Rebekha Sharkie
Mayo · Centre Alliance · Australia
“People often say to me, 'What's the greatest thing that you love about your job?' I would say—what I love the most is actually never in the media—that what I love the most is when my team and I can help somebody with their aged care issue or their NDIS package or a Centrelink problem.”
“For all of us, and certainly for me, that is my team members, and some of them have been with me for many, many, many years. Whether they've been with me for a short time or a long time, I've got to say that every single member of my team has been fantastic. They really have. I love the team of people I work with.”
“These have all been incredibly worthwhile and important projects that our whole community has backed in together. One that we've all really loved and enjoyed being on is the Amy Gillett Bikeway. That's now been extended from Mount Torrens to Birdwood.”
“Ten years ago today, the community of Mayo put their trust in me to represent them. I'd particularly like to acknowledge former senator Nick Xenophon. Nick Xenophon put his trust in me to represent his party.”
“I mustn't forget Kangaroo Island and upgrades to Hog Bay Road which have improved safety. We've had such enormous population growth, but there is so much more to do. There's always so much to do. When I look at health, we have emergency departments that have been upgraded at Victor Harbor and a new emergency department in Mount Barker.”
“He is constantly asked by children and teachers if his skin hurts, if the eczema is getting worse and, by some children, 'What's wrong with you?' There are thousands of children just like Angus in Australia whose severe eczema will cause some long-term physical and emotional harm if they cannot access new treatments.”
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“If there were a time to cut the fuel excise, it is now. The current rate on petrol and diesel is 51.6c per litre. A temporary reduction would offer significant relief for families. If the government is worried about a loss to the budget bottom line, it could cut its fuel tax credits to the mining industry. It's one of the biggest expenses in the budget. Let's look at health costs. Those latest inflation figures show that medical and hospital services went up by 4.2 per cent. The main contributor was higher medical fees and private health insurance premiums, and that's about to get worse. The government has just approved a further increase in private health insurance premiums, by 4.41 per cent, and, certainly, my health insurer wasted no time in letting me know about their increase.”
“During winter I have elderly constituents, pensioners, who can't heat more than one room, who tell me that they go to bed by 7 o'clock so they don't have to keep the heater on at night. Power is an essential, a nonnegotiable, and when power prices go up it's harder for householders and businesses. Businesses pass on the increase to consumers, making everything more expensive and creating more financial hardship on families and households. We're also looking now at a sharp rise in petrol prices, and some economists say we could be paying a dollar more a litre for fuel in coming weeks. Who pays that? Well, all of us pay that—mums and dads taking their children to school and sport. Regional and rural families are hit the hardest because we don't have the buses and we don't have the train lines, so we can't find alternative transport.”
“Recently, I was chatting with a group of Meals on Wheels volunteers in the Adelaide Hills. This wonderful group of women told me they've never felt such cost-of-living pressures before and they're having to make tough decisions on where to spend their money. For example, the cost of electricity is an issue that hits particularly hard in South Australia, where residents generally are paying the highest power bills in the country—where we know, as a nation, we're paying some of the highest power bills in the world. We experienced an extraordinary heatwave in January, and that saw increased energy demand, with bills skyrocketing for so many households. The ABS inflation figures show electricity costs rose 32.2 per cent in the 12 months to January, up from 21.5 per cent in December, with the lift linked to the end of the energy bill rebate.”
“The government is failing families trying to balance their weekly budget. Cost-of-living pressures are hitting hard, and now, with the war in the Middle East, it's only going to get worse. The latest Bureau of Statistics inflation figures show the consumer price index rose by 3.8 per cent in the 12 months to January. Housing costs are up 6.8 per cent; clothing and footwear, 5.6 per cent; health, 3.2 per cent; and food and non-alcoholic beverages, 3.1 per cent. Overall inflation is sitting at 3.8 per cent, yet wage growth last year was 3.4 per cent, so it's not keeping pace with the cost of essentials. Effectively, people have less purchasing power now than they did a year ago. All of this pressure on household budgets, while interest rates are also going up, makes it incredibly difficult for first-time home buyers.”
“My question is to the Attorney-General. At least one in six older people report experiencing elder abuse and neglect—financial, familial, psychological and physical. There has been no national plan to address this since 2023. When will the government release the new national plan to respond to the abuse of older Australians to deal with this crisis?”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. In Coles, pink lady apples are $8.90 a kilo. It's no surprise that Woolworths advertise the same apples for the same price. Australian families are struggling to afford basic groceries. One in three kids regularly have no school lunch due in part to supermarket duopoly price fixing and price gouging. Will the government urgently consider bringing forward the timeline for supermarkets to comply with the ban on excessive pricing of groceries that's not due to come into effect until 1 July?”
“The weekend event brought together community members, descendants of those whose names are inscribed on the memorial and official representatives, including our South Australian governor, Her Excellency the Honourable Francis Adamson AC. Our community is so very grateful to the Macclesfield RSL sub-branch and its president, Dennis Oldenhove, and all of the volunteers who have worked tirelessly for this commemoration and for the great work they do in Macclesfield to bring our community together. A local memorial, such as this, ensures that the stories of those who served are preserved, honoured and not forgotten. Lest we forget.”
“The 100th anniversary of the Macclesfield War Memorial was held just last weekend. It was an important commemorative service to mark 100 years of the Macclesfield War Memorial. When you stand at the memorial, you can understand the motivation of those who first envisioned it and why they believed it was essential to have a permanent place of remembrance. Since its unveiling on 20 March 1926, this memorial has played an important role, serving as a focal point for remembrance, particularly on Anzac Day. There's the very special Anzac twilight service that the Maccie RSL holds, and, of course, there's one on Remembrance Day. It's a lasting reminder of the region's contribution to Australia's defence service.”
“How can it be that in 2065, when we will supposedly have 41 million people living in Australia, we're going to have fewer than 70,000 new Australians, when we take births away from deaths? We must do more. We must create policies in this place that are pro-family, and we're not doing that at the moment. I urge the government to look at making income splitting a reality and to look at the foundations around whether that's increasing family tax. There is a whole raft of things we can do that says to young couples, 'We want you to have a family, we know you want to have a family and we're going to do everything we can in this place to make that a reality for you.' That should not be an unattainable dream in Australia in 2026, but, very sadly, right now it is.”
“FoundIt's modelling showed that aligning migration with building completions would strip two to three per cent off national home prices growth annually. It's going to slam the breaks on runaway prices, and it will also address that structural vice of squeezing the entry-level housing market. Stripping roughly 100,000 people from the intake to return to prepandemic levels—that's not a huge ask; that's not a radical thing to say—would allow compression of growth without causing a catastrophic housing crash. Right now in Australia, we have fewer young couples having babies and we have fewer families. Families are the foundation of our nation. We must address what I see as a crisis.”
“This is not about people coming from any particular country; this is just saying that the demand is overwhelming. The supply is not there, and we are squeezing ordinary, everyday Australians out of housing. That's not even to mention the 2.98 million temporary visa holders in Australia, which is a new record across ABS quarterly stats. Every person needs somewhere to live, so that's fuelling demand, particularly in the rental market. In September last year, 736,000 of those 2.98 million temporary visa holders were student visas, over 225,000 were graduate visas and just under 400,000 people were on bridging visas. Cutting migration down to prepandemic levels, stripping 100,000 out of our permanent migrant numbers would allow housing prices to slow and trigger immediate relief for the nation's battered renters and first home buyers.”
“And, 'Inner-city one-bedroom units in Brisbane have risen close to $20,000 each week, making sales prices from as recent as January irrelevant.' This was bound to happen: when you add a further demand lever without taking away a demand lever—such as the very high numbers of migration since COVID—you are adding fuel onto an already lit fire. We must take the heat out of this insanity, and the only sensible and logical way to do this is to reduce migration numbers immediately. This means both permanent migration and temporary migration. The government says that the rate of permanent migration hasn't changed, at 185,000 each year, but realistically that rate is too high when we look at the fact that just 36,294 new dwellings were completed in 2025. In 2000, our net permanent migration rate was 74,000. That is a much more sustainable figure.”
“You can't have those mortgage repayments and have a family. There just isn't the financial bandwidth. Both couples must be working full time and only covering their own expenses. We've had successive governments constantly create policies that increase housing demand and do not reduce it. The government's latest solution was to create a subprime disaster in the wings for first home buyers through the five per cent deposit scheme. This policy, according to the government's own data, was expected to increase house prices by 0.5 per cent. The reality is the demand has surged, and prices have surged, and the government's own modelling was proven false. Just recently, in the Guardian it was reported, 'Hot competition for cheaper Australian homes has powered a relentless "up-crash" in prices despite rising interest rates'.”
“Income splitting and ensuring that out-of-pocket childcare expenses can be classed as a work related deduction are two measures that would really make a difference to young couples who want to create a family—or perhaps they have one child, and they can't imagine being able to afford a second child. The second issue we must address urgently is housing affordability. This is the biggest lever we can pull and one that I think we can do very swiftly. House prices have skyrocketed over a decade and so has our population. In 2016, the median house price in metropolitan South Australia was $494,000. In January this year, it's $996,000. That's nearly a million dollars. The average new mortgage in South Australia is around $600,000. Those monthly repayments sit at around $3,600. And, of course, we've just had an interest rate rise.”
“For example, one family with a whole family income of $200,000 where both are earning $100,000 each can have a combined tax bill of $41,000, whereas the same income of $200,000 as a family where one member is at home raising children and the other is out earning the $200,000 pays $56,000 in tax, a nearly $15,000 difference. This is unfair. Thirteen OECD nations allow income splitting, including the United States, France, Germany, Poland and Spain. If we want to arrest the decline, this is one measure that we can do. This is saying, 'We value families. We value families being created in our nation.' Out-of-pocket expenses for child care, whether it's day care or vacation care, are a legitimate work expense, yet we do not allow families to claim this on their tax return. We should do everything we can to support families to thrive.”
“Many young people say to me: 'I don't want to have children for them to grow up in a childcare centre and for those places to be the ones that see the first steps and hear the first words. I want to be able to raise my own children where one of us can stay home.' Now that choice is considered a luxury. We have no meaningful tax incentives for families with children. We do not offer income splitting, nor do we have any tax offsets. Income splitting would allow a family's tax burden to be divided and collected across two spouses. This creates a fairness because the same family income can have two very different tax bills.”
“In the early 2000s, the Howard government saw this and were concerned by this, and they implemented a raft of measures and actually asked the Australian community to have another baby. That saw in 2005-2006 an increase in just that one year of 2.4 per cent. We need to do that again. Why are couples not having families? Many couples in my community tell me they simply can't afford to have a family. Nearly half of young Australians cite the expense of raising children as a major obstacle. Over half of Australians under 35 have delayed parenthood due to cost pressures, and child care in Australia consumes well above OECD average share of household expenses. Child care is inflexible.”
“By 2065—and this is what should make every one of us deeply concerned—when we are, according to government data, expected to have a population of 41 million people, we will have a natural population increase of just 69,000 new little Australians, and that's for a population of 41 million people. We have very little time to turn this around, and I believe that there are some levers that the government can pull and they must pull hard to arrest this decline. In 2023, we had a fertility rate low of 1.49, and then that has dipped further. New data from the Centre of Population says that in 2026 it is expected to decline to 1.42 children per couple, the lowest it has ever been—lower than during the Great Depression and lower than during World War I and World War II.”
“What are the greatest issues facing us as a society? I would say our birthrate is actually a good litmus test on the confidence and optimism of our nation. We want Australian families. We need Australian families, and we want and need couples to raise little Australians. On that front, we are failing miserably. Our birthrate year on year has declined, and we're doing very little to stem that decline. The government's own department records birthrate in freefall, and it's expected to continue to decline. We've prioritised very high levels of immigration over natural increase by birth. In 2023-24, we had a natural increase of 105,000 little Australians, which is births less deaths, and a net overseas migration of 423,000 people. In 2025-26, our natural increase is expected to decline to 99,000.”
“My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. I understand that Civil Aviation Safety Regulations part 43 that simplifies field maintenance requirements for aerial work by Australian aviation companies has been on the desk of the minister awaiting approval since October 2024. The delay is causing frustration and hardship for Australian aviation businesses such as crop dusters or aerial firefighting businesses. When will the minister approve these regulations?”
“My heart goes to the families in Deep Creek who have lost infrastructure, as well as to all the animals and the damaged environment. It's been a very terrible time on the Fleurieu.”
“It's a world leader. But Aerotech and other aircraft companies are waiting on the federal government for approval for a set of aviation maintenance rules put together by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, CASA. These rules, Civil Aviation Safety Regulations part 43, are designed to simplify maintenance requirements, with clearer rules delineating private and aerial work aircraft from passenger airlines. Part 43 is ready to go. It's supported by industry but it has been sitting on the minister for transport's desk since October 2024—it must be lost! We should be acting faster to cut red tape. After 16 months, the minister should approve this package so companies like Aerotech can get on with the job. Again, I would just like to reiterate my great thanks to all of our firefighters, including the air support from Aerotech.”
“They gathered intelligence from the firegrounds and assisted with back-burning. Aerotech is forefront in South Australia's bushfire rapid response. The approach can mean the difference between a minor incident and a full-scale emergency. I recently visited the company's Adelaide Hills base in Brukunga, where I saw a fixed-wing fleet and a range of helicopters, including repurposed Black Hawks. Aerotech not only does work in emergencies but also in other sectors such as agriculture, construction and resources. The company has sovereign capabilities, delivering services across Australia and internationally, providing training programs including for pilots, offering in-house maintenance, airfield infrastructure, avionics and ground transport. This South Australian company operates more than 40 aircraft and employs more than 160 people.”
“Last week in my electorate around the Deep Creek National Park on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula, we had a bushfire that burned out of control for a week before being officially contained on Sunday. It caused significant damage, burning more than 4,400 hectares, 22 structures and 12 vehicles. It had a perimeter of 56 kilometres. Our CFS worked tirelessly to defend property and to protect the habitat of native flora and fauna in Deep Creek. A huge thank you to those CFS crews and to the more than 200 firefighters from across the country who came to help from Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Part of the huge firefighting effort was from the air, led by our local company Aerotech. Aircraft operations undertook more than a thousand drops over the fire with water and firefighting material.”
“If you come to Australia, you come to be part of our society, to embrace it, and you don't come here to expect Australia to change for you. I think we must affirm these reasonable expectations of all people. We want to have a harmonious society, but we want to have a society where people can live and breathe and be able to afford home ownership, and right now the demand is far outweighing the supply. All we're doing is carving up as much farmland as we can to try to manage that. I think the Australian community expects us to have a very honest and sober conversation about migration, and I don't think we're doing that at this point.”
“So I think we need to have a very real conversation about the size of Australia, what Australia can handle from an environmental and water point of view, and then what our nation stands for, what we value and what we expect of the people that come here. We came to Australia in 1973. It was an expectation on my family. They were told very, very clearly: 'You will follow the rule of law. If you don't, you're gone.' It was as simple as that. There were expectations on us. We are a proud, Western, democratic society. We uphold the rule of law and equality between men and women, and we should expect everyone who comes to Australia, I think, to learn our language, to know our history, to know and value our literature, to embrace all that Australia has to offer.”
“I sometimes ask the question when I look at the life that we have created for people now, where you as a family need to have two full-time jobs just to cover a mortgage and basic costs. The Australian dream of being able to buy your home is fading away. Young people talk to me about this all the time. Our population in 30 years has grown by 54 per cent—an extra 10 million people. I gave you our net overseas migration figures before. Back in 1996, 30 years ago, the figure was only 95,000—these are, I think, reasonable conversations to have—yet our poverty has increased. In 1996, 12.9 per cent of our population lived below the poverty line. In 2026, it's over 14 per cent.”
“So over three years this is more than 1.2 million people. It's just supply and demand. This has created significant pressure on housing. The figures don't lie. In South Australia in 2020 the median price of a home was $574,000. In December last year it was $925,000. We've done that in five years, and the thing that's changed the most are our migration numbers. If I look at South Australia, our state government has a very pro-migration policy, and we've gone from a population of one million in 1969—when we last built a reservoir—to two million. That's enormous pressure on the environment and on water, and I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about the size and structure of the nation that we are creating. Why are we doing this?”
“I am going to do my best to take the temperature down somewhat. Migration and integration are two policy areas that shouldn't be taboo, yet they have been taboo to talk about in our nation for some years. There is no doubt that in the last three years we have had a very steep increase in migration. I have enormous respect for the immigration minister, who just spoke, but it was put to me that the reason why we've had such a steep immigration increase is that we were catching up from the pandemic. I just fail to understand why we were catching up, when the rest of the world also had minimal migration. There was really nothing to catch up on. If I look at the net overseas migration figures from ABS data, in 2024-25, 306,000 people were net overseas migrants; in 2023-24, 429,000; and in 2022-23, 556,000.”
“If we want them to have trainees, if we want them to have apprentices, we need to help them. We're not doing it. We need to address ageist discrimination, and this starts with government. We need to change the narrative. We need to allow pensioners to work without penalty. They have so much to give, and they are being short-changed by us. And we need to invest in training and skills that will ensure people gain meaningful employment to ensure that we don't just have this churn of unemployed people. We have jobs and we have the people, so we need to marry the two together. We need to do much better than what we're doing now.”
“COTA last week reported that gen X, my generation, are experiencing discrimination in the workforce, and 25 per cent of older Australians are living in poverty. We discourage aged pensioners, many of whom would love to be continuing in the workforce, by charging them 50c in the dollar over a very low threshold when they're on the pension. This is contributing to the culture of ageism, and we need to address this. National Seniors say a five per cent increase in older people working would increase our GDP by $47 billion. So what do we need to do? There are a few things government needs to do. We need to focus on employing Australians of all ages first, not focus on importing people for roles. We need to invest in our own people. We need to provide real incentives for small businesses. We don't do that at the moment.”
“In 2024, according to ACOSS, more than 550,000 people who were receiving income support had been receiving it for more than a year, and 417,000—around 45 per cent of them—were aged 55 to 66. We know that for every one entry-level job there are 25 long-term unemployed Australians who are competing for it. And yet we are not addressing this. Most providers won't even work with a person to get a certificate III to get into those entry-level jobs that we desperately need for aged care or child care. You can't just walk into those jobs. You can't just say, 'I'm keen.' You need to have qualifications. Yet we have a system to work with unemployed Australians that doesn't fix the two together. There's a massive disconnect.”
“It costs money for a small business, in those first couple of years, to have an apprentice. It's a massive investment for that business, and businesses are really struggling right now. There are so many expenses they just can't take apprentices on. No wonder we have a 29 per cent drop! If we look at Roy Morgan research from last November, it said the real unemployment rate in Australia—which included people looking for work, not just those currently counted as underemployed by the ABS—was approximately 1.63 million Australians, and the underemployment rate was around three million Australians, those who just don't have enough hours of work and would like more.”
“This should be ringing alarm bells for every single person in this place. Commencement in trade occupations declined by 29 per cent. Surely, we must do better. This is going to affect every single Australian. Young people leaving school face an unemployment rate of 10 per cent and an underemployment rate of 17 per cent. There are lots of them in casual roles as baristas, but there are not enough being plumbers and sparkies. In past years, governments were the largest trainers of apprentices. Now we expect the private sector to do this. Back in the nineties, it was governments—federal and state—that would be the largest apprentice employers. Not anymore, but we've made it so difficult for small businesses to take on an apprentice. It is just too cumbersome, and the rewards aren't there.”
“National agreements are important, but national action is what is needed. The Jobs and Skills Australia occupation short-list in October 2025 saw that 29 per cent of assessed occupations are in shortage nationwide. Half of the occupations in shortage were technicians and trades relating to construction, engineering and automotives. Infrastructure Australia said that construction workforce shortage for major project pipelines is 141,000 short of what is needed, and this shortage is expected to peak at 300,000 in 2027—only a year away. The shortage in regional areas is forecast to quadruple between 2025 and 2027. A report that was released in December 2025 said that the number of apprentices and trainees in training contracts decreased by 11.3 per cent on the previous year. So did the number of trade contracts, by seven per cent.”
“He's got more blue ribbons than, I think, anyone else in South Australia. In the Meritorious Awards, the Australian Correctional Medal went to Ms Julie Telfer, and the Australian Fire Service Medal went to Mr Martin Carney. Congratulations, all, and happy Australia Day to everyone in our community.”
“I would like to acknowledge Professor Neil Piller, for significant service to lymphology as a clinician and an academic; Dr Lainie Anderson, for service to community history—and many in South Australia would know Lainie and her great journalistic work; Mr Allen Burns, for service to the community through emergency response organisations; Mr Stephen Day, for service to charitable organisations and to the financial sector; Mr Graham Hill, for service to youth and to vocational education; Mr Eli Murn, for service to road safety advocacy, which is incredibly important in Mayo; Mr Robert Peet, for service to the performing arts; and the much loved Mr Rex Liebelt, for services to the agricultural show sector. He makes a very mean banana cake. Never go up against him in any of our country shows! He wins.”
“In my electorate, there are countless community groups, volunteers and local leaders who are making a difference to people's lives. I wish to offer my congratulations to a group of outstanding citizens in my electorate who have recently been honoured with Member of the Order of Australia awards for their achievement and service.”
“I'm about to introduce a bill to make it an offence, a criminal offence, to burn one of our three Australian flags.' They said, 'How is it not already an offence?' That is how the majority of Australians feel. It's our job in this place to act on the sentiment of Australians, so I would urge the government to look at this bill. This bill is designed for unity, but it's also designed to draw a line in the sand and say: 'No more division. Let's respect each other's flags. Let's not burn—let's not desecrate.' Madame Deputy Speaker, I would like to cede the rest of my time to the member for Fowler, who will be seconding my bill.”
“It was adopted in 1992 as a flag and then became part of the flags of Australia on 14 July 1995. So we have a history with our flags, and that history should be celebrated. It should be protected and it absolutely must be respected, and at the moment our flag, our Australian flag in particular, is not being respected. It is continually being burnt by people who seek to incite hatred in our nation. So this bill very much sets a boundary of shared values, respect, inclusion and cohesion, and it's what our community wants. There have been many, many surveys right across the nation that ask, 'Should burning one of our national flags, the Australian flag'? Seventy per cent of people said: 'Absolutely. Why would it not be?' In fact, coming here this morning, one of my sons said, 'Mum, have a look at something online.' I said: 'I can't.”
“There were actually five winners of a competition to create a new flag for a very young nation. The prize money, 200 pounds, which was a lot of money back in 1901, was shared among five successful winners, and quite a few of those were young people. As I said, it will be 125 years this September for our flag. When we look at the Aboriginal flag, the artist, Harold Thomas, in 1971, created this powerful symbol of unity, identity and land rights for Indigenous Australians, and it was first flown in my state of South Australia. Indeed, Harold Thomas went to a high school in Mayo; he went to Willunga High School. The Aboriginal flag has been recognised under the Flags Act since 1995. The Torres Strait Islander flag was designed by the late Bernard Namok on Thursday Island.”
“I must say that, growing up in Australia in the eighties and nineties and having my kids in the noughties, I never saw the Australian flag being burnt. I can't ever recall a time, but now it is happening with flagrant disregard and it's happening with such regularity, and it is not a peaceful protest; it is hatred. Our flags are important history. They are our identity, our history and our sense of belonging, and so desecrating or burning them just shows contempt and disrespect for the peoples and communities that they represent and the many soldiers who died under the national flag for us. The history of our flags in Australia is actually a very joyful thing to know. A hundred and twenty-five years ago this September, our flag was first flown, and it was chosen through a competition.”
“This bill seeks to have the same rules for all three flags. I must say, I was very surprised when there was an amendment to the hate laws that we passed in late January—there was an amendment by the opposition to make it a criminal offence to burn the Australian flag—and the government didn't accept that. The government rejected that amendment. So this bill actually seeks to bring us all together to look at all three national flags and say the same rule should apply. It also draws a line in the sand. It says this behaviour is unacceptable. It's unacceptable no matter who you are in Australia or whether you're visiting. If you want to peacefully protest, that is one thing, but to burn a flag is another. We have a long and proud tradition in Australia of political expression, but we cannot see burning a flag as a peaceful political act.”
“The maximum penalty for this would be up to two years of imprisonment for a first offence and, for subsequent offences, a minimum of one year of imprisonment. Burning a national flag is a criminal offence in many nations: in France, the home of protest; in Germany, up to three years; and in Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Poland. Across Asia it's an offence—in India, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea or, indeed, Israel. Across the Americas, whether you're in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico or even Nicaragua, it is recognised that to burn or desecrate the national flag is a criminal offence. In New Zealand, our neighbour, it carries an up-to-$5,000 fine. Our national flags hold deep significance for Australians. Our service men and women have fought under our Australian national flag.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Criminal Code Amendment (Flag Protection) Bill 2026 seeks to do one thing: to prohibit desecrating or recklessly burning the Australian flag—the Australian national flag, the Australian Aboriginal flag that was proclaimed in 1995 under the Flags Act, and the Torres Strait Islander flag, again, proclaimed under the Flags Act in 1995. To be clear, my bill seeks to make it a criminal offence if you deliberately or recklessly act to desecrate or burn our flags, not if you accidentally do it. This does exclude respectful and private destruction in accordance with the Flags Act once a flag is dilapidated, faded or torn; incidental wear or tear; or the destruction of a reproduction or likeness such as in a picture book.”
“We also need mayoral candidates. We currently have a state election, but we also have a mayoral election in the Adelaide Hills. Every single one of those mayoral candidates should come out and tell the community where they stand on this. This must be preserved for future generations—it's open space; it's community space—and not turned into housing.”
“Yesterday, my community found out that the government will be selling Woodside Barracks—145 hectares, much of it environmental land that has never been cultivated. It's very important environmental land. Next year we were supposed to celebrate our 100th anniversary of our barracks. The barracks hold enormous historical significance to our community. We have 150 cadets there. We used to have a regiment, but the government moved the air regiment down to Edinburgh. The great concern in my community is that this 145 hectares will be carved up for housing. What we need to hear from the state Labor government and from the Liberal opposition is that they agree with my community that this land should not be turned into 400—or perhaps even fewer—blocks. That would potentially be a population of 10,000 in a high-risk bushfire area.”
“With respect to standing order 105(b), I request that you write to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government seeking reasons for the delay in answering my question in writing No. 119, which is now 31 days overdue. Also with respect to standing order 105(b), I request that you write to the Minister for Communications seeking the reason for delay in answering my question in writing No. 120, which is now 31 days overdue.”
“My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. In 2022 there were 60 older South Australians stuck in Adelaide hospitals waiting for residential aged care. As of yesterday, there were 370 stranded—more than a 515 per cent increase. State health ministers are frustrated and so are older South Australians. When will the government act and take responsibility for elderly people in hospitals who need to be in aged care?”
“Punishing compliant firearm owners for the actions of criminals is unjust, counterproductive, and erodes trust in government. Public safety can be improved without penalising responsible citizens. That, to me, is entirely fair. This whole process is rushed, contrived and contemptuous of this chamber.”