Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before I call Senator Day, I remind honourable senators that this is his first speech; therefore, I ask that the usual courtesies be extended to him.

Bob Day (SA, Family First Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Every family, a job and a house.' If every family had a job and owned a house, the benefits to this nation would be great indeed. Australia would be transformed. So why doesn't every family have a job and own their own home? There are a number of reasons, but in the main it is barriers to entry. As a senator, I have been elected to do two things: (1) represent the great state of South Australia and (2) implement the policies that my party and I have been expressing for many years—namely, removing the barriers that prevent people from getting a job and owning their own home.

When it comes to jobs and houses, Australia is not a free country. Let me begin with barriers to getting a job. For the low-skilled, poorly educated or socially disadvantaged, or for those who lack connections or even self-confidence, the barriers to entry to getting a job are serious indeed. When I started in the housing industry 40 years ago, every tradesman had an apprentice. Apprentice wages were very low, as apprentices were treated very much like students and received the equivalent of a student allowance—like every other student in the country. Young people who were not particularly suited to or interested in academic study attended technical schools and then did an apprenticeship. Since then, we have made employing apprentices such a nightmare that few tradespeople are willing to take them on, yet there are thousands of unemployed young people who would love to learn a trade and get a start in the workforce. Whilst 'education, education, education' has become society's mantra, forcing young people to stay on to year 12 when they are clearly not enjoying it is both foolish and wrong. It condemns them to a life of misery.

I spent many years working on building sites. I came across many young lads not enjoying school, causing trouble at home and getting in trouble with the police, who then started working on a building site. I can tell you that by Friday night they were too tired to be hooning around in cars, setting fire to brush fences and spraying graffiti at all hours of the night. I know hundreds of tradesmen—carpenters, bricklayers, tilers—who left school at 15 and have gone on to lead very happy and successful lives. These same early school leavers now all have cars and boats and two or three investment properties—and they send their kids to private schools. They are also members of the local Country Fire Service or surf-lifesaving club and they coach local football or netball teams. They are good citizens, yet they received very little in the way of formal education. As the old saying goes, it is not what you are good at at school that matters but what you are good at in life.

I note the Newstart allowance at the moment is worth about $240 a week and the minimum wage is about $640 a week. Between $240 and $640 there is a no-go zone where anyone who offers or accepts anything in between is breaking the law. In fact it is even worse than that because we do not permit anyone to work for any amount between nought and $640. We praise people who work for no money—working up to 40 hours a week in op shops and nursing homes and for the RSPCA—but we do not allow them to work for more than zero until you reach $640. If you are allowed to work for nothing, surely you should be allowed to work for something. It is absurd.

Australia has been groaning under this yoke for a century. In circumstances like this, sometimes the only way to achieve a breakthrough is to consider a break-with. So when I decided to run for office to go and do something about this, a well-known Adelaide businessman—no names, just initials: Roger Drake—said to me: 'Bob, you will not get in. Politics is designed to keep people like you out.' But given the clear emergency that now exists with respect to youth unemployment, in particular tragically high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment in my home state—over 40 per cent in some areas—the time has surely come to allow young people who want to to opt out of the workplace regulation system and allow them to work at rates of pay and under terms and conditions which they consider are best for them.

Of course there is outrage when I say these things. I hear, 'They might be exploited.' But where is the outrage when these same young people end up on drugs, get involved in crime, suffer poor health, become pregnant, get recruited into bikie gangs or even commit suicide? No, there is only outrage when they want to take a job that suits them but does not suit the government. What percentage of employers exploit young people anyway? Is it one per cent, five per cent, 10 per cent? So we stop the other 90 per cent from hiring people because of some who might behave badly. Trucks career out of control and kill people. Do we take all trucks off the road? Of course not. Athletes cheat and take drugs and fix matches. Do we ban sport? Of course not. Society cannot function if you apply that principle. And, yet, we apply it to people wanting to get a job.

As has been widely reported, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are open to suggestions from the crossbench on where savings might be made to get the budget back into surplus. Well, here is a silver bullet, Prime Minister: the government could reduce its welfare budget, reduce its $5 billion job placement program, reduce a dozen social ills—all costing millions of dollars—and, at the same time, start collecting income tax if it would simply allow those young people who want to to opt out of the workplace regulation system. There are literally thousands of jobs in rural and regional Australia where young people, in particular, who are living at home rent-free, with no commuting costs and a low cost of living, would be able to get local jobs which suit them.

Just yesterday, I had a young Y20 delegate to the G20 Youth Summit in my office seeking my support for, and I quote, 'Ensuring young people have flexibility in negotiating workplace agreements.' Young people are telling me this is what they want. Let me be clear about one thing: I am not advocating a return to Work Choices. I was a vehement opponent of Work Choices. In fact, I visited this place on a number of occasions, meeting with ministers—they know who they are because they are still here—and imploring them not to proceed along the Work Choices path. I said: 'Leave Peter Reith's 1996 Workplace Relations Act alone and simply allow those who want to to opt out. Those who wish to stay in the workplace regulation system could do so. But those who did not want all that stuff could opt out.'

A lot of employers and a lot of employees were very comfortable with Peter Reith's Workplace Relations Act because it told them what to do. But there were some employees who did not want to be bound by it all; hence, my proposal to allow them to opt out. Well, here I am nine years on saying the same thing. As history shows, those ministers did not listen to my advice last time, and we went from a 600-page Workplace Relations Act to a 2,000-page disaster called Work Choices. Now we have its successor, the Fair Work Act, comprising 3,000 pages of rules and regulations, which is all fine for those who want them. But what about those who do not want them? I have no problem whatsoever if people want to work within the regulated system with its awards, minimum wages, unfair dismissals, joining of unions and so on—no problem, whatsoever. Just don't make it compulsory. People do things for their reasons, not ours.

Let me now move on to barriers to home ownership. For more than 100 years, the average Australian family was able to buy its first home on one wage. Young couples got a start in the housing market and worked up from there. The median house price was around three times the median income, allowing young homebuyers easy entry into the housing market. The median house price is now more than nine times what it was for 100 years between 1900 and 2000. At nine times median household income, a family will fork out approximately $600,000 more on mortgage payments than they would have had house prices remained at three times median income. That is $600,000 that they are not able to spend on other things—clothes, cars, furniture, appliances, travel, movies, restaurants, the theatre, their children's education, charities and so on. The economic consequences of this change have been devastating. The capital structure of our economy has been distorted to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. And for those on middle and low incomes, the prospect of ever becoming homeowners has now all but vanished. Housing starts have plummeted, and so have all the jobs associated with it—civil construction, housing construction, transport, appliances, whitegoods, soft furnishing, and the list goes on. That is not to mention the billions of dollars in lost GST revenue to the states.

The single most important factor affecting housing affordability has been land. In no other area of the economy has the interference of government been so pronounced, so unsuccessful in its implementation and so catastrophic in its effect. The deliberate policy to limit urban growth—that is, limiting the supply of land on the urban fringes of our cities by introducing urban growth boundaries and, at the same time, promoting urban densification—has been a disaster socially, economically and environmentally. And it was all designed for one purpose: to make money. It had nothing to do with the environment, the cost of infrastructure, public transport or any other reason put forward.

Land developers, in cahoots with state government land management agencies, have made billions of dollars and, at the same time, ruined the home ownership prospects of a whole generation of young Australians. If there is one commodity Australia is not short of, it is land. Yet, to buy a block of land on which to build their first home, young couples are forced to camp out overnight by rent-seeking land developers and their state government cronies for the privilege of paying an exorbitant amount of money for a measly one-tenth of an acre of former farmland—land that developers and state governments between them managed to convert from $10,000 a hectare to $1 million a hectare. It leaves all other forms of price gouging in its wake. When challenged about this and asked, 'Why are you letting this happen?', a senior state government politician admitted, 'We need the money.' It is why politicians are so easily captured and conned by the constant procession of rent-seeking crony capitalists whose job it is is to enrich one group of Australians—themselves—at the expense of another: first homebuyers. Rent seekers are the scourge of business and politics. They tarnish the political process, distort the market and, in the case of land development, distort the entire economy.

The second barrier is the proliferation of federal, state and local government planning and building controls, which add cost, confusion and delay. Let me give you one example. A few years ago I bought a block of land on a very busy main road in one of Australia's capital cities. I submitted plans to the local shire council to build 12 semidetached home units on the land and, as the zoning allowed for such a development, I did not expect any problems. That was, of course, until I came up against the shire council town planner, who said he would recommend the development for approval subject to the provision of noise attenuation devices across the front of the property. 'Noise attenuation' is a fancy name for soundproofing.

I tried to point out to him that there were thousands of kilometres of main roads across the country with many hundreds of thousands of dwellings along them and that it seemed to work in most places without sound attenuation. In any event, I told him that the project was actually geared towards older people, many of whom prefer the noise of traffic and pedestrians. They say they feel safer on a main road than in some quiet backstreet or cul-de-sac. But he was having none of it. He wanted his noise attenuation devices. Naturally, I tried commercial arguments on him, saying that people who did not like noise would not buy them and that the market would sort it out. But, for reasons known only to town planners but obscure to common sense, he rejected all my pleas and I had an acoustic engineer design a front fence to assist with noise attenuation. No sooner had I finished the job than the royal society for the deaf bought the units—all 12 of them. The point in telling that story is not just to mention the addition of unnecessary cost to say that there is no greater insult to the integrity of a human being than for the state to presume that it knows what is best for you.

There used to be a newspaper advertisement with the headline, 'If you do nothing else, make sure you own your home by the time you retire.' There is no better hedge against poverty in one's later years than to be in one's own home. If people are not then the implications for us here in this place will be enormous, as an increasing ratio of retirees to those in the workforce will mean that future pensions will never be enough to meet either mortgage costs or rent. So who is going to pick up the tab? The state governments who took the retirees' money when they were starting out? I doubt it. It all comes back to the entry point—getting a job, buying a house, starting a business or even starting a political party. This is where the incumbents put aside their differences and unite to keep out new entrants.

I know companies do not like new entrants coming along and undercutting them, especially when the new entrant does not have all the overheads that they have. But that is the basis of a dynamic and prosperous economy. We should reject their pleas. How much longer are we going to keep locking people out of employment and housing? I have spent the last 30 years helping the jobless and homeless, and I can tell you that the situation is getting worse. We all have jobs and houses; why can't they have them? Removing the barriers to jobs and houses would not only transform the lives of thousands of Australians; it would transform the economy.

I had a briefing with Treasury officials just a few days ago and was presented with a bleak outlook on the Australian economy, showing rising unemployment and an activity gap in investment following the resources boom. I asked, 'What about housing construction? Would that fill the activity gap?' The Treasury official replied, 'Yes, it would'. So there you have it—jobs and houses. Even Treasury agrees with me!

I am a conservative. Family First is a conservative party. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, 'Only progressives become old-fashioned; conservatives are always in fashion.' Conservatives acknowledge the achievements of previous generations. They are realists. They see what works and what does not work. And what works are free markets, property rights, the law of contract, sound economics, strong families and strong values. They know the facts of life are on their side. Yes, they have tried many times to bury conservatism, but the body keeps coming back to life after every outbreak of instability to outlive all the pallbearers.

I am also a committed federalist. To quote Sir Samuel Griffith, the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia:

We must not lose sight of the essential condition that Australia is to be a federation of States, not a single government of Australia. The separate States are to continue as autonomous bodies, surrendering only so much of their power as is necessary to the establishment of a central government to do for them collectively what they cannot do individually for themselves.

In other words, the states are equal to the Commonwealth and equal to each other. For someone from Adelaide, who well remembers Bob Hawke's famous line, 'We're all Australians, whether we're from Melbourne or Sydney,' this was music to my ears. As we keep being reminded, the Commonwealth government does not have the money to do all the things it wants to do. As the High Court has recently demonstrated, it also does not have the power it thinks or pretends it has. The Commonwealth has to start giving up some of its power and control.

As many here would know, the infant Australian settlement was based on five key 'protective supports'—two economic, two social and one of imperial benevolence of the mother country. The two social supports were the White Australia policy and state paternalism. The two economic supports were tariff protection and compulsory workplace regulation. These two went hand in hand. Imperial benevolence, the White Australia policy, state paternalism and tariff protection have all gone. There is only one left—compulsory workplace regulation. After 114 years, it is time people were given the freedom to opt out.

If, at the end of my term in parliament, everyone who wants a job has one, everyone who wants to own a home can do so, and my home state is stronger and more independent than it is now, then my time in this place will end well.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who made it possible for me to be standing here today: my wife, Bronte, and my family; my long-standing personal assistant, Joy; my business partner, John; my political mentors Bert Kelly and Ray Evans; my Family First state colleagues past and present—Andrew Evans, Dennis Hood and Rob Brokenshire; our candidates, volunteers and staff. Thank you all so much.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Before I call Senator Lambie I remind honourable senators that this is her first speech; therefore, I ask that the usual courtesies be extended to her.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. I am sure you are very relieved to know that I have finally reached the time for my first speech, after much practice. We will see if that makes perfect.

Mr President, I stand in Australia's Senate chamber and speak to you and fellow senators because I want a better and more prosperous future—a fair go for all Tasmanians and Australians, not just the privileged and rich.

I acknowledge and pay my respects to Australia's Aboriginal traditional owners. I share their blood, culture and history through my mother's, Sue Lambie's, family. We trace our history over six generations to celebrated Aboriginal chieftain of the Tasmania east coast, Mannalargenna.

I also acknowledge the members and former members of Australia's military who have created the ANZAC legend—those inspirational, courageous, heroic Australians who, when asked by members of this house, have fought, shed blood and died so that we can meet here today in this magnificent chamber, safely praise or criticise what is said here and not worry about the bloodthirsty mob or an assassin's knock on the door at midnight. We enjoy our nation's great wealth, beautiful country and democratic freedoms, rights and privileges, which are the envy of the world, because of the great debt we owe to those in the military like our very own Tasmanians Ordinary Seaman Teddy Sheean, Corporal Richard Atkinson and Corporal Cameron Stewart Baird, who gave their lives courageously facing the enemy and whose deaths were an act of love for their state, their nation, their comrades and their family.

Mr President, I am here only by the grace of God and the good will of Tasmanians and I humble myself to both and pledge to do my best to serve our Lord, his son Jesus Christ and the people of Australia's greatest state, my beloved Tasmania. I am also here because of the unwavering, unconditional love, kindness, loyalty and support given to me by my family: my mum, Sue; dad, Tom Lambie; brother, Bobby; sons Dylan and Brenton and, of course, my mini-nephew, Jet. I want to thank them with all my heart.

I also thank and acknowledge Clive Palmer. Clive truly listened when I contacted him with my concerns about the injustices, great harm and suicides that our veterans and their families have been forced to suffer and are still forced to suffer today. After I said that I wanted to stand in this chamber, become a voice for Tasmania and win a fairer share of the national wealth for my state, Clive placed his faith in me, embraced my ideas and welcomed me wholeheartedly to his team. I am extremely proud to be part of the Palmer United Party team.

Like most Australians, Dio Wang, Glen Lazarus, Clive Palmer and I have had to work hard and sacrifice because we were not born into power, wealth and privilege. So we will always take the side of the elderly, sick, needy and disabled, of the battlers, small-business owners and workers, because we know what it feels like to be knocked down and then have to struggle and fight for every cent and victory.

Mr President, as you would know, our Tasmania is a place of exquisite beauty. It is the place I was born. Our air is the sweetest and freshest you will ever breathe. Our island is ancient. Tasmania is made up of stunning mountains, majestic forests, crystal-clear streams and rivers, lush green fields, and farms exploding with rich chocolate volcanic soil and its tasty treasures. Country towns, villages, heritage buildings and modern cities are all circled by a gorgeous coastline of cliffs, shores, beaches and bays that make you want to cry from their sheer physical beauty and grandeur. Imagine what the first Tasmanians, the Aboriginals, thought when they witnessed the flooding of Bass Strait and the gradual creation of that magnificent coastline. It is hard to believe that only 8,000 years ago you could walk from Tasmania to the mainland of Australia. Now there are more than 340 kilometres of ocean between our island and Victoria.

I was born in north-west Tasmania and went to high school at Devonport High, and not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would become a politician. I have had my fair share of good luck mixed with plenty of hard knocks and I have survived. I believe that everyone is entitled to a second chance and sometimes a third and fourth chance, but more importantly everybody is entitled to a fair go.

In the Australian Army I learned to understand the true cost of freedom. My military service taught me that our democratic rights, privileges, freedoms and great Aussie lifestyle have been gifted to us by many brave generations who had to work, fight and sacrifice. They did without, died and put our welfare before theirs. I want to look after our veterans, protect past generations' great legacies and make Tasmania a better place for my grandchildren and their children.

In this place as a senator I will do my best to vote in and protect Tasmania's and Australia's best interests. In order to help determine what is in my state's and nation's best interests, I will ask this simple question: how will this legislation or proposal affect our food security, water security, energy security, national security and job security? If we make decisions in this place which ensure and boost Australia's food, water, energy, national and job securities then our grandchildren and their children will be guaranteed a future of abundance, prosperity, safety and freedom. However, if we make decisions that undermine and weaken those five fundamental securities, then future generations may have good reason to curse us. It is important that we value our farmers and fishers; improve our water storage and drought-proof our prime agricultural land; run our cars and trucks on fuels made in Australia, independent of other countries; dramatically increase the size and capability of our Defence Force; and fight for every Australian job and business.

If a community, state or nation is to grow and prosper, there are only four broad ways they can do it: make it, mine it, grow it, show it. Those businesses which directly manufacture a product—anything from writing a book, bottling apple cider, distilling whiskey, publishing a newspaper to manufacturing mining equipment—those who create something from nothing, make it. Those who extract metal, minerals and oils mine it. Those who work with Mother Nature and harvest her treasures—fishing, farming, forestry et cetera—grow it. Those who build business and attract tourists and help them enjoy our sights, tastes and delights show it. Businesses that directly make it, mine it, grow it and show it are our primary wealth creators. They bring in new money to our economy. The rest of the businesses and services in our community, including government, recycle the new money that the primary wealth creators bring into our communities. If the primary wealth creators fail then we all fail. There will not be any money to employ the heroes who come to our rescue and care for us every day—the nurses, teachers, police, doctors, dentists, firefighters and cleaners et cetera. That is why it is important that government develop policies, in particular, which care for and value our primary wealth-creating businesses. We have failed to properly do that and that is why so many Tasmanian and, indeed, Australian businesses are shutting their doors and laying off workers.

The Greens, most Labor members and even some Liberals have tried to convince Australians that they can stop world climate change by paying more for their clean electricity and power. This lie has caused massive damage to our economy, businesses, manufacturing and primary industries. Right now our electricity and energy costs are some of the most expensive in the Western world. Australian businesses pay up to three times more for their electricity and power than their competitors in America, Canada, the UK and Europe. Is it any wonder that tens of thousands of Tasmanian and Australian workers have lost their jobs, while manufacturing businesses close down and our workers' jobs are exported overseas?

Dr Thomas Barlow is an Australian research strategist specialising in science and technological innovation. He authored a critically acclaimed book called Between the Eagle and the Dragon: Who is winning the innovation race? Dr Barlow reminds us that: 'At the moment the US is having an energy revolution. They have cheap energy. The cost of natural gas in the US is about a third of what it was in 2008. And as a consequence we see manufacturing flow back to the US.' Dr Barlow also reminds us that the formula for national wealth and prosperity was proven by Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. Cheap power and relatively high wages in the 18th and 19th centuries caused a perfect financial and social mix which gave entrepreneurs the incentive to develop new technology and machinery to replace manual labour. This enterprise generated massive national wealth and technological advancement and allowed Great Britain to stay great for hundreds of years.

Australia can use the same formula for national wealth and prosperity in the 21st century. In a deregulated world and free-trade economic environment, if we are to create national wealth, generate more high-tech jobs and protect Australian workers' wages then the only solution is for our governments to deliver the cheapest electricity and power in the world to our pensioners, families, industry and entrepreneurs. We must do this.

Mr President, I am sad to report that Tasmania now faces an extraordinary economic and social crisis. I think I have been quite clear about this over past weeks. Every indicator shows that my home is the worst performing Australian state in unemployment, education, health, law and order, and aged care—and the list just keeps going on and on. However, that is not to say that there is not reason for optimism. But in order to save lives, jobs, businesses and careers, we need to acknowledge the seriousness of the trouble that we are in. We also need to acknowledge the reason why we have arrived in this unacceptable situation.

One of the greatest causes of our extra levels of economic and social disadvantage and record unemployment in Tasmania is the Bass Strait Transport cost crisis. I have spoken about this crisis a number of times already in this place; however, it is vital that all senators, and the Australian public, clearly understand this matter. We need the support of all Australians to help solve Tasmania's Bass Strait Transport cost crisis, which has strangled Tasmania's economic life. Our businesses, workers, families and school leavers have suffered the curse of record unemployment and loss of hope, mostly because of the unfair and exorbitant costs of transporting products, goods and people from one Australian state to another Australian state. Before I briefly outline the details of this injustice, I want to make one very important point. Every Tasmanian senator knows what I am about to say.

Every Tasmanian senator clearly understands the unbearable level of social and economic misery that the extra cost of shipping goods, vehicles, machinery, food, fuel and people 420 kilometres over the ocean has caused Tasmanians—rather than driving 420 kilometres on a national highway. But what I cannot understand is why every Tasmanian senator, especially those who have been in power or are in power now, has chosen to do nothing. In fact, even worse than doing nothing, every Tasmanian senator has turned a blind eye to this outrageous, stinking, filthy injustice. Why is it up to me and the Palmer United Party to find a solution that should have been found 20 years ago? If Tasmanian political leaders had shown foresight and courage over the last two decades, and reformed and boosted the budget of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme by $200 million per annum, then I would not be here today in this place speaking these uncomfortable truths. The solution is clear: if the powers that control the treasury bench do not want an army of Jacqui Lambies in this place, speaking uncomfortable truths and challenging them in the future—then fix the Bass Strait Transport cost crisis.

If Tasmania is to be treated fairly as a state of Australia, the cost of transporting both domestic and international-bound goods in containers—machinery, food, fuel—between Hobart and Melbourne should be no more than the cost of transporting a container on a semitrailer between Melbourne and Wagga Wagga on the Hume Highway. If we are to be treated fairly as a state, the cost of people taking their cars, motorhomes, campervans, caravans, motorbikes, greyhounds or racehorses—or unicorns—from Devonport to Melbourne, or vice versa, should be no more than the cost of driving the 327 kilometres of national highway from Melbourne to Albury. The distance between the Victorian state border and the Tasmanian state border must be treated by policymakers, premiers and prime ministers as a national highway. They are not treating it like a national highway. The cost of surface travel for the distance between Tasmania and the Australian mainland is a national disgrace—not a national highway. It is time to fix this issue.

Mr President, perhaps one of the reasons why God performed a miracle and put me in this place is because I intend to be part of the greatest reforms of Australia's Department of Veterans' Affairs and our Defence Force. The Department of Veterans' Affairs, despite the best efforts of individual public servants, over time has become dysfunctional and, worse than that, is dangerous. The systemic failure to care for our veterans, both young and old, is not confined to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The seeds for this failure and appalling treatment of many former members of our Australian Defence Force can be found in the complete failure of leadership at the highest levels of the Australian defence forces. A culture of cover-up, lies and official misconduct can be found in both the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Australian Defence Force. The only remedy to address the gross injustices is for a Royal Commission to be held into the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the senior military leadership, and their toxic culture of cover-up, which has been present for more than two decades.

There are many reasons why a Royal Commission must be established into the way veterans, former Australian Defence Force members and serving Australian Defence Force members have been treated: an obscenely high suicide rate in our young veterans; the cover-up of appallingly high levels of abuse and sexual assaults in our military; the negligent under-resourcing and staffing of our military; the official prescription of antipsychotic drugs for our combat troops serving in war zones; and the criminal waste of resources and mismanagement of Defence procurement. But perhaps one of the most compelling reasons why a royal commission should be established into the management of Defence is sitting in the public gallery today.

I would like to acknowledge a former lieutenant of the Australian Army, and Tasmanian lad, Marcus Saltmarsh. Marcus served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to thank him for his service. Because this government and Prime Minister, despite written requests from myself, refuse to apologise for the appalling abuse Marcus has suffered, I would like to apologise as a senator from Tasmania—his home state—for the incredible abuse and/or incompetence he has been forced to endure from certain leaders of our military.

During active service in East Timor on 9 August 2000, then Trooper Saltmarsh's Steyr rifle independently and without user manipulation discharged accidentally and killed his best mate, Corporal Stuart Jones. Following that tragic event, Mr Saltmarsh, then a non-commissioned rank, on the recommendation of a military board of inquiry was forced to face a military court martial, which prosecuted him for military offences similar to those of a civilian manslaughter offence. Five hundred days after the death of his mate Corporal Stuart Jones, Mr Saltmarsh was exonerated by a military court martial with a finding of 'no case to answer'.

This official finding, however, was never made public, unlike the adverse recommendations of the initial military board of inquiry, which were shared—along with Mr Saltmarsh's identity—with the Australian media and broader world community. Marcus claims that strong evidence existed at the time of Corporal Jones's death showing systemic mechanical faults and oversights present in a very large number of Army Steyr rifles and an Army-wide weapons technical inspection oversight, both of which could have contributed in specific conditions to an independent weapon discharge.

In relation to Mr Saltmarsh's claim of faulty weapons, I brought to the Prime Minister's attention via correspondence the fact that media reports at the time of Corporal Jones's death indicated that 77 accidental discharges of the Army-issue Steyr rifle had occurred during the East Timor peacekeeping mission. The minister has subsequently admitted that of 77 accidental Steyr discharges, 10 unassisted Steyr discharges had occurred. Disturbingly, Mr Saltmarsh reports that the initial board of inquiry's adverse and supposedly accidental leak to the media effectively paraded him in front of the public, which caused significant damage to his personal reputation and psychological wellbeing.

Conveniently for the generals in charge of the Army at the time and government ministers, that media leak by unknown members of the ADF or Public Service also had the effect of turning Lieutenant Saltmarsh into a public scapegoat, which distracted media and public attention away from reports of those systemic mechanical faults in the Army's rifles. Despite official promises to Mr Saltmarsh, those responsible for the leak have never been identified.

Following a break of three years from the regular Army and also following Mr Saltmarsh's deployment to Baghdad in 2005, he was selected for officer training. He undertook that training successfully and graduated from Royal Military College in 2010. Mr Saltmarsh then served as an officer in Afghanistan in 2011. Following the death of his close friend Corporal Stuart Jones and even as an officer, he says that abuse and harassment from all ranks dogged his whole military career. Mr Saltmarsh says this abuse could have been avoided if he had been able to be properly and publicly exonerated. The Australian military at the highest levels—including the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force, Geoffrey Earley, and General Morrison—have never, despite repeated written requests, publicly exonerated or apologized to Mr Saltmarsh.

It is alleged by Mr Saltmarsh that the Australian military—through the Judge Advocate General of the Australian Defence Force, Major General Ian Westwood—did, however, find time to send to Mr Saltmarsh, despite his request that they not be sent, 28 autopsy photos of his best mate, Corporal Stuart Jones, undergoing an autopsy on a mortuary slab. That was six years after legal proceedings against Mr Saltmarsh had ended. I have photocopies of these autopsy photos and I am appalled and disgusted. I demand an independent judicial inquiry immediately into this matter. They key question for this inquiry is this: was it sheer incompetence that caused these photos to be sent to Mr Marcus Saltmarsh or was it a deliberate, abusive act?

Marcus discharged recently and now, like many veterans, he has a long, drawn-out, bureaucratic and uphill battle against the Department of Veterans' Affairs to receive the entitlements he has earned. I can assure you, he is not alone in the fight when it comes to fighting for our entitlements from Veterans' Affairs. My staff and myself will be there to assist, just as we will attempt to assist every veteran who seeks my help.

In closing, I apologise to all those people and workers whose matters I have not mentioned in this speech. I am very aware that extra funds, resources and/or reform of the Tasmanian health, education, roads, local councils and aged care systems are desperately needed. I will use my time to try to improve the welfare of those organisations. I would like to thank my solicitor, Greg Isolani, for the help, wise advise and invaluable support he has given me over the last 14 years. I would like to thank John Dejohn, Dr John Fisher and Dr Michael Jackson for their kind care and for helping me to finally, after 14 years, get back on my feet. Last but not least, I would like to thank my right-hand man and partner in crime, Rob Messenger.

During my time in this place, I will look for every opportunity to advance Tasmania's interests. God bless Australia. God bless my Tasmania and our beautiful Southern Cross.