David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator McKim, I move the following amendment to Labor's amendment in the terms circulated in the chamber:

Omit paragraphs (c) and (d), substitute "and:

(c) the provisions of the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 be referred immediately to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 October 2025; and

(d) the provisions of the Strengthening Oversight of the National Intelligence Community Bill 2025 be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 October 2025".

The amendment that we are moving provides that the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 be referred immediately to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 October. We're also seeking that the Orwellian named Strengthening Oversight of the National Intelligence Community Bill 2025 not go to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the Labor-coalition stitch-up, but instead go to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. We'd really like to take at least one of those secret security bills out of that dark, smoke-filled room of the war parties and instead put it to a public inquiry—particularly this bill, which is proposing to give the PJCIS even more powers for their secret review of intelligence.

But I really want to dwell on the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025. You can't make some stuff up in politics, but what about this? In the last parliament, we saw Labor coming up with a million reasons they couldn't do anything on public housing. They couldn't help people out on rents, they couldn't build public housing, and they kept saying it was all the Greens' fault for not supporting their crap bills. Then, in this parliament, they start with a public housing bill. Well done, Labor! You bring a public housing bill into the chamber. You push it through the lower house. And do you know what public housing they're building? They're building public housing for US troops under AUKUS. That's their public housing bill.

Right now, they want to build 700 public housing units over in WA—not for Australians who haven't got a place to live and not for renters who can't afford to buy a home. They're building public housing for US troops because Uncle Donald asked them to. Surely they read this bill, didn't they? Didn't somebody in the Labor caucus say, 'Our first public housing bill in the new parliament can't be to build housing for US troops under AUKUS'? Surely someone did a reality check. But no. That's their bill. And do you know what? They can't even say how many hundreds of millions of public dollars will be used to build public housing for US troops under the bill.

Even the coalition were asking some questions about it. The coalition normally wave through anything to do with AUKUS. If it's anything to do with the US alliance, they'll wave it through. But even the coalition downstairs asked some little, quiet, tentative questions like: 'Please, sir, can you tell us how much money we're going to be paying to build the US troops public housing? Please, minister, you haven't explained in the bill how much this is going to cost; is it going to come from the Defence budget or some other budget?' When the coalition got no answers, they crawled back into their shell and went quiet on it. And that's so typical of this non-opposition opposition—