Tom Venning
Grey · Liberal Party · Australia
“Residential burglaries, commercial property theft and daylight shoplifting have left citizens and business owners feeling completely helpless as crime targets every sector of this great regional community. Police statistics show the town is in the midst of a spate of burglaries, with 34 incidents recorded in the first half of June alone.”
“For the Port Augusta community, the most difficult part of this crime wave is what they view as a revolving door bail system for serious juvenile offenders and a lack of quality youth diversion programs in the region. Police can only do so much.”
“Mr Kean was personally chosen by the Prime Minister to lead the Climate Change Authority. It has now been revealed that he spent over $32,000 on one single trip to Brazil last year for an international climate conference.”
“Imagine sitting around the dining table with your family and telling them, 'We're going to spend more money than we receive every year for the next 10 years.' You wouldn't. In fact, you can't, yet that's exactly what this Labor government and this Treasurer are doing. To pay for this, they deploy toxic taxes, assaulting aspiration.”
“Labor cannot manage money, so they continue to come after yours. The average Australian's paying 39 per cent more tax under this government. Since Labor was elected, Australia suffered the biggest fall in living standards in the developed world.”
“It's lifting prices, inflating government charges and pushing hardworking Australians into paying more tax. While Labor profits from this inflation, their tax cuts do not keep up. At 70c a day, they won't even buy a cup of coffee a week.”
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“The Abbott government rightly repealed those restrictive principles. Now this bill makes dangerous amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing government to explicitly preference companies with enterprise agreements tied directly to employee organisations and unions. Currently, the Fair Work Act strictly prohibits discrimination against an employer during public procurement. This means no-one, literally not even the mighty Commonwealth, can legally prefer one company over another simply because it has a union affiliated enterprise agreement. This bill shatters that vital protection. It deliberately creates a massive exemption allowing the Commonwealth to aggressively preference employers whose employees are covered by a union covered enterprise agreement. Critically, this is shockingly one-directional.”
“We are yet to see any credible evidence to support these specific provisions, which is why they should be subject to a Senate inquiry. I turn to the most controversial, destructive part of this bill: the massive sweeping changes to government procurement preferencing. In the October budget, the government committed to establishing a secure jobs code. The consultation paper heavily hinted at radically altering public contracting. It suggested requiring entities to 'ensure that enterprise agreements used on government-funded projects are genuinely agreed'. Yet, since submissions closed in February, there has been absolute deafening silence—until now. The Gillard government introduced similar fair work principles in 2009, making compliance a condition for participation in procurement.”
“We also acknowledge the minor amendments such as updating the National Construction Industry Forum membership, providing travel allowances for the Road Transport Advisory Group and granting more time for the administrator of the CFMEU to prepare vital financial statements. However, we maintain deep reservations regarding the new standalone road transport contractor high-income threshold. These existing high-income thresholds deliberately exclude workers who are deemed to have sufficient bargaining power to seamlessly manage their own commercial arrangements outside of the strictly regulated statutory industrial safety net. Creating an industry-specific carve out purely for road transport contractors effectively pulls a defined class of independent commercial contractors unwillingly back into the complex Fair Work system.”
“The bill powerfully allows the commission to dismiss unfair deactivation and unfair termination applications where they are demonstrated to be frivolous or vexatious or clearly have no reasonable prospects of success. Crucially, it allows the commission to make orders preventing relentless litigants from making further specified applications once their substantive application has already been decisively dismissed, preventing a massive waste of public resources. Furthermore, the bill allows the commission to intelligently decide certain contested matters strictly on the papers without holding formal contested hearings. This saves valuable time and money while rigorously preserving procedural fairness, provided that both involved parties explicitly consent.”
“This made the entire process considerably slower, highly formal and excruciatingly expensive. The president estimates that about 600 cases a year now suffer through this delayed process. The amendments here sensibly clarify the position, allowing the commission to reduce unnecessary preliminary legal arguments and to genuinely help parties resolve disputes efficiently. The bill also practically creates a framework for the president to delegate certain procedural powers in unresolved dismissal and unlawful termination disputes to senior commission staff, which is of course helpful. This allows many simple admin tasks to be handled swiftly, allowing matters to proceed to consent, arbitration or court.”
“The procurement provisions risk pushing union covered agreements straight through Commonwealth contracting and cascading brutally down the entire supply chain. Let me outline the specific Fair Work Commission reforms that we do support. Up until the consequential court case involving Coles Supply Chain and Milford, the normal way the commissioner conducted general protections or unlawful termination cases was to proceed straight to the early dispute resolution stage. Even if an employer vehemently claimed there'd been no dismissal, the commission did not need to formally resolve these complex disputes upfront immediately. Milford disastrously changed this procedure, resulting in the commission having to deal with threshold jurisdictional legal obligations first.”
“The bill must be split: pass the Fair Work Commission reforms immediately, and separately scrutinise the procurement bargaining provisions. Commonwealth procurement should always be based on value for money, capability and compliance with the law, not on whether it's a union. It should never be based on whether a business has signed the preferred industrial instrument of the Labor Party's militant union mates. We have seen exactly what happens when procurement policy is ruthlessly used to advantage union controlled arrangements. It inevitably risks higher costs for taxpayers, significantly reduced market competition and a highly toxic pay-to-play workplace culture. This culture actively entrenches corruption and maliciously shouts out lawful, hardworking businesses.”
“We have the absolute textbook definition of 'wedge-islation'. The government has explicitly warned that legislative changes were desperately needed to address the Fair Work Commission workload crisis, but they deliberately bundled these sensible reforms with extreme ideological procurement amendments they fully knew the coalition would never support. Because, of course, the coalition supports practical, common sense reforms that help the Fair Work Commission deal with this crippling workload. We fundamentally believe that justice delayed is justice denied. However, the government should not use sensible commission reforms as a convenient cover for passing entirely unrelated, highly damaging, radical union-centric procurement and contracting changes. Our demand is simple, and it is reasonable.”
“In his very first press conference as Prime Minister he sanctimoniously declared he 'looked forward to leading a government that makes Australians proud, one that does not seek to divide or wedge, but seeks to bring people together peacefully.' In his very first caucus address, he stated Labor wanted to be inclusive, claiming: The former government sat around and talked about how to wedge the other side of politics. As opposition leader, he constantly accused the coalition of trying to promote 'wedge-islation'. He claimed we were 'a government in search of an agenda'—always looking for division, never looking for unity. He was in the media claiming he wanted to bring people together after a decade of division. He repeated this exact same script ad nauseam. Yet, exactly what do we have before us here today in this parliament?”
“Genuine scrutiny will clearly expose that this is a complete love-in with the unions. Just as we saw with Labor's massive industrial relations agenda last term, they are up to their exact same old trick again—ramming bad legislation through our parliament. What's new? Now while the coalition supports the vast majority of the practical elements within this bill, Labor have deliberately shoehorned in bad faith provisions, essentially forcing the opposition into a position where we must oppose it. The hypocrisy from the Prime Minister on this issue is staggering. Let us look at his own words regarding what he famously called 'wedge-islation'.”
“It was supposedly moved to enable members to attend yesterday evening's solemn ceremony at the War Memorial and yet it conveniently contained a series of gags on highly controversial legislation. When the manager and deputy manager of opposition business rightfully tried to move amendments, Labor mercilessly gagged the debate. The Leader of the House's motion means debate on the second reading is abruptly cut off at 5.30. This is undemocratic. Furthermore, it aggressively limits debate on the consideration in detail stage, allowing the maximum time of a mere 10 minutes per detailed amendment. Consideration in detail is precisely when we get to apply the blowtorch to the technical elements of a bill but we will not get to do that here. Why? Because the Labor Party fundamentally does not want parliamentary scrutiny.”
“They favour big businesses who can afford massive compliance departments, and they overwhelmingly favour the union bosses who fund their campaigns. Speaking of which, you have to marvel at the enduring romance between the Labor Party and the CFMEU. It is truly the great love story. Romeo and Juliet had Verona; Labor and the CFMEU have construction sites and slush funds. They are like a couple who keeps breaking up in public, deleting the photos off Instagram but then secretly texting each other late at night when the campaign bills are due. Yesterday, the Labor Party rammed through a motion which effectively guillotines debate on this profoundly consequential bill. The suspension motion itself is a pathetic, cynical wedge.”
“Here is more legislation from this Labor government. The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 is the government's response to a surging backlog at the Fair Work Commission. Officially, it's about the concept of cooperative workplaces. But let us be honest—beneath these necessary administrative fixes lies a union agenda. Separately, this bill makes aggressive amendments to the Fair Work Act, allowing the Commonwealth to actively preference companies that hold enterprise agreements with unions in government contracting. These reforms are unlinked. One is an administrative necessity; the other is a brazen ideological stitch up by Labor. This is classic Labor.”
“Our plan is for a freer, fairer and better Australia. We will restore standards of living, protect the Australian way of life and firmly fix migration to the number of homes built, because that is common sense. The answer is lower interest rates, lower inflation, rising real wages and more opportunity for all, not more tax. We believe in Australia where hard work is rewarded. Australians deserve affordable homes, a stronger economy and a true tax relief, but Labor has failed on every single front. To borrow a now infamous line from the Prime Minister, 'For the 50th time, stop playing politics and axe these toxic taxes.'”
“The Greens are now demanding new changes to stop people buying investment properties through self-managed super funds. This is absolutely absurd. This is not fixing a mess; it is adding another tax to everyday Australians who simply want to save, invest and plan for their own future. These taxes were bad enough, but if Labor does this deal it will be completely disastrous. Labor should stop negotiating with the Greens. These taxes need an axe, not a deal. If these taxes are bad enough for Labor to run away from, they are bad enough to scrap right now. But there is an alternative. The coalition has a credible plan for real change with no backflips, no flip-flops, no changed positions and no broken promises. We would never deliver lower taxes for smaller businesses, and we will give Australians automatic tax cuts every year.”
“By increasing capital gains tax, Labor will chill investment in startups, with cash likely to funnel into large companies that do not need it. Investors, savers, tradies, farmers and families trying to build a nest egg or buy a home will all suffer. By taking away earnings, we reduce the amount of liquid capital these people will have available to spend in our economy. It is that simple. Even the budget papers show that these taxes will suppress housing supply, meaning fewer homes built and higher rents. If that is not enough, the Prime Minister is now bargaining with the Greens to make these toxic taxes even worse. And we all know how deals with the Greens are done—with more tax, more complexity and much more pain during a brutal cost-of-living crisis.”
“If you could not trust Labor on tax a month ago, you certainly can't trust them now. The fake small business carve-out is a sham. Nine out of 10 small businesses will get nothing, with Labor now wanting Canberra bureaucrats to decide which businesses are innovative and which ones are not. Does that include a sparkie, or a hairdresser? I don't think so. It is impressively vague and gives the government dangerous powers to pick winners and punish everyone else. The truth is that small businesses innovate every day just to survive. More complexity does not fix bad policy; an axe does. Make no mistake, Labor is putting handcuffs on those who aspire to get ahead. They are putting a ceiling on ambition when what Australia really needs is more investment, more productivity and reward for effort.”
“After this week's antics, it is now pretty obvious what Labor's favourite party trick is. It has to be the old-fashioned backflip. In fact, I could see the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in the 10-metre synchro in LA 2028. They've flipped so many times on taxes, the Australian public are getting dizzy. The least they can do is bring home some gold for the nation. Just a month after the Treasurer handed down his budget, it is already in tatters. The Prime Minister told us these tax hikes were so important that he had to break his promise. Now he's poking so many holes in their own failed policies that the budget is starting to look like a piece of Swiss cheese. Australians were clearly told Labor would not touch capital gains, negative gearing, trusts, super or stage 3 tax cuts. Labor broke those promises.”
“We desperately need performance based contracts where builders guarantee their work instead of taxpayers footing the bill when a road fails after two years. I say to this government: keep your shiny new bike paths, keep your connected communities, keep your e-bike access, keep your emissions reduction targets, and when a boilermaker in Roxby Downs works out exactly how to secure a plasma cutter and an ARC welder to an e-bike I'll be the very first to let you know.”
“Instead of fixing the roads, the Albanese government has delivered cuts and confusion for our local road networks. This has been amplified by the 80-20 funding split shifting to a fifty-fifty model with the states—absolutely outrageous. South Australia's supplementary road funding has been frozen since 2017, silently cut by inflation, while councils struggle heavily under the immense weight of maintaining vital regional road network freight routes and key local roads. We have some small victories. Following strong local advocacy, we secured disaster recovery funding for flood damaged roads across remote councils from Ceduna to Coober Pedy to Quorn. It proves we can fight for our fair share. But should we have to fight? Emergency relief is just a temporary bandaid on a systematic failure.”
“At Braemar Station, Leesa Breeding tells me, they have gone without mail for extended periods because Australia Post cannot access the officially closed roads. Up in Anna Creek, Tony, a northern pastoralist, notes that 10 years ago they had five road gangs operating two graders; now it's just one service crew, which services 10,000 kilometres of outback roads. And what was the government's solution to these fundamental failures? Drop the regional speed limit to 80 kilometres an hour! Thankfully, that nonsense came and it went. But maybe they have a better idea now, and maybe this motion gives us some insight into what that is. Perhaps they want us all to ride bicycles! That will surely drop the road toll and make even the worst roads somewhat passable!”
“I, myself, drive road trains, and I welcome any member of this government or any bureaucrat from the infrastructure department to come and sit in the truck with me and drive on our roads in our electorate. There are numerous unsafe roads. I want to call out a few of them: the Flinders Highway on the west coast and pretty much any road on the Lower Yorke Peninsula, or any road in the Adelaide Plains. And it's not just me saying this. A Clare constituent recently told me that the Cattle Track Road is beyond a joke. They drive on the wrong side of the road just to avoid the dozens of deep potholes. There's the Augusta Highway, Highway 1; Robin, a truckie from Booleroo Centre, is disgusted that an upgraded section started falling apart after just six months. And you know what? It's the same in the outback too.”
“Imagine the sheer fitness of our rural workforce if they just cycled down the Oodnadatta Track for their morning commute! I mean, 2028 Olympics here we come! But the reality is that, for regional South Australians, road infrastructure is no laughing matter at all. While Labor throws half a billion bucks at bike lanes, our regional road network is crumbling. On mainland Australia, South Australia receives the lowest federal road funding per kilometre. And I tell you what: it shows. My constituents are not asking for dedicated cycling infrastructure to get to work; they want roads that are actually passable. Here is what is happening in the real world.”
“I rise to speak on the government's motion commending the Active Transport Fund—$600 million for bike paths and walking trails, to 'support the Australian government's commitment to reducing transport emissions and support active and liveable communities'. Well, that sounds amazing. I have read this motion, and I must ask the government: have they ever looked at a map of the electorate of Grey? It covers 92 per cent of South Australia. The only way we stay connected is by phone, satphone, car, truck, chopper or aeroplane. Under this fund, I suppose the government expects pastoralists to ditch their utes, strap a haybale on the mountain bike and make their way down to feed the cattle. I mean, our farmers are tough, but this is just ridiculous.”
“Chinese manufacturers account for 70 per cent of the home battery market, while 80 per cent of new EV arrivals are also built in China. Shouldn't we be worried? Even the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, was warned by his own department to take precautions, while driving his own Chinese EV, to protect the secrets of our nation. What are we doing here? The current flood of electric vehicles is not a miracle of the free market or of good policy. It is aggressive Chinese product dumping, and we need to get a handle on it. (Time expired)”
“This is the truth of this prime minister and minister for climate change and energy's net zero pipedream: it punishes Australians and enriches the Chinese Communist Party. Just as it was with solar panels which are produced in China, with our metals and our resources, and sold back to us, so it is with electric vehicles. Half of all cars sold between now and 2035 have to be EVs to meet our net zero target. That won't happen. But at this rate China will become very, very rich from it. Cybersecurity experts warn that the rapid uptake of these foreign devices actively places our critical infrastructure at risk of international hijack. In more ways than one, Labor's current policies are fundamentally at odds with national security imperatives as they pertain to China.”
“It was because of the crisis in Iran and the lack of confidence that Australians have in this government's ability to manage the crisis but also because the domestic electric vehicle sales in China dropped by four per cent. So, to aggressively offset their softer local sales, Chinese manufacturers are leaning much harder into overseas markets. The Americans aren't taking their cars, so they're bringing them to Australia. Consequently, Chinese brands now account for 57 per cent of the EV market in Australia, up from 33 per cent just last year. This state backed product dumping is rapidly destroying genuine fair competition. They're dumping to take over the market and are being paid handsomely for doing so.”
“Until the energy density of batteries can be comparable to hydrocarbons, batteries will remain unfit for purpose in industrial applications and in long distance transport, particularly in regional communities. EVs are not fit for purpose, and it is completely unacceptable that Labor's family car tax and ute tax subsidise city based doctors and lawyers at the expense of tradies who need that ute to perform their task or that farmer who needs that tractor to do their job. My focus is also on the deeply concerning influx of Chinese electric vehicles and cheap Chinese batteries. We must honestly ask why these vehicles are suddenly so affordable, and it is not simply because of the self-professed brilliance of Labor-Greens policies. Chinese vehicle exports surged by 69 per cent in May. Why?”
“I remain highly critical of their limited application in regional and industrial settings because heavy electric transport trucks, mining trucks, tractors and regional passenger transport face massive logistical limitations, and crucial charging infrastructure remains a vast, unresolved barrier for regional communities. Take me, for example. As the member for Grey, I drive about 100,000 kilometres a year. Could I perform this job in an EV? Absolutely not. With the range alone—going from Port Lincoln to Ceduna, Ceduna to Whyalla, Whyalla to Coober Pedy—I couldn't even get to those communities, let alone find a charger along the way. To cut a long story short—this is not revolutionary—they simply do not work in the bush and won't work for some time.”
“Let's be very clear. The recent uptick in EV consumption in the last couple of months is because the Australian people do not trust this prime minister and this energy minister to manage the crisis in Iran. This government has worked aggressively to move primarily metropolitan Australians into electric cars. But at what cost? Electric vehicles have an excellent application in our modern cities, especially due to regenerative braking, and will continue to become more widespread. However, we must ground this argument and this debate in physics and engineering, not ideology.”
“We must protect our domestic production at all costs. Australia needs a national import quality taskforce to stop foreign dumping. We should offer royalty discounts for companies that produce 100 per cent Australian made—Aussies backing Aussies. We must back our manufacturers now. We must secure our energy future. We must reclaim our sovereignty, and build a prosperous, secure nation for the future.”
“If you want to see this government's true priorities, look at the budget. They allocate a paltry amount to help small businesses navigating complex IR disputes, yet they happily hand out millions of dollars of taxpayer money to continue propping up union administration. The compliance burden of tax and reg law falls on small businesses with the same weight as on big businesses. They do not have large HR and legal teams. The fight to save Australian manufacturing and reclaim our national sovereignty means we must challenge these sorts of policies that leave us vulnerable to foreign imports. Regional industries are not seeking a handout. They just want a level playing field. Without immediate policy intervention to address the energy disparity and the lack of import standards, we risk even more industrial decline.”
“South Australia is the classic example. You see, Labor governs for big unions and big city projects, leaving regional South Australian businesses out in the cold. Look no further than the impending payday super changes rolling out on 1 July. The government attempts to frame this as a simple administrative update. But for a smaller manufacturer in Port Lincoln or Moonta, it is a sudden, brutal drain on their cash flow. Super is absolutely critical, and all employees are entitled to it. That is not up for debate. But, under this new scheme, money will leave businesses much sooner, fundamentally altering their working capital, at a time when they are being battered with energy costs. And what specific support measures has government offered to help cash-poor businesses adjust? Absolutely none.”
“When the price of energy goes up, everything goes up: the cost of producing a coke can, the cost of your protein in the supermarket or the cost of processing your recycling. If energy is cheap, we create a prosperous nation. In South Australia, we have the highest energy prices in the developed world. If you want a prosperous and secure Australia, we must unleash our own energy resources to reduce these crippling costs. We need reliable and firm base-load power for our manufacturers to remain competitive. We'll put an end to green energy rent seeking. We will bring down power prices by backing all technologies that can deliver affordable and reliable energy. Labor put all their eggs into the wind and solar basket, and they're proving to be the most unreliable and expensive energy in the developed world.”
“Labor has comprehensively lost touch, and Minister Bowen must put Australians first. After wasting $150 million to host a climate conference in another country, he's handing even more taxpayer money to foreign governments trying to make a buck out of green energy projects on our soil. Meanwhile, families and businesses are still waiting for the promise of a $275 reduction in their power bills. Minister, where is it? When we talk about energy, people only think about the energy in their homes—their air conditioners and the lights in their rooms. Household electricity consumption is less than 10 per cent of this nation's energy consumption; the rest is industry and transport.”
“Our nation was built on industry: makers, doers, builders and manufacturers. South Australia was the manufacturing capital of this nation. Melbourne was textiles, Sydney was finance and South Australia was the manufacturing heart of this country. Today it remains our sixth largest industry, producing $137 billion of value added output, employing 390,000 people, from big businesses like the smelter in Port Pirie and the steelworks in Whyalla to family operations like Sharman's in Long Plains. We in regional South Australia produce high-value goods using cutting-edge processes. But, in 2026, most manufacturers are no longer with us, and those remaining are fighting to stay alive. Under this Labor government, we are witnessing a complete disconnect between the Treasury benches and the daily reality facing our regional businesses.”
“They hit hardworking tradies, farmers and regional families having a real crack, trying to build a nest egg and get ahead in life. Enough is enough. We will deliver lower taxes for small businesses and give Aussies automatic tax relief every single year to restore our standards of living. The coalition has a solution, and it's pretty simple. The time has come to axe Labor's taxes and start again.”
“Labor's toxic taxes do not need a carve out; they need an axe. Just a month after budget night, their policies are already in tatters. The Prime Minister swore blind that he would not touch super, capital gains, negative gearing or tax cuts, but he completely broke his word. If you couldn't trust Labor last month, you surely can't trust them now on these changes. After weeks of backlash, they are now poking holes in their own mess, letting bureaucrats pick which businesses are worthy. Well, come out to the regions. Tell that to the local sparky, the dairy farmer or the family running the corner bakery. Out in the country, every small business has to innovate daily just to keep the lights on and survive. Labor's complex new rules are punishing the exact people who keep this country moving forward.”
“Kapunda lost its services two months ago, and my community fears these temporary closures will become permanent. I want to assure my constituents that I have demanded the state Labor government outline its long-term strategy immediately, but this is not just a state failure. I'm putting federal Labor and SA's own Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, on notice today. You must stop burying your heads in the sand. Our workforce crisis is crippling our regional healthcare networks, and the silence from Canberra is deafening. Minister Butler needs to step up, intervene and work with the state to deliver genuine solutions for our regional communities. Regional mothers deserve safe, consistent care, not empty promises and closed doors. The hardworking citizens of regional South Australia demand and deserve so much more than this neglect.”
“Under Labor, households have endured a 36 per cent increase in energy prices since 2022, and over 18,000 households are on energy hardship programs. This failure to lower power prices directly threatens the very survival of energy-intensive regional employers like the Whyalla steelworks and the Port Pirie smelter. With a South Australian based federal health minister, you'd think regional SA would get some support in the health space. Wrong! The decision to divert birthing services from Jamestown and Crystal Brook to Port Pirie until July 2026 has shaken my electorate. Expecting mothers are worried. They are being forced to travel over an hour to give birth, stripping away their long-established relationships with their local midwives and destroying continuity of care.”
“Cutting these grants directly hinders young, aspiring rural athletes, and it is families who will take the hardest hit, right when rising costs are already hurting their hip pockets. Regional families are also suffering because this government cannot properly manage our economy. That is clear. Inflation data confirms that regional South Australia is being left behind. South Australia recorded the highest monthly inflation increase of any mainland state, maintaining an annual inflation rate of 4.6 per cent. The minister claims renewable energy is driving down power bills, but this is a complete fantasy in my electorate. South Australia has 80 per cent wind and solar penetration in the grid, yet, depending on how this metric is used, we suffer the most expensive power bills in the developed world.”
“They need full momentum and growth to plan their long-term futures in this town. These living standards and this regional neglect bleed into our community sport, where Labor delivered a devastating $182 million blow to grassroots. Ignoring expert advice, the government is slashing ongoing funding to vital programs like Sporting Schools, Local Para Champions and Local Sporting Champions. They are gutting the sports grants budget from $331 million down to just $151 million. Local sport is the heartbeat of regional South Australia. It keeps our country towns united. Olympic champions like Kyle Chalmers and Dean Lukin from Port Lincoln started their sporting journeys in local clubs.”
“This is the first time in Australian history where the next generation of Australians will be worse off than their parents. It's absolutely outrageous. The overarching theme of this Albanese Labor government is also undeniable regional neglect. Consider the Nyrstar smelter in Port Pirie. Finally, we welcomed a $150 million transitionary package from the federal and state governments. This was a sigh of relief for this resilient community, but why were our proud smelter workers and their families left in a state of limbo for over a month? Furthermore, the previous package expired on 1 May, yet the minister for industry only found time to brief my office in early June. These delays are worrying. The hardworking people of Port Pirie must never endure another period of cruel uncertainty.”
“I urge the government to start allocating resources to address these very real problems before it is too late. Five students from Whyalla have done something truly remarkable. Eli Coppins, Caelan Kaminski, Simon Coppins, Shannon Bayogos and Karman Randhawa will be representing the electorate of Grey on the world stage at the H2 Grand Prix World Finals in Switzerland. How incredible is that!”
“If the South Australian Mental Health Commissioner can acknowledge that Coober Pedy is in desperate need of help, then why is it so hard for this government to do the same? If we can hear the alarm bell raised by local leaders in rural and remote areas of South Australia, why does this government block its ears? The sad reality is that these communities have been left behind and pushed into a crime and mental health crisis. If mental health outcomes in these areas continue to deteriorate, there'll be more crime, more violence and more people being pushed into our crumbling public health system. Crime and antisocial behaviour are destroying these once thriving regional communities. I stand with the families, business owners and local leaders and regional towns like Ceduna, Port Augusta, Streaky Bay and Coober Pedy.”
“This grants SA Police expanded temporary powers to search and move people out of the Ceduna CBD to ensure public safety. But it's not just Ceduna where crime and antisocial behaviour are spiralling out of control. Home invasions and street violence in Port Augusta are placing enormous pressure on police and local services. Suicide rates are way too high in Streaky Bay, where there is a constant shortage of mental health workers. Currently, it's up to our incredible volunteers to do all the heavy lifting, and they are burnt out. All of these issues are rearing their head in the far north in places like Coober Pedy. Things are so out of hand in Coober Pedy that the mental health commissioner was compelled to visit on 27 May. I am told by the SA Mental Health Commissioner that services are stretched and problems are escalating.”
“I rise today to raise the alarm on behalf of my struggling regional communities experiencing crime, anti-social behaviour and poor mental health. I've had 27 letters plus harrowing videos sent to me mostly from Ceduna businesses, all of which tell me they're on the brink of closing. Here are some examples: People are intentionally stealing stock and abusing staff members. Another remarked: Never seen so much shoplifting and anti-social behaviour in my life. Many— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:02 to 12:11 Many indicated that they used to leave the door open, but now they have to lock it, and the list goes on and on. The antisocial conduct has been so concerning that the CBD has been designated by SA Police as a declared shopping precinct.”
“Labor face a simple test: will they vote for our tax back guarantee, delivering bigger and better tax cuts for working Australians, or will they vote to keep taking more money from Australians? Australians are doing it tough. Power bills are up. Groceries cost more. Housing costs more. Families are working harder but too often feel like they're standing still. At a time like this, government shouldn't be benefiting from bracket creep and quietly taking a bigger share of people's pay packets. Our tax back guarantee is simple: if Australians work harder and earn more money, they should keep more of what they earn.”
“Only yesterday, the Mayor of Adelaide—sorry, the Premier of South Australia was spruiking the expansion of out-of-school-hours care, OSHC. At the same time, OSHC was closed down in Stirling North and Quorn. Despite operators working closely with the Department of Education, there was no meaningful intervention—no workers, no support, no solution. Regional Australia continues to be treated as an afterthought. Now, families who depend on these services have been left scrambling. In the regions, alternatives do not exist. People lean on grandparents, friends and family to fill the gap that government refused to. That's not a system; that's abandonment. State and federal Labor must do better and work with locals, councils and departments to find a solution to help these communities.”
“That can only go so far. Insurance is going up, rego is going up, even my mobile phone bills are going up. His conclusion is one that many business owners share today: You can't forecast, you can't plan ahead, and you can't get ahead. This is the reality for people on the ground. Now we want them to adhere to a new superannuation system—talk about totally out of touch. The rules of the economy are rigged against the self-starters. The compliance burden of industrial relations law, tax law and regulatory law falls on small businesses with the same weight as it does on big businesses. But small businesses do not have the HR departments, the legal teams or the lobbyists. Labor can't manage money, so they're coming after yours.”