Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a series of amendments that the Greens will be moving to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill today. This seems to have caused a remarkable amount of passion—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will resume his seat. There is far too much noise in the chamber. Out of respect, I will reset the clock for the member for Griffith.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (6) together:

(1) Clause 2A, page 2 (line 19), at the end of paragraph (b), add "(so that, by 2050, social housing represents 10% of Australian dwellings)".

(2) Page 8 (after line 20), after clause 4, insert:

4A References to affordable housing

To avoid doubt, a reference in this Act to affordable housing includes a reference to:

(a) rental housing; and

(b) housing that costs no more than 30% of income for the bottom 40% of households by income.

(3) Clause 18, page 18 (lines 22 and 23), omit subclause (7), substitute:

(7) A grant under subsection (1) must not be made to a person or body unless the person or body:

(a) is one of the following:

(i) a body politic;

(ii) a non-profit organisation;

(iii) a partnership, if at least one of the partners is an entity mentioned in subparagraph (i) or (ii); and

(b) has applied for the grant.

(4) Clause 56, page 43 (after line 9), at the end of the clause, add:

The Finance Minister must give 6-monthly reports to Parliament about the operation of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

(5) Page 44 (after line 16), at the end of Part 7, add:

59 A Reports to Parliament about Housing Australia Future Fund

(1) As soon as practicable after the end of each reporting period, the Finance Minister must prepare a report about the operation of the Housing Australia Future Fund during the period.

(2) The report for a reporting period must include information about the following:

(a) housing outcomes achieved during the period, including the type and location of housing delivered;

(b) progress on housing projects not yet completed;

(c) grants made under section 18 during the period, including:

(i) the amount of each grant; and

(ii) the recipient of each grant; and

(iii) the housing projects to which each grant relates, including the number of social, affordable and other houses it will deliver; and

(iv) the decision-making criteria used in making the grant;

(d) amounts transferred from the Housing Australia Future Fund Special Account to the Housing Australia Future Fund Payments Special Account and the COAG Reform Fund during the period, including:

(i) the grants to which the amounts relate; and

(ii) the amount of each grant; and

(iii) the recipient of each grant; and

(iv) the housing projects to which each grant relates, including the number of social, affordable and other houses it will deliver; and

(v) the decision-making criteria used in making the grant.

(3) The Finance Minister must cause a copy of the report to be laid before each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the report is prepared.

(4) For the purposes of this section, reporting period means:

(a) the period of 6 months beginning on the day this section commences; and

(b) each subsequent 6-month period.

(6) Clause 65, page 47 (line 20) to page 48 (line 29), omit the clause, substitute:

65 Periodic reviews of the operation of this Act

(1) The Housing Minister must cause independent reviews to be conducted of the operation of this Act.

(2) The person or persons who conduct the review must give the Housing Minister a written report of the review that includes information about the following:

(a) progress towards meeting the target of delivering 30,000 social and affordable homes during the first 5 years of the operation of this Act;

(b) whether the operation of this Act has increased the proportion of social and affordable housing in Australia, including progress towards meeting the target of social housing representing 10% of Australian dwellings by 2050;

(c) the adequacy and appropriateness of:

(i) the total value of the Housing Australia Future Fund; and

(ii) the annual limit on amounts debited from the Housing Australia Future Fund Special Account, as set out in section 36.

(3) The Housing Minister must cause a copy of a report under subsection (2) to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the review is completed.

(4) The first review under subsection (1) must be completed within 2 years after the commencement of this Act.

(5) Each subsequent review under subsection (1) must be completed within 2 years after the completion of the previous review.

(6) For the purposes of subsections (3), (4) and (5), a review is completed when the report of the review is given to the Housing Minister under subsection (2).

The Greens are moving a series of amendments to this deeply flawed Housing Australia Future Fund Bill. Again, it is genuinely remarkable to listen to all of this hatred from this side of the House. Let's go through the amendments. We want to introduce a target that 10 per cent of all Australian dwellings by 2050 are social housing. Let's be clear about this. How often have you said you want to negotiate in good faith? How often? Is this your idea of negotiating in good faith? It's your way or the highway, and your way is hundreds of thousands of people stuck on the social housing waitlists, homeless and unable to afford rental housing. How dare you. Let's have a little bit of a history lesson—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will resume his seat. This debate will not continue in this manner. Members who are not in their seat are interjecting, which is highly disorderly, and could be named if this continues. The member for Griffith will be heard in silence. If members wish to interject, they shall do from their seats and their seats only.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, Mr Speaker. The first amendment is to enshrine in the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill increasing the proportion of social housing to 10 per cent of Australian dwellings by 2050. This will ensure that the act is measured against total housing need and the progress it makes towards increasing social housing stock, rather than only against the government's own targets that, frankly, will see the shortage of social and affordable housing get worse. Australia, at its peak, achieved about a seven per cent target of social housing as a proportion of total housing stock. Best practice around the world in countries like Austria and the Netherlands have seen their proportion of social housing reach up to 20 per cent of total housing stock. A 10 per cent target by 2050 would require Australia to build over a million social and affordable homes Australia over that period. That is eminently achievable. It's been achieved by countries around the world. That's the only way we're going to tackle the social housing need.

I noted that the Prime Minister, in his remarks, said that people have been throwing figures around. The figure that we rely on has been produced by the National Housing Finance Investment Corporation, the government's own body, which said that we needed over 840,000 social and affordable homes over the next 20 years. That's not the Greens' figure. That's not the figure of any part of the housing sector. That is the government's own figure. That means that there need to be at least 45,000 social homes built every year to address the massive shortfall in housing over the next 20 years. That's the government's figure. So that amendment will ensure that that's actually enshrined in the Housing Australian Future Fund Bill.

The second thing we want to do—and it is remarkable that it caused so much passion on this side of the House—is actually define what 'affordable housing' is. I do not know how you can have a bill that purports to build affordable housing without defining what 'affordable housing' is. The definition that we want inserted in the bill is to define affordable housing as:

(a) rental housing; and

(b) housing that costs no more than 30% of income for the bottom 40% of households by income.

There are some out there who try to define 'affordable housing', and certainly we've seen this from property developers, and you can be sure that under this bill, if it is unamended, this is what will happen. Developers will claim, 'When we offer a rental apartment at 80 per cent of market rent, that's affordable.' Of course, that is completely inadequate when rents have already gone up over 20 per cent, if not more, over the last 12 months alone and recent reports in the media suggest that we're actually due for even higher rent increases going into this year. Ensuring that we have a definition of 'affordable housing' in the bill ensures that this bill actually works towards building social and affordable housing, not some dodgy property-developer-led rubbish about 80 per cent of the market rate that actually does nothing to affect or deal with the housing crisis.

In the third amendment, we move to limit recipients of grants from the fund to governments or non-profit organisations or partnerships that governments or non-profit organisations are members of. This is crucial to ensure that property developers don't come along, access money in this fund and claim they're going to build so-called affordable housing when, in reality, there will be public funds going towards the profits of property developers.

Fourth—and again it is remarkable that this has caused so much passion—we're asking that the responsible minister be required to report six-monthly to parliament on the funding, outlining: the housing outcomes achieved by type and location; progress of housing projects not yet completed; details on grants allocated, including recipient, type of recipient, details of housing project, and decision-making criteria; reporting on money allocated by the COAG— (Time expired)

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Griffith for moving those amendments. The government has sought to engage in a cooperative way with the Greens party on the critical legislation to help get more social and affordable homes on the ground. I note that the member for Griffith has flagged, along with the amendments before the House, further amendments that may come in the Senate, as well as additional matters. I have offered, for the member for Griffith along with other members of this place, to engage on any amendments that may improve the housing legislative package, and I want to thank people for their engagement to date.

I'm pleased that we will be able to support some amendments that are coming through, but I want to be clear that we do not support these particular amendments that have been moved. We don't believe that they improve the legislation. But we do want to continue to work with the Greens party, through the Senate consideration, to consider amendments that may improve the bills.

I would like to say that our commitments are ambitious but targeted. They're phased to deal with the capacity constraints in the construction sector, and they're designed to implement processes to fund the right projects in the right places. It is critical that the structure of the fund that we have designed has been deliberate. We understand that people have differing views and claims about that. But we want to get on and get the fund done. Creating a fund that delivers ongoing returns will protect it from whims of future governments. We believe that the fund will generate returns over the long term which will allow it to provide the annual disbursements to deliver a secure pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing in Australia, and that will provide certainty to the community housing providers and the scale of investment that will be required for new contributions to social and affordable housing, particularly from institutional investors who may be interested in this asset class.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments be disagreed to.

Question agreed to.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (8), as circulated in my name, together:

(1) Clause 2A, page 2 (after line 17), at the end of paragraph (a), add:

(v) people in regional, rural and remote Australia; and

(2) Clause 2A, page 2 (line 19), at the end of paragraph (b), add "(including critical enabling infrastructure for new social and affordable housing in regional, rural and remote Australia)".

(3) Clause 4, page 5 (after line 12), after the definition of constitutional corporation, insert:

critical enabling infrastructure, for new social or affordable housing, means:

(a) infrastructure critical to support the new housing, including new or upgraded infrastructure for services such as water, sewerage, electricity, telecommunications or transportation; or

(b) site remediation works relating to the new housing, including the removal of hazardous waste or contaminated material.

(4) Clause 4, page 7 (after line 28), after the definition of realise, insert:

regional, rural and remote Australia means an area that is classified as inner regional Australia, outer regional Australia, remote Australia or very remote Australia under the Remoteness Structure described in:

(a) the document titled "Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 5—Remoteness Structure, July 2016", published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as amended from time to time; or

(b) the most recent replacement of the document referred to in paragraph (a) that is published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as amended from time to time.

Note: The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 5—Remoteness Structure, July 2016 could in 2023 be viewed on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website (https://www.abs.gov.au).

(5) Page 8 (after line 20), after clause 4, insert:

4A References to affordable housing

To avoid doubt, a reference in this Act to affordable housing includes a reference to:

(a) affordable rental housing; and

(b) critical enabling infrastructure for new affordable housing in regional, rural and remote Australia.

4B References to social housing

To avoid doubt, a reference in this Act to social housing includes a reference to critical enabling infrastructure for new social housing in regional, rural and remote Australia.

(6) Clause 18, page 18 (line 7), after "Note", insert "1".

(7) Clause 18, page 18 (line 7), at the end of subclause (1), add:

Note 2: The reference in this subsection to a person includes a reference to a body politic (see subsection 2C(1) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901) which means that a grant may be made to a local government body.

(8) Clause 65, page 47 (after line 31), after subparagraph (2)(b)(iii), insert:

and (iv) housing needs in regional, rural and remote Australia;

This bill is important to the people of Australia and is important to the people of Indi. In my electorate we are experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. Since the pandemic, house prices and rental prices are the highest I've ever seen in my 30-plus years of living in the district. Low-income people are trying to find places to live in a market they can no longer afford. The waitlists for priority housing have blown out, and we do not have the social and affordable housing supply to meet the demand.

Today I seek simple changes across three areas to make a good bill a better one. First, my amendments will make sure that regional, rural and remote Australia are explicitly considered by the Housing Australia Future Fund. The previous government promised to spend $1 billion to help us unlock housing supply. They spent less than 25 per cent of that money, and none of it came to my electorate of Indi—and very little came to regional Australia. There was no dedicated consideration of the dire housing needs in regional Australia. That's unacceptable.

I don't want to see rural, regional and remote Australia forgotten. My amendments will ensure they are not, by adding that an object of the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill includes providing a funding mechanism for the acute housing needs of Australians living in regional, rural and remote areas. Any reviews of the act must also consider the extent to which the fund is meeting housing needs in regional Australia so we know if the funds are actually going there or not.

The second area my amendments address is critical enabling infrastructure. This area must be explicitly considered if we're going to fix housing supply. This government has the ambitious goal of building tens of thousands of new homes but I struggle to see how it's going to fulfil this election promise if it doesn't specifically invest in critical enabling infrastructure, like a functioning sewerage system or drainage system—infrastructure that communities like Wangaratta and Benalla desperately need to fix but don't have the money to do so on their own. My amendments will add that as an object of the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill—an object to fund critical enabling infrastructure for social and affordable housing in regional Australia. It will clarify that any references to increasing social and affordable housing include funding the critical enabling infrastructure necessary for fully realising this goal.

My amendments will also clarify that local governments can receive grants under the Housing Australia Future Fund. Local governments, often partnering with community housing providers, are the key enablers of the critical infrastructure communities need, from parks and sportsgrounds to lighting and drainage. I thank the minister for the meeting I had with her today about this. While I was there, I also discussed with her my proposal for a regional housing infrastructure fund. This is a creative, dedicated $2 billion fund to directly address the need for all types of housing in regional areas, including medium-density housing and social housing. I look forward to many more discussions with the minister on this policy, and I'll be talking about it so much that I'll probably wear out the carpet on the way to her office!

The third area my amendments address is rental housing. My amendments clarify that affordable housing means affordable rental housing. For a long time we've prioritised giving Australians the opportunity of homeownership. Homeownership isn't within everybody's reach. We need to create safe, comfortable, affordable, long-term rental houses. To date, we haven't done so. A rental report released by Domain this year found that, in the last 12 months, three of the top five local government areas with the highest rent increases in Victoria are in my electorate of Indi—Strathbogie, Indigo and Alpine. I want to make sure that affordable rental housing is front and centre.

These are simple amendments and they should not be controversial. When the government proudly talks about building 30,000 social and affordable homes within five years, the housing needs of regional, rural and remote areas must not be forgotten. I urge my fellow members of parliament to support me in passing these amendments.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I strongly back the member for Indi in this initiative and applaud her for seeing a very big hole in this legislation. We would like the minister to seriously consider what we're saying. Without the member for Indi's amendments, I think we'll be left out completely.

We have to accept that to buy a house in Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney or Melbourne the average price is over $130,000. Clearly that is the heart of the problem, but that doesn't mean that in the city of Atherton, where the Lions Club is building housing for the people there—there is a school teacher I mentioned earlier today, paying $300 a week for a place on a verandah with an umbrella in Atherton.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that democracy is not fair, it is not just; it is the will of the majority, and that may be anything but fair and just. In this case, you will watch the minority get everything and the majority get left out as usual. So I absolutely applaud the member for Indi for seeing a hole in this legislation, and I plead with the government to understand that they need this clause in the legislation.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Indi and the other crossbenchers, and obviously the member for Kennedy. We do understand and want to protect the interests of people in rural and regional Australia; we share them. We want to make sure that key workers in regional areas and regional towns across the country can get access to affordable housing. We know how serious this issue really can be. As I said to the member for Indi today, we got it at every single roundtable in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit, but it was particularly a big issue in regional areas. We do understand. It's one of the reasons why we brought forward the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, for instance, in terms of getting people into their first homes, and now more than 1,700 Australians are there under that scheme.

We do think this legislation will address housing in regional, rural and remote Australia. As I indicated to the member for Indi, whilst we won't be supporting the amendments she's making to the Housing Australia Future Fund, we do want to support some of the amendments, particularly in relation to the Housing Supply and Affordability Council. In the Senate and the Senate committee process, we want to look at how we make sure that rural and regional Australia get their fair share from the fund, because we do want to make sure that all Australians, no matter where they live, get access to safe and affordable housing.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments be disagreed to.

Question agreed to.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) Clause 65, page 48 (line 24), omit "2028", substitute "2025".

I would like to thank the minister for giving me the opportunity to talk with her about this bill. I had hoped that the request to have the review period shortened would have been taken on board. This amendment to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill ensures there is a timely review process in which we should be able to see the effectiveness of the bill in two years, not five years. Not every piece of legislation is perfect. Sometimes we get the processes wrong.

I thank PowerHousing Australia, St George Community Housing, Hume Housing and Evolve Housing for their consultation with me on the bill. As PowerHousing and Evolve Housing have rightly pointed out, housing funds can get misappropriated and used for the wrong reasons. They pointed to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which was aimed at mum and dad investors but was ultimately taken advantage of by private development companies. Due to the loopholes, the scheme has gained a bad reputation when it really needed adjusting so it could ultimately benefit the most needy and vulnerable whilst supporting mum and dad investors.

While the scheme wasn't perfect, the end of the scheme could mean that 36,000 houses will no longer provide subsidised rent for tenants and will most likely be sold or rented out at a higher price. This will result in 36,000 families who could be left out in the lurch. I reiterate that Evolve Housing told me in my consultation for this bill: 'Even if the stars align and we miraculously get the 36,000 properties in the next five years, the net impact will be close to zero without the NRAS.' This is just one example of poorly regulated policies from a decade ago that are impacting families today. In my conversations with the Urban Development Institute of Australia, they recommended a one-year review process, but after discussion with you and your office, Minister, we believe this could be far too short. I completely appreciate it will take some time to set this fund up and have it ready for community-housing providers to access. Yes, I agree we need to have housing solutions not just for now but for the future, but we need to make sure we get this right before there are unintended consequences that could ultimately impact the most vulnerable in our communities.

While I understand that these houses are very unlikely to be built within a two-year period, we are talking about a huge sum of money, $10 billion, that the government is putting aside for this bill. It's only fair that we can closely analyse the allocation of funds in the next two years, particularly as it pertains to grants and if there is ministerial discretion involved. A review after five years could see many things go wrong, and by that point it will too late.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate to the member for Fowler that, as she has been advised, we will not be supporting these amendments. There will be transparency around grants. There will be transparency around all of the things that Housing Australia funds. We have been clear about the fact that we want to make sure that there are reports about what is being funded through the disbursements that will come each year under the fund. I don't think there is a need to review it after two years—we do think that it needs time to be up and running—but there will be transparency along the way through Housing Australia publishing the list of where things are going and through the government and relevant ministers also publishing it.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Fowler be disagreed to.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) Clause 18, page 18 (after line 25), at the end of the clause, add:

(9) The proportion of grants made under subsection (1) or (3) during a financial year that are grants in relation to acute housing needs, social housing and affordable housing in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia must be equivalent to the proportion of the Australian population that live in those areas based on the most recently available census data.

This amendment is pretty simple. One in five of us live in regional Australia; at least one in five of these homes should be in regional Australia. Too many of the decisions we make in this place very much favour the capital cities, and I see in my electorate and I see in regional Australia more generally that there is a huge need for housing. Down on the south coast of my electorate, we're talking about vacancy rates of less than one per cent. We need to make sure that a share of this money is going across regional Australia—just an equitable share. That's where the need is so great and that is where people are so isolated.

When I drive home from the bottom part of my electorate, I drive past cars that I know have families in them. There are families hidden in the forest, and they're at the back of churches. It is a chronic issue. Yes, it is in the metropolitan areas as well; I know that. But we don't have the services in the regions when it comes to homelessness services. Our people are told they have to go to the capital cities if they need those services. And getting there is another thing, let alone the fact that they're leaving behind everything that they know.

So this is really about equity. I'm particularly calling out to the Nationals, who say that they're here for regional Australia. You might not like the bill in general, but I would ask you to support regional Australia with respect to this bill and make sure that we in the regions get a fair share of this investment.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In America, they have 'redlining'. Five per cent of all banking has to go into redlined areas, which are basically the slum areas of the cities. And all of the rural areas of America are redlined, so they have to get five per cent of the banking. In Australia, it's just the opposite.

In all of inland North Queensland, the banks will lend no money for housing, full stop. You could put 90 per cent in, and they still wouldn't give you some money for a house, let alone for some business venture or agricultural venture. Is there discrimination in Australia? Too bloody right there is. If you're in a city area, you get the money from the bank. If you're in a country area, you can't. The Americans' democracy works so much better than ours, and here is a classic example of it: five per cent of all banking has to go into redlined areas.

We will be moving an amendment, and I think there will be widespread support from the crossbenchers. The great tragedy, of course, is that the Country Party was formed for exactly this purpose, and they serve that purpose never—never. It's just the opposite. So we would like the government to start thinking about redlining, because we are discriminated against.

If you want a graphic example of this, there are a million people living in North Queensland, my own land, and there are over a million people, about a million and a half, living in Brisbane. Brisbane has 29 kilometres of tunnels; we have none and we're not likely to get any. Now, why do they get 29 kilometres of tunnels and we can't get one at all? I don't mind if I get less than them, but I get none at all. We don't get anything at all.

Our situation is that 60,000 people live over there, and it takes them an hour and a half to get to the hospital, the CBD and the port. And they can't get to the port with heavy transport, so a great mineral province, with five of Australia's six greatest rivers, cannot be used for anything at all because we can't get the product out. The gulf is a flood plain; you can't possibly take product out through the Gulf of Carpentaria. If you want to get it out, you have to go through Charters Towers, which is south of Townsville, on a 2,000-kilometre round trip. Every single mining company that I've known that has opened up in that area has gone broke for that very reason. All we're asking for is $1,000 million for a tunnel, and they've spent $40,000 million on tunnels in Brisbane. I could give you a hundred other examples but I will rest there. I remind the House that in rural Australia the banks will not lend money. The great creator of the Labor Party, and arguably this nation, 'Red Ted' Theodore, one of the first things he did was introduce the state bank. When the great Labor Party of those days got into this place, the first thing they did was introduce the people's bank. We haven't got it, and—boy, oh, boy—are we getting the rough end of the pineapple because of that.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I won't detain the House too much. I just wish to stand in support of my rural, regional and remote colleagues here on the crossbench because it really is up to the members of the crossbench here to push forward with representation for what we need out in rural and regional Australia. It bodes well to listen carefully to what the member for Kennedy has to say. He reminds us of our history. Sometimes he reminds us of things we don't care to think about. But right now he has just reminded us of some of our history and the difficulties that rural, remote and regional Australians face when they're trying to get finance, when they're trying to establish themselves with fundamental infrastructure. Again, I would call on my colleagues over here from the National Party representing rural and regional Australia, have a think about this. You know, if we haven't got the fundamental infrastructure to house our people, to ensure that we have the roads, that we have the hospitals, that we have the telecommunications, we cannot thrive. Housing is fundamental to that. I back in what the member for Mayo has to say and I remind people that rural, regional and remote Australia must never be forgotten when we are investing in this great nation.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do want to indicate to the member for Mayo that we're not supporting her amendment but we do understand the principle in which she's moving it. We do agree that we need to make sure that regional towns, particularly, and remote areas of Australia do get access to the fund. We will be looking at the best ways to do that. It might not be through primary legislation; it might be through the investment mandate. We do want to explore in the Senate the best way to do that. As I indicated earlier, we will be supporting some of the member for Indi's amendments to the supply council in terms of geographical disbursement.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be disagreed to.