Mike Freelander
Macarthur · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“She started the longest and biggest prospective study of allergy and anaphylaxis in the developed world, called HealthNuts, which is still ongoing. She had a PhD, and her PhD thesis was on liver cell transplantation using a mouse model of Wilson's disease, a very rare but well-known cause of liver failure.”
“I knew Katie Allen in a professional capacity prior to her entering this place as the second paediatrician to be elected to the House of Representatives. I dealt with her professionally in her role as the head of the Centre for Food and Allergy Research in the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.”
“She was a really deep thinker, a really decent person and someone—like many paediatricians—who understood the implications of the social determinants of health and was willing to work hard to make sure that Australia led the way in paediatric health care. She was brave and she was steadfast. She was someone who stood up for her views.”
“Recently, we celebrated Australian Made Week in Macarthur, and to mark that occasion I visited the fantastic team at Sebel, a manufacturing business which produces chairs, stools, tables, desks and storage units in Minto in my electorate of Macarthur.”
“It's great to see the Sebel tradition of high-quality products being maintained now in my electorate of Macarthur. Harry and Queenie are long gone, but their legacy continues with a business that is employing lots of people and providing innovative products and 21st century manufacturing, including recycling.”
“It was founded by my friend Ross Doonan in 2004 and has gone on to national and international acclaim, producing products with coating. You often see them on railway stations—the signs and chairs that have wood coatings on aluminium products. I myself am doing a home renovation that will be using DECO products.”
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“As I said, it was the time of the Emergency. There were lots of refugees following the split of Pakistan into Bangladesh and Pakistan. Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, had declared a public emergency and essentially martial law. So we were working with refugees, and communications were very difficult. In that year, I think I made three phone calls home and wrote two letters. The phone calls necessitated a trip from Cuttack in Orissa to Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, which had a communications link to Australia. It took a long time to organise those phone calls and cost a lot of money. In those days, it cost the equivalent of $25 or $26. At that time, I was being paid the same rate as an Indian doctor, which was around 270 rupees or about $30 a month. They were very expensive phone calls, and the link was difficult.”
“I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025. This is a very important bill, and I'm very thankful to Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland's hard work in this area and her support of my electorate and my constituents in dealing with the significant telecommunications issues related to the previous, very poor rollout of the NBN and telecommunications services in Macarthur by the previous government. When I was a student at school, we didn't have computers. We didn't have calculators. We used slide rules and logarithmic tables for complex calculations. When I was a medical student, I spent 12 months working in India at the time of the Emergency in a state called Orissa in a city called Cuttack, which was the capital of Orissa. It had a large paediatric hospital.”
“The matter for consideration is not so much one of the privileges and rights between the two houses, but observance of the requirements of the Constitution concerning the powers of the houses. I am advised that, in the application of standing order 180, a change to the destination of money drawn from an existing appropriation is considered to be a proposal requiring a message from the Governor-General under section 56 of the Constitution. I understand that such a message has been obtained in this case. If the House wishes to entertain the proposal reflected in the Senate's proposed amendment, the House may choose to proceed by alternative means.”
“On behalf of the Speaker, it is my duty to draw to the attention of the House the fact that one of the Senate amendments conveyed by this message raises an important point of constitutional principle. Proposed amendment (4) would have the effect of changing the persons to whom additional amounts under section 80 of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 are payable. Senate amendment (4) is covered by section 53 of the Constitution because it changes the destination of money appropriated by section 423 of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004. Thus, the amendment should have been made to the House as a requested amendment.”
“Our health workers deserve admiration, and the fact that they could behave like this is just revolting to me. It is important to know that our health workers do not discriminate on the basis of race or religion. Of all the people I've worked with in the health service, of all religions, I honour their responsibility and honour their service. What has happened today has shaken me to my very core, as a Jewish Australian.”
“Something happened today which shook me to my very core. The footage circulating online this morning, which involves two alleged NSW Health personnel, is revolting, vile and dehumanising. They said they would kill any patient who was Israeli who was admitted to a hospital in the area health service where I have worked for 40 years. I congratulate the New South Wales health minister, Ryan Park, for his rapid response, and I also congratulate the New South Wales Police and those involved in Strike Force Pearl for their investigation and their immediate action. The alleged role of these health professionals is just disgusting to me. They have abrogated their sacred responsibility as health workers. The fact that they come from the area health service that I work in and live in our society is disgusting to me. We are all Australians.”
“It's not just about training more GPs and getting more GPs to move to the bush; it's about improving social conditions and giving general practitioners access to sabbaticals. It's about retraining GPs in teaching hospitals on a temporary basis. It involves getting them access to schooling for their children and work for their spouse. It involves a whole lot of modalities, and there is no quick fix. No matter what anyone wants, there is no quick fix. General practice is a highly complex field these days, and people require a lot of training and a lot of support, more so in rural areas where there may not be other general practitioners to help them. We need to encourage more people to move to areas of disadvantage, and this may involve significant expenditure.”
“There may be difficulties in moving a family to a rural or remote area, such as the lack of supports available through the health system, which has led to difficulty in attracting people to these areas. Unfortunately, as I've said, the difficulties continue. It is important that every level of politics—from local government to state government to federal government—is involved in improving access to health care in the bush. It's going to involve novel, innovative solutions as we move forward. Twenty-first-century medicine is very complex. For a general practitioner in a rural area, it includes training in emergency medicine, child health, geriatrics, cardiology, and expertise in genomics and genetics, and access to more complex pharmaceuticals. These are highly complex positions, and we need innovative solutions.”
“The Labor government has put in place a significant number of changes. It has increased the number of rural clinical schools. I paid my respects to the member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, who did his very best when he was the Minister for Regional Health in the previous government to try and improve that. More recently, in northern Australia, we added more medical schools to try and encourage more local training of medical practitioners. In 2024, for the first time, the number of rural training positions for GPs were fully filled. That's after almost a decade of those training positions not being filled. So there's a combination of problems, including complex medicine and the importance of having supports for medical practitioners in rural and regional areas and outer metropolitan areas.”
“Health care has become very complex. You need to be highly trained over a whole range of disciplines to become a general practitioner these days. The member for Mackellar here well knows that. People need to train for long periods of time. They need a lot of supports in place to practise 21st-century medicine. In rural areas, that's often very difficult to find. Skilled nurses, skilled allied health professionals, IT specialists, communication specialists and pharmacists are very difficult to obtain in rural and regional areas, but also in outer metropolitan areas. I approached the Minister for Health and Aged Care in the Liberal-National government multiple times about this. Members of the department of health were often present in our discussions. Very little has changed.”
“I thank the member for Calare for putting forward this motion. Politicians like a quick fix. There is no quick fix to this problem, which has evolved over the last 40 or 50 years. And there are many causes. I approached the Minister for Health and Aged Care when I was first elected in 2016 to describe to him the difficulty that disadvantaged areas, outer metropolitan areas and rural and regional areas were having in attracting general practitioners. The member for Calare was a member of the government at that stage. That government did nothing. We have watched the situation get much, much worse since then. Unfortunately, rural GP training positions were not being filled. More and more GPs were leaving the bush and rural areas. They were also leaving outer metropolitan areas, for a whole a variety of reasons.”
“With the support of the Transport Workers Union, we've been able to get better, new technology for recognition of bike roads et cetera for our large vehicles by using the technology that's available. We need to get that in all our vehicles on the roads, and that will make a difference. But, above all, we need all our states and territories to get together to put together a much better data collection system so that we know what is causing our road toll and what is causing the deaths and the severe injuries. We need to make sure that lives are saved. This is not a political issue.”
“Our cars are better, our technology's better and our health care is better, yet the toll is increasing. And that's creating a huge burden on our health services, on the NDIS and on the families involved with this. We have, of course, better access to better roads through our Roads to Recovery Program. The federal government has doubled the spending on the Roads to Recovery Program to a bit over a billion dollars per year. We've increased funding for the Black Spot Program. We've created safer local roads and community infrastructure. We're making our infrastructure better, yet our road toll is increasing. We need better data collection. We need much better access to the technology involved in road safety.”
“This is in these days of improved technology, improved medical care, improved rapid responses, improved neurosurgery, improved orthopaedic surgery and quicker access to acute management. Yet our road toll is increasing. One thing that we really don't know is why. I don't want to politicise this argument in any way. None of us in this place—none of us—want to see our road toll increasing. We want to bring it down, we want lives saved and we want to see fewer people with the severe consequences of motor vehicle accidents. It's not something that I want to politicise. But we do need better data. I'd like to acknowledge the work that Michael Bradley and the Australian Automobile Association are doing in trying to improve data collection in this space. We don't really know why our road toll is increasing.”
“I know the member for Barker, as a police officer, probably did see severe trauma on our roads and had to deal with that, as do our ambulance officers, police officers and, of course, our emergency doctors and nurses—seeing people brought in after severe motor vehicle accidents. What is a tragedy is that every one of those people killed affects their larger family, and those that are severely injured often have lifelong complications that affect not just them but their whole families. It is not only an enormous cost in terms of money but also an enormous emotional cost for all of those people that are injured on our roads, and their families. I'd like to acknowledge those families as well. Unfortunately, what is happening is that our road toll, both in terms of deaths and the severely injured, is increasing.”
“As a young neurosurgical resident in the late 1970s, I went to Royal Ryde Rehabilitation Hospital on many occasions to visit patients who were in long-term rehabilitation for severe neurological injury following motor vehicle accidents and other accidents. It was terrible. I'd like to acknowledge that, whilst every day in Australia three people die on our roads, over a hundred are severely injured, many of them left with severe neurological problems. I'd like to pay my respects to Royal Rehab Private Ryde, which is still doing amazing work in the rehabilitation of people following major motor vehicle injuries and also other injuries, and I acknowledge the work they do. I'd also like to acknowledge our first responders.”
“This needs to be done together with people who are involved in the tunnelling industry, as my eldest son is. There are dangers such as dust inhalation in tunnelling situations, particularly if attention to protective equipment is not followed. So there's much more to be done for public health measures. This bill and the one previously that banned the use of engineered stone are fantastic protections for Australian workers. Only Labor has been able to do this. The previous government ignored the problem, and it's very important that our good work in public health continues.”
“It means that we are able to destroy it immediately before any possibility of use, legal or otherwise, and that it can be destroyed very quickly. I commend this bill to the House. There is, of course, more to be done. We certainly need to be doing more in terms of educating miners and workers about the dangers of inhaling particles, not just silica but also particles from other forms of mining. We've done our very best to make sure people are protected from the dangers of asbestos disease, but it's important to note that we still have quite a significant amount of asbestos in our housing stock. People need to be made aware of the dangers of asbestosis and inhalation of asbestos, not just in our working community but for homeowners, and Labor is committed to doing that.”
“Immediate destruction is the best answer for this, and this bill ensures that this will happen. It's yet another public health measure, as I've said, that prevents workers from becoming unwell and makes sure that they can go home safely every day. Some people have previously suggested that more needs to be done to educate workers about the dangers of engineered stone and that more needs to be done to make sure that workers wear masks and gloves et cetera. But, in a workplace that may only be small or is isolated, it's very difficult to make sure that 100 per cent of the safety measures are undertaken, and so the best result is going to be what has happened—that is, the banning of the use of engineered stone altogether and the destruction of any engineered stone that gets to Australia.”
“We've had to introduce legislation to prevent the use and importation of vapes, and we're now doing the same thing with engineered stone, which is very important. It's part of a suite of public health measures that Labor is committed to. This Customs Amendment (Expedited Seizure and Disposal of Engineered Stone) Bill is a really key component of that. It's important that we have this bill because other seized products have to be kept and stored for a while as the legal process needs to happen so they can be destroyed. But engineered stone is very heavy. It's difficult to store; it's difficult to manage. This bill now gives the government and the authorities the ability to immediately remove any possibility of the engineered stone getting to market.”
“Engineered stone is a particular danger because of the very high concentrations of silica in engineered stone, sometimes up to 80 per cent, whereas natural stone, even though it's not without risk, has usually 20 per cent or lower silica. It's very important that we don't use engineered stone. Unfortunately, as my cousin Julian Lee thought about asbestos diseases and coalminer's lung and silicosis, we are late in doing it. It should have been done years ago. We're very lucky that we've got a Labor government who's prepared to act on this quite dreadful disease and make sure that workers go to work and come home healthy. We've prohibited other imports before—vapes being one of them. That's a particular interest of mine. We should've banned the importation of vapes years and years ago.”
“The Labor Party believes people should have the opportunity of going to work and coming home healthy, hence our moves initially to ban the importation of engineered stone and now to seize engineered stone at the border and to dispose of it quickly without it getting into the system, where it could be used dishonestly otherwise. This legislation is very important, but it's also a continuum of Labor looking after people and looking after workers in particular. As a physician, these are dreadful diseases that could have been prevented. We're still seeing people in this day and age suffering from silicosis, and that just should not be happening.”
“Even with that, results can be difficult because, as we've already heard, the complications of silicosis include things like heart disease and autoimmune disease because the inflammatory process releases proteins into the blood that cause your body's own immune system to attack other organs, so people can have renal kidney failure and they can have other autoimmune disorders. It is a tragic complication of the disease of silicosis that not just the lungs are affected, and people die when they really should have many more years to live.”
“Use of steroids or use of drugs, such as those used in asthma, to open up the airways have a very limited effect, and very quickly people with silicosis become oxygen dependent. You can see them. They're otherwise healthy looking blokes, grunting respiration, walking around with tubes in their nose delivering the oxygen they often carry in a backpack or a trolley to help them move around. Eventually they will die of respiratory failure if they don't get a heart and lung transplant.”
“That inflammatory process then leads to the immune system attacking it, causing scarring. What happens is that scarring gradually shrinks the elastic ability of the little lung tissues to open up with every breath and get that oxygen out of the air we breathe, and gradually the lungs get stiffer and stiffer, the little air sacs get destroyed and people find it more and more difficult to breathe. They help themselves by giving themselves end-airway pressure by the grunting respirations that keep the air sacs open, but unfortunately, people can develop this without recognising it, because our lungs have an ability to compensate. They can often at presentation already have untreatable chronic lung disease, and there are no really effective treatments other than supportive treatments.”
“He was a big, strong, muscular guy but breathing in grunting respirations—that's how they breathe. They breathe to try and keep their little air sacs open so they can get oxygen that they need into their lungs, and it's really terrifying to see these previously fit and healthy strong men basically suffocating in front of your eyes. I believe that subsequently he has gone on to now needing home oxygen, a really terrible end result from what was an entirely preventable disease. The silicosis occurs because the silica dust you can't see and you can't feel, so people without knowledge are inhaling it into their lungs. These tiny little silica particles are gobbled up by the little protective cells we all have in our lungs called macrophages, but once they enter those macrophages the silica itself sets up an inflammatory process.”
“The Dust Diseases Board was a huge innovation, and my cousin, Julian Lee, a respiratory physician at the Woolcock Institute at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, was one of the leading physicians on the Dust Diseases Board. He always felt that governments had been very late in introducing regulations to prevent the development of this terrible lung disease—not just asbestosis but silicosis. There were large numbers of people in the coalmining industry and other mining industries and the tunnelling industry—and in industrial uses and, more lately, in the use of stone for benchtops et cetera—that had been exposed to silica dust. I remember meeting in my office a couple of years ago a well-known rugby league football player and industrial worker, Ray, who developed silicosis.”
“It's not a good death, if any death is good; it's a slow, suffocating death—with them often carrying around their oxygen cylinders—from a preventable cause. Australia led the world in the prevention of silicosis and related diseases in coalminers and industrial workers. We had the Dust Diseases Board, which was important, to make sure that workers were protected from developing coalminers' lung or silicosis and other complications of lung disease like asbestos and mesothelioma. Initially the major concern was asbestos but it was recognised that silicosis could develop in many different coalmines and others from the unregulated inhalation of silica dust—sometimes with coal dust but sometimes with asbestos as well.”
“This bill is a follow-on from that to prevent the importation of engineered stone where it could have been used without any oversight. This is a very important follow-on from that initial banning of the use of engineered stone. If I can take a step back, I'll tell you my experience as a young resident. We used to go into the respiratory wards, when I did a respiratory term, and we'd see people who were pretty fit, middle-aged men. These were people that were used to manual labour either as coalminers or as industrial workers. They were fit, very strong men, and they were basically suffocating from an entirely preventable lung disease. Silicosis is preventable, yet we were seeing numbers of previously healthy, strong men dying from this disease—and it's a slow death.”
“Unfortunately we now have the Liberal Party in a similar position; they want to cut health care. It really concerns me that we still have no health policy coming from the Leader of the Opposition or his health spokesperson. They've agreed to follow our women's healthcare plan but only after much prodding. There is nothing coming forward initiating healthcare policy. It is very poor. Going back to this bill, this is a very important bill. First of all, let me congratulate the government on banning the use of engineered stone in Australia. That was a really important change. It's something that was long overdue. Our government did that very quickly to make sure that Australian workers go home healthy every day—yet another thing we've done to promote equitable access to health care, and that's on an occupational basis.”
“I will be on task shortly, but just let me reinforce what the member for Robertson has just said. Health care is in the DNA of the Australian Labor Party. We recognise that healthy people are productive people. We recognise that there is an equity issue about health care. And Australia has led the world in equitable access to healthcare. We've heard about the Leader of the Opposition and what he did to health care. Basically, he wanted to destroy bulk-billing, to destroy people's ability to equitably access health care and to make sure that only the wealthy could afford equitable access to health care in Australia. It is not just the Leader of the Opposition; don't forget what Jeff Kennett did to the Victorian health system decades ago—an absolute tragedy.”
“We will complete that rail line, and it is very important to link Macarthur to a whole range of areas including Wollondilly, Wollongong, the Illawarra, the Moorebank intermodal, the Southern Highlands, Sydney and Kingsford Smith Airport, north-west Sydney, northern New South Wales and western New South Wales. The list is endless. We must get this rail link done and we will as a Labor government. I'm committed to making sure this happens, so let's get the rail link to Western Sydney airport done.”
“I'm having constructive discussions with my federal and New South Wales Labor colleagues regarding the need for rail, and we are, in fact, proceeding with a scoping study about this. But I don't need a scoping study to tell me that a rail link to Western Sydney Airport is vital. I'm delighted to see that we also have been able to fund the Campbelltown Station car park upgrade that will bring over 500 new spots for commuters. I'm really delighted with the announcement recently that the Fifteenth Avenue upgrades will proceed, which will improve the road links, but we need the rail. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it would have been completed sooner if they'd had a rail line to connect their workers to the site!”
“I've always believed that rail is the best way to connect our region, as our main roads, particularly the Northern Road, the M7, the M5, the M8, are congested already—they're more congested than ever before—and the proposed rapid bus service to the airport is likely to be a very slow, tortoise-like movement because of the traffic on the major linking roads. Further, having rail would enable commuters from connecting lines to link up, thereby expanding access to the airport precinct and helping bolster its financial viability. The fact that the past New South Wales and federal Liberal-National governments did not proceed with the construction of a rail corridor in our region to Western Sydney airport shows just how little they focused on south-west Sydney and how poorly they understand the new rapidly growing areas.”
“Western Sydney airport has the potential to transform the Macarthur area and far beyond. If you look at Macarthur on a map you will very quickly conclude that transport, particularly rail, is key for locals to get to and from their workplaces, job sites, schools, universities and key appointments in major city centres such as Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Liverpool and others. Soon there will also be another major working commercial site up and running in the Bradfield area and the soon-to-be opened Western Sydney airport business precinct. This is an exciting opportunity for my electorate, but I am very fearful that we might miss the boat—or in this case the train and plane—to have a rail line built to connect our region to the aerotropolis.”
“I know that, as a government, we are a cohesive force, and I really do support the efforts of the opposition members who have spoken today as well. It is important that we do act together to get rid of this scourge.”
“The government has funded security and improvements in the Sydney Jewish Museum and in other places around Australia and is doing whatever it can to make sure that antisemitism is recognised, investigated and punished. I'm confident in the efforts of the government, and I think that we must all act together on this, as the Australian parliament and a cohesive group, to lead efforts to prevent antisemitism. I'm very proud of what our government is doing, and I'm very proud to be a member of a government that recognises the importance of catching and punishing people who are committing these terrible acts in whatever cause. I thank the Member for Wentworth for bringing her motion. I support it completely, and I thank all those other members who've spoken out against antisemitism.”
“I can completely understand the reticence of parents to send their kids to these schools and preschools because of this recent spate of antisemitic attacks. The attacks must be stopped. The most important thing I see, though, is social cohesion. We must act together on this. I congratulate the Prime Minister and the government on their efforts. We have done many, many things to try to prevent episodes of antisemitism and make sure they are appropriately punished, such as establishing Operation Avalite with the Australian Federal Police, banning doxxing and the display of antisemitic symbols, the appointment of Peter Khalil as the Special Envoy for Social Cohesion—he's been excellent—and the appointment of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who is doing a fantastic job.”
“It is terrible, but we are very lucky to live in a multicultural, secular democracy like Australia, where we live by the rule of law, and we are very grateful for the efforts of the police and the security forces to make sure that these episodes of antisemitism are being followed up and investigated. Ultimately, the perpetrators, I am confident, will be punished. I don't believe in mandatory sentencing, and I do believe that we should trust in the legal process. We do have the separation of powers, and we do need to trust in the legal process to make sure that people are appropriately punished for the crimes they commit—and these are crimes. They're terrible crimes. As a paediatrician, the way that schools and preschools have been targeted is absolutely shocking and does ongoing damage.”
“One of my ancestors was one of the first paediatric cardiothoracic surgeons in Australia, and many others have contributed, particularly in medicine, over many years. Antisemitism, of course, has existed in Australia since European settlement. We have had episodes of antisemitism going back to the 1800s and the early 20th century. There was, of course, the bombing of the Israeli consulate and the Hakoah club in 1982. The Bankstown Synagogue, where I did part of my Hebrew studies prior to my bar mitzvah, was firebombed and completely destroyed in 1991. The recent increase in antisemitism has been shocking, and, with the recent conflict in the Middle East, we've seen the ramping up of these antisemitic episodes.”
“I'm a very proud Jewish Australian. I'm not particularly religious, but my family has contributed to Australian life over many generations. I can trace my family back to the beginnings of European settlement in Australia. My four-times-great-grandfather, Abraham Rheuben, was one of the founders of the Hobart Synagogue, which is still functioning today. My grandfather was one of the founders of the Emanuel Synagogue in Woollahra, which was recently subjected to an attack of antisemitism and defacement. I'm very proud of my heritage. My family, over many generations, as I've said, has contributed to Australian life in many ways: in law, in medicine, in business and in other fields.”