Monique Ryan
Kooyong · Independent · Australia
“I second this motion and commend the member for Curtin's motion to refer the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 to the House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs. This should not be a controversial request.”
“What about the clinicians, the researchers, the public health experts and the community organisations who have spent years documenting the devastating impact of gambling addiction? Some of them have been given days to review this complex legislation and provide feedback on it to a very limited extent.”
“After this sort of delay, the government has no excuses for not getting this legislation right. But it's rushing to introduce legislation that has been denied input from the public.”
“They're special relationships, the glue that holds us together. For Emily, Matt and Lucy, Noah and Maia, Millie and Rory—I know you share those special relationships and I know that they'll continue. I know that Rich knew that too. Parkrun is something we all do together. It's really symbolic of Rich.”
“We were fortunate to have people in our lives who gave us a sense of what was possible—doctors, engineers, teachers and scientists. We learnt the importance and the wonder of learning and science. There was always plenty of sport. We participated in everything, but particularly footy.”
“The government has not responded to that recommendation appropriately. Its proposals fall well short of that. There are ongoing and serious questions about the extent to which this legislation will provide any support or any protections for children and for vulnerable Australians.”
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“Australia's dream of universal health coverage has been lost. Australians now face an impossible choice, as they cannot access or afford to see medical specialists in this country. We know that one in three Australians are postponing medical care because of cost, and that increases to one in two Australians in the regions, where markets are impossibly thin. Recent figures from RedBridge suggest that 75 per cent of gen Xers in the regions are deciding not to seek the medical care that they need, because they cannot find or access an affordable specialist. In a cost-of-living crisis, healthcare costs are increasing disproportionately to those of other parts of the economy. I hear constantly from constituents who tell me that they've had private hospital and extras cover for years.”
“It offers the possibility of a sector guided by evidence rather than short-term policies by careful long-term planning, not piecemeal fixes. This bill will move us towards the implementation of the Universities Accord, but I urge the House and the minister to ensure that the commission is fully equipped to reform the higher education sector and to better tackle the cost-of-education crisis which faces Australian students.”
“This limits any policy agenda that the commission might want to promote independently of the minister's wishes, including, for example, escalating the question of the job-ready graduates scheme. So, while I support the establishment of an independent higher education commission to steward the sector, I would suggest very strongly that we need to ensure that the commission is sufficiently independent to be able to promote meaningful reform of our higher education sector. If we are serious about securing the future of Australian tertiary education, then we have to ensure that the systems that we build are coherent, transparent and generally capable of restoring public trust. Establishing an Australian Tertiary Education Commission is a step towards that goal.”
“What we can do is ensure that the independent statutory commission can give and will give impartial advice on the biggest cost-of-living factor affecting young Australians. The final report of the Universities Accord called for the ATEC to be an independent statutory authority 'to enable it to provide robust advice and support evidence based decision-making and planning'. It said the ATEC 'needs to be agile and responsive to immediate issues, while remaining future focused overall'. This was echoed in the minister's explanatory memorandum, which states that formal independence is a foundational element of the ATEC's design. However, there have been concerns from stakeholders and from experts about the ATEC's proximity to the minister. Many of the commission's advisory functions can only be performed at the request of the minister.”
“It's alarming that the Commission has not been tasked with considering student contributions or even just considering the impacts of HECS debts on young Australians. It's important that the commission has the power to provide the government with independent and impartial advice on whether the current maximum student contributions are too high. A note to the commission: they are! This function, which is absent in the legislation, is important. It will help begin to reverse the damage that the job-ready graduates scheme has inflicted. The reality is that the government could act today. It could reduce the maximum student contribution amount under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 today, but the government has not put that legislation on the table in Canberra this week.”
“In 2025, I was pleased to successfully advocate for a 20 per cent reduction in existing student HECS debts, and I also supported the government's measures to reduce indexation and to increase the payment thresholds on student loans. Those measures have helped to decrease student debt, but they've only reduced debts back to pre-COVID levels, which, following an unprecedented inflationary surge, has done nothing to help those students who are now at university. The legislation does grant the Tertiary Education Commission the function of advising on Commonwealth contributions to the cost of degrees, but Commonwealth contributions represent only a part of the higher education pricing equation.”
“This bad policy was introduced under the previous government, but the job-ready graduate scheme has now been in place for longer under Labor than it was under the coalition. The government could have fixed this problem at any time in the last four years. Instead, it has delayed. It tasked the universities accord with looking into student contributions back in 2022. By February 2024 the accord's final report called for urgent action, and the minister said then that ATEC would look at the scheme and what change can happen. Now, we have legislation for the ATEC before us, but there is nothing in this bill that recognises the urgent need to ease student fees. Student contributions are not mentioned in this bill, not once.”
“The accord recommended 'urgent remediation'—that's its words—to ease the rising and punitive student contributions. The government has publicly, on many occasions, conceded these issues with the job-ready graduates scheme. In 2023, the education minister said that job-ready graduates scheme needs to be redesigned before it causes long-term and entrenched damage to the Australian higher education system. I couldn't agree more. Professor Bruce Chapman, the architect of HECS, has said on many occasions that the job-ready graduates scheme is the No. 1 issue with our HECS system. But, two years on from the accord, students are paying more than ever before. This is no longer just a Morrison era issue.”
“Increasing student debt is a drag. It's a drag on the lives of graduates. It's contributing to our record-low birth rate and to the 20 per cent fall in rates of homeownership in 20- to 35-year-old Australians over the last 30 years. Young Australians who are struggling already with their increasing cost of rent and of groceries are finding themselves unable to buy a home, unable to start a family. In a country with an ageing population and a decreasing tax base, this is a demographic time bomb. It's not just an educational equity issue, it's a cost-of-living and a societal wellbeing issue. The universities accord report, which was received by this government two years ago, found that the job-ready graduates scheme and the expensive degrees it creates does not work.”
“Right now, there are nearly 700,000 students enrolled in those courses, Nearly half of all university students in Australia, and a large proportion of them are women, First Nations students and students living with a disability. These are the Australians who are being unfairly and disproportionately penalised by the job-ready graduates scheme and who are bearing the burden of serial government policy failures, like those from my friend from the Right. Unfortunately, the effect of the job-ready graduates scheme has been magnified by the means of indexation of HECS. Repayments on HECS aren't deducted until after the loan has been indexed for the financial year, which means that the debt on already expensive degrees can grow further, while people are waiting for the impact of those payments to be reflected in their HECS accounts.”
“They're then taking at least 10 years to pay it off. In popular disciplines like communications, humanities, society and culture, and human movement, student fees have more than doubled as a result of the job-ready graduates scheme. Two in three MPs in this parliament hold degrees in arts, humanities, law or business. These are not fringe pursuits. They're foundational pursuits, disciplines that we need for our economy, our public institutions and our civil life. In a world as fragile as today's, skills from those degrees matter more than ever. But the students who pursue those disciplines are being punished with often insurmountable student loan debts. The number of students affected is enormous. As of 2024, management, commerce, society and culture degrees accounted for nearly half of all enrolments at Australian universities.”
“In that time, student contributions have increased sixfold. The average HECS debt for someone in their 20s is more than double what it was in 2006. How did this happen? Well, much of it can be traced back to the disastrous job-ready graduates scheme, which the Morrison government introduced in 2021. What was sold then as a way to channel students into priority fields instead delivered a HECS debt crisis—a crisis for a generation of many young Australians. Under the job-ready graduates scheme, students in disciplines like law, accounting, business, banking, finance, economics, communications and politics are contributing up to $17,000 a year in 2026. That means that those young Australians are graduating with $50,000 of debt for basic three-year degree and more than $80,000 if they undertake postgraduate study.”
“Establishing an Australian Tertiary Education Commission is a welcome reform and a step towards coherence and independent stewardship. Setting a national tertiary education objective will provide much needed clarity for our universities. Those reforms hold a promise, a promise to improve our higher education sector, and I support them. But I'm disappointed that this legislation fails to recognise and act on the structural failures that have created the current HECS crisis. Right now, three million Australians carry, on average, more than $27,000 in HECS debts. Student contributions for courses like commerce and law are nine times higher than they were when Hawke introduced the HECS system in 1989—a time when many members of this parliament were graduating. Graduate salaries have increased by about 2½ times since 1996.”
“In 1974, Gough Whitlam made university in Australia free. In 1989, when Bob Hawke introduced our HECS-HELP system, Australia's higher education sector remained, even then, among the most accessible in the world. It produced generations of Australians with the skills to strengthen our economy, to enrich our communities and to deepen our democracy. Effectively, those who aspired to go to university to study tertiary education could do so affordably. Today, the promise of fair and accessible higher education in Australia has become a mirage. Australians are being priced out of opportunity. Our higher education system that once opened doors is closing them. The bill before us today takes some commendable steps towards reforming our higher education sector and implementing recommendations of the 2024 universities accord.”
“I echo Mike in thanking our other committee members who worked hard with dedication, with interest, with maturity and with bipartisanship—a rare bipartisanship in this place. I thank the secretariat as well and commend our report to the House.”
“Success of the Thriving Kids model demands that, as a society, we are able to and will accept our responsibility to include and support all children and to create a system responsive to their capacities and their needs and that we commit to creating and supporting the workforce and the infrastructure which are required to maximise those children's independence and inclusion. I'll finish by thanking the chair of the health committee. It's been a great privilege to work with Dr Mike Freelander on this inquiry. Mike brings decades of experience to this parliament. He worked incredibly hard with all of the committee and the secretariat, and the report that we have put together summarises very well the generous and considered contributions of almost 500 groups or individuals who made submissions or who came to the public hearings.”
“We have to have some better data about where the allied health and other healthcare professionals that we need are, and we have to support them. It's not acceptable that people are waiting years to see a paediatrician in our major cities and that they're paying a large amount of money to do that. We should help more young people join the healthcare workforce by immediately increasing financial support for practical placements for all healthcare students. The Thriving Kids program needs us to resile from the premise that disabled people should have to self-manage their care and that all should receive support individually. Some things are better done together for efficiency, for economy and even for enjoyment.”
“We have to determine that these services can physically be provided and we have to improve access to online health services as well. We have to improve the registration policy and compliance and funding system for the NDIS. We have to help providers to decrease red tape. We have to get them to improve their record keeping and we have to cut down on the fraud, which is unfortunately but inevitably a significant issue at this point in time. The Thriving Kids program has to be subjected to regular review when it's rolled out, and it should have an independent inspector-general. We need better workforce planning. We heard again and again about the deserts where people can't access the supports that they need, particularly in regional, rural and remote settings. It's inequitable and it's unfair.”
“This was a short inquiry, and it has not been able to address all of the issues and questions around Thriving Kids, but some things remain clear. We have to make it easier for parents to navigate a system which has often proven hostile and defensive. Many parents told us in this inquiry that their caring responsibilities increased when the family member entered the NDIS. That's a fail. We have to collect better data about participants' experiences and outcomes and the quality, safety and effectiveness of their treatment. We heard repeatedly that the record keeping by the NDIS is inadequate. We have to ensure that the services are co-designed with peak bodies and with all stakeholder groups and that they reflect the needs of the child not the eloquence of their advocates.”
“The Thriving Kids initiative marks a commitment to a new system of evidence based early intervention services, which should provide equity of access for all young Australian children with emerging developmental delay and disability. We have to acknowledge that there has been very justifiable anxiety within the disability community about these changes. For Thriving Kids to be accepted by the community, it will only win social licence by demonstrating effectiveness, and that includes a real commitment from the states. It cannot be seen as a cost-cutting exercise which will decrease the scope and the quality of the services that are provided. At this point, the state and territory governments are not ready to roll out foundational supports, and so I support last week's announced delay in the launch of Thriving Kids.”
“We have a demand driven scheme with no means testing and no limits on spending, which is projected to cost as much as $100 billion a year by 2032. That's a scheme for 700,000 people which will cost more than Medicare for 30 million. This is unsustainable, inefficient and inequitable, especially when we're still leaving many people with a disability without the support that they need. So it does make sense that, rather than limiting services to individual packages, we should create a system with defined packages for those people who have a more significant disability and community based programs for younger children with developmental delay and neurodivergence. Increasing community supports for children with emerging developmental delays should be more cost effective. It should increase capacity, and it should promote inclusion.”
“by leave—The NDIS is simply not sustainable in its current form and at its current rate of growth. The uncomfortable truth for those of us who care deeply about the NDIS is that it has to undergo reform or we risk losing it altogether. It wasn't designed to support all disabled Australians, but in recent years the loss of community based block funded supports has left a void for those with mild developmental delay and disability. Many participants can't find the help they need, particularly in rural and regional settings. In the absence of alternatives, everyone has had to fight for an NDIS package. We've got an unsustainable situation where 11 per cent of Australia's five- to seven-year-old boys now have individual packages.”
“The NHMRC has allocated $64 million since 2012. It is, quite simply, not enough. Minister Butler could double that allocation today with the stroke of a pen. So, today, I call on the Albanese government to save Australian women's lives by releasing the money put aside for that purpose—funding life-saving research into ovarian cancer—in the Medical Research Future Fund.”
“Today is World Cancer Day, and February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Today, five Australian women will be told that they have ovarian cancer, a devastating condition with a survival rate of only 49 per cent. Ovarian Cancer Australia's national awareness campaign is shining a much-needed light onto one of Australia's most challenging forms of cancer. Every year in Australia, 1,900 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In most cases, detection occurs at an advanced stage, rendering treatment much more difficult. Raising awareness is therefore essential to improving early recognition, timely care and survival outcomes. One of Ovarian Cancer Australia's primary priorities this month is to secure more research funding. The Medical Research Future Fund has allocated only $21 million to ovarian cancer since 2015.”
“Given the increasing complexity of medical care in this country, particularly for older Australians and for those with multiple medical problems, the best model of care is that provided in a multidisciplinary team. I support this bill as I support increasing the scope of practice of all competent healthcare professionals in Australia, but I call on the government to ensure that these changes are appropriately scrutinised and monitored and then not instituted in a kind of band-aid solution in response to the—at this point—unaddressed issue of our chronic healthcare workforce deficiencies. Having said that, I commend the bill to the House.”
“It's my belief that prescribing of these should remain the role of the clinician ultimately responsible for patient care and management. There are real concerns not only for patients but also for prescribers with allowing nurses to prescribe schedule 8 medications without putting in place the appropriate legislative guardrails. For example, such designated RN practitioner prescribers will not necessarily have access to real-time monitoring programs, which is a real concern given the significant risk of misuse by some individuals of schedule 8 opiates. The expansion of scope of practice should empower our healthcare professionals. It should improve accessibility and efficiency in health care. Our first priority should always be patient safety and the protection of patient care.”
“Other recent concerns include the increasing use of telehealth and emerging online business models often focused on prescribing specific substances like medicinal cannabis or weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic. In that context, prescribing is often based on a single phone or video consultation, so it carries much greater risks than those associated with typical face-to-face consultations with a GP who knows their patient. Concerns have also been raised by stakeholders regarding the types of medications that can be prescribed by RNs. Specifically, the AMA and RCGP have expressed appropriate concerns around the prescribing of schedule 8 medications such as morphine and other opiates. Schedule 8 medications carry a significant risk of abuse, dependency and harm.”
“There are some potential pitfalls to expanding the ability to prescribe to healthcare professionals who have not traditionally been given that remit. These include the danger of fragmented care, duplication of services, increased complexity, role confusion and poorer health outcomes. If the professionals who are prescribing don't have adequate diagnostic and clinical experience, of course there's a risk of inappropriate prescribing such as unnecessary antibiotic use and a greater chance of drug side effects in the context of multimorbidities and polypharmacy. This is particularly relevant for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who often experience multiple health conditions earlier in life, and for older Australians, who are often on multiple medications.”
“I note that the podiatry endorsement for scheduled medicines registration standard has been in place for years, but we still haven't given podiatrists the ability to be authorised prescribers under the PBS. There's no rationale for this anomaly. In order to optimise scope of practice for health professionals, we could act today to expand authorised prescribers under the PBS to include all professions which are currently endorsed to prescribe. It would be reasonable to expect that, if we did so, in addition to immediately enabling podiatrists to act independently, we could in short order allow optometrists to prescribe oral medications and potentially increase access to prescribing for physiotherapists and for other craft groups.”
“They have to prescribe in partnership with an authorised health practitioner and complete a six-month period of clinical membership after accreditation. A model in which a suitably qualified RN works closely with a doctor to try to titrate a medication to meet patient needs does seem reasonable, but it would be appropriate to limit authorisations for that sort of oversight to professionals who are free of commercial conflicts of interest. And it makes sense that nurses are given access to prescribable medications which have been carefully selected such as to secure that they're safe and appropriate. It is disappointing that this legislation extends prescribing capacity only to registered nurses.”
“These sorts of discrepancies contribute to inequities in healthcare access. They increase strain on our workforce, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities, and they really make no sense. Basically, we need a commitment from the federal, state and territory governments to removing barriers, to streamline care across all Australian jurisdictions. I do note that this legislation expands the ability of registered nurses to prescribe schedule 2, 3, 4 and 8 medications under supervision. Under the new standards for nurse prescribing which came into effect in September 2025, designated RNs who are prescribers will have to have 5,000 hours of post-registration clinical experience and to have completed specific training.”
“Key recommendations of the scope of practice review included the establishment of a national skills and capability framework for consistent legislation across jurisdictions and new funding models to support multidisciplinary and patient centred care. A major finding of that review is the fact that we have ridiculous but ongoing legislative inconsistencies across Australian states and territories which limit the scope of practice for professionals, such as pharmacists and Aboriginal health practitioners. For example, while pharmacists in some regions can administer vaccines, in others, they are prohibited by law from doing so. Similarly, Aboriginal health practitioners in Queensland are banned from undertaking immunisations even though they've had the necessary training.”
“Without access to the PBS, nurse prescribed medications would only be available to those patients who can pay for them privately, and that raises significant questions of equity as well as best practice health care. The Strengthening Medicare T askforce report from December 2022 was supportive of altering regulatory arrangements to enable all parts of our primary care workforce to work to their full scope of practice. The subsequent review undertaken by the Albanese government proposed recommendations aimed at enabling healthcare professionals, including pharmacists, dental hygienists, nurse practitioners and allied health workers, to work at their full scope of practice. But it's important to note that we're not actually doing that with the legislation in front of the House.”
“Nurses play a critical role in providing essential care for Australians. They manage chronic and complex health conditions and keep people out of hospitals. Nurse prescribing is a cost effective intervention which will offer continuity of care, can reduce the workload for other healthcare team members and improve patient satisfaction. Nurses are highly trusted. Australians trust them and consistently rank them as the most trusted profession in health, which I have a small problem with personally but which I get. And they are the single largest health profession in Australia, accounting for more than half of the Australian health workforce and registered nurses working in Australia—in particular, remote area nurses and rural and isolated practice registered nurses are commonly particularly experienced and skilled.”
“The prescribing of medications has, in the past, generally been limited to authorised health practitioners, primarily doctors but also some others, including dentists, optometrists, nurse practitioners and midwives, who have been given the ability to prescribe within their defined scope of practice. We have chronic workforce shortages across Australia in a range of healthcare craft groups, and these are generally more pronounced in regional, rural and remote areas. Factors contributing to these workforce shortages include the increasing demand associated with an ageing population, rising levels of chronic disease and barriers to education and training, including the financial barriers associated with the absence of paid practical placements for students taking undertaking training in all healthcare professions in this country.”
“The Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 will enable qualified registered nurses to prescribe pharmaceutical benefits under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It seeks to implement reforms identified as necessary by the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the subsequent scope-of-practice review. The amendments will empower nurses to work to their full scope of practice in primary care. It does make sense that we should do everything possible to ease chronic workforce pressures and provide more equitable access to treatment for people living in rural and remote areas of Australia, in particular.”
“And so I've moved this amendment to permanently freeze indexation of the draft beer excise to help thousands of Australian craft brew workers and to offer some cost-of-living relief to the millions of Australians who simply want to be able to afford one of the simpler pleasures of life. Question negatived.”
“We could take a good hard look at every part of our tax system, and we could have the courage to tackle housing affordability as well as the significant challenges associated with the funding of health, education and aged care. But to do that, we would need to have a government which had both courage and vision. For the moment, those of us who do care about tax reform in this country have to push this government—bit by bit, issue by issue—to make things fairer and more equitable, and to restore some sense to a system which really does not make a whole lot of sense.”
“We should tax all alcohol products consistently with a volume metric tax based upon their alcohol content. That has been recommended by several independent reviews. There is a lot more that we could and should do to responsibly tax the alcohol industry. In fact, there is plenty that we could do and should do to reform our tax system overall. We could derive fairer income from fossil fuel and mineral exports by more effectively taxing resources that are owned by all Australians. We could get reasonable income from our digital services. We could stop subsidising fossil fuels by means of the diesel fuel rebate for mining companies. We could tax labour less and income from passive sources such as rent, interest, super and capital gains more.”
“Independent brewers face challenges with the rising cost of ingredients and energy, softening consumer demand and stiff competition from large retailers like Coles which are increasingly selling home brand beers and mimicking craft styles. Many small brewers deferred excise increases during COVID and are now struggling with that debt in a persistently tough economic climate. Alcohol taxation in Australia does not make a whole lot of sense. The wine equalisation tax taxes wine and other fruit based alcohol products based on their wholesale price, not their alcohol content. That has led to an oversupply of cheap wine products in Australia. It's decreased tax income, but it's also increased consumption of fruit based alcoholic products, flavoured ciders and cleanskins. The WET should be abolished.”
“It's pleasing to see the government's commitment to freezing indexation on draught beer for two years, but indexation of the excise over recent years has left those draught beer prices already too high. Indexation of the beer excise needs to stop, and that's why I'm moving that this freeze should be permanent. A permanent cap on the draught beer excise would help millions of Australians with cost-of-living pressures. It would also help support Australia's emerging craft beer industry. Despite rapid growth of small independent brewers, 85 per cent of Australia's beer market is controlled by two foreign owned multinationals. Our craft beer industry supports local workers and economies. The independent beer sector employs over 8,000 people directly, with many brewers also contributing to local hospitality and to tourism.”
“The rising cost of living has challenged millions of Australian families for several years now, with inflation rising sharply since our economy bounced back after COVID. The government has a hand in setting the price of relatively few grocery items, but one of them is the cost of beer. The average price of draught beer has gone up by over 30 per cent in the last three years, an increase which is considerably higher than the rate of inflation. This has, at least in part, been driven by the automatic indexation of the beer excise every six months which has forced price increases above their annual CPI. This indexation is yet another typical anomaly in our unnecessarily complex tax system.”
“by leave—I move: (1) Schedule 1, heading, page 3 (line 1), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 7), omit "Temporary", substitute "Indefinite". (3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (lines 8 to 19), omit subsection 6L(1), substitute: (1) Despite any other provision of this Act, subsection 6A(1) applies in relation to each CPI indexed draught beer rate as if the indexation factor were 1 for 1 August 2025 or a later indexation day. Note: This means the rates as they are on 31 July 2025 will be unchanged indefinitely. I propose amendments to the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025.”
“So I thank the member for Curtin for moving this motion, and I join my colleagues here today in acknowledging the significance of this event and expressing solidarity with all those impacted by it.”
“It requires the disruption of organised extremist networks and a willingness to name Neo-Nazism for what it is: an ideology of racism and violence. First Peoples in Australia continue to face entrenched racism, threats and intimidation. This motion appropriately calls for urgent action in response. Urgent means now. It means ensuring that camps asserting sovereignty are protected, not ignored. It means ensuring that those who organise, incite or carry out racially motivated violence face consequences proportionate to the harm that they cause. This parliament has recently and rightly condemned racially motivated hatred and extremism. That condemnation has to unambiguously include the incitement of hatred and violence towards First Nations people.”
“Five months after this act of violence, we're still waiting on investigations to be completed and charges to be issued. For First Nations people from Victoria and their allies, the message has been unmistakeable: expressions of white supremacist intimidation can occur in the open in the heart of our city without immediate consequence. That perception is corrosive. It emboldens extremists. It deepens fears in people who have already been subjected to entrenched racism for generations. The federal government has a duty to protect all people in this country from racism, discrimination, hate speech and the threat of racially motivated violence. That duty doesn't end in statements. It requires coordination with the states. It requires the enforcement of policing standards.”
“To target a non-violent Invasion Day rally with an act of violence represents a deliberate attempt to intimidate and to silence. That's why this motion matters and why the response to it must be more than just the sum of the words that we speak here today. What happened in Perth on 26 January didn't happen in isolation. Months earlier, after the March for Australia rally in September, Neo-Nazi protesters in Melbourne openly attacked a camp which was asserting Indigenous sovereignty. These were not covert acts. They were carried out in public in broad daylight with symbols and chants that left no ambiguity about their intent. But the response from authorities from both Victoria Police and from the AFP has been slow and opaque.”
“Many of us spoke to this fact, and we tried to legislate to that effect in this place last month. But words of condemnation, while necessary, are insufficient. When acts of racial violence occur and are not met with immediate, visible, decisive action by police forces and by government, they don't fade; they metastasise. An attack against First Nations people is an attack on all Australians. This is not a political slogan; it is a statement of fact. Our country and our culture rest on the principle that no group should live in fear because of who they are. When that principle is breached for one community, it is weakened for all of us. For many First Nations people, 26 January is a day of mourning. As a country, we should have the heart and the maturity to respect that fact.”
“This motion confronts us with a truth that should unsettle every person in this chamber. Racial violence against First Nations people in Australia is not hypothetical, it is not historical and it is not isolated. It remains a real and present threat. The attempted bombing in Boorloo/Perth on 26 January was not just an attack on a peaceful protest; it was an attack on First People who were asserting their identity, their history and their right to gather on a day that to them marks a day of dispossession. That this incident is now being investigated as a possible act of terrorism is appropriate but also deeply alarming. It speaks to the seriousness of the threat that we are now all confronting. Violence motivated by racial hate has no place in Australia.”
“Since that time the laws have been invoked to charge only a handful of people in the face of a very significant number of hate crimes that we know are ongoing within our communities. This is just disproportionate to the seriousness and prevalence of hate crimes in our communities. The reports that would be generated as a result of this amendment will provide a clear and accurate picture of whether a hate crime regime is effective or whether its threshold remains too high to enable meaningful outcomes. The amendment is based on recommendations of expert groups, including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the office of Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. We need a better understanding of the effectiveness of this critical piece of legislation.”