Allegra Spender
Wentworth · Independent · Australia
“Estimates are between 0.5 per cent and two per cent of all abortions over 20 weeks. They are generally because of late diagnosed anomalies, genetic syndromes or severe fetal growth problems.”
“The bill is useful, it is technical, it's incremental, it has useful schedules, it has 'tell us once', it has streamlining and it has technical fixes. These are all good things, and I do not underestimate the effort that goes into getting useful changes like this.”
“Across Australia, we're seeing rising threats to women's access to abortion care. We see it in bills in state parliaments. We see it in the way some politicians talk about this issue, using misinformation and scare tactics to drive divisions, tools straight out of the Trump playbook.”
“They're saying they're waiting up to 18 months for the ATO to make a decision on how an investment would be treated, so the foreign capital just goes away. We need to change the culture here, and this is why—while I support this government's actions in this space—I urge the government to go further. This isn't about bad people.”
“I've seen firsthand how drone technology is at the forefront of some of these problems because government is slow to make decisions. There's no accountability from many government departments in terms of the speed of their decision-making.”
“I support the government's work on the fund, but I think it's currently around one tenth the size of the original 1990s National Competition Fund. If we expect that to move the dial, as it did back in the 1990s, we are going to have to put more firepower behind it.”
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“It sends a powerful message to victim-survivors: we believe you, we see you and we will not punish you for the harm done to you. I thank the government for listening to advocates, for responding to last year's inquiry into financial abuse and for making this change. This is well supported by many in my electorate, and this change is certainly one I'm very proud to have pushed for. Another important shift in this legislation is about income apportionment. Again, it's an issue that sounds dry on paper but has a deeply frustrating and unjust impact on people who receive income support. Under the old system, some individuals had their payments reduced due to outdated income rules, even when they no longer had access to that income or it had already been recovered. This caused real stress and hardship.”
“Coercive control is a form of abuse that strips people of autonomy, including over their finances. A woman might be forced to sign documents, give false information or relinquish control of her Centrelink account, not by choice but out of fear. Under previous rules, even when Services Australia recognised that abuse had occurred, they often had no legal pathway to waive the resulting debt. It was cruel, it was bureaucratic and it was wrong. I'm pleased that the government has taken action here and that the legislation takes action to fix that, giving Services Australia the authority to waive debts where false information was provided under coercive control or similar abuse. This change won't make headlines, but for those it effects it could mean everything.”
“Too often in this place we talk about laws in the abstract—about frameworks, definitions and administration. But behind every line of law and, in particular, every line of social security law there's a real person, often someone in crisis: a woman leaving an abusive relationship, a single parent trying to rebuild—someone who has done everything right and is still falling through the cracks. That's why today I rise in support of this bill, the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2025. I do so because, while many of its provisions may be technical, the real-world impacts are really human. Over the past year I've written to two successive ministers for social services about one particular issue: how the government handles debts raised against victim-survivors of coercive control.”
“My question is for the Prime Minister. The royal commission into robodebt found that cabinet secrecy enabled the appalling abuse of power to continue for years, yet your government's FOI bill would expand, not reduce, that secrecy. The crossbench and the Greens will not support it. Is the government really going to work with the parties responsible for robodebt to explicitly act against the royal commission's findings and increase secrecy in government?”
“The Australian people deserve a system that learns these lessons. The Australian Centre for Disease Control can be that system, but only if it is empowered to act boldly and independently and only if the government matches words with actions, including in its remit.”
“To be effective, it needs to attract and retain the best scientific and public health talent, including through partnerships with universities, state health agencies and international bodies, because we don't need another body that sits on the sidelines; we need a CDC that can drive a cultural shift, that focuses on prevention, that can improve data and transparency and that is going to help Australians live longer and healthier lives and also ensure that we can afford health care. After years of promises, the government must now move with urgency to make this happen. Every year of delay means more preventable disease, more pressure on hospitals and more cost to families and taxpayers alike. The COVID pandemic taught us that the cost of being unprepared is measured not only in dollars but in lives and in livelihoods.”
“That is why the CDC is an opportunity, and that is why putting off including chronic diseases until 2028 is a false economy by the government. So, while I do support this bill, I want to emphasise that passing it is only the first step. What matters now is how quickly and effectively the CDC becomes operational. It must be genuinely independent, with the ability to provide frank advice to government and to the public, and it must have secure long-term funding.”
“It could lead to nationally coordinated efforts on chronic disease, obesity, smoking, alcohol, mental health and vaccination, areas where progress has stalled because responsibilities are split and leadership is lacking. But this is where I would like to come to some of the challenges of where the government is at the moment, because chronic diseases are only going to be considered after an independent review in 2028. The prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases should be recognised as a core component of the CDC's scope from the initial development of the organisation. I think this is really important. Again, when you look at it from an economic point of view, where, increasingly, is the cost burden in terms of our healthcare system? It is in chronic diseases.”
“Australians spend less than two per cent of our total health funding on prevention, compared with more than five per cent in countries like Canada and New Zealand. This is a false economy and it is also wrong for the health of Australians around the country. Every dollar in prevention saves many more dollars in future health costs, and it saves lives. We have an ageing population. We will have increasing pressures on our healthcare system. Investment in prevention, in living well for longer, is what will maintain the quality of life but also help us manage growing demands on our healthcare system. The Grattan Institute has made this point clearly in its research. The national CDC is an essential platform for shifting our health system towards prevention.”
“We also saw how valuable timely, trusted information could be in maintaining public confidence. A strong, independent CDC can help us do better next time. But let's be clear. This reform is well overdue. We have been talking about the need for an Australian CDC to be established for almost 40 years. We are the only OECD country to not have a CDC or equivalent body. The government committed to establishing an Australian Centre for Disease Control before the 2022 election, yet we only saw an interim CDC within the department established in January 2024 and are now only just seeing legislation to bring an independent CDC formally into being. Australians deserve a public health system that is proactive, not reactive. The truth is that prevention and preparedness have too often been the poor cousins of acute care.”
“I rise in support of the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025. This bill establishes the long-promised Australian Centre for Disease Control, a national body to strengthen our ability to prepare for, prevent and respond to health threats. The new CDC will consolidate functions that are currently scattered across the department of health and various public health agencies. It will improve coordination between the Commonwealth, state and territories; strengthen surveillance systems; and provide clear, science based advice to governments and the community. This is a reform that Australia has needed for some time. During COVID-19 we saw how fragmented the public health system was, with each state making decisions in isolation and the Commonwealth struggling to coordinate national responses.”
“I do acknowledge the work that the government has done, in the case of aged care, with the opposition and the House more broadly, and also on the NDIS, acknowledging that there is a problem here in the sustainability of budget spending. But this is not enough. To drive spending restraints, we need fiscal rules and a proper commitment to a charter of budget honesty. I acknowledge that governments of all stripes have been riding roughshod over the Charter of Budget Honesty over the last 15 years or so. So my second question to the Treasurer and to the government is: will this government commit to implementing key fiscal rules, including spending growth that is less than GDP growth over the cycle, and return to its obligations under the Charter of Budget Honesty? Proposed expenditure agreed to.”
“The government may well and have historically often pointed to the back-to-back surpluses they've delivered and the significantly improved budget outcomes for the financial year 2024-25 as evidence of their prudent fiscal management. However, in all three years, there has been a structural budget deficit, and at the same time the government has committed to significant off-budget spending that has run into the tens of billions of dollars. There are going to be further demographic shifts in Australia which are going to put really significant extra burdens on the Australian government's budget. These are likely to be the shift to an older population and Defence requirements. These shifts are real, and they are growing. It makes it even more important right now to better control government spending.”
“This pre-election budget passed an important milestone: government spending reached 27 per cent of GDP, the highest point since 1986, outside the COVID-19 pandemic emergency measures. There have been real cost-of-living pressures that the government have sought to address in recent times, and I acknowledge that. However, the growth in government spending has been far too high over the last three years. In fact, nominal expenditure rose more than eight per cent last financial year, and this is unsustainable. Global economic agencies, including the IMF and the OECD are calling on governments around the world—including Australia—to adopt clearer fiscal rules to avoid further burdening future generations with debt and further worsening our intergenerational compact.”
“Secondly, the current federal tax take is relatively high in historical terms. Thirdly, the history of significant Australian tax reform, particularly the Hawke-Keating reforms and the Howard-Costello reforms, adopted this model of, at most, revenue neutrality and, at best, reducing the tax burden on the country. We should learn from their examples. Finally, because the opposition have also acknowledged publicly that they are open to tax reform that does not increase overall tax burden in the country, this means there is a rare opportunity to get the reform through the parliament—I should hope! The second area I would like to question the government on is fiscal rules.”
“I believe that if we fail to act on significant economic reform, we will stagnate—we will lock in stagnating living standards. I want to question the government on its frame for tax reform. Specifically, I ask the government and the Treasurer whether the government will commit to a revenue-neutral approach to tax reform where the reform—at a minimum—does not seek to increase the overall tax burden on Australians over the short-to-medium term. I believe that model is absolutely critical to successful tax reform in this country, and the reasons for adopting that model are various. Firstly, and very importantly, the Australian people do not support higher taxes on average. This is borne out in survey after survey. They are suspicious of tax reform that they feel is just increasing money to the government rather than to them.”
“I would like to question the government today about two critical areas of economic reform—principles for tax reform and fiscal rules. I believe these are interrelated and absolutely critical to sustainable budget management. First is tax reform. I was very heartened to hear the Treasurer acknowledge the need for the tax system to better help young people build prosperous lives, to drive productivity and investment in our businesses, and to be on a sustainable footing. I acknowledge his openness to taking on a tax reform agenda. This is hard to do. I believe there is an opportunity to work towards challenging but necessary economic reforms that set Australia up for the coming decades. I've been championing tax reform and productivity reform since I got to parliament, and it is heartening to see the government back this approach.”
“In conclusion, this legislation implements broadly sensible changes, and, as such, I will not stand in its way. But I am concerned that the government, and indeed regulators, have made an insufficient case for increasing the reporting period from two to five years. Lastly, I am disappointed that we do not have a stronger agenda from the government on supporting small businesses, because they need it. There are some great ideas out there on the table. It is time for the government to step up and to act.”
“That could make a real difference to small businesses and smaller businesses that are struggling with working capital, struggling to stay afloat. This is something simple that the government could do now, and I urge the government to act on this example, because it is something that could make a difference right now to small businesses that are struggling with working capital. This type of proposal has been recommended both by the 2023 Emerson review of payment times reporting and by the payment times and practices inquiry of 2017. All we need is a government that is willing to act and to back small businesses to make sure they are paid on time and have access to working capital so they can continue to invest in themselves and also invest in their employees.”
“But, apart from naming and shaming the businesses that are slow payers, this scheme doesn't really have a lot of teeth and consequently has barely shifted the dial on payment reporting times more than 30 days. Multiple reviews have highlighted the scheme's ineffectiveness in terms of changing those behaviours. The change I propose is a modest one, given that we already collect all the data that is required. Furthermore, it would act as a real setting of expectations by large businesses, with currently about 15 per cent of government contracts held by some of these large-business slow payers. It's pretty simple. If, as a big business, you are a slow payer—if you are not paying your small businesses, your suppliers, on time, within 30 days—then you shouldn't expect to be able to access government contracts.”
“It does not make sense for each of those businesses to be under the same regulatory burden. Frankly, they just don't have the same resources to manage all the regulation that bigger businesses do. I think that needs to be reflected in the scope of the legislation and the scope of the regulation that affects small businesses. The second is I believe that the government should strengthen the payment system reporting times regulation by making fast payee designation a requirement of procurement, as they do in the United Kingdom. Under the Payment Times Reporting Scheme, large businesses and some government enterprises that have an annual taxable income of more than $100 million, known as reporting entities, must report every six months on their payment times and terms for small business.”
“We are only now seeing some relief from this, five years on. Furthermore, the government has made, in my opinion, some retrograde choices on industrial relations legislation that have increased the complexity and created disincentives for small businesses to hire employees and expand their businesses. If the government would raise their threshold with a simple adjustment, it would relieve over 40,000 small businesses of the regulatory red tape burden designed for big corporates with hundreds or thousands of employees. I've run a business. I've run a small not-for-profit with around 15 employees that grew to around 25 employees. I've run a business with more than 100 employees. I've worked in businesses with thousands of employees. They are quite different beasts.”
“If we agree in this House, as I believe we do, that the measure is worthwhile, let's deliver the certainty that businesses need to invest. One question is really: is it because there are not more interesting or innovative policies that the government could announce to support small businesses that they just have to roll this out every single year? If that is the case—if they don't have ideas on how to support small businesses—I'm happy to share a couple of ideas that I and others on the crossbench have put forward. The first is to increase the threshold for the definition of a small business in the Fair Work Act from 15 to at least 25 people. Let me tell you why. The past five years have been tough on small businesses. COVID-19 lockdowns, followed by high inflation and high interest rates, eviscerated consumer demand.”
“In the last term, this happened only because the crossbench put significant pressure on the government and the opposition to come to the party and pass the legislation, because it wasn't on the agenda, and we were coming literally to the last two days of the sitting calendar. The Senate was about to rise, and the legislation was just not going to go through. Again, there would have been an election. Again, we don't know what would have happened. Australian small businesses would have been left in the lurch. Businesses just can't make decisions under these conditions. It's just not fair. As such, numerous small businesses and tax groups have called on the government to make this policy permanent, or at the very least make it more permanent, so that small businesses can plan ahead and have more confidence in the scheme.”
“This instant asset write-off is meant to incentivise businesses to invest, but the legislation for this incentive passed on the last sitting day of that financial year, which from memory was back in April—a mere couple of months before the end of that financial year. So for most businesses over the previous 10 months this had provided no incentive to make that investment, because of that uncertainty—or, on the other side, businesses had actually made some purchases, having listened to the government make an announcement about this instant asset write-off, without really being aware that it hadn't actually passed through the parliament, so they were undertaking an enormous amount of risk in their own business. This really makes no sense. People are caught between two stools. In 2025, it was the last sitting day of the financial year.”
“Since I've come into this parliament, we have passed this instant asset write-off measure three times now, coinciding with each financial year since 2023. We have come to expect this amendment each year, yet we refuse to make it permanent. Despite the regularity with which this measure is passed, businesses still can't rely on it, because it is politicised, weaponised, senselessly debated, thrown in with other controversial measures and held up for months in this parliament until the government finally relents. In the financial year 2024-25, we passed this measure on the final sitting day of the financial year. So let's think of the timing here and what that means.”
“In some cases, they are taking months or years to respond to cases and using workarounds, such as requests for additional information, to reset the clock to meet their reporting requirements. As one executive said to me, regulators have no natural predators, and, if the government is not able to hold them accountable for their effectiveness, there is a significant chance that they are causing damage by poor standards of support for the business community. This change in the legislation will put a greater onus on other parliamentary mechanisms of accountability, such as the committees' reviews of regulators, to ensure that the regulators are held to account. Finally, I'd like to speak mainly to schedule 7, which extends the instant asset write-off of $20,000 for another financial year. Here we are again.”
“This measure does raise some concerns for me, as the FRAA was only established in 2021 and has delivered only one report for each regulator in 2022 and 2023. I understand that frequent reporting and analysis provides limited time to implement changes prior to another assessment. However, I am concerned that five years may be too far in the other direction, without sufficient data points to indicate that the difficulties with this reporting regularity outweigh the reduction in regulator accountability. This is because I do have some concerns about the performance and effectiveness of regulators. I repeatedly hear from members of the business community and my electorate that regulators are not always meeting their requirements and responsibilities.”
“I rise to speak on Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Financial Systems and Other Measures) Bill 2025, which on balance I believe introduces some broadly sensible measures. However, I will not speak to all those measures today. Schedule 1 of this legislation brings cash settled equity derivatives under the beneficial ownership disclosure legislation, acknowledging that alternative financial products can have similar effects on owning assets. While this change will create some additional compliance requirements for holders of derivatives, I believe it is broadly consistent with greater transparency in Australia's financial market and is broadly supported. Schedule 3 changes the reporting period of the Financial Regulator Assessment Authority from two years to five years.”
“I think the first thing that I pray for, and I know so many do, is peace because of the devastation of the war overseas. We know that there are negotiations afoot between Israel and Hamas. I pray that those are successful, that we find peace, that the ceasefire happens, that the hostages are released, that aid is reached and that we rebuild a Palestinian state and the Israeli state. But it is also up to us to protect what we have in this country here. We are the most successful multicultural country in the world, and it is up to every single one of us every day to protect that, to make sure this is a safe and welcoming place for all faiths and all cultures. (Time expired)”
“A rabbi said he was holding the hand of his eight-year-old daughter and waiting at the lights when, again, a car slowed down to swear at them as Jews. This eight-year-old girl—what responsibility does she bear for anything? Absolutely none. She is welcome in this country, as are all Jewish Australians and all people of all faiths in this country. The armed guards in front of the schools in my electorate are an affront to our Australian humanity. The food that has been thrown and the firebombs on the street—the street that I actually grew up on—don't belong here in Australia. No attacks on any religion belong here in Australia, and the Jewish community has been absolutely devastated in the last two years in particular. The question really is: now what? Where do we go from here?”
“There have been Jews in Australia since the First Fleet, and the Jewish community has made an outstanding contribution to this country in all fields, from the military to law, the arts and community, and in so many different ways. But I have spoken to so many Jewish people, whose families have been here for generations, who are now not sure if they are welcome here or if their children or their grandchildren are safe here, and that is a terrible thing to be contemplating in this country. I spoke to a 15-year-old who was walking down the street wearing a blazer from a Jewish school when a car slowed down to do a 'heil Hitler' at him and swear, 'Effing Jews.' A friend of mine asked another person just to move his car and was told, 'Eff the South African Jews'—again, just because he asked someone in a South African accent.”
“Lives have been destroyed across the world because of a war that followed Hamas's actions that day. We can acknowledge all the pain across humanity that started with those atrocities that day. We are all the children of humanity, and all of our children are innocent. Jewish Australians in particular have been affected by that day because of their personal connections to Israel and the friends and families in Israel who were directly affected—those who were lost and those who were devastated by losses. But of enormous pain, I think, for the Jewish community, particularly the community I represent, has been the devastating rise of antisemitism here in Australia.”
“We think of the families, in particular, who are left behind, like the family of Galit Carbone, a Sydney born grandmother. We think of the family of people like Eli Sharabi, a hostage who was finally freed to find that so many of his family did not survive that day and who came to the parliament recently to share his story. We think of the Bibas family, whose beautiful children and mother were murdered on that day, and people like Remo, Mazal and Millet, who came to Australia and told of their terrifying experiences at the Nova music festival—the friends that they helped and the friends that they lost on that day. Today is the day to recognise and commemorate the lives that were destroyed on that day. Many of those were Israeli and many of those were Palestinian.”
“The barbaric atrocities of 7 October 2023 are seared in our minds: around 1,200 dead, 251 hostages taken—48 of those still in Gaza—women raped, children murdered and lives destroyed. It was the most devastating attack on Jewish life since the Holocaust. Hamas's barbaric attack was not just an attack on Israel; the impact has reverberated around the world for the last two years. When I look back today, I cannot think of a single group of people around the world whose lives are better off due to that barbaric attack, except those who are enemies of peace, enemies of social cohesion and enemies of the values that our country holds most dear and must protect. Today we remember the attack and we commemorate the lives of all of those who were lost on that day and those people whose lives are daily affected.”
“The World Health Organization predicts depression will be the leading global health concern by 2030, and we see the impact of this challenge in every community, including mine in Wentworth. What Tama Touch footy are doing shows the very best of community spirit, looking out there for one another and taking action to help. Their effort would not be possible without the support of long-suffering families, friends, sponsors and Waverley Council. I want to pay tribute not just to the players but to everyone who has contributed to this extraordinary undertaking. I really wanted to be there to cheer them on, but I couldn't be, because parliament is sitting. I was very proud to play with them last Friday, and—my God—it was very tiring, even for five minutes! So I don't know how they will keep it up.”
“Right now on Bondi Beach in my electorate of Wentworth, something both exciting and exhausting is happening. The Tama Touch football group are attempting a world record for the longest continuous touch rugby match in history—34 hours of non-stop play. As of now, they've been playing for 31 hours and 37 minutes. This group of mates have been playing on the beach for 20 years. Their extraordinary attempt is about more than just sport; it's about raising awareness for mental health. With Beyond Blue as a charity partner, Tama Touch footy have already raised over $156,000 to support the vital work of this organisation. Addressing mental health has never been more urgent.”
“This is a good choice, and I'm proud to have been part of that. Certainly my community will be extremely grateful for the changes that have been made to this bill.”
“Both bringing the additional 20,000 packages and bringing forward those packages earlier in the year are really critical when we are seeing such a growth of people on the waiting list desperately needing help and not being able to get it. I also want to acknowledge everyone who has played a part in this. I wrote to the government last year about my concerns with home-care packages, based on the feedback I'd got from constituents. I was proud to work with Senator Pocock and others earlier, just after the election, when there was concern that the packages would be delayed, to say that they should not be delayed. I've been proud to stand up with other members of the crossbench and across the parliament to say: 'This is important. These changes are required, and it's time to put them through.' This is a positive day for the parliament.”
“They felt that, once a need was identified, the help would be there. This disconnect between the need being identified and recognised and the help being delivered was unintelligible to them. I think it's unintelligible to most Australians. I want to say that this is a really important change that has been put through. I recognise that the government has been trying to make home aged care and care for older Australians more sustainable. That is a good thing. That is a very positive thing. But home care is really critical to that. Home care is both a good economic choice—if we can keep people out of aged care, it is better in terms of the cost—and, most importantly, a good choice for people's families and for people's own mental health. It is what they want.”
“I rise in support of the amendments to the home-care packages that have been put through the Senate and have now returned to the House. I want to highlight why these are so important. It really comes back to my experience in my community in Wentworth. I was in Paddington recently at Five Ways, doing a pop-up office, and I had three people come and talk to me about their own experience of home-care packages and how they just could not understand—when they had been assessed as needing something, knowing that they needed something, doing their best as members of the community who wanted to stay at home—not being able to get the help that they needed to stay out of aged care. They could not understand why their packages were going to take months or up to a year or so, so they could get that support that they had been identified as needing.”
“So the only way we're planning to fix our fiscal deficit will actually have more impact on younger working Australians. These numbers do not add up, and this is why serious tax reform is needed. The member for Curtin has been advocating on GST, and I think it is absolutely essential that we do consider the breadth of taxes, not just a narrow cast, which some in this House want to do, because, if we are going to fix this tax system to drive productivity, to drive fairer outcomes for younger Australians and to drive climate action, we're going to have to look at the breadth not the narrow.”
“We have a tax system that is decreasingly relying on older Australians, despite the fact that we know that we are ageing as a population. In the 1990s, around 30 per cent of people over the age of 65 paid income tax. Now, it's only 17 per cent. When we know that our population is rapidly ageing, we've got to know that that is not going to work. We know that our young people are struggling to achieve the same milestones their parents did. They have a 20 per cent lower chance of owning their own home when they're 30 to 34 than previous generations, and this is particularly affecting less wealthy younger Australians. The tax system is really at the heart of this because, currently, the only way that we are ever going to get back to a budget surplus is through indexation, which is an income tax on younger working people.”
“We know that the tax system, in terms of its high headline rate, is not working, and its complexity is also actually stopping investment at the level that we need to see from both international and domestic companies. This has got to be a key focus for tax reform for the government. This is where I'm urging them to focus. Secondly, I particularly wanted to focus on our income tax system, because we have a tax system that's just not working for every generation. We have a tax system which—I think quite unintentionally—has led to a situation where, in the last 10 years or so, the wealth of households over the age of 65 has grown by around 50 per cent, while the wealth of households under the age of 30 has pretty much flatlined.”
“If we don't take action now, it is a problem, and we know that the tax system can help drive this. Finally, a piece which is outside tax but is absolutely relevant is fiscal discipline because, if we lade our current generations with debt, we know that they have to pay it off in the future. So this goes to spending as well as tax, in terms of restraint in spending, but I do want to spend the rest of the time really focused on tax because it's absolutely critical. Firstly, we need a tax system that drives business investment. We are seeing business investment at record lows, and the incentives for business investment are not there.”
“Wages won't grow and generations won't be more prosperous unless we can get that productivity moving, and tax matters to productivity. Secondly, we have a tax system that is unfairly weighted towards being dependent on younger working Australians while their wealth is going backwards compared to different generations. The income tax system is not working for driving incentives and driving businesses, nor is it working for making sure that young generations can get ahead. Finally, we have a tax system, and an overall system, which is not driving climate action. This gets to the heart of intergenerational inequity. Who's going to be paying the bills for climate adaptation and change? It is the current younger generations and future generations.”
“Now that he has made that admission, it is time for the parliament to get behind this in terms of driving real change, and I urge the opposition to engage constructively in this discussion. That's certainly what I expect will happen from the crossbench, because the crossbench has been driving this debate from the start. This is because tax matters, and, frankly, the future of every generation, including those young people in our country right now, really matters, and they're struggling. Right now, only eight per cent of Australians think that the next generation will have a better standard of living than their parents. This is something you hear every single day on the street. This is really rooted, I think, in three key problems. Firstly, we have flatlining productivity.”
“I commend the member for Curtin for putting forward this really important MPI; for her advocacy in the previous parliament, and this parliament, on the need to make sure our system works for every generation; and for her bravery in speaking up on tax. I'm also very proud to have spoken up on tax and to have then delivered a tax green paper last term, because tax has been the missing element of so many of the issues facing younger generations, and we need the major parties to step up and get real and courageous about the changes that need to be made. It was great to see the Treasurer, out of the Economic Reform Roundtable, acknowledge that the tax system is at the heart of intergenerational inequity as well as absolutely critical to productivity.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. The Attorney-General has asked us to be open-minded to the government's proposed freedom-of-information reforms as a step towards greater transparency. I might be more trusting if the government showed greater commitment to other transparency measures. Publishing ministerial diaries and disclosing sponsored parliamentary orange passholders, as the crossbench has repeatedly urged, would demonstrate real commitment to transparency. When will the government commit to these reforms?”
“I understand that the tribunal, which is an independent statutory body, is also expressing opposition to some of the changes that I've described here in my speech today. Finally—I'll just put it simply—our veterans deserve a system grounded in fairness, clarity and lasting recognition. This bill, if passed in its current form, would undermine that trust. Let us ensure that our defence honours and awards system truly upholds the values and sacrifices that members of the defence forces have made and which it purports to honour.”