Steve Georganas
Adelaide · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“It reflects one of our most important national values. Health care should be available to everyone, not just to those who can afford it. Many people prioritise their health and paying their everyday essentials. That is a fact.”
“That means more than 172,000 occasions when individuals and families have been able to receive urgent medical care without needing to attend an emergency department or a public hospital and without needing to face out-of-pocket costs.”
“That is really important because that gives the confidence to those people that I spoke about earlier, those families that are doing it tough that may have previously considered whether they received the health care that they really required and was a necessity or whether they put food on the table.”
“People receive treatment earlier, chronic illnesses are managed more effectively, hospital admissions are reduced and pressure on our emergency departments is eased. Every dollar invested in effective primary care saves costs elsewhere in the system while delivering better health outcomes for Aussies.”
“I too rise to make a contribution, just as the member for Pearce just did, on the Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026. At its heart is Medicare.”
“In my home state alone, bulk-billing has risen to 80.4 per cent across the state, representing one of the strongest improvements in the country. We heard, the other day, other statistics around the country. They are all increasing, and this is a good thing. It means people are having to fork less out of their pocket when visiting a GP.”
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“It is not as simple as you think having 15 to 20 young toddlers in front of you, reading the story, making sure they all eat their fruit and carrying out the activities. I recall that I left exhausted after just one hour. So the work these early childhood workers put in to looking after our kids is very important. They do it because they are so committed to it. They do it because they love it. They do it because they're passionate about it. I really appreciate, as we all should, the work that early childhood educators do for our children. About a year ago, I met with staff, advocates and parents at the Unley Community Childcare Centre. They also told me about their trials and tribulations. They told me about the long hours of work, their difficulties in recruiting staff and the difficulties in running a family household with such low pay.”
“As I said, I met with the parents, the committee members and some of the early childhood educators who work there. I sat and spoke with them, and they showed me the centres but also told me about their work and how hard their work is. A few years ago, we had a program through the childcare centres and their union. They ran a campaign saying, 'Walk in their shoes,' where they gave us the opportunity to go to a centre and sit and actually do the work of an early educator for just one hour. I went to Camden Park back then when I was the member for Hindmarsh. I recall it clearly. Part of the role was lunch, reading a book and then playing some games. So I sat there with the childcare worker who was guiding me. I was absolutely exhausted after one hour.”
“I've seen the benefit to my kids and my grandkids on top of that. I visited the Goodstart Early Learning at Plympton about six months ago. There is the Goodstart Early Learning in Prospect, which I am visiting again next month. They've invited me to go down. There is the Parkside Community childcare centre and the Unley Community Childcare Centre, where I had a great meeting with parents, educators and the committee of the centre. They told me about their trials and tribulations a couple of years ago. I fed all of that back to the minister. I hope those discussions that I had played a role in developing some of these policies. Other great ones are Precious Cargo and Little Oxford Montessori early learning centres. When you visit these centres, you get a great sense of the importance of their work.”
“There are 9,800 families benefiting from cheaper child care in my electorate alone. As many of us do in this place, I have had the privilege of visiting quite a number of childcare centres. I always enjoy going along and seeing the work that the early educators do and the activity of the children. I have always been received with open arms wherever I have gone. In the electorate in recent times, I know how well the news that I have just explained is being received in such centres. I'll just name a few of them. One that has been there for many years and which my own children attended is the Lady Gowrie Child Centre. My kids, by the way, are now 40 and 36. That's how long the Lady Gowrie Child Centre has been at Thebarton. They do amazing, incredible work, and they have educated thousands of children in their early years.”
“Families who work, study or train will continue to be eligible for 100 hours of subsidised care each fortnight. This is extremely important across the nation. For example, ABS census data showed that 2,280 childcare workers were working in metropolitan Adelaide in 2021, which compares with 862 in 2011. This is an increase of 1,418, or 164.5 per cent—a huge increase. As at July 2024 there were 157 early childhood education and care services in my electorate of Adelaide. These include centre based day care, outside-school-hours care, family day care and preschools. There were 70 centre based daycare services and 50 outside-school-hours services in the Adelaide electorate—all playing a crucial role in early education and educating the next generation of Australians.”
“We're committed to a package that establishes building an early education fund to build and expand childcare centres in areas of need, including outer suburbs and regions, where perhaps people are not as able to access these centres as we are here in the cities. As part of this package the government will also develop the early education service delivery price to help better understand the cost of delivering the services around the country and to underpin future reform. Going back to the bill: the bill provides that all families will be guaranteed three days, or 72 hours, of subsidised childcare each fortnight, and that is a great start. We hope we will build on and future governments will build on those three days. Families who are caring for First Nations children will be guaranteed 100 hours each fortnight.”
“The Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) Bill 2024 also supported affordability for families by establishing the fee increase cap in the terms and conditions of the worker retention payment grant. This means that providers are not able to raise their fees by more than 4.4 per cent in the first year. This will put downward pressure on fees, helping to make education and care more affordable for families. Why am I saying all this? It is because all of it is part of a package to ensure that we have a professional early education industry that provides the utmost and best for our children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren so that they can develop and have the best education possible to them, which will then benefit the nation as a whole.”
“Research and experts and professors around the world all have one common thing to say when it comes to early education, and that is that the earlier you start the better off that person's education will be. That is a proven fact. It's not just about babysitting or caring for kids while parents are at work—which are also very important for working families—but also about the development of the child's education for the rest of their life. This pay rise will encourage more people to stay in or come back to the industry and more people to think about becoming educators—and having more educators means that more children and more parents can benefit from the life-changing work these educators do.”
“So, wages in the early childhood education and care sector—a heavily female dominated workforce—are amongst the lowest in the caring professions, with award rates for professional qualified educators often comparable to rates of pay for unqualified workers, such as those in retail and hospitality. An effective supported bargaining process will lift pay and conditions for the workforce and contribute towards the government's ambition for that universal, high-quality sector. This is important because what happens in early education and care is important. It's not just babysitting; it's early education, and 90 per cent of brain development occurs in the first five years of life.”
“Decent wages are absolutely critical for this sector to reversing the attrition and growing this crucial workforce. Everyday Australians trust early educators with the most important people in our world, and that is the next generation of Australians and our very young children. We ask our early childhood educators to do some of the most important jobs imaginable, and they desperately deserve that pay rise and to be paid accordingly. That's what this government has delivered—a 15 per cent rise for childcare workers, a 10 per cent pay rise from December 2024 and a further five per cent pay rise from December of this year. A typical early childhood educator receives an additional $103 extra a week from last December, and that will increase to at least $155 from this coming December.”
“It does a number of things. It builds on cheaper child care, which will cut the cost of early education and care for more than one million families, and, on top of that, our 15 per cent pay rise for early educators. This pay rise has been a critical achievement for early childhood education and care workers, who have traditionally been some of the most important workers in the country, who are dedicated to looking after our children in those very early formative years and those very early years of their education in and around the country. They're also important for our economy, and they deserve to be paid fairly. This government recognises that and pushed for it. Achieving quality outcomes for children relies on a highly skilled, well-supported and professionally recognised early childhood education and care sector.”
“This has created some barriers, and we've identified so, for families accessing the CCS, for example, where a parent needs educational child care in order to look for work, or before they can commit to study. The bill will provide that all families will be guaranteed three days, or 72 hours, of childcare subsidy each fortnight. Families who work, study or train will continue to be eligible for the 100 hours of childcare subsidy each fortnight. The three-day guarantee will increase entitlements for over 100,000 Australian families, with more than 66,000 families expected to be better off in the first full financial year of implementation, and absolutely no family to be worse off. The reform is part of the next steps to building a universal early education and care system, expanding access to quality early education across the country.”
“It gives me great pleasure and pride to be here supporting the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025. I do so because we on this side want to make sure that every child gets the best possible start in life, and we believe that every child has the right to go to early education, to help make sure they don't start school behind. This Labor government is going to make that possible. The bill replaces the old activity test with a new three-day guarantee in early education, starting from 5 January 2026. The activity test requires that parents meet a minimum level of approved activity, such as work or study, before qualifying for the child care subsidy.”
“Our TAFE and our higher education play an important role. As I said, a better educated workforce drives innovation, productivity and long-term economic growth. This is particularly important to my electorate of Adelaide and to my home state of South Australia because we know that South Australia has a commitment to build naval nuclear powered submarines. We know they will be built in South Australia, so we need skills and trades. We need to prepare for it and to be ready with those skills and trades so that the workforce that's needed will be there. We know that South Australia will create up to 4,000 jobs— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 13:09 to 13:21”
“I'd like to congratulate the member for Hunter for this motion because a better educated workforce drives innovation, productivity and long-term economic growth. This is what TAFE does exactly. It assists people to skill up; to learn different trades; to, perhaps at a particular time in their life, go and upskill; and to ensure that they can contribute to long-term economic growth in our nation. When you look at the history of TAFE, it has helped and served thousands of people in Australia. My own family is no exception. My son is a plumber. He went through TAFE and did his plumbing certificates et cetera. It has served him very well. I'm a product of TAFE; I didn't go to university. I finished year 12 and went back to TAFE later on in life to upskill and get certain certificates, and here I am today.”
“We've seen far too much—far too many scams. This Scams Prevention Framework Bill will go a long way in assisting, and I suspect that, in years to come, we'll have to continue looking at this bill, amending it and making it even tougher and harder for those scammers. The bill introduces principles based obligations that require regulated entities also to take certain actions in relation to scams. We're talking about the financial institutions: the banks and insurance companies. They have a responsibility as well to prevent, detect and, very importantly, report—we found that many scams were going unreported—and to disrupt and respond to scams relating to services that that particular entity provides. Contraventions of their obligations may result in civil penalties, as well. It's important to get that message through.”
“We were finally informed by Home Affairs that this was a scam website that many people had fallen for in the US. Apparently it has disappeared. We finally did get the visa for the visitors to come to Australia to enjoy the wedding with their family—after they'd lost US$190 for three different family members, which is a very sad case. These laws are very welcome. They are welcome because we need to put laws in place to be able to make it difficult for scammers. We know that we'll never get rid of them completely because they are very elaborate and, with the intricate computer systems et cetera, we know that they will just keep on morphing into something new. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant and on top of it. We should be chasing them and hunting them down to ensure that money is not scammed from innocent Australians.”
“They were coming over for a wedding, for a two-week stay, and then going back. We looked into it, and they told us about the responses they got from the application on the Home Affairs page. When we contacted Home Affairs on their behalf and gave them the details—the emails they had received—we were informed by Home Affairs that it was a scam site that they were using. They paid about US$190 to apply for the visa—this amount does not exist; I think the fee for a visa is miniscule—and they had been scammed. When they kept on going back into this website, it would send them a scam email saying, 'Your visa application for an e-visitor visa is being considered.' So it was all about delay. Every email they got was about delay. These would have been done on AI—very robotic and very elaborate.”
“We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases. In one case, a woman from the UK had been scammed out of her entire life savings of over 100,000 pounds. It's very elaborate. Again, it's about being cautious. If there is something that is too good to be true, it usually is. Recently, I was contacted by constituents who were having a big family wedding. They had an extended family. Part of their family lived in the US, and they wanted these particular family members to come over to Australia for the wedding. They applied for the visa and they were knocked back. This was for an Australian visa through the home affairs department website. They could not work out why they had been knocked back. They were an elderly couple. They had their own retirement plan and pension, and they were fairly well off in the US.”
“This is where people are on the phones, calling internationally, all over the world, trying to find people that they can scam. It was a very elaborate set-up. Many of these people were brought in from Third World countries, were basically working like slaves and were beaten et cetera in these factories. I would suggest to anyone who hasn't seen this episode of 60 Minutes to watch it. It would have been around October of last year, where they did extremely good investigative reporting and traced back money that had been scammed through these factories here in Australia, in the US and in the UK. It was everything from dating services and love stories to elaborate money-making schemes. What these people would do is ring and ring and gain the confidence of the other person on the phone until they were able to extract the money out of them.”
“This is where you walk into a restaurant and you view your menu or, perhaps, you're paying your parking meter and you scan the code and these scammers create their own codes and go and put them on top of the code in that premises or on the parking meter or wherever it may be. Therefore, when you scan, you're scanning into their website, which then tells you where to send money et cetera or to pay the bill. This then goes into the scammer's pocket. We know that they're getting more and more elaborate and we know that overseas there are such things as scam factories. We would have all seen on 60 Minutes late last year the investigation that they did into an Asian country where up to 120 people were working in what's called a scam factory.”
“When you're paying your bills and you just get a BSB number, check with the supplier, check with the person you're paying, to make sure that it is correct. This was another elaborate way of siphoning money from people. This poor chap, his father was telling us, not only lost thousands of dollars to scammers but also still needed to pay the bill to the correct suppliers, another added cost that was about to take him under. Because of that extra burden, he may not have been able to survive the following month. That's one example. Another one that appeared recently, certainly in South Australia, in my home state—it was reported in the Advertiser , the local paper in Adelaide—was the scanning codes. I'm sure it's happening all over the country. When I read about it, I sent the article immediately to the Assistant Treasurer.”
“So he sent off the payment to this particular bank account, only to receive the following month a reminder bill from his normal supplier saying, 'You haven't paid the bill.' He was up in arms, obviously, as you can just imagine. He pulled out his records, sent them the details and said: 'This is where I've paid it. Here's the BSB number'. It was the wrong BSB number. It was not because he made a mistake but because someone, though an elaborate phishing system, had been able to get the supplier's details and letterheads and change the bank account and the BSB numbers. So that money went into a scammer's account. By the time they got on to the police, the police were investigating it, but the scammers had taken the money and disappeared, and they would have done this to hundreds of other people. So, again, be very careful.”
“Again, the same questions were asked, and it was approximately the same ratio. Pretty well everyone in the room put their hand up to say that they knew of someone that had been impacted or that they themselves had received text messages or emails. There were some great examples that day of how elaborate these scammers are, and there was one which they spoke to us about. It was a billing scam. A gentleman who was there spoke about his son, who was a tradie. His son would buy equipment from different suppliers to conduct his trade in the building industry, and every month they would send him an account, and he would pay that account directly into the BSB and bank account of the supplier of the goods. One month he got the account with the same letterhead and everything. He looked up the BSB number, and he'd been told it had been changed.”
“What was even more astounding was when we asked the question of everyone in the room, 'Who has been directly affected by a scam or knows someone that has, whether they're a part of your family or someone very close to you?' and two-thirds of the hands in the room went up, approximately 70-odd people out of 100. That was astonishing. It goes to show that every single person either has been touched by it or knows someone that has been scammed. That's why the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024 is very important. It amends the Competition and Consumer Act to establish the Scams Prevention Framework to prevent and respond to scams that impact on the Australian community. At our seniors forum in Adelaide we had over 200 people attend, and we did a special session on scams.”
“And the other forum was one I held in my electorate of Adelaide with the Assistant Treasurer and a very good friend of mine, Stephen Jones. I'll take this opportunity to wish him all the very best after his announcement. He's done an absolutely outstanding job as Assistant Treasurer. One of his targets has been scammers, and, as I said, he's done an exceptional job with the legislation and with weeding these scammers out. At that second forum we had approximately 100 people in the room, and we spoke to the residents of Adelaide about how these scams affect individuals and the community. It was striking that, when the Assistant Treasurer asked the audience if they had ever received a scam phone call, text or email, every single person in the room put their hand up. And each and every person had a story to tell.”
“The reality is that we should be very careful with what we click on. We should be very careful when we respond to text messages from entities that perhaps are not our family, our friends or people that we know. Sometimes we're all too eager to click and see where it takes us to. The one bit of advice that I can give and that most people have heard today is to take a short breath. If you're not sure, don't click on it. If there's something that you feel unsure about, speak to someone else about it, and if it seems too good to be true it most probably is too good to be true. That's an old saying that goes way back. I think our gut instincts sometimes tell us that things are not quite right. Recently, in Adelaide I've had a couple of forums. We had a seniors forum where one of the sessions was on scams and protecting people.”
“I get one regularly—a text message every night at about midnight from 'Australia Post' saying that my parcel is being delivered and to put in some numbers and names. They're gathering information. I know that it's not Australia Post because I've got nothing to be delivered at this point, nor have I ordered anything. You can report them. As you delete that message, we now have a system that comes up automatically and says, 'Would you like to report this as a scam message?' You press the button, and off it goes. I did report it, and I've never received another one since. But they're very elaborate. They will morph and form into a different type of message. That's just one example. You see, the Australia Post logo is very well respected. It's something that has been part of our lives all our lives. You see it, you trust it, you believe it.”
“We've heard many examples here today from both sides of the House of thousands and thousands of dollars of financial loss, of hardworking Australians' cash lost through text messages, emails, the internet and the whole range of tools and mechanisms that these scammers use. Unfortunately, these scams are all too common nowadays. Each and every one of us in this House has seen constituents that have been scammed and have come to see us seeking retribution or seeking to recover their money. The scammers target individuals with these deceitful messages, pretending that they're legitimate communications from a bank, a government agency, telecommunications companies or even Australia Post.”
“It gives me great pride to belong to a government that's bringing this type of legislation into the House. I think the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024 is something that both sides of the House are very supportive of. All of us value receiving text messages, emails and phone calls from friends, family, colleagues, business associates and companies that provide us with information, the products that we need for our work and the services that we need to go about our daily lives. Whether it's a quick hello on the phone, news of a particular sale that's taking place or a gentle reminder about an upcoming appointment, these messages keep us connected and informed. There's also another type of message and text message and email that none of us want to receive, and that's the one that leads to financial loss.”
“Their contributions not only benefit Vietnamese Australians but enrich the lives of all Australians. This weekend we have the Chinatown Adelaide Lunar New Year Street Party in my electorate, and I'm looking forward to attending that in Chinatown in the federal seat of Adelaide; it promises to be another vibrant celebration. May the Year of the Snake bring health, happiness and prosperity. (Time expired)”
“They perfectly complemented the lunar new year festivities, adding harmony and cultural significance. A special thankyou to the Consul-General of China, Mr Li Dong, for making this possible for us and for his hard work, together with the Premier of South Australia and the federal minister for trade, Don Farrell, in getting exports back into China. He should be recognised for the enormous work he's done with the federal government and the state government of South Australia. On top of that, on the weekend the SA chapter of the Vietnamese Community in Australia hosted the Tet Festival, with the theme 'Home away from home'. This year marks 50 years since South Australia welcomed Vietnamese boat people, a resilient community that has done so well. They've overcome adversity to enrich our nation.”
“My heartfelt thanks go to Quoc Long Ha, the president of the association, and Mr Charles Tran, a senior committee member, for personally inviting me, as they do every year. I've been attending this very special event for nearly the last 20 years. I'd also like to thank Mrs Say Kapsis for her support and of course my very good friend Stephen Chueng, who's been on the committee on and off over the last 20 years and who's always a fixture at this particular event. The Chinese new year was also celebrated at a dinner at the Adelaide Zoo, which was hosted by the Premier and the honourable Consul-General of China. The highlight of the event, which made it even more special, was the arrival of two giant pandas, Xing Qiu and Yi Lan, to the Adelaide Zoo; these majestic animals are now available for public viewing.”
“I'm very proud to represent a very multicultural seat with lots of celebrations. This past week was an exceptional week in which we celebrated the incredible lunar new year. These celebrations took place all across Adelaide, marking the Year of the Snake for 2025—a symbol of wisdom, transformation and resilience. Celebrations started off last week at the South Australian Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association's temple. The SA Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association hosted a truly remarkable celebration, which thousands attended to see in the Year of the Snake at midnight. It featured fireworks, lion dances and other traditional activities. It was a magnificent event full of joy and full of celebration. Seeing the community celebrate the Year of the Snake and bring in the new year was a fantastic sight.”
“There are a lot of startup businesses and restaurants et cetera. And this year is especially important because it marks 50 years since South Australia welcomed its Vietnamese boat people. We all remember back in the seventies through to about the eighties that there were over 100,000 Vietnamese boat people who sought refuge here in Australia and have contributed so much over the years. Their contributions not only benefit the Vietnamese Australian communities but also enrich the lives of all Australians. I would like to thank the first female president of the organisation, Ms Quin Tran. (Time expired)”
“I was very privileged this past week to attend many events in my electorate to celebrate the lunar new year, the Year of the Snake. As I said, I was very privileged to have been invited to the Vietnamese Community in Australia/SA Chapter, the South Australian Chapter, which hosted the Tet festival in my electorate, with a particular theme this year. The theme was 'home away from home'. I suppose what they were showcasing was this wonderful community that they have established in South Australia in my electorate, in suburbs all over my electorate, but predominantly in Regency Park, Athol Park, Ferryden Park, Woodville North, Croydon, Croydon Park, Mansfield Park, Kilburn and Northfield. You'll find the Vietnamese community in every suburb in my electorate. They have created a wonderful and enterprising community.”
“GEORGANAS () (): On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, I present the committee's Interim report: inquiry into the understanding and utilisation of benefits under free trade agreements . Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).”