Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This MPI is an early Christmas gift, and I thank the member for Farrer. We can all remember what a chaotic government looks like, because it wasn't that long ago that we saw the coalition chaos, with the member for Cook pretending to run a government, not holding a hose, having six extra ministries—which no-one knew; the member for Farrer didn't know and the member for Dickson didn't know—upsetting the French, upsetting the Chinese, upsetting New Zealand and the Pacific, being slow to understand or act on the pandemic, and trying and not quite succeeding in getting his pastor mate in to visit President Trump. There were negative texts leaking from premiers and coalition partners. Australia was being ignored at international climate conferences. Yes, we know what chaos looks like.

This government, however, is just getting on with business. Last week, for example, I was proud to represent the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence at HMAS Stirling in Perth, where the government handed over a patrol boat to the Samoan government to enhance security in the Pacific. The defence minister was representing the Australian government in Saudi Arabia. Here the Prime Minister and the foreign minister are working hard to restore our place in the world while delivering for Australians here at home. The assistant ministers were already committed to other events in other states too, because they were busy delivering for all Australians. Just on Thursday, Minister Conroy announced that Henderson would become the home of continuous naval shipbuilding in Western Australia, which the WA state Minister for Defence Industry, the Hon. Paul Papalia, described quite rightly as an 'absolutely priceless' decision. That's what this government does: it makes good decisions and gets on with business.

A few days before that, I attended the BP refinery site in Kwinana in the electorate of Brand, together with Ministers Bowen and Madeleine King, for the announcement of the H2Kwinana hydrogen energy hub. The Albanese government is investing over half a billion dollars in regional hydrogen hubs, with the other locations being the Pilbara, Gladstone, Townsville, the Hunter, Bell Bay and Port Bonython. It's important, as it has been predicted that our hydrogen industry will generate anything up to $50 billion in additional GDP by 2050.

We have had interest in this from all over the world, and the government would be negligent not to take action. This government takes action. We recently delivered the gas code and expanded the Capacity Investment Scheme because governments have to plan for the future and the future is calling.

Earlier this month, I attended the CSIRO labs in Perth. We can be very proud of our CSIRO, which has originated many essential innovations such as polymer banknotes, long-life contact lenses and wi-fi. It's important that we value the CSIRO and Australian ingenuity and back it in here at home. I will only briefly remind members that the climate science division of CSIRO was gutted by the coalition in 2016—a great example of how not to treat our scientists and how not to govern our country. The coalition is chaos.

Further, in science and technology we see that the lack of action over the last 10 years has now been corrected by this government. Where were the AI strategy, the quantum strategy and the robotics strategy under the too many long years under Liberal-National coalition as they sleepwalked into the future? Under this government it is all happening. The Albanese government has been characterised by stability and delivery. We have delivered the Defence strategic review 2023. Where was your Defence strategic review? We've created Australia's first national anticorruption commission. Where was your legislation? We've re-established ties with our Pacific neighbours. All you could do was insult them. We have delivered two surpluses in two budgets for targeted relief for Australian households. We're closing the gender pay gap, we've increased women's participation in the workforce and this is the first gender-representative governing party in our history. Where's the coalition's? We are taking action on climate change, securing our energy supply and renewing our environmental legislation—things the Liberal and National parties could never do, because they could never agree on the science. It was chaos.

We've got wages moving again, which was not a priority for those opposite. We've invested in Medicare. We've increased bulk-billing and made medicines cheaper. Those opposite did not. We've increased assistance payments, parenting payments and rent assistance at a time when household budgets do need a hand. We've increased enrolments in training with fee-free TAFE. We are changing lives. We've acted to uncover wrongdoings such as the robodebt scandal and the Pricewaterhouse scandal. We're strengthening the Public Service and implementing the recommendations of the Jenkins review to create a safe and respectful workplace. We have repaired relations with our trading partners and finalised trade agreements that have stalled. (Time expired)

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