Kate Chaney
Curtin · Independent · Australia
“Digital platforms will have a legal responsibility to prevent harm, but the design of this commitment matters enormously, and I want to flag three things that the government must get right. First, there must be a single overarching duty.”
“The government gave stakeholders representing millions of Australians affected by gambling harm a single 45-minute consultation session on the exposure draft, with written submissions due the next day. Emeritus Professor Mike Daube, who took part in that session, described it afterwards as a charade.”
“A doctor who uses the phone, internet, fax, email or video conferencing to provide lawful VAD care risks prosecution and fines greater than $300,000. This means seriously ill patients must attend every consultation in person, travelling long distances while gravely unwell, often more than once, to make and confirm their request.”
“I rise to present a petition signed by more than 13,000 Australians. The petition has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order. It calls on this House to amend the Criminal Code Act so that it no longer applies to voluntary assisted dying, VAD.”
“She lived in one half of a single house divided into two separate dwellings. She got on well with the quiet single working man next door. This particular morning she was devastated and in shock. The man had hung himself in the shed where she found him, and left a note listing all the people he owed money to including the amounts.”
“No avenue to call up customer service at these companies and request this person be denied an account. Our nightmare never ends. There's nowhere to help us. The only option presented seems to dissolve the marriage and the family.”
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“We welcome the investment, but these companies must build on terms that leave Australians better, not worse, off. That means converting the government's expectations into a binding framework through cooperation with the states, a credible plan to run on 100 per cent additional renewable energy, binding water efficiency standards, real commitment on local jobs and training, and genuine community consultation before approval, not after the concrete's poured. The member for Warringah's MPI also refers to the need to ensure that the benefits of AI are shared across society, and this includes ensuring that, when these models are trained on the work of Australian writers, musicians, journalists and artists, those creators are actually paid for their work not stripped for free while the value flows offshore.”
“They ask operators to support our energy transition, use water responsibly, create local jobs and engage with affected communities. They're sensible asks, but that is in fact all they are—asks. Developers are not required to comply. A company can secure fast-tracked approval, consume gigawatts of our electricity, draw down our water, employ a few dozen workers and face no consequences for failure to meet a single one of those expectations. This is a wish list rather than a national interest framework, and the costs are real. Reporting suggests that between 70 and 80 per cent of the money committed to Australian data centres flows straight back overseas, while Australians provide the land, the energy and the water, and carry the risk. The issue raised by the member for Warringah is the right one.”
“I thank the member for Warringah for bringing this matter forward. Data centres being built across this country right now are reshaping our energy grid, our water resources and potentially our communities. At the moment Australians have almost no say in whether they deliver us any benefit at all. Australia is one of the most attractive destinations in the world for this investment. We have a stable democracy, available land and the potential for abundant, cheap renewable energy. When the big AI and cloud companies talk about investing in Australia, this is largely what they mean. Amazon has committed $20 billion to data centres here, and Microsoft has committed $25 billion. That investment is coming whether we set the terms or not, so we'd better set them. In March, the government released its data centre expectations.”
“This amendment does not decline the bill a second reading—the sensible measures in it deserve to pass—but it puts on the record my concern with part 9, which is that allowing a business's enterprise agreement arrangements to determine its access to grants and contracts cuts against the principle that public money should be allocated transparently and on merit—on value, capability, delivery and compliance—and that these provisions, with their broad ministerial power to extend their reach by instrument, should be removed from the bill. I will not let a significant corruption-sensitive procurement change ride through on the coat-tails of sensible reform. If this procurement prioritisation remains, I'll vote against this bill.”
“So I move a second reading amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: (1) notes that: (a) the bill contains a range of measures, most of which are sensible and warrant support, including efficiency reforms to the operation of the Fair Work Commission, a fairer high income threshold for road transport contractors, and administrative changes to reporting requirements; (b) Part 9 of Schedule 1 would allow the Commonwealth, and parties within a Commonwealth contractual chain, to discriminate between businesses in awarding grants or procuring goods and services on the basis of their enterprise agreement arrangements; (c) the integrity of public spending depends on decisions about grants and procurement being made transparently and on their merits, including value for money, capability, delivery and compliance, rather than on factors unrelated to a business's ability to do the work; (d) Part 9 would weaken that principle by making a business's industrial arrangements a permissible basis for preferencing in the allocation of public money; and (e) these provisions would also confer a broad power on the Minister to extend or modify their operation by legislative instrument, with limited parliamentary oversight; and (2) calls on the Government to remove such measures from the bill that would allow the Commonwealth to discriminate against businesses on the basis of their enterprise agreement arrangements".”
“For example, small and medium-sized businesses that make up the overwhelming majority of the construction industry largely operate under awards, not enterprise agreements. They should be treated no less favourably than those with union-negotiated enterprise agreements.”
“The government has said it may carve out the construction industry, but that's not what's being put before the House and not what I'm being asked to vote on. So this is a bill of good measures and one serious problem, and my position follows from that. I support the objectives of the commission efficiency reforms; the road transport income threshold, which is a fair fix for low-paid owners-drivers; and the supported bargaining streamlining, which is a sensible administrative simplification. I'd back these readily on their own. But the principle underpinning part 9, that government should discriminate on the basis of the existence of an enterprise agreement, appears to be targeted at elevating the role of unions.”
“If public money is to be steered towards companies that hold a particular type of agreement in a sector with this recent history, the safeguards against that money flowing to the wrong hands should be spelled out, and here they are not. This also lands awkwardly against the government's own statement on 1 May this year that it had no intention of requiring union agreements as a condition of construction funding. The government must reconcile that commitment with what part 9 actually does. If businesses are complying with our very complex industrial relations laws then they should be able to compete with other businesses on a level playing field for government contracts on the basis of their ability to fulfil that contract and give value for money.”
“Geoffrey Watson SC, examining the construction sector, found that some enterprise agreements were bought for cash and awarded to criminals and that practices like these could drive legitimate businesses out of the market altogether. This is not a hypothetical risk; it's a documented finding about the very sector this measure would touch most directly. The timing makes it sharper still. The CFMEU's construction division is at this moment under administration, in fact dealt with separately in this bill. So, at the same time as we're cleaning up after corruption in construction enterprise agreements, part 9 would elevate the role of these agreements in the awarding of public contracts and grants.”
“If the Commonwealth wants the power to steer public money in this way so it's spent on the basis of how businesses contract with their employees rather than value for money or ability to fulfil the contract, the boundaries of that power should be debated and fixed here in the primary legislation, not filled in by instrument once the bill has passed. Industry has raised serious concerns about this aspect of the bill. The Australian Industry Group warns that it undermines freedom of association, the right of workers to join a union or not. They point to a parade of scandals and billions wasted where procurement was bent to industrial objectives at a state level. The Business Council and Master Builders go further, to integrity. We don't have to reach back very far for the relevant lesson.”
“The bill tells us that the Commonwealth may preference employers that are covered by an enterprise agreement, but the crucial detail of exactly which contractual arrangements this power reaches and how far down a supply chain it extends isn't settled in the act itself; it's left to be determined by the minister, by legislative instrument. So parliament is being asked to approve the principle while the substance—the part that determines who is caught and how heavily—is deferred to ministerial decision after the fact. A change of this significance deserves far more scrutiny.”
“But part 9 of this bill creates an exemption to this prohibition. That means the Commonwealth could give preference to businesses whose employees are covered by an enterprise agreement, often a union agreement, when awarding grants and contracts. And it potentially reaches down supply chains. A single Commonwealth project could impose these conditions on every business beneath it. This is a significant change in how we decide how taxpayer money is spent. Bundling it into a bill that is otherwise about commission housekeeping, under the reassuring banner of 'building cooperative workplaces', understates what it does. This is precisely the kind of opaque process I've consistently criticised in this place. And there's not a lot of relevant detail about how this might work that's actually written into the bill.”
“Empowering the commission to dismiss frivolous, vexatious or hopeless applications and to rein in repeat applicants who clog the system is a reasonable response to a real problem. I don't pretend that these measures are cost-free. They touch on procedural rights, and the government acknowledges as much. But they come with safeguards. Vexatious orders may be made only by a full bench. Matters proceed on the papers only with the parties' consent, and judicial review remains. On balance, this is the unglamorous legislative work of making an institution function, and it deserves to pass. But—and there is a 'but'—one part of this bill is doing a great deal of quiet work for a so-called efficiency measure. There's been a longstanding prohibition on discriminating between employers based on the industrial instruments covering their workers.”
“Until the 2020 Federal Court decision in Coles Supply Chain Pty Ltd v Milford, also called Milford, when a worker brought a general protections claim and the employer argued that no dismissal had actually occurred, the commission could simply move the matter to conciliation and try to resolve it. After Milford, the commission first had to run a full arbitrated hearing just to decide the threshold question of whether a dismissal had happened at all before it could even begin to deal with the dispute, and that's slow and expensive for everyone. This bill restores the earlier, more sensible process: the commission can proceed straight to conciliation, and the question of whether a dismissal occurred can still be worked through there, or later in arbitration or in court if the matter can't be resolved.”
“It also establishes a separate, more appropriate income threshold for low paid owner-drivers in road transport, whose high operating costs can make them look better paid than they really are, giving them access to unfair termination and unfair contract protections that they would otherwise be denied. And the bill tidies up the timing of CFMEU construction division financial reports. I'm broadly supportive of these measures. They address real pressures and they deserve to be passed. The commission is under genuine strain, and these measures respond to it directly.”
“I rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026. This bill bundles together measures with very different impacts. It gives the Fair Work Commission tools to manage a rising tide of applications, a tide now driven in part by paid agents and by artificial intelligence generating claims at volume. It streamlines how dismissal disputes are handled, restoring a more efficient process. It allows the commission to decide certain matters on the papers—that is, on written submissions without a hearing—where both parties agree.”
“My community is frustrated by political parties more focused on scoring points than planning for the long term. But, when faced with that frustration, Curtin did not reach for the fear and division of Trump-style politics; the people of Curtin responded in a uniquely Australian way, by returning to the basics and choosing a representative who's answerable to them, driven by their values and not told by any party boss how to vote or which flags to fly. At a time of increasing polarisation, I'm proud that my community has sent me here to represent the values of a modern, inclusive Australia.”
“Every month when I go doorknocking, I ask the people of Curtin to give me three words to describe the Australia they want to live in. These are the words that I hear the most often: fair, safe, inclusive, compassionate, prosperous and sustainable. These are the values that I bring into this parliament on their behalf. My community does not want to live in a monoculture. We know that half of us were born overseas or have a parent born overseas, and we understand that this is not a threat to the Australian story; this is the Australian story. We want a fair go for everyone, not just our own tribe. We value expertise and evidence, even when it shows an inconvenient truth about the warming of our planet. And we understand that the complex challenges Australia faces will not be solved by angry slogans.”
“I urge the government to look seriously at options for improvements to the parent visa system: increasing the number of parent visas each year, with stronger financial obligations on sponsoring families to manage the fiscal impact; introducing a fairer method of allocating places from the existing backlog, such as a lottery instead of a queue that stretches beyond most applicants' lifetimes; or placing greater emphasis on temporary parent visas that are more affordable and accessible, supported by enhanced financial commitments from sponsors. The migration debate in this country too often focuses on problems that are overstated. Here is one that's real, measurable and within the government's power to fix.”
“Based on current wait times, Isaac will be in his 20s before his grandparents can settle permanently in Australia. Stefan from Mosman Park contacted me about his mother, Kristina, who is 82 and has been on a bridging visa for six years. She cannot leave Australia to visit a gravely ill friend in Germany without voiding her application. She waits, unable to plan her life in either direction. These families acted in good faith, and the system has not matched that. I welcome some of the government's migration reforms announced in the budget. Updating the points test, fixing skills recognition and increasing scrutiny of visa applications are sensible steps, but the parent visa backlog sits outside that conversation, and it shouldn't.”
“The government's independent review described the situation as 'cruel and unnecessary', noting that offering visas that will probably never be granted serves neither applicants nor system integrity. I could not agree more. Families choosing the premium pathway pay fees of nearly $100,000, about 10 times the standard option, on the expectation of processing times of around three years, but wait times have blown out to 15 years. If you lodge an application today on the standard pathway, you can expect to wait until 2059. A 70-year-old applicant today would be 103 before receiving a decision. Kyle from Shenton Park paid the premium so his parents could join him, his partner and his seven-year-old son, Isaac. Six years later, his parents are still waiting.”
“There's no shortage of loud voices in this parliament on migration. Migration is being targeted as an easy scapegoat for all our challenges, despite the long history of its successful contribution to our economy and our society. There's no doubt that we need better planning in our migration system to match infrastructure needs with our population, but there are also aspects of our migration rules that are failing because they're deeply unfair to those caught in the system. Australia has a parent visa system that's quietly failing thousands of families. More than 151,000 applicants are currently in the queue. With only 8,500 places allocated in the system each year, the queue grows faster than it's processed.”
“We've seen it all before, and we can't be fooled by it from tobacco or from gambling. If this bill is to achieve what it promises, the enforcement framework it creates must be matched by an unwavering commitment to public health policy that's developed transparently and free from industry capture. I urge the committee and this House to ensure that when we scrutinise the illicit tobacco trade we do so with our eyes open to the criminals who profit from it and to the legal industry that has never stopped trying to protect its market share at the expense of public health. I commend this bill to the House.”
“Where that process appears opaque, where some witnesses get public scrutiny and others get a closed room, it invites entirely reasonable questions about whose voices are being heard and whose interests are being served. We cannot allow the legitimate concern about illicit tobacco to become a Trojan Horse for the tobacco industry to rehabilitate itself as a policy partner, to insert itself into regulatory processes or to subtly water down the public health settings that have made Australia a world leader. It's worth noting that right now the gambling industry is copying straight from the tobacco playbook, casting doubt on where the harm is done, resisting proper regulation, wining and dining decision-makers, and now pointing earnestly to overseas illegal gambling sites, claiming that that should be the focus of regulation.”
“The committee advises that it may call any witnesses it deems relevant, that transparency is its first preference and that the Philip Morris transcript was published on 7 May, and I welcome the publication of that transcript. But the committee's response does not fully address my concerns. It doesn't explain why a closed session was the initial preference. Neither does it address how the inquiry will remain consistent with our obligations under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires governments to protect health policy from commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry. This matters. Parliamentary inquiries play a vital role in building public trust in decision-making, particularly on matters of public health.”
“The long and troubling history of hidden influence by tobacco companies brings me to the Senate inquiry into the illicit tobacco crisis and specifically to the hearing on 4 May, where the committee allowed tobacco industry representatives to give evidence in a closed session. I wrote to the committee chair to express my deep concerns. I asked why private briefings from tobacco companies were considered appropriate, when the transcript of the Philip Morris session would be released and how the committee would ensure that the remainder of the inquiry remained consistent with our international public health obligations. I have now received a response.”
“And it means being alert to who is shaping these settings and how. Tobacco companies have a well documented history of seeking to influence public health policy in ways that serve their commercial interests rather than the public's health. That history is why Australia, as a party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, has clear obligations to protect public health policy from industry influence and to ensure full transparency in any interactions that do occur. It's also why I seconded the amendment from the member for Kooyong to ban political donations from tobacco companies.”
“This bill responds by creating new offences for large-scale illicit tobacco activity linked to organised crime and substantially increases penalties across the full supply chain. It expands unexplained-wealth and proceeds-of-crime tools, enables wiretaps for serious tobacco offences and improves information sharing between law enforcement bodies. These are sensible, proportionate reforms. But enforcement alone will not win this battle. Australia has a national target of reducing daily smoking prevalence to five per cent by 2030. If we rely on enforcement alone, without addressing underlying demand, we will be chasing this problem indefinitely. That means maintaining our public health infrastructure, funding quitting support, and holding the line on plain packaging, advertising restrictions and excise.”
“I rise to support the Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026. Smoking still kills about 66 Australians every day. After decades of hard work, daily smoking rates halved between 2001 and 2022 from 22 per cent to 11 per cent. Australia was a genuine world leader in tobacco control. The illicit market now threatens to undo much of that progress, fuelling organised crime and hooking a new generation. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, the combined rate of smoking and vaping has climbed back to 28 per cent, higher than it was a decade ago, and that's a trend that should alarm every member of this House. The illicit tobacco market is now estimated to be larger than the combined Australian illicit market for cannabis, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. So the case for stronger enforcement is clear.”
“They are some of the reasons that this needs to be referred to a proper inquiry with a proper public consultation process, and I commend the motion to the House.”
“That's what's euphemistically called a targeted consultation. This was a charade. Given the scale of harm and the number of people whose lives have been torn apart by gambling and its incessant promotion, this bill deserves a public consultation process. Where's the evidence to back up any of its half-measures? Without a public consultation process, how can the government claim to be acting in the public interest? Good process really matters. This bill deserves a public consultation so all Australians can have an opportunity to tell the government what they think about the reform that it's putting forward. We need that public consultation process, which will inevitably surface the many, many ways in which this bill could be improved.”
“The government has decided that, even if people don't like gambling ads, the issue probably won't change the way voters vote. That says so much about what's wrong with politics today. Policy decisions are driven by elections and vested interests, not by what's right for the country. With such a huge gap between what the committee recommended and what the government's proposing, surely Australians have the right to know why. But the government wants as little attention on this as possible so they can tick the box on delivering gambling reform and move on. It's simply not acceptable. After taking nearly three years to respond, the government gave half a dozen people representing the three million Australians negatively affected by this industry a 45-minute Zoom call and a couple of days to make some submissions on the exposure draft.”
“The government knows its response is disappointing, which is why it was announced on Easter Thursday, and details of the reform package were released during the budget lock up, when all the political journalists are literally locked in a room with lots of shiny stories—probably the few hours in the whole year when media attention is least likely. I can only imagine what they'll save up for budget lock up next year. The government's presenting this reform as 'a balance'. But just to be clear, the PM means a balance between the public interest and vested interests. It just happens to contain exactly what the chief gambling industry lobbyist proposed six months ago—three ads per hour. This is not a balance. It's spineless. It's weak caving to the money and the power, and it deserves scrutiny.”
“The only evidence we have about whether an opt-out function works is from SBS, which has had an opt-out function for gambling ads for some years now. Zero point one per cent of subscribers have taken up that option despite numerous surveys showing three-quarters of Australians want to see a phase out of gambling ads. So gambling companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Why does the gambling lobby fight so hard to keep gambling ads in front of our children? Because it works. We saw the tobacco industry try all the same tactics as the gambling industry, but then we were willing to put the public interest ahead of the money.”
“We will have three gambling ads per hour on TV and unlimited gambling ads after the magic time of 8.30, when anyone under 18 apparently trots off to bed. In the 45-minute consultation, which I'll get to, when asked about the evidence to back up unlimited ads after 8.30 pm, stakeholders were told that it was a political decision. Our kids will still be able to name all the betting companies. They'll still know what a multi is before they hit high school, and they will still think that if you know a lot about sport, then gambling is for you. The so-called triple lock for online ads actually means unlimited online ads if you're watching through an adult account as long as, hidden somewhere on each digital platform, there's technically an opt-out function there.”
“Yes. I second the motion moved by the member for Kooyong. I sat on that committee, and I heard from people whose lives had been torn apart by an industry that's addictive by design, marketed aggressively and disproportionately harms young people and vulnerable communities. Our report made 31 recommendations, and its central finding was unambiguous. We need a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising phased in over time. It took the government nearly three years to respond, and that response has been so disappointing. It addresses just a few of those 31 recommendations. This is not a phase-out of ads for online gambling. It's more Swiss cheese. Partial bans simply don't work. The evidence is clear on that.”
“As one put it, they just want to make it 'a little bit easier to do what we love'. This bill is one concrete way that we can make it easier. It doesn't cost the budget a cent. It doesn't add a reporting obligation. It just says that if you want public contracts, you have to treat the small businesses in your supply chain fairly. In Curtin, these small businesses are the fabric of our community. They create the jobs, take the risks and bring our neighbourhoods to life. The least we can do is make sure they get paid on time. I commend this bill to the House.”
“And as those wages rise, state payroll tax thresholds stay frozen, so businesses are taxed more simply for paying their staff properly. There is cost after cost, with no-one asking how it all adds up. That's the context for this bill. These small businesses are price takers at both ends, squeezed by rising costs on one side and customers whose own spending is under pressure on the other. There is very little room to support another hit, so when a large customer or supplier pays late, using a small business as a cheap form of finance, it's one more pressure on an operator already stretched to the limit. One owner put it plainly: it feels like small businesses are left to pay the bill, while big businesses have their accountants and leverage to avoid carrying their share. These owners weren't asking for a free ride.”
“That's a powerful lever. Large businesses make up around 79 per cent of the Commonwealth's $71 billion procurement program. Tying access to that program to fair payment creates a real, ongoing incentive to pay promptly. It's measured and fair, with sensible exemptions, and it's self-correcting: pay on time and the restriction falls away. A fortnight ago I sat down with hospitality owners in Curtin running some of the best venues in Perth—venues like Lulu La Delizia, Monsterella Pizza, Juanita's and Kith. The clear message was that it's getting harder just to stay afloat. Rents and insurance have gone up 20 per cent in a year. Credit card surcharge changes are costing a single venue about $25,000 annually. Wage and superannuation increases are adding up to $50,000 more.”
“I second the member for Wentworth's motion. I'm pleased to support this bill, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Supporting Small Businesses To Be Paid On Time) Bill 2026, which tackles one of the corrosive pressures facing small businesses: not getting paid on time. Late payment by large businesses to their small suppliers is one of the biggest drivers of small business financial stress, and inadequate cash flow remains the single most reported cause of small business insolvency. The mechanism in this bill is elegant. We already require large businesses to report their payment times. This bill simply says that if you consistently pay your small suppliers late—averaging more than 30 days across three consecutive reporting cycles—you should not be eligible for the largest Commonwealth contracts.”
“We should require frontier AI developers to provide Australia's AI Safety Institute with early access to their models and information about the training and testing processes. We should set binding obligations for data centres to use 100 per cent additional and renewable energy, meet minimum water-use efficiency standards, engage with community, hire locally and deliver community benefit. We should tax big tech to ensure AI companies generating value from Australian consumers, Australian data and Australian resources pay their fair share. The thing that I hear the most from parents in my community is that we need to protect our children from sycophantic AI chatbots and companions that are causing long-term psychological harm and eroding critical thinking. The promise and the peril of AI are unparalleled.”
“To touch on just a few of them, we should increase funding to the AI Safety Institute so Australia can test new models, monitor risks and attract technical talent to match global peers like the UK. We should set up a national AI missions program to identify and target a handful of AI opportunities where Australia can be a world leader, like natural disaster response, agricultural productivity and medical research. We should resolve the copyright standoff by facilitating licensing agreements between AI companies and Australian creators, unlocking AI training in Australia while fairly compensating rightsholders. We should deal with the overwhelming volume of AI deepfakes and disinformation by introducing federal truth-in-political-advertising laws and giving people ownership over their own likeness.”
“Almost the only federal funding allocated to navigating our AI path is the $20 million in annual funding for the two new AI bodies, for a technology that could supposedly boost productivity by over $100 billion each year. If the government continues to pursue a passive and hands-off approach to AI policy, it means our future is at the mercy of the quirks and capabilities of AI models grown in overseas labs by tech billionaires. That's not good enough. That's why I've put out an AI discussion paper with 18 specific policies that should be implemented now to set up the structures to govern AI policy moving forward, to capture the opportunities of AI, to deal with current harms, to prepare for emerging risks and to share the benefit of AI with all Australians.”
“We can already see the effects of AI—white-collar graduates struggling to find jobs, young girls in schools finding their likeness used in disgusting pornographic deepfakes, floods of AI slop online, supercharged scams, and sycophantic chatbots and companion apps hacking our children's ability to form relationships and eroding their critical thinking. This is why I'm so frustrated by the government's passive, hands-off approach to AI policy, and I'm not alone. I've met with a large range of stakeholders across industry, business, civil society, think tanks and academia who agree. The government's National AI Plan puts forward important goals but has implemented almost no policy to achieve these goals.”
“If this is a tsunami that we're facing, we need to be ready. Experts around the world are telling us that AI will fundamentally reshape our economy and information environment. Some are telling us it could cause the extinction of our species. Others are telling us it will bring unparalleled prosperity and equality. A lot of these scenarios feel like unrealistic sci-fi fantasies, but, if even a fraction of the promise or peril of AI comes to pass, it will have an enormous impact on our society, and we're not ready for it. This is not just a future problem.”
“Artificial intelligence feels like a huge wave forming vaguely on the horizon. We can't tell yet how big it is or when it will arrive, but we can feel it looming, and already there are smaller waves lapping at the shore. The decisions we make now will determine whether we'll be able to ride the wave or whether we'll be swept away. No-one knows how significant the impact of AI will be on society, not even the people developing the AI models at frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI. In fact, these people reject the use of terms like 'building' and 'developing'. They prefer to say that they are 'growing' the AI models, because even they have no idea how they'll turn out. That creates a lot of uncertainty, but uncertainty is not a reason for inaction. Our government needs to be preparing.”
“My question is to the. Minister for Communications. It took 15 years to act on social media's harm to children. Parents are now worried about a new threat, attachment hacking. Children are increasingly spending their formative years talking to AI chatbots that simulate emotional intimacy, which can cause deep psychological harm and erode critical thinking. Will this be covered by the proposed digital duty of care or will the government extend its under-16 social media ban to sycophantic AI chatbots and companion apps?”
“Minister, will you commit to an open, merit based appointment process by advertising the roles, publishing the selection criteria and disclosing the assessment process?”
“Minister, will the government commit to a comprehensive, independent review of the FOI Act led by independent experts with genuine public participation? The NACC was established to investigate corruption and restore public trust in government. Australians are watching closely, and what they're seeing is concerning. No public hearings have been held, and not one case has met the exceptional circumstances test. The workings of the NACC have occurred almost entirely behind closed doors, and now there's a vacuum of leadership, with vacancies for both the commissioner and the deputy commissioner. This is a critical moment. The appointments you make, Minister, and how you make them will either rebuild or further erode public confidence in this institution.”
“Freedom of information is one of the few everyday tools citizens, journalists and civil society have to scrutinise government power, and the system is broken—not in my words but from the findings of every major review over the past decade: Hawke in 2013, Shergold in 2015, Thodey in 2019 and the Senate inquiry in 2023. All four reviews reached the same conclusion: the system is not fit for purpose and needs a comprehensive, independent review. None of them actually conducted one. The government's recent attempt at reform proposed reducing disclosure, expanding exemptions and introducing fees. It did not address collapsing rates of full disclosure, serious processing delays or what advocates describe as administrative torture. Reform that only moves towards less transparency is not neutral; it's a political choice.”