Julian Hill
Bruce · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“We want people to aspire to home ownership and to get into the housing market, and yet for the past 20 years it has felt like, however fast they save on the treadmill, house prices just race ahead twice as fast—and that's what the data shows. The opposition's policy depends on who you ask.”
“For those listening at home, Narrabundah is a pretty wealthy suburb in Canberra. He was standing in front of a flat this morning that, in 2006, sold for $420,000. The asking price today is $900,000. He thinks that's not a problem. He thinks nothing needs to change.”
“One of the things that we've been hearing over the last couple of weeks, out in the community—I was at the Berwick market on Sunday morning; around Dandenong at lunchtime—is the question of house prices. What's going to happen with house prices with the government's tax changes? I want to make a couple of points.”
“The definition of insanity, of course, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, which is what we see from the Liberal Party. Actually, I'm going to contradict myself; I'll finish on this point. They do have one policy for housing: super for housing.”
“Seven out of 10 for performance art. There were a few questions I was actually looking forward to responding to, but unfortunately the opposition chose to call a bunch of silly divisions and has eaten into the time, so we've run out of time. Proposed expenditure agreed to.”
“The truth is, from when the government was elected four years ago, debt is in a better place. It's lower, deficits are lower and the debt-to-GDP ratio is lower. The fact is—and you can see it in the budget papers in black and white—the budget is in far, far better shape than the mess that the Liberals left behind.”
The complete record
Every one of 313 lines we hold for Julian Hill, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 7.
“(): I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025will amend the Customs Tariff Act 1995 to implement a waiver on customs duties for goods imported under the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The agreement—which is known as the Geelong treaty—was signed in Geelong by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom in July this year. The Geelong treaty is a historic agreement, a commitment to the next 50 years of United Kingdom and Australian bilateral defence cooperation under AUKUS Pillar I with respect to delivering Australia's SSN-AUKUS submarines.”
“That's his agenda for manufacturing—literally parroting Labor's policies, 'Let's make things again.' We agree, but he votes against action on manufacturing at every opportunity. There's a big say/do gap between the opposition— (Time expired)”
“But the opposition, at every chance, vote against and oppose action on manufacturing. They opposed the NRF. They oppose the cheapest form of new power. They chased the car industry out of Australia. They're a divided rabble who literally hate each other. Yesterday on radio Senator Price described the opposition—her own party, which she joined five minutes ago—as 'a clown show'. People could rightly—understandably—think that's a bit unkind to clowns. But the weirdest contribution has to be from the member for Canning. He quit his job last week. He's such a team player, that one. He's too scared to run for leader, but he quit for his car videos. He's making car-fetish videos.”
“The government is backing Australian manufacturing with the Future Made in Australia agenda; the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund—we shall be a renewable energy superpower; $400 million for the Industry Growth Program; and $500 million—I said 'renewables'; I know it triggers them—for the Battery Breakthrough Initiative. We are rebuilding the industrial base of this country. That is a generational effort, resulting in good, well-paid, secure jobs. Australians, rightly at times, accuse governments of thinking too short term. Rebuilding the industrial base of our country is the right thing to do, given our strategic circumstances, given the opportunities we have to reshore manufacturing with renewable energy and given the strategic circumstances we face.”
“It revealed that south-east Melbourne now supports more manufacturing jobs and businesses per capita than any other part of Australia—3,801 manufacturing businesses, with 75,046 Australians employed in these businesses. The former minister for industry and science, from Western Sydney, is here. That's good of you. You're staying. There are more manufacturing jobs in south-east Melbourne than each of G21, Melbourne's west, Western Sydney, Brisbane South, Perth South, or the entire state of South Australia. A Future Made in Australia is happening in south-east Melbourne. The contrast couldn't be clearer.”
“I'm going to issue a trigger warning, a content warning, because what I'm about to say may be hard for some to hear. People from Sydney in particular may be very upset. Greater south-east Melbourne has overtaken Western Sydney as the nation's leading industrial engine room. Greater south-east Melbourne is officially now the heart of Australian manufacturing. There is a bravery award for my friend the Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science, Senator Tim Ayres, who's a senator from New South Wales, for attending and speaking at the launch of a report by Deloitte Access Economics, entitled G SEM: Australia's manufacturing powerhouse . It wasn't written by AI; it wasn't one of those Deloitte reports.”
“Ordered that consideration in detail of the bill be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:31”
“I don't call them the modern Liberal Party; it is today's Liberal Party—I wouldn't ascribe the word 'modern' to them. As for the rest, we do have a migration strategy, a fundamental difference between our government and the previous government. We have a migration strategy. We did a review, we put out a strategy, and we're implementing it. You can't point to that in the nine or so years—a decade really—of decay and disfunction and division that we saw from those opposite. I'm happy to answer questions, but there really were no questions; it was just miserable rants, and they ran away. So here we are. Anyway, there you go! It's a matter for them, how they choose to use their time in opposition. They weren't a very good government, and they're not a very good opposition. Proposed expenditure agreed to.”
“Maybe he hadn't cleaned out his ears in question time and didn't hear the answers that were given: exactly the same scenarios occurred multiple times under the former government. What it boils down to is this: if the opposition don't trust our security agencies and the people who lead them, the same people who led them when they were in government, the same people they know—the member for Fisher and I served on the intelligence and security committee—then they should just say so. If they don't trust the work of Australia's security agencies, then say so. Otherwise the bizarre kind of 'members after dark' echo chamber that we heard over there should go back to whatever weird WhatsApp chat group they like to hang out on and hate on each other, because that's their main sport, the far right and the further right of the now Liberal Party.”
“As to the obsession with Australian citizens returning from Syrian IDP camps, if you want the answer to that, I refer you to my interview this morning on Sky News and I refer you to the Minister for Home Affairs' extensive answer on this in question time today. The government has not provided repatriation or assistance for these people to return. The answer was the same a month ago, it was the same yesterday, it's the same today and it'll be the same tomorrow, because that's the truth of it. Our security agencies are constantly watching this cohort offshore. If, as Australian citizens, they under their own steam return to Australia, as is their right as citizens, then we watch them here. We take advice from the security agencies. The member for Fadden, I think it was, is relatively new, so we will give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“They're following the fine example of the immediate past shadow minister for home affairs, who also quit his job on Friday, leaving the former shadow minister for home affairs to front Senate estimates this week. They're so committed to national security that they literally quit and ran away. Small mercies, Deputy Speaker Small—I recall fondly your contribution yesterday, which seemed to revolve around students being Furbies, cats and dogs in the education debate, so they're following in a fine tradition. With respect to the one question that was posed—does the government have what it takes to keep Australians safe—the answer is, yes, we do.”
“I thank government members for their contributions. I also acknowledge the contribution of the member for Warringah, and I will pass on the questions regarding NEMA funding to the Minister for Emergency Management so she can respond directly in a different forum. As for the rest of the contributions, I was listening carefully; I was trying to write down questions. My friend the member for Fisher made two contributions but asked no questions; it was just a bit of a rant. As for the rest of them, though, their hearts were so in it. They were so deeply committed to finding out what's in the government's budget that they ran away. They quit. They cut and ran.”
“There are public school students who are going to be better off for years to come because, finally, this government has put in place the funding agreements so that every public school student in the country will be fully funded—will meet the recommended funding standard. Students with a HECS debt will be better off because of the 20 per cent cut to all student debts. That's building on the $3 billion of student debt cuts that we made last term. Students will be better off because of the lower repayments that they're making. There's more that I could say on the details, but I'll end my comments there to enable the member for Deakin, who is a former teacher himself, to also make a contribution.”
“And they really do have short memories—not just short memories about their terrible record and that wasted decade of decay, dysfunction and division, but very short memories about the propositions, the policies, they took to the last election, or indeed the way that they voted on core legislation that has come through. Parents are better off with the cheaper child care changes—$7,740, on average, better off. They are paying lower fees than they otherwise would have. Childcare workers are better off because of the wage rises that this government proposed, which the opposition said were wasteful. There's fee-free TAFE, which the opposition leader said was wasteful; if you don't pay for something, you don't value it, according to the opposition.”
“There's the $189 million national child safety package, developed and agreed shoulder to shoulder with states and territories, to keep children safe in early learning. I acknowledge the commitment of the states and territories for more funding to improve the working-with-children check and regulators, with more compliance checks. New legislation has been passed, so we can cut funding from services not up to scratch. And we're now using those powers, with 37 services under investigation. I acknowledge some of the sensible contributions, but I am worried about the opposition's collective amnesia and lack of contact with reality. I'll quote the first contribution. The first speaker said she hadn't met anyone better off. Well, I think she needs to get out more.”
“They weren't a very good government, and there's no sign that they'll be a very good opposition, but maybe they'll get better as the week goes on. I just want to respond to a few comments which have been made and, firstly, to thank the opposition, very genuinely, for their comments regarding the minister and the government's bipartisan work on child safety. Every child deserves to be safe in early childhood education and care, and every parent deserves to know that their children are safe. The media reports which were seen were shocking. They shocked every member of this parliament. We acknowledged there was more to do—that we all had more to do. And the government has acted. I thank the opposition speakers for acknowledging that.”
“But this week, proudly, the Attorney-General will introduce important reforms to improve and modernise FOI; to stop anonymous FOI requests—you'd think it would be pretty low-hanging fruit that you can't make an anonymous FOI request—to stop the secret FOI requests; to prioritise genuine requests; and to save dollars on the frivolous and automated requests. We heard the opposition's new little scare campaign—the truth tax. Remember he said it twice with emphasis for his social media cuts?”
“They actually job-shared the privacy job, the FOI job and the information commissioner job with one person. So the same person who was supposed to be keeping stuff private was also responsible for making stuff available publicly. They failed to modernise the regime. This government has boosted resources to the FOI commissioner—appointed an FOI commissioner—and overhauled the reporting to be more honest. There have been some silly media stories—a bit of hyperbole. That's because we changed the typology of reporting to properly distinguish between FOI requests that are released in part and those released in full. Unfortunately, some media outlets have muddled the reporting on that.”
“Their lack of integrity and their addiction to secrecy trashed Australia's standing in Transparency International's global rankings—that is, the corruption perceptions index score. From 2013 to 2021, when this mob were in government, Australia saw the largest decline of any OECD country in Transparency International's rankings—absolutely shameful! On their watch, we fell from the seventh-least corrupt system in the world to eighteenth, it's a record low score for Australia. Why? Well, we heard a bit about FOI. The degradation of the FOI regime under the previous government certainly didn't help. There were absolutely savage cuts by the Abbott government when they were elected, completely stripping out the resources, and there was their failure to appoint a dedicated commissioner of FOI.”
“I actually read it when it came out and my step count that day was 506 steps, from the couch to the fridge to the bathroom and back again—so gripped was I with reading the inside account of the dysfunction that was the Morrison government, the trashing of democratic conventions and norms right throughout that period. Even John Howard had the decency and the common sense to criticise them. Yet when push came to shove, when a censure motion was brought to this House against the former prime minister for trashing the core conventions of the Westminster system, they walked out of the chamber. They couldn't even bring themselves to vote for it. But it's not just domestic secrecy.”
“Even the now opposition, the majority, said, 'Yes, it's got pretty bad with the grants rorting. We probably should actually pass a rule that says you have to follow the rules.' The previous prime minister was aided and abetted by his cabinet colleagues, as I said. I wouldn't be able to get away with recording in Hansard the description of the previous prime minister by Michael Keenan, the former cabinet minister who served alongside him, but you can google that. If you want to know what they were like, I encourage you, if you haven't read it, to read Bulldozed by Niki Savva.”
“No-one could have imagined that early last term, when this got revealed, we would have to introduce legislation into the parliament and debate the bill, week after week, to pass a law to say, 'You can't have secret ministers.' It seemed pretty obvious, as a basic principle of accountability, that Australians needed to know who the ministers were and that the parliament, from which authority for executive government flows, needed to know who the ministers were so they could hold them to account. You didn't think it would be necessary. Then again, when I was chair of the audit committee we had to add an eighth principle—actually, it was when they had a majority, and I was the deputy chair—to the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines which said that ministers actually have to follow the guidelines.”
“Multiple members of the cabinet knew exactly what was going on. They knew exactly what Mr Morrison was like, and they knew what he was. The inquiry by former High Court justice Bell said that the secret ministries were 'corrosive of trust in government'. The Solicitor-General found that the secret ministries of the Liberal government undermined the basic principles of our entire Westminster system of government and that it was a deliberate action. You don't accidentally appoint yourself as Treasurer, finance minister, home affairs minister and all the others. As I said, you can't blame Scott Morrison. The now leader of the opposition was a cabinet minister in that disgraced, degraded government that enabled this culture of secrecy, which corroded trust and corroded Australians' trust in government itself.”
“But honestly, the mob who brought you the secret ministries—it's a serious point. It was funny. It was objectively the source of untold numbers of jokes, on social media and for the comedians around the country, that the former Liberal prime minister, Scott Morrison, swore himself in secretly as the Treasurer; the Minister for Home Affairs; the Minister for Science, Industry, Energy and Resources; and the Minister for Health. And, not content with that, he also secretly took on the finance ministry. He didn't tell anyone publicly, although he did tell quite a number of them. They're not going to be able to get away, if they want to bring on a debate about secrecy, by saying, 'Oh, that was that odious Scott Morrison character; he is gone.' The member for New England was all over it.”
“It is the silliest thing since Tony Abbott knighted Sir Prince Philip, which the comedians then thought may, indeed, be the death of irony because nothing could ever be funnier. But here we are. I am really happy—and the government is happy—to have this debate with this mob. It is an own goal—that's a little tip to the tactics committee—to bring on a debate on secrecy when you are the Liberal and National parties inheriting the wreck of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison legacy. It reminds me of the old saying: never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Now, you could quibble with two words there. You could quibble with the word 'enemy'—I did not describe the people on the other side as enemies; I described them as opponents. I wouldn't quibble with the word 'he' because, statistically and overwhelmingly, it's going to be accurate.”
“They could talk about the cost of living, energy prices, agriculture, defence, foreign affairs—anything that might have some relevance to the Australian people. But, instead, the Liberal and National parties choose to bring on this debate. It's their choice to bring on a debate at this hour about the culture of secrecy in government. It feels like we may have entered a parallel universe. I checked the calendar when I saw the topic. Is it April Fools' Day? No, it's 2 September 2025. Is it the 'International Day of Irony'? It is possibly the most ironic thing that this mob—who brought you the shame and cover-up of robodebt, who brought you secret ministries and cabinet committees of one, and who failed to introduce a national anti-corruption commission—choose to bring on a debate about secrecy.”
“I will give my friend the member for Berowra points for a valiant effort, but the troops look bored. They look sad, they look bored and they were looking at their phones. I'll give the member for Mallee a shout out; she was nodding appropriately. It's not easy to be a nodder in opposition, so well done. Those poor souls watching the parliament from home, wondering 'What is this debate about?'—I think we've got one person left in the gallery—would be right to be confused at this debate. The opposition can choose for this hour of the parliament to bring any topic they like. They could talk about Medicare—well, they wouldn't want to talk about Medicare, they would have a nuclear explosion. They have one of their little nuclear meltdowns when they talk about Medicare.”
“I commend the work of the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner. It sits in the ABF but works across the whole of the Commonwealth and with all states and territories; there are in the order of 40 separate agencies involved, if you add up the consumer agencies, the health agencies and so on, to disrupt this trade. I commend the work that's underway while acknowledging that there's more to do and commend this bill to the House for making an important contribution to that effort.”
“You can think about it like this: there's pre border, there's at border and there's post border. The work that the ABF is doing with international counterparts on shipping and intelligence to improve our ability to detect at the border and disrupt production offshore is going well. We've seen record numbers in seizures of vapes and cigarettes over the last 12 months. Don't hold me to the figure, but I think it was in the order of 2.5 billion cigarette equivalents intercepted at the border through the fantastic work of the ABF. I've visited them in Perth and Melbourne and seen firsthand the work that the team does. But, of course, as other speakers have observed, there is more to do in the postborder environment, particularly in working with the states and territories on tobacco and vaping.”
“But the explosion of vaping in the next generation that we have seen and that the government is acting on is deeply concerning not only for the future health of our kids and that generation but also for society because we know that, as people become addicted to nicotine—a highly addictive substance—through vaping, at some point many people then start to transition to smoking cigarettes because, for a lot of people, it's actually cheaper to go and buy illicit tobacco than stick with the vapes. These are all publicly known facts. There's obviously a lot of work underway. One of the responsibilities I have in the customs portfolio, with the Australian Border Force, is oversighting their fantastic, incredible work to intercept illegal tobacco and vapes at the border.”
“But what we have been seeing in recent years, with the infiltration of organised crime into the illicit tobacco market and, of course, vaping, is deeply concerning, as previous speakers have said, and rightly so—vaping is bad for your health. Of course, people who are chronically addicted to nicotine can see their doctor and receive a prescription. If it's a harm minimisation approach—vaping versus cigarettes—then that might be the right choice for the individual.”
“As previous speakers—including, I note, the member for Warringah—rightly observed, it doesn't solve the problem of illegal tobacco or vaping, but it does contribute through the health portfolio to tightening the regulatory environment and taking steps in that direction. Australia's efforts over generations now to curb smoking rates are world leading. People come from overseas to have a look at the public policy initiatives we put in place, a combination of education and interventions in the younger years and also excise increases over time. The combination of measures that Australia has taken in public education have seen smoking rates consistently decrease for a very long time now and flatline. That's a good thing. It saves lives and it saves untold billions in the health system.”
“They fixed her up in ICU, but she has chronic vein damage in her leg and will be a blood thinners for the rest of her life. There is no reason for people who suffer a chronic health condition to have to go to the doctor every 30 days, but, unfortunately, the former government failed to act. To this government's credit and to the health minister's eternal credit, he toughed it out and pushed that reform through, and it's saving hundreds of millions of dollars for Australians every year. The final thing I'll just note is with respect to the measures in the bill that contribute to tobacco and vaping management. This is a really important amendment with respect to tobacco and vaping.”
“Well, she calls me quite a bit, but it was rare that I got a call that said, 'Dad, you've done some useful.' I said, 'Oh, what's that, darling?' And she said, 'This 60-day prescribing is going to save me a fortune,' because she had just bought a house and her life revolved around keeping money in the offset account and trying to get me to pay for as many things as possible. That's a fairly predictable modus operandi. I see a bit of camaraderie across the chamber here; it's relatable. It's true. We've all been there, if we've got kids of that age. The point is she has a chronic DVT. She almost died, as I spoke about in the parliament at the time, at her request, to raise awareness of the issue. She got a DVT overseas. We were in Sri Lanka.”
“They'd been told, year after year, when they were sitting on the Treasury benches, that this was a reform that they should do for people with chronic health conditions and that there was no reason for them to have to go to the pharmacy every month and pay the prescribing fee when they were going to be on a medication for life. I'll give you an example. Often, when you talk about these things, people think of older Australians who may have more health conditions or be on more medicines or they think of people our age, my age, who may start to develop some health conditions, if they see the doctor regularly enough. But I got a rare phone call from my daughter when we made that change.”
“That was July 2022, and it was one of the first actions the elected Albanese Labor government took. Then, as I said, came the largest cut to the cost of PBS medicines in the history of the PBS, with the maximum cost of a general script falling to $30 from $42.50, where it had risen to under the Liberals, and then came the 60-day prescriptions, saving time and money. There was a little bit of an unhelpful debate. I think it's fair to say some of the pharmacy lobby went a little bit over the top. The sky was going to fall in, and pharmacies were going to close. There were going to be no pharmacies left. I remember them up there, yelling in the gallery and carrying on. Full credit to the health minister for persevering with this important reform. Again, the former government had the advice.”
“There's a specific provision in the bill to protect the availability of discounting, which is so important for competition and to many people who pursue and focus on saving every dollar. One of the key cost-of-living measures is the reduction in medicine costs. It comes on top of the largest reduction to PBS medicines, which we affected in 2023. These measures will make four out of five PBS medicines cheaper. In my electorate of Bruce, more than $10 million has already been saved by people because of those changes, as at 31 July. As I said, it builds on action we've already taken to deliver important cost-of-living measures through the PBS through cheaper medicines—more free and cheaper medicines sooner, with a 25 per cent reduction in the number of scripts that a concessional patient has to fill out once the safety net kicks in.”
“As I said, this is part of the delivery of our ambitious health agenda, and one part of that, as many speakers, both government and opposition, have remarked upon in their own way is the government's measures to make cheaper medicines even cheaper and to reduce the general PBS copayment so that, when the bill passes, Australians will pay a maximum of $25 per script. I'll say that again. The Labor government is delivering on our election commitments to charge a maximum copayment, under the PBS, of $25 a script. The last time the copayment was $25 was in 2004. That's more than 20 years ago. This reduction represents a more than 20 per cent cut to the maximum cost of PBS medicines. Importantly, the bill is drafted so that, for all medicines that pharmacies can currently discount today, they'll be still able to be discounted.”
“I had to help them.' The ethos of care that most people in the medical profession exhibit to their patients is admirable, but the truth is there are also some filthy rich doctors who rort the system—absolutely unacceptable. Those doctors—we have seen the examples—come up rarely, but when they do come up they completely undermine public trust in our Medicare system. It's really important that those doctors are cracked down on with the full force of the law, and these measures to give agencies powers to conduct proper investigations and go after them are absolutely critical; I commend them.”
“My mum was a nurse, and my uncle had two PhDs in nursing. I not only refused to do medicine, even though I did science and had the marks; I rebelled against my mother by refusing to go to Melbourne University—I went to Monash and studied other things. But I've got great regard, coming from a family immersed in medicine, for the work that doctors do. The vast majority of doctors serve their patients with care and distinction. My dad died when I was young, but Mum used to tell the story that when he'd come home and she'd do the monthly books for his doctor's surgery—it was back in the day where you could be a GP and a specialist obstetrician/gynaecologist—she'd get very frustrated at the end of the month and say, 'You haven't charged all these patients,' and he'd say, 'But they were sick.”
“To contrast, we saw under the former government the shocking scandal of robodebt, sending fake debt notices to the most vulnerable Australians with the power of the Commonwealth logo for money they did not owe—absolutely shameful. It was a deliberate budget measure continued under successive ministers. If only they'd put the same amount of effort into pursuing rorting in schemes like the NDIS, which the government is now investing through the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and other measures, to find the crooks and charge and prosecute them. My dad was a doctor. As I was saying to the assistant minister, I was a great disappointment to the family. I was supposed to be a doctor because he was a doctor and his dad was a doctor and his dad was a doctor—a line of obstetricians, one of them very famous actually.”
“Of course it's important and a focus of the government to make sure every dollar is spent efficiently, effectively, economically and ethically by the public agencies that administer it, but it's also important for public trust because when taxpayers and citizens see rorting of public programs it undermines public trust in these universal programs which Labor governments introduce. Integrity really matters, and it is important that our agencies have the powers they need to support investigations, conduct efficient and timely and effective compliance activities and crack down on any rorting and misuse of the system that they see.”
“Medicare and its programs help Australians pay for their health care. It's a world-class system that is rightly the envy of the world. My electorate in south-east Melbourne is home to many new migrants, people new to Australia, and one of the things they marvel at is that, when they become a permanent resident and then a citizen of our country, they get the little green and gold card which gives them access to the doctor, medicines and so on. Most people in the world do not live in a country where they can enjoy the kind of health care we have. But money doesn't fall from the sky. It's incumbent on the government to make sure every single taxpayer dollar that goes into Medicare is managed properly and managed with integrity. That's important for the sustainability of the scheme.”
“Already in this place he's become a powerful advocate for his community but also has been courageous enough to share many of his own health challenges and highlight in a very personal way the importance of Medicare to everyday Australians. He's a real asset to the parliament. To summarise the bill, the measures are principally intended to protect the integrity of Medicare, enhance the regulation of therapeutic goods and, importantly, vaping goods under the Therapeutic Goods Act and make minor amendments to ensure the smooth and consistent operation of the tobacco act. I'll just touch firstly on the Medicare integrity measures. These are not made-up. They implement recommendations from the Independent Review of Medicare Integrity and Compliance, known as the Philip review.”
“This bill brings together a number of important strands of the government's ongoing work to improve and reform Australia's healthcare system. It brings together a number of elements that were contained in the bill that was considered by the previous parliament which lapsed in the Senate but which I note had been the subject of a Senate committee report recommending that those important measures be passed. The context is also important because it complements and links to all of the work—and I see the assistant minister for health here—which the government is powering ahead with, delivering on election commitments around cheaper medicines, Medicare urgent care clinics and all of the other reforms in the health system. I commend the member for Moore for his speech.”
“Australia will continue to uphold the rules based international order that underpins Australia's security, prosperity and stability. Debate adjourned.”
“I move: Customs Tariff Proposal (No. 2) 2025. Customs Tariff Proposal (No. 2) 2025 proposes to amend section 18A of the Customs Tariff Act 1995 to extend for a further 24 months the additional duty applied to imported goods that are the produce or manufacture of Russia or Belarus. From 25 April 2022, an additional 35 per cent customs duty has applied in addition to the general rate of duty that would have ordinarily applied to these goods. This was due to end on 24 October 2025. The continued extension of the additional duty aligns with measures implemented by like-minded nations. Australia unambiguously condemns Russia's illegal, immoral and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. We support Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and right to self-determination.”
“I'll finish on this point. The goal of these antisemitic attacks is to spread fear in the Jewish community and to divide Australians. I say to those opposite who want to bring this motion and frame the debate in these terms and weaponise this scourge of antisemitism, for whatever partisan reasons, however genuinely it is felt by all of us, this kind of debate is exactly what our adversaries want. Don't fall into their trap with this kind of motion and debate. It should be a moment for our nation to come together; it lasted 24 hours. The Leader of the Opposition's position yesterday was decent, but all the shadow leaders of the opposition—O'Brien, Cash and Hastie—have been out on TV talking out of both sides of their mouths, and they should know better.”
“Their members who have spoken so far have been or are members of the intelligence and security committee. The member opposite was the deputy chair when I was a member of that committee. They well know that the government takes the advice of security agencies. They don't take the advice of the opposition or interest groups. We listen to it, but we act on the advice of our security agencies, as has long been the tradition in these matters, as was their action as the former government. I'll say clearly that Iranian Australians are not responsible for the actions of the ayatollah regime. Most of them vehemently disagree with that regime. There are a couple of fringe-dwelling idiots who might carry a flag or a picture at a rally, but that doesn't represent the majority of the community and they shouldn't be tarred by it.”
“It's not just an attack on the Jewish community or a place of worship or a business; it's an attack on Australians and Australia. When one of us is attacked because of our identity all of us are diminished. The government has rightly taken action that we haven't seen in this country since the Second World War to expel the Iranian ambassador and diplomats and suspend the operations of the embassy. That will impact thousands of Australians—Iranian Australians, dual citizens and others in Iran right now. As we've heard, ASIO has done the painstaking work of uncovering the links with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. There are ongoing investigations. I'll make one point in response to the hyperbole that we've sadly seen from those opposite.”