Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talking about grievances at this point in time, I grieve for democracy and what we're seeing in the halls of parliament. It is embarrassing, it is disgusting and it belittles all of us. Each of us has a duty to address this situation quickly, properly, efficiently and with no obfuscation.

One of the other things I wish to speak about is veteran suicide. I spoke about this yesterday in the debate on the royal commission. Something that is close to my heart is the mental health of those who have served this country proudly. Yesterday, a motion calling for a royal commission into veteran suicide was passed in the House of Representatives unopposed. I say 'unopposed' because it was not universally supported. It should have been something that gave the Prime Minister an opportunity to come into parliament, do the right thing by veterans and support a royal commission, but he never supported it. He did not oppose it, but he never supported it. Even today in parliament, the opportunity came for him to stand up and be a leader, and as usual he failed miserably. The government is dragging its heels when it comes to actually establishing a royal commission. As at December last year, 500 former servicemen had lost their lives to suicide since the war in Afghanistan. Compare that to the 41 lives lost on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a harrowing statistic. Sadly, we've seen more people die by suicide than in war in the last 20 years. It's time for a proper examination of what is going on. All the evidence shows clearly that something is happening to veterans after they leave the service. They feel unsupported by the agencies which are built to supposedly support them. I just can't understand why the government would not want to get to the bottom of the issues that are plaguing veterans. Suicide rates amongst serving personnel are less than half of the average in the community, but they absolutely skyrocket once people leave the forces. And it's not just a male thing. The rate of suicide among female veterans is a staggering 127 times higher than in the general population. Something needs to change.

We called for a royal commission in 2019, but the Prime Minister only wanted a national commissioner. We wanted the national commissioner to be independent, but we were shocked—and, I dare say, not surprised—when they appointed a friend of the Minister for Defence. There was not enough independence and scope for the national commissioner to report at arm's length on this government. The national commissioner would be put into the Attorney-General's Department and would issue a report on 400 suicides in 12 months. At the end of the day, it was almost like a glorified version of a coroner. Sadly, both those ministers are not here, so we can't actually ask them questions and find out what's going on. Veterans' lives matter. They matter to us, they matter to their families and they matter to our communities. We need to be able to have confidence that the government has the backs of the people it sends out and puts into tough situations.

I want to pay tribute to the extraordinary courage of women like Julie-Ann Finney, who has campaigned on behalf of her late son. She has shown resilience and shown courage, and I respect and applaud her today. People like her want this royal commission and oppose the government's national commission. The feedback from RSLs and the ADF is to overwhelmingly oppose a national commission. If people on the ground are saying it's a dud, then for God's sake, Prime Minister, listen to them. It's time for a royal commission for our veterans.

Another thing that's concerning us at the moment, of course, is that JobKeeper will end in five days. Wages will be cut, JobKeeper support will be axed and childcare costs will still remain way too high. Add this to the broken promises of sports rorts, the dodgy land deals, a dud NBN and $1 trillion of debt, and you've got to ask: what has the government been focusing on? There have been a bunch of businesses who've been given hundreds of millions—if not billions—of dollars who didn't need it. If the government hadn't been giving money to all those people who didn't need it, they could afford to extend it to businesses that do, businesses like Wendy Clayton's travel agency in our electorate, which has only been keeping afloat because of the lifeline JobKeeper has given her during this pandemic. She said: 'The extension of JobKeeper is an imperative for me to pay my bills. It will provide certainty and allow me to keep my business intact.' My message to the Treasurer is: listen to Wendy Clayton. She needs help. Gerry Harvey doesn't. JobKeeper should not be paid in executive bonuses. It was supposed to be to help struggling employers keep employees on staff. These employees will be left high and dry come 1 April.

There are a million people on JobKeeper who are going to face a serious cut at the end of the month. There are two million people who are either unemployed or underemployed—it's a great scourge of this nation—and can't find the hours that they need to support their families. We need to put things into a bit of perspective here. The government wants to do the whole 'mission accomplished' thing, when a lot of people are going to be unemployed in the next few days. Entire sectors, including tourism and hospitality, will be denied government support, and job losses are inevitable. Instead of a plan to get Australians back to work, the Prime Minister is leaving people behind to let it go.

Another thing that's concerning, of course—and I said this last week—is around child care. Child care is one of the issues that holds back productivity in this nation. When the median childcare costs of Victorian families are up to $546 a week, you've got to say there is a real problem. There is a problem for people that wish to go to work, contribute to society and do the right thing, but they can't, because of the federal government's appalling track record on child care. I want to quote a constituent from McEwen who said: 'It's a broken system.' We expect families to work and try and set up their future, but we don't offer them the support to do this properly.

The government might be viewing child care as a second-order issue, but the Labor Party doesn't. An Albanese Labor government will introduce the Working Family Child Care Boost to cut childcare fees and put more money into the pockets of working families straightaway. Child-care fees in Australia are some of the highest in the world. Under our plan, we will scrap the $10,560 child-care subsidy cap, which sees women losing money. They have to not work extra days to ensure that they keep their places. We'll lift the maximum child-care subsidy rate to 90 per cent, increase child-care subsidy rates and taper them for every family earning less than $530,000.

What does this mean? It means that the reform will help 97 per cent of families in the system. They will save between $600 and $2,900 a year. Families are not going to be worse off; they're going to be better off. Importantly, we will task the ACCC with designing a price regulation mechanism to shed light on costs and fees that drive them down for good. Our plan for cheaper child care will reward working families, not punish them. It will allow more second-income earners, who are usually women, to work more and contribute more to the economic recovery. We will keep working to fix Australia's broken child-care system, which currently locks out more than 100,000 families because they can't afford it. We will keep working and keep fighting, because that's what we do.

We know that affordable early education and care is not just vital as infrastructure for parents and children; it's also vital for Australia's economic recovery. Australia needs an early education care system that ensures that early learning is affordable and accessible to families. We need to keep educators in jobs and protect the viability of the businesses that they work in. I will continue to stand up for communities and our families to make sure that child care is foremost front and centre of policy development that we do.

Another thing I want to talk about quickly is the Macedon Ranges Regional Sports Precinct. This is a regional sports hub, a fully planned project; but the federal government is destroying our community's ability to play sport in proper facilities by not funding it. The Macedon Ranges Shire Council has put in $10.7 million. The Victorian government has put in $11.6 million, and even the AFL committed $100,000 to this project. But you know who hasn't committed to it? The federal government. Despite their Liberal candidate, after the election, saying yes this is a great idea, the government has still steadfastly refused to do it. They keep saying to the council, just go back and have another crack at the grants program. Well, that's not the case. You can't keep rejecting facilities in some of the fastest-growing areas of this nation. You can't keep hiding behind it's about time Victoria received its fair share. Even the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged the need to make this project a reality, with the business plan in2018. This project has continued to involve solid partnerships with community groups, sporting associations, the community, myself, the state government and the local council. It's a state-of-the-art sports precinct that needs to be built, and the only thing stopping it is this government's lack— (Time expired)