Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 10 December 2024:

The benefits of conducting a Federal Convention to examine the ambiguous roles between the state, territory and federal governments considering, but not limited to, the following issues:

(a) the need to streamline the duplication of bureaucracies to save billions of dollars in bureaucratic waste and reduce unnecessary regulations;

(b) the lack of accountability and transparency between the state, territory and federal governments;

(c) the need for state and territory governments to raise their own revenue to reduce their reliance on Federal Government funding;

(d) the need for Federal grants and goods and services tax allocations to state and territory governments to be much more transparent, efficient and effective;

(e) the need for the implementation of a co-ordinated infrastructure funding facility to provide capital for sovereign infrastructure;

(f) the need for the Corps of Royal Australian Engineers to take responsibility for building and maintaining all national land transport network roads; and

(g) any other related matters.

I'm pleased to move this motion today. As I said in my maiden speech, of all the issues faced by Australia, few are more damaging to our country than the fiscal imbalance and ambiguous responsibilities between state and federal governments. You've really got to ask why Australia, a country of 25 million, has nine growing health bureaucracies while maternity wards are being closed in my home state of Queensland. Our Constitution was designed for government to be held to account by the people, yet 120 years of compromise have rendered it ineffective. It's time for what was once COAG and is now National Cabinet to hold a federation convention to clearly define and separate these responsibilities, with proposed changes to be put to the people. The blame game needs to end, and Australians deserve much greater accountability.

I said this back in September 2019, when the bushfires were ripping through the east coast of Australia. I well remember that many people who came to my maiden speech had to take various diversions to avoid the bushfires. During the bushfires we saw the blame game at full throttle, with the federal government being blamed for not doing enough, despite the fact that state governments are responsible for dealing with fires and emergency management. We saw the COVID disaster, whereby there was constant bickering between the state and federal governments over who was responsible for what. Just a couple of weeks ago, up in Gladstone, we had another tragic accident up on the Bruce Highway, and of course the usual blame game is going on. I know my good friend the member for Wide Bay, Llew O'Brien, has had many fights and arguments with the Queensland transport minister, Mark Bailey, over getting funding to duplicate the highway north of Gympie. I know my good mate Llew is very passionate about improving road transport.

The point is that we can't deliver essential services in this country while there is continual bickering between state and federal governments. We can't generate productivity in this country when we have unnecessary rules, regulations and hoops that companies have to jump through to get something built. We saw that just recently with the dismissal of the proposed goldmine in Orange. Regis Resources have spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting regulation approvals from the New South Wales government, only to then come to the federal government and have the project kiboshed. The federal government isn't the government that's going to lose the royalties from that mine. It isn't the government that's going to lose the payroll tax from that mine. It's been very easy for the federal government to kibosh the mine over heritage concerns, but they're not the ones who lose the revenue.

I often talk about capitalism. A capitalist is someone who risks their own capital, not someone else's. We've got this agency theory going on in our federation whereby one level of government can stick the boot into another level of government and not reap the consequences, but this issue is much more systemic.

If we take health, for example—and I quoted this particular example in my maiden speech—we've had over 30 maternity wards close in my home state of Queensland in the last 30 years—not so many recently, but, between 1990 and 2005, a number of them shut down. That's despite the fact that we have these growing health bureaucracies, new departments, the new CDC and whatever, with lots of bureaucrats in the back end coming up with more rules and regulations. But we can't deliver essential services.

In health, the state government really only manages public hospitals. The federal government is responsible for funding private hospitals, it's responsible for Medicare, it's responsible for the PBS and it's responsible for approving drugs through the TGA, as well as other health issues. So wouldn't it make much more sense to move health to the federal government and then, in exchange, move education back to the state governments?

In education—and I often hear the other side of the chamber talk about this—we've got another situation whereby we have private schools funded by the federal government and we have public schools funded by the state government, and then we have this bickering over how much funding private schools get and how much funding public schools get. It's very hard to get a comparison between the schools to know what they get. And we have this bizarre situation where universities are owned by state governments but are funded by the federal government.

What I'm proposing here is a federation convention. I originally wanted a constitutional convention, but I think that was a mistake. I think it should be a federation convention because changes in these roles and responsibilities of the state and federal governments don't actually need a change to the Constitution. They can be a simple agreement through section 109, where they go, 'Okay, you take responsibility for this, and we'll take responsibility for that.' In doing so, you can eliminate bureaucracies and get them out of the road. You'll save money when you eliminate these bureaucracies, because what we've seen in the last 40 years is an increasing number of bureaucrats. If you look at the figures in the health sector, for example, the ratio of bureaucrats to frontline services staff is increasing.

The reason why I'd like education to go back to the states—one of the proposals that I've just suggested—is that I believe education is competitive and it would be good to have competition between the states. On the other hand, basic health, emergency services and things like that are very inelastic, and that matters. We often talk about competition in this chamber—at least on this side of the chamber—and there is this view that greater competition leads to greater outcomes. It doesn't always. Competition can be constructive and it can be destructive, and it's very important—and it's the role of government—to make sure that we have competition that is constructive.

To understand that, you need to also understand elasticity. When it comes to health, there is very little elasticity in basic health services. If I'm bitten by a big black snake out in a paddock somewhere, I'm not going to pick up the phone and ring around the country looking for the cheapest hospital to go to; I'm going to go to the nearest hospital. So we need to be able to deliver reliable health services across the country, regardless of where you live. That is very, very important, and that is the role of the government. It is the role of the government to provide a safety net. But we're not really providing a safety net for the people out there beyond the beltway—beyond the bubble here in Canberra. What we're really giving them is a set of rules and regulations. So that's one example that we need to look at.

Then we've got the whole energy debacle. Our energy sector is controlled by AEMO, and I stand to be corrected on the numbers here, but I think it's 40 per cent owned by the states and 30 per cent owned by the private sector, with another 30 per cent owned by the federal government. This is another classic example of where everyone is in charge and no-one is in charge. Our energy sector, of course, has become a complete mishmash, a Frankenstein's monster. We've got some public assets left in Queensland with our coal-fired power stations. We've privatised base-load assets in other states. We've then got the conga line of rent-seeking parasites in the renewables sector who are constantly milking the federal government for subsidies to keep their heads above water. State governments are throwing subsidies at both the renewables sector and the base-load sector now because they've run down the base-load sector so much that they have to go around propping that up, rather than having a simple model whereby one level of government is responsible for the provision of energy.

I would tend to go back to having the states run energy. It's not in section 51. There's no head of power, I'm led to believe, under section 51 that says energy should be the responsibility of the federal government. Having said that, I give credit to Ben Chifley for using 51(vi) of the Constitution to get the Snowy Hydro project built. He had to bring New South Wales and Victoria together, and at first, I'm led to believe, they complained, but when they realised the federal government was going to pay for it all they let it go through. That's another example showing where, if we let the energy sector run down, we may end up having to use 51(vi) if the energy grid collapses. Again, my experience in life has been that you've got to have clear lines of accountability. When you've got three players in this, a triangular system—state government, federal government and a private market—it ain't working.

On top of that, we've got the water sector. Nothing grinds my gears more than what happened as a result of the Tasmanian dams decision in 1983. Regardless of what your view on the environment is, the fact is that Bob Hawke used section 51(xxix), the foreign treaties powers, to override the powers of the state government. I'm pretty sure that when our founding fathers set up the Constitution and said that the federal government was responsible for foreign powers it wasn't so that they could then sign treaties whereby we've got UNESCO or whatever stopping the state government from building much-needed dams.

Might I add, a good way of providing renewable energy is hydropower, and we don't do enough of that in this country. It's no surprise that since that decision there have been very few dams built in Australia. I'll back dams over desalination plants any day, for two reasons: (a) you can get the sort of renewable power I do support, which is hydropower; and (b) you get irrigation. In this country, we need water security desperately because we do have a hot and dry climate and we can't sustain a rising population unless we learn to control our water. That was the whole basis for the civilisations founded in Middle East, the Indus Valley and those places. It's no coincidence that civilisation was built around the river systems of the Indus Valley; Mesopotamia, with the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers; the Nile River; and the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. These rivers were used for irrigation. The communities at the time were able to secure their food supply and, as a result of that, they went from hunting and gathering to farming. People could then go from farming into the cities, where they could specialise further into trades. If Australia wants to continue to grow and prosper, we desperately need irrigation in this country.

This brings me to one of the things I speak about in this motion, which is looking at a way in which we can fund infrastructure in this country. State governments don't have what is known as exorbitant privilege. They don't have their own currency; that is a domain of the federal government. But we should draw some inspiration from Lachlan Macquarie, who did understand the art of exorbitant privilege and the right of any country to control its own currency. One of the key responsibilities of any country is to control its currency. We need to look at having an infrastructure bank to help fund the state governments to build infrastructure. At the moment, if state governments want to build a dam for a billion dollars they generally have to borrow it offshore, and then the first billion dollars they make from that dam has to be repaid offshore. When they're borrowing money from offshore the biggest market in the world is the Eurobond market, which is all the US dollar bills that get traded around the world outside the US. That money just comes from the US printing press. It's ridiculous that we pay another country to use their printing press when we should be doing it ourselves in a constructive manner by issuing infrastructure bonds.

This is one of the biggest mistakes that people in the West make. We were taught through university that the art of exorbitant privilege is to be able to tap the nation's untapped wealth. In this country, we've got seven million square kilometres. We have this thing called untapped wealth. Every time it rains, that is free wealth falling out of the sky. Every time the sun shines on the soil and we have plants growing, that is free, recurring wealth every time. We need to secure that untapped wealth against the title that our forefathers fought for and built over the years, because that is the definition of a sovereign country; it is title over your untapped wealth. That is the true art of exorbitant privilege—to secure that untapped wealth for our children by issuing infrastructure bonds against the seven sovereign assets. Many of these are built by state governments. They need a funding facility so that they, not the foreign banks, can capture the wealth.

In summary, we need a Federation convention to look at reducing the bureaucracy, reducing cost to the taxpayer, streamlining regulations so that we can increase productivity and finding a way to help fund state governments and federal governments to build the infrastructure that delivers recurring revenue to pay for the recurring costs of our schools and hospitals in a sustainable manner so that our children and all Australians can have a better and more prosperous future.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on this motion. I thank Senator Rennick for putting it forward. One thing we know about Queenslanders and Western Australians in this place is we tend to be the committed federalists in the building. Western Australians were strong federalists at a time when we probably needed a bit of financial assistance from the Commonwealth government, and we remain committed federalists at a time when we are net givers to the federal economic situation—whether that's through the GST or through the extraordinary tax revenue and royalty revenue that grows from our great mining industry.

The issue Senator Rennick highlights here is one that we should never take for granted—that is, the health of our democracy, the health of our structures and systems, the health of our Federation. I think many of us who have been in and around politics for a number of decades know these discussions about waste, duplication, inefficiency, the lack of clarity between the roles and responsibilities of the Commonwealth government and the states, the blurring of the lines and the tendency for the Commonwealth to creep into areas that were, quite frankly, clearly not part of its purview when the Constitution was drafted. There has been a slow drift. There have been occasional huge lurches in that process through High Court decisions or through, as Senator Rennick outlined, the handing over of particular powers to Commonwealth governments by agreement from the states. But that doesn't mean that this is a set-and-forget Federation. We cannot think that the discussions that were held over 120 years ago now should be the final word as to the health of our Federation and the structures of our Federation.

Senator Rennick is highlighting the possibility—when all's said and done, this is a referral to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for an inquiry, and I think that is what this chamber has a responsibility to do. We have seen a tendency in this place in recent times, and particularly in the last year, for Labor—particularly in combination with the Greens—to block what I see as quite legitimate and uncontroversial inquiries, such as an inquiry into the transmission lines through, particularly, agricultural property that are going to be a significant part of the proposed future rollout of renewable energy that Labor and the Greens are championing. That was quite a reasonable inquiry put forward by Senator Cadell—who's in the chamber at the moment—and Senator Colbeck a number of times. How many times did we get up to, Senator Cadell?

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nine.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nine times that inquiry was put to this chamber, and nine times Labor, the Greens and the crossbench combined to block what was a perfectly reasonable inquiry. I see here, from Senator Rennick, a perfectly reasonable thing to inquire into—consideration as to whether a Federation convention should be considered to look at some of the issues that have been identified over many decades as being at least a question mark over the efficiency and strength of our Federation.

One of these issues has been laid absolutely bare in the past few weeks, and that is the overlap of federal and state jurisdictions on mining approvals and the lack of clarity that provides to the industry. Regis, a listed Australian company, one of the largest Australian goldminers, spent $193 million and seven years going through all the state approval processes and through all the federal approval processes only to have an arbitrary decision from a minister overrule the project at the eleventh hour. That shows that these systems are not at all as efficient, clear, transparent or reasonable as they should be. Any of us in this room who talk regularly to major project proponents, who have to go through these dual processes, know that the approval times for projects have blown out from between two and five years to between seven and 12 years, sometimes even beyond that for much more significant projects. This is the fault of systemic problems that see state approval processes intersect with federal approval processes, and the delays and confusion that result from those approval processes, overlaid with another layer of arbitrary decision-making, which we've seen from this government in particular in recent days. So I think Senator Rennick's motion clearly raises issues that are of concern, that are of interest.

We saw the very long, protracted debate over GST-sharing arrangements. My home state of Western Australia was on track to receive cents in the dollar of GST revenue raised in WA, and it took a coalition government to fix that issue, in the face of Labor state parliamentarians and Labor parliamentarians in this place saying it couldn't be done—absolutely impossible. Of course, the Liberal government did fix it, championed particularly by the Liberal members of parliament in this place, to put in place a 75c floor in the GST-sharing arrangements, but should that be the last word? From my point of view, that 75c floor should be the lowest we possibly see, but what Senator Rennick is proposing here is an examination of other funding streams to the states and the way in which the Commonwealth government interacts with the states on that basis.

So I think the motion is one that deserves our support. It's a perfectly legitimate motion, and we should allow the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee to look into this matter.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Rennick for his motion. I compliment his intellect and understanding—his technical and financial understanding and his understanding of history. I'm going to read the motion because I think it's fitting. This is a very significant motion, which I will be supporting. It says:

That the following matter be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 10 December 2024:

The benefits of conducting a Federal Convention to examine the ambiguous roles between the state, territory and federal governments considering, but not limited to, the following issues—

I'll go through those issues and respond to each in turn, so I will deal with the terms of reference.

I want to point out something that Senator Brockman pointed out and add to it. Systems drive behaviour, and behaviour shapes attitudes. The combination of behaviour and attitudes, plus values, symbols and leadership, shapes culture, but systems are an enormously powerful driver of culture. And culture, as we all know and increasingly understand through business and other organisations, is fundamental to productivity, fundamental to safety, fundamental to quality and fundamental to security. Culture is crucial. As I go through these terms of reference and make some points, please think about the systems and the behaviours that are driving this, and the culture, because our culture in this country is falling to bits. And think about productivity, which is the key to wealth creation.

I'm going to read some figures here from a paper titled 'The Australian precedence for a Hamiltonian credit system'. On page 15 it says that a paper presented to cabinet calculated the value added in exporting aluminium ore, or bauxite, versus processed aluminium, in 1970 dollars. I'll convert that to 2022 dollars. Exporting one million tonnes of bauxite, the raw material, earned $65 million. Processed one step into alumina, it earned $355 million—5½ times as much for Australians. Processed again into aluminium, it earned $1.6 billion—25 times the value of the ore. Finally, processed into aluminium products, it earned $7.8 billion; that's 120 times the value. You can see the wealth that has been created. Instead of just mining red dirt in Western Australia and other places in the country and shipping it overseas, if we process it here we can generate enormous wealth—almost $8 billion worth of wealth, instead of $65 million.

This is from the terms of reference:

(a) the need to streamline the duplication of bureaucracies to save billions of dollars in bureaucratic waste and reduce unnecessary regulations—

Look at the health department and the education department—duplicated at state and federal level, a complete waste of money. Worse than that, it destroys accountability, because when there's a problem with education the federal points to the states and the states point to the federal, and nothing happens. A culture of blame is created. Think about the behaviours and the culture developed under this kind of system.

We need to get rid of that, streamline the bureaucracies and end the duplication to improve productivity. Productivity in the government is abysmal in this country. We're shutting down the private sector, which has high productivity and generates enormous wealth, and transferring it to low productivity.

I'll read the second term of reference:

(b) the lack of accountability and transparency between the state, territory and federal governments—

This goes to the heart of the problem. I listened to a wonderful mayor, dedicated to his town. He pointed out to me that the federal government has the money and the states have the power, through regulations and legislation—because the Constitution has handed them the power for most of the services provided by government—and the local councils have the problems. Now, councils have accounting system problems in terms of their accounting systems driving inadequate behaviours. But the councils depend upon grants, which are sometimes three years in advance or five years in advance, which means local councils do very little in the way of long-term planning; they can't.

But the fathers of the Constitution, our country's forefathers, pinched an idea from America—competitive federalism, which basically means that sovereign independent states are competing with each other to provide the best services, or the most efficient services. The same thing has happened here, and that drives accountability, because if a state does poorly in something then people leave the state and go somewhere else; if a state does well in something, people come to that state. When Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a former premier of Queensland, abolished death duties, people around Australia flocked to the Gold Coast because when they died they could leave their money to their children. And what happened? With that improvement, other states did the same, because they lost people if they didn't.

So competitive federalism is a marketplace in governance, and that's what we need, because at the moment we have central domination of our system, just like what America has sadly evolved into—a central government domination. There's no marketplace in governance. There's very little accountability. The states blame the federal government, and the federal government blames the states. So we need a marketplace in governance to be restored.

Australia, 120 years ago, was the world's wealthiest country in terms of per capita income. We need to get back to that. We have the resources; we have the best resources in the world. We have great people. The education system sucks, but we can get back to a proper education system. We need to restore accountability and we need to bring back competitive federalism, and these terms of reference so far are on the right track.

Term of reference (c) is 'the need for state and territory governments to raise their own revenue to reduce their reliance on federal government funding'. I completely agree. States used to have the right to raise income tax. That was taken away as a war measure in 1942 or 1943 by the federal government and hasn't come back. I would suggest that we need to seriously look at stripping the federal government of income tax powers and, as the terms of reference say, give them back to the states. Let the states be accountable for what they raise and for their interest rates. At least have the debate. When a state raises money, it's accountable for its spending. If it needs to go to its taxpayers for more, then let the taxpayers—the voters—make up their minds. This would bring real accountability and significant productivity improvement.

Term of reference (d) is 'the need for federal grants and goods and services tax allocations to state and territory governments to be much more transparent, efficient and effective'. I wholeheartedly agree. We need comprehensive tax reform to make the GST transparent. Why not just have comprehensive tax reform to see whether the GST can't be abolished and replaced with a far more productive system? Under the GST, states like Western Australia generate the majority of the revenue, and states like South Australia and Tasmania are on the tit for money. They don't have to produce. They don't have to be productive. They don't have to develop their resources. They don't have to be accountable. Queensland, I'm sad to say—at least a couple of years ago—one of the wealthiest states in the world, was a net recipient of GST. That's an absolute disgrace, and that's because of the Beattie-Bligh-Palaszczuk-Miles governments that have destroyed budgets, destroyed the economy in Queensland, exacerbated the revenue problems and created so much waste.

So why not have the states raising the tax? At least have a discussion. It's not the states raising the tax in addition to the federal government; it's instead of the federal government raising income tax. And then have the state governments determine how much they will share with the federal government—accountability and productivity again.

Then we go to term of reference (e), 'the need for the implementation of a coordinated infrastructure funding facility to provide capital for sovereign infrastructure'. A long-term plan—wouldn't that be wonderful? Councils, state governments and federal governments would have long-term plans. It would streamline approval processes.

And what about the project that I've introduced into the Senate? It wasn't my idea. It was the idea of Lang Hancock and maybe even someone before him in Western Australia: Project Iron Boomerang. Restore Australia to being a significant player in high-quality, value-added steel and one of the biggest producers of steel in this world. We've already got, according to proponents of the project, significant interest from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, communist China, Indonesia and, potentially, India and Saudi Arabia in that project. Instead of sending ships loaded with our iron ore from Western Australia and our coal from our east coast, in Central Queensland, we would send coal to the west coast and make steel there, mixing it with the iron ore, and send iron ore to the east coast and make steel there, at Abbot Point. We would have up to 10 steel mills at each end, which would make us a significant producer of steel, which would add productivity, value, security, accountability and wealth generation—enormous wealth generation.

As Senator Rennick said, we can convert nature's blessings into products and services that will meet people's needs. Why ship our raw materials overseas so someone else can do the value-adding? We need to do that here in this country. Connecting the west coast to the east coast with a railway line and having steel mills at both ends would make it very productive. It would open up the whole of Central Australia, the whole of North Queensland and the whole of northern Western Australia and would give the communities in those remote areas access to water from a pipeline, access to communications and access to a railway line, eventually bringing tourists and investors from around the world and exporting products to the rest of the world.

Let's look at term of reference (f):

the need for the Corps of Royal Australian Engineers to take responsibility for building and maintaining all national land transport network roads …

I'm not so sure about this, because it doesn't comply with the true federal system. States need to retain responsibility and accountability, but we need to have the debate. We need to start that debate, and that's what I compliment Senator Rennick for in raising this.

We also need to consider the use of data in our federal government. Data is ignored, contradicted, twisted and misrepresented in this country, and by this federal parliament in particular. We need to get back to good governance through the use of data in making decisions.

I will just take this opportunity—I've mentioned it to one or two senators in the place here—to ask: why don't senators sit in state groups? This is not only the house of review; it is the states house. It is here to protect the states. It is for those reasons—and, above all, to start the debate on how we can improve and restore our country so that it is productive and so that all Australians can be wealthy—that I commend Senator Rennick for moving this motion. I will be supporting it.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I might, for the people of Queensland and from the people of Queensland, present an alternative perspective on the world from the Labor Party. The government will be opposing this motion, although I congratulate Senator Rennick on introducing his first motion as a newly Independent senator. I am looking forward to some of the freestyle policy that we're going to get from Senator Rennick. It'll certainly liven things up around here. But I regret to say that we will be opposing this motion.

The Albanese government are committed to working cooperatively with states and territories, which is how we've already managed to deliver significant reforms in the national interest. Just last week, National Cabinet agreed to a landmark $4.7 billion package to end violence against women in a generation and strengthen legal services. This will deliver much-needed support for frontline specialists, better identify and respond to high-risk perpetrators and address the role that systems and harmful industries play in exacerbating violence. This is the biggest investment by any federal government in legal services in our nation's history.

Last year, National Cabinet announced the $3 billion New Homes Bonus to incentivise states to build homes faster and secured a better deal for renters. This sets our ambitious goal of building 1.2 million homes and develops a nationally consistent renters policy, including phasing in minimum rental standards. This year $1 billion was paid to states and territories to build the road, sewer, energy, water and community infrastructure that we need for new homes and for additional social housing supply.

In health, National Cabinet agreed to the further $1.2 billion Strengthening Medicare package of measures to take pressure off our hospitals. This will grow and support our health workforce while reducing unnecessary presentations to emergency departments. We also boosted funding for Medicare urgent care clinics and last week we opened our 75th clinic.

Last week, the Commonwealth reached a historic bilateral agreement with the Cook government in Western Australia to fully and fairly fund Western Australia's public schools. This will ensure all WA schools are funded to 100 per cent of the schooling resource standard by 2026. This follows similar agreements reached with the Northern Territory government.

Following the tragic event at Wieambilla in Queensland, National Cabinet reached a landmark agreement to implement a national firearms register. This will allow police to know where firearms are, who owns them and what other risks to the community and police may exist. This is the most significant improvement in Australia's firearms management systems in almost 30 years and was the result of good cooperation between the Commonwealth, states and territories. This initiative is led by the Attorney-General's Department and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, working alongside state and territory governments.

Our governments—federal, state and territory—will continue this good work, and therefore we will be opposing this motion.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I put the question. As a division is required and it's after 6.30, it will be deferred until tomorrow.

Debate adjourned.