Michael McCormack
Riverina · National Party · Australia
“She told the local newspaper, the Daily Advertiser : He shared his personal story and he was just such a brave, compassionate man— and we heard that from the member for Chifley a moment ago. She continued: He was the most warm, caring, generous man.”
“He knew that he was going to succumb to the diseases that were afflicting his body, and yet he used his final months, weeks, days and hours to send a message to the nation about what can be done, what should be done and how we should act.”
“The coalition has concerns from the sector itself about the consultation process, including but not limited to the fact universities had not seen the bill before it was tabled. There are elements of the drafting surprising the actual sector.”
“My thoughts and love and condolences go out to Katie and his children, Emily, Matthew and Lucy. It is a profound loss that they have suffered. I listened closely to the words of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Minister for Health and Ageing yesterday before question time.”
“There are a lot of Australians out there at the moment who are very angry, and, when there is anger, there is unfortunately a race to the bottom when it comes to healthy debate. I don't need to remind the House about the sovereign citizen movement and what that can do to Australia and the nature and discourse of debate.”
“I do believe that children should be allowed to be children. We saw it in the veterans legislation, where there is now going to be a $5,000 cap on allied health for veterans to access important services. The Labor Party said: 'Trust us. We'll do the consultation over the next 12 months.' It's not good enough.”
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“He knew that he was going to succumb to the diseases that were afflicting his body, and yet he used his final months, weeks, days and hours to send a message to the nation about what can be done, what should be done and how we should act. That is extraordinary, when, as the Prime Minister said, as did the member for Hume, most people would use those moments to shrink away from society, to spend them with family and perhaps to feel sorry for themselves, but not Richard Scolyer, not this man, not this bloke. Wow! What an amazing human being he was and is, quite frankly. I used the present tense there because he will continue to be a name that will resonate throughout this nation. Whenever melanoma is discussed, whenever funding is required and whenever awareness needs to be raised, the name Richard Scolyer will live on.”
“My thoughts and love and condolences go out to Katie and his children, Emily, Matthew and Lucy. It is a profound loss that they have suffered. I listened closely to the words of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Minister for Health and Ageing yesterday before question time. I think everybody shared their deep and meaningful words about what a loss this nation has suffered. As the member for Chifley has just pointed out, the letter that Richard Scolyer wrote just prior to his death should be required reading in our schools. It shared the journey, the emotion and, you could almost argue, the Australian larrikin spirit of this bloke, and I'll call him a bloke because he was just one of us, but, then again, he was so much more special than most of us, because he knew what lay ahead.”
“She told the local newspaper, the Daily Advertiser : He shared his personal story and he was just such a brave, compassionate man— and we heard that from the member for Chifley a moment ago. She continued: He was the most warm, caring, generous man. On Saturday, about lunchtime, I received an invitation that has come from his wife, Katie, and his family to invite us, which was lovely. My husband and I feel very humbled to be invited to his state funeral. Annette, the Wagga Wagga community and, indeed, the nation have been so touched and are mourning the loss of Richard. No-one is mourning it more than his wife and children. They shouldn't have lost their dad. He's fought the good fight. He's finished the race. He's kept the faith to make sure that people know about this disease and other cancers and know to do something about it.”
“I'm so very pleased that Annette St Clair, a wonderful human being from Wagga Wagga, has been asked to attend the state funeral service for Richard at the Sydney Opera House on 13 July, and she's quite moved by that invitation. Richard Scolyer and Annette St Clair met about eight years ago through Melanoma Institute Australia. Just two years ago, Professor Scolyer came to Wagga Wagga as a guest speaker at the annual Amie St Clair Melanoma Ball, held in honour of Annette and Peter's beautiful daughter, Amie, who died of melanoma in 2009. She was taken way, way too soon. The world renowned pathologist and 2024 Australian of the Year passed away on 7 June. Annette said it was inspiring to hear his story throughout his journey.”
“I'll speak more about Richard Scolyer and his battles against melanoma and other cancers in this contribution, but we can ill afford to lose two men of their ilk and calibre and credentials at such a young age. Richard Scolyer was 59; Neale Daniher was 65. They probably lived a lot longer than some of the sufferers of the diseases which took both of those fine gentlemen, but they still went way too soon. They were still way too young, and they still had so much more to give. But their memory and legacy will live on thanks to their courage and the unique way that they both campaigned and advocated for and on behalf of the communities of people who are bedevilled by their suffering from MND and melanoma. The member for Chifley mentioned our sunburnt country, and, yes, we are.”
“Those were beautiful, powerful and heartfelt words from the member for Chifley. We all share his raw emotion. I can tell by looking at him that he is very touched, as we all are and will go on being, by Richard Scolyer's life. Australia has lost two giants in recent weeks: Neale Daniher AO and Richard Scolyer AO. Both should be posthumously awarded ACs because they are the best of the best—two 'ordinary men', in their own words, who've done extraordinary things for Australia, particularly in fighting insidious diseases. As members of parliament, we should do—and do do, I think—everything we can to increase funding for diseases which beset our nation. These two men have done so much to raise awareness and the stakes, in making sure that we—in Neale Daniher's case—fight motor neurone disease.”
“We know that the darkest chapter in history was the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews, and we must never, ever forget that. We must never, ever fall into being a society that allows anything about Hitler, about the Nazis and about their evil regime and the Holocaust to be forgotten. I think that the member for Shortland is better than his comments that he uttered today. It's unfortunate that he made them. Given the fact that he also made them in this parliament previously, I think he needs to really curb his language and be mindful of what he is saying and the people who might be affected by that sort of narrative, which is so unnecessary. With that, I wish everybody a very good winter. With that, I wish everybody a very good winter.”
“I note the member for Macnamara's presence in the chamber, and I note too his comments before that inquiry, in other motions before this place and in the media about the need to ensure that people in Australia feel safe. It's really important that Jewish Australians who have contributed mightily to this nation over many decades feel safe in this country. It is not right that children going to a childcare centre have to have additional security, that children going to cricket practice in Melbourne have to have additional security—quite frankly, any security at all—or that people worshipping at their synagogues have to have armed guards outside, protecting them when coming in and out of that particular place of worship. We have to be better.”
“There are a lot of Australians out there at the moment who are very angry, and, when there is anger, there is unfortunately a race to the bottom when it comes to healthy debate. I don't need to remind the House about the sovereign citizen movement and what that can do to Australia and the nature and discourse of debate. We've seen all too often our police being shown utter disrespect. When we as leaders make comments about former prime ministers—and we can go through each and every former prime minister's tone and language, but we're in 2026 and we need to be better than that. We absolutely do, I think. We are also in the midst of an antisemitism royal commission, and I think whatever we say in here and outside is really important, given some of the harrowing evidence at that particular inquiry.”
“But I was disappointed by the Minister for Defence Industry in relation to his comments at the National Press Club. I've given speeches at the National Press Club, and, like in the parliament, you need to have the right tone. You need to have the right message. You need to have the right narrative. To suggest for a moment that former prime minister Menzies was anything other than a patriot I think is a step too far. I don't think it is, in the national debate, right just at the moment—at any time. The Prime Minister has for some months been telling us to bring the temperature down, and I don't disagree with the Prime Minister in those sentiments, because we all need to reflect on our language. We are leaders in this nation, and our messages are important because they reach a lot of people.”
“Speaker, I too acknowledge your 10 years, and each and every other member who was elected in 2016. I well remember that election campaign. It was very cold. It was a very cold winter. It was a very long campaign. But the parliament was made better by the people who came into this place then. I think we all come to this parliament with a view to making our communities better, for a start, and to making our society better and to making our nation stronger. That said, I think standards are important in the federal chamber. I think it's good that the winter recess is now upon us, because I think we all need to take a deep breath and reflect upon those standards over winter. There's been a bit of faux outrage, a bit of confected indignation, today.”
“I say again that the sandstone universities are only as strong as the success of regional universities success. We have to make sure that our country kids who want to go to university are able to go to a university in a regional setting, because the chances are that, in three-quarters of the courses and cases, they will stay in that regional setting and we will not be exporting some of our best and brightest to the cities, never to see them again in our country settings.”
“As long as you're contributing to the common wealth, then good on you—as long as you're having a go. I've always said a TAFE certificate is worth every bit as much as a university degree—a hundred per cent it is—but we have to look at the model of universities. Labor claims that the Universities Accord bill before us is doing just that. I remain wary. I remain cautious. Whenever Labor says that it's opening the doors of opportunity or says, 'Trust us. Everything will be all right,' I must admit it does send a shiver up my spine. The minister's public sales pitch has been $3.6 billion over the decade and 230 000 additional universities places—all of this. Well, we will live in hope. The government must come to grips with the debt problem faced by not just CSU but also our regional universities.”
“Our sandstone universities, which have been very successful for a very long time, cannot continue to survive and thrive without the success of universities such as CSU and other regional universities. I will champion those universities for as long as I have breath in me, because all too often in country communities our best and biggest export are our children, our young people, those with the most potential. I have to say, and I really stress this, just because you have a university degree doesn't make you better than somebody without one. It does not. Some of our best and brightest people are those who would never go near a university other than to maybe fix the fridge or work as a chippie, a sparky or something that doesn't require generally a university degree to do that job.”
“Charles Sturt University, University of New England and other country universities which provide a great service—CSU does, and I'm fully supportive of that organisation—are in competition with the sandstone universities in our metropolitan cities. There are also significant concerns around institutional autonomy, efficiency, parliamentary oversight and ministerial discretion. We have to make sure that our regional universities are thriving, because the success of our sandstone universities is dependent on the success of our regional universities. It's like the hub and spoke model. Our cities can't survive and thrive without our country towns. They cannot. It's the same with universities.”
“I defer to CSU's vice-chancellor when indicating the debt situation that that university unfortunately finds itself in, yet vice-chancellors have agreed to a position which provides a centrally managed model. The minister and future ministers would gain extensive powers over domestic Commonwealth supported places, international student allocations, demand-driven higher education course places, needs based funding, conditions imposed on providers, and priorities and directions given to ATEC. These powers could be used by a future government to address serious policy problems. However, they do raise significant concerns about competition.”
“Whilst that is worrying, it's not entirely government's fault that CSU has found itself in such a predicament, but something needs to happen and be done to provide more support for regional education. The member for Whitlam gave a contribution prior to me and indicated quite rightly and appropriately how hard it is for young people in the regions to get that diploma from the university of their choice, because of socioeconomic factors, distance—all manner of reasons. And she was right. The central issue in this bill is not only funding or student places. The bill centralises enormous power over universities and higher education providers into the hands of the minister, yet, as the shadow education minister indicated, the vice-chancellors have agreed to this.”
“Professor Renée Leon, the vice chancellor, in a statement on 27th June last year, just 12 months ago, said: Charles Sturt University announced to staff and other stakeholders the need to remove $35 million from the University's operating budget between now and the end of 2027. She wrote: As distressing as this decision is, it should not come as a surprise. In recent years, the Australian university sector has been in crisis, with jobs, courses and research jeopardised by needlessly restrictive and unsupportive government policies. We have been saying as much to those responsible but those comments have fallen on deaf ears, to the detriment of our staff and communities.”
“In 1989—and I will remember this because I was the subeditor and night editor of the local Wagga Daily Advertiser newspaper at the time—the historic merger took place between the Mitchell College of Advanced Education and the Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education, incorporating into Charles Sturt University, with campuses in Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst and Wagga Wagga. I'm also proud to say that my three children, Georgina, Alexander and Nicholas, are all products and graduates of CSU, in teaching, accountancy and policing, respectively. I worry about and I am very alarmed at the fact that CSU has found itself in a very unfortunate debt situation.”
“Now, I represent the Riverina, and throughout the Riverina we've got many Charles Sturt University students. Charles Sturt University's genesis goes back to, would you believe, 1892 with the establishment of the Wagga Wagga Experiment Farm. In 1947, the Wagga Wagga Teachers College was founded, and just two years later the Wagga Wagga Agricultural College was established on the site of the experiment farm. In 1972, the teachers college reformed as the Riverina College of Advanced Education, which merged with the Wagga Wagga Agricultural College four years later. In 1985, the Riverina College of Advanced Education was renamed the Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education, with campuses at both Wagga Wagga and Albury-Wodonga.”
“A similar arrangement applies for the regional component. In short,' he said, 'the amount of equity and regional funding you will receive under the needs based funding grant guidelines are within the control of the minister,' Deputy Speaker, you no doubt would have heard me say often that I am not against ministers being ministers and ministers having control. But there is some concern in this particular legislation in relation to the control of the minister. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission is not involved. To the vice-chancellors—I'm quoting the member for Berowra here—'This is how you will be funded into the future.' And he expressed surprise at the fact that the vice-chancellors had so readily and so quickly signed up to this arrangement.”
“It shouldn't need to decide on a policy and then ram it through this House. It should be doing the consultation because, irrespective of what legislation it brings before this place, it's going to get it through. It doesn't need to ram it through. But it does need those stakeholder groups across industry, across Australia's society, it needs to do the proper groundwork, and it needs to consult. The coalition believes that this bill should be, has to be and must be referred to a Senate committee for an inquiry and report. It should. As the shadow minister for education said in his contribution: 'The equity modifier amount is again specified in the needs based funding grant guidelines. Presumably, in theory, any future minister could simply determine that the equity modifier amount is zero.”
“I do believe that children should be allowed to be children. We saw it in the veterans legislation, where there is now going to be a $5,000 cap on allied health for veterans to access important services. The Labor Party said: 'Trust us. We'll do the consultation over the next 12 months.' It's not good enough. The consultation should have been done prior to the budget, prior to the legislation, prior to our veterans being unnecessarily alarmed by what the budget changes could entail. They've got every right to be concerned, to be worried and, in some cases, to be fraught with anxiety. It's their livelihoods; it's their quality of life. All of that is at stake because of changes brought about by a government which doesn't do the consultation. The thing is that this government has a huge majority.”
“The coalition has concerns from the sector itself about the consultation process, including but not limited to the fact universities had not seen the bill before it was tabled. There are elements of the drafting surprising the actual sector. No exposure draft was released—probably no surprise there—and stakeholders were shown only limited material under confidentiality arrangements. This is so typical of Labor. It comes in here with legislation and without the proper consultation. Just this week, we've seen in the online legislation designed to protect children that the work, the background research and the consultation was not done prior to the initial bill being put forward. I supported that particular bill; I was in favour of children under 16 not being able to access certain social media platforms.”
“I always admire the person in Labor's central command who writes the titles of bills before the House of Representatives. This one, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, is written as if you couldn't oppose it—'opening the doors of opportunity'. It's so often the way with Labor that it comes in here as the government of the day with a 50-plus seat majority and feels the need to word its bills in such a way that, if you opposed it or went against it, you would be the worst of the worst. The coalition, as the shadow education minister, the member for Berowra, said, has not finalised its position on the bill. There are reasons for that. One of the reasons for that is, once again, Labor's lack of consultation.”
“As the member for Moore quite correctly pointed out—and he did, and I'll give him his due—the bill updates and maintains the accuracy and coherence of Commonwealth legislation, by correcting drafting errors, by repealing spent provisions, by removing obsolete legislative material and by updating terminology and cross-references inasmuch as where apostrophes—and nobody uses apostrophes any more, more's the pity; I do; I'm a real technical grammar—”
“When the teletext machine whirred, we knew that something was happening. Generally, it was the Greens being the Greens. They were just starting as a political movement. They were just getting a little bit of unfortunate traction, and, instead of something important happening, they were the biggest users of the fax machine, which you couldn't stop. You couldn't dictate who was going to send something or not fax through the good old facsimile machine. It was the same with the teletext. The Greens political party are the biggest abusers of environmental processes. Heaven help them if they were here to talk about the very important statute update bill. Schedule 1 of this bill contains 126 amendments across Commonwealth acts, and schedule 2 repeals more than 100 spent amending acts.”
“I'm old enough to have started in the newspaper industry when we were still—I can see the smiles of those opposite—using typewriters, would you believe? They were good old Remington typewriters. I've got a colleague who understands well! Thank you to my Tasmanian colleague. She gets it too. We used typewriters. And when the teletext machine would whirr into action, everybody got excited, because, at a country newspaper, it was something coming from afar. People might have thought it wasn't such a professional outfit, but when I became editor of the Daily Advertiser in 1991, I had 58 journalists in my newsroom, and there were 230 people or more who worked full time on that newspaper. They were heady days in the print industry. More's the pity, it's not the same now. I digress.”
“The Greens MP says the volume of documents produced under her call for papers motion was 'absolutely ridiculous'. O'Doherty wrote: Faehrmann made the complaints when seeking other documents, which she wanted in an "electronic form"—something the parliament refuses to do. Government emails are instead printed out, stapled and put in boxes. As someone who has spent hours poring over physical government documents, this Sauce columnist reckons she has a point. It's about time parliament joined the 21st century. That is one thing, but that Greens MP, albeit at a state level, is just like any other Greens political party MP. They want something, they demand something, and, when they get it, they're never quite happy. They're never quite satisfied. It's so typical of the Greens.”
“Interestingly, at the weekend I see in the Sunday Telegraph James O'Doherty's column 'The Sauce', no less. Under the heading 'Papering Cracks', he refers to the New South Wales parliament. I appreciate we are the Commonwealth parliament, but it's interesting because the same sorts of things that happen in state parliaments occur here. Here we have the good old Greens, in this case Cate Faehrmann, costing taxpayers—wait for this—$733,000 in public servant hours with a parliamentary call for papers relating to music and arts grants, and what happened? Her parliamentary demand resulted in almost 700 boxes of paper arriving at her office. Can you just imagine that? You know what she did? Having called for the parliamentary papers, she then complained when they arrived because there were so many volumes of papers.”
“The Office of Parliamentary Counsel prepares what is a routine statute maintenance, and through the Statue Update Bill 2026, the statute updates will happen. It makes technical amendments to enhance the accuracy and operation of Commonwealth legislation. The member for Moore has just spent the best part of 15 minutes telling us, 'There's nothing to see here, nothing to worry about.' I always get a little bit concerned when Labor members utter such words, because you can never be quite sure lately when government members stand at the despatch box or at the lectern in either the House of Representatives or the Federation Chamber and say, 'All will be well.' He also went to great lengths to talk about the necessity of sorts to reduce the amount of paper being spent printing bills and the like.”
“They should not be having that without it having to be explained to them as to why this is necessary and then having to justify why they need it. The minister needs to come clear on why it's necessary and explain himself a lot better than he has been. I would also like to mention the fact that I caught up this morning with David Johnson, who has been a fine Chief of the Defence Force. He is retiring—Admiral Johnston is—after 48 years of service, and we do thank him for those 48 years of service. That is extraordinary. We welcome Vice-Admiral Mark Hammond. He has been Chief of Navy, and he is very much going to fill the role well. We need the very best people as CDF. We need the very best people in our defence forces, and aren't we lucky we have them? But when they finish their service we've got to be there for them.”
“The government shouldn't be having to provide consultation on legislation that is either before the House or in the budget. You understand it with so many of them; they are triggered by things from their service. Rest assured, many veterans are not broken. They are not—they are contributing to civil society and getting back into the community and taking up jobs and doing all the sorts of things you'd expect them to be doing. Many of our finest Australians are people who've worn the uniform, and many of them are not broken. But for those who are, we need to be there for them. They had our backs when we sent them to conflict zones; we need to have their backs when they need it the most. They need it the most right now, and they should be having a $5,000 cap on allied health.”
“She shouldn't have needed to do that, because the legislation should have been right in the first place. I realise that in many areas of endeavour and many portfolio areas sometimes it is a moving feast, but if you do the work, if you do the background, if you do the consultation, if you take stakeholders on board with you—as we did when we were in the coalition and in government for nine years, we didn't have the messes to mop up that Labor seems to be having on such a regular basis. We did not have to go back and implement amendments and strategise about how we were going to handle the fallout, because we did our work, we did our research, and we took on board so many stakeholders. Our veterans are more important and our veterans need the very best health and wellbeing and welfare.”
“That might all be well and good, and the government may well be undertaking that consultation as we speak, or beginning to. But that consultation should have been done six months prior to the budget being handed down. This is so typical of this Labor government—that it hasn't done the consultation with stakeholders prior to bringing legislation into the House of Representatives on so many occasions. Then we're left to deal with the fallout when something is not as it should be. Either it gets through the Senate and comes back, or it doesn't pass muster in the upper house, and we're left with legislation that needs adjusting. A classic example this week was in the online space. That legislation needed to be updated, and the minister gave a press conference and gave an explanation while introducing the amendment as to why it was necessary.”
“That's why yesterday, when I sat opposite those much-credentialed and fine veterans from the RSL sub-branch of Cronulla, in the electorate of the member for Cook, they said they were very concerned about the changes to the cap, as are many veterans, particularly regional Australians, for whom services are not always as readily available as they are for those who happen to live in capital cities. Certainly when it comes to psychological welfare, and also the physiological services that that have been provided, we just need to be a little bit careful about making changes and then perhaps not explaining them as well as we should have. The government tells us—and the minister has been quite clear on this—that it will do consultation over the next 12 months.”
“He said, 'It is support predicated on the requirement that these reforms deliver genuine, tangible improvements rather than simply adding more layers of administrative complexity to a system that many servicing personnel and veterans already find difficult to navigate.' He added, 'We must ensure that this legislation is effective, proportionate and capable of delivering the improvements that are needed, recommended and promised.' Truer words could not have been uttered, because at the heart of this bill is our veterans, and they need every bit of support.”
“They are objectives that each and every one of us would wholeheartedly agree with. We all share those values. We approach this debate, as we do anything related to the welfare and wellbeing of our veterans, with an open mind and in the spirit of constructive engagement, as the member for Herbert, who is the shadow minister for defence industry and defence personnel, said earlier today in his contribution to this bill—although he did add that our support is somewhat cautious; he used that word.”
“I know that when the royal commission came to Wagga Wagga it heard some harrowing evidence, and not just in Wagga Wagga, where we've got tri-service. We've got the Kapooka Army Recruit Training Centre. We've got Airpower starting at Wagga Wagga; it says so on the hangar facing the airport, the Royal Australian Air Force having been established there during the Second World War, if not before. And we've got 80 personnel serving in the Navy. It's a long way from the nearest drop of seawater, but we've got a very visible and active RAN presence in inland Wagga Wagga. Who would have thought? But it's strategic, it's good, it's proper, and those men and women are playing a fine role in the ADF. The objectives of this bill are to strengthen the health, wellbeing and safety of our personnel.”
“I can tell you she loves policy. I think she'd actually make an outstanding parliamentarian. I really do. As well, she's building strong partnerships through stakeholder engagement. She's doing all of that and so much more. She's produced a very good paper just in the time that she's been in the role since 18 August. She was appointed on 1 August 2025 and began work a few weeks later, and she's getting on with the job. The Defence Legislation Amendment (RCDVS Implementation and Related Measures No. 2) Bill 2026 will be supported by the coalition, and it will be supported for these reasons. It directly implements 15 recommendations of the royal commission. Let us not forget that it was the coalition who introduced the royal commission, who ensured that it began.”
“Like the member for Solomon, I too had a very, very good meeting today with the Veteran Family Commissioner, Annabelle Wilson. It was 11 months ago today that she was appointed to that position. She too, like Mr Cox, is an outstanding human being. She is a widow. Her husband passed away. He was a member of the Australian Defence Force. We mourn her loss but we celebrate the fact that she is doing something as a legacy for her husband, her family, herself and the wider veteran community to bring about good change. Her roles and responsibilities include championing equity and accessibility for all veteran families, identifying systemic issues and advocating for reform, removing barriers to lasting change, escalating individual cases needing further attention and providing evidence based policy advice informed by lived experience.”
“I commend him for that address that he gave this morning in the Senate courtyard. I also acknowledge Mr Cox's years of service. He fought in Bosnia with British forces and also served in East Timor and Afghanistan as an outstanding Australian Army representative, somebody who is a Churchill fellow. That's how well credentialed Mr Cox is. That Churchill Fellowship, which was awarded in 2022, was to create a model of care for families supporting a veteran suffering psychological and/or physical injury. He investigated and evaluated examples of international best practice—having served with British forces as well as Australia's, he would certainly know this—in providing holistic support to defence families supporting a veteran with physical and psychological injuries as a result of their defence service.”
“If there isn't such a cap and it is making it better, easier and more efficient for veterans to receive services, why are the veterans arcing up so strongly against it? That's a genuine question. Maybe it's not been explained well enough by the minister, who, I might add, gave a very fine speech at the Parliamentary Friends of Veterans event this morning at which the Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency was established. I commend the minister for this agency. I acknowledge his appointment of Brendan Cox as the inaugural chief executive for the Veteran and Family Wellbeing agency. I'm not just saying it here. I said it on Sky News earlier. I mentioned the fact that I said to Minister Keogh that he gave a very eloquent address. Where praise is needed, I will certainly be the first to give it.”
“He pointed out the backlogs in the Department of Veterans' Affairs and what the government is doing to address that. I would ask, quite earnestly and genuinely: if in fact Labor is so much better at ensuring that the DVA is well resourced, why, oh, why were more than 100 positions cut from the DVA in the federal budget in May? It doesn't matter how you sugarcoat this, it was still more than 100 positions taken from an important organisation providing help, support and service to veterans. I would also ask: if the changes that were announced in the budget to the allied health provisions for our veterans were so necessary, so right and so proper, why is there white-hot anger in the veterans community about the $5,000 cap?”
“I thank the member for Solomon for his service as a distinguished and decorated Australian Army officer. I know he understands that the home of the soldier is at Kapooka, where he served. The long line of khaki that stretches from Gallipoli right through to the front gates at Blamey Barracks, right through to the present day, is an important thing—not just for our nation, but for the world. It is Australian soldiers, Australian aviators, Australian sailors and Australian peacekeepers who are relied upon so much to keep the peace, ensure democracy and give help where help is most needed. We do that in times of conflict and we do that in times of peace, and we do it very well—best in the world, I would argue. I listened to the member for Solomon very closely and deliberately.”
“But these NDIS providers that were providing travel to those towns about an hour's drive of Wagga Wagga now simply can't keep up with the cost of fuel, the cost of staffing and the cost of service provision when their fees are being reduced in this way. Meanwhile, we've got the shonky providers still operating. There has to be a crackdown. There has to be a proper audit in this space, and there has to be something done. I acknowledge that. But the vulnerable young people who need the care the most are now missing out, and the families are very upset. They're very worried. It's going to end up, as it already currently is, in a bureaucratic nightmare.”
“What that meant for towns such as Tumut, Gundagai, Cootamundra and Temora, in my electorate, which are about an hour away from the regional hub that is Wagga Wagga, where a lot of the service providers are—those good, professional, caring, loving service providers who've done the job for many, many years—was that all of a sudden they found that the travel component was packaged in with the total overall cost. They can't run a business on the smell of an oily rag. Whilst they are still continuing to do it for many, if not all, of their clients, they can't keep doing it. We've lost 40,000 small businesses already because of some of the policies of this Labor government and the overall decline of the economy.”
“Listening to the stories from families whose little ones, whose vulnerable ones, have been able to get care and provision because they live in a major regional hub such as Wagga Wagga but now, because of changes to the NDIS and this crackdown on the dodgy, shonky and charlatan providers—and I'm not against it—are going to miss out was heart-wrenching. This is what happens. It's not the ones who should be getting taken off the system and having their funds cut away from them. It's the ones who most need it, who most need the speech therapy, the physical care, the psychological care or the autism care, and they are not going to get it. Earlier this year—it was, I have to say, a blight on this Labor government—the government packaged the travel component into the service fee.”
“We need to do better and we need to provide more services for country areas. One of the provisions in the budget which I was most exercised about, as were many of my constituents, was the change for older Australians in their private health rebate. All that is going to do is push older Australians who are in more need of health care and should be actually using private health into the public state health system. It's cost shifting. That's what it's doing. This Labor government is guilty of cost shifting not only in the space I just mentioned but certainly in the National Disability Insurance Scheme space. I hosted a forum in between the sitting weeks for service providers and families using the NDIS.”
“I appreciate and acknowledge that there are regional members in the Labor caucus as well. But what we really need to do is make sure that we, at every step of the way, provide the funding where it is most needed. I have to say that I think we're eventually going to have to look at the Medicare provider numbers for some of those graduates—and for some of those people coming to Australia from overseas to practice, and even for some of the doctors who are graduating from the sandstone universities. It's not right or fair and it's un-Australian that too many regional people are waiting weeks and weeks in pain for the absence of a doctor when some areas—the leafy eastern suburbs of Sydney and elsewhere—have a doctor just about every square kilometre. It is simply not right.”