Julian Leeser
Berowra · Liberal Party · Australia
“Third, the bill gives the minister unilateral power to impose conditions on higher education providers under the new section 36-65 of the HESA, which is introduced by this bill. The current version of section 36-65 of the HESA requires that there be an agreement in place with the provider. The new version does not.”
“Presumably, if you're a university and you get a bad decision, then your only recourse is judicial review, litigation or a constitutional writ. It's not a great option when the target of your litigation will be the minister who will make the future decisions that shape your ongoing financial viability.”
“This bill changes it from capped funding to capped places, but the places cost different amounts depending on the course. The Commonwealth contribution to a history degree is $1,316; agriculture costs $32,400. Could a university which typically teaches history be allocated 100 places and decide to convert them to agriculture?”
“I said very clearly that I understand the value of international students to Australia. I also said: We will want to make changes to the settings around international students, but I want the sector to know that we want to work closely with you to develop these policies and announce them in due course.”
“This so-called system steward, ATEC, can be bypassed at any time by a minister choosing to exercise this power. Again, this means universities are, under this bill, subject to extraordinary control by this minister or any future minister.”
“He said that Australian kids should be taught Australian values, which he defined as democracy, the rule of law, basic freedoms and a fair go.”
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“Individually, many of these elements are not unprecedented. The concern is the combined effect and what it does to the balance of power. Taken together, this bill creates a clearer executive pathway: the minister can set the standards, assess performance, suspend and ultimately terminate. In other words, the powers are transferred from being clearly set out by the parliament to being set by the relevant minister, all without strong parliamentary oversight. A critical point is that several of these levers were deliberately placed outside strong parliamentary oversight. For example, the performance standards are not legislative instruments, they're not disallowable and they're not required to be published or tabled, and suspension decisions for most entities are not required to be tabled.”
“This bill is presented as a governance modernisation measure, aligning certain statutory office holders with contemporary accountability standards. It applies to four entities: the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, or ACIAR; Austrade; the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, or ASNO; and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. It does this by changing some maximum terms to five years; by expanding termination grounds to include serious misconduct and, for most roles, unsatisfactory performance; by allowing ministers to set written performance standards that can be used when assessing unsatisfactory performance; by introducing express suspension powers; and by giving the minister a new power to issue general written directions to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.”
“It sits squarely within that same culture where the instinct is to reduce transparency, to centralise control and to weaken parliamentary oversight, especially when it comes to statutory offices that parliament created precisely to operate with independence. That's the core issue here. If you combine greater ministerial power with weaker visibility, you don't get modernisation; you get a structural tilt away from parliamentary accountability and towards executive control. That's why the coalition will not oppose its second reading in the House but will seek Senate committee scrutiny—because sunlight is exactly what this government keeps trying to avoid. That brings us to the details of the Commonwealth Entities Legislation Amendment Bill.”
“I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Entities Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. I want to start by putting this bill in context, because Australians are living under the most secretive and least transparent federal government that we've seen in a generation. Time and again, this government's instinct is to control information, avoid scrutiny and shift key decisions out of the parliament's line of sight. Instead of lifting standards, Labor's pattern has been to make accountability harder. That includes more decisions made by ministerial discretion, fewer documents proactively disclosed and more 'trust us' governance where parliament is asked to sign off on frameworks while the real power sits with ministers behind closed doors. That matters here, because this bill is not being proposed in a vacuum.”
“In conclusion, I say to the students and former students across this country: I'm listening. If you've had an unfair group assessment, if you could have been assessed in a better way—tell me. Let's make it better, because our system needs to be modern and it needs to be fair. To academics and university administrators around the country, I say this: unless there are compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances, I'm calling on you to get rid of group assignments. Thousands of students have now backed this in. I'm calling on the universities to listen.”
“But it's a shame, because this isn't about politics; it's about students. It's about 1.6 million students in higher education in this country for whom group assignments are a daily reality. I say to the minister: listen to the students who tell you they're being unfairly penalised; listen to those who are telling you that group assignments force them to carry others; and listen to the mums and the mature-age students who somehow have to fit study between work and caring and family responsibilities, who don't have the flexibility to work around three or four other people, who don't have time to do the lion's share of a project that is meant to be split and who can't hand in an assignment, which their group have left until the last minute, during their night shift. This isn't a small thing; it's the real life experience of students.”
“A university degree is an individual certification. It tells the world that the individual student has met the required standard and that they have a particular set of knowledge and skills. In group assignments, too much of that falls away. In a sense, it's the same basic question that is being raised by the use of AI and cheating factories: is the individual student demonstrating they have the knowledge and skills to earn this degree? Have they been properly and fairly tested? In a group assignment situation, too often the answer is no. On Friday, the Minister for Education was asked for his thoughts on the issue. Instead of answering, he used the opportunity to make a joke and give some gratuitous political commentary. He's a politician—fair enough. I'm a politician; I get it.”
“Collaboration is a good thing, and I understand that employers want graduates who can work with others. But, at a time when the integrity of the university assessment system is under attack and the purpose of a degree is to assess an individual's knowledge and skills, not a group's knowledge and skills, group assignments only weaken the standing of a degree, and, in too many cases, they are simply unfair. The depth and volume of the response sends a clear message. This issue has hit a nerve, and there's a common thread. It's about fairness, and it's about the integrity of the degree. Students feel instinctively that, in many cases, it's deeply unfair to assess them individually based on the work of others. There's always that student who does the work and that student who reaps the benefit.”
“Megan said: I totally agree. Unless students are made accountable for their contributions a few are doing the work for everyone else. Sharon started like this: Totally agree. Our daughter and niece always were left to carry the others—even in high school. Rontania said: Absolutely agree. As a teacher I've seen too many kids get stuck with terrible groups and have to pull all the weight only to achieve a satisfactory grade. Braden said: I withdrew from a course because of the group assignments. Especially with adult education, where some students work shift work, juggling family responsibilities, it's not fair and feasible to be doing group assignments this day and age. Others disagree, and their main argument seems to be that, in the workforce, you often have to collaborate. I appreciate that.”
“Since my speech, I've heard from thousands of students and teachers across Australia venting about their experiences, including people like Hilary, who said: Group assignments are torture. It is virtually impossible to get others to do their fair share. Steve wrote: Spent 30 years working in universities. Could not agree more. Laura said: Agree—group assignments were horrible … Alison wrote: 100% absolutely agree. I have just completed a 4-year nursing online degree where there was a considerable weighting on group work … It is a contrived and unrealistic replication of teamwork in the 'real world'. Sarah wrote: Group assignments for online degrees should be outlawed! The reason I'm studying online is because I'm a Mum to little ones & I don't have a uni near me but I'm expected to do a group assignment somehow? Insane!”
“Last Thursday, I told every public university in this country that, unless there are compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances, they should get rid of group assignments. The response has been profound. In the last five days, I've been flooded with responses from people across the country who shared their experiences. People feel deeply about this issue. On Friday, I spoke to a mum who told me that her daughters chose not to enrol in particular subjects to avoid group assignments. On the weekend, I spoke to another mum whose daughter had been penalised because someone else in the group had been caught using AI. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Lucia is the daughter of Anthony Field, the blue Wiggle, and she is now one of the blue Wiggles. She and her mum both have endometriosis, and it was really only because of her mum's experience that she was successfully diagnosed. But even a woman in her 20s in Australia today, in 2026, was still given the run-around of the health system in terms of getting a proper diagnosis. This really has to be, in my view, the focus of ongoing work, given that we know one in seven women in this country have endometriosis by the age of 49.”
“The gathering was also addressed by Professor Anusch Yazdani, who is a world leader in endometriosis research and who reminded us that Australia is a world leader in this space. I particularly want to acknowledge Greg Hunt, the former minister for health and aged care, for the work that he did when he was health minister in the former government in supporting research into endometriosis, listing medicines and raising the profile of this issue. I want to acknowledge Senator Anne Ruston, who is the current shadow minister for health and aged care in this space, and I want to give credit to the current government for continuing the good work to make Australia a world leader in endometriosis. It's so very important. One of the most affecting presentations at the parliamentary friendship lunch was from Lucia Field and her mum, Miki Field.”
“I want to acknowledge Ellie Angel-Mobbs, who is the broadcaster that moderated some of these sessions, and she did such a great job. She is a sufferer of endometriosis. One of the things that Endometriosis Australia is promoting at the moment is the idea of being accredited with EndoThrive—so becoming a workplace that is supportive of people who have endometriosis. Divya Gokal, along with Dani Difalco from Showpo, talked about some of the benefits of signing up to the EndoThrive program, which is something that I would encourage other employers to do. It provides support for people in your teams that have endometriosis and shows how you can enact best practice as an employer.”
“My message to the women who have not had a positive diagnosis of endometriosis but suffer from debilitating period pain is, if the diagnosis hasn't been properly revealed, go and get a second opinion and, if you still don't think that that diagnosis is correct, get another second opinion. One of the things that we in Parliamentary Friends of Endometriosis have done in this parliament is stage a very important day back in February about the importance of endometriosis, in conjunction with Endometriosis Australia. I want to acknowledge the people involved in Endometriosis Australia and, in particular, Monica Forlano and Donna Ciccia, the chair and the deputy chair of Endometriosis Australia. They put on a series of forums that highlighted some of the challenges that people who are suffering from endometriosis face.”
“I also want to acknowledge on my side of the House the former member Nola Marino, who was generous in sharing the stories of her daughter, who had suffered from endometriosis and had a very difficult and trying experience as an endo sufferer. I want to say to the women of Australia who suffer from endometriosis on behalf of their husbands and partners: we love you, we hear you, we support you and we think you're amazing. For any husband that's gone through watching their wife suffer from multiple surgeries and difficult diagnoses it's almost impossible to fully appreciate what they're going through because the pain can be so severe.”
“I want to rise and make a brief contribution to this debate as the husband of a woman who suffers from endometriosis and also as the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Endometriosis, alongside my friend the member for Bendigo. I was one of the founding members of the Parliamentary Friends of Endometriosis, a very effective parliamentary friendship group in this place that was founded by former members Gai Brodtmann and Nicolle Flint. Nicolle's story is particularly relevant in that Nicolle decided to get involved on the issue of endometriosis because of friends that she had who had endometriosis and then Nicolle herself found that she had endometriosis and has been undergoing treatment.”
“That's why people are paying higher prices in energy across my electorate. It's why interest rates have gone up again. It's why, under Labor, we've experienced the largest decline in living standards in the developed world. The people of Berowra have kept their side of the bargain. They've worked hard, they've paid their taxes and they've trusted what they were told. They deserve a government that does the same. All Australians do.”
“Those rebates didn't fix supply. They didn't strengthen reliability. They simply delayed the pain, and now households are feeling it in full. Those failures on energy are reflective of a much broader failure of Labor's economic policy across the board. This is a government on track to rack up $1 trillion of debt. The result is Australians pay. Labor's spending drives up inflation. The input costs for everything go up. The consumer ends up footing the bill. When Labor spends, you pay. When Labor spends, Australians pay. Under Labor and the reckless Treasurer, inflation is higher than in any other major advanced economy. It's higher than in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, France and Japan. High inflation means higher power bills. It means higher prices for Australians.”
“Until the government is prepared to admit that its approach has consequences, real consequences, for families and businesses, the pressure on my community and communities like mine will continue to mount. A new Canstar survey has provided some alarming data following the expiry of Labor's temporary energy rebates. It reported that, of 3,000 respondents surveyed, 72 per cent had seen an increase in their power bills since the end of the rebate, 18 per cent are now struggling to pay their bill and 12 per cent have had to sacrifice to pay the bill. They've had to sacrifice what? School excursions, family outings, insurance cover and even basic groceries. These figures are post Labor's spendathon to artificially push down prices. Billions of dollars were borrowed and splashed around to mask the underlying problems.”
“But emissions reductions have flatlined since we were in government, despite more than $75 billion in spending, but prices have surged. Energy policy has to be about cost and reliability. This government has dropped the ball. Energy should be a comparative advantage for Australia. We are a resource-rich nation. We export energy to the world, yet increasingly Australians are paying the world-leading prices for a basic necessity. It's not a failure of geography; it's a failure of policy. We need to ask a basic question: how did the country that exports vast coal and gas, that has vast renewable potential, that has world-class engineers and operators end up in the position where families are rationing power.”
“What troubles people the most is not just the size of the increase, but the sense that all of this was avoidable. Australia is not a country that is short of energy. We're blessed with resources. We've got the capacity, the expertise and the workforce to power our own economy reliably and affordably, and yet households and businesses are paying more and getting less certainty. Right now, too many Australians feel they are part of an experiment. They are being asked to carry the cost of decisions that haven't delivered on the promised outcomes. It's not good enough for families, and it's not good enough for the small businesses that I represent. Under the coalition, Australia outpaced much of the developed world, cutting emissions by 28 per cent on 2005 levels while growing the economy.”
“This summer too many in my community have had to choose whether to put the air conditioner on or to put food on the table. Katherina from Beecroft has showed me copies of her power bills. In the November quarter in 2024, she paid $940 in electricity. In the same period one year later it was $1,189. That's an increase of $249 in a single quarter, and if you extrapolate this it is basically an increase of $1,000 a year. Families were promised a $275 reduction and instead they got $1,000-a-year increase. This is the Albanese government's legacy. I've seen power bills for a small business in Thornleigh. In January 2025, they paid $312 for power; in January 2026, they paid $604—nearly double. That's affecting the viability of businesses across the electorate. How is this the new normal under Labor?”
“People in the Berowra electorate are hurting. The ABS CPI data revealed last week that in the 12 months to January electricity costs have surged an extraordinary 32.2 per cent. That means families in suburbs like Waitara, Asquith, Normanhurst, Glenhaven—indeed, right across the electorate—are opening their bills at the kitchen table and wondering how they're going to make ends meet. My electorate is still waiting for the government to deliver on its broken promise of a $275 reduction in their power bills. They are still waiting. This gets raised time and time again with me as I'm out and about in the electorate. By failing to lower prices, this flailing government has broken its most basic promise to the Australian people.”
“These students all demonstrate the very best of the next generation through their dedication to their studies and their contributions to our community. I commend all the students in Berowra schools and wish them well for the 2026 academic year.”
“Today I'd like to place on the national record the names of the students from across the Berowra electorate who I had the honour of presenting prizes to at last year's school presentation days. These students are acknowledged for their dedication and achievement in their studies and their active citizenship: Jess Ray from Annangrove Public School; Liam Cape from Arcadia Public School; Andrew Paw from Arden Anglican Junior School; Ruth Harnwell from Arden Anglican Senior School; Davis Stanley from Asquith Boys High School; Charlotte Payne from Asquith Girls High; Arwen Lowe from Asquith Public School, Violet Wade from Beecroft Public School; Hayden Wall from Berowra Public School; Emelia Lloyd from Brooklyn Public School; Mia Eikli from Cheltenham Girls High School; Zoe The and James Phillips from Cherrybrook Public School; Theodore Sobinoff from Clark Road School; Jay Lavu from Dural Public School; Christian Lane from Epping Boys High School; Jedidiah Tharion from Epping Heights Primary School; Cathy Han from Epping West Public School; Elena Matley from Epping North Public School; Serena Cipponi from Epping Public School; Jordan Herrington from Galston High School; Jacob Reeves from Galston Public School; Ivy Tanevsky from Glenhaven Public School; Rowdy Hitchcock from Glenorie Public School; Efa Warner from Hillside Public School; Angela Yang from Hornsby Girls High School; Eliza Guest from Hornsby Heights Public School; Elisa Daidone from Hornsby North Public School; Harry Astin from Hornsby South Public School; Pashaan Sarkari from John Purchase Public School; Lennon Taylor from Kenthurst Public School; Lucy Saad from Loreto Normanhurst; Xavier Younes from Marian Catholic College; Cleo Rahe from Maroota Public School; Shakked Gazi from Massada College—Senior School; Maya Gazi from Masada College—Junior School; Hunter Hartl from Mildura Public School; Zoe Hutchinson from Mount Cola Public School; Ryan Herbert from Mount Kuring-gai Public School; Mariella Donnelly from Mount St Benedict College; Jimin Baik from New Hope School; Junhyeok Cho, from Normanhurst Boys High School; Patrick Moinet from Normanhurst Public School; Harlow Walker from Normanhurst West Public School; Emma Onozuka from Northholm Grammar School; Fernando Higuchi from Oakhill College; Benjamin Pell and Zoe Pearce from Pacific Berowra Christian School; Cassandra Ptolemy from Pacific Hills Christian School; Cash Daley from Pennant Hills High School; Matilda Saunders from Pennant Hills Public School; Xavier Shalala from Redfield College; Sophia Awad from Saint Agatha's Primary School; Martha Askew from Saint Bernards Catholic Primary School; Leela Ingham from Saint Leo's Catholic College; Elise Azzopardi from Saint Madeleine's Primary School; Eliza Kutepova and Donovan Renard from Saint Patricks Asquith; Lucy Denahy from Tangara School for Girls; Nicole Meng from Hills Grammar School; Abigail Dennis from Thornleigh West Public School; Scott Wilson from Waitara Public School; Sapphire Datson from Warra Special School; Allegra Wells from West Pennant Hills Public School; Skyla Roy from Wideview Public School; and Matilda Bloodworth from Wisemans Ferry Public School.”
“They're particularly vital for older Australians, they're particularly vital for the civility of our society, and they're particularly vital for people who are trying to access services. So I put Australia Post and its well-paid CEO and its well-paid board on notice that we in the Berowra community will not stomach the closure of any more post offices, and we intend to expose Australia Post's plan, right across the country, to close post offices and diminish the services that Australians want. Unfortunately, life under the Albanese government has got harder, whether it is because of the cost of living, the reduction of services or the imposition of a lower standard of living because of a failure to invest in important infrastructure.”
“We launched a petition, which now has over 1,200 signatures, which I gave to the Minister for Communications, yet there's been no action on restoring postal services to Australia Post. I've put in a freedom-of-information application to find out not only what the status of decisions about the future of the Pennant Hills post office is but what Australia Post's plan to close post offices in other parts of my electorate and indeed other parts of Australia is, because I believe Australia Post has a secret plan to close post offices right across the country that they're not coming clean about with Australians. We need to expose this, because today it's Pennant Hills. Tomorrow it'll be other communities. Australia Post services are absolutely vital.”
“McDonald's headquarters in Thornleigh used to have, as its post box, the Pennant Hills post office, but when Australia Post decided to dispense with a post office in Pennant Hills, it's really left that community bereft, and my office knows it as well because we used that post office to service our constituents. This is now a real matter of which business in Pennant Hills are suffering. We know that Pennant Hills is due for redevelopment. I welcome a redevelopment of Pennant Hills. But all of these things are factors that Australia Post should be taking into account in determining whether to maintain services or not. Australia Post will not even provide for a licensed post office. We've written to the CEO.”
“I want to turn to the issue of the Australia Post decision to close the post office at Pennant Hills. This has been a body blow to the Pennant Hills community. There are an increasingly large number of older Australians in Pennant Hills who've moved into the retirement villages around those areas. There are people who shop at the excellent Pennant Hills shops there with the IGA, Harris Farm and a range of speciality shops. There are an increasing number of businesses in Pennant Hills, including Excelsia University College, which opened up at the beginning of this year.”
“It's all very well to build more of these towers across Epping, but there's no point building the towers if nobody can actually shop at Coles there and if nobody can see the doctor. It just diminishes the quality of life. The state government has this bizarre policy when they allow people to develop new dwellings that you don't have to provide a carpark for every bedroom you've got there. If you had to provide a carpark for every bedroom you've got, you wouldn't have as many problems in relation to parking, but we don't. So we need the parking situation addressed, and I call on people in my community to sign the petition to get more public parking in Epping so we can make Epping and its town centre workable and liveable again for the residents and those people who need to visit Epping.”
“It has the metro, it has the northern line, and it has the express line going from Newcastle through to the city. It is a major transport hub. It is a hub for major businesses near Macquarie Park. It is a hub for people going to Macquarie University. It has a town centre that is really struggling. It's struggling because people cannot get a park. They cannot get a park to go to Coles. They cannot get a park to see the doctor or the optometrist, to take their kids to tutoring or to go to one of the restaurants there. It's affecting the business community. It's affecting the quality of life. At the end of last year I doorknocked around Epping, and, again and again, the issue of more parking for Epping around the station was one that was raised with me.”
“New Line Road's widening is a must, and I urge everyone to sign my petition and to amplify the voice of our community to ensure that the Minns government and the Albanese government hear what we need to do to improve the situation across those suburbs. At the redistribution just before the last election, I was privileged to begin representing the suburb of Epping. Most of the suburb of Epping is in the Berowra electorate. Epping is a wonderful and diverse part of the community. It has a very significant Chinese Australian community. It is a community that has gone from single-dwelling houses to 20-storey apartment towers. Again, the infrastructure in Epping has not kept up with the growth in population there. The Epping train station is now a major train station.”
“We are going to continue to put the pressure, as I have done right across my last decade in parliament, on the state government to do its job and the Albanese government to back them in to fund the important widening of this road that not only affects the suburbs I mentioned but is a bottleneck for people in Kenthurst and Annangrove and the suburbs in the neighbouring electorates, which are undergoing their own redevelopments and their own increases in density and population. There is nothing wrong with building more homes. I obviously support the idea of more Australians buying a home in my community, but we cannot build more homes when the infrastructure for existing homes is already failing.”
“It's so important that New Line Road is widened, particularly as the state government has announced plans to insert an extra 9,500 dwellings around the Cherrybrook metro. How can you put more dwellings around a metro where the road infrastructure already is not keeping up? It's vital that before a sod is turned in Cherrybrook for the metro redevelopment that important infrastructure upgrades, like the widening of New Line Road, occur. Otherwise, the quality of life of people in our community will just continue to decline. People have waited long enough. It's time for action.”
“New Line Road is a state road, but sometimes when the federal government puts money on the table it pushes the state into action—and, indeed, it did. The state government matched that money. This was a Liberal state government. Then, in its last budget, the Perrottet government, with Matt Kean as Treasurer, committed $77 million for the widening of New Line Road between Hastings Road and Purchase Road, the main bottleneck. But, when the Minns government came to office, they shelved the project. They shelved the project that our community has been waiting half a century to bring about. We're fed up with it. It's why I've started a petition to put pressure on the Minns government—and the Albanese government, if the Minns government won't find the funds—to widen this very important road and improve the bottleneck.”
“Not only has Labor's management of the economy made people's lives more difficult; Labor's failure to properly invest in infrastructure is also having a very deleterious effect on people in my community. New Line Road is the worst bottleneck in my community. It connects Pennant Hills and Pennant Hills Road through Cherrybrook up to Dural and up and out to the semi-rural part of my electorate. For 50 years, people have been waiting for New Line Road to be widened. My in-laws built their dream home there in the early 1980s and were told that the widening of New Line Road was some six months away. Well, people are still waiting today. When I first became the member for Berowra, I secured $10 million for the planning for the widening of the road.”
“These figures are shocking and they have real impacts on families and family budgets. A local in Waitara recently wrote to me saying their apartment strata fees have more than doubled in two years. Their council charges and water and electricity costs have gone up as well. What we're seeing now in my electorate is families having to make very difficult decisions as the school year starts and the club sport year starts. Do they buy their child school shoes or do they register them at the local sporting club to play a winter sport? This is Berowra. This isn't one of the most economically strong areas of our country, nor is it one of the most economically challenged areas. It is a Middle Australian area. If families are struggling in my community, they're struggling so much more in other places.”
“As we enter the year 2026 and students go back to school and parents return to work, one thing is constantly discussed with me across my electorate and that is how much harder life has got under this Labor government and how much more expensive it is. As we know, when Labor spends, you pay. Across my electorate, families are working harder just to afford the basic essentials as costs go up and up under this government. Insurance costs are up 38 per cent, energy bills are up 38 per cent, rent is up 22 per cent and health is up 18 per cent. In my shadow portfolio, education, the cost since Labor came to government is up 17 per cent. It's up 5.4 per cent this year, well above the broader inflation figure of 3.8 per cent. Child care is up 11.2 per cent. Grocery prices across the board are up 16 per cent.”
“I also want to acknowledge the wider committee: Kristy Livy, David Duncan, Ian Thompson, James Keevy, Claire Dewar and Ashleigh Robinson. At the Hornsby Swim Club, which has been going for 63 years and meets on Friday nights, I want to acknowledge President Bec Sheppherd and the committee of Lachlan Hinds, Lachlan West, Barbara Judson, Susan Martin-Blake, David Grant, Rachel Gibbons, Alan Hitchens and Margaret Gruca-Dziok. These are two very important clubs with very important committees who volunteer their time to create safe and welcoming spaces and have built the sort of club cultures that keeps people turning up for both clubs. With over 250 members, from little kids through to swimmers in their 70s, this is creating a very important racing culture and learn-to-swim culture in our community.”
“The Royal Life Saving Society of Australia has released some pretty disturbing statistics. One in four Australian adults can't swim, and 40 per cent of children graduate primary school without being able to swim. In Hornsby in my electorate, we have the Hornsby aquatic centre, which offers great learn-to-swim classes, but it also takes care of Australians who want to learn to race and be part of the competitive nature of Australian swimming. We've got two very important swim clubs. I recently visited the Berowra RSL sub-Branch Youth Swimming Club. It's been going since 1959, and it races every Sunday. I want to thank and acknowledge the president, Dean Burgess, and the executive, Kiri Burgess, Corrie Hassan and Hayley Matthews, for their leadership of the committee.”
“Parents send their kids to school to learn reading, writing, maths, science and all the other subjects; they don't send their kids to school to learn politics. Let's keep politics out of the classroom. Bluey is about dads and their kids, and it shouldn't be hijacked by pro-Hamas activists to be used in school as a propaganda tool aimed at children. The priorities right now should be obvious. Teach the fundamentals well. Teach them explicitly. And ensure every student has the chance to succeed. Finally, the government wants Australians to applaud its investment. But families are under pressure and costs are going up. Education costs rose 5.4 per cent in the last year and, over Labor's term in office, they rose 17 per cent. This motion doesn't recognise this. If funding goes up while outcomes go down, that's not success.”
“Let me say that again: more than a third of those teaching maths aren't maths teachers. Subject knowledge matters. To teach advanced maths, you need strong maths expertise. To teach physics, you need to be able to confidently understand physics. I'm not having a crack at those teachers who are working out of field; that's not a problem they've created. But it's disappointing that, rather than talking about these issues, the government wants the parliament just to give it a pat on the back. Let me turn to another concern parents raise with me regularly: schools and classrooms drifting away from education and into activism. Let me be clear. Classrooms must be a place of learning. Teachers hold a position of authority, and the teachers I know do a magnificent job.”
“This motion doesn't talk about that—and it's a shame, because, rather than giving the government a pat on the back, we should be asking how we can lift these outcomes. Do we need more explicit teaching, a better and more knowledge-rich curriculum, better classroom management, less focus on screens in the early years? This motion also speaks about teacher shortages. We all hear it from principals and parents, and we see it in hard-to-staff regions and subjects. When you look further into this, though, there's a second serious problem, and that's an expertise shortage, particularly in maths and science. The fastest-growing jobs in Australia need a strong grounding in maths and science, but the most recent data shows that almost 40 per cent of maths teachers and technology teachers were teaching out of field.”
“In the last two decades, we've made extraordinary strides in the education of women and girls, and those achievements must be celebrated. But there is clear data and a growing sense that the education system is letting too many of our boys fall behind. And we need to do better. The most recent NAPLAN tests show that, by year 9, in writing, there's a 35-point gap between boys and girls—roughly one to two years of learning. That's an educational deficit that compounds year after year, and we see the consequences later in schooling pathways. The ABS reports that, in 2024, the year 10 to 12 apparent retention rate was 83½ per cent for women but only 76.4 per cent for male students.”
“That's an extraordinary collapse in recreational reading in just a few years. If children aren't reading, they're not building vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and the background knowledge that makes every other subject easier. This motion doesn't talk about that. It also doesn't talk about an issue that's ignored far too often, and that's boys' education. The data is clear and consistent. Boys trail girls in every NAPLAN literacy assessment—reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation—in every age group. Average achievement for boys falls short of girls' in every NAPLAN domain except numeracy. Boys are twice as likely to score the lowest performance bands in literacy. And this isn't a boys-versus-girls argument. We want every child to succeed.”
“Teachers are, unfortunately, increasingly having to be focused on behavioural management, distracting them from teaching. This motion is about intergovernmental school funding. It's not about education outcomes. And, when you look at those outcomes, too many Australian students are going backwards. The statistics are terrible. Roughly one in three Australian school students are not mastering the reading skills they need. For a child to have a successful education, that starts with the ability to read; without it, they struggle to comprehend other areas of the curriculum and cannot fully participate in the opportunities that school is meant to provide. A University of South Australia study of students aged 11 to 14 found that the share who never read for fun jumped from 11 per cent in 2019 to 53 per cent in 2022.”
“This motion is full of self-congratulation and not about improving education. The reality is we are looking at an education system today under increasing pressure. Families, teachers and principals tell me the reality they're living with every day: standards are slipping, classrooms are harder to manage, teacher workloads are exploding and too many Australians are being left behind. This is a central failure of the Albanese government in education: announcements and slogans, amidst declining outcomes. It's what I hear every day from parents, and it's what's reflected in the data. Children increasingly can't read confidently at the age they're supposed to. Foundational learning's not being prioritised in the curriculum. STEM subjects are being increasingly taught by teachers who don't specialise in areas like maths and physics.”
“To those protesting in Iran I say: you may live under the sword of fear, but you are counted among the champions of liberty. We see you, we hear you, we stand with you and we will not be silent.”
“It's time we looked the Ayatollah in the eye and said, 'Enough.' I want the world to know that we stand with the Persian people. I honour all those who speak up and who want Iran to live out its destiny as a free democratic nation, not a pariah state under a brutal criminal dictatorship. I want an Iran where the Iranian people freely choose their future, far from the jackboot of a police state. I want an Iran where women have the same rights and freedoms they enjoy in Australia. I want an Iran where women and girls can go about their lives without fear, where they can dress as they choose, pursue an education, build careers and shape their futures. I want an Iran where children go to school to learn and grow and are not subjected to political or religious extremism and indoctrination, and where families live their daily lives in peace.”