Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

In my home of Port Phillip, the local council will soon vote on whether to end or continue developing aged social inclusion services through the better together program, a community based social connection program funded under the Commonwealth Home Support Program. The prospect that the council may walk away from a proven model, only to replace it with something that will ultimately cost more, is deeply concerning and a real shame for the city of Port Phillip. As a user of the program said:

It has reduced our loneliness and isolation. We became friends with other participants and staff who are kind and caring. We felt a greater level of community connection and cohesion. We felt that we belong.

People who rely on the better together program to stay active and avoid isolation are rightly worried. They fear a decline in quality and accessibility, along with higher personal costs, outcomes that have become all too common in aged care. I urge the City of Port Phillip to continue providing these social inclusion services in their current form to protect the quality, continuity and accountability that public delivery provides, and I urge the Labor government to confront the broader aged-care crisis, as my colleague Senator Allman-Payne has. We must properly fund public and community based care and end the overreliance on for-profit providers from early childhood right through to aged care. Our communities deserve nothing less.

Think Australia's emissions are insignificant? The Otway Basin acreage release has just opened 2.5 million hectares of Southern Ocean waters to gas exploration—exploration by multinational corporations with a track record of pillaging our environment, shipping gas overseas and not even cleaning up after themselves. We are the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, and the coalition thinks that's great. 'If we're going to be climate criminals,' they figure, 'we might as well get away with the money.' Except we don't. We export the vast majority of our gas overseas for next to nothing, a deal so lopsided it's made us a global laughing stock. We sell gas to Japan, and Japan onsells it and somehow makes more money than we do. Labor thinks that's a great arrangement too. They're putting our marine ecosystems at risk through seismic blasting so their donors and foreign buyers can make a profit.

Labor's 2½ million hectare Otway Basin release isn't just another bad climate decision. It flies in the face of communities who have said loudly and clearly that our ocean is not for sale. That's why my Greens colleagues and I joined hundreds of Victorians in a paddle-out with Surfrider in Torquay on the weekend. We'll challenge you in the ocean, we'll challenge you in the parliament, and we will challenge you at the ballot box at the next Victorian state election in November.

In October 2023, he endorsed collective punishment against all Palestinians in Gaza, and his comments have been used to prove the crime of genocide. In the following two years, his government has overseen the killing of at least 70,000 people, overwhelmingly women and children. He's the head of state of a country responsible for blockading Gaza, the mass starvation of children, and indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and refugee camps, actions that continues today. Since 2023 the country he represents has continued to perpetrate genocide in Palestine as the death toll of journalists rises to 250. He has failed to apologise to the Australian people or the family of Zomi Frankcom after the IDF killed the Australian aid worker. He has stood for photographs with bombs that he's signed his name on with a permanent marker before they were fired into Gaza. Who is he? He is an invited guest to Australia, invited by our prime minister Albanese. He is Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and here is perhaps an easier question: has this government lost all semblance of humanity? It is a great shame that we are inviting this person to our shores when he has perpetrated and overseen these horrific acts perpetrated against Palestinian people. I'm proud to stand with the Greens, in particular my colleague Mehreen Faruqi, in protest, along with the thousands of protesters across our streets who are rejecting the division that this visit will bring.