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 legislation is another bipartisan reform that has broad stakeholder support. The coalition introduced this legislation in 2022, and since then industry has been waiting for Labor to deliver. It's been four years—four long years—of delay from this government for reforms that have across-the-board support. At the same time, Labor will look to rush through controversial new taxes, as they did with the super tax. These delays have led to ongoing regulatory uncertainty, reduced confidence for international firms, which is a shame, and risks to Australia's competitiveness as a financial services destination. We don't want that, and we can't afford that; we simply can't. The third schedule deals with multilateral development banks.”
“The reality is that this was a reform everyone agreed on, yet Australians were left waiting due to Labor's delays, and we don't know why. In schedule 2, where there's relief for foreign financial service providers, the coalition acted and Labor delayed; that's a simple fact. This schedule provides long-overdue clarity for foreign financial service providers operating here in this country. It will assist in ensuring our market remains open, competitive and connected to global financial expertise, and let's face it—there are some xenophobic people in this place; we all know who they are and what they're about—we do live in a situation where we are very much part and parcel of international global financial markets. In this particular schedule, schedule 2, we see more evidence of how slow this government has been on this particular bill.”
“It seems that, whilst it might be, the delays are questionable. The coalition backs these reforms because they support better health outcomes. When I came into parliament in 2010, I was told that, if you had a healthy community, you had a happy community and things would go along pretty well. We've got a cost-of-living crisis at the moment, but health is everything. Yes, people are finding it difficult to pay their bills and, yes, every time they open their energy bill, every time they go to the supermarket and, goodness gracious, every time they go to the petrol station now they almost need to extend their mortgage, but if they're healthy, at least they're going to be happy. This bill supports better health outcomes, and that's why the coalition backs it. It's why Labor should've introduced it much, much earlier than right now.”
“We have to be better than this—we do—particularly when there is bipartisan support, and when it seems you're not going to get pushback from the crossbench, and when it's just perfunctory legislation, or it seems that way. When the Senate will agree, the parliament will concur and royal assent will be given, I ask: Why the hold-up? Why the delay? What we're talking about is people's lives. What we're dealing with here is people's health. It's not good enough. We've got to be better. The government has to pull its socks up; it really does. The coalition supports these reforms, as we always did. We back them because they provide that certainty that is needed. They do prevent discrimination. I genuinely, in my heart of hearts, would've thought that avoiding discrimination would've been one of the hallmarks of a Labor government.”
“People who could have benefited from genetic testing may have been discouraged because of concerns about insurance discrimination. That is not being melodramatic; it is not too far fetched. That is a genuine concern. It was a real fear amongst people who could have, would have or possibly did delay the genetic testing that would have gotten the important medical results they needed for their own peace of mind and for the sake of their own health. Labor kicked this into the long grass. As I said, when there is procrastination and the government delays, as it so often does, there are genuine impacts in our communities across Australia.”
“Delaying a bill such as this does have an impact in the community, in all of our communities. The people we represent, ordinary everyday Australians, expect better and expect this place to just get on with the job. I know the wheels of parliamentary process, just like the wheels of law and legalese and justice, turn very slowly at times but they don't have to turn this slowly. We just heard from the Teal member for Curtin. With strong bipartisan support—refer back to what I said when we were in government in 2019—and with no opposition, there is no reason why this legislation could not have been introduced in the previous term—no reason, none whatsoever. Labor's delay was not without effects, not without consequences and, as I said, they are real consequences.”
“That announcement was widely welcomed, and it raised genuine and real expectations amongst Australians and the medical community, as previous speakers have noted, that people should not be discriminated against because they go and get medical checks for hereditary illnesses or diseases or the like. But by the 2025 election, no legislation had been introduced, none. These reforms, it seems, were simply not a priority for Labor. Labor came to office in May 2022 promising to be more transparent, promising that it would get on with the job that it said it would do. But we know, in so many areas of endeavour that are so important to Australians, that Labor has failed, and this is another of them. Australians were left waiting and wondering and the delay has had genuine consequences.”
“In 2019, whilst in government, the Liberals and Nationals coalition supported the introduction of an industry moratorium as a temporary or interim safeguard with the expectation that legislation would follow. By the time the May 2022 election came around, there was broad agreement across industry, clinician stakeholders and the parliament that legislated protections were needed. Of course, a number of things happened after 2019, not least of which was COVID-19, that put great difficulties on a number of things. Move on to September 2024, when the coalition was no longer in government—more's the pity—the then assistant treasurer, the former member for Whitlam, the immediate past member for that electorate, announced to great fanfare that Labor would be introducing legislation to ban—forbid—genetic discrimination in life insurance.”
“I appreciate that there has been stakeholder negotiation. All too often we find with any bill Labor introduces that, first of all, it's too little, too late. There's procrastination. But so often we hear from stakeholder groups that they have not been able to put their case to the government and that there has been little or no consultation. At least these organisations are supportive of the bill: the Financial Services Council, the Council of Australian Life Insurers, the Australian Financial Markets Association, the Financial Advice Association Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. That support is to be encouraged because a bill which contains these sorts of measures needs proper input.”
“The Treasury Laws Amendment (Genetic Testing Protections in Life Insurance and Other Measures) Bill 2025 is an important piece of legislation. It truly is. What I do question is why it has taken this long to be brought before the House. The coalition, as is often the case, had to drag Labor kicking and screaming to this point. The government does need criticism for delaying implementation of this vital bill, which contains long overdue protections around the use of genetic information in life insurance, which is in schedule 1; relief for foreign financial services providers, which is in schedule 2; and financial adviser registration requirements, which is in schedule 4. But there's also the point about weakening scrutiny by introducing new funding arrangements for multilateral development banks, which is part of schedule 3.”
“If these trucking companies cannot get the fuel, then the nation stops, because trucking companies run this nation. Without them, the nation grinds to a halt. The minister is not giving convincing enough answers as to what he's doing. The ACCC needs to be involved. Our distribution companies need to be involved. It's all well and good for the minister to say his door is always open, but we've heard from the member for Wannon that it is not. Please, Minister, be truthful. Come clean about what the government is doing about this critical issue, because if our trucking companies can't get the supply—if they can't get the distribution—then this nation will be in awful strife. Our farmers, who are at the moment embarking on sowing season, will be in all sorts of trouble. We don't need higher prices; we just need answers.”
“There is a concern about supply, and the government has to explain better what it is doing to allay those concerns in regional Australia, particularly for the growers who are about to embark on sowing season. If they can't get the fuel from their distributors, they can't grow the food. And if they can't grow the food, the price is going to go up and up and up. That will produce all sorts of issues. Even if trucks could get to the supermarkets at the moment, they're not going to have any food to distribute to supermarkets, and it will be a problem in and of itself that will manifest in higher prices at the checkout. Of course, people are already facing higher prices at the bowser, and the issue is supply. The issue is distribution.”
“At 5.13 pm on Sunday, I went to fill up to come to Canberra. There was the sleeve on the diesel bowser—'temporarily out of order'—at the petrol station I usually fuel up at on Lake Albert Road in Wagga Wagga. I didn't fill up, because obviously there was no diesel available. So I got home and phoned up, and they said, 'We're right; it's all good.' As I returned there the red Ron Finemore Transport tanker had just finished fuelling up. That's all well and good. That supply would have run out, and I would urge and encourage people not to panic buy. I would urge and encourage people to use the NRMA Fuel Finder app to find the cheapest fuel. But there is a concern out there about distribution.”
“It's all well and good for the minister to come to the dispatch box and talk and talk and talk, but it's another thing when the reality on the ground is that, out in regional Australia, they cannot get the supplies and the distribution that they so desperately need. One of those is Paul Lawton. He's got 12 trucks. He's running out of Gunning and he has operations in Young, Goulburn and Wagga Wagga as well. He is buying 236,000 litres every fortnight. That's a lot of fuel. The last time he fuelled up, it was $1.60 a litre for diesel. Next time he fears it will be $2.60 per litre, and he is very concerned. He employs 15 locals. His wife, Kristen, and his mother, Marilyn, are part of this family owned business. But he is desperately worried about supply, and he is just one person—the face, if you like, of the concern in regional Australia.”
“Today's matter of public importance debate is about the government's failure on fuel prices and fuel distribution, moved by the member for Wannon, the Manager of Opposition Business. He comes from a regional electorate and he would, as I have and as many other regional members should, talk to his farmers, talk to his growers, who at the moment are at the start of sowing season. And it's not just farmers; it's also those wonderful truckies and trucking transport operators, many of them family owned, who are really desperately worried at the moment. They're not getting the answers they seek from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and they are desperately seeking solutions. Now, one of those solutions would be to ensure that we have distribution and supply.”
“It's important for many of the reasons that the minister, member for Shortland, has just described. Indeed, it's also very important because we need to protect the rights of our coal miners. The reason we need to absolutely, 100 per cent, get behind them is because coal generates 47 per cent of Australia's electricity. I do look forward to question time today when the energy minister is going to hopefully explain what the government is doing in the area of fuel security. But when we talk about securing our nation's wealth, when we talk about feeding our nation, one industry which very much comes to mind, front and centre of all this, is the black-coal industry. Anyone who represents the Hunter should know that. Anybody who comes from Queensland coalmining areas would know that.”
“I'm interested to see the member for Fenner and the minister at the table. The member for Fenner has written a number of publications in recent years, one of which is entitled The Economics of Just About Everything : the hidden reasons for our curious choices and surprising successes . Apart from the 1,152 speeches he's given on legislation to this place, when he adds another chapter, when he adds the sequel to that 2014 publication, he may well want to include some sentences about this particular bill, which is rather an oxymoron because we have Labor talking about coalminers and we have the coalition talking about workers' rights and, of course, we're all in furious agreement, which is also rather unusual. The Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 is important; it absolutely is.”
“We also need to have a really good look at where we're going to put all of these people who are flooding into our country, because we do have a housing crisis. I know Labor's talking about building 1.2 million more homes—again, good luck with that endeavour. Yes, they are needed, but when we've got the construction industry in freefall at the moment, it's going to be a tough ask. Speaking of sectors which are in freefall, the trucking industry is doing it very, very tough at the moment. I spoke earlier today to Craig Forsyth, originally from Casino. He's got the Truck in' Life magazine. He will tell you the story about sham contracting, and that is something that I think this government really needs to address. We need a bipartisan summit. Get the unions involved. Get the industry involved. The industry has the solutions.”
“We need better politicians, we need better policies, and we simply are not getting that at the moment. Whilst I appreciate that Labor, as a political endeavour, will talk about yesterday's national accounts figures, they also show—the facts are there—that productivity is in freefall. It's dropped 4.7 per cent on Labor's watch. But what has gone up is the numbers of small businesses which have gone to the wall—more than 40,000 of them. That's not just them closing their doors—that level is about a thousand per day. That is actually them going bankrupt. That is so, so sad. That is terrible, because we know, or we should know, that small business is the backbone of the economy. Population—we've got 1.9 million more people since Labor came to office. What we really need to do is have a good look at migration.”
“I'm sure some of us from regional areas even go as far as talking to farmers and listening to farmers, because they too are struggling. It is really important that we restore our standard of living. It is really important that we protect our way of life. Unfortunately, as parliamentarians—and certainly as the government—it's not happening at the moment. What is the Labor Party's solution to this? Well, they want to put in more politicians—not better politicians. There is a move that Special Minister of State Senator Don Farrell is considering at the moment to increase the House of Representatives by as many as 24, possibly 28, seats, and the Senate from 12 additional seats to as many as 14 additional seats. That is, in one option, 42 more parliamentarians. We don't need more politicians.”
“This matter of public importance is the decline of Australia's living standards during the government's cost-of-living crisis, moved by the member for Goldstein, the shadow Treasurer. It is a matter of public importance and not, essentially, a matter of political importance. There's a big difference, because the public are hurting. They are suffering. Whether they're in the gallery or whether they're the parents of the schoolchildren above, they are really doing it tough at the moment. We all know that. I'm sure we all go into our own electorates and we talk—more importantly, perhaps some of us even listen—to the small-business owners and operators and family owned businesses. I'm sure we talk to everyday mums and dads who are struggling with balancing household budgets.”
“Petrol prices in Cowra are now well and truly over $2 a litre. In every way, whether it's at the browser or whether it's at the check-out, people are paying through the nose, and it's on Labor's watch. People need their living standards secure. Real wages have just gone completely backwards, and no amount of saying the opposite will make it otherwise for ordinary, everyday Australians. It's time Labor members went into their electorates and stopped talking at people and instead started listening to people and started acting on behalf of those people who are really hurting at the moment.”
“Under Labor, living standards have not only gone backwards; they are in such a poor and parlous state at the moment that ordinary, everyday Australians are wondering when they're going to make ends meet. We heard yesterday in question time the Prime Minister and particularly the Treasurer going on about the fact that they believe that living standards are on the improve. They talked about the OECD. They talked about everything that just happens in this place. Don't worry about what happens within this chamber. Go out and ask Mr and Mrs Average how they're faring. They're doing it tough. That's if they've got a roof over their heads. That's if they're able to find the rent to pay each week or each fortnight. People are doing it tough. They can't afford their energy bills. They can't afford their rent.”
“I applaud the government for any funding initiative that's going to help women by providing more shelters or more care, whether it's in Wagga Wagga—it doesn't matter where it is—or whether it's through state governments or federal; that matters not. It needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. There should be no more silence against domestic violence. There is help available for those women who find themselves in those situations. Domestic violence simply must stop, and we, as a nation, must do better.”
“He was out on bail, and he'd been out dozens and dozens and dozens of times. He'd got bail, he'd got out and he'd offended again. He crawled through the doggy door that the family had for their dog, their pooch. This woman—a single mum with three young kids, all school aged—managed to get out of that very touchy, delicate and dangerous situation, but what would have happened if she hadn't? She would have become the next victim. Our courts absolutely have to be tougher. I see the nods from those opposite. There is a real responsibility on the judiciary to get this right because our women deserve better than this. They do.”
“It's getting worse, not better. In South Australia, offences are up 13 per cent, murder rates increased 69 per cent year on year. In the Northern Territory, assaults have risen 20 per cent since June 2024, and eight women have been killed. Tasmania has seen a 45 per cent jump in reports. Here in the ACT, where probably people have got a higher income per capita than anywhere else in the country, family violence assaults have increased by 12 per cent. I know we've got a cost-of-living crisis, but these figures are unacceptable. It is a national tragedy, a national scourge. I was talking to a woman who I know well, a friend of mine in Victoria, and she woke up one morning with a fellow at the end of her bed. I say a fellow, but that's too nice a term. A thug, a mongrel—call him what you will.”
“One in six have suffered sexual or physical abuse from a partner—as the member for Sturt said, from somebody who was supposed to love them, from somebody who lives with them and, in many cases, has done so for many, many years. One in two has been sexually harassed. It's simply not good enough. Look at the state statistics. In Western Australia, there were 40,000 offences with a restraining order breached every 44 minutes. The picture gets just as dire elsewhere. In New South Wales, police are called to a domestic violence incident not every four hours but every four minutes. In Queensland, more than 200,000 call-outs occurred last year. That figure was a marked increase on the previous 12 months. Police officers report that as much as 90 per cent of their workload is now family violence related—all but 10 per cent. That's incredible.”
“They've come in for a bit of unfair and undue criticism lately, but they do a fine job to protect and save lives, and to protect and save women, particularly in domestic violence situations. Domestic and family violence is the main cause of homelessness for women and children, particularly in some of those rural and remote areas and particularly in Aboriginal communities. Where do the women go to? Sometimes there is just no shelter for those for those ladies and their kids. Anything the government could do would, I'm sure, be agreed to in a bipartisan way. This absolutely must be above politics. It is a national crisis. The figures are confronting and they are unacceptable. One in three Australian women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15—one in three. That's an extraordinary figure.”
“In the past 12 months alone, 35 women have been killed and 55 children have lost their mums. I went to the funeral for Molly Ticehurst, who was tragically and brutally murdered in Forbes in April 2024. Joining me on that occasion was the Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, who I've got a lot of respect for; I really do. His father had died just before, and yet he went to Forbes to attend Molly's funeral. The police minister, Yasmin Catley, went with him, and I also have the utmost respect for her. The New South Wales police are under instruction that, if it is a call about domestic violence, they are to get there in double-quick time to attempt to address the issue, and they do.”
“At that hour of the morning—or any hour of the day, quite frankly—people don't need to hear those derogatory remarks, which are often sexualised. They make light of it, and it's not right. The other thing, too, is that men have an obligation to lead and not to tell jokes amongst themselves—that's where leadership comes in—that are derogatory of women. That's where it starts. It starts in the workplace, at home, at the local sports club—wherever men gather, if they are telling jokes that are derogatory of women, it's not right. And it just pervades society. Violence against women remains the leading preventable cause of death, disability and illness for women aged between 15 and 44, and that simply is unacceptable. It is 2026, but it wouldn't matter what year it was.”
“Some of the things that they've done have been just outrageous. I know we live in a society where they call them 'shock jocks' and the more shocking they are the more listeners they get. Unfortunately, with social media, the more people push the envelope, the more followers they attract and the more 'likes' they receive. And it just goes too far. Some of the stunts that those two radio announcers have done over the years have been nothing more than rude and crude, and it's no wonder that Nerida O'Loughlin, ACMA's chair, said at one stage that enough was enough. People don't need that when they're driving their cars to work, particularly if they've got the children in the car and they're driving them to school.”
“Anything the government can do funding-wise, in alerts or whatever the case might be, I certainly would very much welcome, as I'm sure every member of the parliament would. We heard the member for Bonner earlier talking about how female MPs are subjected to vile filth via their social media accounts. That is so regrettable. Men are too, but not to the sorts of derogatory comments that women receive not just on a daily basis but every time they post. Every time they put something up, they've got people out there, generally men—almost always men—saying rude and crude things. When it comes to rude and crude, I know it's been a big topic in the local media—the Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson show has ended. I say, 'Thank goodness!' because I think society is better than that.”
“In Riverina, I am in one sense ashamed to admit, between October 2024 and September last year there were more than a thousand cases of domestic violence: Wagga Wagga, 480; Lockhart, just seven—I say 'just'; it's seven too many, but that was the lowest number of all the local government areas that I represent; Cootamundra-Gundagai, 59; Cowra, 101; Junee, 38; Temora, 15; Snowy Valley, 77; Yass Valley, 58; Upper Lachlan, 16; Coolamon, 24; Hilltops, 122; and Weddin, 18. They're not just numbers; they're people—women—who have been set upon, mostly by their intimate partners. It's simply not good enough. It's simply not right, and, as the member for Sturt quite correctly pointed out, it has to stop. It must stop now.”
“Well said, Member for Sturt. It's 2026, and there should be no more silence about domestic and family violence. There should be no more domestic and family violence. It is sad that we are devoting time, yet again, to this scourge—and it is a scourge. It's a national scourge. It's a scourge throughout our states, and I'll come to that in a minute. It's a scourge throughout our local communities.”
“We're taking up the parliament's time talking about putting three organisations into one entity, to satisfy the bureaucratic desires and vanity projects of somebody who will never have their name on a ballot paper. I simply don't understand it. We need to seek a referral to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for some common sense in regard to this legislation.”
“If the government wants to dismantle three institutions, it should first show what has in fact failed. What has let the government down so badly that it needs to push these three institutions into one? I do not understand it; I simply don't. I think that what needs to happen now is that we need to have a good, long, hard think about this. Those who are putting together the legislative framework for and on behalf of the government should think about the things that are important to average, ordinary, everyday Australians—and, at the moment, that's the price of fuel, the cost of living, the price of power and the ability to get things done. But, no, we're talking about bureaucracy.”
“The question I have to ask is: why? Why is Labor doing this when we've got so many more important things we could be doing? Is this just a vanity project from some bureaucrat down the hill who's thought: 'Let's just change the organisation. Let's change the letterhead. Let's change the sign on the front door and increase the bureaucracy'? There's been no international credibility crisis—although, I must say, people sometimes must look at Australia and wonder about some of the decisions we take and make. But, anyway, there has been no demonstrated governance failure or international credibility crisis in, I stress, the bureaucratic sense. Our accounting standards and institutions are respected and internationally aligned—so why change them? To quote Mr Bert Lance, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Why fix it?”
“The coalition does not support reform for reform's sake. We never have and never will. That's what this legislation is. This is just reform for reform's sake at a time when we should be discussing important things such as the cost of living and the outrageous increase in the price of fuel in regional areas. The bowsers from which people are sucking petrol this morning for their cars will not have been affected by anything in Iran yet; that fuel would have been there last week, before Iran was even under attack and when the Ayatollah was, unfortunately, still alive and kicking. We're discussing this bill about changing the bureaucracy—for what reason, I do not know. This bill abolishes longstanding accounting and auditing standard setting bodies that, I have to say, have served Australia well for decades.”
“We saw that yesterday when the member for Lalor, the Chief Government Whip, once again just silenced the debate on an issue, and we saw that with the extraordinary sittings of parliament during January when we were given one day, one morning, to discuss nation-changing legislation—hate speech laws and gun reform. We got very limited time, and very few speakers were able to address those bills. Even those speakers, those members of the House of Representatives, people sent here to do a job by and for and on behalf of their electorates were only given five short minutes to debate what needed a lot longer and probably needed every member of the House of Representatives, all 150 of them, save maybe the Speaker, to talk and discuss and put forward their views on those important nation-changing reforms. But oh no—government doesn't do that.”
“We've got the house of review, the states' house. They do a mighty fine job in running a ruler over legislation—sometimes before it's even appeared in the House of Representatives, if it's in a draft exposure form. They do a fine job in scrutinising that. They play an important role in overseeing and refining and fine-tuning legislation that has passed the House of Representatives and made its way to the upper house. Then, often it goes to committee to be looked at before it passes the Senate and goes back to the House of Representatives for the final tick-off before it gets to the Governor-General at Yarralumla. That's how the system works. But, unfortunately, what we've got now is a government which is all too fond, all too keen, to just rubberstamp legislation and push it through the House of Representatives.”
“I revert to Mr Lance's comment, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,' because it is an issue. He popularised that term in 1977, and it's true today as it was then. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why look at it? Why try and adjust it? Why try and amend it? Why try and fix it? If the system is working, leave it well enough alone. The coalition believes that these changes are unjustified. We believe that there should be Senate scrutiny of governance safeguards, of appointment processes and of independent protections and limits on intervention powers. That's why we've got the Senate there. That's how and why the Westminster system operates so well. Whilst we do have the people's house, the House of Representatives, the house we all belong to, that we were voted to, we've also got the upper house.”
“Right across the board, our bureaucrats do an outstanding job per se, but they don't run the show, and no bureaucrat is ever going to have their name on a ballot paper. I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but they are faceless people. It's the minister who has been appointed by the Prime Minister and by the cabinet and had that ministerial commission adopted and accepted and acknowledged by the Governor-General of the day who gets to make the final decision. We can't give the final decisions to the bureaucrats. We have to have a minister who is willing to make a decision and willing to buck the trend. I do find that sometimes our ministers are not standing up to the bureaucracy and are just being railroaded into doing what the bureaucracy wants. Importantly, no compelling case has been established that the current model is failing.”
“I've bemoaned, many times since Labor took office, the fact that they are, I do believe, watering down the ministerial responsibility. When you do that, you water down the standards of ministers. Ministers have to make decisions. The buck stops with the minister. I know, having been a minister in various portfolios, that it's important that you read the correspondence you get from bureaucrats. I have nothing against bureaucrats. I do not. I think we've got some outstanding bureaucrats in the public service. I have quoted many times the efforts and work that Steven Kennedy, head of Treasury, and Simon Atkinson, head of Infrastructure, went to during COVID-19. They saved many jobs. In fact, they saved many lives with the work that they did.”
“There were concerns over too much power being concentrated in one entity, which is understandable; the removal of clear separation of oversight between the Financial Reporting Council and the technical decision-making of the Australian Accounting Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board; the risk to technical experts of independence and having that independence they have enjoyed in the past; and the scope of ministerial and board powers, particularly given accounting standards apply to both public- and private-sector accounting. I said in this chamber yesterday that I'm not against ministers having discretion. I'm not against ministers actually doing what ministers always did in the past under this very good Westminster system we operate under.”
“Those two things are very important. They certainly are. The coalition opposed the government's 2024 climate related financial disclosure regime on the basis that it went way beyond its remit—way too far. As the environmental social governance reporting requirements are expanding reporting standards, they do become sensitive politically. Absolutely they do. Stakeholder submissions looked at this. It was a rarity, I suppose, for this government to actually do a lot of stakeholder submissions. Normally they don't. They normally just rush things through the parliament and rubberstamp them because of their 51-seat majority in the House of Representatives then hope for the best in the Senate.”
“But, seriously, we should be talking about what we're doing about the price of petrol, the cost of living and the price of energy, rather than discussing what we are here. Let's focus on some of the elements of this bill. I do really question why it is even necessary. The coalition will rightly ask the questions in relation to that. The bill ends the Financial Reporting Council, the Australian Accounting Standards Board and the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and is updating them. 'Updating' is not the greatest word I could have used in that sentence. Let's just say it replaces them with a single statutory body: External Reporting Australia. Now, accounting and audit standards may sound mundane, may sound technical, but they underpin the credibility of Australia's financial markets and our international reputation.”
“We do it very well in regional Australia—that is grow food and fibre, of course, as well. Those prices are extraordinary. And the mayor of Cowra, Paul Smith, was beside himself when we spoke this morning about it. In Wagga Wagga, the price is significantly cheaper. Indeed E10 is 167.9c, and diesel is 175.9c. That's the cheapest. It does go up from there, but it's nowhere near the over $2 a litre that they're paying in Cowra—so unnecessary. I know what's going on in Iran; we all do. But the Strait of Hormuz is still operating. I appreciate that it's one of the most strategic choke points in the world, as far as a shipping lane is concerned, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.”
“What were the big issues at stake?' I look forward, when I attend various events this weekend, to saying, 'Well, I discussed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Reporting System Reform) Bill 2026!' They'll say, 'What was that all about?' and I'll tell them it's about bloating the bureaucracy, but what I won't be able to say is that we talked about the issues that are really important to people. This morning in Cowra, in central-western New South Wales, the price of E10 went up to 207.9 cents a litre. The price of diesel is 219.9c. That's more than $2 a litre for diesel. In regional areas not only is energy the economy but so is fuel, because it powers cars and trucks and anything else to enable people to get places. More importantly than that, it also powers trucks to get food to capital cities.”
“To quote Oscar Wilde, the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Yes, I am being facetious; it's not normally in my nature to do that. I could also quote the late Bert Lance, a Georgian banker and confidant of the 39th President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, who said, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' I think we should take a little bit from both of those quotes from those learned gentlemen when discussing the Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Reporting System Reform) Bill 2026. Like you, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, when I go home after a parliamentary sitting week, a lot of people ask me: 'What did you discuss in the parliament?”
“The bill would allow ministers to set written performance standards which can be used when assessing unsatisfactory performance—okay. It would introduce express suspension powers and give the minister a new power to issue general written directions to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. I'm not against ministers just doing their job. If only they would! If only sometimes they could! I'm really not. But, individually, many of these elements are not unprecedented. Again, I refer to the fact that it's just getting ministers to do their job. We certainly, as a coalition, as Liberals and Nationals together—”