Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was immensely pleased the New South Wales Liberal government committed $1.2 million to our cause. Not only will the track be replaced and become a danger-free zone for young and less young athletes but the grandstand and amenities will get a revamp too. It's the only synthetic running track in the northern part of Sydney and its refurbishment will mean a world of difference thousands of kids, young athletes, amateurs and Olympians using the track every single week. Thank you for your support and patience, which has made this achievement possible.

I'm proud to report that, since my election in July 2016, under the Turnbull government we have managed to secure grants and funding for 35 community organisations. These funds go directly to the community groups which everyone on the Northern Beaches knowingly or unknowingly comes into contact with in one way or another. It goes directly to providing better services and better support for our community. The Davidson Volunteer Rural Fire Brigade was able to build a station extension. The Australian Outrigger Canoe Racing Association of New South Wales bought safety equipment. Volunteer Marine Rescue in Terrey Hills funded its radio room upgrade, while the Scotland Island Rural Fire Brigade bought community fire unit boxes. The Sharing Stories Foundation in Palm Beach received a grant for language workshops and equipment to work on projects with out Indigenous peoples. Northern Beaches Interchange used its funding to better care for teenagers with disabilities. A grant was allocated to the Australian National University for improving innovation connections. Playtec was supported through a business growth grant. We helped the Rotary Club of Belrose with funds to cover their fuel costs. The Tibetan Community of Australia was able to buy computer equipment.

Under the Smart Cities and Suburbs Program, we funded a project with the Australian PV Institute to develop a solar-powered mapping tool currently being rolled out by the Northern Beaches Council. The Manly Warringah Women's Resource Centre was able to install new appliances, and the Be Centre Foundation upgraded its IT. The Northern Beaches Business Education Network received funding to upgrade its emergency systems, while Easylink Community Services was able to purchase a vehicle for community transport. Lifeline Northern Beaches will be getting water and flooring upgrades, and we've supported the Narrabeen Lakes Festival with equipment for a generator. The New South Wales Branch of the Scout Association of Australia was able to install solar panels and get air conditioning. The Burdekin Association will be setting up a youth hub for mental health in Pittwater under the Stronger Communities Program. MWP Community Aid received funding for iPads, and the Cottage Point Association received funding for a defibrillator and its supporting signage.

For those living in such a beautiful and natural environment, sport has always been and will always be an integral part of life on the beaches, so supporting our local sports clubs is a top priority. So far, the Avalon Beach Surf Life Saving Club has received funding for a function room upgrade and to install a flagpole. South Narrabeen Surf Life Saving Club was able to buy a vehicle for community transport. Collaroy Surf Life Saving Club was able to upgrade its gymnasium, while Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club restored its facilities for female lifesavers. The Liberal government supported Narraweena Junior Rugby League Football Club with equipment and training costs. Both the Manly Warringah Gymnastic Club and the Pittwater Rugby Club were able to buy new equipment. The New South Wales Gun Club refurbished its disabled amenities, and the Peninsula Bridge Club bought new equipment.

Far from being a tagline, 'lest we forget' actually means something to our community on the Northern Beaches. We have a long and proud history of supporting both our ageing veterans and our current service men and women. So many individuals work tirelessly on this front, and I continue to do everything I can to ensure their work is supported. The Narrabeen RSL Sub-branch was able to purchase a public address system with help from a government grant. The Avalon Beach RSL Sub-branch received funds for salaries and administration, as well as to support and train in veterans advocacy. We are also supporting the Veterans Centre Sydney Northern Beaches with salary and administration support and have recently allocated them a grant to look into the availability of service dogs for our younger veterans. It is probably the cutest grant that I have ever made!

I'd be remiss if I ignored the fact that our region, as beautiful as it is, can also be prone to natural disasters. Anyone who lives on the beaches knows the devastating impact some of our worst storms have had on the community and how hard it is to rebuild. That's why disaster relief is so critical. After numerous representations, we managed to secure funding from the federal government to help the council cover the costs of clearing storm debris and restoring community assets after the February 2017 Sydney storms, the June 2016 east coast storms and floods, the April 2015 east coast storms and floods, and the October 2014 eastern New South Wales severe thunderstorms. That money helps ease the burden on ratepayers who ultimately bear the cost of cleaning up and rebuilding our community after these disasters.

I am proud of these achievements. I am proud of my community, which does so much and asks so little in return, and I am privileged to represent it. There is more work to be done. Over the coming year and however long I will have the pleasure of serving you, I will fight for our fair share on the northern beaches.

For example, Cottage Point is a small community of about 250 residents, nestled on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, on the edge of Mackellar. Bounded on all sides by bushland and water, it is accessible only by a narrow road through the bush or by boat on Pittwater. This small community is home to a yacht club, a highly successful cafe, one of Sydney's best restaurants that often makes the list of top 10 restaurants in the world, Marine Rescue New South Wales, and a local Rural Fire Service brigade. The residents are highly independent and don't ask for much from government.

Currently, telecommunications are extremely poor, with virtually non-existent mobile coverage and an unreliable and old ADSL connection serviced by microwave link to Berowra. For local businesses and residents, this situation is incredibly frustrating. Businesses that depend on internet connections for EFTPOS and bookings frequently see disruptions, often at the height of busy weekend trade. Over the Christmas holidays, we saw the speed with which tragedy can unfold and the importance of having quick connectivity to Marine Rescue and other emergency services when a seaplane crashed into Pittwater, near the Hawkesbury River.

Making sure Cottage Point receives adequate connectivity remains a top priority. I will continue to push on behalf of the community for upgrades to mobile services and for federal government funding through the Mobile Black Spot Program. Given the area's exposure to bushfires and the number of visitors enjoying our beautiful Pittwater waterways, this is a safety imperative.

As well as Cottage Point, too many residents on the beaches, especially at Palm Beach, Avalon, Bilgola Plateau, Newport, Narrabeen and Oxford Falls, struggle daily with inadequate mobile phone reception. As the rollout of the NBN progresses, many residents are ditching their home phones and relying on mobile phones. Older Australians who are choosing to remain in their homes longer, aided by the provisions of home care services, often rely on medical alert systems, which run on 3G or higher mobile connections. With the increasing rollout of telehealth services, these connections will become ever more important. For these reasons and others, I will continue to work with our providers to ensure services are upgraded and these black spots are fixed. It is simply not good enough that in the 21st century we still suffer from major mobile black spots in metropolitan areas, where most people live.

The Manly Warringah Gymnastic Club, as I mentioned previously, is Australia's largest and most successful gymnastics club. Under the leadership of its CEO, Ian Hardy, the club has gone from strength to strength, with over 2½ thousand members and 220,000 visits per year. As the only high-performance centre in Northern Sydney, the club serves a huge catchment area, with members from all over Sydney. The club, however, has long outgrown its current location, with some gymnasts being turned away due to lack of space. Despite years of successive promises from local council, this premier facility is still without a plan for a new fit-for-purpose and enlarged gym. I will continue to work with local and state governments to ensure that we can find a solution to secure the long-term future of this club on the northern beaches. A club which trains some of New South Wales' and Australia's best gymnasts cannot be lost due to inaction and lack of support.

The repair of the seawall at Collaroy Beach after the storms in June 2016 has been stalled by red tape at Northern Beaches Council and disagreements with the state government. The centre of the bureaucratic storm is the location of the protective barrier and how it should be built and maintained, and this argument is still going on 18 months later. Liens on residents' properties, easements, bank guarantees and unlimited liability are conditions that Dick Persson, the council administrator—this unelected official—was attempting to impose on residents. Residents believe council is shifting the burden of maintaining the public beach onto the Crown and residents.

Meanwhile, residents live in fear of another storm where their houses will go unprotected.

The Wakehurst Parkway is a vital transport artery on the northern beaches. Far too often, however, the parkway is flooded and closed. With the increasing pace of development on the peninsula, the construction of Northern Beaches Hospital and the need for emergency access despite regular flooding near Middle Creek, the parkway will have to be widened to North Narrabeen from Seaforth to flood-proof it. In recent years, the parkway has been closed due to flooding an average of four times a year. Dredging Middle Creek and raising and widening roadways are on the table. In other words, the parkway needs to be rebuilt, including all the bridges. Preliminary funding of $5 million has been provided by the state Liberal government to support investigations by Northern Beaches Council into practical action to minimise siltration and improve water flows to prevent flooding.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you have watched the news in recent days you might be forgiven for thinking that the government's excuse for not getting on with the job of governing in the interests of Australia's future is the chaos that is occurring behind the scenes such as the issue with the previous leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, or the previous citizenship debacle. But I am here to say quite clearly that none of those things that happen in the background, none of those peripheral issues, stop a government from doing its job. This government should be doing its job anyway. Scandals are no excuse for not doing it.

The Public Service still chugs away, no matter what's happening. I will say that it does stop you from getting your messages in the news, but it shouldn't stop you from actually doing the work. It shouldn't stop you at all. The Public Service still chugs away and, if given nothing else to do, it will clean up and repair. It will still come up with the reports you've asked for. It will still develop the policies you've asked for. There are lots of ministers on the front bench who weren't involved in any of those debacles. They should have been getting on with their jobs. There is no reason whatsoever why this government shouldn't still be effective.

I'm going to go back to the last time Labor were in government. We were in government roughly the same amount of time as this government has been—between five and six years. So the government have had roughly the same time now as Labor had to build their agenda, do their reports, survey what needed to be done, come up with their plans and introduce big policy ideas. They've had six years. Yet all we've had from them is a corporate tax cut. That's all we've had at the moment. I want to compare this to the last six years of the Labor government, because we also had moments when it was difficult for us to get our messages out. We also had moments of chaos. We did. But it was not in terms of governing. Let's remember back to those days.

We introduced an emissions trading scheme. We tried once and failed. Then we finally introduced an emissions trading scheme. This government came in in 2013 and abolished it and emissions have been rising since. We created the NBN. We did the hard work of the structural separation of Telstra. That took a while. It was a hard policy area. But we did it, and the NBN was set to grow. This government came in and deliberately destroyed it. On instructions from then Prime Minister Abbott, then Minister Turnbull deliberately set about weakening the NBN and we see the disaster that it is now. We created the National Disability Insurance Scheme, something we worked with the community on for years before finally establishing it and launching some test sites. Again, we have seen this government not do its bit in making sure that it rolls out as well as it should. There are very real issues with it, and every member in this House would know people in their communities who are struggling with its implementation.

We introduced a new school funding model. Again, there were years of consultation. We increased funding across the board, with incredible support from the public and private school sectors. Again, the government knew it was a good thing when in opposition because it committed to it. When it got into government, it scrapped it. We've seen $30 billion in cuts, in spite of the government's rhetoric, from schools since then. We created the Tasmanian forestry agreement. It was incredibly difficult work to find a pathway towards sustainable forestry in Tasmania. This government got in and scrapped it.

We established the marine parks—something that many people in my community are very proud of, as am I. And what happened? We had the Abbott government come along and wind back the management plans. It is still up in the air. The marine parks, now six years later, are still at risk.

We developed the Murray-Darling Basin plan and the water triggers—incredibly difficult policy areas—and we have seen this government attempt to wind that plan back in spite of the very serious issues in the management of water, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland.

We developed the national agreement on housing and homelessness— something that was working very well. Tens of thousands of new properties came into the affordable housing market because of that agreement. When the government came in, they were very slow to act. We are still in a transitional one right now, between 2017 and 2018, even though since 2011-12 we have seen the number of people aged over 55 seeking homelessness help grow by 9.5 per cent each year—and we have a government that still has a transitional agreement and has cut $44 million per year from homelessness funding since 2014-15.

We introduced paid parental leave. The government hasn't quite scrapped that but they sure as hell have cut it. There are 70,000 mums who will be worse off now thanks to this government cuts.

Apprenticeships actually grew during the global financial crisis. Knowing how downturns usually decimate the apprenticeship base—they completely take out take people who have done a few years and it is very difficult for them to get back in—the Labor government we worked very hard on apprenticeships. The number of apprenticeships actually grew during the financial crisis. Now, though, we have 148,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when this government was elected—in spite of the fact that we are in the best economic conditions in 10 years. In Parramatta alone, there are 1,100 fewer apprentices now than there were in September 2013. And, of course, the government has cut funding from TAFE. They have cut more than $2.8 billion from TAFE skills and training. And, in the 2016-17 budget, Prime Minister Turnbull cut a further $600 million from TAFE skills and training over the next four years. That is quite extraordinary from a government. There is no excuse for this government not to be addressing the major issues of the day, and the training of the future workforce should be one of those.

In the Labor government's first years, we gave the biggest increase to pensions in decades. We increased the single pension by about $100 a week. And what did this government do when it came in? It changed the taper rate and seriously undermined the financial stability of part-pensioners—an incredible change for a group of people who had already retired. If you talk to a person who has recently retired, one of the things that they tell you gives them a real shock when they first retire is that they realise the money they have is what they have and they're not actually going to earn any more. So to change the conditions of people once they have retired in the way that this government did by changing the taper rate is quite extraordinary. There are many angry people out there who planned for their retirement for decades and retired on one set of rules and then had those rules change, which significantly undermined their earnings for the rest of their life. The government is also trying to ditch the energy supplement, leaving pensioners up to $366 a year worse off. And they still plan to increase the age pension age to 70. Many people in my community have signed petitions about that.

When Labor was in government, even in a hung parliament, even though we had to convince conservative independents in this House and a progressive party in the Senate, we still managed to get all of this stuff through. We put an extraordinary commitment into renewables, growing that sector strongly under Labor policies. But since this government came in, when they essentially slashed support for renewables, we have seen investment plummet. And we have seen dramatic increases in power prices for households and businesses, which are suffering much more, with no real answer in sight six years later.

Instead of getting down and doing the work of figuring out what they were going to do to invest and grow this incredible sector—which is growing around the world so quickly, but not in this country—they have been attacking private companies for making sensible decisions to shut down ageing power plants when the cost of upkeep makes them commercially unviable. You also might remember that in 2015 then Treasurer Hockey instructed the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop funding windfarms. So strong is their ideological contempt for renewables, they have done incredible damage to our renewable sector and put us back years.

We can also talk about the economy when it comes to this government. Despite all the rhetoric back when they were in opposition and in their early days in government about growth and jobs—and they are still on it—their performance when it comes to GDP is actually not that great. Between 2010 and 2014 we had the fourth highest GDP growth among OECD countries. The US, UK, Japan and Germany were all contracting back then, but we had the fourth highest GDP growth among those 30-plus OECD countries. Now, in that same group, we are 20th. We've actually slumped to 20th. We are behind Mexico, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and a whole range of other countries. So we have gone from a leader under the former Labor government to a lagger now when you look at the global league table. So all the rhetoric about jobs and growth from those opposite is just not true—and that's despite the fact that GDP growth worldwide is the highest it's been in 10 years. The IMF is actually adjusting forecasts up; yet we are now lagging at No. 20.

The same story can be said of debt. For all the talk of the previous Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister and the previous Treasurer and the current Treasurer about the $200 billion gross debt being frightening and promising that the Liberal government would never ever run willy-nilly into debt and describing the $300 billion in projected as gigantic and an almost conceivable level of debt, what's happening now goes far, far beyond that. It's currently about $515 billion. They said that $200 billion was frightening and now, after six years of Liberal government, it is $515 billion with no sign at all of that slowing down. From the government's own budget papers we are talking about gross debt not even peaking over a 10-year horizon.

There are also a lot of small things that we did in government that had quite an impact. We abolished the gag clauses that the Howard government had introduced into the grant agreements for charities. I was really proud of that, because I had been the subject of one of those gag clauses once. We abolished the gag clauses, and this government came back in and they introduced them again. We abolished temporary protection visas and this government came in and they are back again. We established a loss carry-back scheme for small business where business could carry back losses in one year against tax paid in the previous two years—something that was called for by small business. But that was abolished when this government came to power in 2013. We also established a permanent instant tax write-off scheme for small business. The government abolished that and then they replaced it a year later with a temporary one—a bigger amount but temporary. In the university sector in western Sydney, when Howard was in government—prior to us winning government—we saw a decline in the number of people from low-socioeconomic status households enrolling in university. We turned that around in six years of a Labor government, and we are now seeing it go back again.

There have been substantial cuts to child care. While the government may claim that the households that are worse off are the wealthier ones, that is actually not true. The households that will suffer most from this government's childcare changes are those where you have a parent trying to get back into the workforce, where they can't demonstrate the number of hours required to get the appropriate rebate because they're still trying to get into the workforce.

Housing—you'd expect that this government would have acted on housing by now. We're in opposition and we've managed to come up with a serious housing policy, but this government hasn't. And that's in spite of the fact that in areas like mine, Western Sydney, the rent for a three-bedroom house has now surpassed that in Sydney generally. In Western Sydney, in Parramatta the median rent is now $500 a week compared to $470 for Sydney wide. It's a crisis in Western Sydney. We've got 24.5 per cent of rental households under stress and 12 per cent of home owners under mortgage stress. In six years you'd think the government would have thought, 'Gee, we really should do something about that.'

A bit of scandal, a bit of gossip going around on the outside are no excuse for a government not doing its job when it comes to these things. This appropriation bill should be an exciting document. It should be moving Australia into the future, but it's not. Gossip has taken over, and this government has ceased to function. (Time expired)

Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always good to follow the member for Parramatta, another fierce Western Sydney advocate. She will also be affected by the new train timetable we have for the western line, which is causing a lot of headaches for the residents in my electorate of Lindsay. The new train timetable is an absolute mess, it's a debacle and it's a guessing game trying to get a run home from work of an afternoon. Delays, cancellations, system meltdowns—day after day after day, the commuters in Western Sydney are being buggered around by the New South Wales Liberals. It's an absolute debacle. Often there is only standing room on our train lines. In a place that recorded 47.3 degrees in summer, there's no air-conditioning on those trains either. It's going from bad to worse.

The people of Lindsay don't have too many options, because it's either two hours on the M4 with a toll—we had a toll on the toll road and then it was removed because we'd already paid for the road; now we have the toll back again. Lucky us!—or it's rolling a dice to catch a train home to Western Sydney with a system that is constantly in meltdown. Commuters got a fair increase at the beginning of the year as well, so they're now being slugged even more to catch an unreliable service. But that's what you have to do if you live in Western Sydney: you have to commute. Why are they commuting? Because that's where the jobs are.

In the next 33 years more people will live west of Parramatta than they do in the east. We have a three per cent higher cost of living and inferior transport options compared to our inner-city cousins. Half a million Western Sydney workers will need to commute outside the region, with an expected 200,000 fewer jobs available to workers by 2026, which is not that far away. But where are the local jobs? Where is the Turnbull government's strategy for local jobs in Western Sydney? Population growth is outstripping jobs growth, and this has been the case for years and years. There is clearly a growing need to create, attract and sustain quality jobs.

We know the projected growth and we have a proposed corridor for transport options, but it's only proposed; there's nothing really happening. It's kind of like: we might get there, we might not, but it's really not a priority. There are plans for a rail line. Maybe it will go north south, maybe it won't go north south and maybe they're still deciding; but, in any case, it will connect to an already overcrowded Western Sydney line. There is no comprehensive plan to deal with people movement in Western Sydney.

We know Western Sydney airport is supposed to be the Holy Grail and aerotropolis that is destined to save us all. We hear about the boards being created, where the bulk of the people on the boards don't come from our area. They see an eastern Sydney sunrise every morning; they don't see a Western Sydney sunrise every morning. They come from the east and they tell us what's good for us. They make the decisions and tell the people of Western Sydney what we're going to get and what we're worthy of.

The 24-hour airport has no comprehensive infrastructure plan or jobs plan for locals, but we keep getting told it's the only thing we're worthy of having, it's good for us and we should just accept it. We hear about tens of thousands of jobs. It was going to create 60,000 jobs; now, based on the statements by the minister, it's going to create 11,000. But where are the jobs for the locals? Where is the jobs guarantee for Western Sydney residents so that they can get out of their cars, get off the M4 and forget about paying that toll, or get out of the stuffy train and stop being crammed in like sardines?

Where are the local jobs for my Western Sydney community? Show us the benefits? Those in the Turnbull government are ripping the guts out of the future for Western Sydney kids and out of Western Sydney University for healthcare, and there is absolutely no strategy for my community and Western Sydney more broadly.

In 2050, the kids who are currently in primary, kids my kids' age, will be in their 40s—a terrifying prospect for me as their mum. What's the future going to be like? We come in here to advocate for our next generation. What is that going to look like for them? Are they going to be taking up a university degree? Will they be able to get a trade? Will they be raising kids of their own? What will my community be like then? What will Lindsay be like in 2050? Will they have a local job to go to? At the current rate of growth and job creation, absolutely not. Will they have a fantastic place to live in Lindsay? If you're recording 47.3 degrees in summer, I'm guaranteeing it's going to be pretty hot and, unless we take some action on climate change, it's going to be even hotter. To support a great future for all of the residents in Lindsay, we need a government that is committed to Western Sydney, not someone who, each election campaign, takes a day trip on a train—with a TV crew no less—to say, 'What a great man I am! I can get on a train and come all the way out to Western Sydney.' That's not action; that's not a plan. That is tokenism, and that's all we've seen from those opposite in this place.

To have a great future in my community, we also need a great hospital that supports not only the current community but also the growth that I talked about before. By 2050, in Western Sydney, we're going to have more people living west of Parramatta than living east of it. So you'd think there may be some future planning happening to futureproof my community or to give us some decent options out there, but, no. The Turnbull and Berejiklian governments need to act now to fix Nepean Hospital. We've seen no serious increase in clinical funding, and it continues to be the most under-pressure hospital in New South Wales. They have promised $550 million but will not give us the $1 billion that we need to help with our projected growth or the current need. Hospitals on the other side of Parramatta got $1 billion each—no fight required, no picket lines, no TV cameras, no petition, no community angst, no stories in the paper week after week of women giving birth on floors or women miscarrying in public toilets and bathrooms. There is no plan for Western Sydney. Instead, they are spending $2.5 billion or more on rebuilding Sydney stadium so that the people who attend soccer matches or the football don't have to line up in a queue for so long to get a pie and a hot dog. I think that the people of Lindsay are not silly. They're not fools, and they should not be treated as such. What an absolute waste of resources this $2.5 billion is—which, we heard over the weekend, is actually going to blow out. Where is the investment for Western Sydney? Why do our people constantly get the raw end of the deal? It's no wonder they feel let down by the Turnbull government.

It's even worse for our school communities, following the Turnbull government's $21 million kick in the guts for the thousands of local schoolchildren who returned to school at the beginning of this month. In Lindsay, public schools will be $21 million a year worse off, thanks to funding cuts by the Turnbull government. Figures released by the Parliamentary Budget Office confirmed that every single public school in my area—the ones that I go to week after week, the ones whose presentation assemblies I attend at the end of the year—is going to be getting a cut. That has to be the worst back-to-school gift this government could give any school. A $21 million funding cut is a slap in the face for every single family who pays their taxes and has a child who is going to school in our area—where, by the way, enrolments are up; for the first time in our history, we have more kids enrolling in a public school than in our local Catholic school system. We know that this impact on our kids will be massive. Test results show that Australian students are slipping behind the rest of the world, and anybody who says that funding doesn't make a difference probably never stood in a classroom with nothing and held a piece of chalk and actually tried to teach kids.

Bill Shorten has said that, in order to get every single school up to its fair funding level, a Labour government that he leads will restore every single dollar that these Liberals have cut. The government claims it's increasing spending on schools, but they're using Tony Abbott's 2014 budget, where he announced a $30 billion cut, as a baseline. So they get in over there and they talk about the 'Mediscare' campaign, but they don't talk about the budget fudging that they're doing. They're reversing some of these measures, but it's still a cut when compared to the original funding arrangement. The PBO figures show that schools in this state are losing $856 million over the next two years alone. That's the equivalent of sacking 8,890 teachers, or three teachers from every single school in New South Wales. Nationally, more than 80 per cent of the cuts fall to public schools.

Last year, I managed to get around nearly every single school in my electorate. Every school was worried about how those cuts would affect its students. You only have to look at one of the local high schools in my electorate that has a 20 per cent Indigenous student population. The biggest investment that they made with their Gonski money was that they were able to get year 9 and 10 boys to start reading. If this government doesn't value that kind of achievement with additional resources and additional funding, I'm not quite sure what will stand out as an achievement for it, because I can tell you now that those boys who have learnt to read in year 9 and year 10 will go on to have much better lives and much better career options and prospects because of that skill.

The Prime Minister and the Liberals are ripping out billions and billions of dollars at the same time as enrolments are going up. More money means more teachers and more individual attention for every single student, but that's not actually what's happening now. Education is a priority for Labor, because we believe getting a great education shouldn't actually be determined by your postcode or your parents' bank account. Certainly when it comes to Western Sydney, we don't want our kids to feel like they're any less than any other students. So the need is the greatest out there.

A great education is the ticket to a lifetime of opportunity. It's a ticket that every single child in this country deserves, regardless of who their parents are, and the schools in my electorate are crying out for resources. They need to bring up their physical building structures. They need to bring up air conditioning into their classrooms. I don't want to see a time when local teachers are putting their hands in their own pockets to buy readers, or when P&Cs are no longer fundraising for things like tech—iPads in classrooms—or we're not fundraising for basic things like being able to send kids on excursions and giving them basic access to things like life education. That's certainly the case for the public school where my kids go.

Given how hot it is out in Western Sydney, we need to think about how we make those classrooms and those spaces much more livable so kids on hot days can actually go and learn something rather than sit and sweat their guts out. There are a number of schools in my electorate—including Kingswood High School, Glenmore Park High School and Kurrambee School—that just don't have any air conditioning, which is a disgrace. It is an absolute disgrace that this is not a priority for the government. Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of this country, should be ashamed that he's scrapped a policy that was making our school system fairer so that kids in Western Sydney had the same access as every other school across New South Wales.

Let's talk about the uni funding cuts, shall we? Western Sydney is amongst the worst funded and worst affected regions hit by the $2.2 billion in uni cuts. The former Labor government uncapped uni places, resulting in huge increases in the number of students going to Western Sydney University. But that growth will come to a standstill, because the Prime Minister has effectively reintroduced a cap on the number of university places, taking us back to the bad old days of John Howard. Enrolments in university under Labor increased by 60 per cent in my electorate of Lindsay. In my community, there was a 60 per cent increase. That's massive, and now we're slamming the door in the faces of all of those kids and removing all of that educational opportunity for the kids out in my area. We opened the door and made uni more accessible for people from low- and middle-income families, and now Malcolm Turnbull is locking them out.

Most of the kids in Western Sydney that end up at university are the first in their family to attend, so making it harder for these kids to go is only entrenching disadvantage further. My university, Western Sydney University, will be the hardest hit, with $98 million worth of funding cuts handed out. Sixty per cent of students at Western Sydney University are the first in their family to attend. That's a phenomenal number. Instead of supporting them, this government wants to lock them out.

We're already facing an uphill battle, with the level of tertiary qualified people sitting well below the averages, and the cuts also mean our university's critical outreach programs, industry partnership programs and government partnership programs are all at risk. These programs are focused on addressing Western Sydney's pronounced educational equity gap. It is just not good enough, and while ever I'm the member for Lindsay I will not come into this place and let this government go by without absolutely shaming it on the disgusting treatment that Western Sydney residents are getting. Those cuts to university are a really cruel blow, because hardworking year 12 graduates may now be denied a place at university. It's even more galling to see this Prime Minister ripping funding away from students to pay for tax cuts for multinationals and millionaires. How does he justify making it easier for big business to pay less tax but harder for people to go to university?

Not only do we have cuts to schools and inadequate investment right across Lindsay; we've also got problems in the VET sector. The latest data shows that Commonwealth funding to the vocational education and training sector has had a $1.6 billion cut. That's a 27.3 per cent reduction according to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, and this is on top of state governments cutting around 13 per cent of funding. Instead of investing in local jobs and skills, they cut funding to TAFE and vocational education. Day after day, they are failing to help the youth of this country, and particularly those in Western Sydney.

They are failing to support the families out in my area, with 1,798 families worse off under the new childcare packages that come into effect on 2 July. Those families are part of the just under 280,000 families across Australia who will be worse off. Most of the families who stand to be worse off are families in the lowest income cohort—families who have a combined income of less than $65,000 a year. This government is absolutely out of touch when it takes credit for an increase in fees and introducing a new childcare package which leaves nearly 2,000 families in Lindsay worse off. It's just another kick in the guts for families out in my area who are struggling with flat wages growth and are facing massive hikes in their electricity, education and health bills. The residents of Lindsay need some more action. They need a government that actually cares about what happens to them, that is invested in them and that knows what they need to survive and thrive.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that there aren't any contributions from the other side today—on the appropriations bill, no less. The member for Grayndler, the member for Jagajaga and I this week will celebrate and mark the occasion of 22 years in this place. I don't recall—and I think they would agree with me—seeing a situation where government members are not contributing to an appropriations debate: a freewheeling and wide-ranging debate which allows members opposite, members on this side and the crossbenchers to discuss anything at all. It's not possible to be picked up by the Speaker for being not relevant to an appropriations bill.

This is a fantastic opportunity: 15 minutes to talk about how wonderful the government might be doing; 15 minutes to talk about what a wonderful job they're doing in health and education and defending the environment; 15 minutes, maybe, to talk about what's happening in their own electorates—as we just heard from the member on this side—and to talk about the things that have been done. But, apparently, they have nothing to say. They have nothing to say for two possible reasons, if not both. One is that nothing is being done in their electorates. That is one conclusion you might come to. A second reason might be that they are embarrassed to speak. They are not prepared to come in here and defend their own government, a government so dysfunctional and distracted that it is achieving nothing in this country. The truth is that this government has stopped governing. They are self-imploding. They are so distracted by their internals they have stopped governing.

The bad news for the government is that the punters are on to them. They understand it. All they read about on a daily basis is scandal and internal division. Sadly, it looks like they're going to be reading about that for some time to come yet. I can see, already, the member for Warringah and the member for New England sitting up the back there smiling away. If anyone on that side believes either of those gentlemen—I'll call them that—have put their political aspirations behind them, then they are kidding themselves. So, the future doesn't bode well for all those who are represented by the people on those benches, particularly the members of the National Party, who have completely forgotten people living in rural and regional Australia. Constituents can't be hopeful that anything is going to change anytime soon. It's a disgrace that members are not prepared to either come in here and defend their government or come in here and stick up for their constituents. It's a disgrace, and not something I've seen in my 22 years in this place.

That brings me to some issues in my own electorate which I want to speak about this afternoon. Traffic congestion is not something often associated with regional communities, but the Hunter Region, happily, is growing very strongly, and traffic congestion in the Hunter Region is a real issue. In fact, it is so much of an issue that it would be dangerous of me to single out particular problems. But I'm going to nominate four problems today which I think are a priority: the Glendale interchange in Lake Macquarie, the proposed Singleton bypass, the proposed Muswellbrook bypass, and the proposed Cessnock ring road and our aspirations to link Cessnock proper to the Hunter Expressway. These projects are important not just in terms of traffic congestion; they will unlock the further economic potential of the region. So they are traffic projects but they are also economic projects.

It is extraordinary that the 11 councils, the 11 local governments, in the region unanimously support the Glendale interchange as the region's No.1 infrastructure priority. That is pretty extraordinary in a large region so diverse in its communities. They unanimously support the Glendale interchange. A Labor government funded it here in Canberra. The Lake Macquarie Council has been prepared to put its money where its mouth is—and I think the contribution they are offering is $6 million or $7 million. But we can't get conservative governments in Canberra or Sydney to take the project seriously. It's time they did take the project seriously and recognised the economic benefits that will flow from the completion of the Glendale interchange and the wonderful difference it will make for commuters moving from one side of Lake Macquarie to the other or from the western side of Lake Macquarie to the Newcastle CBD.

The second project is the proposed Muswellbrook bypass, which has been under consideration since 1988—at least, that's when I first became aware of the issue. The CBD of Muswellbrook is still inundated with trucks moving up and down the New England Highway. Mayor Martin Rush and the council there are doing a wonderful job of revitalising and beautifying the CBD and making it an attractive place to shop and visit. But it is very difficult while it remains the main thoroughfare for heavy traffic and indeed vehicular traffic on a daily basis. Labor was funding the planning of this project when last in government. But since the election of the Abbott government, and then the Turnbull government, the project has come to a grinding halt.

The next project is the Singleton bypass. Every morning, even when in Canberra, I tune into ABC Radio Newcastle—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And why wouldn't you!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley rightly says, 'Why wouldn't you!' I'm sure he does it occasionally as well—

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I try.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

particularly if he thinks he might be on the news! The traffic news every morning notes what is happening in and out of Singleton because of the commuter traffic heading to the coalmines. We still have a very healthy coalmining industry in the Hunter region—and may we do so for many years to come. Traffic through Singleton is a nightmare. Despite the New South Wales government making a lot of noise about a bypass over the period since 2011, we still don't even have a fixed route option. I am going to let the Turnbull government off the hook here. The Turnbull government can't fund a Singleton bypass if there is not a Singleton bypass to fund. Until the New South Wales government produces a project, it is pretty hard for the Commonwealth to fund the project. So I appeal to the New South Wales government to get on with it, give Singleton the bypass it deserves and give those who are in that traffic nightmare on a daily basis the relief they deserve.

The fourth project relates to Cessnock, my home town. Cessnock is another high-growth area in the Hunter region. It is growing rapidly. Of course, that is partly because people are attracted to the beauty of our wine tourism and other attractions. The problem is that with the way Cessnock has developed historically, with its periphery of mining communities, everyone living in any of those villages or new housing estates goes to the CBD every morning or afternoon as they exit or re-enter the town. That is a traffic nightmare. The council is acutely aware of the problem and has identified a solution. That solution is twofold. It includes Cessnock ring road which will allow commuters to exit their suburbs around Cessnock out of town without going through the CBD and to come in the same way. It will also link Cessnock city to the new Labor funded and built Hunter Expressway, which would give people a quick exit to Newcastle and other places to which they might be commuting.

This is not an inexpensive project, I concede. In fact the ring road would be in the order of $174 million, and the link to the expressway and the required interchange would be expensive projects. But the economic return would be enormous. There is an inevitability about this project. This will have to be done at some point, and the state government and federal government should get on with supporting council's plans to do so.

There is another element. Sadly, more than a year ago Cessnock had thrust upon it a massive expansion of the corrections centre right on the edge of the town. It's virtually in the town, I would argue. It is only hundreds of metres to residential streets. The state government decided it would change its own planning laws so that council and residents could raise no objections and so that this project would not be subject to the scrutiny of council or local communities. There was very little consultation and very little opportunity for people to express their concerns about the impact of that massive jail expansion on Cessnock and its community.

I want to say at the outset that I do acknowledge and recognise the benefits of the expansion to Cessnock, both in construction opportunities and the impact on the community and on an ongoing basis, because the jail will be easily the city's largest employer. So I want to acknowledge that there are benefits to Cessnock. The New South Wales government would have had a significant level of support from the community if it had gone about this thing the right way, not changed its planning laws to protect its own decision and: provided a new entry and exit out of the jail so that substantial traffic movements are not going into residential streets; increased police numbers in Cessnock to deal with any antisocial impacts from the expansion; and made sure our hospital had the facilities necessary to deal with prisoners who might need to visit. That would not have been asking much. How many of those three key points have been recognised and addressed by the New South Wales government? Not one.

So it's time for the New South Wales government to make up for its mistakes. It's time for it to get serious about the ring road. It's time for it to get serious about ready access between the township of Cessnock and the Hunter Expressway. Of course, the ring road would provide a new entry and exit out of the jail, taking those traffic movements out of the residential streets of Cessnock. These are residential streets, of course, that the council has to maintain on an annual basis. So it's an easy opportunity for Premier Berejiklian and her government to make up for the massive expansion in Cessnock and to reward the residents of Cessnock for accommodating the jail expansion, keeping in mind that that jail generates enormous income for the New South Wales government.

Ms Burney interjecting—

I hear the member for Barton agreeing. She as a former member of the New South Wales parliament would know this. Enormous revenue comes to the New South Wales government as a result of that jail, and that revenue is going to increase over time. So the residents of Cessnock should be compensated for what this expansion is doing for our image, arguably. Being known as the place of potentially the biggest jail in the Southern Hemisphere is not exactly what we're looking for as a town promoting ourselves as a wine tourism destination. They should be compensated for the impact on the roads and on the hospital. We see prisoners being brought into the emergency department at Cessnock jumping the queue, the queue where local residents have been sitting and waiting for a protracted period of time.

Residents are conscious of these issues. They know about the adverse impacts. But, as I said, they know that benefits come too, and they will accept that in net terms. They will accept that the benefits are there and that maybe the benefits can overcome the negatives of the project. But they will only do that if the New South Wales government gets serious about properly developing the project—that is, making sure the road issues are addressed, the health issues are addressed and the social issues are addressed. Until the New South Wales government is prepared to do that, it will not have wide support from the Cessnock community. The Cessnock ring-road is a fantastic project—something that is inevitable, something that has to be done, something that will allow Cessnock to grow without the usual growing pains, or at least minimise the growing pains. It's a great opportunity for New South Wales to get serious. We now have that jail expansion. I say to the Premier that there's not much we can do about that, but you can compensate us by backing some of these very important projects.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an exciting day, a truly exciting day: Australia has a new Deputy Prime Minister.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Really?

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, the 19th Deputy Prime Minister, apparently. With a shiny new Deputy Prime Minister in place, I was expecting to hear an excited announcement that good government would start today—again.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who said that?

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will accept the interjection. The member for Warringah was the author of that sentiment: 'Good government starts today.'

Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting—

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I remind members that all comments must be made through the chair.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We heard the member for Warringah say, 'Good government starts today,' and while those opposite don't often want to quote the member for Warringah in this place and they're trying to airbrush him out of history, it certainly would be expected that we would hear today that good government would start again. Whenever I hear that phrase, I'm reminded, for example, of those signs you see in workplaces that say, 'It's been 100 days since a workplace accident,' and I'm wondering whether or not we could have a similar sign placed in the ministerial wing of this place that says, maybe, 'three days since good government'. I'm probably being a bit generous about the three days. But I think it's a great day today and I don't want to ruin the buzz of the coalition, because it's probably the first time in a long time that we haven't had the word 'embattled' put in front of the title of either a Prime Minister or a Deputy Prime Minister, so I want them to enjoy the day. But the reality is—and the general public are coming to expect this—we are always going to get out of this government dysfunction and division. The second thing we will get out of the government when that is realised is that they will promise, 'No, we'll be better.' I'm sure we will get these types of promises today, where we'll hear that the government are back on track and that they'll resume good government and that they'll be doing the right thing for the people of Australia—until the next stuff-up, until the next thing comes along and we find out that there is some division, some blue, within the coalition, and everything gets derailed. It's not good enough for the country, frankly. The country has all these challenges and issues it wants to deal with, and we're all held up waiting for the latest drama to play itself out in the coalition party room. It's simply not good enough.

People are expecting more. People in my area expect good results. I would put firmly on the table this question: why does the federal government hate Mount Druitt?

I ask that for this reason: we struggled for years to get funding for an MRI to be put in the local hospital, Mt Druitt Hospital. In 2013 Labor committed to provide this as an investment. The then health minister, Tanya Plibersek, announced that we would make that commitment. One of the first actions of this government on arriving in government in 2013, in their first MYEFO—it was the warmup act for the horrific 2014 budget—in their first financial act as a government the coalition ripped that money away from Mt Druitt Hospital and denied us an MRI in that area. People know people that an MRI is a crucial piece of equipment that helps in the identification and treatment of cancers that so many people struggle with. They refused to provide the MRI.

I'm not prone to congratulating the New South Wales Liberal government, but I will say that, to his great credit, Premier Mike Baird committed money for an MRI in Mt Druitt Hospital. To their great credit, and I salute them for this, they make sure this MRI was installed last year. They then approached the federal government and asked for a Medicare licence to cover the use of the MRI so that people aren't forking out to use it. What was the federal government's response? Not content with failing to provide the equipment that will help local families in their battle against things such as cancer; not content with not providing the equipment, they now refused to fund the Medicare licence attached to the MRI, even though it has been requested. This is at a time when we know, as the member for Ballarat and shadow minister for health indicated at the weekend, people are already paying on average $47 out of their own pockets to see a GP and up to $99 to see a specialist—they are paying this already—they will have to pay to go and get an MRI, which in some cases, I am told, might cost up to $600. In an area where the weekly household income in my area is a shade under $1,500. It is not small bickies. There are a lot of people who don't have the money to pay up front for an MRI, yet they're being told that they will have to pay for it themselves and the government doesn't have the money for a Medicare licence. They have $65 billion for a corporate tax cut; they have that money; but they don't have money for people who are in need and struggling who don't have the capacity to pay for expensive things like this to get it done for themselves. It's an absolute outrage. People in my part of Western Sydney should not be forced to pay that amount of money because of the absolute callousness of the federal government in refusing to do the right thing when their state counterparts did the right thing in putting the MRI in.

Let's look at the amount of money that is spent by this government, that says that they are fiscally responsible. I'll turn to another area that both the member for Barton and I would have a deep interest in: digital transformation. A lot of people would not be aware of the amount of money that this federal government has put aside for digital transformation or ICT projects. It is $10 billion. The amount of money, the spend that's being put in, now rivals the amount of money in the Newstart allowance budget allocation. This is a huge amount of money that has been put in. We know at the same time that there are ageing platforms within the entire federal government in IT. We know that. We know also that there is not enough digital capability within the public service, because of all the cuts that we've seen in the public service, to manage that, so they're heavily reliant on outside contractors to do a lot of this work. But this federal government, much as it has promoted and says great things about digital transformation—in fact the then communications minister, the now Prime Minister, back in 2015 said that he was bringing in a team of insurgents and they were going to shake things up and do digital transformation in a way that had not been experienced on the planet—he said he would do all that, and where has gone? It's gone off with a whimper. Digital transformation has come to a grinding halt. Dare I say, we have seen the end of digital transformation under this government. When we look at the pitiful end of digital transformation under this government, the obituary is here. It's the current ministry list of the federal government. When you see where digital transformation ended up, this has not been missed. It's now placed under the same minister who manages human services. So the Minister for Human Services is also responsible for digital transformation. We know a lot of people questioned the way in which the Department of Human Services resisted the digital transformation reform process, and it is very telling that we saw that the former assistant minister, Angus Taylor, who promised that he would revolutionise it and even wrote a book about digital transformation, is gone from digital transformation.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's transformed!

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has transformed into a black hole—disappeared. Thank you very much, Member for Gellibrand. The second thing that we noticed is that digital transformation has come under the same minister as the Department of Human Services. The other thing we noticed—this one was slipped out, for people in the know who watch this—is that we heard this news in late December:

The Department of Human Services' high-profile chief information officer Gary Sterrenberg will depart the agency … after more than six years in the role … It leaves arguably the most technology-intensive leadership position—which involves looking after the IT operations of Centrelink and Medicare …

This was very quiet. It is a very big departure. For those that follow this process outside—and I accept that there won't be many that will—I tell you what: as has been observed to me, if you're a senior public servant in the Commonwealth, you used to get yourself acquainted very much with financing and build your skills up there, but what's now also going to be required is a commitment to not just having digital literacy but understanding how IT will transform the way public sectors operate and the way departments operate. We lost a big one here, and it was slipped under the carpet. This person, with so much experience—who's contentious, I might add; he had his fans and his detractors—certainly disappeared. They are very interesting changes: Angus Taylor is gone, Michael Keenan gets responsibility for DHS and digital transformation, and the CIO of Human Services quits—huge within there. When we see all the things that this government has done in this space, the impact on digital transformation—the census, robo-debt, problems with the child support agency, the ATO website going down over a dozen times with no explanation as to why, and accountants being affected by this—it is just terrible.

I'll tell you the other thing that's looming on the horizon that is going to drive small business nuts, and this is another area of the digital economy that is already causing concern. The government's domain registry body, auDA, is now revolutionising the way in which web addresses in this country, particularly for small business, will be managed, and small businesses are now demanding answers about the introduction of these new domain names, with a former non-executive director of that domain registration body warning 'the rollout of the new domains could result in a long period of "David and Goliath" battles for web addresses', because there will be a concern that 'organisations that registered ".com.au" sites after April 2016 would have to apply and potentially fight it out to claim the equivalent .au domains', which 'could cause significant financial and time costs to small businesses'. As one person who responded said:

It smacks of an idea hatched in a pub after far too many beers.

Another said:

It is common knowledge the dominant and most aware extension in Australia is .com.au. Why disrupt this and cause confusion and chaos in our ecosystem?

Josh Rowe, who previously served as a non-executive director of auDA, said that he had been 'waiting for a solid explanation from the organisation about why ".au" domains are necessary'. He said:

I'm quite open minded about being able to be convinced there is a need, but the issue is, no case has been put forward.

Again, not content that they're stuffing up digital transformation in their own backyard, the government now want to affect the way in which some of their decisions impact on small businesses in this country. They'd better get this sorted out quick smart. SMEs do not have to have visited upon them the kind of calamity that we've seen in the federal Public Service when it comes to digital transformation and the way that tech issues are being managed. That should get sorted out really quickly.

In my last two minutes, talking about big lots of money, I have to say I am watching with increasing interest the amount of money that is going into the second Sydney airport. We've already had $3.5 billion dedicated in this infrastructure package to support it. When the government couldn't get Sydney Airport to take on the role of monopoly operator of all airport infrastructure in this country, they said they would put $5.3 billion into the airport. This is going to be a 24-hour facility and it is going to run completely differently from what happens on the other side of the city. It will be flights over Fairfield roofs and flight-free over Kirribilli in terms of the way that this will be done. I watch, as I have said, people standing in rows of five deep on railway platforms on the western line, waiting to catch a train. Then they have to potentially stand on that train for 50 minutes. I see in the weekend papers that the government is planning to spend up to $30 billion on the north-south rail link, between Badgerys Creek and Rouse Hill.

Western Sydney residents love seeing greater public transport access, because they are frustrated to their back teeth about congestion on our roads. But what they want to see is a comprehensive plan for people movement across the region; they want to see how they will be able to move around. Bear in mind, they are spending 50 minutes on that train at the moment. The claim on the weekend is that it will be 50 minutes from Badgerys Creek airport to the city. Yeah, right! Let's see that happen. You can't even get people from Doonside to the city in 50 minutes and you reckon you're going to get that on a congested rail line. The other thing is that $10 billion is being loaded up on this facility, and we don't have flights plans. People don't know where this airport is going, and there is no jobs plan about the jobs that will actually be created for Western Sydney residents. We deserve more for the money that is being spent.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start my contribution on the Appropriation Bill (No.3) 2017-2018 by reflecting on Australia Day in Hampton Park and the Day of Nations. It was a good day, particularly given the contribution made by the Hampton Park Progress Association and the good volunteers who are involved with it on the Hampton Park progress committee. What it did was demonstrate the diversity that exists within our country. Referring to the Day of Nations means that the local community, particularly in Hampton Park, came together to celebrate the contribution that people make, regardless of their walk of life, where they came from or what religion they practice. It was a great spirit there.

One of the key issues that has arisen in my constituency over some period of time is the persecution of the Oromo people in Ethiopia. I have had fairly extensive consultations with the Oromo community, particularly with three representatives from that community. I made a commitment to them that I would raise in this place their ongoing concerns about human rights issues and persecution in Ethiopia, in particular the ongoing plight of the Oromo people in Ethiopia. The representatives that I spoke to updated me on the latest developments regarding the Oromo protests in Ethiopia. I have spoken on numerous occasions about how, over recent years, the Oromo people who, according to the Oromo diaspora, newspaper reports and the US congress, experience ongoing persecution and are targeted by the Ethiopian government.

Since April 2014, the Oromo have been staging protest rallies across Ethiopia against, in their words, 'the systematic marginalisation and persecution of ethnic Oromo'. The immediate trigger for the first wave of protests was a development plan that sought to expand the territorial limits of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, into neighbouring Oromo villages and towns. Oromos saw the proposed master plan as a blueprint for annexation, which would further accelerate the eviction of the Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands. In light of the Oromo protests, the Ethiopian government has used overwhelming force—this has been seen on many occasions, and I have spoken about it in this House—to crush the protests, killing hundreds of protesters and arresting thousands.

According to my sources within the Oromo community, the Oromo diaspora here in Australia, in light of the ongoing persecution, on the 11 February 2018 the youth of the Oromia region launched a new protest and a three-day market boycott. This drastic economic boycott suspended the operation of businesses and government activities. It was unlike any other protest in the history of the country. The objectives of this particular boycott were: to drop all charges against senior opposition leaders and release all political prisoners without any preconditions; to stop displacing Oromos from their land and intimidating the Oromo people; to stop the war waged on the Oromo people along the Oromia border with the Somali region, using the notorious Somali special forces known as 'Liyu police'; and to stop the killing of innocent people by the army.

The impact of the boycott was felt nationally, as the whole Oromia region boycotted the movement of people, goods and services across the country. Markets were closed down. Civil servants did not turn up to government offices, and schools and universities were closed. The transportation system was also brought to a complete halt. This boycott was well organised, disciplined and attracted support from just about every different grouping of the community and the country. As a result of this boycott, the Ethiopian government was shaken to its core within a matter of 48 hours. Consequently, 70 opposition leaders including Bekele Gerba, the secretary-general of the opposition party, was released. Bekele Gerba, the secretary-general of the Oromo Federalist Congress was arrested in December 2015 after mass protests broke out in the Oromia region over accusations that farmers were being forced to sell land, with scant compensation for the plan.

In light of the release of key opposition leaders, as well as other prisoners, the third day of the boycott was called off. That resulted in jubilation across Ethiopia and particularly across Oromia. However, in addition to these celebrations, the Oromia peoples are mourning the loss of over 30 civilians who were killed in various cities across the country by a special government unit called Agazi. The most callous of these cruelties took place at the Hamaressa camp. On 11 February this year, as the boycott commenced, the Agazi invaded the Hamaressa camp in eastern Oromia where defenceless and displaced people were sheltering. Over 13 people were killed. Other Oromia people were uprooted from their homes by the government militia.

Unfortunately, as I speak, I'm informed that close to one million Oromo internally displaced peoples in Bale, Burana and Harar deserts are exposed to starvation and other human rights violations. These internally displaced peoples are now surviving on help that is being sourced globally by Oromos, including those in Australia. I think our displaced Oromo diaspora believes that the Australian government should consider providing aid relief to the Oromo peoples experiencing hardship in Ethiopia.

They've also let me know about something pretty disturbing that occurred in relation to Facebook, which resulted in an online petition that called on Facebook to immediately unblock the Facebook account of Jawar Mohammed, the executive director of the Oromia Media Network and a prominent Ethiopian political activist, who has over 1.2 million followers. He was able to use Twitter but not Facebook. According to the head petitioner, Girma Gutema, an Oromo living in Norway, it was particularly disconcerting to see Facebook block Jawar's account at this critical time when the Ethiopian people were campaigning to free all political prisoners in Ethiopia.

Jawar, as a longtime and prolific user of Facebook for over 13 years, had a significant role in the effort of the Ethiopian people to free themselves of the existing oppressive regime. The act of blocking Jawar Mohammed's account by Facebook violates freedom of expression and breaches the user guidelines of Facebook itself. In the end, the petition called on Facebook executives to immediately unblock the account of Jawar Mohammed and publicly apologise to the millions of Ethiopian Facebook users who felt that Facebook might compromise their privacy and personal data. I understand that that Facebook account has now been unblocked. But I would raise in this House, when we are talking about companies like Facebook and social media, talking about their freedoms being encroached upon by impending government legislation, bad encryption or other things, that blocking someone's account who has been using their account the 13 years—and my understanding is not advocating violent activities, but for peaceful protest—does call into question, the capacity of totalitarian governments to influence social media providers. I think that's an issue that my friend the Hon. Mike Kelly, the member for Eden-Monaro, would share with me as something that I think that our intelligence and security committee will be looking at. It's hard for Facebook to be arguing about their freedoms when they have actively suppressed the freedom on Facebook of someone who is a key leader of the Oromo community without sufficient justification; and, coincidentally, that block is then removed after the Ethiopian government had released political prisoners. I think that's something that if Facebook actually looked at I would like them to respond to. I don't think it's satisfactory. On behalf of Oromo community, both here and in Ethiopia, I ask why was this gentleman's Facebook account blocked? In the view of many of the Oromo diaspora in this country as well, they believe that there need to be some answers provided. So I would urge the Ethiopian government and will continue to rise on half of the Oromo community in my constituency and elsewhere in Victoria and this country, to cease the ongoing persecution of the Oromo people in Ethiopia. I will continue to work with Oromo leaders in Victoria and overseas to continue to highlight their concerns.

Some will say that what happens in Africa does not affect our country. That is just not true. Africa is a growing series of countries that will have an increasing say in what happens in world affairs. What does happen in Ethiopia, regardless of how far away people think it is, does have an impact and ultimately will have an impact on this country. What happens to the Ethiopian government—there is a fairly substantial transition occurring at present period of time. We're not exactly sure where that will lead to, but it does have an impact on Africa. It does have an impact on the security of the country. It does have an impact on the diaspora communities here. Depending on what the outcome is, it could have a quite destabilising impact on those countries within Africa. So when people say that is none of our concern or none of our business, it is, because ultimately this does impact on us. It does have some influence and bearing on us. It is something that I will continue to raise in this chamber.

The other thing I want to raise in the time remaining is the issue of human rights persecutions in Cambodia. Over recent months I've continued to be briefed by the president of the Cambodian Association of Victoria, Councillor Youhorn Chea, and also the City of Greater Dandenong Councillor Heang Tak, along with Hong Lim, the retiring member for Clarinda in the Victorian parliament. Why we have an interest in Cambodia in particular is that before in foreign affairs minister and the former member for Holt, Gareth Evans, was a key influence of the Cambodia peace accord. Hun Sen was around at that time. I don't think Gareth in his wildest dreams would have thought that we would be in a situation where we would be talking in this parliament about Hun Sen, his activities and what he has been doing in Cambodia, particularly to the opposition. I think that should cause us all grave concern. I know that Gareth has been strongly outspoken with respect to the human rights abuses that have been occurring in Cambodia, and he will continue to be, given that he was the father of the Cambodian peace accord.

I want to read into the parliamentary record that according to Lindsay Murdoch's article in The Age:

Cambodia's ruling party has drawn-up a five-year plan that critics say will entrench the dictatorship of strongman Hun Sen through intimidation, harassment and arrests. The plan crushes hopes that Hun Sen would allow a return to political freedoms and a semblance of democracy after mid-year elections.

Unfortunately the Cambodian government state agencies in Phnom Penh last year launched a sweeping crackdown targeting the opposition, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, non-government organisations, human rights and labour activists, independent media outlets and foreigners living in the country.

I'd like to commend the member for Hotham for her work in advocating in this place on behalf of the Cambodian Association of Victoria, and obviously share the concern of the well-established, law-abiding, peaceful Cambodian community in this country who feel deeply concerned about what's happening in Cambodia at this time. I am deeply concerned by the Cambodian Supreme Court's decision to dissolve the country's main opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, and ban CNRP parliamentarians and officials from engaging in politics for five years. It is essential that Cambodia has a viable opposition and a free press. Australia has a long history working with the Cambodian people to create a fairer and more democratic Cambodia. The Paris Peace Accords, as I have mentioned before, in which Australia played a central role, promised the Cambodian people the right to free and fair elections. I would certainly urge the Cambodian government—and I know that Hun Sen will be visiting this country soon—to reconsider its ongoing persecution of opposition parties and dissenting forces in Cambodia.

In the time I have remaining I want to go back to the Hampton Park Day of Nations. What was really instructive about the Hampton Park Day of Nations was the diversity that we saw. At the Day of Nations we also held the Holt Australia Day Awards to honour people who had made a contribution to a better community, and the people whose names we read out came from all parts of the world. It didn't matter what race, colour or creed; they were all Australians and we were all honouring the contribution that they had made to this country. In the ongoing discussion that occurs about this country, we need to remember that we ask them to abide by our laws and values but they also make a substantial contribution to our country—something that we should continue to honour and recognise. (Time expired)

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak on these appropriation bills and adjustments to the current government's budget—in particular, in relation to some disturbing dimensions that we need to see addressed. In my opinion, we are not seeing these issues dealt with, and they are leading to a serious credibility issue in relation to this government's approach to the budget. The first of these relates to our defence spending and the design, planning and implementation of projects. I also want to address continuing and serious misrepresentation by the Minister for Defence Industry and the government. I also want to speak about the Snowy Hydro 2 project, where there are some very important issues that need to be pointed out in relation to the government's budget projections and arrangements.

As I mentioned, the first issue relates to concerns around the budget and defence spending. There was a lot of debate around the so-called two per cent of GDP figure as a target for defence spending. The Minister for Defence Industry and Mr Abbott—as the previous Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister—made a lot of hay out of the comparison with the spending of the Rudd-Gillard government and saying that it was lowest level since 1938. The irony of that was that in 1938 there was a conservative government, which included Sir Robert Menzies. At that time the state of our defence capability and our ability to deal with the threats we were facing at the time were seriously degraded.

I am very proud of my great-grandfather, who ran for Eden-Monaro in 1940 and whose son, my grandfather, was in the Army at that time and fought in the Middle East and Java and became a prisoner of the Japanese on the Burma-Thai railway. In 1940 my great-grandfather was very agitated about what had become of Australia's capacity and he said:

We're seriously perturbed over the manufacture of munitions and mechanical equipment for our soldiers. We do not want our soldier sons

including his own—

to be ill-equipped. We want them to have at least an equal chance.

He also highlighted:

Had our government—

that is, the conservative government at the time—

not sold, leased or dismantled our docks, this job could have been done. Manufacturers who have contracts for making various parts are complaining that they cannot get their money for the work done.

Another matter hampering our war effort is the fact that our shipping line was sold, our trawlers were sold and the invaluable boats and information gained by Australians in this industry is now in the hands of foreigners.

How tragic it is that those errors and mistakes were to be replicated at least another two times within our very short experience, over the last 20 years or so, in this parliament, in this building.

In particular, I'll firstly dispel this reference to this target of two per cent of GDP because, in effect, it was the Howard government that only averaged 1.78 per cent in all of its four terms and in fact fell to 1.68 per cent in 2007, its last year of government. That was the lowest level of GDP spending since 1938. As you review actual expenditures and actual data post budgets, it turns out that Labor's lowest budget was 1.69 per cent. So it was actually the Howard government that was the lowest since 1938 as far as these comparisons are even relevant. You are talking about percentages of GDP which are relevant to the size of the economy and expansions and contractions in the economy. There is no way that the economy of 2007 to 2013 is in any way comparable to the size of the economy back then with the vast difference in expenditure in real terms that the Labor government committed to in our time in government and during the Hawke-Keating years. In fact, during the Hawke-Keating years the percentage of spending never fell below very high levels of spending and, in fact, routinely was above two per cent and reached 2.31 per cent at one point.

But what was more important during that time was the planning and investment in Australia's defence capability. When I talk about that, I also must refer to the fact that during Labor's time we were the ones who actually came closest to that two per cent target since the Hawke-Keating years at 1.94 per cent. But we were presented with a problem, and this goes to exploding the myths that the Minister for Defence Industry is happy to run around. I saw him just recently at an industry dinner again parroting his comments that under Labor there were no ships commissioned and that we had put our shipbuilding in a parlous situation. This is completely false. The truth is that it was under Labor that we built our modern shipbuilding capacity. It was Labor that brought home the last two of the Adelaide class frigates to be built in Australia to give us a platform to go from there in building our capacity. We then rolled that into the Anzac frigate class construction process, giving our nation very serviceable and fine vessels through that project. Then that was added to by the Collins project, which for the first time gave Australia a submarine-building capacity. All of these projects together were really building us a wonderful platform to have a world-class efficient shipbuilding industry.

But then when the Howard government came in there was none of that. There was no follow-on from any of that investment—none at all. Perhaps the most heinous related to the submarines. For a very complex, difficult platform like a submarine you need a long lead time for planning. To give you an example, the replacement planning process for the Oberon class submarines began in 1978 and construction of the Collins commenced in 1990. So it was a 12-year span. It's a complicated platform. The planning for the replacement of the Collins class submarine should have begun before the last boat hit the water in 2003, but nothing was done under the Howard government. There was not one thing done to prepare for the replacement of our submarines and so when we got into government in 2007 we had to start from scratch. So to say that there was no result in our six years in government with the long span of planning that is required for these platforms is just a complete joke and a furphy.

In addition to that, we inherited the failure to plan and prepare for the redundancy of our supply vessels. It's famous now that neither of our support vessels were able to respond to Cyclone Yasi, for example. Serious underinvestment also followed and compounded this problem in sustainment and maintenance both for those supply vessels but particularly in relation to the Collins. By the time we hit government in 2007 we could barely get one boat in the water at any one time. We had to immediately inject $700 million into addressing that deficiency in our sustainment and maintenance. We did so and got to a much higher rate of availability by the time we were finished.

But then we went through our due diligence in replacing the Collins. We invested a lot of effort into the service life extension process for the Collins to see how much time we could get out of them so that we could roll that into the future submarines. We also did a lot of learning on deep-cycle maintenance which enabled that extension, including hull cutting and the like. But we also progressed in selecting the combat system, the AN/BYG-1 combat system, which is now the system that will go into the submarines. We made that decision. And we made the decision for a specified land based propulsion testing facility for the two things you wrap a hull around. We also spent $266 million on developing all of the lead-in activities that are necessary for making a decision on the submarines.

So then what happened? We were ready to roll and then the Abbott government came in and there was that famous captain's pick period. He wanted to get a Japanese Soryu submarine. There was not any process involved in that until he was forced by his own backbench into this really rapid bizarre process, which no-one had ever heard of before—the competitive evaluation process. Again that was trying to steer the result towards these Japanese submarines, which weren't suitable for Australia's needs. When Mr Abbott was removed from office at least that process was put on a sounder footing, but there was a huge delay, a huge loss of time, and huge extra costs are now involved.

Additionally, one of the key decisions made by the Labor government that I was pleased to be a part of was the commitment to building our supply vessels in Australia. That was a critical decision that needed to be made to deal with the so-called valley of death that would have emerged in our shipbuilding capability. Labor invested $1 billion to resuscitate our skills and get up our capacity and productivity in those shipyards, but it was all blown away by the current government. I commissioned advice from the department on the replacement of the supply vessels—the SEA 1654 project. I will quote what the department advised me on that project. They said:

A full in-country build for SEA 1654 could provide critical workflow to Australia's naval shipbuilding sector across all three shipyards, avoiding the costly decline of specialist skills between completion of the LHD and AWD projects and the start of Future Submarines.

They advised:

… optimisation of in-country shipbuilding work would require some trade-off between cost, risk and schedule benefits for both the Commonwealth and industry to overcome the national shipbuilding valley of death and retain critical skills. Construction of whole blocks in country rather than overseas could commence at multiple shipyards relatively quickly. With recent experience in ship consolidation, ASC could commence consolidation of the whole modules at Techport Australia as soon as the second AWD is launched in quarter 1 2016.

In other words, when you look at all of this—the avoidance of the valley of death and the speed with which the supply vessel construction could have been done—under the department's advice, we could have been consolidating blocks for the final phases of construction of the first vessel right now. Instead, we saw the Abbott government first try to hand this off to the Koreans. He was asking the Koreans to build a Spanish design. It made no sense, even putting aside the fact that they should have been built here. Fortunately, the Turnbull government made the decision of sending those off to Spain so that at least the Spanish were building their own vessel. Ultimately, the critical crime here is that those vessels should have been built in Australia. That is the objective advice I have from Defence.

Let's not hear any more nonsense from the Minister for Defence Industry about Labor not commissioning a vessel. In fact, we did commission a vessel. It's called HMAS Choules, which was the only vessel available to respond to Cyclone Debbie, so just as well we did. The irony is that, under the five years of this government, they haven't commissioned a single main fleet unit, so their own rhetoric flies in their own face.

The final issue I would like to mention is Snowy 2. I'm fully supportive of this concept. It's been on the books for 30 years. The Snowy Hydro team—Paul Broad and his crew—have done an excellent job of getting this up and running as a proposal. They made an initial bid for ARENA funding for feasibility studies in February last year—well before Malcolm Turnbull discovered this project. ARENA made an independent decision to assist them with that—$8 million I think of the $29 million that was required.

They will be able to raise the finance for the construction of the project, but there are a number of things that the federal government needs to attend to. Firstly and most importantly, there is $2 billion of extra transmission costs that are critically important for South Australia in any event, because we know that the lack of a second interconnector is a vulnerability for South Australian electricity. This will be the platform that enables the critical south-east corner of Australia—New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—to transition to 100 per cent renewable energy. Critical to that will be the transmission aspect. Critical to the investment flow will be the government guaranteeing the risk on that transmission before those financial decisions are made by midyear. The government has to now get on with consolidating what is required for the transmission costs.

There was also this floating of the idea of a Commonwealth buyback of the Snowy scheme. We haven't heard any more of that. There's nothing reflected in these bills about the agreement of the states and the $5 billion or $6 billion that will be required to do that. Certainly, we wouldn't be opposed to that, as long as the privatisation processes that were previously sought aren't sought by the coalition ever again. The other aspect that needs attending to is that it's likely that the project will need some sort of dividend holiday from the stakeholders, and we've heard nothing from the federal government on that.

This report, the Marsden Jacob Associates report on the feasibility of the Snowy scheme, which I think all journalists should read, deals with the economics and market issues here. It bells the cat on this government completely. It talks about the fact that this project will only be truly feasible and truly beneficial if you commit to an aggressive renewable energy target. It talks about a long-range commitment of 60 per cent by 2040. It specifically says:

… the higher market benefits in the LT Commitment scenario reflect the greater utilisation of Snowy 2.0 in shifting energy as required under the scenario of higher renewable generation …

Really, it critically fits only within the concept of Labor's current renewable energy policy, and it's all spelt out in the report, as is the belling of the cat on the so-called carbon capture and storage plant. It specifically says that there's nothing commercially deployable in the space of carbon capture and storage, there's not likely to be anything close to that before 2030 and, even then, it will be viable only with a carbon price. That's what it says specifically in black and white in this report.

It also highlights the fact that these major power stations are going to be falling over by 2032. The future of coal—thermal generation—is clearly reaching its termination. There's a lot of urgency needed out of this government in adopting the measures in this report to deal with not only energy security, market stability and lower cost for consumers but the future of our children as well in climate change measures.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we look at bills such as those before us today, the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018, which are a half-yearly adjustment to this government's last budget, it is incumbent on us to ask the questions that those in our community, when faced with government budgets and their adjustments, ask, which are: 'Who is it that you are caring about? Who is it that you are looking out for? Who is it whose welfare you're concerned to address in these measures?' There is nothing more telling about this government and where its priorities lie than that budget and these bills to make adjustments to that budget.

There are people across all of our communities at the moment who are struggling to make ends meet. They have had stagnant wage growth. They've seen the nature of employment fragmented, so many of them are cobbling together their household budget from casual work, contract work or irregular opportunities to do work in what might be called the new economy, which is not delivering any security for them. They're facing the reality that what's coming in, in terms of income, is stagnant if not declining. At the same time they're seeing significant increases in their cost of living. This is a real challenge in households across all of our electorates.

One would think it would be something that a government would be seriously addressing, because we know the foundation of prosperity, both productivity and economic growth, is driven off the back of ordinary, everyday households and workers. That's the reality. Those opposite often say that small business is the driver of economic growth. Well, who feeds small business? Who are the customers of small business? Those customers are the workers and communities in which they operate, and those businesses suffer because the people who are their customers are saying, 'You know what, this week I can't afford to go out for dinner. I can't afford to go and buy that extra outfit for the kids. I can't afford to go and buy new shoes for school. You'll have to make do.' They're the people that we in this House should be concerned about, because they're the real economy in each of our electorates. They are the lifeblood of that economy—people earning enough to have a decent life, go out, spend their money in their local businesses and support people. The parents who run the local businesses probably have kids in the same footy team as their kids. That's the reality. This budget does nothing to address that. In fact, it contains measures that will make it worse.

It is really telling that I have had a lot of locals, as I'm sure many of my colleagues on both sides have, raising this serious challenge that they are facing with me. So I thought I might put a survey out there to enable people across the electorate more broadly to give me feedback on the condition of the wages and income in their household and their cost-of-living pressures. I put it out late Friday afternoon. We are here Monday morning and nearly 800 people have already completed that survey. If that doesn't tell you that this is an issue that is real to households across our community, I don't know what can. It has been very telling that of those 834 that have replied so far—and it is still running if anybody locally wants to participate—67 per cent of people indicated that they had no real change or, even worse, a decrease in their income in recent years. That absolutely shows the flat lining that is going on with wages and incomes in our households.

The survey showed: thirty per cent of people indicated housing and mortgage costs were putting pressure on their family budget. Over 70 per cent indicated that electricity prices were putting pressure on their households; 40 per cent indicated doctors and specialists visits; 30 per cent said pharmaceutical costs were putting pressure; and 55 per cent indicated private health insurance costs were putting pressure on the family budget. There were as well a range of other services that I surveyed on. For 30 per cent, broadband costs are a real problem. And when you think how critical broadband is to participation in our economy and society, particularly for kids, that is a real problem. Fifty-six per cent of people said grocery prices are a real impost and the same number said their house and vehicle insurances were a problem. I gave people a list and it was a little bit heartbreaking to see how many people did not say one or two things were putting pressure on their household budget but a whole range of things and this reflects the fact that, as I said, their wages and incomes are stagnant and these things continue to go up in cost.

It is really important to make the point that governments can and should play a significant role in this space. And one of the areas which on this side of the House we could argue that the government has been not only less than helpful but an outright problem is around people's capacity to organise and press for wage increases. We know from international data that more highly unionised countries have higher outcomes and quality of life because people have better wages. But what we have seen here is the government refusing to intervene when the threat was made to penalty rates yet, for so many of these families, the capacity to earn extra money from penalty rates was what they relied on to make ends meet.

There are important things that a government can do around the input side of these household budgets: getting people fair just wages; ensuring that they are able to advocate on their behalf to achieve that; making sure that the structure of our decision-making on minimum wages, penalty rates and so forth don't disadvantage people and put them backwards. We've seen no action in that space.

Governments can also take action on the cost side of those household budgets. We have seen, in fact, the government make decisions that have only increased those pressures. I particularly want to take the opportunity to acknowledge that many of the locals who have responded to my survey have made exactly this point. A lot of them are on pensions and have expressed great concern about the measure in this particular bill before us that continues to pursue removing the energy supplement for pensioners. We're not just talking about incomes coming into households through wages and earnings but also people on fixed incomes and pensions. Many people are very concerned that the measure in this bill will directly decrease what is coming into the households of those pensioners at the most difficult time when prices are continuing to go up.

So, the appropriation bill, which seeks amendments to the government's budget, has not learnt the lessons that it should have learnt from the budget. It's priorities are still about getting a big tax cut to the big end of town—delivering to those who least need our support, not delivering to those who really need it.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member for Cunningham will be given an opportunity at that time to conclude her contribution.