Rowan Holzberger
Forde · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“… … … "Right at the beginning, it was thought that there was an intrusion in the relationship between the doctor and their patient," AMA president Tony Bartone said. … … … At the time Medicare was introduced in 1984, the AMA was heavily influenced by developments in the United Kingdom, particularly the National Health Service.”
“During my preparation for my contribution tonight I came across an article written in 2019, at the death of Bob Hawke, by ABC journalist Norman Hermant, and I'd like to read out a bit from it. The article was titled, 'Before Bob Hawke's Medicare, a visit to hospital forced many Australians into bankruptcy'.”
“My dad met my mum in Mount Isa, and I was born in Brisbane and grew up in Broken Hill, so I'm not sure where that quite places me. I've always actually believed regional Australia should have its own state. The cities could have one state, and regional Australia could have another state—anyway.”
“Mrs Buckingham's quote on thinking twice about going to see the doctor is something that all of us in our electorates have faced and heard about from people who told us that they would choose to put food on the table and feed their kids rather than see the doctor.”
“I think that will go some way to addressing some of those shortages; 17,000 doctors is a shot in the arm to the health system. Finally, the member for Riverina talked about the NDIS, kicking the proverbial out of us.”
“Even though they gave up, I think some time after the 1993 election, realising that they couldn't do what John Howard said and stab it in the stomach, they went around and tried to stab it in the back.”
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“In fact, I said in my first speech that, in many ways, artistic expression is one of the most pure forms of humanity. Indeed it is what defines Homo sapiens . If you go back to some of those earliest cave paintings, they are really the difference between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. It's this ability to express our thoughts in the physical world. It is what makes us human. So it is incumbent on us, as governments and societies, to give people that space. I'm very much an optimist.”
“One I went to last year was T he Lightning Thief , the Percy Jackson musical. It was my experience as a 14-year-old of the Broken Hill Repertory Society—I saw these kids coming together. They'd come from as far away as Tweed Heads, about an hour's drive from the far northern suburbs of Brisbane. These kids had come together over the school holidays, and they had welded themselves together as a team through rehearsals. I was privileged to be there on that last day that they performed. When they came out and took their final bow, the tears in their eyes were something that I could feel and I could place myself in. The relationships that they had formed and the lessons that they had learned are something that is unique to the arts. I think that really goes to show why cultivating that and giving people the space to do that is so important.”
“But, of course, preparing for this speech today gave me a chance to reflect on my own past. Art comes in many forms. I remember being a young kid, a young teenager, in Broken Hill who was part of the Broken Hill Repertory Society, where I took part in greats such as Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof . I also remember, as a 14-year-old, taking part in a one-act play festival. This is in a mining town in outback New South Wales. These kids had come from Mildura, Cobar and all around the countryside. That experience has really lasted with me. Those memories that I had were so incredibly fond that it's stuck with me forever. It gave me an opportunity, now that I'm the representing the electorate of Forde, to have the honour of being the patron of the Beenleigh Theatre Group, a local repertory group which puts on fantastic performances.”
“Something starts off as an idea in somebody's head, somehow gets converted to paper and somehow then gets passed on to somebody else, who is able to make it into form. Construction is quite an amazing thing, and it is very much where art meets science. For those that have been involved in construction and have looked at those modern drawings on CAD—computer assisted design—as much as they are an expression of human thinking, they have a certain sterility. They are sterile compared to those hand-drawn architectural sketches. When you look at some of those hand-drawn sketches, there's always a slight imperfection. It is within that imperfection that you can see the humanity of the person who has drawn it. That, I guess, did make me appreciate art a little bit more than I thought I had in the past.”
“I'm reminded of when I took my now-adult child to an art gallery in Tamborine Mountain, in the hills of the Gold Coast, when he was five years old, and the art gallery owner came up to him and said, 'Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?' He said, 'I am an artist.' I thought, 'Well, only a proper artist would say something like that.' We've got a responsibility as a community to create the space for people to create and be that person they are passionate to be, and art is one of those highest expressions. While I might have considered myself a bit of a Philistine in my earlier life, funnily enough it was in construction that I discovered the true beauty of art, of architecture. Something was pointed out to me which I hadn't realised before: in this room around us, everything we see started off as a drawing.”
“I think those that have listened to one of my speeches before know quite well that I like to claim many careers, having been a station hand, having worked in servos, having worked in Goat Works, having run a construction company. I claim to have done many things, but being an artist is not one of them; I think anyone in history who reads my speeches in this place will see that that statement is well and truly underlined! To me, a true artist is not somebody who is made but somebody who is discovered.”
“I rise in support of the Public and Educational Lending Rights (Better Income for Authors) Bill 2026 and the associated bill. In doing so, I recognise the work the minister—the Leader of the House and the Minister for the Arts—has done. I appreciate talking to people within the arts community about how involved he is; it's part of his down-to-earth personality, and that means he really fits in with that work for that community. The work these bills do sits in the broader context of the work that the minister and the government are doing. I also pay credit to the caucus committee, which has pushed for this. It is a modest but meaningful part of the government's broader arts strategy—a strategy which is not only to the material benefit of our community but also to our cultural and spiritual benefit.”
“It was fined $413,000 after failing to verify the identity of 26 customers whose mobile services were abused by scammers who stole at least $45,000. It was the telco's second such penalty. There is a long list of bad behaviours which have been allowed to flourish— Debate interrupted.”
“But it's not just Optus. I feel like I should spread a little bit of it around. Exetel, a company that purports to be one of the fastest internet providers in the country, has also dropped the ball. Effectively, it was identified that there were 63 cases where it had allowed SIM swapping, which is where the scammer gets hold of somebody's mobile phone and then is able to control their phone number, get all their passwords and get all the codes in order to access their account. Those people lost over $412,000 because of the incompetence of Exetel. They copped a $700,000 fine. To share it around a little bit, there's another company, Circles Australia—which, incidentally, is a company I've heard of only because my son chooses to use it.”
“It was only when it was exposed that Optus ended up doing what it thought was the right thing, but it copped a $100 million penalty for that behaviour, which, incidentally, is only because this government has been properly resourcing ACCC and giving it those enforcement powers that had been so lacking under the previous government. It had managed to take Optus to court and get that $100 million penalty which, hopefully, deters the behaviour of not only Optus but also other providers as well. Ultimately, as this debate sits within the government's broader economic objectives of keeping the cost of living down, if we can keep these services and level the playing field to improve competition and improve consumer safety—particularly with the telcos, which are an essential service—that's one approach to lowering the cost of living.”
“But, also, it's about the way they behaved—something that I referred to earlier, and the member for Griffith has to sit through this again, but it's a story well worth telling—when the ACCC took Optus to court because they had been selling expensive phones and expensive plans to vulnerable people, obviously disabled people and people with severe learning difficulties. They sold, effectively, junk products because Optus hadn't even bothered to check whether they could actually cover them in the regions in which they lived.”
“They don't want blame to be thrown around, although there is plenty of blame which could be apportioned to these telcos. Someone said to me that perhaps they should only pay for the number of bars that they have of a service. If there's one out of five bars, then they should only pay one-fifth of their bill. Ultimately, though, it is not about the blame, but there is a good bit of blame to go around. The way that these telcos have really thumbed their noses at the Australian consumers is really, in some cases, unconscionable. The very well respected Allan Fels pointed out that Optus—and I don't want to single out Optus, because it's a big list of telcos that have not lived up to their obligations—had three strikes there, with two notable and tragic outages of their triple zero network.”
“Shortly, we're going to be launching a survey to try and find out exactly where the black spots are, because it is typical also of the way that the telcos operate that they have one set of data that shows that everything is fine but actually doesn't reflect the experience of people on the ground. We're going to do their job for them and find where these black spots are. We've got a pretty good idea as it is, but we want to see how widespread they are, and then we intend to work collaboratively with the telcos. We're going to have a public meeting to really try and get some momentum behind this campaign. We're going to work collaboratively with them and with the authorities to try and get a solution, because ultimately that's what people want. They want a solution.”
“In some ways, I'm not sure whether it's more inexcusable that they haven't got the services in a well-established suburb or that they haven't got the services in a new suburb, where it should have been obvious to them that these houses were going to move in and it should have been easier for them to get hold of the land and get the approvals that they needed to set up the towers and other infrastructure in order to provide their service. And so it is that we are going to run a campaign locally to try and get the telcos to come to the party and to work collaboratively with them.”
“It is really inconceivable that today, in well-established suburbs in my electorate like Eagleby, where there's a retirement village whose residents are constantly talking to me about the lack of service that they have on their mobile phones, and Cornubia, which has been there for as long as I've been alive, they can't get decent mobile phone service, let alone some of those newer areas like Holmview and Boronia Heights. I was out in Upper Coomera the other day, trying to get connection on my phone to navigate through the maps. I had better GPS services literally out the back of Bourke than I had in Upper Coomera.”
“A friend of mine who had escaped the Yugoslav war of the mid-nineties said that being without those communications was exactly what it was like to be in a war zone. So it is not just that there is, as I say, that economic imperative and that convenience that we think it is. It is also to give that human connection, which is ever more important as families and communities become diffuse. It is not only in the outback and not only in times of natural disaster.”
“But those methods of communication have come together and are vitally important now to our economy. But, of course, it is not just an economic imperative or convenience that there are good communications. I'm reminded of my mother's experience in the flood of 2010 in Brisbane—the first big flood, something that, unfortunately, we've become all too familiar with. In 2010, she lived in the suburb of Oxley, and her very modest house was flooded. Apart from the dislocation that, of course, that caused, the communication systems went down, and there was this moment of fear with my family not being able to get in touch with her. It was a fear which had spread through the whole community, with people not being able to get in touch with family members.”
“That communication device was familiar to people out in some of those places in the year 2000, while mobile phones were completely unfamiliar to people out there. It was things like that that really provided that economic benefit and opened up those economic opportunities. By the way—without digressing too far—it's amazing to see how far telecommunications has come now, with the idea that stock can be mustered by essentially wearing a collar that gives a sort of gentle vibration to steer them in the right direction. The future of communications is really quite amazing when it comes to what the potential for agriculture is. So it was that people in the city had no idea what GPS was at the same time that we had no idea what a mobile phone was.”
“Allow me to reflect on the bill that sat alongside this one, which was the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025, which is dealing with telecommunications in regional and outback Australia, an area that I'm familiar with. It is an area where communications for me, in the year 2000, involved strapping a yellow rubber Garmin GPS to my motorbike so I could know where I was. You can imagine that having grown up in town, in Broken Hill, and coming onto a property in my 20s, I was no bushman, and I very much relied on the technology, I think, to get me out of there alive. It was very simple. It was a little green screen with an arrow that would point to the homestead or the tank or wherever we were going. But it connected to a satellite.”
“Frankly, they exposed elements of a system that relied on a best efforts approach, and sadly, in some instances, those efforts were far from the best. At a deeper level, it exposed a discordance between how the industry is regulated, and perhaps how it sees itself, versus how the public expects it to operate. I am sure we all have constituents for whom and suburbs in our electorates in which the telcos are not operating as the public would expect them to operate. I think that this bill sits well within the Albanese government's approach to making sure that all Australians are connected, wherever they live.”
“I rise in support of the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025, and, in doing so, I very much acknowledge the work of the Minister for Communications, who is doing an incredible job in what is a very difficult and essential portfolio in an industry which is wracked with problems and which, really, I think has been allowed to get away with some unconscionable conduct. It is a credit to the minister that this bill forms a part of that general approach to fixing that essential service, and I very much think that she's really doing a fantastic job. In fact, she's far more diplomatic than I would be when talking about some of these telcos. I'll use her words, just in case I get a bit intemperate myself. She said: The Triple Zero failures last year shook public confidence.”
“They were defending an act in 1974—just as they're equivocating about supporting this one—that Lionel Murphy described as having been proved to be one of the most ineffectual pieces of legislation ever passed by that parliament. Even in 1974, that would have had some stiff competition. He said: In consumer transactions unfair practices are widespread. The existing law is still founded on the principle known as caveat emptor—meaning 'let the buyer beware'. That principle may have been appropriate for transactions conducted in village markets. It has ceased to be appropriate as a general rule. Now the marketing of goods and services is conducted on an organised basis and by trained business executives. As insightful as and prescient as Lionel Murphy was, I don't think even he could have been quite as—”
“In introducing this bill back in 1973, Lionel Murphy said: Regrettably Opposition senators refused to debate that Bill— because— … there had been insufficient time to consider its provisions. Some things are just hard to get out of your DNA when you're a political party. It ultimately tries to parade itself these days as looking after the battler, but it has always been the party for the big corporations and big businesses. It is only the Labor Party that has stood up for small businesses, stood up for consumers and stood up for farmers. When you look at the results the opposition got in Farrer, I'm not sure they're drawing the right lessons. They would certainly do well to do a little bit of private introspection rather than trying to litigate that in public. This is in the DNA of those opposite.”
“The purpose of many restrictive practices is to maintain prices at levels higher than would otherwise prevail. This contributes to the inflationary trend. He went on to say: Consumer protection also assists in the fight against inflation. It is the consumer who has to bear the burden of higher prices and of unfair methods of dealing. I half quoted Mark Twain's quote that history may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes—and just as it was with the Trade Practices Bill in 1974, so it is with the mutterings we hear from the opposition. Are they supporting this bill? Are they not supporting this bill? I'm not 100 per cent clear on what their position is, and that's because I don't think they're 100 per cent clear on what their position is. There is a rhyme from history here as well.”
“The measures in this bill are about improving competition for our economy, which sits not only within this government's mission but also within the Labor Party's historic mission. We're now 52 years on from the introduction of the Trade Practices Act, which was introduced by another great reforming government, the Whitlam Labor government, and by another great reforming Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy. The Trade Practices Act 1974, on which this work is built, sat squarely then in the government's approach to tackling inflation and the cost of living, just as ours does today. In fact, it gave me an opportunity while preparing for this speech to look at what Lionel Murphy said at the time. It's interesting that history rhymes, as the saying goes. He said: The Bill … is especially important because of its relevance to inflation.”
“I rise in support of the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026. In doing so, I too commend the work of the assistant minister in the lead-up to and preparation of this bill and also for the way that he has handled this bill through the parliament and through the Labor Party processes as well. I don't think the community could ask for a better assistant minister at this time than the assistant minister we have. He's somebody who lives and breathes this sort of work. It's a privilege to be able to serve in this parliament alongside him. I also pay due credit to the leader of our economic team and my neighbour, the Treasurer, who is leading an economic policy focused on the cost of living. The competition policy sits very much within that general approach to tackling the cost of living.”
“This government really has got on with the job of fixing up many years of neglect, underinvestment and bad management across so many realms. The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services should be congratulated for his work. People within the Labor caucus who made this happen should be congratulated for their methodical work that today recognises the hard work that people like Charlie and Jenny, Josh and Dan selflessly put into our community to make Australia a better place. Debate adjourned. Federation Chamber adjourned at 13:25”
“Again, the former government let all this happen while they brought in unfair tax cuts and then opposed our tax cuts. And so this sits within the government's broader strategy of a fairer, simpler and more sustainable tax system, a strategy which has delivered one tax cut in our first term and is going to deliver a tax cut this year and another one next year. That is on top of a broader strategy such as the LISTO, which is not an acronym which rolls readily off the tongues of our voters, but that lower income superannuation tax offset is going to mean a better retirement for 11,353 people in Forde, 7,688 of whom being women. About 68 per cent of these low-income earners are women. We can only do that because we are prioritising our tax system so that it is fair, simple and sustainable.”
“This legislation provides practical support to the government's goal of doubling that giving amount by the year 2030. As the member for Griffith talked about, it's those small little round-up donations that end up adding up to a lot of money, so this legislation is going to really supercharge the efforts which are exemplified by people like Charlie and Jenny and Josh and Dan. The other thing that this legislation does which is notable apart from the technical, which is really the methodical and careful and deliberate way that this government goes about doing things, is make our tax system fairer, simpler and more sustainable. It is really gobsmacking that, in 2026, industries which can cause people harm are able to access research and development incentives at the same time.”
“Something like one in four Australians live with a neurological condition, and I think something like only 66 per cent are supported through the NDIS. There are another a couple of guys, Josh Steel and Dan, who are riding in the—I don't think I can say this word in here, but it is the S-box rally. It's an Australian colloquialism for a car that is not of a high standard. Forgive me for that allusion, but they're riding from Port Douglas down all the way to Melbourne in this dodgy VW that they've done up to raise money for cancer. Again, it's a personal story that motivates people, and Josh was motivated by his mum, who was a survivor of breast cancer. Dan is motivated by his father-in-law, who was not a survivor of prostate cancer, but they have turned tragedy into purpose. I think they've now got up to $22,780 of a $10,000 goal.”
“But, in 2013, Charlie had to leave work to become a full-time carer for Jenny. I've got to say that Charlie is that sort of guy. I actually can't remember when I met him. He's just always been there, and he's always been an absolute inspiration to me. In those years that he's been looking after and caring for Jenny, it hasn't stopped him from participating fully in the community. In fact, he rides in the MS Brissie to the Bay fundraising ride every year and has now fundraised a cumulative total of about $100,000. This is one absolute legend from Logan. He's doing it again this year, and he's raised $16,384 out of an $18,000 goal. It is a phenomenal amount of money. It is truly a measure of an effort and a measure of a man and a measure of a couple that just were not going to be beaten by a debilitating disease.”
“Debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering an Efficient and Trusted Tax System) Bill 2026 gives me an opportunity to talk about the importance of charities in a working-class community like Forde, like the communities that we on this side of the House represent particularly. There are two groups of individuals I really want to give a shout out to. The first is Charlie and Jenny Bennett. They met each other at the age of 19, 40 years ago—I think that probably gives away their age! Four years before they met, Jenny was diagnosed with MS. It must have been a devastating diagnosis for a little girl to get. But that didn't get in the way for them, as it does not get in the way for many MS sufferers, who just get on with it, and they built a life together and contributed massively to their community.”
“That sort of approach, through consultation and through listening to what industry and stakeholders want and making it happen and delivering, is a hallmark of this government. The assistant minister is to be congratulated for his work. I commend the bill to the House.”
“This is not only something that you can't take back when it breaks; it is something which literally could kill you. This government is to be commended for doing the work that the previous government didn't do. It is part of an overall strategy to lift the living standards of all Australians and to do it in a methodical and deliberate way, which stands in stark contrast to the utterly chaotic way the government was run under the now opposition. As I say, because of the philosophy that we have of investing in our people and in systems and our philosophy of managing properly—just as I would have learned in a construction company—it is important to get those details right.”
“I've often also said that, if criminals spent as much time being imaginative in a legitimate pursuit, then they would probably make more money than they would be in illegitimate pursuits. They made these counterfeit chainsaws, believe it or not, which were sold online for just a little bit cheaper than what you'd buy the genuine article for, to make it even more convincing. When they found one of these counterfeit chainsaws and unwrapped it, the safety handle actually snapped off as they were unwrapping the chainsaw. Extraordinarily, somebody almost got this into the country, and people would have been able to buy it. As I say, it's not just that gut-wrenching feeling that you would get when you realise that the Hermes bag you bought is not actually Hermes.”
“There was another example last year where counterfeit Labubu dolls—anybody who has a child would probably know exactly what a Labubu doll is. I'm not sure why anybody would want to counterfeit them, but they're attractive. Attractive may be looking like Labubu dolls perhaps, but when the child imagined—because of the poor stitching and because of the poor construction of these dolls, they broke apart. They would break apart literally in a child's mouth and become a choking hazard. There were examples where these dolls also contained harmful chemicals because of the way that they were constructed. There's another example where, amazingly, somebody thought about counterfeiting a STIHL chainsaw. You've got to hand it to organised crime to even come up with these things.”
“And so it is that, through this sort of work, the government is really getting on with the job that was left to us to do. The first point to make about this legislation is that it is not about somebody getting off the plane in Bali with a fake Hermes bag. That's not what this legislation is going to capture. Some of the examples are where organised crime and, effectively, illegal operators have brought in something—for example, Ozempic. There's one case study here where the TGA and Border Force intercepted fake Ozempic pens, believe it or not. They were stopped before they could reach consumers. But there was one case, reportedly, where an individual had used this Ozempic and almost died because it was full of insulin.”
“The one thing that I learned by running a business, which I don't think the member for Goldstein has ever done, is that there are two—in fact, I love the saying that you run a country like you run a company, because there are two ways to run a company. One is to invest in your plant and your people, and the other is to delay the maintenance, to strip out the profits and to run it into the ground. The latter is exactly what the opposition does. That's why, on detail like this, it was just left to go. It's not just on detail like this. It's their opposition to free TAFE. It's their opposition to bulk-billing. It's the fact that they don't want to invest in the people or the infrastructure of this country that has created the problem that we're dealing with now.”
“They have to take the civil action themselves—something which the estimate from the legal stakeholders who took part in this quite extensive consultation process estimated at somewhere between $200,000 and $500,000. And so this government is doing the right thing by relieving that burden, and we'll be able to fine the companies which are caught importing counterfeits, which is, as I say, something that industry and stakeholders have been calling for for years, but it is only this government that has been able to deliver it. As I say, it is typical of this government's philosophy and its managerial skills that we're able to do this.”
“I remember the consequences of their competitors doing exactly that. There was a job in Sydney where they were digging a hole next to a post office, and the wall collapsed. The post office started to move and the customers and the workers in the post office were fleeing for their lives as the glass was breaking all around them. That was an example of what happened when their product was poorly counterfeited and poorly installed. My job was to sit in those meetings with patent attorneys and with the lawyers to work out how to stop the competition. Because the only way to do it was through civil action, it would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to take that action, with no guarantee of there being success. That is the sort of example of what companies in Australia that have a trademark have to do under the current system.”
“They had this Australian designed, Australian-made, Australian installed product, which they had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars patenting and trademarking. By the time I came along, their business had been running for 20 years or so, and one of my jobs was to sit in the meetings with the patent attorneys and with the lawyers to try to work out how to stop the competition from ripping them off. They had the sheet-piling and, without going into too much engineering, they also had an anchoring system where they had this 20-centimetre-diameter screw head, which would tie into the sheets and pull them back into the ground as an anchor. They had these cowboys ripping them off and copying their exact design, but not only was it poorly counterfeited but it was also poorly installed.”
“Essentially, the idea is that if you need to dig a hole—say, to build a basement in a high-rise building—it's the shoring which is designed to stop the hole from falling in on itself. That's the theory—it doesn't always necessarily work in practice. Ian's son was Grant MacDonald—who I'd also like to give a shout out to. He was somebody who really understood the business. When you're working underground, the really good people get this sense about when the ground is moving, and Grant had that sense. Grant was so skilled in business and in construction that he took me under his wing and taught me so many things about business. They had actually developed this product which was designed by them, which had been tested at Griffith University and by a local engineering firm, Howl Engineering.”
“Ian Macdonald and Grant MacDonald took me under their wing and really showed me the ropes but then let me run the company as if it were my own. When I first met Ian, who was affectionately known as 'Macca', he was in many ways the quintessential Gold Coast entrepreneur—not the one that you might think of in the white shoe brigade, or the flashy type. This guy was really somebody that embodied small business. He was somebody that didn't holiday overseas, didn't eat out, drove the late-model car. When I met him, he was 70 and well and truly a character and a half. He was so passionate about this system that he had developed of sheet-piling—and, Deputy Speaker Boyce, with your engineering background you may have come across what sheet-piling is.”
“The thing that I really learned about business is that quite often the business person is not doing it for the money. As somebody put it to me once, the money is a way of keeping score. They do it because they've got this idea, they've got this passion for something which generally solves a problem in other people's lives or brings joy to other people. In many ways business is so fulfilling because the most fulfilling thing that you can do is make a contribution to your community. That's what good business people do. That's what good entrepreneurs do. So it was that that I ran a construction company in Beenleigh. When I say I ran the construction company, I didn't own it, so I regarded myself as chief lackey. There was one family in particular, the McDonalds, whom I would very much like to give a shout out to here today.”
“This bill very much deals with a commercial problem for business, but it also deals with a safety problem for consumers, as part of that philosophy that this government brings and part of that skilled management as well. I'd like to remind people that I came to this place after spending quite a lot of time in small business myself, having a contract mustering business, where I had a pack of dogs and a ute and a motorbike and the will to win. I would go around and help farmers muster their sheep and cattle. But, when we moved to the city 20 years ago, I ran a construction company in Beenleigh. When working in business—and that's why something like this is so important—people really put their heart and soul into creating a product and creating intellectual property.”
“We have a philosophy in this government that is about lifting up the living standards of people and making it easy for business to operate, but I think we also have a very sharp managerial edge to our team, where we are just methodical, calm and deliberate in that approach. Here we are dealing with what is really an insidious problem for small business but also an insidious problem for consumers, who have every right to expect that the product that they buy is genuine, quality, warrantable—they can take it back if the product needs repairing or is faulty in any way—and, most importantly, safe. This is not just about products which you might typically expect to be counterfeited. This is about medical devices. This is about children's toys, where the bits can break off in a baby's mouth.”
“I rise in support of the Customs Legislation Amendment (False Trade Marks Infringement Notices) Bill 2026 and, in doing so, congratulate the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs, who has done a lot of work to make this bill happen—a lot of work that is typical of this government's approach to getting on with the job and fixing up the mess that we were left with after so many years of the former government's neglect. This government is, in many ways, dealing with stuff, and in this case it is dealing with something which industry and stakeholders have been calling on for years. It is only this government that has been able to do it. That's because of two things.”
“We are working in lock step with the people from the disability community who this affects. I think that is the Labor way. It is unsurprising that it is only the Labor Party that is able to actually fix the NDIS and get it back on track. As I said, I'm pleased, despite the politicking that goes on, to know that the opposition in their hearts want to see it work, because I think the Australian community wants to see it work as well. But it's going to take a lot of effort, and it's going to take a lot of us working together to make it happen. This is not the beginning of the process to fix it, but it is an important step along the way. There is a lot more to be done. I commend this bill to the House.”
“Perhaps it was their ideological obsession with not employing public servants, outsourcing and trying to cut costs. We saw it in so many areas, whether it was 41,000 veterans waiting for their claims to be processed when we came to government, or whether it was robodebt and the heartache that was Centrelink. The NDIA also suffered that. I think that that is absolutely worth underlining. That's a stunning figure—that we review more claims every single day than the previous government reviewed in an entire year. This party was responsible for the birth of the NDIS. Unfortunately, we weren't there while it turned into a delinquent teenager. But we're back. We're back now. At the heart of this government's approach is what the disability community says, which is 'nothing about us without us'. That is the approach that we are taking.”
“If your plan is seen as not profitable because of the supports they'll need to provide, you won't be able to get that provider. So what sort of choice and control is that, when you're not actually able to choose your provider because the provider doesn't see you as profitable enough? The other thing I'd just say on fraud is that it is probably the central problem that the community has with the NDIS. This is the best example of where the opposition just completely took their hands off the wheel. This government is now reviewing more claims of fraud every single day than the previous government reviewed in a year. It is almost unbelievable that that is possible. It took investment; it took an investment in systems and it took an investment in people.”