Mr Burke - I move: That the debate be adjourned.

The SPEAKER: The question before the House is that the debate be adjourned.

For votes: Spender, Labor, Green  

Against votes: Coalition.

Peter Dutton

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) that in the course of question time on 15 August 2024, the Prime Minister purported to quote statements made by the Director-General of ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess, in a recent interview on Insiders;

(b) that the Prime Minister's purported quote specifically omitted key words with the effect of changing the fundamental meaning of Mr Burgess' statements; and

(c) that as a consequence the House was given an incorrect understanding that all visa applicants from Gaza are the subject of an ASIO assessment, whereas in fact this only occurs 'where criteria are hit';

(2) therefore calls on the Prime Minister to immediately attend the Chamber and speak for up to 15 minutes to explain:

(a) which visa applicants are the subject of a security assessment by ASIO;

(b) what are the criteria for ASIO to carry out a security assessment in relation to visa applicants from the Gaza war zone;

(c) how many of the almost 3,000 visas already issued by the Government were granted without an ASIO security assessment; and

(d) whether the House can have any confidence that under this Government's processes, there is a proper and thorough security assessment of all visa applicants from the Gaza war zone to determine whether the applicant would present a security threat to the Australian community; and

(3) resolves that no other business be considered until the Prime Minister undertakes the action requested in (2).

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition from moving the following motion forthwith—That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) that in the course of question time on 15 August 2024, the Prime Minister purported to quote statements made by the Director-General of ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess, in a recent interview on Insiders;

(b) that the Prime Minister's purported quote specifically omitted key words with the effect of changing the fundamental meaning of Mr Burgess' statements; and

(c) that as a consequence the House was given an incorrect understanding that all visa applicants from Gaza are the subject of an ASIO assessment, whereas in fact this only occurs 'where criteria are hit';

(2) therefore calls on the Prime Minister to immediately attend the Chamber and speak for up to 15 minutes to explain:

(a) which visa applicants are the subject of a security assessment by ASIO;

(b) what are the criteria for ASIO to carry out a security assessment in relation to visa applicants from the Gaza war zone;

(c) how many of the almost 3,000 visas already issued by the Government were granted without an ASIO security assessment; and

(d) whether the House can have any confidence that under this Government's processes, there is a proper and thorough security assessment of all visa applicants from the Gaza war zone to determine whether the applicant would present a security threat to the Australian community; and

(3) resolves that no other business be considered until the Prime Minister undertakes the action requested in (2).

It's clear to every Australian that the Prime Minister has misled this parliament and has misled the Australian public. He didn't have the ability, the determination or the strength to come in here last week and answer these serious claims, and he's missing in action again today. This parliament has now sat for two hours today, and the Prime Minister should have come in here at the ringing of the bells to correct the record—to explain to the Australian public and to this parliament why he misled them in that fashion last week.

It's one thing to come into this parliament and to quote from a document. The Prime Minister is perfectly entitled to do that, as is any member. You might leave out a sentence for the purposes of brevity or to make a point, but you can't leave out the middle of one sentence that you're quoting and pretend that that is an accurate reflection of what has been said by the person you are quoting. It's beyond tricky; it's duplicitous.

This Prime Minister walks both sides of the street. The Australian public know that. The Australian public clearly are disappointed in this Prime Minister. We get that. He's made wrong decisions in relation to the renewables-only policy, which has driven up the price of energy and now the prospect of blackouts. We have a Prime Minister who has presided over different policies, including in housing and migration, that have made it harder for Australians to buy homes. We have young Australians who have lost the dream of homeownership because of the government's policy to bring in a million people over two years when they only build a quarter of a million homes. We have a Prime Minister who is walking both sides of the street, telling the Jewish community one thing and the Muslim community something completely different. He's telling the Indigenous community one thing in relation to the makarrata commission, which he has purposefully redesigned now to mean something else, even though there's money in the budget for a makarrata commission. So he's telling the Indigenous population one thing and the non-Indigenous population something other than what he's telling the first group. He walks into one room and says, 'This is the fact of this matter.' He walks into the adjoining room and tells the opposite to the group there. It is no wonder that people's disappointment has turned into dismay when it comes to Prime Minister Albanese.

In relation to this issue, it doesn't get any more serious than an allegation of a misleading of this parliament and the Australian public by the Prime Minister of our country. This is not a concocted outrage or some interpretation of a quote. It's a completely and utterly scandalous approach by the Prime Minister, and he can't come to this chamber. I've watched seven prime ministers, who have come from both sides of this parliament, and I have never seen a circumstance where a prime minister of the day is accused of misleading this parliament and doesn't have the strength of character to come down here and to argue his corner—because he knows he's done the wrong thing.

The obligation under the standing orders and the practice of this place means that the Prime Minister at the first available opportunity needed to correct the record. Mr Speaker, as you would recall, I raised with you during the course of question time, when it was brought to my attention, the fact that the Prime Minister had selectively misquoted the director-general of ASIO. I don't believe that the Prime Minister has a leg to stand on here, and that's why he's not coming into this chamber. What it says, every hour that ticks by now where the Prime Minister doesn't come to this chamber, is that he can't be honest with the Australian public.

We know that the Australian public believes that our country is heading in the wrong direction under the Albanese government. This government has made decisions which have not helped Australians but harmed Australians. Up until this point, it has been in relation to economic matters. People's grocery prices have gone through the roof under this government. The price that they're paying for insurance has gone through the roof. For their mortgage, interest rates have gone up 12 times, whilst interest rates are falling in New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The government has made wrong decisions, but, up until now, we haven't seen examples of decisions made by this government which have made our country less safe, except, of course, for Minister Giles's actions when he released 152 hardcore criminals who were noncitizens and had committed crimes against citizens—rape, paedophilia, armed robbery and murder. In error, the then minister released those people into the Australian community, and—you wouldn't believe it—they went on to commit more crimes. Who would have thought? The tragedy of that reality is that there is a human being, there is an Australian citizen who is a victim, behind each one of those crimes. We should never forget the face of that elderly lady in Perth who fell victim very early to one of these individuals.

Minister Giles has decided to bring people in on tourist visas from a war zone which is controlled by a listed terrorist organisation. The Prime Minister got up here and said to us that everyone had been checked through the ASIO process. They have not been. The selective quoting, by leaving out those words that Mr Burgess had given to David Speers over on Insiders, served the misrepresentation and backed up the position of the Prime Minister, which turned out to be false.

If you bring people in on a tourist visa, it's like coming from the United States, from New Zealand or from other parts of the world where a visa is issued automatically. It's issued automatically without the checks and balances of somebody who would come here through the refugee and humanitarian program. The Prime Minister said to the Australian public that what they had done as a government under Minister Giles, by bringing people here on tourist visas, was akin to, or a replication of, what we had done when we brought people into Australia from Syria.

The complete opposite is the case. We brought people here through the refugee and humanitarian program. It didn't take 24 hours to get a visa, as it does if you're a tourist. It took in some cases 12 months because we had to collect biometrics. We had to collect all of that information to check against databases. The Prime Minister will have you believe that somehow that's what happened here. It's not.

Let's look very quickly at what went towards covering up the fact of his mistake—the egregious and potentially very consequential mistake that he has made here. Let's look at what Mr Burgess said. He said they've gone through a visa process:

If they've been issued a visa, they've gone through the process. Part of that visa process is, where criteria hit, they're referred to my organisation and ASIO does its thing.

The Prime Minister missed those words: 'visa process is where criteria hit', and that is essentially undermining the credibility of this Prime Minister.

This Prime Minister has lost his integrity, he has lost his credibility, he has let down the Australian public, he has made us less safe, he is the weakest leader in our country's history and Australians are suffering because of it—not just economically and not just financially. This Prime Minister has now weakened the security settings in our country and he should be here defending himself.

Milton Dick

Is the motion seconded?

Dan Tehan

The motion is seconded. I didn't think that we'd get to this stage, but this is where we've got to. We've got to the fact that the prime minister now is as hopeless and hapless as the previous minister for immigration. As a matter of fact, they are peas in a pod. If you think about what has happened and the track record of both now, they're exactly the same

The former minister for immigration let 152 detainees out on the street and then came into this place and said they had all been issued with visas and had conditions placed on them. Then what did we find out down the track? That hadn't happened. FOIs showed us that some of them—and as the Leader of the Opposition has said, hardened criminals, murderers, sex offenders, child sex offenders—had been released without visas and without conditions placed on them. Did the Prime Minister, when he knew about that, require the former minister for immigration to come in here and admit that he had misled this parliament? No, he didn't. And now we know why, because if he had required him to do that, he would be in here today doing exactly the same thing. Yet where is he? Where is he? No-one knows. And what has he been accused of? It is not just misleading the parliament in some form, which is sort of irrelevant. What he has done is he has misquoted the director-general of ASIO. How can you not quote the director-general of ASIO in the correct form and think that you can get away with it? I'm glad the new minister for immigration is here because I hope to hell, for the Australian people's sake, that he isn't as hopeless and hapless as the previous minister for immigration and the prime minister.

Let's look at what the prime minister has done. He was asked a very simple question, which goes to the No. 1 priority of this government: was everyone who came into this country from the Gaza war zone properly given a security check—every single one of them? And the prime minister said, 'Yes, they had.' Now we know that is not the case, and there is nothing that the new minister for immigration can show us or prove to say that what the Prime Minister has said was correct. The Prime Minister stands condemned today, the former minister for immigration stands condemned today, and what we will wait to hear now is whether the new minister for immigration has any explanation for two things. The first is: where is the Prime Minister and why won't he come and defend his honour? Because he knows he's wrong. He knows he has misled this place. The second thing we want to hear from the new immigration minister is: what was done to make sure that Australians are going to be kept safe from the people that have come in from the Gaza war zone? If we don't hear answers to those two things, then you might as well not get up and say anything.

The other thing that will be very interesting to see while you're here defending the Prime Minister is whether the Prime Minister will come in to listen to the new minister for immigration defend him. Will he? Do you reckon he will? What do you think? I've got a feeling that the PM won't turn up. He'll stay in his office watching on the television because he's gutless. He won't come in here and defend himself. That is weakness at its worst and that is why he stands condemned today.

Long debate text truncated.

Kate Chaney

I move the amendment on sheet 2 as circulated in my name:

(1)   Schedule 1, Parts 7 and 8, page 23 (line 1) to page 44 (line 25), omit the Parts.

I move this amendment to ensure that this bill, which is supposed to be about improving the quality and integrity of the higher education system, doesn't go beyond its intention and create new ministerial powers that could have catastrophic repercussions for universities. This amendment, very simply, removes schedules 7 and 8 from the bill. As we know, schedules 7 and 8 give the minister the power to cap international student enrolments by course and by university.

I've already spoken at length about my concerns with schedules 7 and 8. In summary, first, I'm not convinced that the ministerial power to implement caps is about quality, integrity or sustainable growth of the sector. I'm concerned that it's in response to our domestic housing crisis; reducing the number of international students will, at least theoretically, free up some accommodation. Second, I've heard significant concerns from universities about how the application of these drastic powers will affect the sector. Universities rely on fees from international students to fund research and development capabilities. More than half of the financial investment in Australian research is funded by international students. Third, I'm worried about the ramifications for our international reputation and our economy. Given that education services are our fourth-largest export, changing the rules will affect education providers, students and their families. Education is a globally competitive market. Creating this level of uncertainty will mean that students will choose to study their chosen course in Canada, the US or New Zealand instead of here.

There's broad support for schedules 1 to 6 of this bill, and I believe they contain good measures to improve the quality and integrity of our education sector. But I urge the government to reconsider the damaging effect of schedules 7 and 8 and remove these schedules from the bill. I commend the amendment to the House.

Jason Clare

I thank the member for Curtin for her amendment and for her engagement on this bill. The government is not able to support this amendment. As I said a moment ago in reply in this debate, we need to set up the international education sector for success. Part of that is making sure we protect the integrity of the system, which is what the first part of the bill does, and the second part is about protecting its social licence to operate. That involves providing certainty for universities and having a mechanism in place to promote sustainable growth over time. It's important that we have the tools necessary to do that. That's what these parts of the bill are all about.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Curtin be agreed to.

Zoe Daniel

I move:

(1) Page 2 (after line 12), after clause 3, insert:

4 Sunsetting of Parts 7 and 8 of Schedule 1

(1) Despite item 53 of Schedule 1, the amendments made by Part 7 of Schedule 1 do not apply in relation to the 2027 calendar year and later calendar years.

(2) Despite item 56 of Schedule 1, the amendments made by Part 8 of Schedule 1 cease to apply after the end of the 2-year period starting at the commencement of that Part.

I am yet to be convinced that the volume of foreign students coming to Australia is the core of the problem that the government is trying to solve here, that they are the primary cause of the housing and rental crises currently besetting our country and causing so much hardship to so many. Nor am I convinced that, even if that is a major problem, this legislation is the way to solve it. Overseas student numbers collapsed during COVID, understandably, and now it seems to me that we're seeing a temporary spike as numbers recover. In the normal course of events, vice chancellors have suggested to me that it may well be numbers return to normal in a very short period. So if there is a perceived and temporary issue with the number of people entering the country, there's an easy fix, which is to make sure that the legislation operates only for a limited period. As I said in my second reading speech, I have been in discussions with the minister to add a sunset clause to the legislation to allow it to lapse once it has achieved the government's short-term goal. Unfortunately, the government has decided not to support this amendment despite support from the tertiary sector. The minister's advisers say they sympathise with the concept but it's too difficult to implement.

As it stands, the legislation grounds extraordinary powers to the minister—for example, to impose total enrolment limits by legislative instrument and to impose total enrolment limits by notice to the provider. Then there's the real sledgehammer—additional provisions to allow the minister to impose enrolment limits on individual courses by legislative instrument or by notice to the provider.

As it stands, the legislation grants extraordinary powers to the minister, for example, to impose total enrolment limits by legislative instrument and to impose total enrolment limits by notice to the provider. Then—the real sledgehammer—there are additional provisions to allow the minister to impose enrolment limits on individual courses by legislative instrument or by notice to the provider.

This is just too much power in the hands of one minister, and I wholeheartedly support the amendment just proposed by my colleague the member for North Syndey to remove that provision. Meanwhile, I'm offering a sunset clause of two years that would enable the government to get over what it sees as an immediate but one-off problem. It would also give the sector certainty that the extraordinary powers granted to the minister would not be used in unacceptable ways by a future incumbent. This parliament simply should not leave such overwhelming powers in the hands of one person given its potential impact on what has been an Australian success story.

Control over individual courses ought to be the responsibility of the individual institutions and not imposed by a minister. We have already seen the damage done by the previous government with its job-ready program, designed to make some university courses less attractive than others by, for instance, more than doubling student contributions to a three-year humanities degree, from $20,000 to more than $43,000—an increase of 113 per cent. Despite this price signal, Australia's largest universities earlier this year reported a jump in applications for arts degrees, leading to higher enrolments. It is this sort of meddling, therefore, that has already proved counterproductive.

The government acknowledged to me that it might have been a different story if the Australian tertiary education authority had already been up and running. I offered suggestions to address this conundrum. They were considered but rejected. Perhaps it would have been the case that, had the government seen its way clearly, the presence of my amendment might have given them cause to get a wriggle on and actually see the authority established. I do suspect that, if the minister had been the ultimate decision-maker, a sunset clause would have seen the light of day—to mix the metaphor.

I would say that not all universities are against this legislation. I acknowledge that, but vice-chancellors from the universities of Monash and Melbourne—many Goldstein students attend those—who I have met with personally entirely disagree with it. I certainly do not want to be involved in creating a situation where students in Goldstein cannot get a place at a university anywhere near where they live because of arbitrary caps imposed under this legislation. I commend the amendment to the House.

Jason Clare

I thank the member for Goldstein for her contribution to the debate and the amendments that she has brought forward here. I also thank her for convening a meeting of members of the crossbench and me in the last sitting.

These amendments seek to sunset parts 7 and 8 after two years. I have discussed this with the member in those meetings and with a number of other members of the crossbench and can say publicly what I've flagged privately—that the government is looking at how we might transition these powers to an appropriate independent body such as the Australian tertiary education commission, once it is established. That was flagged in a discussion paper that was released recently about the Australian tertiary education commission. Obviously, it has not been established yet and the detailed design work on what that commission should look like and what it should do is being developed as we speak.

The member has raised this concept with me, and I'm very happy to keep discussing this with her and other members of the crossbench in the House and in the Senate and looking at what provisions might be able to be put in the bill or in the explanatory memorandum to point to this. That said, though, at this point in time we're not in a position to support the amendment.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Goldstein be agreed to.

Kylea Tink

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

(1) Schedule 1, item 45, page 23 (lines 6 to 10), omit the definition of course enrolment limit in section 5.

(2) Schedule 1, item 46, page 23 (lines 16 to 26), omit the item, substitute:

46 Section 15A (after the paragraph beginning "Division 1 contains")

Insert:

(3) Schedule 1, item 47, page 29 (line 11) to page 34 (line 8), omit Subdivision C.

(4) Schedule 1, item 48, page 34 (lines 9 to 18), omit the item, substitute:

48 Section 83A (after the paragraph beginning "The ESOS agency")

Insert:

(5) Schedule 1, item 49, page 36 (line 4) to page 37 (line 20), omit section 96A.

(6) Schedule 1, item 50, page 37 (table item 13), omit the table item.

(7) Schedule 1, item 51, page 38 (line 5), omit "or 96A(6)".

(8) Schedule 1, item 53, page 40 (lines 3 to 33), omit subitems (4) and (5).

I rise to speak to the amendments as circulated. As I said in my second reading speech, while many in North Sydney would support efforts to improve the quality, integrity and sustainability of our tertiary and advanced education sector, we're concerned this piece of legislation conflates a variety of issues and uses them to confer unprecedented powers on both the current and future education ministers.

Importantly, under the guise of fixing the integrity of the international students sector, we're concerned government overreach, as seen in this bill, risks undermining what is currently the second most profitable export sector in our economy. Specifically, the ministerial power to introduce student caps at the course level is unprecedented, with no other major export industry currently subject to such extraordinary micro-level powers.

The amendment I'm moving seeks to remove the ministerial power to set caps at the course level, instead allowing for caps at the provider level only. The reason I believe this amendment is required is that ministerial intervention at the course level is a dangerous overreach that would have serious consequences for institutional autonomy, existing regulations and student choice.

To be clear, universities already deliver education under strict and mature regulatory and funding arrangements. And because they're increasingly asked to deliver graduates in line with Australia's skills needs, based on advice from agencies including Jobs and Skills Australia, a ministerial intervention at the course level could have serious consequences for institutional autonomy, existing regulations and student choice.

Capping international student numbers altogether is one thing; setting them with respect to specific courses is another. It not only poses a serious threat to the operation of a vital sector; it sends a message of lust—I'm sorry, it sends a message of lack of trust in a free market that is the direct result of consecutive governments stepping back from funding. And I'm sure there are plenty of other markets lusting after our education sector!

Ultimately, surely the question we must ask is: why would we think, as much as we trust this education minister, that any education minister is best placed to make decisions like these? The fact there is no requirement for the minister to consult before issuing a notice to limit international students at a particular institution is also concerning. In addition to this, the rushed nature of these changes means that education providers are stepping into them blindly. Providers could soon negotiate international student caps on courses without even knowing what the guidelines, regulations or skills priorities will be and with no line of sight over the courses that may be subject to caps.

A large university in my electorate informed me that they have a major concern that these new measures have been introduced with little warning and, to date, little consultation, with the only effort they've seen coming just a few days before the bill was introduced to parliament. The government says they're committed to working closely with the sector, yet the fact the sector is concerned about the lack of consultation to date does not bode well.

Education providers tell me that managing international student enrolment numbers at a course level for approximately 1,400 higher education institutions will create an immense administrative burden for both the government and universities. They have explained how caps would limit student choice, which could be detrimental to the entire sector. Ultimately, our tertiary education providers operate in a global market and demand driven system, underpinned by student choice. Restrictions placed on student choice risk reputational damage and undermine the decades of work that both the sector and the consecutive governments have done to establish Australia as a world-class provider of international education.

It's clear there's more work to do on this legislation to ensure the right settings are in place to bring certainty, stability and growth to this critically important sector. Rather than let the major parties use this bill to target international students in a bid to slash migration in what can only be seen as a poll-driven war on the cost of living and housing, we have to do what's right by the sector. The future of this sector, our economic productivity and our society more broadly require us to take the passing of this legislation seriously. I commend this amendment to the House as a way of delivering a more targeted approach with measured ministerial powers rather than the extraordinary overreach currently in the bill.

Max Chandler-Mather

While there are a number of amendments from the crossbench to this bill that the Greens will be supporting, including this one, and that do improve the bill somewhat, for us this remains a terrible bill. We want to outline that the Greens oppose international student caps remaining in the bill in any form. Capping international student numbers is bad policy and it makes a dishonest conflation between international students, migration and the housing and cost-of-living crises. This will do nothing to fix our education policy or university sector or to help deal with the housing or cost-of-living crises.

Jason Clare

I thank the member for North Sydney for bringing forward this amendment. She's right: trust is important. And she raises an important issue here about the structure and operation of this bill specifically as it relates to courses. It's something about which I'm having discussions with stakeholders, both universities and those outside the university sector, at the moment. It's been part of the discussions that have been taking place since I introduced the bill in May of this year. It's important that we get this right. That's why that consultation is important. I am also looking forward to seeing what the Senate Education and Employment Committee has to say in its recommendations in response to some of the issues you have raised in your contribution just then. So, whilst we're not in a position to support the amendment today, I am looking forward to continuing that work with the sector, which I just pointed to, and with the crossbench, both here in the House and in the Senate, in the weeks ahead.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that the amendments moved by the honourable member for North Sydney be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that this bill be now read a second time.

Milton Dick

The question now is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Petrie be agreed to.

Proposed amendment—

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House notes:

(1) that the former Government consistently delivered lower taxes for small business, families, and implemented more than a dozen measures to combat multinational tax avoidance;

(2) the Government voted eight times against delivering a bigger tax cut to small business in last year's instant asset write off;

(3) the Government's last multinational tax bill was so badly designed it taxed Australian companies;

(4) that since the election, Australians are paying 20 per cent more income tax and the Government has banked over $60 billion in bracket creep;

(5) that despite promising to only raise taxes on multinationals at the election, the Government has broken promises to raise taxes on superannuation, on unrealised capital gains, on franking credits, personal income, tax, and to end small business tax incentives; and

(6) that the Government's housing policy is failing to meet its supply targets and supporting forever renting, not home ownership".

Milton Dick

The question is that the amendment moved by the member for Bradfield be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that the bill be read a second time.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Ryan moving the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes the Minister for the Environment yesterday approved Gina Reinhart's Atlas gas project until 2080, which will destroy koala habitat, exacerbate the climate crisis and ignores the IEA's warning that no new coal, oil and gas projects can be built in order to reach net zero by 2050;

(2) condemns the fact that since the Government came to office, 9 gas projects and 5 coal projects have been approved while ten oil and gas fields covering 46,758 square kilometres of ocean have been released by the Resources Minister; and

(3) insists that the Atlas approval decision be overturned.

Just this morning here in Parliament House, I attended an important forum held by ACOSS introducing their blueprint framework for fair, fast and inclusive climate change action. Climate change is threatening our communities, the natural environment and the economy. In short, runaway climate change is threatening everyone and everything everywhere. This is an urgent crisis that needs to be dealt with now, and yet this government is actively exacerbating it. As Cassandra Goldie said this morning, climate change disproportionately impacts people and communities experiencing disadvantage, particularly when the transition to a clean economy is slow, inequitable and non-inclusive, which it is. That's notwithstanding the superficially concerned and fine words at the ACOSS forum this morning from the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy.

Stage 3 of Senex's Atlas project was yesterday approved by the environment minister. This Gina Rinehart-backed project will construct 151 coal seam gas wells in Central Queensland. It'll clear at least 360 hectares of koala habitat. This project will reportedly drain 6½ million litres of groundwater every day. That's catastrophic in this area, which has some of the most productive farmland in this nation. Farmland is literally sinking already because of these coal seam gas wells, as we know, and we know this well. Up to 700 water bores in Queensland are also affected by CSG drilling.

It's time for some truths in this narrative, and I want to put them on record here. This gas is not being used to shore up the energy grid. That's a blatant lie. The biggest domestic use of gas in Australia is by the gas industry themselves, who use it for their own operations. The vast majority of Australian gas—around 80 per cent—is being exported overseas to countries like Japan and Korea. Australians see next to no royalties or tax from it. And then—get this—Japan gets such a good deal on Australian gas that they're onselling it to other countries. They can do that because Japanese domestic LNG demand is actually falling. They're exporting more than they're importing. Then you've got this absurd situation where Japan is now a competitor with Australia in the overseas gas market, except it's with our gas. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Australians are getting taken for a ride by the gas industry. Indeed, they are being gaslit, and there are backers in both major parties. The government just loves this project so much they even gave it an exemption from their energy price caps. The urgency of this motion is clear: we're in a climate crisis, and this government is addicted to approving new coal and gas. The gas industry in particular has a stranglehold over the government. We saw this with the release of their gas strategy a few weeks ago, which locks in new gas past 2050. This government has just released a budget containing tens of billions in fossil fuel subsidies, including $1.5 billion in funding for the Middle Arm project, which is a gas export hub. That's $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars to assist gas companies—who, again, pay almost no tax or royalties—to assist them to export Australian gas, which other countries are then onselling for a profit. Taxpayer money is going to benefit gas companies and is making the climate crisis worse.

Gas, of course, produces fugitive methane emissions that are 80 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It's not a safe fuel. Fugitive emissions are also, of course, very hard to keep track of, because they're gas. We really have no way to predict the effect, and we're expected to believe that gas is somehow a cleaner energy source. That's another untruth that this government is actively peddling. The climate crisis is as urgent as ever. The government knows it. The government know that every fossil fuel project they approve makes climate change worse, and yet they go ahead with it. They know it means more natural disasters, including floods and bushfires. Globally, the number of extreme wildfires has doubled since 2003.

We in Queensland know that floods are happening more frequently, but underreported are also the effects of climate induced heatwaves. Places like Western Sydney will swelter through twice as many days above 35 degrees by 2050. That is just unsustainable. It's uninhabitable. The government's own data predicts over a thousand deaths each year in Australia's major cities—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth—by 2050. That's not a thousand deaths cumulatively; that's each year.

Disadvantaged people and elderly people are most vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves, and that's according to the government's own data. This goes to what ACOSS is begging for, and was begging for this morning, in this urgent emergency. ACOSS is at the front line of trying to help those who are worst affected by climate change. ACOSS says—these are their seven principles—please reduce emissions quickly; please promote good health and wellbeing; please promote human rights, fairness and equity; please promote inclusion and representation; please uphold First Nations rights to sovereignty and self-determination; please, we beg of you, government, ensure a fair employment transition; and please, we beg of you, promote ecological sustainability and nature repair.

The government knows that this is a problem. They know all of this and yet they still approve more coal and gas. Make it make sense.

Ian Goodenough

Is there a seconder?

Stephen Bates

There is a seconder. I second the motion. Our federal environment minister has just approved a Gina Rinehart backed, huge coal-seam-gas project in my home state. This project, the Senex Atlas stage 3 project, will clear 360 hectares of endangered koala habitat in inland Queensland for fracking. This project is expected to require the drainage of a whopping 6½ million litres of groundwater as the coal seams are depressurised every day. Let's not forget that the depressurisation of coal seams across Queensland's Western Downs is causing some of Australia's best farmland to sink. Lock the Gate said it best:

"Minister Plibersek is happy to pose for photos with cute and cuddly koalas one day and then approve the clearing of hundreds of hectares of koala habitat for new Gina Rinehart-backed coal seam gas developments the next … "

Queensland communities are already incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, yet we have the Labor government approving yet another polluting fossil fuel gas project, further exacerbating the climate crisis.

The overwhelming majority of Queensland's gas extraction is exported overseas, and the biggest domestic user of gas in Queensland is the gas industry itself. There would be no need for this project if the federal and state governments were managing existing gas fields in the national interest. This project is going to result in 151 coal seam gas wells and a 300 million litre CSG brine storage requirement. This is only going to make the boom-and-bust cycle of short-sighted gas development worse in the Queensland town of Miles. So here we go again: yet another fossil fuel approval from this Labor government. It's not the first, and it's abundantly clear it's not going to be the last.

How long can the Labor and Liberal parties continue to ignore the most basic of scientific facts. Approving new fossil fuel projects is bad for the environment, the climate and the future of our planet. April was the warmest month on record—the 11th month in a row of record global temperatures—and sea surface temperatures have been at a record high for over a year. The world's top scientists now believe that we're going to blow past the 1.5 degree target set by the Paris climate agreement, and here we have the Labor government willingly approving new fossil fuel projects, despite those warnings.

You don't have to look too far to see to why this is happening, though. We all know it, so we're going to say the quiet part out loud. Over the last decade, the fossil fuel industry has donated $13.7 million to the Labor and Liberal parties. You might be asking: why both? It's because it guarantees that this dirty industry has influence and power regardless of whether Labor or the Liberals win the election—and what a return on investment they get. This last budget continued to hand over billions of dollars in subsidies to fossil fuels at the expense of communities right across the country. Coal and gas say, 'Jump', and this government simply responds with, 'How high?' It is abundantly clear that you cannot trust either the LNP or Labor when it comes to protecting our environment. The LNP still don't really believe that climate change is even real; and then we have the Labor Party, which has the gall to tell us that they think it's real while they continue to approve new coal and gas wells. It's actually insulting!

This latest approval of 151 coal seam gas wells is the latest in a long, long line of this government ignoring science and ignoring every single person in this country asking for climate action, and it must be overturned.

Adam Bandt

This is astounding! Usually, when we have a motion condemning the government, someone from the government comes and speaks in defence of what they've done. But, no, the government can't even come in here and bring itself to justify why it has just approved 151 new gas wells in the middle of a climate crisis. There's a reason that the government cannot bring themselves to come in here: they are utterly ashamed. Labor are utterly ashamed, and they should be. The environment minister has just approved a climate-destroying gas project to run until 2080. They told us we were meant to be at zero emissions at 2050, and Labor are approving coal and gas mines to run out to 2080.

When is the environment minister coming in here as this parliament moves to condemn her? The environment minister cannot even bring herself to come into the chamber and justify this climate-wrecking decision. I thought we had got rid of Scott Morrison and his gas led recovery, but what's becoming crystal clear by the day is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell Labor and Liberal apart on coal and gas. Labor pretends to care about the climate crisis and then they come into this place, with the power they've got, and approve new coal and gas mines running out to 2080. And they can't even bring themselves to come into the chamber to justify it. They should be ashamed, and they cannot hide from the Australian people their climate-destroying approval of coal and gas mines to run out to 2080.

This must be overturned—this must be overturned! If we're to give our kids any chance of a safer climate, we must stop approving new coal and gas mines. You cannot put the fire out while you're putting petrol on it. The first step to tackling a problem should be to stop making the problem worse. At a bare minimum, Labor should stop approving new coal and gas mines. This is a contemptible decision that the government can't even bring itself to defend. This motion should be passed and this terrible decision should be overturned.

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Bob Katter

I return to what I was saying previously. The minister is saying, 'We'll cut the costs.' You want to know what you're doing in this place. On the face of it, you say that, instead of having to go to the pharmacy twice in 60 days, now you just go in once. So this halves the income for a pharmacist. As I said previously—there's no doubt in my mind. I say: hold on a minute; if you halve the income for pharmacists, a lot of them are going to go broke. Where are you going with this? I don't notice any pharmacists in my area running around in Mercedes-Benz motor cars and going on trips overseas. What are you going to do—just wipe them out?

I've always said: in politics, follow the money trail if you see something that you don't understand, and say, 'What's going on here?' So, if you're going to halve the income for pharmacists—some of the most highly respected people in our society—who's going to benefit from that? Is the consumer going to benefit? To some degree, yes. But it's a very small degree to which the consumer is going to benefit. Who benefits? Well, if there are a whole lot of the owner-operator pharmacies going broke then of course it's the big two who benefit—here we go again! It's Woolworths and Coles. And now we've got the two giants, Terry White and—the second company is eluding me at the present moment. Those two companies are on 42 per cent of the market now.

There is no doubt that this move will give them another 12 or 14 per cent, and that's what's speculated inside the industry. Their percentage will now go into the mid-50s; from there, it will pay them to pay big money and go to over 60 per cent; and from there it's like Woolworths and Coles and they can charge anything they like. They've got no competition. So what appears, on the face of it, to be moronic stupidity that will wipe out one in four pharmacists in Australia—of course, in the small towns, forget about your pharmacy, it'll be gone!

The thing that always intrigues me about politicians in Australia today that is so fundamentally different from the politicians 40 years ago—40 years ago they cared about people. I remember saying to the much maligned Bjelke-Petersen, 'I have a portfolio that is manned by whitefellas, and it's a blackfella portfolio.' He said, 'What do you want to do?' I said, 'Obviously, I want to change it over to blackfellas, of course.' He said, 'Bob, we don't sack.' I said: 'No, it's a policy of nonreplacement. Within three years, we'll just about achieve that goal.' He again said, 'But, Bob, we don't sack.' We cared about people; we didn't want to go around sacking people.

We lost government in 1990, and within five years the ALP had sacked 12,000 railwaymen and 2½ thousand electricity workers. We had to go to computerisation, so there should have been a reduction in employment. We employed 22,000 in 1979, and 10 years later we were employing 21,000 in 1989. When the ALP came in, they were employing 7,000. So here we have it again. Don't you care about people, and don't you understand that these pharmacists are going to be destroyed?

I just want to say a few words on what a great group of people pharmacists are. Trent Twomey, head of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, was head of Advance Cairns. He and I were instrumental in getting the Gordonvale CBD road made into a two-lane divided highway, which is very safe and very quick for people to get to work or move out of Cairns. He played a very real role in getting the alternative route, and I must say the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, played a very key role as well in the alternative route that cuts the round trip from the huge fruit and vegetable growing area of Far North Queensland to Melbourne by 1,800 kilometres. It's a wonderful breakthrough in saving our fruit and vegetable growers both for tropical fruit and vegetables coming out of Far North Queensland and for temperate fruit and vegetables coming out of Victoria. Trent Twomey played a key role in that. He's the head of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, but in that case he was with Advance Cairns.

Michael Collins, in my own hometown of Charters Towers, put in a lot of money—I can't divulge how much, but it was an awful lot of money—to get the North Queensland Cowboys rugby league team going, which has been a great and exciting thing for the people of North Queensland.

Madam Deputy Speaker Chesters, I don't mind people ignoring me, but I do object when they're talking to each other across the chamber, which I think is exceptionally rude and bad mannered. My parents brought me up to not speak while other people are speaking, but obviously their parents didn't bring them up that way. So I'd ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to please stop them from talking across the chamber while I'm trying to talk. Thank you.

I used the case of Michael Collins, who is so typical of pharmacists. He put real money in to get the Cowboys going, which is a wonderful thing for North Queensland. He got rugby league going in Charters Towers. He was one of five or six of us that met and got rugby league going in our own town, where three or four teams are now playing. He did a hell of a lot to rescue the schools in Charters Towers when they got into trouble—the huge boarding schools that provide a wonderful service to people of the outback, where they can go away to boarding school. He was the commentator for the country music festival and the race club. These people contribute to our community. Why would you hit these people? Why would you halve their incomes? What's the benefit to the Australian people? Infinitesimal. But what is the value to the two giants in the pharmacy industry? Colossal.

I will repeat what I said earlier today. The spokesman, the assistant minister for health in the Senate, let the cat out of the bag. As I said: follow the money trail. She said—and I must say it was quite a stupid comment and quite damaging to her party, for those that picked it up—'We haven't been able to speak to the Pharmacy Guild, but we have spoken to Chemist Warehouse.' Yeah, I bet you did! You spoke to Chemist Warehouse because this will enable them and their other competitor to move into a Woolworths-Coles position in the Australian economy. For some reason, the governments of Australia and the politicians in this place have no understanding of economics. Obviously, if you have a free market system, you'll say, 'Oh, a free and open market system will deliver you cheaper prices.' No, it won't; it will deliver you an oligopoly. This is what it's done in almost every area of concern that we have in Australia.

I will again refer to Woolworths and Coles. We have a potato grower that ploughs the field. Then he has to till the field. Then he has to plant the potato. Then he has to irrigate the potato. Then he has to fertilise the potato and keep the pests and diseases out—a lot of work. Then he has to pull it out of the ground, put it on a truck and take it to town. In the town, Woolworths and Coles take the potato out and put it on the shelf. He gets 45c per kilogram, and they get $4.20 per kilogram! And that's what's going to happen here. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind that once they get what the ALP is delivering to them, an oligopolistic marketplace, they will charge what they like. So, in the short term, you can say, 'Competition will reduce the price' Yeah. But in the long term you will have an oligopoly and you'll know what pricing is about.

I want to say one other thing about pharmacists. They are the first line. I myself had an interesting case. I had a little pimple thing on the side of my face that was itchy, and I raced down to the pharmacy, which was still open at nearly 10 o'clock at night, and I said: 'I just want something because it's a bit itchy. It's just a little pimple.' And the pharmacist said: 'No, I think that's shingles. That's very serious indeed.' At five to 10, the doctor was still in, so I raced down to the doctor, and she said: 'It's shingles. In 24 hours you might die.' (Time expired)

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