Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

I come to this debate—well, it's not a debate but a fait accompli, with the deal having been done, clearly, with those sitting at the end of the chamber—as someone who has been a member of the AAT. I think I'm probably one of the few people in here that can say that I actually know the AAT. I had a brief stint there. For those that played along at home during the constitutional crisis, the ruling impacted me. When Fiona Nash left the Senate and I was the next on the ticket and should have entered the Senate, that went to the High Court. The High Court ruled that the election had never ended and that I held an office of profit under the Crown at the tribunal and was therefore ineligible to enter the Senate. So I have firsthand experience of the AAT and the work it does. I can proudly say I've worked in the migration area. Not one of the decisions that I made and not one of the outcomes of the cases that I sat on and adjudicated over were appealed. That's actually one of the KPIs of the AAT—that it's not seeing excessive numbers of appeals of the decisions made by members and that the decisions are made on sound and solid grounds. I can proudly say I didn't have any appeals on my record.

But I do, just in light of this, want to make mention of someone else. I'm not sure if he's still at the tribunal; he very well may be. He was appointed by then Attorney-General George Brandis at the same time as me. He was a lovely man. I actually sat with him at the dinner we had to welcome new members to the tribunal when we were going through tribunal school. That was a man called Mark Bishop. Mark was a Labor senator who had then been appointed to the tribunal by the Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis because Mark did have, as a former senator, a number of skills that would provide value. I'm sure he has provided value to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The difference is that we see that—and I note from Senator Davey's contribution when she looked at the discrimination act and how it behaves in the Public Service as well and what's actually discriminatory behaviour—the current Attorney-General might need to update himself on discrimination because it is actually a form of discrimination to penalise someone based on political affiliation.

What we are seeing here is a cosy deal done with the Greens; otherwise, the day after the budget, we wouldn't be seeing a change of hours for them to just ram through $1 billion worth of spending on an administrative tribunal which is actually not changing it. It's a rebrand so that they can restructure and move out everyone that they did not appoint, outside of the 160 Labor affiliated appointments that the government have made since coming to office, so that they can effectively discriminate against anybody who does not have card-carrying membership of the Labor Party. Maybe the Greens want a couple of their own. Maybe that's part of their deal. It is the most disgusting and disgraceful abuse of power. But, I have to say, I am not shocked, which is disappointing. We have come to expect, in record time from this government, nothing less than completely hypocritical behaviour and a lack of transparency, and now we can add a good healthy dose of nepotism.

I will talk a little bit more about the specifics, for those playing along at home, of what the difference is going to look like and what spending $1 billion on a rebrand is going to look like. It's got to be the fastest time a government has delivered a budget and then hasn't wanted to talk about it. It's literally not even been 24 hours since the budget, and they've urgently said, 'Quick—we can pass this legislation,' about the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I've seen the headlines evolve throughout the day, and this budget has gone down like a lead balloon. Australians can see it for the stinker that it is. They know it's absolutely going to make their lives harder.

They know about this rubbish they've gone on with about 'every household'. I do not know if everyone's caught up on question time in the House of Representatives today, but there was a fantastic question from the Manager of Opposition Business, the member for Bradfield. He asked, in a hypothetical question, whether someone who had to move from, say, Bellevue Hill to Parramatta for work and owned a substantial number of properties, including, say, a $12 million beach house at Palm Beach, would receive $300 per household for each of those properties. There is actually a list in the Daily Telegraph of how many homes all members of this place and the other place own. It was a fair question on 'per household'. If you have a couple of households, are you getting it a couple of times?

Coming back, this is a billion dollars on a rebrand. I thought I'd just have a look at some of the things we could spend a billion dollars on rather than a new logo, business card and letterhead—and, I'm assuming, some redundancy payments for anyone who's ever been affiliated with the Liberal Party. We won't see the Greens here because of their level of hypocrisy. I want to say that if they didn't have double standards they wouldn't have any at all. Let's think about infrastructure development. We have Senator Allman-Payne, who is very passionate about public schools, schooling and education. Just think of how many public schools could be refurbished or hospitals updated in our under-served areas. Look at the ageing water and sewerage systems and how much public health and sanitation could be improved. Rail connections and even—I don't know—a road from the new airport in Western Sydney might be part of that equation.

They could have some EV charging points! Just think how many, Senator O'Sullivan, EV charging stations could be put across this land! You know what? They could even put some good cappuccino makers there so you could make yourself a coffee while your car charges for 3½ hours!

Seriously, we could establish new community health centres in rural and remote areas. We could invest in medical research and develop treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. We could expand mental health. We know we had a tokenistic mention of mental health in the budget last night while this country is consumed by a mental health crisis made worse by Labor's homegrown inflation and cost-of-living crisis. But we get a tokenistic app being developed for mental health. Just think what a billion dollars could do for mental health, especially at the moderate-to-severe end of mental illness.

We could have new technology going into every classroom across the county and enhance digital learning for students, particularly those in rural and remote areas and those who struggle with connection at the moment. We could update those sorts of systems for them. We could fund scholarships for low-income families to go to university or vocational training. We could help Indigenous rural and regional children attend boarding schools that would provide them with secure housing, food and education and really set them on a path to a better life. Look at what we could do in adult education. We have more migrants in this country than ever before, but imagine the programs we could put in place to help them learn English and understand Australian culture.

We hear a lot about homelessness, affordable housing and how people are struggling to get into homes. What could a billion dollars do? How many houses could a billion dollars build? What could we build for a billion dollars? How many low-interest loans could we offer to first-time homebuyers to help them break into the housing market with a billion dollars? These guys are all about energy efficiency. They love that. It's 'zero emissions', you know? 'We've got to make sure everyone has five stars on their appliances.' We could improve energy efficiency in many, many homes, particularly in lower-socioeconomic areas, so they wouldn't need to run their heaters full time in winter. They wouldn't require that volume of air conditioning because their houses would be insulated properly. But no—we're not looking at that. We're looking at a rebrand.

Look at environmental conservatism. Think about the ecosystems that could benefit from some reforestation programs. We could even invest in working more effectively with the transmission lines that everyone is so determined to bulldoze through those communities. We could look at how to use plastics better. We could look at recycling. These are the things that we hear the Greens talk about, but, when it comes to a billion dollars for a rebrand, forget the recycling and the environment: 'We don't want any energy efficiency programs in any of these lower-socioeconomic groups. We don't want to work on any job creation programs.' Imagine spending a billion dollars on rural and regional areas and Indigenous communities to train them up. How much could a billion dollars do there?