Louise Miller-Frost
Boothby · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“This has been a big week in parliament and a big week for delivery by the Albanese Labor government. The Solar Saver program started—three hours of power in the middle of the day. We expanded paid parental leave to a full six months. We opened the National Environmental Protection Agency and we opened a new veteran wellbeing agency.”
“More recently, we announced that we will strengthen consumer protections for those on Support at Home by empowering the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to be able to order refunds for overcharged services and to be able to report publicly on investigations and enforcement actions; by producing each quarter a national summary of Su…”
“The demographics are not in our favour. Next year, 90,000 additional Australians will turn 80; 15 years ago that number was 15,000. This has an impact on the service offerings we need to provide, specifically in aged care and health.”
“While we listen to those opposite try to throw blame around and cynically, desperately, try to claw back some votes, we should turn to an independent arbiter as to why the aged-care system is where it is right now.”
“The government's plan to expand and improve aged-care services in Australia will also mean an expansion of end-of-life pathway, providing dignified care to older Australians in their final months.”
“We are confronted with this reality and we are confronting the reality with a plan—a plan that will ensure that every older Australian can get affordable and timely access to the quality care they need and deserve, and a plan that will improve and expand the system to make it fit for purpose and sustainable well into the foreseeable futur…”
The complete record
Every one of 506 lines we hold for Louise Miller-Frost, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 11.
“One of the particular honours that I've experienced since being elected in 2022 is the opportunity to get to know so many defence personnel and veterans living in my electorate of Boothby. As well as the Warradale Barracks, we have a number of RSLs in Boothby and also the statewide Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia South Australian branch. We also have the Veteran Wellbeing Centre at the Repat Health Precinct in Daw Park. The centre was established by the Plympton-Glenelg sub-branch of the RSL and in particular the late Bill Hignett. It is under the auspices of SA Health but consists of a number of agencies, such as Open Arms and Military Advocates, and it provides free services, including advocacy for DVA claims. They are always generous with their time and their insights, and I greatly enjoy visiting them.”
“So to be able to have a doctor spend that time to have a look at what is actually happening in your life and provide you with the treatment that you need so that you can manage the symptoms and any long-term health effects that come out of that is so important and will be life changing for so many women. Deputy Speaker Mascarenhas, this is Women's Health Week, and I'd like to say to you and to all the women here, 'Say yes to you.' It's time that we looked after ourselves.”
“For many of these women, the most important part is finally being believed and then putting all of the other symptoms together and understanding they're all part of the same condition. We're investing $26.3 million to implement a temporary new health assessment MBS item for women experiencing menopause or perimenopause. This will be introduced for an initial two-year period. This is another area where women get substandard care. They're expected to just continue on, yet there are often long-term, life-impacting health impacts from not managing your menopause symptoms.”
“We have an endometriosis clinic in Glenelg, in my electorate, and the stories I hear from women who've found their way there are inspirational. In many cases, they've suffered for decades. It affects their ability to hold down a job and therefore to have income and retirement savings, to have a social life or an intimate relationship and to exercise or maintain their general health. They spend their lives at home curled in a ball on medication. The endometriosis clinic is Multi-D. It not only helps people through a coordinated care plan between the GPs and the specialists and the allied health professionals but helps them develop plans, similar to an asthma plan, to work out their triggers, recognise early symptoms and know what to do when that happens and went to seek further help.”
“Needless to say, when choosing contraception, the woman's doctor plays a fairly important role. If your doctor doesn't feel confident inserting the LARC, than you probably aren't going to have it offered to you. So this women's health package includes $71.5 million to increase four LARC item fees in the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the creation of new items for nurse practitioners to claim these services. This measure will incentivise healthcare professionals to provide LARC insertions and removals with no out-of-pocket service costs through better remuneration. We're also providing $64.5 million for increased endometriosis and pelvic pain, perimenopause and menopause management and support, including another 11 new endometriosis clinics on top of the 22 that are already in existence.”
“The Australian government is investing $792.9 million through the 2025-26 budget to increase the capacity of the primary care workforce to support women's health needs, increase access to services and make both services and medicines more affordable. This includes $159.9 million to make it easier for women in Australia to access and afford long-acting reversible contraception, LARC, one of the most effective and reliable methods of contraception. LARCs are extremely effective and reliable and are a cost-effective way for women to manage their fertility and contraception, but the uptake in Australia is considerably lower than comparable countries around the world. We have around a 10 to 11 per cent uptake, whereas in Sweden, the UK and parts of Europe it sits just under 30 per cent.”
“Of course, women with other barriers—language barriers, cultural barriers, poverty barriers, social isolation barriers, geographical isolation barriers—and those experiencing domestic violence or coercive control, or a combination of all the above, experience even worse health outcomes. We know that women of colour are even more likely to have their pain ignored. The Albanese government's National Women's Health Strategy outlines a national approach to improving health outcomes for all women and girls, particularly those at greatest risk of poor health, and aims to reduce inequities in health.”
“We know the classic heart attack symptoms that get taught—crushing chest pain, shortness of breath, pain radiating to the shoulder or jaw—are the symptoms of men, and this a significant impact on the treatment and care you might get if, for instance, you're a woman with typical women's heart attack symptoms, which are often much more subtle and different. A Sydney university study found that women are half as likely to receive an appropriate diagnostic test and treatment for heart attacks. It's little wonder that women have much more poorer survival rates than men. Six months after a heart attack, women are twice as likely to have died than men.”
“Conversely, women recounted positive health experiences that stemmed from strong interpersonal interactions and relationships. When you find a good doctor or a good midwife who you gel with, that's gold. We also know that medications and treatments are standardised on men. It used to be that medications were trialled on male uni students, typically white, wealthy, 21-year-old men—hardly a standard population, let alone relevant to women, who have different hormone profiles, which interact with medication.”
“In 2023 the #EndGenderBias survey looked at the unique barriers and gender bias women face in Australia's healthcare system. From across the country there were 2,570 responses about women's own experiences. Two-thirds of women reported that they experienced health care related gender bias or discrimination. Gender bias in health care has a far-reaching impact on women's lives. Women report feelings of abandonment, shame, blame and self-doubt. If you're repeatedly told that the pain isn't real but in your head, where do you take that? Women report significant financial burden and lost educational and career opportunities from untreated or ineffectively treated conditions. Delayed diagnosis and treatment lead to disease progression, fewer treatment options and worse health outcomes.”
“It's little wonder then that women with endometriosis typically take up to seven different doctors and between seven and 10 years to get a diagnosis, let alone an effective treatment plan. Improving the health and wellbeing of all women is a key priority for the Australian government. The experience of women in the health system is not the same as the experience of men. Women experience delayed diagnosis across a wide range of conditions and diseases and tend to use healthcare services more than men. This includes GPs, specialists and hospital admissions. Women spend more on out-of-pocket healthcare costs than men, and younger women spend more than men their age, partly due to maternity care and the higher prevalence of chronic illness.”
“We sent a doctor out, who told her that her pain was normal and that she'd get used to it over time—that this was what being an adult woman was like. She was crying, guarding her stomach and very distressed that this was the future that she was looking at for her adult life. When she was still getting worse a few hours later, her parents arranged for her to see another doctor, who diagnosed her with appendicitis and sent her to hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Her pain, unrelated to her women's issues, had been normalised and minimised, and the rationale of period pain meant she had a substandard medical experience that could have been life threatening.”
“My portfolio included two women's health clinics that specialised in working with women who faced additional barriers to accessing health care, particularly preventive and screening services, through their cultural background, poverty, domestic violence or coercive relationships. I ran a community midwifery service, two domestic violence services and a perpetrator rehabilitation unit as well as multiple BreastScreen sites and buses that travelled to remote areas such as the APY Lands. The experience of women in the health system is often one of not being believed. Their pain isn't believed or is minimised, and their symptoms aren't believed or are normalised. I recall taking a call from a family whose 14-year-old daughter was having her first period and was in severe abdominal pain.”
“I'd like to thank the member for Bonner for sharing her deeply personal story that beautifully explains the importance of Women's Health Week. I speak with a little authority, I hope, on the topic of women's health. I have decades of personal experience—I'm not going to tell you how many decades—with the health system as a woman, through puberty, decades of polycystic ovary syndrome, fertility, high-risk pregnancy and childbirth, postpartum care—that would take a couple of hours to talk about—and, dare I say it, perimenopause and menopause. In a past life I also ran women's health and safety services in the central northern Adelaide health service, a unit of SA Health, providing services to two-thirds of the female Adelaide population and also statewide breast screening.”
“We've committed to increasing bulk-billing to 90 per cent by 2030, and we introduced a raft of measures to make medications cheaper, making the safety net more available, reducing the cost of PBS medications, introducing 60-day scripts and lowering the maximum PBS co-payment to $25—the same price as in 2024. We've also made health care more accessible by introducing walk-in, bulk-billed, urgent care clinics across the country. We established endometriosis clinics and funded a groundbreaking women's health package including longer MBS items for women's health assessments. We've established children's hubs—with one coming in Boothby by the end of the year—and Medicare mental health clinics. We're establishing a national 1800 Medicare helpline. Medicare is core business for Labor.”
“Australia has a world-class health system. Despite its challenges, if you're sick or injured you wouldn't want to be anywhere else, Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are some of the great social reforms of our time, ensuring that health care is available according to your need, not your ability to pay. Consequently, our population health is among the best in the world. This Labor government has strengthened Medicare and the PBS because we know how important it is. We funded an increase in bulk-billing that has already seen an increase of more than four per cent in Boothby after a decade of frozen MBS under those opposite.”
“We have been warned for decades about marine heatwaves devastating marine environments, and now it is happening along with floods in Queensland, droughts and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo. Climate change is real. Meanwhile, the Queensland LNP and the South Australian and Western Australian branches of the Liberal Party want to abandon net zero. We have a similar private members bill for debate in this place. It's time that those opposite realised that climate change is real. It's going to have significant impacts on our way of life, our environment and our economy. We can't just put our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. We need to work together to help Australia minimise and mitigate the effects of climate change that we are seeing right now.”
“Today, we have a delegation of mayors, researchers and industry with us from across South Australia, visiting Canberra to talk about the South Australian algal bloom. They met today with the Prime Minister and the ministers for the environment, agriculture, emergency management, health and tourism. The Albanese Labor government and the Malinauskas state Labor government have committed over $34 million combined to industry support, research and business supports. Sadly, there is nothing that can be done to get rid of the algae or to prevent marine deaths. We just have to wait it out and support the impacted business, industries and the community to survive. This is climate change in action.”
“He turned a BA at Flinders University and TAFE training in marketing into an award-winning advertising career. At the time of his death, he was managing director of campaign consultancy and executive director of renowned marketing communications agency KWP and Partners, as well as chair of the V-Star Powered Lift Aviation. I last saw JB and Jo at the Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club awards a couple of weeks ago, and he was, as always, in fine form. His sudden death has devastated the Brighton surf lifesaving community and the broader surf lifesaving community. My condolences go to his wife, Jo, and to his children Harry, Kate and Annabel. He will be missed. His was a life well-lived and a life cut short too soon. May he rest in peace.”
“His over 31 years of service to helicopter patrols will be long remembered, not least by the many in the broader surf lifesaving community who fondly remember his voice over the radio. While his service was driven by passion for the craft of surf lifesaving and not for the accolades, nonetheless he was awarded a well-deserved Emergency Services Medal in 2017 and a Member of the Order of Australia in 2024. His community service to surf lifesaving was extensive, but he was generous with his time to other organisations as well. He also served on the boards of the Australian Red Cross, the Smith Family and the Virtual War Memorial. As with so many people who give so generously of their time, he was also very successful in his work career.”
“After marrying Jo and starting a family, he, like so many committed surf lifesaving club members, shared his love with his children, Harry, Kate and Annabel, who joined him on active patrols. His service to Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club didn't finish on the beaches. In the 1990s, he joined the club's management committee and eventually became state president of Surf Life Saving South Australia, then national president of Surf Life Saving Australia and eventually also vice-president of the International Life Saving Federation based in Belgium. In 1994, he joined the Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter, initially as a crewman on patrols and eventually as a director.”
“I rise to honour the life of the late John Baker AM ESM. Known to all as JB, he joined the Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club in 1977 as a nipper, and I'm sure he wouldn't have minded me saying he took to it like a duck to water. There started an almost 50-year life of service to surf lifesaving and, through that, service to the broader community. At Brighton, he became the under-14 club champion, and, as part of the famous Brighton Beach team, won six state and Australian titles in the following six years, culminating in the club trophy for best Australian title competitors in 1988. He became a patrol captain in the late 1980s and eventually accumulated the highest number of patrolling hours in Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club's history.”
“It will reduce pressure on the hospital system. It will strengthen our health system. It will reaffirm the principle that health care is a right, not a privilege. For all these reasons, I commend the bill to the House.”
“We're tackling the social determinants of health through housing policy, through education and through support for secure, well-paid jobs, because we know that health is not just about what happens in the doctor's office; it is about the conditions in which people live, work and age. This bill complements those efforts. It's a practical, targeted and highly effective way to reduce inequality and improve health outcomes. The National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025 is not just another piece of legislation. It is a statement of values. It says that in Australia your health should not depend on your wealth. It says that we are a nation that looks after each other, that believes in fairness and that puts people before profit. This bill will save lives. It will reduce pressure on families.”
“Cheaper medicines help them to be able to remain healthy in the community, avoid hospitalisations and stay at home and out of aged care as long as possible, enjoying better quality of life and longer lives. When we lower the cost of medicines, we are not just helping individuals; we are helping the whole community. We are ensuring that people can stay in the workforce, care for their families and participate fully in society. We are sending the message that every Australian, no matter what their income, has the right to good health. We are moving the mean and the tail of health status in our society. The cheaper-medicines bill is part of a broader health reform agenda. This government is strengthening Medicare, expanding bulk-billing, investing in urgent care clinics and increasing support for mental health.”
“Avoiding one medical emergency spares not only the patient suffering but also the strain on our hospitals and emergency departments. The long-term savings for our health system will outweigh the upfront costs. This is preventive health at its best: evidence based, targeted, and fiscally responsible. Much as I love the data of health economics, this bill is about equity. We know that health inequality tracks closely with income inequality. Australians on lower incomes live shorter lives, experience higher rates of chronic illness and face greater barriers to care. Cheaper medicines are one of the most direct ways to reduce that gap. Older Australians are more likely to be heavy users of the health system and medications.”
“The Albanese government is proudly continuing that Labor tradition. Labor are the party of Medicare and the PBS, and we are once again making the system fairer and stronger. The health economics of this bill stack up. Every dollar we invest in affordable medicines saves many more down the track. When I studied public health, the quoted metric was that $1 of primary health prevention was the equivalent of $9 of savings at the tertiary level—that's your hospital system. It's probably only gone up. That's not to mention the cost of the burden of disease in the community in terms of lost productivity, lost personal income, the cost to social and familial connections, absenteeism, the cost to quality of life and live expectancy. Preventing one hospitalisation more than pays for the cost of lowering co-payments.”
“That courage—Labor courage—means that, today, Australians pay a fraction of what people in other countries pay for essential medicines. Let us not forget that, in the United States, without universal coverage, medication that would cost $25 here can cost hundreds of dollars there. When we reflect on our world-class health system here in Australia, it is worth looking at the comparison with the United States. The US has the most expensive health system in the world and worse health outcomes at a population level than almost every other high-income country. Australians know, if you get sick or injured, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world than right here in Australia with our Medicare system and our PBS. That's why, on this side of the House, we are constantly talking about Medicare and the PBS, because it really matters.”
“This is a more than 20 per cent cut in the maximum price of PBS medicines and will save Australians collectively over $200 million every year. Four out of five PBS medicines will be cheaper as a result of this bill. For pensioners and concession card holders, the co-payment will continue to be frozen at $7.70 until 2030. Together, these measures represent one of the most significant expansions in affordable access to medicines since the PBS itself was created, and it's not an exaggeration to say that this bill will save lives. This bill also builds on a prior Labor legacy. It's worth remembering how we got here. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme was introduced by the Chifley Labor government in 1948 against strong opposition. In fact, it took a referendum to secure the right of the Commonwealth to run it.”
“Beginning in September 2023, 60-day prescriptions were introduced in three phases, meaning you can get two months of medication for the price of one for many regular medications. The prices of PBS medications were frozen in January 2025, with co-payments not rising with inflation for the first time in 25 years. Residents in Boothby have already saved over $13 million on pharmaceuticals as a result of the Albanese government's cheaper medicines agenda. This bill takes the next step by further lowering the maximum PBS co-payment from $31.60 to $25 from January 2026. The last time medicines cost no more than $25 was 2004, a long time ago. My children were about to start school in 2004. They're now well and truly adults.”
“We had the largest increase in Medicare ever and an increase in bulk-billing, in my area, of over four per cent. At the recent election, there was a $150 million commitment to Flinders University, which they're matching, which will enable 1,300 new nurses and allied health workers to be trained and graduated every year, and 10,000 appointments to be free or low cost to patients in the community. In 2023, we introduced the largest cut to the cost of PBS medicines in the history of the PBS. In 2022, we enabled Australians to access more free and cheaper medicines sooner through a 25 per cent reduction in the number of scripts a concessional patient must fill before the PBS safety net kicks in.”
“The downstream costs to the health system are enormous, but, more importantly, the human costs are devastating. That's why this bill matters. The National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025 builds on the reforms introduced by the Albanese government in the last term, and it's worth doing a little history on those changes. The urgent care clinics—we have one at Marion, which has had probably around 20,000 visits since it opened in November 2023—are so important to enable people to get quick care and stay out of the hospital emergency department. There are the endometriosis clinics. We have one in Glenelg, which services metropolitan Adelaide. Again, women who have suffered with pelvic pain for their entire lives are having life-changing treatments.”
“Managing the cost of prescription medicines is one of the most frequent concerns raised with me by older Australians, by families managing chronic conditions and by younger people struggling with unexpected illness. A survey by the Consumers Health Forum recently found that one in eight Australians have delayed or gone without filling a prescription because of cost. Think about that—more than two million Australians making the awful choice to risk their health because they simply cannot afford the medication. This is not an abstract problem. It's a problem that shortens lives. When people skip their heart medication, they risk a heart attack. When they delay filling their asthma inhaler, they risk hospitalisation or worse. When they forgo their diabetes medication, they risk losing their eyesight or their limbs.”
“But there is absolutely no point in getting a prescription if you can't afford to have it filled. So much of the health management that comes from medication occurs in the community setting: people filling prescriptions at their local pharmacy and managing their health on a day-to-day basis at home. The story of cheaper medicines in Australia is a story about fairness. It is about the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, one of the great Labor reforms of the 20th century. It is about successive governments recognising that health care is not simply a line in the budget but the foundation of a decent and inclusive society. It is about the choices we face in this chamber: do we build a system that relieves pressure on families or do we allow cost to become a barrier to care? The bill before us makes the right choice.”
“I was honoured to represent the Minister for Health and Ageing at the Adelaide Primary Health Network's Health Equity Awards on the weekend. If I can deviate slightly, I would like to congratulate late NEAMI, Youturn, STARRS—Survivors of Torture and Trauma—LELAN and Relationships Australia on their awards, and I thank them for their work addressing health equity in specific populations in Adelaide. Returning to this bill, an important part of health equity is being able to afford the treatments that you need. Medication is important in treatment but also in prevention: primary prevention, preventing you becoming ill; secondary prevention, preventing a disease progressing; and tertiary prevention, minimising the impacts of the disease or illness.”
“It reflects the values that brought me to this parliament—the belief that no-one should have to decide whether they can afford essential medicines or which one is the most important; the belief that access to affordable health care is not a privilege for the wealthy but a right for every Australian. My career in health and in the not-for-profits has always been about health equity, because, if we are really going to maintain our health as a community, we need everyone to be able to benefit—statistically, to move the mean and the tail of health outcomes. Access to affordable primary care and affordable pharmaceuticals is vital to maintaining our health as individuals. In a former life, my title in SA Health was General Manager Population Health Equity.”
“Australia has a world-class health system. Despite its challenges, if you're sick or injured, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. Underpinning this is a commitment to health equity. Thanks to Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Australia is a country where the health care that you receive isn't related to your income or your status. Medicare is a cornerstone of our national identity and one of the great social reforms of our time. It ensures that health care is available according to your need, not your ability to pay. Consequently, our health at a population level is among the best in the world. This bill, the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill 2025, goes to the heart of what good government should be about: making life fairer, healthier and more affordable for Australians.”
“So far 175,000 Australians have already bought their first home on this scheme. This means first home buyers can get into the market faster and avoid having to pay mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance is very rarely called on and costs the average mortgagee $23,000 a year, money they could be putting into their home equity. Alongside increasing affordable housing supply, the five per cent deposit scheme means housing will be more affordable for first home buyers, many of whom are in the younger age groups. The Liberal and National parties left a housing disaster for our next generation and have tried to block our housing strategies at every step. This government is working hard to make housing affordable for all Australians.”
“This country hasn't built enough houses for 40 years. This has meant prices have gone up, both for purchase and to rent. This Labor government has got cracking on a number of strategies to address this. We're making it better to rent by strengthening renters rights, increasing rental properties through build-to-rent, with 80,000 more homes, and providing a 45 per cent increase to Commonwealth rent assistance, helping one million households. We're building more homes through the Housing Australia Future Fund, training more tradies, providing more infrastructure and reducing red tape. We're also making it easier to buy through shared equity with Help to Buy and a 20 per cent cut to student debt, which we are excluding from mortgage assessments. And now we're expanding the five per cent deposit scheme.”
“The home battery subsidy will help fast-track the change and make your energy bill significantly cheaper. The faster we transition our energy system, the faster we get off fossil fuels. Climate change is not a theory. It's not fiction. If you want to see the future under climate change, come and see our beaches. This is not the time for grandstanding about net zero; now is the time we should be racing for solutions. The impacts of climate change we were warned about are happening now. They're happening on my beaches. They are impossible to ignore, or, at least, they should be impossible to ignore.”
“The federal and state governments have jointly committed $28 million to provide support, and that's up to $100,000 for seafood businesses and up to $10,000 for other businesses—money to help with the clean-up of the beaches and for research to try and find how we can prevent this happening again in the future and what can be done to remediate the marine environment after this is over. I know what my community wants is for the animals to stop dying. They want a cure. They want a fix. And there is nothing in the short term that will make a difference. But this is a sign that we need to continue our action on climate change. Our energy transition, which has been supercharged under this government—80 large-scale renewable projects approved and 130 more in the pipeline.”
“An oyster farm in Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula announced its closure today. Commercial fishers are experiencing significant declines in catches. Our tourism industry is affected. A local boat tour operator told me they've had pretty much no income since March. A recreational fishing shop told me their income has dropped by 75 per cent. An algal bloom of this scale and this duration is unprecedented, and, unfortunately, the scientists can't tell us how or when it will end. There's no cure that we can apply—nothing we can add to the water, no process to remove the algae and nothing we can do to protect the animals.”
“Dolphins, sharks, rays, skates, fish, squid, penguins, turtles and shellfish are dying. Their carcasses are washing up on our beaches. Under the water, the reef and seagrasses are now a barren, sludgy wasteland. This is obviously having significant effects on my community as well. Local residents are devastated by the marine carnage they see. We love our beaches and we love our marine life. People are avoiding the beach because of the reaction to the algal bloom, which in humans causes sneezing and watery eyes. It's also affecting our economy. South Australia is renowned for its quality seafood industries—bluefin tuna, King George whiting and renowned Coffin Bay oysters just to name a few. All are suffering downturns in catches, and some of the aquaculture industries are facing closures.”
“Scientists identify three major causes: nutrient-rich floodwaters from the Murray floods; an unprecedented upwelling of nutrient-rich waters from deep off the continental shelf, caused by changing ocean currents; and a marine heatwave of around 2½ degrees. This has been complicated by a long, warm summer with calm weather and a late winter onset which meant the waters were relatively still. We've been warned of climate change and marine heatwaves decimating marine environments for a long time, and, like the apocryphal frog in warm water, we haven't paid enough attention to the early warning signs, so now we have a late warning sign. What is happening in South Australia is what we were warned about. While those opposite squabble about net zero and whether climate change exists or is worth responding to, our marine environment is dying.”
“I wanted to give the House a brief update on the unprecedented algal bloom affecting much of the South Australian coast. Of course, we've had short-term algal blooms in South Australia before, and they occur around Australia and internationally from time to time, and they usually resolve within a matter of weeks. This algal bloom started south of Adelaide in Mayo in March, and initially it was also expected to last a couple of weeks. But it didn't, and it grew. The algal bloom is now affecting metropolitan beaches, coastal waters around Yorke and Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The bloom is twice the size of the ACT, affecting over 4,000 kilometres of coastline, and, in places, it's about 20 metres deep.”
“It anchors in law a protection that millions of Australians depend upon. It reflects our commitment to safeguarding lowest paid workers amid economic pressures, and it reaffirms the integrity of Australia's modern award system. I'd like to thank the minister for this latest tranche of legislation, and I commend the bill to the House.”
“The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Act expanded parental leave and embedded superannuation in the National Employment Standards. Part 1 of the closing loopholes legislation criminalised wage theft and introduced the same job, same pay provision for labour hire workers. Part 2 introduced minimum standards for gig workers. The right-to-disconnect laws allow workers to refuse unreasonable contact outside work hours. We backed a pay rise for minimum paid workers, aged-care workers and childcare workers, and now we are legislating to protect penalty rates and overtime rates. This is a government that has the backs of workers, and we are legislating to make sure workers also benefit from the prosperity of this wonderful country. This bill is about principles of fairness, decency and dignity.”
“The Albanese government is a government that cares about the rights of workers. We know that as a society and as an economy we only profit when we all profit. 'No-one held back, no-one left behind' is a statement that says, 'We are all in this together and we need to look after each other.' This bill goes to protecting the rights at work of some of our more vulnerable workers—young people, women, shiftworkers, part-time workers and casual workers. In the last term of government we passed a raft of industrial relations legislation which went to making the lives of Australian workers better so they can get ahead. The secure jobs, better pay legislation introduced multi-employer bargaining, ended pay secrecy and strengthened gender pay gap measures and pay equity.”
“Opposing it therefore seems to indicate an intention to make the worker worse off. Another criticism is that the bill would undermine the Fair Work Commission's role. However, under this legislation the commission remains free to interpret and apply awards providing it upholds the newly legislated principle. This bill does not remove independence; it ensures awards maintain their purpose as a protective floor. A third concern raised is that this will affect business viability. While we recognise small businesses face challenges, this bill is carefully crafted to avoid causing undue hardship. It exempts flexibility terms and only restricts award variations that reduce worker entitlements. The government has committed to consulting small-business stakeholders as the bill proceeds.”
“That should likewise be uncontroversial. We see this bill as a moral and economic imperative. I believe that the concept of a fair pay should transcend partisan politics. So no doubt it will surprise you to know that not everyone has immediately jumped on board. Some employer groups, particularly representing retail, hospitality and banking interests, have opposed it, and the opposition, I understand, is yet to commit to a position. We saw the shadow minister yesterday trying to delay this legislation. Employer groups argue that they should retain the freedom to negotiate away loadings in exchange for higher base pay. However, we know that such deals often disproportionately disadvantage award-reliant workers whose hours coincide with penalty times. The bill does not outlaw bargaining; it simply ensures that no-one ends up worse off.”