Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021, bills which fund some of the business of government. This isn't about last night's budget; we're in fact talking about bills that are from last year's budget. I want to particularly address one element of that, which is the JobKeeper scheme. JobKeeper was meant to be a wage subsidy, and the government was of course initially very reluctant to introduce such a scheme. It wasn't until queues formed around the block at Centrelink offices around the country as the nation went into lockdown that the government finally ceded to calls from unions, employers, the Greens and Labor to get serious about saving jobs.

Within a week, JobKeeper was announced, but it was flawed. The major flaw was that there were no conditions placed on its payment to companies that were profitable, even if their turnover had reduced such that they were still eligible for the scheme. Neither were any conditions placed on its payment to companies that went on to pay bonuses to executives. The parliament did flag those issues at the time but the government didn't heed the concerns raised. In effect, it took advantage of the 'Team Australia' moment and the goodwill of the parliament in wanting to help protect millions of Australian jobs. The government allowed big business to make a profit off the back of a publicly funded wage subsidy. Once again, they delivered for their big corporate mates and mining billionaires.

Costings undertaken by the Parliamentary Budget Office show that 65 of Australia's largest companies that were profitable during the pandemic received $1.2 billion in JobKeeper while they recorded profits. Indeed, of the companies receiving JobKeeper, at least 25 paid executive bonuses worth a combined total of $24.3 million, and 60 companies recorded profits over $8.6 billion in the past 18 months—big businesses such as Harvey Norman, who have refused to repay a single dollar of the $20 million in JobSeeker payments they received, despite doubling their profits during the pandemic and paying executive bonuses. The founder of Harvey Norman, Mr Gerry Harvey, said that the JobKeeper payments they received were 'a tiny amount of money'. This is astonishing when you consider that during the pandemic the number of people on income support increased by 100 per cent to over 1.6 million Australians who, I am sure, would not consider millions of dollars to be a tiny amount of money.

JobKeeper became 'Profit Maker' and 'Bonus Payer'. Australia's biggest stimulus package turned into one of Australia's biggest corporate rorts. Billions of dollars of public money that was meant to ensure the wages of people whose jobs were at risk has, instead, been used to boost the profits of some of the biggest corporations and boost the wages of their executives. This is obscene, but it can be fixed. At the request of Senator McKim, I move the second reading amendment on sheet 1279:

At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that the 2020-21 Budget delivered the JobKeeper wage subsidy, which saw over $1 billion in JobKeeper payments paid to companies that made a profit or paid executive bonuses; and

(b) calls on the Government to require companies with an annual turnover of more than $50 million that received JobKeeper payments, and in the last 12 months, did one or more of the following:

(i) issued dividends, or

(ii) made a profit, or

(iii) paid executive bonuses;

to repay the Commonwealth an amount equal to the amount of JobKeeper payments they received, up to the sum of profits made and executive bonuses paid".

This amendment calls on the government to require companies with an annual turnover of more than $50 million that received JobKeeper and also made a profit or paid executive bonuses to repay the JobKeeper payments that they received, up to the amount of the profits they made and the executive bonuses they paid. This is so those big companies and their executive bonuses don't profiteer off JobKeeper. It's pretty simple, really. Those companies got more than they needed, and they should return it.

If anyone is wringing their hands about the effect this might have on corporate Australia—perhaps those on the government side of the chamber—just two days ago the ASX 200 reached a record new high, eclipsing where it was before the pandemic hit. So corporate Australia is doing just fine. Frankly, they are doing even better after last night's budget, where we saw that in the coming financial year there will be $62 billion of public money in handouts to big corporates and mining billionaires. The very least they could do is repay those amounts of JobKeeper that they didn't need, that they turned into corporate profits and then paid out as executive bonuses. These companies can well afford to return that which they should never have been given in the first place.

I want to contrast this with the approach that the Australian tax office is taking in trying to recover JobKeeper payments from migrant workers. There was an article up on the ABC yesterday that explained the situation of Hassan Jaber, who was living in Australia on a temporary protection visa. He was driving an Uber to make ends meet during the pandemic. He was asked to pay back almost $30,000 that he'd received in JobKeeper payments. He'd gone to his tax agent and sought advice on whether he was eligible to receive JobKeeper. They had phoned the tax office and spent, reportedly, 35 minutes on the phone to the ATO, who advised him: 'Look, submit the application and if you're eligible we'll pay you. If you're not, we won't.'

He then received payment and so naturally assumed that he was entitled to receive that payment, and yet nine months later he got a bill for $27,900 to be repaid by him. Of course, at the time, the Greens were moving to make sure that JobKeeper was provided to so many more cohorts of people than this government ended up providing it to. There were so many people left out of JobKeeper as it was: short-term casuals, migrant workers, those on temporary protection visas and other visas. By some miracle, this fellow ended up receiving the payment thanks to the error of the tax office, and then nine months later the tax office sought to recoup that money from him. Can you imagine the shock in a pandemic, where you have no other support, getting a letter saying: 'Oops. We paid you 30 grand that you weren't entitled to. Now pay it back'?

The poor man sought advice again from his tax person. They lodged several objections, and ultimately he did get justice. The ATO recognised that, in fact, it was their mistake and so they would just have to suck it up. But it's very interesting to contrast the approach of agencies going after individuals for receiving JobKeeper when what we see is massive profiteering by big corporates and the payment of executive bonuses in a pandemic where so many other people were tightening their belts. The government is like: 'Nah, we can't be bothered getting them to pay their money back. We're not even going to bother to ask them.' Of course, none of those people have volunteered to give it back either.

That's exactly why we're moving this amendment today. We would like this chamber to compel those enormous companies, who earn over $50 million, who paid out executive bonuses and who made profits in a pandemic when they didn't need that JobKeeper support, to pay back the amount that they didn't need, pay back the amount that's equivalent to those profits and those executive bonuses paid. It is only fair.

It will be very interesting to see how this chamber votes on that amendment, because it really goes to the heart of the role of government. It goes to whether or not this government will continue to treat taxpayer dollars as corporate largesse as they did in last night's budget when they dished out $62 billion in just the coming financial year in handouts for big corporates and mining billionaires and in, I might add, an increase in the fossil fuel subsidies—yet more new money to prop up fossil fuels in a climate emergency. This budget is completely blind to the climate crisis that we're in. It pays out for the government's corporate donor mates and it's propping up unsustainable industries that are wrecking the economy, damaging nature and threatening the future of our community. So, how the government, in particular, votes on this amendment will be very interesting for all to see.

Big corporates who are making huge profits should not have been given JobKeeper in the first place. There should have been parameters placed saying that, if you were making massive profits and paying executive bonuses, you didn't need taxpayer support. They, not people who drive for Uber to try to make ends meet, should be required to pay it back. The contrast couldn't be more distinct. I note that, if we were to get the money paid back by those billionaires and big corporations for the JobSeeker that they received even though it turns out they didn't need it, it would be about $1 billion, which is about the same amount as was cut from universities last night. So much for JobKeeper.

Of course, universities weren't eligible to get the support that they deserved. They were already copping a big walloping from not having as many international students contributing to their coffers, and then they weren't eligible for JobKeeper. They have last so many jobs already. If billionaires like Gerry Harvey were required to pay back the unethical amounts that they received through JobKeeper when they didn't need it, we could keep some jobs in the tertiary sector. There's a nice synergy there in those figures. That is just one suggestion. So many other good things could be done with that billion-odd dollars that could be recouped from big corporates and mining billionaires who didn't need the help then and sure don't need the help now. They didn't need the help last night when they got an extra $62 billion in handouts.

This government delivers once again for its big corporate political donor mates. It's an insult that those that already have more than enough means are getting yet more help from this government when we saw last night nothing for social housing in the budget and a 10 per cent cut to university funding. And still wages will be declining in real terms. This government, despite crowing about job creation, glosses over the fact that you can be considered to be in employment if you've got one hour of work. So it's all smoke and mirrors again with this government, in a pre-election budget last night where it's clearly trying to buy support and buy back the trust of the Australian people. But, frankly, I think they have lost it. I cannot wait for the day they lose government, and I'm sure so many other Australians feel the same.

Corporate Australia got largesse from the taxpayer funded schemes like JobKeeper. That scheme helped to keep a lot of people in work; that's why we supported it. But, where companies used that taxpayer money to subsidise their own profits and to subsidise executive bonuses, what a waste of public money! When this government made it so hard for people who needed support to get it and made so many people ineligible for JobKeeper, it is unconscionable that it allowed big companies to rip off the Australian taxpayer by getting support that they did not need. The least the government could do would be to get those companies to pay it back, and that's why our amendment on sheet 1279 requires exactly that. Those big companies should not have profiteered off the taxpayer in the first place. We are now in a position to fix that. We could use that money to actually keep jobs in sectors that had funding cuts last night, like the tertiary sector. The university sector has already lost so many jobs. It could do with some more support. It could do with vastly more support. This could be a first down payment.

So we urge the government and the opposition to look favourably on this amendment and to require those big corporates to pay back the money that they didn't need. We are so glad that JobKeeper worked to keep so many people in jobs. That's why we voted for it. But it was misused by those enormous corporations, who then paid themselves record profits and record executive bonuses. It makes the Australian public sick. We can fix this, and that's exactly what the government should do today in voting on our amendment.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, yesterday may have been budget day, but I must say it felt more like groundhog day, because this particular show, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, is now in its eighth year and, sadly, the acts are getting a little tired; the lines are starting to wear pretty thin. We may have had a revolving door of treasurers and prime ministers, but the song sheet hasn't changed: talk, talk, talk and promise, promise, promise, showing an announcement over here and a few dollars over there, with commitments made and promises dealt up. But where is the delivery? Where are the lasting legacies of achievements left behind, for all of the glitz and glamour? After eight years, is there anything concrete to show after the curtain comes down? Sadly, in this space, this government has a pretty consistent track record. It's a well-worn path they've trodden for the past eight years: overpromise and underdeliver. They like to make big, flashy, showy announcements, but, when it comes to the follow-through, they're nowhere to be seen.

In fact, they like announcing things so much they don't do it just once. They don't make an announcement or a commitment just once. No, they do it once, they do it twice and they do it again and again, over and over—the same announcement of the same commitment for the same project, year in, year out, again and again. But do they actually deliver on their commitments? No. With each reheated reannouncement, the project time lines get pushed further out and the dollars are pushed further into the out years—so far out, in fact, that it's basically a permanent commitment to the never-never.

The reality is that, when it comes to infrastructure announcements in particular, this government and this Prime Minister simply can't be believed, because, no matter what allocation of funds is provided in these and other bills, and no matter what the Treasury briefs out in the newspaper drops, we know they will fail on delivery. That truth is available for everyone to see in black and white in the budget papers and MYEFO. What we can see from those documents is that the Morrison government averages an infrastructure underspend of $1.2 billion a year. In fact, in the last financial year, they underspent on their promises by $1.7 billion. So forgive me for showing some scepticism when the government decided to drop their road funding commitments to Tasmania's local papers at start of the week.

The headline looked good. It sounded like the government were doing something, but scratch the surface ever so slightly and you find the truth: another prebudget infrastructure nonannouncement by the Morrison Liberal government following a now familiar pattern after eight years of this government—promise big, fail to deliver. In fact, in a remarkably brazen attempt to pretend they were actually delivering for Tasmania, the Morrison Liberal government have reheated and re-announced commitments to roads in Tasmania that they made in their first term in office. They've certainly got some gumption, because they actually attempt to pass off their failure to deliver after eight years in office as a brand-new promise, backed in with new money. But it's all a mirage—a fraud, in fact—perpetrated on the people of my home state by a Prime Minister best known for his marketing spin.

Talk, talk, talk is all we ever get from Mr Morrison. That's all with ever hear from the Prime Minister, but what has he actually delivered for Tasmania? Have we seen the progress on the Bridgewater Bridge? What about the much-hyped new bridge across the Tamar? Remember that? What about the River Derwent ferry service, the Hobart underground bus mall, the fix for the Cooee Crawl and the much-promised and greatly needed fix for notorious sections of the Bass Highway from Marrawah to Wynyard and all the way to Launceston? What's happening to the transit corridor through Hobart's northern suburbs? Has a single cent been spent from the Urban Congestion Fund to tackle Hobart's worsening gridlock? No. Where is the extra lane on the Southern Outlet?

They finally dug a hole at the Hobart Airport roundabout, a project that was supposed to be finished by now. Haven't they stuffed that up? What a bungle. Speaking of bungles, they ripped money out of Tasmania's rail freight funding to pay for the Burnie Port shiploader, and even then they didn't fund it properly. They have now had to tip more in because they stuffed it up the first time, yet astonishingly they have once again tried to pass that stuff up off as a new commitment for Burnie—extraordinary! People on Tasmania's north-west coast will believe it when they see it, because all we ever get from this government and from this Prime Minister is talk, talk, talk. That's all we hear. The Cradle Mountain master plan—they make a promise and then it's delayed—is another stuff-up. They can't even pretend to make a much-needed commitment towards the Arthur Highway or the Tasman Highway from Sorell to Scottsdale. For some reason, the Tasman Peninsula and the east coast of Tasmania have fallen off the map in the eyes of the Morrison Liberal government.

Yes, Mr Morrison and his government like to talk a big infrastructure game, but when you look at the detail their promises are nothing more than old announcements reheated like a dodgy chicken burger that's been sitting in the bain-marie. There's no reason to think announcements made last night or briefed out in days gone by will be any different to the countless others that have fallen by the wayside. What Tasmanians need is real infrastructure delivery that boosts productivity, reduces congestion and improves safety across our road network. That isn't what we're getting from the Morrison government, but it would be delivered by Labor.

Labor are pleased the economy is recovering from COVID, but we need to ask: how good could Australia's recovery be? The economic situation we find ourselves in is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Australians, and we don't want to miss a single opportunity. That's why we can't afford more of the repeated failures of this government. Australians need government to seize the day, make bold decisions and then deliver on them. That's why an Albanese Labor government would deliver national reconstruction that squarely focuses on jobs—not just any jobs but good, secure jobs that working families can rely on, underpinned by fair-paying conditions and supported by better and cheaper childcare that working families can depend on.

An Albanese Labor government would make commitments that we'd actually deliver on. We'd announce, and then we'd follow through—a concept that seems quite alien to the Morrison Liberal government—because we want Australia to be a country that makes things and supports local jobs, including in manufacturing. Under an Albanese Labor government, nobody will be held back; nobody will be left behind. Under an Albanese Labor government, budget day will be a day when Australians can finally look to their government to deliver on their promises—not like this government and their budgets, which are just all talk, talk, talk and no delivery.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this discussion on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. As expected, last night's budget included some money for our domestic vaccine rollout, including money for workforce, administration, monitoring, reporting, distribution, logistics, storage and communication. While this is welcome, we are far from the appropriate approach when we deal with both vaccines and quarantines here in this country and also in our global contribution.

The government has missed a significant opportunity to right its wrongs and the wrongs of a number of other nations around the world. We should be showing our neighbours that we are here to help and that we are supportive during this pandemic. Last year the government committed to dedicated funding for the Covax Facility. Covax is an important agreement that aims to distribute vaccines to those who need it most. It represents a landmark agreement between nations, where governments from every continent have chosen to work together to ensure vaccines are available to the most vulnerable everywhere—at least, that's the theory. This year the government has refused to commit any additional funds to Covax in the budget. Australia's lack of additional funding for Covax was a serious missed opportunity and sends the wrong message to those in desperate need of vaccines.

Across the world, we are seeing big pharma and wealthy nations engage in what's been termed as a vaccine apartheid. While one in four citizens of rich countries have received a vaccine, just one in 500 in the poorer nations around the globe have. We've already seen big pharma pay out $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders. This would have been enough to vaccinate 1.3 billion people.

It's extremely important that we ensure that the lower GDP countries around the world are vaccinated not only because that is the right thing to do but also—and I will keep repeating this—because nobody is safe until everybody is safe. This is an investment in people, because we should be doing it. But, if you want to look at it from a selfish point of view, it's also making sure that Australians are protected, because it is absolutely essential that everybody is vaccinated. If we just go down the vaccine apartheid approach, where the wealthier nations can all get vaccinated, those in the lower GDP countries who aren't vaccinated will foster the development of further strains of the virus. What does that mean? It means the vaccines have to catch up and we are potentially not protected from some of those variants that are generated, perpetuating the need to keep our borders closed and perpetuating the pandemic. Any way you look at it, it's the right thing to do.

We're extremely disappointed to see there have been zero commitments by the government to support a TRIPS waiver. Since last year, over 100 low- and middle-income nations have been calling on the World Health Organization to waive intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines and products. Last week we saw President Biden show leadership by announcing the support of the United States for the waiver. The Morrison government should be following suit and should be contributing to the global discussion and supporting the waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines to ensure that we enable an equal distribution of the vaccines.

We've also, of course, seen the flawed domestic vaccine rollout. We have seen nothing allocated by the government, and the federal government refuses to acknowledge that it has a key role in quarantine in this country. It continues to push it off to the states and territories. There is the investment in Howard Springs. I have to say, of course, that expanding that investment is welcome, but we can't just rely on that facility. We need facilities in other states. It is a federal responsibility. Reach out the hand, work with the states and territories and ensure that we have quarantine facilities, because we are going to need quarantine facilities in this country for the foreseeable future. It is absolutely essential that we have top-quality quarantine facilities that actually meet the best standards—that we finally truly address the issue of aerosol contamination and spread. Although some of the words are now being mouthed, the actions aren't being taken. We still don't have the guidelines fixed, we still don't have a national standard to deal with ventilation, and we know that we don't have all of the states and territories making sure that their hotel quarantine facilities are up to date. We still have states and territories, my own state being one of them, where positive COVID cases are actually in the same facility—such as a hotel—as those who are, fortunately, negative.

These are the sorts of things we need to sort out in this country. Where is the federal government's leadership? Nowhere. We need to get serious about ensuring we have these facilities so we can bring home the tens of thousands of Australians who are still overseas—in particular, of course, those who are at high risk. I refer to the current situation going on in India, which I did briefly talk about in the Senate yesterday. This is not the appropriate way to be supporting Australians overseas. We need to make sure that we are putting on enough flights to enable those in India in particular—9,500 people, of whom 950 are vulnerable—to return home. At the moment the government has only committed to bringing 450 home, because there are only three committed flights, with a possibility of another three, which may then ensure that at some stage by June we get all of those vulnerable people home—the 950. But what about the rest of those Australians and permanent residents who are currently facing the dire situation in India?

We're also, of course, seeing the government not being transparent about vaccine doses and the deals that it's signing. The health department complain that we've recently had them in front of the COVID committee four times in as many weeks. Well, one of the reasons that we have to have them there is that they don't fully answer the questions, they don't fully answer the questions on notice and they hide behind cabinet-in-confidence. Another reason is that we keep seeing problems with the vaccine rollout, for example. On Friday, we had to have a hearing to address the issues with India. The government only recognised when a question was asked that there are 173 unaccompanied Australian minors in India. So my question to the government is: when would you ever have paid attention to that if it were not for the COVID committee asking those questions? So, yes, as far as this member of the committee is concerned, we will keep asking departments, particularly the health department, to come and answer questions so that Australians get answers about the botched rollout of the vaccines.

We still haven't had a satisfactory answer to why we haven't signed an agreement with Moderna, for example. Now Australians have to wait for more Pfizer doses to become available. Although there's been a further deal signed for more doses, we're not getting them until towards the end of the year—hence the hope that we will be able to get all Australians vaccinated by the end of this year. Government say they have provision for the purchase of additional vaccine doses, including mRNA vaccines, but there are zero details about how much funding has been set aside or, in fact, when this might happen. I'm so sick of the oblique approach to vaccines which we are facing. It is essential that the public know what is going on. It is essential that there be transparency and accountability on this issue.

We're not seeing a serious commitment by the government to a publicly owned mRNA facility in this country. MRNA vaccines and other mRNA drugs are the way of the future. An mRNA manufacturing facility, a publicly owned manufacturing facility—so that we are not at the whim of big pharma, and that's important as well—is an investment not only in this pandemic but in the future, because mRNA is going to be the leading edge of drug development into the future. The market can't guarantee us access to this revolutionary technology. We need a publicly owned facility. There is leading-edge research being done on mRNA vaccines and technologies around this country. Yes, it's happening globally, but we have some leaders here in this country as well. What is the government doing about negotiations with AusBiotech to ensure that we have a publicly owned facility here that is leading edge and able to do its own research and manufacture those vaccines here? I hope the government doesn't make the same mistakes but looks towards creating this and rethinks working with the private sector—yes, work with the private sector, but make sure we have a publicly owned facility so Australians and the government have control of the manufacture of and the decision-making on those vaccines and other drugs, going forward.

We need long-term thinking here. We are in this for the long haul. We've already heard that the borders probably aren't going to be open until sometime next year. That's what the experts have been saying all along, because this isn't over. We are already seeing more variants. The vaccines are all going to have to be developed to address those variants into the future. The pandemic and its effects are not going away any time soon. The Treasurer has acknowledged that. We need to be doing better in how we are responding in terms of vaccines, manufacturing here, openness and transparency and accepting the science of this pandemic. And that's one of the things I'm concerned about—we aren't, and aerosol transmission is a perfect example of that.

We've still got varying standards around the country. We still do not have best practice in some places. Government have made various announcements about what they're going to do—for example, testing of passengers coming to Australia through third countries. That still isn't happening. When it is going to happen? If that's not happening—and other sorts of things they're putting in place—once they start the repatriation flights from India, can they guarantee us that they have that sussed so that those flights do start on time and the best possible practice is in place? If they haven't started elsewhere, they need to guarantee that they are going to be doing it for those Indian flights so that people can come home when this stupid ban ends—which should be ended now. Those Australians and other people coming home from India need to be assured that those things are all in place so they are safe and people in Australia are safe. We have a long way to go with this pandemic. The government needs to fully acknowledge that and get these things right.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am to be a part of a government that continues to deliver for regional, rural and remote Australia. It is in these parts of the country that we grow food and fibre, and mine the resources that build schools, hospitals, roads and inner-city places. Most importantly, it is an amazing place to raise your family—whether it's the sense of community or just living under the brilliant stars of the southern sky. The investment in regional, rural and remote Australia is critical to the wellbeing of this nation more broadly.

Among a number of other things, appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 contribute to the Morrison-McCormack government's heavy investment into rural and regional Australia. I'd like to touch on a few of the things I am most excited about that have made the most significant change to our communities. The first one is the Building Better Regions Fund, an additional round of new funding of $200 million. In round 5, $100 million was allocated to tourism related infrastructure, while maintaining an additional $100 million for broader community infrastructure and investment, bringing the total investment in this program to $1 billion from 2017-18 to 2023-24. The BBRF supports regional and remote communities by funding investment-ready infrastructure projects that create jobs, that drive economic growth. It funds new or expanded events, strategic regional plans or leadership and capability-strengthening activities that provide economic and social benefits to these regions. Local governments and incorporated not-for-profit organisations are eligible to apply.

In Queensland we have the Qantas Founders Museum and the Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach and the Australian Age of Dinosaurs in Winton. Longreach and Winton are just two examples of communities that have built world's best practice, world's best assets. If you haven't been to Longreach or Winton to see those incredible exhibits then you have missed out on something. I urge you to hire a car or book a plane and get out there. Whatever way you can get there, get there.

The next one is the Regional Recovery Partnerships—$100 million of new funding over two years from 2020 to 2021. The partnerships will coordinate investment with other levels of government to support recovery and growth in 10 regions: the Snowy Mountains, Hunter and Newcastle and Parkes regions in New South Wales; Cairns and Tropical North Queensland, Gladstone and the Mackay-Isaac-Whitsunday regions in Queensland; the Gippsland region in Victoria; Kangaroo Island in South Australia; the south-west region of Western Australia; and all of Tasmania. The partnerships seek to back in existing regional plans by developing targeted initiatives with contributions from all levels of government to deliver jobs, economic recovery and economic diversification.

For the Stronger Communities Program there is $22.7 million in new funding in round 6. The SCP provides funding of up to $150,000 in each of the 151 federal electorates. Members of the House of Representatives will continue to use their roles to identify key locally driven projects, with available funding of between $2,500 and $20,000 for eligible projects. In recognition of the ongoing impacts of the COVID pandemic on communities, applications submitted in round 6 by all incorporated not-for-profit organisations and/or incorporated trustees applying on behalf of a trust will be exempt from the normal 50 per cent co-funding requirement and will be able to apply for funding of up to 100 per cent of their eligible project costs. This is extraordinarily significant because we are talking about communities where the councils are required to provide key infrastructure and often have a very small ratepayer base to develop that from. The removal of the 50 per cent co-contribution at this time is an incredible acknowledgement of their challenges. In Queensland, differently to other states, shire councils have to provide things like sewerage. This is not a requirement in other states, and it means that in small and very remote communities, where there might be as few as 350 ratepayers across a vast area, the councils are required to maintain roads, sewerage and other amenities—pools, for example—that make such a difference to the lifestyle and livability of these remote and regional towns.

Guaranteeing Medicare: the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training Program infrastructure will receive $50.3 million in additional funding. The existing network of 16 university departments of rural health, which are funded under the RHMT Program, will be expanded. These networks provide training to students across a range of health disciplines, including nursing and allied health, and offer innovative learning opportunities in settings such as aged care, disability, rehabilitation services, child care, schools and community facilities as well as Aboriginal community controlled health services. This package provides for capital works as well as recurring funding. The capital works programs invest funding through purchases of housing for student accommodation and through building works to add teaching facilities to aged-care services. And, of course, last night we heard the Treasurer talk about additional commitments to supporting aged care across the nation. That's a really important announcement, because we know that, in regional communities, if there is not an aged-care facility then families end up moving away from those towns. Aged care is an important part for rural communities.

I could go on all day about the incredible announcements under so many of these packages. The Mobile Black Spot Program, the Building Strong, Resilient Regional Leaders initiative, the Recovery for Regional Tourism program—these are all incredibly important projects that go, as I said, towards the government's agenda of investing in the regions; investing in rural and regional communities; and, most importantly from my point of view, being a senator based in Townsville, investing in the northern Australian agenda. There have been a number of commitments that continue to build on the government's commitment to northern Australia, and I know that those commitments will be paid back to the Australian people, to Australian taxpayers, in spades. Examples are irrigation and agriculture projects, and mining projects that are facilitated by things like CopperString 2.0, a transmission line that will provide a connection for renewable projects as well as existing power infrastructure, allowing us to be connected in a reliable way and reducing electricity costs, one of the things that really cripple business in northern Australia.

In addition to those kinds of projects, the government has made financial commitments to local roads and community infrastructure. Local governments in Queensland benefited from the additional $202.4 million from January this year, 2021. These are critical projects, as I have already touched on, because local government is—dare I say it—the most important level of government in this nation, the one that is closest to communities and understands the real challenges of living in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia.

Most exciting, particularly for those of us who live in the far north, is the commitment to water projects. Within Queensland itself, the Australian government has committed more than $516 million to 28 water infrastructure projects through the $3.5 billion National Water Infrastructure Development Fund. The investments include $176 million to build the $352 million dollar Rookwood Weir project, $42 million to build the $84 Emu Swamp Dam and $11.6 million to modernise the $28 million Mareeba-Dimbulah Water Supply Scheme, which provides more than 8,000 megalitres in new water for irrigators, creates more than 260 jobs and boosts the value of production annually by $20 million. In that region, the incredible agricultural blossoming that's happened since the construction of the dam in that region now measures around half a billion dollars of produce each year. If you haven't been to Mareeba, I encourage you to get there. Visit the deli that showcases regional produce. It is a wonderful community that highlights a diverse range of peoples that came to this country during the development of that region.

There is $790,000 towards the $1.58 million Warwick recycled water project, which supports drought resilience by supplying recycled water for primary producers. Importantly, in the north there has also been $30 million to support the construction of the Big Rocks Weir. This is only a relatively small water project. It's 10,000 megalitres, but it will change the community of Charters Towers because it provides not only security for town water supply but also additional irrigation water for the irrigators in that region. Sadly, despite the community supporting this project for at least 30 years, despite the council being a proponent, despite the urgent need for commitment to water security for that town, unfortunately, the Queensland government has now called it in to the Coordinator-General, and we will continue to play politics with a water project that is so small in the scheme of things but so important to town security for water supply that it really beggars belief that we should be still kicking this project around.

There's $180 million to support the construction of the Hughenden irrigation scheme, including $10 million provided for the completion of a detailed business case for the project. In addition, there's been $75 million to support the Queensland government, which is responsible for building these water projects. For any senators who don't understand the separation of power for water resource plans and water allocations, under the Constitution those are the states' responsibility to deliver. The federal government has delivered 22 feasibility studies, including $24 million for the Hells Gates Dam Project, which includes the Big Rocks Weir that I already spoke about, and $10 million each for the Urannah Dam and the Lakeland irrigation area business case projects.

These projects are critical because in the north part of Australia we receive metres of rain each year—rain that is not captured or managed and that would allow us to develop the sorts of crops in agricultural precincts where Australia is known as leading the world: the trial crops that have been run by the CSIRO and the departments in new cropping varieties, including existing crops such as cotton, which now uses less and less water and less and less pesticide and fertiliser. It is recognised now as a fibre that is fully traceable and the product that we should be wearing as a completely renewable product. In North Queensland we have the opportunity to grow vast amounts of this product in both dry land and areas like Etta Plains around Julia Creek or further north, up around Mount Garnet and in that region.

In Georgetown recently, at the terrific forum organised by the Etheridge Shire Council and Mayor Barry Hughes, there was a great discussion of CSIRO's work, also funded by the federal government, that had demonstrated the availability of suitable water, land and sunshine, and of course the demand for our products that are recognised as world's best. This is an opportunity for Queensland and North Queensland to be developing, because we know that in these parts of Australia, regional, rural and remote, we grow the food and fibre and we dig out the resources, but, most importantly, we have innovative, exciting communities that are a great place to raise a family and to live.

Government Senator:

A government senator interjecting—

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to get a cheer from the other side. It was obviously directed towards me, and I'll probably start to get used to it after a while. I should thank the last speaker for her contribution. It's only the modern National Party, really, that comes in here—after spending years apologising for projects that are announced with enormous buckets of money for dams that are never built, having spent years apologising for this hoax that's perpetrated on regional communities—at every budget breathlessly announcing more promises for more water infrastructure, promises that will never be kept. The announcement is for $560 million. Does anybody on earth really believe that the Morrison government, having made another announcement about another series of dam infrastructure projects, will ever build one?

I don't want to spend too much time on the Treasurer's performance last night, but it was one of the most lacklustre ones. You would think that a government that was announcing this much spending would really have their heart in it. I can see that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have no difficulty executing this enormous political backflip, after having spent more than a decade telling the Australian community that debt and deficit were a crisis. As bold as brass, they're in the joint next door saying there's no problem. We're a trillion dollars in debt, with nothing to show for it—no reform, no infrastructure, no fixes to the big issues that face the Australian community—but here they are. It goes to Gough Whitlam's maxim that politics for the tories is like the art of rowing: you look in one direction but go in the other. That's okay for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. It's not okay for the coalition backbench. Every time you turn a corner, you can hear a group of coalition backbenchers finding this subterfuge, this deception, this hypocrisy, very difficult to swallow.

It was an absolute snoozefest last night. The only thing that kept me awake during the Treasurer's performance was the hypocrisy. It made me reflect upon last year's budget, a budget that was similarly aimless. Good elements of the budget were the government committing to the proposals that Labor had made through the course of the year, particularly around the JobKeeper and JobSeeker increases that were Labor proposals. I remember, vividly, the former leader, in here, scoffing at Labor's proposals for wage subsidies to keep workers connected with their employers. Three weeks later, they were doing it.

What was the centrepiece, though, of the October budget? It was JobMaker. Does anybody remember the Treasurer, in his contribution last night, spruiking the achievements of the centrepiece of the 2020-21 budget, JobMaker? I don't think he will. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister promised Australians that 450,000 new jobs would be the product of that scheme. At the back end of a recession, a commitment to produce 450,000 jobs—more jobs than was required out of the Working Nation scheme at the back end of the recession in the 1990s—was a grand promise that should have filled regional communities full of hope for the jobs that were to come. What was delivered out of that promise? Well, in March, 609 jobs. By the time we get to this week, just around about 1,100 jobs out of 450,000 jobs—0.02 per cent. A 450,000 job promise; 0.02 per cent delivery. It's become the maxim that will define this miserable government: all promise and no delivery, all about the announcements and the marketing and the spin and never about the delivery for Australian households and Australian families. And where is it? Where is the JobMaker program in this year's budget? It's not up the front. It's in page 292 of the Regional Ministerial Budget Statement, literally four pages towards the end. That is political cowardice, and it will define this government.

The budget is just a political budget of course. It's absolutely not designed to fix the structural problems that the Australian community faces. After eight long years of chaos and self-interest, complacency and bungling and failure, what we have from this government is a political budget that is designed to paper over the cracks of eight years of failure. It is a shameless attempt at a political fix. It's not the genuine reform that we need.

What do we see this week? It's a very welcome development that sections of the Australian economy have bounced back faster than any economist or any commentator predicted. It's good to see. While we do see some shopping strips where shops are closed, where some sectors of the economy that need the government's support aren't getting it, it is welcome to see in aggregate terms some improvement.

What you see from the Morrison government is taking credit for the achievement of others. It's as if welcome news has got anything to do with what this government's done, with any reform that the government's conducted, with any attempt to address the underlying structural issues. No. Where there have been achievements, they have been achievements of the Australian people. Where there has been good work on the pandemic, good work on public health, it has been the work of the state governments—much of it undermined, much of it criticised, much of it politicised by those opposite, none more so than by the Prime Minister, who in his callous disregard for the public interest, poured scorn on the efforts of premiers to try and get control of the quarantine failures of the government. Is there anything in this budget about quarantine? Nope. Still the government pushes away responsibility for quarantine and border control. Bystanders usually don't get in the way, but somehow this government manages to be both bystander and get in the road and subsequently take credit for whenever it is that things go well.

Beyond the hype and the headlines, there is very little in this budget for ordinary Australians. Australians on modest incomes will get a modest tax cut, but they will get a tax hike after the election. There is nothing in this budget for families who've been held back by the Morrison government's failure to have a strategy on wages. In fact, baked in to the heart of this budget is an assumption that real wages will continue to be held back, and that means for many households real wages and household incomes will go backwards. While house prices rise and rents rise, wages for most Australians will continue to fall, and there is no strategy in this budget to deal with housing affordability and housing availability. There is no strategy to deal with falling wages and to deal with wage growth. That is the problem that is at the heart of this budget: it is all about the politics and not what's going to have an impact on the lives of ordinary Australians. There's no plan on wage growth. The previous Leader of the Government in the Senate, former Senator Cormann, said that falling wages, a brake on wages growth, was a design feature of this government's approach to wages. There is no strategy in this budget to fix that problem.

You can see it when you look at the government's halfway-house approach to aged care and child care. You would think that the impact of a royal commission interim report entitled Neglect would cause those opposite to reflect on the impact of the budget cuts to aged care that they delivered in 2014, which crippled the capacity of the aged-care sector to deliver decent care to elderly Australians. These people have worked for decades in the Australian economy. They have held the country up. They have contributed, and we owe it to them to make sure that they spend their final years in care in comfort and dignity. You would think that a report entitled Neglect could wake up even the miserable hearts of those opposite, causing them to reflect a little bit. What do we see? We see a halfway house on aged care. There's nothing in terms of wages for aged-care workers. You can fund all the training for aged-care workers that you want, but until you lift the wages of aged-care workers, until you improve their position in the labour market, you won't see the number of Australians working in aged care that you need to see. You can fund all the packages that you want, but you won't see the arrival of skilled workers committed to the care of elderly Australians. You won't see people go to those jobs to be paid 20 bucks an hour.

This is true of child care too. Last year, these characters opposite poured scorn on Anthony Albanese's commitment to delivering universal child care. We said, correctly, that providing universal child care was an important commitment for labour force participation, particularly for women, although child care is not just about women; it is about young men and about the welfare of children as well. We said that it was a productivity initiative. This government poured scorn on both the proposal and those two claims. What did we see yesterday? Mr Frydenberg was out there talking about productivity and labour force participation, but with a scheme that will help less than 25 per cent of the families that the Albanese Labor proposal would help.

There's nothing in terms of meaningful tax reform—no energy policy, no improvement. Energy prices have gone up almost every year of the term of this aimless government. There have been 21 different energy policy frameworks and no security for investment in cheap energy for the grid.

Affordable housing: there is no plan for housing and homelessness. There is an explosion in regional New South Wales, particularly in big towns such as Dubbo, Tamworth, Nowra, Albury and Wagga, of people sleeping rough. Families with young kids in the Hunter Valley are sleeping in tents. They have been forced out because the cost of rental housing continues to rise while household income continues to fall. Purchasing housing is out of reach for most ordinary Australians. What is there in the budget? There's nothing really, except a sound grab, a cruel hoax, that says, 'We're going to fund 10,000 single parents who can get a housing deposit of two per cent.' I don't believe them. I don't believe that this government will ever deliver on that meagre, tiny promise. It is a cruel hoax. It won't touch the sides of the housing affordability problem that is out there.

What are we seeing in infrastructure? Big announcements that are actually big cuts. There's a $3.3 billion cut to infrastructure spending in the fine print of the budget papers. Why is that? Why is there such a big gap between what the government says it will do and what it does do? People are learning there is no relationship between what the Prime Minister says and what actually happens—no relationship between what the Prime Minister announces and whether, in the real world, anything actually happens. That's what's going define this budget as much as it defines this government.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're the masters of marketing spin. They'd have you believe that the federal budget is a story about the Australian economy making a comeback. The Treasurer would have you believe that, through them spending $100 billion and plunging the Australian economy into a record trillion dollars of debt, the years of economic mismanagement by successive Liberal governments are behind us. But, if you read the fine print of the Morrison government's budget—the Ts and Cs—you see that real wages for Australian workers are forecast to decline in 2021, in 2022, in 2023 and in 2024. That means that the amount of money that Australian workers will take home this year and in the next three years, accounting for inflation, will go down. The middle class in this country will start to shrink. Our incomes will shrink along with it.

This is not a new phenomenon for the Morrison government. For five consecutive years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia suffered through record-low wage growth. Under this government, Australians have suffered through years of stagnant wages, and now they'll have to suffer through years of wage cuts. What sort of economic recovery is that? The Morrison government's only plan for years of stagnating or declining wages is to rack up record debt. Even then, the Morrison government is serving up to Australian workers—to the Australian middle class—a wage cut. Do not believe the Prime Minister's spin that this wage cut for Australian workers is as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, because the Prime Minister has for years, going back to his time as Treasurer, been delivering record-low wages growth for Australians.

We know why this is happening and we also know how to fix it, but the Morrison government is too ideologically blind to do what must be done. Years and years of stagnant or declining wages are the direct outcome of years and years of attacks on unions, years and years of attacks on workers' rights to come together and collectively bargain for their wages, years and years of attacks on the ability of unions to inspect books and expose wage and super theft, years and years of inaction on the rampant exploitation of migrant workers, and, of course, years and years of inaction on sham contracting and the exploitation of gig workers, casual workers and labour hire workers. Some of these people are getting paid as little as $6 an hour, undercutting what used to be good, fair-paying and often unionised jobs—middle-class jobs. Of course, this government has no plan to deal with those inherent problems for hardworking Australians.

For eight years Liberal governments have done nothing about these issues. Now, at the eleventh hour, with a trillion dollars of debt the Morrison government is hoping it can indiscriminately throw money around and fix them. The budget forecast says it all. After years and years of stagnant or declining wages, the Morrison government has spent $100 billion only to deliver more years of declining wages. Mr Acting Deputy President, you don't have to take my word for what the government's strategy and ideology are. The former Minister for Finance Senator Cormann himself said that low wage growth is 'a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture'. Low wages are the Morrison government's plan for this economy. They have been for years; Minister Cormann said it himself. And we know now that low wages will be the plan for years to come.

The problem the Morrison government is now running into is that Australian workers are not being paid fairly. When Australian workers have little money in their pockets and when the Australian middle class is shrinking, it means that middle-class Australians do not have the spare money to spend. When the Australian middle class has no money to spend, then there is no money there to stimulate the economy. This is the story of the sorry situation that the Morrison government now finds itself in. It can spend $100 billion of taxpayers' money and the economy remains a disaster. So what do the Australian middle class get in return for another four years of stagnant and declining wages? They get a one-off tax cut to see the Morrison government through an election and then a tax hike on top of their wage cut. The only real tax cut in this budget that isn't just a piece of cynical pre-election marketing is a tax cut to the super wealthy. Unlike the Australian middle class, the super wealthy get a permanent tax cut. That makes it clear who the Morrison government is really looking out for.

If you believe the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, aged care is supposedly a big winner in this budget. Let's look at the fine print and see what the real story is. The budget is supposed to be a response to the aged care royal commission, but, if you had to rate their response, it would be a pitiful two or three out of 10 at the most. Why do I say that? I say that for a very clear reason: the royal commission recommended very clearly that, to provide the care that older Australians need and deserve, the sector needs to have additional funding of $10 billion a year and a massive overhaul of workforce pay and conditions. I have been speaking to aged-care workers this morning and hearing about the devastating pressures that are on their employment—work that is directly procured and paid for by this government with no strategy or plan for that workforce that goes beyond minimal numbers.

Let's just make this point, which one of the workers made very clearly to me only an hour ago, about the deficient numbers that have been talked about in terms of training: when you come into an industry that pays only $21, then those people just don't stay. So, in actual fact, we're paying for training that's going to be a waste of money because we're actually not going to be able to have the people we train stay in those jobs. When people come and see the sorts of pressures that are in that industry, regardless of their love of care and desire to be in a caring industry, their capacity to raise a family and have a middle-class life is economically impacted by this government's direct ideological strategy of suppressing wages. There is no better example of this than aged care. We've heard the government announce only $3.5 billion a year, which is only one-third of what is needed and only one-third of what the royal commission into aged care said was needed. To this, there is no meaningful commitment to the pay and conditions of the carers who literally are the care in the sector. The heart of the aged-care sector is not the buildings and it's not the operating companies. There is no care without the workers. There was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift up the workers who do the most difficult, stressful, intimate and essential work of looking after older Australians, and this government once again has failed.

Let's look at what this budget has to offer to two critical Australian industries: aviation and tourism. Essentially nothing. Buried in those budget assumptions is the government's cataclysmic vaccine rollout failure. That failure means that international borders are assumed to be shut until mid-2022. The Prime Minister had one job. He outsourced quarantine to the states and he abandoned aged care to the ravages of the pandemic, so he literally had one job. That job was to get the vaccine rollout right, and he failed. Now we see the horrific consequences for pilots, flight attendants, engineers, baggage handlers, ground crew, catering staff, security guards and many more at our airports around the country, not to mention the thousands of tourism businesses that rely on international visitors and will struggle to keep their doors open and their workers employed for a few months, let alone until mid-2022. What's particularly disturbing is that the government's own report says mid-2022. They made the assumption that, in October this year, the aviation industry would be back up and flying. There'll be no announcement of new funding until that period.

Let's just look at this whole strategy for how, supposedly, international tourism will start to come back. Key industry bodies are saying it will not be until 2023. We've got skilled workers who are being lost from this industry because they've been made redundant by companies that have received billions of taxpayers' dollars from this government, with no obligation to keep those workers connected. Look at Qantas: right in the middle of the pandemic they laid off 2,500 workers who could have been receiving JobKeeper—and not a peep from this government. Well, in fact there was a peep: there was yelling of abuse from those on the opposite side at those 2½ thousand workers whose jobs were outsourced, saying they were just too middle class, that their wages could raise a family, that the companies that had won those contracts were getting paid less and that those middle-class jobs were gone. Well, this government saying the middle class is greedy is outrageous—particularly after they've spent billions of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars on these companies that, along with this government, have so dismally failed this industry.

Of course, we're a country that relies heavily on aviation. What we needed was a rescue package for the aviation sector with a focus on secure jobs and skill retention. Instead, we are facing a skills Armageddon in this lifeblood Australian industry. We've seen the contempt that the coalition has for good Australian jobs. They're apparently happy to abandon this industry, these workers and their families. But, when the industry finally reopens, the current, the power, needed for this industry to reopen will be greatly diminished.

You can't have an industry that lays off hundreds of pilots. You can't have an industry that lays off engineers for aircraft. You can't have an industry that hasn't done the hours and days required to train people to do the screening at our airports, which is of national security importance. Those people don't just come out of thin air—they need to be trained; they need to be skilled. So the government will be trying to turn the power back on for the aviation industry, and of course there will be no electrons coming through because those people will be out of the industry, as they've been made redundant. This government has failed to have a plan for how the aviation industry can get back into the air. There are so many examples of this government abandoning industry and workers and their families. We saw that with those dnata workers who were so dismally abandoned by this government—many thousands of workers in the food delivery sector of the industry.

Quite clearly, if we are going to talk about powering up the skills of our workers then we have to deal with the massive skills shortage we face, as we face a huge exodus from the aviation and tourism industries, with many workers already bleeding out to retail and logistics jobs—some of them even going to rideshare jobs. Of course, they're rideshare jobs that have no minimum standards, as this government says they're too complicated to give. It seems to be okay for other countries to work out how working people in those sectors can have minimum standards; in New York, in Seattle, in California, in the UK, in various countries in Europe and in parts of Asia they have. But, no; it's too complicated to work out how we can actually give decent jobs to Australians.

But what happens with this patchwork, particularly in the tourism industry, when these skilled workers go, is that we won't have the power to switch on the industry; we won't have the electricity coming through. What we've seen is a series of patchwork jobs on aviation. And now this government has very little to show for the $4.5 billion in assistance given over the past year. There was devastation for the industry, no future plan, yet we spent $4.5 billion. Despite putting billions into the coffers of the airlines, we have seen 10,000 jobs lost and more outsourcing. If you had a plan to decimate the airline and tourism industry and drain the skills from Australia, you couldn't do much better than what this government has done. If that was the intention, this government has done a great job of it. There is nothing in this budget that will fix that challenge.

This budget delivers a wage cut for Australians. This budget fails to deliver for the sectors that Liberal governments have repeatedly abandoned over the last eight years, such as aged care and aviation. Clearly, this budget fails to deliver any sort of economic recovery.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I'd like to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. This appropriation bill relates to the allocation of $12.4 million to the Office of the Special Investigator to investigate potential criminal matters identified in Inspector-General Brereton's report in relation to war crimes committed by Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

The matters which will be investigated by the Office of the Special Investigator are of a most serious nature. They go to the alleged commitment of war crimes by our special forces in Afghanistan during our nation's longest conflict, one that is drawing to a close. We have seen, through the work of Justice Brereton, many terrible, terrible crimes come to light. Within that report we've also seen a contention which, from the beginning, we in the Greens have clearly suggested is untenable. The contention is that knowledge of and responsibility for these crimes is limited to ranks below that of officer. When the Brereton report was published to the world, the Greens were very quick to call attention to what seemed to be the ridiculous idea that such activities as were outlined in the report—the war crimes; that is what they are—could have been committed without the knowledge of senior commanding officers. In the subsequent months since the publication of the Brereton report, it has indeed come to pass that the cultural activities referenced in the Brereton report, particularly the illegal imbibing of alcohol and the use of limbs of enemy combatants as trophies and playthings, were indeed something participated in by officers of our ADF.

It is vitally important that this investigation is properly funded—that it is given the resources and access needed to undertake its work. What is at stake here is nothing less than justice for those whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of serving members of our ADF, who were participating in a security action in Afghanistan undertaken under the pretence of protecting and supporting the people of Afghanistan.

Let's be very clear: the war in Afghanistan was a complete failure. We should never have participated in this military engagement. It was without strategic direction almost from the beginning and it has seen the loss of countless lives and the diversion of resources which would have been spent better either here in Australia or as part of international efforts to address humanitarian issues. We are also as a community now forced to confront, through the revelations of the Brereton report, the reality that individuals who have been elevated to a supreme position of moral leadership within our community may well have committed some of the most heinous war crimes, the most heinous violations of the laws of war, that have been committed not only in this nation but in the history of nations within recent times. We are forced to contend with the possibility that we may be forced to journey soon to the Australian War Memorial, that space which has been elevated to the closest thing we possess that might be considered a secular national shrine, and take down pictures of individuals who are currently honoured there, post their conviction for the commitment of some of these crimes.

It may soon fall to this parliament to make decisions about what actions we will take in holding politically responsible the serving defence ministers of the day. Make no mistake: the office of the special investigator will have the responsibility of pursuing individuals for the commitment of these crimes. But that is not where the responsibility must end. It must be held there: individuals that pulled the trigger, individuals that lied, individuals that took actions that covered up—they must be held responsible and so too must the senior levels of command, all the way up to the top. General Burr and General Campbell must be held responsible and so too must the various defence ministers that served over that period of time. All must be held responsible for their part in these crimes. After a long period of existing in the shadows of these instances being spoken about, first as whispers, then as conversations, then as confidential statements, there must now be full transparency. There must be full accountability. These crimes must never, ever be enabled to be perpetrated again. The seriousness of them must never be excused, because they have taken the lives of people, they have shattered families, they have stained our institutions.

We must in this moment find the courage to look clearly in the mirror of Afghanistan and study the reflection, lest we accidentally recommit ourselves to the same cycle of violence that led us to this conflict. There are some in this place that are welcoming, propagating, promoting, very dangerous narratives, speaking of the drums of war and, in so doing, beating them themselves. They are claiming false historical analyses, planning career moves, looking for their opportunity, their space, to make a name for themselves as they whip up dangerous rhetoric. What Brereton gives us the opportunity to do—and it is an opportunity that we must grasp—is to look clearly at the reality of war, to look clearly at the crimes that have been committed, to look clearly at the political mistakes that were made, to hold all accountable for their action and inaction and to ensure that these crimes are never, ever committed again. I thank the chamber for its time.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's spin machine would have us argue that this was a budget about the future recovery. In fact, if you look at the detail of the budget, you see that it's nothing to do with recovery; it's about the government preparing its election strategy. This is a budget that's really about getting the government through the next election, not about getting the country through the next 10 years. The budget reflects the political judgement of the government trying to overcome a series of problems of its own creation and seeking to persuade the Australian public that it doesn't really need a long-term strategy; what it needs to do is re-elect a group of Liberal politicians.

What we have is no strategy, no coherent plan about the investment in science, no investment in research, no investment in the industrial capabilities of the nation and no approach that would lead us to have any confidence about building Australia's industrial capabilities to forge a stronger nation past this pandemic. There is no understanding of what it takes to have the skills, to have the resources and to build sovereign capabilities in manufacturing to secure the future of the nation.

This is a budget of wasted opportunities. This is a budget that has no substantial investment in the future of higher education or in science and research and only tweaks at the edges of various little programs to say, 'Oh, we've attended to this problem or to that problem.' There is no attention whatsoever to, for instance, the substantive questions about the 32 per cent drop in research and development by private sector companies, which is reflected in the 2015-16 science tables and which the government itself, through its department of industry, acknowledges as the actual research and development expenditure by business. There is no attempt to deal with the substantive strategic approaches that its own reviews have highlighted—for instance, the 2016 FFF review about what could be done to develop a long-term strategic vision for the nation.

If we turn to the universities, we see that this is a government that once again is silent when it comes to our public institutions such as the universities. The small handouts, I acknowledge, are there for the private higher education providers, but for the universities it's a $400 million reduction, a reduction that saw the loss of 17,000 jobs from our universities. And there are some revenue falls in the order of $2 billion. What we're seeing is the government forcing upon the universities no plans in terms of future research funding. At least there were, in the last budget, measures to have temporary support with a billion dollars in research funding; that, of course, is not continued in this budget.

What we see is a glimmer of hope, some would say, about the measures such as the half a million dollars a year over two years for a PhD completion for industry placements. Do you know what that amounts to? It amounts to 36 PhDs in a country and economy of this size. Thirty-six PhDs—that is the sort of measure this government claims is its contribution to try to understand how serious our problems are.

When we deal with the issues of our science program we note, for instance, that it's where the universities are major contributors to our research effort. They undertake some 35 per cent of all research in Australia, which makes them amongst the highest in the world in terms of the OECD figures. They perform some 43 per cent of all the applied research in this country. They, in fact, provide more research support than the private sector from industry. They provide some 90 per cent of all the discovery—that is, the basic research in this country.

Now, it's a pretty fundamental proposition: you cannot have commercialisation of research without the development of basic new discoveries. There can't be commercialisation without new discoveries. But this is a government that seems to have lost sight of that simple proposition. It's a simple proposition that anyone who has any real understanding of the way in which higher education works, how research policy works, how we actually talk about understanding the relationship between the government of this country and such an important sector as our tertiary higher education sector—what it should be doing in the circumstances such as this.

You would have thought that with the amount of money this government is throwing around to secure its own political survival it might have been able to develop some understanding in the time. What have they done instead in terms of science innovation? They put Mr Porter in charge. They reckon they can hide him in plain sight to try to deal with the difficulties the government have faced on that front, rather than develop the types of coherent programs that are actually needed to secure the future of our industrial capabilities in this country. I would have thought this was an opportunity that's gone begging, an opportunity where the government should have been able to address the fact that our universities are facing this revenue shortfall of some $2 billion, rising to $3 billion. The government should have faced the fact that 17,300 jobs have been lost, as the universities said would be lost. Rather than reducing the support for universities, one would have thought the government might have paid attention to what the cost is to the university system of such blatant neglect.

Professors Frank Larkins and Ian Marshman at the University of Melbourne's Centre for the Study of Higher Education have reviewed the annual reports of Victorian universities, and have tabled that in the state parliament. They've indicated that 7,500 jobs have been lost in the last year in Victorian universities alone. That's a total of 14 per cent of their staff. The cuts have been heavily concentrated amongst casual staff and staff on fixed-term contracts. They're the staff in the lowest incomes. They're the staff with the least protections in employment. Three universities, RMIT, La Trobe and the uni of Victoria, have cut staff in excess of the loss of revenue. Professor Larkins and Professor Marshman expect there will be more job losses. How many more will depend on how long the borders remain closed.

We know the situation is very simple: international education is worth an enormous value to this country. We see that in terms of the long-term investment to the universities. We have as a parliament, across the board, said to the universities, 'We're not going to be able to fund you to the extent you need.' This has been on a bipartisan basis since the late eighties. We've said, 'You have to rely on your own sources of income to make up the difference.' Now, because of the pandemic, the situation has arisen that international student numbers have dried up. So the universities are now faced with a situation not of their own making but of a policy decision that this parliament has made. They've been left in a very parlous position. And what do they get in terms of support from this government? Nothing. They get, in fact, reductions. They get hostility. They get abuse. And that's not just in terms of financial support; it's attacking them for their international connections.

On the one hand universities have reductions in funding, but on the other hand other government agencies and companies, like ASPI, are able to secure funding with no qualms, no competitive tendering, no arrangements made for a proper assessment, no peer review of their research and no performance appraisals. They produce low-quality, non-peer reviewed research, which, of course, is then used on the front pages of various Murdoch newspapers to run assaults on academics and to run McCarthy smears. Circumstances have arisen where ASPI now has some 35 per cent of its funding from the Department of Defence, 32 per cent from various other federal agencies, and then other funding is provided for various events that it undertakes, all without any questions being asked—and, of course, it gets substantial sums of money from foreign governments. It is allowed then to use that money to attack the universities because of their alleged associations with other governments. This is a tap that's not turned off, but, when it comes to the public universities, we see a very, very different approach indeed.

We note the situation in other science agencies. There is minimal support there. There is minimal support for ANSTO and some capital moneys for the CSIRO and for the other science agencies. It is very much at the edges. But, with the cultural institutions, there is money for just about every one of them, except the National Archives. There is not an extra cent there, despite the fact that the National Archives are now faced with a situation where they are clearly in breach of their statutory obligations because they're not able to fund their activities, where extraordinarily significant historic records are under threat. What has the government done in response to this? Nothing. Why? How do they explain that? How can they provide even an elementary explanation of their failure in that regard? What, there are no votes in the National Archives? Or is it just part of our history that we don't mind seeing wasted, demolished, removed? I think it is an extraordinary dereliction of duty. Given the amount of effort that has been put into the Tune review, I find it an amazing proposition that the National Archives are not able to be provided with any support, particularly in the context where every other cultural institution under the Commonwealth's responsibility is able to secure support. But there is nothing for the National Archives.

So I say in general terms that this is a government that, frankly, is only interested in securing its future, not securing the future of the nation. This is a government that is not seeking to address these fundamental problems like, as I say, the fact that the percentage of our gross expenditure on R&D, at 1.8 per cent, is roughly half that of our major competitors. We see a situation where the People's Republic of China are increasing their R&D to the point where they will be able to double their efforts within 10 years, but we are languishing behind countries throughout this region because we have no coherent plan, no strategy to deal with what the government says is its interest in building a national capability. We have no strategic plan to be able to develop the manufacturing capabilities of this nation. Surely we should have understood this when we went into the pandemic and we couldn't even get enough face masks made in this country, we couldn't build the ventilators, we couldn't build the elementary and rather simple devices needed to secure the health of this nation. We can't now see anything from the government to demonstrate that they've learned anything from that failure, and yet we've got our competitors around the world grasping the opportunities that present themselves, and they are dealing with these problems in an entirely different way.

This government is obsessed with marketing, with electoral fortunes, with ensuring that it is able to overcome political problems by throwing large sums of money at any particular matter. It has no plan, however, for the long-term future of the nation and has no real interest in institutions like our universities, the National Archives or the many other agencies that we require to build that future and secure the capabilities that the nation desperately needs so that we can ensure prosperity for the people of this country and can ensure that we do take our rightful place amongst those international competitors that are clearly moving ahead of us in leaps and bounds.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to thank all of those senators that have contributed to this debate. These additional estimates appropriation bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Passage of the bills will ensure continuity of government programs, commencement of new activities agreed by the government since the 2020-21 budget and the Commonwealth's ability to meet obligations for 2020-21 as they fall due. Details of the bills were considered in the additional estimates process. I commend the bills to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Original question, as amended, agreed to.

Bills read a second time.