Alex Hawke
Mitchell · Liberal Party · Australia
“I asked Telstra, and I do say to the government we need to start taking quite seriously the ongoing arrangements between NBN Co and Telstra—whether this is denying reasonable service to everyday Australians.”
“The reason why I'm raising it to the House's and the government's attention today is that, when the original NBN Co was created by the previous Labor government, there were these contractual clauses written into the legislation about denying Telstra the ability to offer the same services as NBN Co and, indeed, denying Telstra—and I spoke…”
“I rise today to take up the series of complaints in my electorate about the Telstra coverage and ongoing service-related issues in relation to mobile phone reception in the Hills District. I remind the House that my electorate is in a major metropolitan city, Sydney, in the middle of a really urbanised area.”
“Indeed, Telstra has been recommending to them—and I'm going to go through this specifically for one case in my electorate—the purchasing of an additional antenna at their own cost. It doesn't sound too unreasonable when you think about it for a moment.”
“As the Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Motor Neurone Disease, I rise to recognise Global MND Awareness Day, which just passed. It was a powerful symbol of hope for sufferers and their carers, who are showing the resilience of the blue cornflower every single day by caring for those with motor neurone disease.”
“This has helped draw attention to the national conversation about the realities of living with MND, the realities of the sufferers and their carers and the great urgent need for support.”
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“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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 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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Clearly, when we look at the Future Made in Australia program, we're now seeing not only the traditional industries like aluminium smelters needing bailouts and all of the things we're seeing in the matters I spoke about but also, as we saw recently, advanced manufacturers, like lithium ion battery manufacturers with government handouts, going into receivership. We say to the government: where are the new green jobs if we cannot manufacture advanced lithium ion batteries and have those companies succeed? We're paying out both ways. We're paying out with the collapse of our industry but also with the bailouts. The government needs to have a plan for cheaper operations in Australia, and we ask the government: what is that plan?”
“We ask the government: how can the National Reconstruction Fund meet its charter or mission given to it in legislation if the minister takes $5 billion out of it for its climate target program? That wasn't the purpose of the money in the National Reconstruction Fund. And it's not the first time the fund has been raided, directed, changed or modified. How will the National Reconstruction Fund do its job when $5 billion of its mandate is removed by the minister and allocated elsewhere? Clearly Labor has no plan.”
“There is a grave responsibility that comes when the government hands out this much taxpayer money to highly profitable corporations, and that responsibly must be a return for the Australian people. So we ask the government to outline what they are actually going to do. Why are they ignoring industry's continuing advice that energy pricing is their No. 1 concern? What is their actual plan for industry to make them compete better so that we don't have to use taxpayer money to bail them out? One million dollars per job today is a very expensive bailout from the taxpayer. In other areas, the government continues to repurpose the money in the National Reconstruction Fund.”
“The government will talk about world factors and say, 'There are state actors manipulating particular metals.' Well, sure, that may happen, and it may come about, but we can only control what we can control here domestically, and what we can control are things like energy pricing, availability, affordability and reliability. What we can control is our cost structures here that allow industry to compete against things like state-sponsored manipulation of different metals and other markets. While we accept the government has to bail out companies, the numbers are getting staggering in terms of money and value proposition. And, as many people have pointed out, the corporations behind many of these operations are highly profitable corporations internationally. They're paying large dividends.”
“Then there are considerations like the tax settings in Australia, the regulatory settings, the cost of doing business in Australia. We won't talk today about the industrial framework—I'm sure that will be talked about at another time—but we have the world's highest wages and we have high costs in other areas. We need competitive areas as well so that businesses and their operations can compete in Australia. That's what's required. Energy used to be our competitive advantage. The government, by not addressing domestic gas reserves and competitive energy pricing for industry, is causing the ongoing need for companies to come to government. Of course, we understand there are world factors.”
“What the government is failing to do, through its programs in the industry portfolio, is outline its plan to reduce costs for important industry players in Australia. The cost structures are what is driving the process. And it hasn't stopped with Glencore. Other companies, we now know, have their hands out, saying to government, 'We need large amounts of taxpayer money to continue our operations in Australia.' We ask: why is the government ignoring industry's No. 1 concern? The No. 1 reported concern over a long time now has been and continues to be energy pricing for industrial and manufacturing users in Australia. That's the No. 1 concern. If they cannot solve their cost-structure problem with energy, they will not be able to compete.”
“I rise today to speak to the industry appropriations. Clearly, the government's announcement today of the bailout of Glencore shows its ongoing instinct to continue using the taxpayer's balance sheet to bail out companies across Australia that are struggling to keep their operations open in many important sectors like smelting, manufacturing and heavy industry. The problem with this approach is that it isn't the last of the bailouts that the government will have to do. They have already committed billions of dollars for Whyalla, there have been hundreds of millions of dollars for Nyrstar, and today there is $600 million for Glencore. The Prime Minister outlined today in the House that that's 600 direct jobs. By any analysis, that is $1 million per job. That's an expensive bailout.”
“My question is also to the Attorney-General. I refer the Attorney-General to former premier Daniel Andrews's decision to attend the Chinese Communist Party's military parade alongside dictators Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Masoud Pezeshkian and Alexander Lukashenko. Is the Attorney-General aware of whether former premier Andrews has complied with the requirements of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, and can she report back to the House on the status of former premier Andrews's compliance with the scheme?”
“Well, we're holding back the Australian economy at the moment. We can do better. We will do better. We might need to change the government to do that, but we will support any measure from the government that reduces taxes or increases productivity in the meantime. We await with bated breath to see if they'll do it.”
“We need to be smarter and better and take a pure economic focus into the next few years, or we are sleepwalking into a disaster. And so, with that in mind, that will be my prime focus for the next three years—improving the ability for the private sector and our economy to, again, do the heavy lifting for Australia in growth, in prosperity and in paying the government's bills too, which would be a bonus for the Labor Party. The government's going broke. The answer is not to do more taxes; it's not to introduce more charges on people. Let's grow the economy again. Let's listen to abundance. Let's have abundance. Let's bring it back. I don't care if you do that in a left-wing context or a right-wing context. Abundance means we grow the economy, we let people succeed again and we stop holding them back, as the Prime Minister might say.”
“But, if it doesn't produce results, we're going to see these trends continue—no private sector investment, soaring housing costs and the costs of doing business, and an increase in business collapses. The public finances can't get us through this period. There are only so many times the government can pay a small amount of a person's power bill or hand out money to a business to keep it going. The public finances will not sustain that in the long run. We must bring down costs, see cost structures come down and improve our competitive advantages. And we can do these things. We have an energy abundance, and yet we're charging the highest rates for power of all the developed countries from our own citizens and businesses. Why are we doing that when we have all the resources in the world?”
“Now, I'm thinking we don't have a lot of time. There are cost pressures for most businesses that have come to me, and they say their profits are very, very thin. The margins have dropped in small, medium and large businesses. Large businesses are asking for bailouts and handouts. Medium and small businesses are collapsing at record levels, and insolvencies are through the roof. This is more than just the post-COVID period. That is not the answer to what we are seeing. There are serious collapses of small and micro and medium businesses in our country, and they cannot be explained by the post-COVID period. The government's response, so far, is to say we had a summit. Now, that's fine if it produces results, to be frank.”
“We're already seeing the broken nature of this model, so we must come up with cost-competitive and pro-economy models. The government started by saying: 'That's exactly what we will do. We will have a productivity summit. We will have an economic roundtable.' We're all still waiting for the memo of what happened at the economic roundtable. What came out of the economic roundtable? Where are these productivity measures? What is going to happen to our economy? Well, the government's gone silent on that. So either they've got some really, really good ideas from the summit that they haven't told us about yet and they're working on them or they're working on other things that they came up with that they already had agreed to—well, we're going to find out which. Or they still don't know what they're going to do about it.”
“It's a very serious warning that hasn't got enough attention, in my opinion, because prices are going to stay very high. So the government does need to pay attention to this. More regulation is not the answer, and more and more difficult regulation is not the answer. We have some of the world records in regulation in terms of our business sectors. Our competitive advantages have been eroded over time—sometimes by deliberate design; sometimes accidentally, to be fair to the government; and sometimes because things have changed under us. But all of them acting together means our country needs a new economic compact to be able to see more growth and to see our cost structures come down. It will be unsustainable for the government to hand out and subsidise sector after sector with public finances.”
“That's why the Reserve Bank governor warned—it wasn't picked up, but she warned very clearly—that there would be no price deflation in the foreseeable future. That wasn't widely reported, but what that means, in relation to the cost of everything, is that nothing is going down in the foreseeable future, so costs are going to remain unsustainably high for all our goods and services. As to whether wages will try and catch up with prices, she's saying they're not going to do that. Normally, we would have periods of price deflation where costs and things come down, and there would be a catching-up because of downward pressure as well as upward pressure. The Reserve Bank governor is signalling to the government and the economy that we're in for a difficult time. There will be no price deflation.”
“You don't have to believe me—I don't ask any government members to listen to me at all—but grab A bundance and open it up and have a look. That's what it says in there. Abundance says that. That's all the rage in leftie circles. So have a look at it. It says, 'Don't kill the private sector in your state, because they have to pay the bills at the end of the day.' You should really pay attention to Abundance . Don't listen to a word I'm saying; I honestly say, 'Don't do it.' I'm not saying it's a good book; read it. I encourage everybody, including my left-wing friends, to read Abundance . The settings for Australia are quite serious. We're at a time when our cost structures are going through the roof.”
“But they made the point—I think quite sensibly—that they had gone through all of their members around the country—big businesses and everyone who does a lot of foreign investment—and looked at the state of Victoria as one case study, and they said that there had been basically no big new private sector investment in Victoria for two to three years. Nothing has come on. Now, I'm from New South Wales. I love Sydney, and I'm not a huge fan of Melbourne in the Sydney-Melbourne dynamic. But I will say this: I don't find it good that in the state of Victoria there is no new private sector investment. There must be new big-scale private sector investment in the state of Victoria, including Melbourne. So, whatever settings are broken down there in the government and whatever they're doing to discourage private sector investment, you need this.”
“So I do endorse that book, yes. We do need the private sector to survive. They do something useful for the government. They do pay the bills. So I welcome the fact that he's found it. I'd say to him that we must do more to make Australia competitive again and see growth again. If there is zero private sector investment—and, anecdotally, big business chambers and some of the biggest business representatives across the country have come to see me. I won't identify them here, because everyone lives in terror of the Albanese government's supermajority.”
“They say, 'We've got some government public money that we're going to borrow and put into some funds, and we'll ask them to give you a bit of it to keep your operations going for a while.' That doesn't smell like success to me. We do need a 'future made in Australia' policy that recognises that the cost structures of doing business in Australia are at record highs and our international competitiveness is at record lows. Private sector investment is at a record low in Australia. Even the Treasurer has discovered that this is a problem, even if it was by reading the book A bundance , I understand. I actually endorse the book Abundance ,becauseit actually says what people on the left of centre should have realised for a long time: you can't kill the private sector. We need it to pay the bills. That's the essence of the book.”
“Yet what we see from the government is: 'I will give you a small bit of public money rather than focusing on the core of the problem, which is: how do we reduce cost structures, what is the competitive advantage Australia can see again, and can we have a reduced power cost profile for manufacturing?' Well, there is no solution to that, and there is no solution coming forward. All industrial users report that the cost of their new energy contracts is much higher than that of their existing contracts. We have no industrial relief; the government will provide none. The productivity roundtable produced exactly zero ideas that the government have said they will agree to on lowering costs through productivity. So what is the government's response to whole sectors of our industry being on their knees?”
“Energy costs are through the roof, not just for consumers but for manufacturing and domestic industries. Wages are, by deliberate design, being pushed as high as possible, even though we've seen today that profitability in all major sectors is in many cases negative and in some cases very low. Profitability is falling and wages are going up unsustainably in comparison to profitability. Of course, we also have cost and regulation imposition from our net zero commitments, our carbon taxes and all of the things that are being imposed on businesses in Australia. So costs are going through the roof—industrial costs, costs of doing business, costs of components coming into the country and more. Everything is costing more.”
“Having been elevated to shadow minister for industry and innovation, what shocked me the most about getting an update from every major business around the country in the industry space was that a lot of them are on their knees in terms of their profitability and their ability to compete internationally. Almost all substantial heavy-industry businesses across the country are asking for a handout or bailout from the government—and they have serious reasons to do so. The government's response, of course, has been to have funds like the National Reconstruction Fund and the Future Made in Australia fund to hand out money to businesses. We still question the wisdom of this approach, because the government continues to increase the cost of doing business.”
“Rents are going up, yet we don't see any policies cutting through to reduce the actual cost of construction, to accelerate the release of land and to see more and cheaper dwellings built in a faster way—and this is going to get even more urgent in coming years. It's incumbent upon parties like the Liberal Party to have a good quality housing policy at the next election. It's something that we will absolutely be committed to working on, to make sure that we can cut through this cost dynamic and to make sure that we do put downward pressure on prices so that people can afford to rent and afford to live. We've also seen cost-of-living pressures placed on every kind of business around the country.”
“All constructors and builders will tell you that in Sydney today you could probably not build a house in New South Wales at the moment for less than something like $400,000 minimum. Why should it be the case that that is the minimum house cost before you even get to the price of the land? We need to provide cheaper housing solutions—and more of them, much faster—if we are to seriously tackle this issue. I flag again—with the state government in particular, but also the federal government—that these housing policies are not going to be sufficient to reduce prices. Prices are going to continue to rise unsustainably. It's not going to put downward pressure on rents.”
“It doesn't matter when the fund comes online; even small increases in the amount of social housing will not solve the basic economic problem in our major cities, where unsustainable price rises for housing and now rent are causing a cost-of-living crisis. People are paying more for their mortgages, even with interest rate reductions, because prices are going through the roof. With their deposits lower, they'll still pay an enormous proportion of their disposable income into mortgages for longer. Rents are through the roof. People can't afford to rent. We have social challenges in front of us that are immediate and require much more urgent action from state and federal governments, in terms of unlocking cheaper and more sustainable housing for all kinds of people who are seeking housing in the market.”
“More houses were built in the year following the end of World War II in a single year in our state, the biggest state with the biggest economy, than were completed in the last year, despite, so many years later, demand and population being through the roof. This is a huge problem. Prices are going to continue to increase. The cost of housing and now the cost of rents will increase, with unsustainable rent increases still coming across the City of Sydney. People are getting rent increases again—big ones. This is going to continue to be a drama. The government says: we've got a fund, and, with the earnings off the fund, we'll build a few houses. This is not going to solve the problem.”
“The government needs to be very careful about the unintended consequence of this policy: the impact of it at this point in time on pushing up prices, especially in metropolitan cities. It could be real. There's no point hitching someone, on a five per cent deposit, to an unsustainable price if that price is going to continue to rise because of these demand-driven policies. There isn't the supply, even with the Premier's good intentions to fast-track homes and fast-track projects; they're still two to three years away in Sydney. I want to remind this House that the state of New South Wales built more houses at the end of World War II than we did in the last year, despite a population differential, with a substantially lower population.”
“The average price in my electorate is heading to $1.5 million or $1.6 million for a basic dwelling. This is unsustainable price growth already, so I do question and caution the government about its five per cent deposit guarantee which they have been trumpeting. It is worth trying as a policy, but to apply it to properties up to $1.6 million—to have five per cent with no income limits on $1.6 million—does create a lot of questions. One of those questions is: have they modelled the impact on prices in major cities of all these new buyers being given, in effect, the guarantees to access the market in a demand-driven way? We've already had 10 and 20 per cent price increases in recent times. Will this increase prices further? Some economists say it will. How will that help people if prices continue to rise in this unsustainable fashion?”
“They were election announcements committed to, but they have not been forgotten just because the Albanese government has won the election. They need to come forward with this money and provide for this critical infrastructure in parts of Sydney. So I will be holding them to account on that. The signal that was sent to us—to the Liberal Party here in Canberra but also to me as a representative of my electorate—was that people wanted us to do better on the economy in particular. The economy continues to be the No. 1 issue in Sydney. The cost of living is through the roof, and that isn't just a mantra people use every day about the cost of living. I can attest to the House personal anecdotes from my street. A property sold this month for $2.3 million which would have been about $1 million 10 years ago. Prices in Sydney are through the roof.”
“The 20,000 petitioners have already got a win, we have seen a downscaling of these zonings and we have seen some sensible adjustment. I think Minister King in the previous government promised infrastructure funding, and she actually made some announcements with the member for Greenway, including a huge amount of money, half a billion dollars, for regional parks, one of which is in my electorate. We're going to hold the government to account for every single cent of that money—an enormous amount of money for three sites in Sydney, I must say—so that it is spent on the proper infrastructure provision within Sydney electorates. Some people will say they were good announcements, but we still can't get details or answers to basic questions. Where are the parks? What are they for? What regional precincts are they intending to create?”
“Now we understand that maternity services are going to come, but the hospital hasn't started, even though we're now looking at the fifth or sixth or seventh year of well-established need for this hospital, and the land is provided for, the site is secured, and we're ready to go. This has got to get underway. This is a top priority. For Premier Minns to tell us we're going to have an additional 20,000 residents when we already need our public hospital built, this is really where the priority is: better infrastructure and services, and for the funds to be provided at the same time as the houses and the dwellings. It isn't acceptable for a state government to say to a community, 'Take these additional dwellings without those services.' So we've got a good fight on our hands. Our community's up for it.”
“I commend the member for Greenway for getting that reversed. Good on her. We all took the same view early on that this was ridiculous. I think she was president of the Labor Party in New South Wales at the time. I just ask her and the state Labor government now: how could you possibly, in 2025, propose a brand-new public hospital without maternity services in the biggest growth corridor in the biggest city in our country? With completely ridiculous issues like this, the community has to waste enormous amounts of time fighting for basic common sense of government policy.”
“At the moment there is no plan for an additional school, and to propose even 20,000 new residents with no additional public school isn't an acceptable position from a state government—especially a Labor state government, I must say. Regarding the Rouse Hill Hospital, which the member for Greenway spoke about extensively in the campaign, there are more delays to the funding and the building of the Rouse Hill Hospital. It was commissioned by a Liberal government, the land was secured by a Liberal government, and the site was prepared and ready, with the funding put aside. That has still not commenced. We also had the ridiculous situation where the state government announced there would be no maternity facility at a brand-new public hospital in the biggest growth corridor in the biggest city in our country.”
“Through the community's action, through the Hills District's action, we put together a petition which has seen 20,000 people sign it, and it was submitted to the state parliament of New South Wales. That government already has relented and downscaled the amount of housing they are proposing in my community, in our federal electorate. This is a good and welcome move, but my priority as your local member for the term ahead will be to say to the state government: if you're going to increase the densities to that level in one community in the north-west of Sydney, you must provision infrastructure and you must provision the necessary services our community will want.”
“This election saw a redistribution that led to the loss of the suburbs of Box Hill and Nelson and a lot of Rouse Hill, which were vibrant and very special parts of the Mitchell electorate. We saw them go to Greenway at this election, and obviously it was sad to see them go. I still miss them, in terms of the connected community that we have with Kellyville and the rest of the Hills district. However, that is the theme of the times. In the Sydney equation, in the growth that is being put upon us by the New South Wales Labor state government, the lion's share of new housing is being asked to be met by the north-west of Sydney. In the initial proposal up to 30,000 new dwellings is proposed in already overloaded suburbs under the government's priority housing precincts.”
“It's a privilege to rise today to follow my good friend the member for Berowra, my neighbour in Sydney, whom I congratulate on his re-election. I obviously welcome the fact that, after a very tough contest, he was returned by the people of Berowra to serve them. I also want to open in this parliament by thanking my community in the Hills district again for their endorsement of me as the local member and their support for me to continue, for the next three years, to represent them in this parliament. It's been a great privilege for me to represent all of the communities of the electorate of Mitchell since 2007. However, we now have a very reduced electorate.”
“My question is to the Minister for Aged Care. I refer the minister to his previous answers. The minister has justified the government's decision to delay home-care package rollouts from 1 July to 1 November this year by saying, 'The legislative framework didn't allow for that start date.' If the government knew its own legislation didn't allow for a 1 July start date this year, why did the Labor government mislead Australians and promise to deliver 83,000 new home-care packages in November last year for 1 July this year on a timeline that it knew was impossible?”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. This morning, the Prime Minister snapped at a journalist, saying he had given '5,324 answers' as to why he has failed to secure a meeting with the President of the United States. Can the Prime Minister table these 5,324 answers, and could the Prime Minister explain to the Australian public whether his decision to recognise the State of Palestine means he is more likely to get a meeting with President Trump or less likely to get a meeting with President Trump?”
“As they seriously did interrupt proceedings in the House and it was obviously very difficult to hear members and questions, including the Leader of the Opposition's question and the Prime Minister, I just want you to report, when you're able to, on the strengthening of the security protocols that you undertook on 4 July 2024 and any other measures that might be required, on efficacy and, of course, if anyone in this House signed in the individuals responsible for the protesting and whether there'll be any penalties or other action taken against people who have disrupted parliament.”
“Mr Speaker, I have a question for you. Today, during question time, we had the unfortunate spectacle of several protesters interrupting proceedings in the gallery. I want to acknowledge the efficiency of security and other officers in removing those individuals.”
“Instead, this appears to me like more of the same discredited protectionist policies of the past but with less scrutiny and less planning than ever before. If the Prime Minister and the industry minister are serious about a return to government, surely they are going to need an investment plan, not just spending the money? This isn't our claim; this is from the Auditor-General. So we ask the government to seriously look at what they are doing in this fund.”