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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“It is fundamental to their participation, to their inclusion and to their physical and mental safety. The disability royal commission made this clear: isolation increases the risk of abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. We shouldn't be creating legislative settings that inadvertently increase that risk. I appreciate that the government recognises this issue. It understands that it needs to be addressed. But recognition and intentions are not enough. This amendment ensures that participants will be identified by their individual circumstances and by the nature of the supports that they receive and that their assessed support needs will be taken into account when the minister makes a determination. It provides a clear legislative basis for protecting those participants whose circumstances need a different approach.”
“Applying a blanket 50 per cent reduction to their community and participation supports without recognising those quite unique circumstances could have profound implications for those individuals. Firstly, it creates a real risk that people who require 24-hour support will not receive funding in a way that reflects how those supports are delivered. Their support needs don't fit neatly within a standard funding model, and neither should this legislation. Secondly, it risks confining vulnerable people to their homes. For many participants who have a really significant intellectual disability, support to access the community is not an optional extra. They can't get out into our public spaces, they can't engage with normal life, unless they have that support.”
“It reduces funding without significant regard to individual circumstances or to the way that people actually use supports in their daily lives. I, along with Inclusion Australia and Down Syndrome Australia, am particularly concerned about its potential impact on the small number of NDIS participants who need support every hour of every day. These are the people with permanent and profound disability that the NDIS was established to support. This includes people with down syndrome and people with intellectual disability who have very high support needs. Many are amongst the most marginalised Australians. Some have spent their entire lives in state run institutions or group homes, and they rely on that 24/7 continuous support to live safely and with dignity.”
“I move amendment (5) as circulated in my name: (5) Schedule 1, item 34, page 12 (after line 16), after subsection 34A(1), insert: (1A) A determination under this section may specify classes of participants to whom the determination applies or does not apply. A class of participants may be identified by reference to any one or more of the following: (a) a characteristic of participants (including their circumstances); (b) the nature or type of supports provided under a plan; (c) the support needs (as assessed) of participants. I move amendment (5) with the support of the Justice and Equity Centre, Inclusion Australia and Down Syndrome Australia. The ministerial support determination proposed by this bill is a blunt instrument.”
“It's what the disability community deserves at the very least. When I met with Minister Butler and Minister McAllister about this amendment, they told me that this is not their responsibility; it's the responsibility of the states, but I can't accept that. For the government to reject this amendment would mean that the government was going against its own explanatory memorandum, going against the minister's National Press Club speech, going against the disability community in the most insulting and egregious way.”
“Reporting on the status of foundational supports and Thriving Kids should be a precondition to the commencement of relevant schedules in this legislation. That would mean that before 1 October 2026, before 1 February 2027 and before 1 January 2028—all relevant dates for when parts of this legislation are set to commence—the minister has to table three key updates to this parliament: first, a status of foundational supports, including the status of Thriving Kids in every jurisdiction; second, whether the minister considers those supports to be established, funded and operational; and finally, the basis on which the minister forms these views, including the availability and accessibility of supports for persons likely affected by the commencement of the relevant parts of this bill. It's not an unreasonable ask. It's not an undue burden.”
“The very first heading in their submission warns that the bill will cause material harm to people with a disability. The submission goes further. It asserts that harm arising from this legislation is 'beyond dispute'. It's an extraordinary finding, but, unfortunately, it's consistent with the community feedback that I've received. In this context, I see amendment (1) as critical. It introduces an important safeguard. It requires public transparency that the 241,000 people to be moved off this scheme will have somewhere to go. We're being asked to support a scheme change which removes people from the only guaranteed support that they currently have, and it has no enforceable mechanism to ensure that replacement supports are ready, they are accessible and they are adequate.”
“It said: Changes to access and budget setting processes can only be implemented once the recommended foundational supports are in place to offer support outside the NDIS. That was page 273, for those who are looking. The government knows this. It quoted that recommendation word for word on page 258 of the explanatory memorandum to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. But here we are. We have the legislation, and it provides zero certainty to participants that they will have anywhere to go—zero certainty about foundational supports, zero certainty about Thriving Kids, zero certainty that people are not just going to fall through the cracks. The NDIS Reform Advisory Committee's first recommendation is that this bill should not be passed in its current form.”
“But this legislation gives no assurances to the estimated 241,000 Australians that it will move off the scheme that they have anywhere to go. The NDIS Reform Advisory Committee was set up in response to the NDIS independent review. Eight members were nominated by state and territory governments, three were appointed by a national public EOI process and two were appointed by the minister for the NDIS. The Reform Advisory Committee is a peak voice for the disability community. It was set up by this government. Its submission to the inquiry into the bill recommended that access changes and budget reductions be tied legislatively to the prior availability of foundational supports for affected cohorts. They are not alone in saying this. The NDIS independent review was unequivocal.”
“I move amendment (1) as circulated in my name: (1) Clause 2, page 3 (after line 3), at the end of the clause, add: (3) Despite subsection (1), the provisions mentioned in items 3 to 6 of the table do not commence until the day after the Minister has caused to be tabled in each House of the Parliament a statement setting out: (a) the status of foundational supports, including Thriving Kids, in each jurisdiction; and (b) whether the Minister considers those supports referenced in (a) to be established, funded and operational; and (c) the basis for that view, including consideration of the availability and accessibility of supports for persons likely to be affected by the commencement of those Parts. The NDIS is the 'only port in the storm'. That's what the minister has said countless times. That's what he said in his press conference.”
“You can't build a better NDIS by sidelining the people it is designed to serve. I'll finish with a quote from Jenny Macklin, former minister for disability reform and the shadow minister when the NDIS was launched: 'We need these voices to be strong. We need them to be firmly built into the consultation and policy design processes not as an optional addition to the NDIS but as an integral part of ensuring people with disability can exercise choice and take control.' Currently, everything about this bill is without the disability community, and much of it will deny them both choice and control.”
“Article 4.3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires governments to 'closely consult with and actively involve' people with disability, through their representative organisations, when developing legislation that affects them. Australia is a co-signatory to that convention. The government likes to remind us of that, but only when it suits. The NDIS independent review action 25.2 specifically called for 'deep public consultation' with the disability community on proposed legislative reforms. Every speaker to this bill in this House has said that they want the NDIS to be sustainable. Everyone says they want it funded into the future for the people who depend on it. But genuine reform requires trust. You can't build trust with people who haven't been given a seat at the table.”
“The member for Bradfield's amendment would legislate a minimum 28-day consultation period for future rule making on functional capacity assessments, eligibility criteria and funding levels. It would require an exposure draft, a feedback summary and a disability impact statement for important regulations. These are sensible and principled requirements. In a better world, they would be standard practice already. The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability found that people with disability are chronically insufficiently involved in government decision-making. This bill has repeated that pattern.”
“Many people with a disability need assistance to access parliamentary platforms and to engage with complex legislative language. Many people with a disability rely on support workers, advocacy organisations and community networks, all of which take some time to mobilise. Slow consultation windows aren't just inconvenient. They are structurally inaccessible. I'm glad that the government has now, under pressure, extended the Senate inquiry into this bill until 14 August, but that only happened because of a chorus of disappointment, frustration and anger from the disability community. The disability community shouldn't have to fight to be heard and consulted. Co-design and consultation should be a right and a given.”
“According to the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee, no disability representative organisation, funded or unfunded, was consulted on the content of the minister's Press Club speech, the budget or the preliminary drafts of this bill's text. The consultation on this crucially important bill has been utterly inadequate and utterly inaccessible. The Senate inquiry was launched on 14 May, and it initially closed two weeks later on 29 May—two weeks for submissions on legislation which will reshape the lives of 760,000 Australians with a disability. Many people with desperately important stakes in this scheme were denied the opportunity to contribute to the inquiry. Many people with a disability were unaware of the details of this legislation at that time.”
“(): … the perspectives of people with disability must be centre stage as we deliver these reforms. There has been continuous consultation with the disability community and this will continue as we pursue our reforms. That was former NDIS minister Bill Shorten in March 2024. For decades, people with disability have told policymakers, ''nothing about us, without us!''. I understand the need to ensure your voices are loud and carry weight. As Minister I have a responsibility to ensure NDIS is not done to or for participants without their input. That was Minister McAllister in May 2025. That next wave of reform will—of course—involve the deepest collaboration with the disability community and participants. … … … … 'nothing about us, without us'. That was Minister Mark Butler at the National Press Club in August 2025.”
“In doing so, I move: That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "(1) notes that: (a) strengthened penalties and expanded information-gathering powers for the eSafety Commissioner are sensible improvements to enforcement of the Online Safety Act 2021; (b) effective online safety policy requires a consistent approach to harm prevention across digital environments; and (c) the Government does not plan to implement key recommendations of the House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs' You Win Some, You Lose More report, including a comprehensive prohibition on online gambling advertising, leaving Australian children and families exposed to significant and well-evidenced harms; and (2) calls on the Government to apply the same priority to addressing the harms of online gambling advertising as it has demonstrated in relation to social media regulation".”
“If we are serious about an evidence based public health approach to Australia's digital environment, then we cannot be selective in its application. We can't treat social media harm to children as urgent, as the government is doing today, while treating their exposure to gambling harm in online spaces as optional. So I commend this bill to the House, but I ask the government for more, more quickly and more effectively.”
“So, when the government's gambling legislation is introduced into parliament, I will be introducing a detailed amendment that will honour the late Peta Murphy, that will honour her clear recommendation that Australia needs a comprehensive ban on online gambling advertising that leaves no room for circumvention. My amendment will provide for a full ban on online gambling advertising across digital platforms, including social media, streaming services and online video environments, where Australians are now currently routinely exposed to targeted content. My amendment will ensure that Australia's approach to online safety is consistent, that we don't take a strong regulatory approach to one set of harms, as we are here, while continuing to tolerate another source of significant harm to young Australians and their families.”
“We owe it to young Australians and to their families to act before further harm accumulates, not after. That's why it's difficult to understand why the government has this urgency about social media while it continues to drag its heels on online gambling harm and on other safety concerns in the public space. The Murphy report called for a comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising online that leaves no room for circumvention. But, under the government's reforms, if a person is logged into an account, they'll be exposed to online gambling ads until they opt out. That is not a safe digital environment for Australians, and it's incongruent with the principles that are expressed in this bill.”
“At the same time, the explosion of gambling advertising and online wagering products has normalised betting for the next generation. It has embedded harm into our homes through kids' phones and screens rather than betting shops. A digital duty of care would shift that legal and moral obligation back onto the platforms. It would require them to proactively identify and mitigate risks to our children rather than just react after the damage is done. Coupled with stronger restrictions on gambling promotion and advertising, it's not about restricting freedom or innovation; it's about ensuring that the platforms that shape our children's daily lives are held to the same standard of care that we would expect of any product or service that was marketed to our young people.”
“It's about reducing foreseeable harm at the source. It's about ensuring that digital products are designed to be safer, that harmful commercial practices are addressed and that companies take responsibility for the risks that they create. Australia's young people are growing up in a digital environment. It's built for engagement, not for wellbeing. The costs are now plain to see: rising rates of anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and gambling-related harm in our children and our teenagers. Social media platforms have been allowed to operate for much too long without a legislated duty of care. They optimise algorithms for time on screen while exposing minors to harmful content, predatory contact and addictive design features that our children are simply not equipped to resist.”
“Those who remain in the NDIS will soon have their social and community participation supports cut in half. We know where they'll be turning. Young Australians also exercise democratic participation online. They increasingly access news, debate public issues and engage in political communication through social media platforms. That makes the constitutional issues raised by this legislation difficult to ignore. Reddit has now challenged the validity of the social media ban in the High Court on the basis of implied freedom of political communication. The government should explain how it intends to respond to those concerns. Finally, if we are serious about taking on a public health approach to this online environment, then we should apply that principle consistently. A public health approach is not simply about restricting access.”
“For many young Australians, including those under 16, it is a source of essential information. It's where they get their media knowledge from. It's a source of education; they all love YouTube videos. It's a source of community and it's a source of civic participation. That is particularly true for LGBTQIA+ young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, young people living in remote and regional Australia and young Australians with a disability. For many of those young people, online communities provide communities that are impossible or at least difficult for them to find offline. Access to social media may well be more important than ever for those young people with a disability who will soon be moved off the NDIS by this government.”
“While researchers continue to investigate questions of causation, the evidence is already more than sufficient to justify stronger safeguards. Those safeguards should apply to everybody. We should require platforms to design products that are safe by default, that are more transparent, that are less addictive and that are more accountable. But, instead, we've created incentives for children to conceal their age, deceive their parents and thereby lose the protections that currently exist. A digital duty of care would achieve what I argued for when this online safety legislation was first put in front of the House. It would preserve the legitimate benefits that social media provides while making digital platforms safer for everybody. Back then, I said social media is not just entertainment.”
“If the product itself creates unacceptable risks then regulation should focus on the product and not simply on restricting who can access it. That's why I continue to believe that Australia needs a comprehensive digital duty of care. The government has committed to introducing one later this year, with somewhat less urgency than it has demonstrated in putting this legislation in front of the House this week. Digital products should be designed according to public health principles, with safety built in from the outset rather than added as an afterthought. The evidence supporting that approach continues to grow. Excessive and addictive use of digital media has been associated with poor physical health, poorer sleep patterns, reduced social connectedness and worse mental health outcomes for many young people.”
“Empowering the eSafety Commissioner with stronger powers helps with monitoring and enforcement, but it doesn't reduce the harm that, as we've heard from both sides of the House today, still exists in online spaces. In 2024, I asked the House: what is the problem that we are trying to solve with this legislation? Is the problem that children and teenagers are using social media platforms, or is the problem that billion-dollar companies are marketing unsafe digital products in Australia? I said then and I say now that a ban is not going to address the root causes of online risks. It's not going to make platforms safe for anybody—not for young Australians, not for other Australians. Age-gating will not make an unsafe product safe.”
“But let's think about those legislative changes in context. Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire. The maximum penalty that we're proposing for his platform, X, is approximately US$68 million at the current exchange rate. X's income in 2026 has been estimated at $1.4 billion, so A$68 million would represent about 11 to 12 days of Elon's profits. For the largest technological companies in the world, these bans and fines are still hardly an existential threat. They risk becoming simply another cost of doing business. More fundamentally, my concerns about the bill from November remain unabated. Doubling fines on a broken system doesn't fix the system.”
“On Saturday, the government proposed to double the maximum civil penalty for platform noncompliance, increasing it from $49.5 million to $99 million. The bill also strengthens the powers of the eSafety Commissioner to compel platforms to demonstrate the steps that they have taken to comply with the ban. Those are sensible measures. We know that the eSafety Commissioner is actively investigating possible noncompliance by five platforms: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok. Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, has sent those platforms formal notices demanding information on how they're implementing age checks. Stronger investigative powers and higher penalties will assist that work. For that reason, I support this bill. I want Australian children to be safe in online spaces.”
“A child who lies about their age to access Instagram is no longer recognised by the platform as a child. Whatever safety settings or other protections that might otherwise have applied disappear, and the child is then treated by the platform's algorithms as an adult. That outcome was entirely foreseeable. It was the predictable consequence of legislating too quickly without sufficient evidence, meaningful consultation or a credible implementation strategy. It was legislation which flew in the face of the expert advice. It turned out the experts were right. We've ended up with a policy that has failed to substantially change children's online behaviour. This brings me to the bill before the House today, the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026.”
“The researchers, in fact, found very little evidence that this much-trumpeted ban had succeeded in getting young people to stop using platforms like TikTok, X, Facebook or Instagram. None of this should surprise us. I warned the House about this potential outcome in November 2024. When this parliament first debated the social media ban, I opposed that legislation because I believed that technological workarounds—VPNs, false age declarations and other methods of circumvention—would inevitably undermine the effectiveness of a blanket ban. The data that we've seen this week confirms that those concerns were well founded. I also warned that a ban could unintentionally increase risks for those children who continued to access social media platforms.”
“Unfortunately, she spoke too soon. By March this year, eSafety's own data showed that about 70 per cent of children who had accounts prior to that ban were still using restricted platforms. I'm hearing that in my electorate. In February this year, a group of young constituents from Methodist Ladies' College in Kew visited my office in Kooyong. They said that the ban just wasn't working. They told me that their classmates routinely bypassed its restrictions. Their experiences reflected exactly what the emerging evidence was beginning to show. Over time, that evidence has only become stronger. This week, researchers from the University of Newcastle published a survey of 408 Australian adolescents which found that 85 per cent were still accessing social media three months after the ban commenced.”
“Australia's world-first social media ban came into force in December 2025. As of June 2026, seven countries have implemented similar bans, four countries have legislated similar restrictions and 15 countries are actively considering taking stronger action on social media. The aspiration behind this reform is something of which Australia can be proud. We have led the world in recognising that children deserve better protection from the harms of social media. But good intentions don't necessarily produce good policy, and aspiration and goodwill are not the same as keeping children—or adults—safe online. Immediately following the commencement of the ban, the eSafety Commissioner reported that 4.7 million age restricted accounts had been removed from social media platforms, and she described those early results as being very encouraging.”
“He was unable to make loan contributions and his debt ballooned to $22,600. He says the HECS system is clearly broken. Australia's cost-of-living crisis is already hard enough, and we're giving young people a cost-of-learning crisis on top of it. We have to end the harmful Job-ready Graduates scheme and make education affordable again so that Australians have a shot at getting ahead instead of being punished for choosing to invest in their education.”
“Next year, an arts degree will cost $54,000 and a double degree over $90,000. For five years, the Job-ready Graduates scheme has doubled the cost of arts, law, business and commerce degrees, and in those five years students have also found themselves paying 40 per cent more for rent, 27 per cent more for groceries and 43 per cent more for fuel. Behind those figures are real people from Kooyong. One constituent works part time as a social worker while studying for a master's degree. She was unexpectedly hit with a $5,000 bill for her HECS repayment and had to spend hours negotiating with the ATO. She described it as one of the most deflating experiences that she has experienced as a low-income single parent. There's another Kooyong constituent who had repaid about half of his $11,000 HECS debt when he found himself with a serious illness.”
“We've seen how poorly this has worked for vulnerable people in aged care, but the government is proposing to roll out the same unfair system at the NDIS. The government is also going to be able to deny vulnerable people NDIS supports if they haven't received all the medical therapies available for their treatments. You might be on a waiting list for those treatments, sometimes for years at a time, but that will be grounds to deny access to care under the NDIS. That is a cruel paradox. Peter is just one young person from Kooyong, but he's much loved, and his community wants better for him. They want a government which cares for vulnerable people and helps them achieve their best, not one that makes it harder for young people and families who are doing it tough at a tough time.”
“The review actually accepted evidence from his treating team. It accepted that Peter had made meaningful progress in therapy, but it cut his supports nonetheless. Peter's mum knows, as so many carers around Australia know, that things are about to get worse for disabled people under the NDIS. Under the government's proposed cuts to the NDIS, which are currently in front of this parliament, pathways for participants to challenge unfair decisions like this are going to become much narrower. Having an inadequate plan under the NDIS will no longer be grounds to request a reassessment, and plan design is increasingly going to be in the hands of automated assessment tools. If the computer says no, the government will say no, and you will have no right of appeal.”
“I want to speak about a vulnerable young person from Kooyong today. His needs are being disregarded and disrespected by the NDIS. Peter is 13. He has level 3 autism, anxiety disorder and expressive language delay. He's been dependent on NDIS support since it was established. Late last year, Peter lost his dad, and his mental health deteriorated. His family was told to get a plan review, including a functional capacity assessment, and that cost them almost $1,000. But the review resulted in cuts to his psychology supports, despite a clear documented increase in his functional needs. Peter's mum has requested an internal review. My team has advocated on his behalf. But, again, the NDIS upheld a 64 per cent reduction in his plan—less speech therapy, less psychology, less social skills supports.”
“That's what the rest of the world provides, and that's what this parliament should deliver. With that, I move the amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "notes that" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "(a) the Aviation Consumer Protections Charter has not been presented to Parliament, preventing members from assessing whether the protections it will deliver are adequate, despite consultations on the Charter occurring nine months ago; (b) the bill creates no automatic entitlement to compensation for passengers affected by delays or cancellations within an airline's control, leaving Australia's consumer protections well below the standards available in the European Union and Canada; and (c) the bill's broad exemption powers and exclusion of charter operations and third-party intermediaries risk leaving significant gaps in consumer protections; and (2) calls on the Government to: (a) table a draft Charter with mandatory minimum content before the bill proceeds to a third reading; and (b) amend the bill to provide for fixed, automatic compensation for controllable flight disruptions consistent with international best practice".”
“What the Australian passenger deserves is automatic, fixed compensation for significant delays and cancellations caused by factors within the airlines' control, a passenger rights charter with mandatory minimum content that is legislated not delegated, genuine coverage of charter operations and third-party intermediaries, and robust exemption criteria that cannot be gamed by carriers seeking to avoid their obligations. Australians deserve to know what they're entitled to when things go wrong before they board a plane—or before they wait for hours in the airport—not after a complaint process that might take months and not subject to the discretion of an ombudsperson, whose caseload will quickly become unmanageable if this scheme does not change behaviour. They should know that now, automatically, as a right.”
“For too many years—through the pandemic, through Qantas selling tickets on already-cancelled flights, through its illegal sacking of ground workers, through flight credits that passengers couldn't use—Australian consumers have long been left exposed by aviation consumer protection in this country. This bill is an inadequate remedy to a longstanding injustice. Incremental improvement is not the standard we should be setting. This is our only opportunity to get this right, and the government is squibbing it. The standard we set should be a gold standard—the same protections available to passengers on the same routes operated by carriers flying in or out of the United Kingdom or the European Union.”
“We shouldn't replicate that model with a different letterhead. I want to briefly acknowledge what the bill does achieve. An independent ombudsperson with binding determination is meaningfully better than an industry funded body. A new Aviation Consumer Protection Authority with enforcement capability is better than voluntary compliance. These are genuine improvements on the status quo. The minister has claimed that this is the most significant aviation consumer protection reform ever introduced by an Australian government. That may be true, but it's a pretty low bar.”
“The bill excludes services that are not directly paid for by consumers, meaning that inter-airline connections and codeshare arrangements may fall outside its scope. It has limited coverage of third-party intermediaries, such as booking agents, and its broad exemption powers risk creating the same loopholes that have allowed airlines elsewhere to avoid accountability. During the COVID recovery period, complaints to the Airline Customer Advocate rose by 138 per cent, even as passenger numbers fell very sharply. Most of those were related to the refusal by Qantas and Jetstar to offer cash refunds. The Airline Customer Advocate resolved fewer than half of those complaints. That's what happens when a complaints mechanism is funded and controlled by the industry it is meant to police.”
“On sitting days there are almost 2,000 lobbyists in this building, between 10 and 15 for ever member of the House and the Senate. Most are not on the Lobbyist Register, because the existing register is toothless. Ministers are still not required to publish their diaries. The airlines don't have to have a formal lobbying presence. They've already built the access that they need through other means. That's the context in which this bill has been developed, and it could help explain why a government that has expressed genuine concern for passengers has nonetheless declined to legislate the automatic compensation that those passengers need and deserve. There are other significant gaps in this legislation.”
“When I was first elected in 2022 I initially accepted Chairman's Lounge and Virgin's Beyond memberships. It seemed to come with the job, and let's face it, there are practical advantages to lounge access when you're constantly travelling between Melbourne and Canberra. But I relinquished that Chairman's Lounge membership in 2023 because I'd become concerned about the extent to which perks extended by the airlines to politicians could affect government decision-making. Airlines don't offer these things for no reason. Research in medicine has shown that even small gifts from pharmaceutical companies can influence doctors' prescribing patterns. The same dynamic applies here. When politicians are guests of the very industry they are meant to hold accountable, we can't be surprised if that accountability falls short.”
“To some extent at least, the answer might lie in the nature of the relationship between our major airlines and the politicians who should be regulating them. Qantas in particular has cultivated deep and deliberate influence in Canberra for many years. Joe Aston's book The Chairman's Lounge and the parliamentary debate that it prompted in 2024 documented in detail how that influence has operated—through Chairman's Lounge memberships extended to politicians across the spectrum, through upgrades, and through access and proximity that is not available to community organisations, to not-for-profit groups or to ordinary constituents, who might also appreciate the welcome attention of their representatives. I'm not naive about this. I've experienced it myself.”
“But in every jurisdiction that has actually implemented reform, it turns out the airlines have survived. What the argument really reflects is the power of an industry that has benefited from inadequate regulation for decades. The ACCC, the government's own competition watchdog, has long called for stronger consumer protections for passengers in our commercial aviation industry. CHOICE has welcomed this legislation, but has explicitly noted that it falls short of EU 261. Even the government's own aviation white paper acknowledged that the scale of consumer dissatisfaction with the existing deeply inadequate state of affairs continues. It's worth asking why successive Australian governments, both coalition and Labor, have consistently fallen short on this issue.”
“The government hasn't even bothered to include a draft charter of passenger rights in the legislation. What should be the centrepiece of a new framework for customer protection in the aviation industry has been delegated to regulation and to consultation, which has been ongoing for years but which is still not complete. As the Law Council of Australia has said, in its submission to the Senate inquiry, parliament can't assess the adequacy of protections because their substantive content is absent from the legislation. So we have been asked to pass a framework with no content. Now, the government has argued that a European style compensation scheme would drive up airfares and damage a competitive aviation sector. That argument has been made by airlines in every single jurisdiction that has contemplated reform.”
“The EU scheme is so effective that the European Parliament is currently considering strengthening it, including maintaining the three-hour threshold and banning fees for check-in and for child seating. In Canada, passengers on large airlines receive between C$400, for delays of up to six hours, and C$1,000 for delays exceeding nine hours, with smaller carriers also carrying some liability. But in Australia, under this bill, a passenger whose flight is cancelled or significantly delayed still has to lodge a complaint with the ombudsperson, has to wait for it to be assessed and has to hope for a favourable determination—a determination that is binding on the airline, but not on the passenger. There is no automatic compensation. There is not even a fixed entitlement.”
“Instead, we have seen Virgin keep that $93 million for a number of years and now it's asking people to book flights before 30 June or they will lose those credits altogether. Over recent years we have seen what the rest of the world does. In the European Union, regulation EU 261 provides passengers with fixed automatic compensation for significant delays and for cancellations. For flights under 1,500 kilometres, passengers receive 250 euros if they arrive more than three hours late. For longer flights, compensation rises to 400 euros or 600 euros, depending on the distance. This right applies unless the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances outside the airline's control—genuine extraordinary circumstances, not a broad, industry drafted exemption.”