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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“This is not the Australia I grew up in. This is not the regional Australia that I know and love. These companies, quite frankly, can go to hell. They really can. Take Cheryl O'Donnell from Crookwell. 'We just get this constant noise,' she says. She lives in the shadow of one of these wind towers. She says she suffers headaches and dizziness from the continual reverberation. 'It can be like a jet engine coming over the hill.' About her husband, Michael, she said, 'He's broken. He said to me recently, "I'm running out of places to hide from them out here."' The Upper Lachlan council area between Upper Lachlan and Yass Valley has got 42 per cent of the state's green energy projects and it's not even in a REZ. Then you've got 60 per cent of the wind turbines in New South Wales in Upper Lachlan.”
“Emma Webb—she's a wool grower between Binalong and Bowning—told the Bush Summit in Wagga Wagga last Wednesday: It's really tough at the moment. I'm a wool grower, so anyone whose involved in the wool industry knows how tough that is and when you couple that with poor seasons and rising costs, things are really, really tough and what it means with it being so tough, is its opening up the door to predatory renewable energy developers coming into our communities with bags of cash and buying off farmers so they can industrialise prime agricultural land. And that's the rub, because these companies send out these spivs, they send out these shysters, and they are buying off one farmer and not the farmer's neighbour. They are making people who are generational friends friends no more. They are dividing families.”
“I do not believe we deserve this to be happening in our landscape and having our food security placed in jeopardy.' He's talking about wind turbines, and his area, Old Junee, between Wagga Wagga and Temora, is not a windy area. It's not an area where there are huge ridge lines, but it matters not, because these wind towers as tall as Barangaroo are coming to a country area near you. Yass Valley mayor Jasmin Jones said: We're not a renewable energy zone— and that's really important to remember— They keep approving these in prime agricultural area, prime tourism and agri-wine area. We're internationally acclaimed for our wines, and we're turning into an industrial junkyard. They're village killers and we've had a gutful. That is what she said.”
“Today is the first day of spring, and across the Riverina there are swathes of golden glory wattle—and today is the national day—and canola in full bloom. New lambs have hit the ground, and green shoots—thankfully not of the political variety but of the pasture variety and crops—are thankfully, finally, out, because it's been very, very dry. There is a crispness and a freshness in the air that only comes about on 1 September, but there's also an uneasiness in the air—tension you can sense, you can feel and you can see. I want to talk a bit about the faces of net zero. I want to talk a bit about a fellow I know very well; I'm not going to mention his name. He told me yesterday: 'Our land is the absolute pinnacle of prime agricultural land and I believe is well and truly amongst the best and most highly productive in Australia.”
“Get yourself out to the region and see what's happening on the ground.' I call on the member for McMahon to come to the Riverina and take a look for himself. I call on him for two reasons. The first is this rush to renewables is madness, and the second reason I want the member for McMahon to come out is that I want my vote to go up.”
“We brought it down to $15 million cumulatively, but, because of the tariff negotiations and free trade arrangements with the US, companies and individuals and churches can come in from the US and buy as much farmland as they like. That is one real major issue for our farmers and for our regional people, but the biggest issue at the moment—it's the burning issue, literally—is the rush to renewables. Yass mayor Jasmin Jones stood up in the audience yesterday and took issue with the discussions that were taking place. She said: 'Your government is riding roughshod over regional Australians, and we have had a gutful. I'm the mayor of that community, Yass Valley, and we have said "no more". You need to come to our region and meet the farmers who have said "enough".”
“Many of them are not against renewables; it's just the mad rush to roll them out, particularly in the Riverina electorate, which is not a renewable energy zone. Ian 'Jock' Munro got up at four o'clock in the morning and drove there from Rankins Springs with Noel Hicks, a former member for Riverina, from Griffith, and they were holding up placards about land and renewables. When it comes to land, I note that the Grain Producers Australia CEO Colin Bettles has belled the cat on the potential sale—which the Foreign Investment Review Board is not even examining, because the buyers are from the United States—of our farmland, and we've only got so much farmland. I can recall, when we took office in 2013, that the trigger for the FIRB was—wait for this—$252 million. Labor wanted to make it a billion dollars.”
“Karen Mason and Barry Kohlhagen from The Rock and Mick Henderson from Maxwell are constituents of mine, and, in the spirit of this constituency statement, they were at the 2025 Bush Summit, sponsored by The Daily Telegraph and Gina Rinehart, yesterday in Wagga Wagga. The Prime Minister was there, the Premier of New South Wales was there, the member for New England was there, and I was there. All of those movers and shakers from the Wagga Wagga district and the Riverina converged on the largest inland city in New South Wales to talk about what is good, or what should be good, for the bush. I thank Ben English, the editor of the Daily T elegraph , for hosting this. The constituents I mentioned are upset about the rollout of renewables.”
“Many of them are in the construction space. It is so hard. I know Labor are talking up the importance of tertiary education—and, yes, it's fine to have a university education—and then they go on about free TAFE—and that's a misnomer too—but what about the relief, help for tradies, sparkies, chippies and brickies? It's just not there. If Labor wants to do something in the housing space, it needs to address, much better, the cost-of-living pressures on so many Australians and so many Australian families, those Australians who once had the idea, the dream, the aspiration of owning their own home, which is off into the never, never. It's almost becoming an impossible dream. We've got buyers agent Diane Klem-Goode describing the current housing market as 'limited' and 'madness'—and it is. It truly is, and Labor is doing very little about it.”
“In the 2024-25 financial year, this increased to a historic high of 1,567, up from 611 in 2014-15. That data comes from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. Industry leaders are very worried. It's all well and good for Labor to come in here and talk about the Housing Australia investment mandate amendment. It's all well and good for them to crow about the fact that Labor's building 1.2 million homes. That's the plan. Well, I've said it many times, good luck with that. And I do genuinely mean good luck with that, because with construction companies failing by the numbers that I mentioned it is going to be so difficult. What Labor needs to do is reduce compliance on business. It is crucial that the government does this. We've already seen nearly 30,000 small businesses go into bankruptcy under this government.”
“Then, as Robert Gottliebsen said in his article, we've got, particularly in apartments, 'a militant union movement' adding 'cost uncertainty, particularly in Brisbane.' He talked about the 'gap between market values and building costs' making banks 'nervous about lending.' Then consider the Daily Telegraph report, back on 31 July: Construction firms are falling like dominoes with insolvencies almost tripling— tripling!— in a decade, casting considerable doubt over NSW's— my home state's— plan to build hundreds of thousands of new homes. In fact, the figure is 377,000 new homes—that's the plan—by 2029 under the National Housing Accord. Then consider the number of construction companies that are failing, the number of construction companies going into liquidation.”
“He continued: In many areas of the dwelling market the cost of building, fuelled by government taxes plus construction costs, has risen to a point where, on a bricks-and-mortar comparison, it is cheaper to buy an existing dwelling than to build a new one. And I appreciate that. But there's also the fact that so many construction companies are going to the wall—pardon the pun. They truly are. They can't build a wall because they're going bankrupt. Indeed, it is becoming more and more difficult. The demolition—again, pardon the pun—of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the first term of this government took away the regular cop on the beat as far as construction working sites go.”
“It is the great dream of every Australian to own their own home, and this is so crucially important. Having a roof over your head and owning it yourself has to be the aspiration of Australians, particularly those who are working, paying taxes and having aspirations, but it's becoming more and more difficult. It was really interesting to read in the Australian yesterday the piece by the highly respected Robert Gottliebsen, headed 'Government charges pushing new home costs above market value'. He gave the government some credit in the introductory sentence: The Albanese government's first-home buyers scheme will help a lot of younger Australian gain a dwelling, and it's a good first step, but it does not address the fundamental problem. He is so right.”
“The article goes on: But while most of that debt was accrued during the Coalition's term, a sizeable chunk was inherited from the previous Labor government. Labor's share amounted to either 25 per cent of gross debt ($218 billion), or 31 per cent of net debt ($161 billion). In neither case did this represent a "tiny fraction" of the total. I appreciate the member for Bass is a new member, but what she should know—and what the member for Fenner would know because he was here at the time—is that there was a global pandemic. We had to address the most challenging of times, and we kept small businesses open. I sat in silence while you had your contributions. Please give me the respect of doing the same for me.”
“When Labor members talk about the 'trillion dollars of Liberal Party debt', to quote them, I just want to refer them to the RMIT ABC fact check article of Monday 8 May 2023. This is the ABC; this isn't me. This isn't the Liberal or National Party talking points unit. They say this: During an April 13 interview with Sky News, Treasurer Jim Chalmers— I'm reading here. I know he's the member for Rankin— said he was concerned "about the cost of servicing that trillion dollars in Liberal debt that we inherited from out predecessors". That's what he said, and the RMIT ABC Fact Check investigated it. It said: Mr Chalmers's claim is spin. When the Coalition left office in March 2022, Labor was left with $888 billion of gross debt— I appreciate it's a big number— or $517 billion of net debt. Listen to this one.”
“We heard the member for Leichhardt talking about the tidal wave of green energy projects in regional Australia and suggesting that this was a good thing. Let me tell you that, if he visits the Riverina, he will hear completely the opposite, because those green energy projects are going to hurt, and they are already hurting the lives and livelihoods of my constituents. The member for Bass talked about the trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt. I might remind the member for Bass that it was the Liberal-National government. We are in a coalition. I appreciate she acknowledges that. When there's talk about the trillion dollars— Member for Fenner, just be quiet for a moment. You might learn something too.”
“We have heard a fair bit of drivel in this discussion of matter of public importance. It's no wonder as we’ve got the member for Leichhardt and the member for Bass. I appreciate that they are new members, but they've got basketball backgrounds. The member for Leichhardt played the game at the highest level in Australia, and the member for Bass was a basketball coach. Well done to them both for that. Sport is healthy, and basketball is a fantastic sport. But when you come into the chamber on an MPI, don't always take the talking points that you're given by the dirt unit of the Labor Party and just spout them in the chamber, because sometimes you might get led astray. Sometimes your pass might be misplaced.”
“It's going to lead to more congestion, more pollution in our capital cities and, when people don't have room to move and air to breathe and they're all foisted in on top of one another, I dare say higher crime too. Why don't we have a population roundtable? Forget the waste of time of the productivity roundtable, that talkfest we held in Canberra last week. Let's have a population roundtable where we get states and demographers and the Bernard Salts of the world in to talk about where we are headed as a nation as far as population is concerned. When we had that dreadful global pandemic, many people turned to the country areas—to go and live there. They loved it. They had a backyard and room to move in country towns that were big enough to get a good cup of coffee but small enough to still care. Yet we seem to have forgotten all that.”
“It is to build higher high-rises. This is ridiculous. Aside from the Housing Australia Investment Mandate Amendment (Delivering on Our 2025 Election Commitment) Direction 2025—I always love the titles that Labor give their bills—we need to have a vision in this country. We need to have a good hard considered look at population policy. When it comes to finding houses, we've got the leaders of our state governments, our state parliaments, talking about building high-density housing, taking over all the sporting fields, the racecourses, the rugby fields and the golf courses and filling them up with more apartments. They've got to actually ask themselves: where is this going to lead?”
“What we've got here in Australia is a situation where net overseas migration in 2023 was 446,000. What we're getting at the moment, according to the ABS, is 1,221 new migrants coming into Australia every day. And Labor talks about having 1.2 million homes built under its policies. Good luck with that! Good luck with housing all the migrants who are coming in—migrants who would fill many or most of the country towns in my Riverina electorate in a day or three. That's what we are seeing. We are seeing the equivalent of country towns flying in to Australia each and every day. The difficulty is that many of them, most of them, almost all of them, are going to our capital cities, primarily Sydney and Melbourne. The problem is we've got Labor leaders in those two states who say that the answer to our housing crisis is to go up.”
“I remember as Deputy Prime Minister going up around the Ipswich area and looking at the home development projects that were going ahead under the former coalition government. I visited there with Liberal-National Party senator Paul Scarr. There they were, the homeowners and first home buyers of Ipswich—constituents of the member for Blair, in fact—benefiting from those housing policies like the home buyer scheme put in place and contributed by the member for Deakin, the Minister for Housing. Labor come in here and they talk a big, big game about a trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt—not true. They talk about the fact that we didn't have a housing minister—not true. They think to themselves that, if they say it often enough, people will start to believe it. They in fact will start to believe it themselves, and it's just not true.”
“The social media phenomenon has caused a lot of people to be a lot more bold and a lot more aggressive than they otherwise would've been. We know that, just in May this year, two Australian Border Force contractors were assaulted and stabbed whilst on duty. This should not be happening in the Australia that we live in. Fortunately, the number of incidents involving guns has drastically reduced since John Howard and Tim Fischer brought in, rightfully, very good restrictions on guns, and that is a good thing. That appalling incident in May 2025 underlines the urgency of providing additional safeguards across Commonwealth workplaces. I'm pleased that this particular legislation does just that, and I commend it to the House.”
“I think the military personnel in those defence bases also need protection, but they can probably take care of themselves better than most because they're trained to do so. They're the best in the world at protection. Make no mistake. Our army, air force and navy people—there are no finer people at taking care of themselves, in our nation, than them. I also mentioned the AFP earlier. I know, having been the acting Prime Minister for 101 days—I'll just add that in—and having had the benefit of AFP protection, that they are so good. Electorate office staff all face risks in the course of their duties. They shouldn't, but they do. We live in a volatile world, and we live in a world where people think these days that they can write, say and do whatever they like.”
“It includes staff in embassies, and thankfully the government was able to get our brave embassy officials out from Tehran with the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador earlier this week. The legislation also covers contractors on defence bases, and I have three military installations in Wagga Wagga. I've got the 'Home of the Soldier', Blamey Barracks, in Kapooka. I've got RAAF Base Wagga. If you spend any given time in the Royal Australian Air Force, you may well end up at Forest Hill. As the big sign emblazoned on the hangar says, 'Air power starts here,' and, indeed, it does at Forest Hill in Wagga Wagga. Even though we're a long way from the nearest drop of sea water, we have an important and strategic naval presence in my hometown. Those contractors on defence bases need protection too.”
“No Australian employee should ever fear for their safety simply for turning up to do their job. Between July 2023 and July 2024, there were—wait for this; this is an alarming statistic—1,700 serious incidents at Services Australia centres. I know a lot of people come into those particular offices stressed, not knowing which way to turn, suicidal and, in many instances, feeling as though their cause for complaint has been spurned. But, rest assured, those Commonwealth service people, those public servants, aren't there and aren't paid to be abused or assaulted. They are there to be protected, and they should be. This legislation does that. I know that the problem is much broader than Services Australia.”
“It's good to see that we are getting some uniformity across the nation. I know that making sure that we have things in lock step with states and territories is so difficult. It doesn't matter whether it's transport or child protection checks. Irrespective of what it is, it's so hard to get states, territories and the Commonwealth all on the one page. I don't know why, but it is. I've been a minister in many portfolios, and, sometimes, getting states and territories on board, even with policy that you would think would be a no-brainer, is so hard because they might agree at a particular forum where they all come together to discuss such things, and then one state or territory minister goes home, their cabinet decides, 'That's not for us,' and the whole thing falls down. It's a bit like a house of cards.”
“Irrespective of whether they are here in the ACT, in Canberra, where there are many, many public servants, whether they are Australian Federal Police—and aren't we lucky we've got such fine people who work in that particular organisation?—or whether they are in all the Commonwealth public offices that dot this nation, they do an incredible job. They do, and we should be very thankful. I know public servants often get criticised. It's all well and good to bag a public servant, but we are very blessed in this country to have outstanding people filling the roles that they do. The bill establishes a scheme for Commonwealth workplace protection orders modelled on state and territory apprehended and personal violence orders to provide targeted protection for Commonwealth workers and workplaces.”
“He and the rest of the Victoria Police family—and I do say 'family'—would be very much in mourning at the moment. That particular review examined security arrangements in Commonwealth workplaces following that particular attack. This bill follows the passage of the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Commonwealth Frontline Workers) Bill of 2024, which expanded criminal offences for assaults against Commonwealth frontline workers. Together these two pieces of legislation form a stronger framework for protecting those who serve the public. Our public servants do a mighty job. They do.”
“We can't be in our electorate offices all the time, and they shoulder a big burden of responsibility to do the right thing by our people. And by and large they do. Not everybody who comes into my office, or any MP's office, is going to get the answers and the results they want. That's impossible. Many of the requests are far beyond the pale; they wouldn't be able to be resolved at any rate. But they try. They do the right thing. Irrespective of whether it's an NDIS issue or a Centrelink matter, our staff do a mighty job, and we should say thank you to them each and every day. I know this particular bill responds directly to the horrific stabbing of a Services Australia employee last year. It implements a key recommendation of the Ashton review, which was led by former Victoria Police chief Graham Ashton.”
“I mourn for the families of the slain officers—police officers who bravely go out and do their jobs each and every day, and run towards danger when most normal people would run away from danger. But, in the course of their everyday job, they've been gunned down. This is a national tragedy. Their families will never recover from this. The communities probably won't. And the rise of these mongrel sovereign citizens—that's what they are—is getting higher and higher. The incidence of these people who are antigovernment, anti-establishment, anticouncil, antipolice, anti flaming everything, is on the rise. We live in troubled times, and that is why we should, at all times, be protecting our staff. Our staff are some of our best assets, trust me. We couldn't do our jobs without the duty, the support, the care that our staff take.”
“Whilst they were just coming in, my staff preferred that open arrangement with the constituents who came in. They didn't want to make it look as though it was a bank with the big iron bars or the big hard heavy plastic petitions separating the customers from themselves. But these days they're not just mandatory; they're necessary. I've had to put a sign up saying 'No unauthorised videoing or photography in my office' because of the number of people who come in and hold up the phone and want to video the staff. They don't deserve to be identified or exposed on some sort of stupid sovereign citizen's Facebook page. We live in a very volatile world. We only have to think about what's going on in north-east Victoria at the moment.”
“But, by the same token, there are some people in the electorate—and it's only a very minuscule number—who push the envelope a bit too far, often during election time. I found the last election to be the worst as far as conduct is concerned, particularly by some of the other candidates but also by some of their supporters—nasty, awful, horrible comments directed not just at me but at my staff. There was one particular female candidate who dressed down one of my staff members for the attire she was wearing. This is not the way we should be conducting ourselves in regional Australia. Our staff do need proper protections. I can remember when I took over from Kay Hull in 2010. We did not have plastic petitions or grills or anything of that sort.”
“And I'm not referring to me in this instance; I'm referring to the constituents. My electorate has vastly changed from 2010. My electorate used to take in west of Narrandera, the Coleambally and Murrumbidgee irrigation areas, Wagga Wagga and a few other towns around to get to the 100,000 voters or thereabouts. These days, the electorate has moved vastly east. It wraps around Canberra and goes right up into Whitlam. It borders Whitlam. It borders the Illawarra. It's basically Matong to Illawarra. It's vastly different—Riverina by name, not necessarily Riverina by nature. But, whilst the boundaries changed in a major realignment just at the last election, the people still have the same aspirations and the same ideals. They're good country folk and they deserve good representation.”
“My staff work very hard for and on behalf of the constituents of the Riverina, and I have to say probably three-quarters of the work they do is for people who will never vote for me, who will never put a 1 beside the box for the Nationals at election time, and that is fine. Whether you are a member of a party or you're an Independent, that's all well and good as you lead up to the election. But after the election, when you get elected to this place, you are and should be a member for all people, irrespective of the way they voted. It doesn't matter. I know my staff are so loyal to the people of the Riverina and so loyal, indeed, to me. Many of my staff have worked with me for decades. I must be doing something right—or they just like to work in a salt mine! But they love the work. They love the people for whom they work.”
“The Commonwealth Workplace Protection Orders Bill 2025 is vital because we do need to protect at all costs our public servants, those Commonwealth officers, and the people who work for us parliamentarians. When the member for Blair describes the issues that they confront on a daily basis, he is totally right. I've been a member of parliament since 2010, and increasingly, sadly, I have seen the rise of hostility, of hatred, of objectionable protests outside and indeed inside my office, particularly my main electorate office at Wagga Wagga. There are a couple of people I've actually banned from my office—one for making totally misogynous comments and one for sparking what I would almost call a riot inside my office. Now, my staff don't have to put up with that.”
“I thank the member for Blair for his eminently sensible comments in this regard, and this parliament will do the right thing as far as this legislation is concerned, whilst I appreciate there is a lot going on outside of this building. There are cost-of-living issues. Many farmers in my electorate are quite understandably concerned about the foreign take-up of land, with the Foreign Investment Review Board not having total scrutiny over, particularly, land that could end up in American hands via our free trade arrangements; there's no trigger point for that. There's the rollout of renewables. There are so many issues. But this is an important issue too.”
“If you spend any time in the Air Force, you'll end up at RAAF Base Wagga at Forest Hill, where air power begins here in Australia. Even though we're a long, long way from the nearest drop of seawater, we have an important military presence, as far as the Navy is concerned, which is in conjunction with RAAF Base Wagga. We are very proud of our military contribution to this nation in Wagga Wagga. We need to lift our defence spending. We need to lift our profile and we need to make sure that we keep cohesion going. Today of all days, when we're kicking out—thank goodness—the Iranian ambassador, we've got a very dangerous situation building and we need to be very prepared. The price of peace is eternal vigilance.”
“I had a very good discussion with former US president Biden about trade and military matters while in Rome. It was quite a lengthy discussion. It beggars belief that our Prime Minister cannot get a face-to-face meeting with President Trump. This is important. I appreciate that members have mentioned HMAS Stirling in WA, the Henderson shipyard in WA and Osborne in South Australia. These are going to be very important naval shipbuilding and collaborative places to lift our military arrangements. I'm very proud to come from a unique city, Wagga Wagga, where we have all three arms of Defence, which is unique for a regional inland centre. We've got the 'Home of the Soldier', Blamey Barracks, where we've got Colonel Gerard Kearns, who I believe has the most important position in the Army because he is leading the new recruits for our nation.”
“It's simply not good enough. AUKUS stands for Australia, UK and US. We have got to realise who our friends are at this important juncture in time—it's the most critical geopolitical situation we have faced since 1945. We heard the Minister for Defence, the Deputy Prime Minister, utter that pronouncement and he's right. So I cannot understand why he's in America at the moment and cannot get a meeting with his US counterpart, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. I would have thought that would have been prearranged before he actually stepped on the aircraft to fly to the United States. It's critical that we meet with the US President. I've been closer to the US President this year—at the Pope's funeral—than has the Prime Minister. Indeed, I had a conversation with Sir Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister.”
“The member for New England will follow me, and I'm sure he will use his favourite phrase at the moment, which is that we need to get as strong as possible, as quickly as possible, when it comes to military matters. We do; we absolutely do. Indeed, with the Bushmaster, I cannot understand why this government, when the previous government made a commitment to providing Bushmasters to Ukraine, delayed that. They did. The Bushmasters were very slow in getting to Ukraine in their fight against the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I cannot understand, also, why we outsourced our national security to a Virgin co-pilot. That particular pilot warned Australia about the Chinese navy circumnavigating our nation, firing test missiles very close to our open waters—our international waters. We saw a situation where China was just mocking us.”
“It gives me great pleasure to rise on this matter of public importance debate on the importance of the AUKUS agreement and greater defence spending to Australia's security and prosperity, moved by the shadow minister for defence, the member for Hume. It is very important. I listened closely to the member for Bendigo, and she mentioned the Bushmaster. Indeed, she is correct—this is Australian manufacturing at its best. She talked about equipment, and she talked about sovereign capabilities. She didn't talk about people. They are our most important asset when it comes to our defence, and we need to lift dramatically the number of people that we have in Defence.”
“How these evildoers managed to slip through the system is anyone's guess. No more. Let's put the system under the microscope. A full and exhaustive royal commission is what is needed, for the sake of our most precious of people—our kids. You see, with aged care, the older people were able to at least give evidence. Our babies can't; they can't speak for themselves. And we should do the right thing by them.”
“Our children are our nation's best asset. They are the future of this great country. This is why we must protect them. We must nurture them and give them the best possible chance in life. This is why we must conduct a royal commission into child care. Nothing less will suffice. The appalling string of charges laid against an appalling string of offenders in the childcare system in recent times demands action. As well, the incidents where some childcare centres have put children's lives at risk in the pursuit of profits is obscene. We are now seeing the industrialisation of childcare. It is simply not right. Let's not mince words. The predators who do the wrong thing by babies—and they are babies—in child care ought to be locked up forever. They should never ever see the light of day again.”
“I know we had a productivity roundtable last week. I'm not too sure how much health was a part of that, but health is vital. If we get our health system right, if we get the distribution of medicines right, we will increase productivity and we'll have a better nation, besides. Certainly, we need to ensure that those rollouts of vital medicines and vital health services are done in rural and remote regional Australia, where so much of the heavy lifting for this nation is done.”
“I wonder why that wasn't funded for the few million dollars that it would have cost to carry on the vital work they were doing to help babies, particularly, who were born with that condition. That colorectal centre was providing great hope and opportunity for those children, and it's now just been taken away for the few million dollars that it would have cost. I will continue to work cooperatively with government to see it funded in the future, because it is all too vital not to be funded. At the end of the day, if people can get cheaper medicines, if people can acknowledge the role and responsibility that our pharmacies play, particularly in regional Australia, then that has got to be seen as a good thing. If we have a healthy nation, we have a happy nation and we have a productive nation.”
“Maddie Riewoldt passed away in 2015, all too young, from bone marrow failure syndrome. Her very famous AFL relatives, Nick and Jack, and her wider family are very much supporting that vision that she had—and that they have—and continue the work in this regard. My niece, Elizabeth Shaw—she's married now and has a little baby, Max—has a future because Maddie Riewoldt's Vision is going to be so beneficial for her. Now, with her doctor husband, Dr Byrnes from Wagga Wagga, I know they are going to have a bright future, and I thank the government for that. But I am very disappointed that the government didn't see fit to continue to fund the colorectal centre in Melbourne that we funded.”
“When I was in government, we were able to bring headspace to town, just like I was also able to bring it to Griffith and fund it for Cowra. Anything that can be done in the headspace space has got to be valued and praised. To that end, I thank former member for Sturt Christopher Pyne for the pioneering work he did for headspace in its early years, when the genesis of headspace was being brought to this parliament. There were 1,400 additional nurse placements for the regions that also came about under the former coalition government; that's a good thing. We should be acknowledging that work that we did. In the time remaining, I also want to thank the government—here you go—for the work that it's done to fund the Maddie Riewoldt's Vision service that is being provided.”
“I realise there's a process that is required for a listing, and I do appreciate that the pharmaceutical companies want to get their pound of flesh too. Earlier, I heard the member for Moore talking about kidneys and kidney medicines, drugs and treatments. But, particularly when it comes to medicines that ease the suffering from cystic fibrosis, I also support such listings. I appreciate the government has done something in that regard, as we did for heart health and for any sort of health. I say thank you to the government for any work they do on health. I truly acknowledge that. There are more than 128,000 Australians supported by headspace, and I welcomed the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health, Ms McBride, to Wagga Wagga just recently. We visited the walk-in clinic in Baylis Street.”
“It's truly unnecessary. As a regional member, I will continue to fight for those people who aren't being given those services. Under the former coalition government, there were more than 94 million telehealth consultations through Medicare to 16 million patients. Telehealth will never replace, or should never replace, face-to-face consultations. But, when you are in a remote or regional part of Australia and you don't have that face-to-face professional care, then telehealth is the next best thing and the number of consultations increased under our watch. There have been 857 new medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme since 2019. That's a significant number. I praise and I welcome any listing on that scheme. I realise that new listings have got to go through PBAC.”
“My office deals more with NDIS issues than with any other single matter or concern which comes before us via email or any other means. There are issues with the NDIS, not least of which is the cutback to pricing and payments. This means that those NDIS providers who travelling are now cutting back their services to people who need them and are outside the major regional hubs. This is because the travel cost is being absorbed into the overall cost allowed for by this government. This change came into place on 1 July, and, when you talk about health outcomes, that is of critical importance because it means that the most vulnerable of our society, people who have disabilities, are now not going to receive the allied health that they need, whether it's podiatry, physiotherapy, speech therapy or the like. That's cruel. That's sad.”