Tony Burke

I move:

That standing order 43 be suspended for this sitting.

That's so that we can continue with the bills. We'd be skipping members' statements, to give a reminder of where we're up to with time.

Milton Dick

I'll put the question.

Tony Burke

Before we go to the next item, I just ask that all members be reminded that if any staff are in the advisers box, they are there as guests in the House and no-one from any advisers box should ever be trying to participate in the parliament and certainly should never be in a situation where they are interjecting on anyone, especially against the Speaker.

Milton Dick

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question is that the amendments made by the Federation Chamber be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question is that amendments (1) to (3) moved by the honourable member for Curtin be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question is that the amendments moved by the honourable member for Kooyong be agreed to.

Milton Dick

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

Milton Dick

The member for Fisher has indicated that he wants to raise a point of order.

Andrew Wallace

Yes, thanks, Mr Speaker. I just want to raise this to your attention, and this goes to the neutrality of the chair, which is a fundamental principle of this place. The member for Wentworth stood in her place trying to speak on the amendments moved by the member for Indi. Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, who was in the chair at the time, did not give the member for Wentworth the call. The members on this side of the House were alerting the Deputy Speaker to the member for Wentworth being on her feet. This is not the first time this has happened, and I would ask that you inquire into the issue. Every single member in—

Milton Dick

Okay, resume your seat. You've made your point. Resume your seat. It's not a speech or a statement. You've raised the issue at the first opportunity to speak. I understand that. I'm aware of the issue, and I'll give a statement regarding the issue, but I'll hear from the Leader of the House first.

Tony Burke

Just to the point of order, I'd remind the member of standing order 47, which allows motions to suspend standing orders to be moved at any time. That's exactly what happened.

Milton Dick

Yes. The standing order enables, mid-sentence or mid-behaviour, for that to be moved. I like to give, and all the chairs like to give, all members a fair go, and I think that has been evident. I disagree with the member's statement—the way that it was phrased. What will also help is if the House in order and there are not people just standing around and making interjections, as I believe occurred at the time.

Honourable members interjecting—

No, we're not going any further with this. I've given a statement to the House. I've recognised that. But I want to reinforce what the Leader of the House says: at any time under that standing order—during a debate, when someone's on their feet or not on their feet—a suspension motion can be moved. So that is the standing order. If you're not happy with the standing order, I can appreciate that, but they're the rules that we all operate under.

Now we're going to move to the unresolved question on the amendments moved by the member for Indi. The question is that amendments (3) and (4) moved by the honourable member for Indi be agreed to.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is amendments (1) and (2) moved by the honourable member for Indi be agreed to.

Anthony Albanese

():  I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

In June 2020, in the days when oppositions actually developed policy, I went to the National Press Club to deliver my vision statement on science. My opening words were, 'One day, when the pandemic is over …'. With the spectre of a second wave of COVID then hanging over us, I talked about how the pandemic had been a wake-up call for Australia. I pointed out the anomaly that we were the only OECD country without an equivalent of America's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Knowing that a stronger future for our country depended on that anomaly being addressed, I called for the establishment of an Australian Centre for Disease Control, properly resourced and independent—a CDC that would provide governments with consistent, rapid advice and a CDC with a focus on preparedness for any future pandemics, including drills and exercises.

We must not forget that one of the factors that saw Australia even more vulnerable to COVID and its impacts was that we hadn't had a pandemic drill since Exercise Sustain under the Rudd government a dozen years earlier. The grim consequence of the coalition government's complacency was that we were woefully underprepared for what came. As the COVID-19 inquiry report would eventually lay bare, Australia went into the pandemic with no playbook for the pandemic, limited readiness of the National Medical Stockpile, and badly stretched aged- and healthcare systems.

A few months after my vision statement I used my budget-in-reply speech to commit a future Labor government to establishing an Australian Centre for Disease Control to bring us into line with other advanced economies. I'm pleased that, with this legislation, having followed considerable work to make sure we got it right, we're once again turning a vision from opposition into a reality delivered in government and maintaining our momentum in delivering for all Australians.

We are heeding one of the core recommendations of the COVID-19 inquiry: to ensure that in the future we are as prepared, as a nation, as we can be. So what we did was the systematic, orderly, considered development of policy into progress that defines the way that this government operates. We came into government with a commitment. We established the COVID-19 inquiry first and waited to hear that evidence in our first term. We took that influence and used that input into policy, and then, of course, we introduced the legislation in this term. Now, these amendments will improve that legislation on the basis of being prepared to consider advice and the process which we have gone through.

This will make the ACDC operational from 1 January. It will be an independent statutory agency led by a director-general. It will bring together critical information and experts to protect Australia from diseases and other threats to public health. The Australian CDC will provide high-quality analysis and advice on public health risks to governments and the Australian community. It will also promote and coordinate action to prepare for and respond to these tasks. Just as we've worked to apply the economic lessons of the pandemic by investing in our manufacturing capacity, strengthening our supply chains and building our economic self-reliance, we must learn the health lessons of that time as well. That is what this legislation does.

On a small sidenote, you couldn't ask for a more Australian acronym than ACDC, though if this ACDC were to have a theme song—and I know raising contemporary music is dangerous in this House—it would have to be 'Highway to Hell'. Once again, our government is delivering for Australians, delivering carefully and delivering methodically. We are a government that looks to Australia's future armed with the lessons of the recent past and an understanding that Australians are always best served by a government that governs not just for today but for the long-term future of this nation. I commend the amendments and the bill to the House.

Milton Dick

The question before the House is that the Senate amendments be agreed to.

Alex Hawke

I note the Leader of the House's remarks about the calendar; I thank him for that. We'll celebrate the Burke birthday sitting tonight; I look forward to that! I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent all remaining proceedings on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 taking place in this Chamber.

The opposition has looked carefully at what the government is attempting to do here. The Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025 should go to the Federation Chamber, but it was never intended to have matters of supreme importance to this parliament, like freedom of information—the primary governing legislation that protects citizens' rights against this government—dealt with in the Federation Chamber. We are moving today to stop this Labor government sending what is an important bill to the media and to the public—it was a commitment of the Prime Minister's at several elections that the government would have increased transparency and integrity in their legislation—off to the Federation Chamber. We do need to debate it here.

We've canvassed widely across the crossbench and the parliament, and there is extreme concern for the government's agenda in relation to freedom of information bills. Sending it to the Federation Chamber sends a signal that this parliament is not taking this primary piece of legislation as seriously as it ought to in relation to what is a critical matter to its citizenry. This government came to office promising increased transparency and increases to the protections of citizens against government, and we do need to suspend the Standing Orders so we can get this bill back to the House. That's why we didn't oppose the Leader of the House's motion—because he had two bills attached to it. The customs bill can go there—that's a simple matter for the House. No-one in this House would suggest that the freedom of information changes the government is proposing is a simple bill or an unimportant bill. Let the government come forward today and say this matter isn't important enough to be debated in the primary chamber of our country's parliament, the House of Representatives.

We have moved with great passion to make sure that this is debated here. It should be in the full light of scrutiny, in the daylight that the Prime Minister has called for repeatedly on many occasions of the media, before every single member here, and before the public who can be here to witness this in the galleries, and who are here today in many numbers to see us speak to the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill and to access their rights against government. There are a lot of people here; I want to note that.

In the 47th Parliament, amendments in 201 bills about this issue—or 44 per cent of all bills presented to the House—were referred to the Federation Chamber, sometimes with objections from the opposition. The government is regularly sending matters to the Federation Chamber that probably shouldn't be going there, so we will object where that's possible. This is the first time we have objected in this parliament. I want a government minister to come forward and say 'Freedom of information is a matter that should be shunted to a second chamber, because it isn't controversial.' I can assure the government and the Prime Minister that their changes to freedom of information are highly controversial and deserve a serious examination by this parliament.

We know what the government are trying to do here; they are trying to restrict freedom of information for citizens. They are trying to charge people as a way of limiting access to freedom of information requests   —the foundation of our democratic system. It's not just my view; it's a view of the Prime Minister's. It's his view, and he can come here and tell us why he is allowing his Leader of the House to move this to the Federation Chamber when he has insisted that Australia needs increased transparency from its government. I look forward to that contribution.

In the perspective that I have just raised, the Federation Chamber has become a legislative clearinghouse, and that is bad for democracy and bad for transparency on a bill that is so important to democracy and to transparency. The opposition and many of the crossbench cannot accept that in relation to a bill like this. This is a reasonable argument, and I know members sitting opposite understand that. I know that they like to have views exchanged between us about this. Let every single member of the government come forward with passion to say, 'We are restricting access to freedom of information under our changes,' let them argue why it's better for the executive and their own government to have less scrutiny over them.

I can tell you, having been in the executive of a government, freedom of information provides a great discipline to ministers. It's good for ministers, it's good for their office and their staff, it's good for their departments. It means citizens have fundamental rights to get information when they need it. It has led to so many things in so many governments, I can't list them all here today. I can only say to this House that the process—the sacred process in our democracy—whereby citizens should have access to the executive to say, 'We know something has gone on, we have a right to access it,' that exchange between citizen and executive government is an important fundamental. That's why this bill should not be sent to the Federation Chamber and that's why this suspension is saying, 'We must debate this here.' Let the citizenry witness; let the kids who come here to say 'democracy is fantastic' come and see the exchange of ideas. We will advocate as a coalition for greater scrutiny and transparency over the executive of government. Let government members come forward and say, 'We don't want that, we want more restricted access, we want limitations on the access regime that people will have under freedom of information.' Let them say that this should be sent to a secondary chamber where the debate won't so fulsome, where it won't be scrutinised and where it won't be in transparency. It's not lost on anyone listening to this debate, or anyone who's concerned about the freedom of information. I can tell you the entire media gallery is concerned about their access under this. It doesn't matter what their political persuasion, their background or their length of time in the gallery, the gallery—if they had a vote in the gallery—would say: 'This is limiting our access to information, and we oppose this bill.' That would be it, if they had a vote. They're the extra chamber. But they should be here to witness it. They can't all fit in the Federation Chamber. There's another important argument. They want to be here. They didn't know this was on the agenda. I'm sure we're going to tell them very shortly and say: 'Get in here and help us defeat this government on freedom of information.' And we know they're going to turn up in numbers, en masse. So that's another reason why we need to have this debate in this House, in the full glare of the media.

I welcome it, because there are not many times where we can all be in alignment. But the crossbench, I know, have concerns about this. The media have grave concerns about it. Individual transparency and freedom organisations have already raised that this is a massive overreach from the government. It just got a massive majority, but this wasn't on the platform—there was no mandate to reduce transparency or to reduce integrity. In fact, the Prime Minister promised the exact opposite from his government. So this is not the mandate the Australian people gave the government—to restrict freedom of information and to take a step backwards in relation to transparency. They have said, clearly, that they believed the Prime Minister when he said: 'We need the full light of day over government operations. We need the full light of day and scrutiny. Let the sunshine in.'

Well, let the sunshine in. We can't charge people to let the sunshine in; that's just not going to work. In fact, we know what that means—a regime to increase the cost means, effectively, that people won't be able to afford access to freedom of information.

You can see, just from my own contribution, how important this matter is. We can't let this go to the Federation Chamber. I know the Leader of the House is considering it. He's weighing up the matter very carefully. I think, on the customs amendment, we agreed—that was something that could go to Federation Chamber. The customs amendment is a straightforward matter for the government. But on freedom of information—not for us, as an opposition, not for the member for Hume, not for the member for Lindsay, but for each individual citizen who has come to the gallery today to access information from their own government, their rights will be restricted under this proposed bill from the government. So we want to stand up for them today. We want to stand up for our friends in the media, who also deserve access.

Frankly speaking, on the serious point here, all governments need this discipline. This will weaken the quality of your government. So I say to any of the backbenchers that are wavering—I can see their faces, frowning in concern at what I'm saying—your executive will be weaker. Ironically, that may help you get to the front! I'm just saying: you want to run a good government; I'm sure you do—and I'm sure every member here wants to run a good government—but your executive will be weaker; your discipline will be less.

More importantly, in an era of big government—with more public servants than ever and bigger and more bloated bureaucracies—citizens need to access the information they need. They need rights against their own government. And the freedom of information regimes are fundamental rights. They belong in the hands of our citizenry.

We oppose the government sending this to a secondary chamber. This is not a clearing-house issue. This is not a debate that should be sent somewhere to just ram it through or have no scrutiny. In fact, ironically, this is the bill about scrutiny of government! It should be scrutinised by this House. It should be watched by everybody here and everyone that wants to be here. Let's have this debate in this House. Let's have a fulsome debate. We want to hear arguments. We want to hear why the Prime Minister was wrong when he said, 'We want more transparency and more scrutiny,' and why whoever designed this bill got it wrong in restricting citizens' rights, restricting the media's rights, and restricting what has been a well-functioning system, for all governments, of access to information.

Milton Dick

The member for Macnamara, the chief government whip and the chief opposition whip and the member for Longman are not in their seats. You can't interject if you're not in your seat. I'm just reminding everyone. I'm not saying you did, but, everyone, we're just going to have normal rules. Is the motion seconded?

Andrew Wallace

I second the motion. The House of Representatives is the pre-eminent debating forum in this country, and, on an issue that is as important as government accountability and transparency, I would have thought that this government would relish the opportunity to have the debate in this chamber.

I've had the privilege of serving in this place for nine years, mostly on that side of the House rather than this side of the House, and I had the opportunity for six of those nine years to watch the Leader of the House go from Defcon 5 to Defcon 1 over issues around transparency and accountability. In fact, no-one does Defcon 1 like the Leader of the House. The issue of government transparency and accountability was, according to those members opposite—the government—one of their principal tenets, one of their principal pillars. I sat there and listened to speech after speech about how important it is to ensure that we have accountability in this place.

So you can only imagine my great surprise, when the chamber has an opportunity to debate a bill that talks about significantly altering the Freedom of Information Act, about significantly watering down the powers of the people to hold their government to account, that this government wants to send it off to the Federation Chamber, where none of you folk in the gallery will get an opportunity to look at it or listen to it. The students up there all want this matter debated in the House of Representatives, because this is the pre-eminent forum in this country.

Where the government consistently banged on for years and years about the importance of honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability, what do we get? We get the Leader of the House moving a motion to squirrel it away to the Federation Chamber. I say, even though it's his birthday: shame on him. I say to the Leader of the House, based on the previous speech and mine, I think we're getting to you. I know, deep down, that the Leader of the House has some modicum of respect for executive accountability. The concept of executive accountability is one of our fundamental tenets—

Josh Burns

Is this an audition for leader? Has he had a haircut as well?

Andrew Wallace

I take that interjection from the member for Macnamara—

Angus Taylor

He's good: that's it; it's in Hansard!

Andrew Wallace

and I hope he's in his correct seat, but I don't think he is.

This is an incredibly important issue. I will speak to the substance of the bill very shortly, and I encourage everybody to hang around for a few moments afterwards. But I implore the Leader of the House to let the sunshine in. This chamber has a skylight, and the best form of disinfectant is sunlight. The Leader of the House might notice that the Federation Chamber does not have a skylight. The House of Representatives will let the sun in and hold to account—it is a sign, it is a metaphor—the executive and this hopeless, arrogant government that would try to introduce a bill that would lessen accountability yet squirrel it away to the Federation Chamber.

For all those people who are listening on their radios, tuning in right now, I ask this question: have you ever even heard of the Federation Chamber? Most Australians will never have heard of the Federation Chamber. They want this debate heard right here today in the House of Representatives.

Long debate text truncated.

Lisa Chesters

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 has been a long time coming for people on my side of politics. This bill is common sense. This bill will be welcome news to all Australian workers. For businesses doing the right thing: keep doing what you're doing. This bill will have minimal impact on you, because it's not about you, the businesses that pay their employees super on time. This is about giving tools to the employers that might get a bit caught up and accidentally not pay on time, or the employers or businesses for whom not paying super on time has become part of their business model or who are unable to pay super on time.

It is a fact in this country that far too many workers go without super. Along the way, some in business in Australia have not accepted that super is not their money but their employees' money. Many, many years ago, this parliament, with the support of industry and the trade union movement, agreed to set up the superannuation industry. Today, it is worth billions upon billions of dollars, safeguarding savings for Australian workers for their retirement. It was founded on that fundamental principle: super is employees' pay. They defer collecting it, and it is kept in safeguard by superannuation accounts until they retire, but essentially it is their pay. They have earnt it.

As I stated at the beginning, the majority of businesses do the right thing. I acknowledge that. They put the pay aside and pay super. All of us in this place receive super on time, as do employees of the Parliamentary Service. The majority of businesses do the right thing and pay super on time. Advancement of technology has made it so much easier for our small businesses. The ATO already supports businesses using the Single Touch Payroll data system to ensure workers are paid super on time. This is how the ATO will enforce the legislation that is before us.

What we are proposing in this legislation is that, from 1 July 2026, employers will be required to pay superannuation guarantee contributions on the same day as wages instead of quarterly, aligning, for the first time, your regular pay with your regular super payment. Employers must ensure that contributions are received by an employees' super fund within seven days of payday. This change will make it easier for employees to track their super. It will ensure that they earn on their savings but also ensure that employers have the ability to manage cash flow.

I know those opposite like to claim that people in Labor don't understand small business. It is just a falsehood. We do, many people on this side of the House being small business owners themselves or having close connections with families through small business. I myself grew up in a family of small business. I can remember the work my parents did managing cash flow in the running of their small businesses, a second-hand furniture business and then a holiday hire company.

Cash flow with small business has always been king, and the ability to manage cash flow is critical, so I can understand why some small businesses, that are so focused on the day-to-day running of their business and delivering the goods and services, can sometimes get caught out with that super bill. Have they put enough aside? That is why this reform will help them. The Australian tax office and the Treasurer have already committed to supporting businesses to adapt to this system and manage their super. There will be a way in place, working with chambers of commerce and with the ATO, to ensure small businesses can transition to this system.

Those who will not like this bill are those businesses who are doing the wrong thing, undermining all of us, undermining the businesses doing the right thing and ripping off their workers—the ones who build that into their business model: the phoenixers, the people who will go and undercut or underquote another small business because they bank on never having to pay their super bill.

Before coming to this place, my background was working for the United Workers Union, in their cleaning and security divisions. Time and time again we saw dodgy cleaning companies and security companies undercutting someone who did the right thing by their workers—paid them properly—and then phoenixing at the point when the ATO chased them for unpaid super. Those workers would lose their jobs. The company would go into bankruptcy and would phoenix. The workers would lose their super. Through the Fair Entitlement Guarantee and, before that, GEERS, we would try to manage payment of what they were owed. The ATO, of course, would miss out on payments, and whilst, quite often, through the federal government-backed scheme, we could recover annual leave, they lost their sick leave and they lost their super. It was just accepted that you would not get that super.

This changes that. It catches out those businesses early and it will help break that phoenixing model that exists. It will be a game changer for those service based industries, such as cleaning and security and so many others, where wages are a critical part of the competitive tender. But, most importantly, apart from helping to create fair competition in those industries so businesses can compete against businesses on quality, not on the fact that you'll rip off super from your employees, those employees who've done that hard work and who might have been paid their weekly, fortnightly or monthly wages will also know that their super is being paid.

Since the creation of super, far too many people in our history have missed out on super, and many people in this place have shared those stories. Quite often it was when they were younger and they worked in hospitality or in a retail business, in those early days—and in those early days of super too. Quite often, when I'm talking to people in my electorate, I talk about my generation being the generation of super. Like so many others, I started working at 14 and nine months—legitimately, of course. I worked in my family's businesses. When you're working in a family business, it's a little bit of pocket money for those hours that you do when you're in the truck helping your dad with the deliveries or helping with the till. But I was 14 and nine months when I got my first job, and it was early days.

My generation, the people now in their 40s and 30s, will have a working life of super when they retire. Technically, for when it is planned, we should have enough to retire on. But far too many people in their 30s and 40s missed out on those early days of super because we didn't have the system set up. It was paid quarterly, and not all businesses did the right thing and put it aside. And there was the phoenixing that I talked about.

One of the reasons I got actively involved in the union movement was that I was one of those young workers at university who didn't get paid their super. I was being paid cash, and I said: 'Hey, this isn't right. I've got a pay slip here, but there's no super on it.' It was only when I started to ask questions that I discovered I actually wasn't being paid properly. There was something really dodgy going on with my pay slip. I got sacked because I was a casual worker, and I brought that up. But the bar didn't want to have a bar of it. So that was one of the reasons why I started to get actively involved in my union. I was one of those young workers who said: 'I should be getting pay slips. I've got this dodgy thing that doesn't look like a pay slip. Where's my super?' That is the experience of far too many young people. Even with all the advances in technology, where we're at today, this is still happening. This bill will change that.

This bill will ensure that super, for the first time since its creation, will be paid on payday. From 21 July 2026, employers will be required to pay super guarantee contributions on the same day as wages. The changes will make it easier for businesses, easier for employees, and easier for the ATO to detect missing payments earlier—before debts become unrecoverable and before some businesses are unable to pay. The legislation also updates the super guarantee charge, which is the penalty employers face if they fail to pay super on time. Under the new framework, the super guarantee charge will apply for each payday an employer fails to pay super in full and on time. The updated super guarantee charge includes national earnings, administrative uplift and choice loading as well as a number of other ways to help ensure that employers pay on time.

As I said before, this isn't just a great advancement and support for employees, to make sure that they get what they're owed. For those industries where wages are a big part of competition, it helps to ensure an equal playing field so employers who are doing the right thing are not disadvantaged in the market because of employers doing the wrong thing. It's something that's quite often forgotten in this debate. They think it's about employees versus employers, but it's not. It's about employees and good employers having the opportunity to compete in a fair playing field on the very fundamental that is their wages. This is what they've earned.

I'm reminded, as I stand in this debate, of all the heartbreaking cases that have come into my office and into all of our offices. People ask, 'I realised too late I didn't get paid my super; what can I do?' Standing in this place, I have to acknowledge Meryl Birch. She and her brother first came to see me when I first got elected. Her's is a legacy case that goes back to the previous two federal members for Bendigo. They knew her brother wasn't being paid super. They tried to pursue it, to get the money owed to her brother, and it never came. They went through the ATO, and they pursued the business. When the business eventually went bankrupt, they tried to get the money any way they could. It never came. She continues to try to get justice for her brother—even though he has, sadly, passed away—because it is money that he earned as part of his wages. He never got that money because it was deferred.

If this had been in place from the inception of super, then Meryl may have never had to go through this. Her brother may have been able to enjoy his retirement with his retirement savings, through super, that he would have earned. Meryl and her brother are just one example of the countless cases that we have all seen come through unpaid super and the impact it has on people's lives and their retirements.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands of other people who have just written it off: 'It doesn't matter; I've written it off. I can't cry over what I can't fix.' This reform will be a game changer for workers. It will ensure that every dollar they've earnt in their super will be there when they retire. It will make it easier for business to be able to pay on time and equal the playing field, disrupting the way in which the dodgy ones use it as part of their business model to phoenix. In construction, cleaning, security and other service based industries, it is real.

I'm proud to be part of a government that is making this reform happen, and I am ready and willing to work with our local small businesses to make sure they're aware of the changes they need to make to ensure they're ready for this. We can make this happen so it is a win-win for all. Ultimately, it's good for workers, it's good for businesses and it's good for the future.

Long debate text truncated.