's look at some of the numbers. The bulk of Australians get about $15 a week with these tax cuts, which is $15 a week more than they otherwise would have had, and I'm sure most people appreciate getting that $15 a week. But let's put it in context. That's less than half of the extra spending that people have had to do in the last 12 months—the $37 a week in extra spending to buy the same basket of groceries that they got 12 months ago.
So $15 in tax cuts pays less than half of the increased cost of a basket of groceries at the supermarket.
And why is that happening? That's because Labor and the coalition, together, have never stood up to the price-gouging of the Woolies and Coles supermarket duopoly.
The lowest 10 per cent of taxpayers will receive about 10 per cent of the benefits of these tax cuts. So the people who need it most get the least. That's the design of Labor's slightly-less-crap-than-the-coalition's tax cuts. The people who most need income support and tax breaks get the least. And Labor wants us to cheer them on in this. Well, we're just not going to.
Inequality in Australia has been growing rapidly, under both Labor and the coalition, for the last 15 years. Since 2009—and we've had Labor and the coalition in, at different times—the bottom 90 per cent of Australians have received just a few tiny crumbs of the economic growth that's been generated in this country, while the top 10 per cent of income earners have taken 93 per cent of the additional wealth that's been generated over the last 15 years. So the top 10 per cent have taken more than nine in 10 of the dollars of additional wealth that have been generated over the last 15 years, under both Labor and the coalition. And, in that time, the share of the economy that's gone to corporate profits has just gone through the roof—at a level we haven't seen since the immediate post-war years, some 75 or 80 years ago. Inequality has been running rampant, and it hasn't mattered whether Labor has been in government or the coalition has been in government, because they've got the same basic economic agenda: they have in mind this kind of trickle-down economy, delivering to their corporate donors and wealthy mates.
When I say 'wealthy mates', we got a lesson in Labor's hugging of billionaires and wealthy mates just on the weekend, didn't we? While millions of Australians were struggling to put food on the table, and hundreds of thousands of Australian families found the last dollar in the bank account to get their daughter a ticket to Taylor Swift, or to pay the electricity bill, or to buy a decent basket of groceries, what was the Prime Minister doing on the weekend? He was trotting down to his mate Anthony Pratt's place—the billionaire packaging mogul; one of the richest Australians, who has, like, a speed-dial to the Prime Minister and the coalition leader. He trots down to Anthony Pratt's place and has a little private concert with Katy Perry. You couldn't make this up! The Prime Minister, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, was trotting down to have a private concert with Katy Perry at the mansion of a billionaire packaging mogul—who also just happened to have been a major donor for both Labor and the coalition over the last few decades—and he was doing it with this group of 200 political and business elites, who were swapping business cards, and working out where they'll go in their post-political career and, 'Who's going to pay for this policy?' and, 'How can we get more corporate profits going?' while listening to Katy Perry and drinking champagne in a billionaire's mansion. That's what the Prime Minister was doing on the weekend. And you want us to cheer in some tax cuts where Labor gives income earners $15 a week. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with selling that to the Australian public.
You see, the Labor and Liberal parties—and the Nats, when they can—take millions in donations from big corporations, and then they write laws here to benefit them, and then they pretend: 'There's nothing we can do about it. This is just how the world has to be. And if you're not well off, we'll throw you a crumb. We'll throw you a crumb, and maybe with that crumb you'll be able to actually pay for the bus to work for that week. And good luck with that.'
'By the way, I'm off,' says the Labor Prime Minister. 'I'm off to my billionaire friend's mansion for the champagne and Katy Perry, but good luck with the 15 bucks a week. Good luck with that'
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, people making above 150 grand a year—that's the top eight per cent of income earners in the country—are going to get 40 per cent of the benefit of these tax cuts in the long run. That's 40 per cent to people who are already earning above 150 grand a year. The top five per cent of income earners, and that includes senators and members of the House of Reps—those making over 180 grand a year—will be getting a quarter of all the benefits. So what does that actually mean? That means over the next decade, that top five per cent—politicians, billionaires and everyone dancing to Katy Perry with the Prime Minister on the weekend—collectively will get $85 billion from these tax cuts.
What else could we have done with $85 billion over the next decade? We could have given everybody access to dental care through Medicare. We could have put dental into Medicare for $77 billion. That's less than what these tax cuts are delivering to the top five per cent. Of course, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the message the Prime Minister got on the weekend when he was dancing to Katy Perry at Anthony Pratt's place. I'm pretty sure Anthony Pratt was saying: 'Good on you, Prime Minister.' Corporate profits are up; corporate taxes are low. 'You're not wasting money,' say the corporate donors. 'You're not wasting money on poor people, and we're still going to get a whacking great tax cut.' If Labor's test, going into the next election, is that they're slightly less crap than the coalition, then this is exhibit A.
]]>… it remains very concerned that the Committee's truncated inquiry period will undermine or diminish the democratic and proper scrutiny of the Bills.
That's not my position or the Greens' position. That's the position of the Law Council, and it was shared by a series of key stakeholders about a government inquiry that basically started on Christmas Eve and ended on Australia Day. That's the worst possible process for major institutional reform.
Now the Attorney, through the minister here, says that they want yet another sham inquiry to finish by 13 March on a committee that doesn't have a spare hearing date between now and 13 March, unless the chair decides to make us sit on the weekend. To suggest that's a good process for fundamental legal reform, which we only get one chance at doing every two or three decades, is genuinely embarrassing.
Going to the bill itself, we have the government, the Attorney, saying that they consulted with the sectors in the course of this. They met with them, but they didn't listen. There are very, very significant problems with this bill that may in fact, in some circumstances, drive things backwards. One of the most remarkable things about it is that the government says this is all about integrity in the selection and appointment process. We share the government's concerns about the appointment process that happened under the former government without any due process. We share the government's concerns about that, and we never want to see that happen again, but the government's bill makes all the integrity measures discretionary, so a future Attorney can just ignore all the integrity measures that they're putting in this bill and do exactly what the former government did. So to come in here and lecture the Greens on integrity, when you want to abolish a major institution, have a sham inquiry over Christmas and then another sham inquiry after that and then to put forward a bill with discretionary integrity measures—you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Not only are there the integrity problems with the bill but also the social security sector has very substantial concerns that tens and tens of thousands of social security claimants are going to lose their tier 1 review rates. That may mean nothing to the government but, when the people struggling to survive on social security are going to be told that their primary review right when they lose an entitlement or have their entitlement docked is going to be abolished by the government with no solution under the table to fix it, that concerns the Greens. And we're not willing to just wash through legislation that takes away fundamental rights for social security claimants—people who are already suffering on benefits that you won't lift. We're not just going to abolish their rights in a fast and dirty inquiry according to your timetable.
Similar concerns have been raised within the refugee sector about the reduction of rights for refugee claimants with this bill. So to lecture us on integrity, when you've got a bill that has optional integrity measures, to lecture us on wanting a proper inquiry when you had a sham government dominated inquiry over Christmas and now you want to have another sham inquiry through the Senate, and then to pontificate and pretend you've got the moral high ground—ha! We are open to good-faith negotiations with the government. These are things that can be solved. We can work across the chamber and resolve these things. And, if we can resolve them before 24 July and get excellent legal reform and institutional reform, we are super open to doing that, but we're not going to ride roughshod over key stakeholders, we're not going to ride roughshod over social security claimants, and we're not going to go with the artificial timetable here. (Time expired)
]]>Defence has over 16,000 active contracts, with a total value of over $200 billion. That's on foot now. There's no effective oversight and sod all accountability. There's just a bunch of mates patting themselves on the back, giving themselves Orders of Australia, giving themselves promotions and giving themselves blank cheque after blank cheque. No wonder they don't want to let the light in. No wonder they don't want people to know what's going on behind closed doors. Let's just run through a couple of those examples. Do you want to know who decided to sign off on spending $45-plus billion to get currently—I don't know—eight but probably six, five or four Hunter frigates? It's the single biggest live procurement contract the Commonwealth's entered into. Do you want to know who did this without any value-for-money assessment? Do you want to know who or why this contract was signed? You don't get to know. They've lost the records, apparently. Do you want to know who we sell military equipment to or what that equipment is—whether it's Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel or both sides of the conflict in Sudan at the same time? You don't get to know. They don't tell us.
Do you want to know why we've been waiting more than half a decade to just get a patrol boat in the water and actually into commission? Do you want to know who's responsible for that delay or how much it's cost? You don't get to know that either. Do you want to know why Defence is currently chopping up and burying a bunch of billion-dollar helicopters that just a few months ago they said were fine and terrific and dandy? Do you want to know how or why? No, you don't get to. Silence. And do you want to know why the flight safety standards for those same helicopters aren't in the public domain? Do you want to see the flight safety standards and the testing that happened, maybe, to get some idea, given that four lives were lost on those same helicopters? No, you don't get to. Silence. You don't get accountability from Defence.
It's as bad under the Albanese Labor government as it was under the coalition. We get all this rhetoric about transparency. We got all these social media posts and spin from the Albanese government when they were in opposition that things were going to be different, things were going to change. But, instead of that transparency, we've got the same brick wall that separates the public interest and the public from the decisions and the decision-makers shielding mates, shielding people who should be held to account and shielding people like senior officers in the AFP, who we found out this week spent heaven knows how much money and how many resources issuing a covert operation against a 13-year-old boy with autism. We don't get the transparency. We don't get to see who did it. Without that, we don't get the accountability.
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