Bush Telegraph July/Aug 2018

ISSUE 8

“Defending families, farms and small business”

$327M RFDS Funding

Banking Royal Commission

Regional Airfares Inquiry

Drought Relief

JULY/AUGUST 2018

Dear friends and colleagues, We are drawing ever closer to the next Federal election campaign and our focus is squarely on the achievements of our government to date and the challenges confronting the nation in the coming years.

Our government has taken a long term view for fiscal repair and rejuvenation which is the only responsible option to ensure the next generations do not pay the price for irresponsible and short sighted actions by a former government during the global crisis of 2008.

But to lay a solid foundation, we must fully understand the depth of the challenges confronting our most integral institutions.

As such, the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry has become among the biggest public policy stories of 2018.

My road towards playing a significant role in establishing this inquiry was never an easy one.

I worked closely alongside the late Noeline Ikin during the 2013 federal campaign on banking and rural debt load issues.

The second ever speech I delivered on the Senate floor – following my maiden speech – was a call to action from the banking sector to address its corporate culture and work more closely with landholders and small business operators to ensure fair play.

In the subsequent years I held numerous meetings with senior banking officials both in parliament house as well as the banking headquarters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

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I also travelled extensively across rural Australia where the issue of banking culture was repeatedly raised at my public meetings.

Alongside my good friend Senator John ‘Wacka’ Williams – another outspoken advocate for a Royal Commission – we went in to bat for multiplies of family owned enterprises who had first-hand experience with these culture issues among the financial corporates.

From the moment I began discussing some sort of significant inquiry, I was buoyed by the strong support I received from constituents and colleagues.

I would especially like to thank my friends George Christensen, Llew O’Brien, Keith Pitt and many others.

The right decision is not always the easiest one, but I also must pay tribute to the Prime Minister for not only committing to a Royal Commission but also developing a strong raft of policies that will ensure this fundamental pillar of our economy is best placed to service the Australian people for many decades to come.

From the parched lands in Western Queensland to the corridors of Parliament House, I hope you find this read to be an insight into my work in recent months.

Until next time,

BARRY.

THE BUSH TELEGRAPH WITH SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN – JULY / AUGUST 2018 EDITION

Speaking to party members

ASBESTOS SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 22 MARCH 2018 Indeed, this notice of motion by Senator Hanson raises a very important issue. I’m a child of the 1950s.

Those of us who, sadly, remember back that far know now of this hazard. As a child, we would play with asbestos. It made terrific swords, and you won the fight when you struck the other child’s sword and broke it in two—releasing, I imagine, millions of these fibres into the atmosphere and certainly within close proximity to where you were.

I want to deal with Senator Hanson’s motion in three parts, if I might, because, as you read it, it is itself in three parts. She notes the urgent need to establish an effective, safe means of eradicating asbestos from our community —and I’ll deal with that separately to the issue of what happens with the disposal of this commodity—and the talk of coordinating a national asbestos management and disposal plan. Let me finish with that.

Senator Hanson is right to suggest that per capita we’re up in the top percentage of countries whose citizens are exposed to this terrible condition resulting from inhaling asbestos, and there’s a reason for that.

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The reason is that, per capita, we used more asbestos in our building industry than almost every other country on earth. It was a revolutionary product of its time.

There are two types of asbestos. There’s an A type and a B type, but both of them were introduced to this country in the postwar period. Again, you can still see evidence as you move around our country of

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what a revolutionary building material it was. It went into every aspect of construction in this country. We clearly were clueless, as a nation, about the potential problem. We built entire schools out of asbestos and asbestos related material. We built all of our homes out of it. Again, I refer back to when it was a very common practice for children to play with asbestos and punch an asbestos wall. That was when you knew you were tough and ready; you could punch a hole through an asbestos wall—and hope you didn’t get the stud. It took me a while to find out that you should look for the line of nails before you threw the big right cross! Nonetheless, it was a very common practice.

But this is a very serious issue, as raised by Senator Hanson. On the question of establishing an effective, safe means of eradicating asbestos,

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this government has taken a very strong approach to this. Senator Hanson referred to the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Council, ASEC. As an aside, the government has just doubled the funding for this organisation. This council—I think there are nine members on it, from memory—is designed to provide advice to government and to the states and local government. It’s a national resource to provide a focus on asbestos issues that go ‘beyond workplace safety to encompass environmental and public health’ issues.

So it is unfair to say, as her motion suggests, that this government—and I’m sure there were measures under the previous government—has not established an effective, safe means of eradicating asbestos from our community. That’s happening.

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I know from some experience—and I hope all of my colleagues on the other side listen carefully when I say I have no business interest any longer. I was at some stage involved in quite comprehensive business exposure in construction, which many times included the removal of asbestos and asbestos products. I can tell you that there are no other products—other than solids that come from the liquid waste industry—that require such protection when they’re being removed and buildings are being dismantled. The whole site has to be sealed off so that there can be no airborne transfer of these invisible fibres. The asbestos products, where possible, are wet and soaked to minimise the release of fibres in demolitions and in the removal of the material. It can only be done by professionals, so tradespeople who haven’t got the special qualifications cannot be involved in this procedure.

THE REASON IS THAT, PER CAPITA, WE USED MORE ASBESTOS IN OUR BUILDING INDUSTRY THAN ALMOST EVERY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH. IT WAS A REVOLUTIONARY PRODUCT OF ITS TIME. This asbestos is taken and seal-wrapped. Only certain vehicles are allowed to carry hazardous waste when there is more than 10 cubic metres of the material. It’s taken off to a facility where it is dealt with according to the processes available generally through local government.

Apart from the establishment of this national resource, the regulation around dealing with asbestos products and the removal of them is largely a state responsibility. I often dislike it when others hide behind what the states need to do and what federal responsibilities are, but this area is largely covered by by-laws and regulations of local governments. The overall workplace health and safety requirements to deal with the protection of workers, and the safe and effective removal and transporting of this material and its disposal, are state government responsibilities. So I think it is unfair that Senator Hanson’s motion notes ‘an urgent need to establish an effective, safe means of eradicating asbestos from our community,’ because I think ASEC does that. It’s a competent body.

be much better than the existing practices— thermochemical conversion—they would ignore that.

These people have no stake in these matters, other than to provide the three tiers of government, and others, with the very best advice possible out there. I remain satisfied. I would need to know more about it.

I don’t want to challenge Senator Hanson in relation to thermochemical conversion, because it seems she has spent some time in coming to understand the technology, but I would urge her, at the earliest possible opportunity, to present what she knows of that technology to ASEC, because I imagine they would be willing to assess the potential of the technology and then recommend to governments accordingly. In fact, I would be somewhat surprised if they weren’t already aware of the potential of that process for use.

The motion calls on the government to coordinate a national asbestos management and disposal plan.

Again, this is some of the work of ASEC—that’s one of their responsibilities—so this element of the motion is already dealt with. Senator Hanson may have a view, based on what she knows, that she doesn’t think they’re doing a terribly good job of that. There is no evidence before me that that’s the case. My inquiries, as I prepared for this, suggested that they are a very well respected body across all tiers of government.

Their work is progressive. They are continuing to look. Indeed, as a result of recommendations they’ve made from their own due diligence and applying the science to this, there have already been massive improvements around the way that asbestos management is dealt with in this country and, indeed, asbestos is disposed of.

Senator Hanson-Young—Senator Hanson, I should say. I suspect I could have offended two senators at once there! Senator Hanson is right to say that we should take every available measure to minimise the amount of material that goes into landfill, particularly

It’s made up of experts. It’s very well funded. As I said earlier, it has now has had its funding doubled. And it is a national resource.

So this is not something that is required to trickle down through federal or state or local governments.

All of those bodies and identities can rely upon ASEC for information. They are a cast of professionals who are determined to do whatever is at their disposal in terms of advancing sciences to deal with this. I think it would be unfair to suggest that, confronted with the potential of a new technology that would

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hazardous material and material that has long life, as would be the case, I suspect, with asbestos. I’ve got to say, the other side of the chamber, when they were in government, paid a lot of attention to this, as has our government and as we all continue to do.

There has been massive progress with respect to the management of hazardous waste and, in fact, material that goes into landfill over recent decades.

This government and previous governments have spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars supporting technologies and practices to do with transfer stations where waste goes. Putting hazardous waste aside for a moment, that waste is separated in looking for the potential to recycle it, even if it’s not cost-effective to recycle it, as is the case with many types of waste.

Senator Hanson is right to point out that, if there is any measure whatsoever that would allow us to deal with waste, particularly hazardous waste, in a way that neutralised the hazard of the waste, it should be undertaken. But it wouldn’t make sense for organisations such as ASEC, which have been formed specifically with this intent, to act as she suggests.

They’ve got no position to protect, other than their reputation at doing the work, determining best processes, technical and otherwise, and providing that contemporary advice to all levels of government and other industries in this country.

THIS GOVERNMENT AND PREVIOUS GOVERNMENTS HAVE SPENT HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGIES AND PRACTICES TO DO WITH TRANSFER STATIONS WHERE WASTE GOES.

contamination in our waters. We spend billions of dollars on our environment, supported by everybody, to try and protect our environment as best as we can.

When I hear that there is a process and I hear that we have a specialist professional body whose job it is to scour the planet to try and find the best possible practices and technologies to deal with the scourge of this terrible, terrible thing that produces mesothelioma, to me it denies logic that technology exists that has not been adopted.

Sometimes the adoption of technologies can be slower than one would like, particularly when you’ve got something as serious as this. You have to be absolutely certain that the technology is foolproof and that, in being applied to deal with a serious problem, it does not create another serious problem.

As undesirable as it may be that it is in landfill, if that is the best way to protect our citizens from this terrible plight, then that’s what needs to happen.

I don’t want to challenge the views that Senator Hanson has formed on this, because I don’t have the information before me. Accordingly, I say to Senator Hanson: if she has empirical evidence—academic studies or trials from the United States or any other developed nation where they’ve paid attention and stuck to the scientific principles when they’ve looked at these matters—she ought to take it directly to ASEC so they are be able to assess it. I’m certain that they’d be prepared to correspond with her and brief her if they’ve already done some assessment.

Senator Hanson, I extend an invitation to you here, through my speech: I’ll come with you. If you’ve got a body of academic evidence or industrial evidence that supports this as a commercially sound and superior method to deal with this terrible commodity, then I will come with you. We will go to see them together, and, as colleagues know, I won’t blink when

There has been a massive amount of work done to ensure that there are no asbestos products coming into this nation now. About two years ago, I recall a visit to a facility on an unrelated matter in Brisbane. It was a transit centre for goods that are both exported and imported. The principal of the company was showing me massive amounts of product in there. It looked perfectly all right to me—motorbikes, motor vehicles and other commodities that had been sitting in their facility for months and, in some cases, years. It was there because small traces—in some cases, very small traces—of asbestos had been detected. I am not even in a position to tell you which government would have been in power on the day, but I would imagine it would not matter. The Labor Party have a very, very high commitment to and pride themselves, along with our government, on creating the highest standards and safest possible environment for workers and our citizens. Billions of dollars are spent over every budget cycle to ensure, for example, that there’s no

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THE BUSH TELEGRAPH WITH SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN – JULY / AUGUST 2018 EDITION

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it comes to bringing people to proof on something. I’ll test them. If they say it’s no good, I won’t leave until we know why.

We’ve got other measures. I imagine—and the minister may be able to nod and confirm this—ASEC is probably subject to attending estimates in some form or another, if it’s a body funded by the federal government. So Senator Hanson ought to consider bringing them to estimates, at which time we can then properly evaluate, through examination of their officers, just what they are doing, what they intend to do, what their knowledge is of this thermochemical conversion process and what their assessments are to date. They may well have a perfectly sensible explanation as to why it might not work. We’ve had many emerging technologies over time, not just industrial technologies but biological technologies and manoeuvres. Think cane toad. I used to love the cane toads when I was a young fellow on a Friday night with a golf stick. But, at that point, they were no further north than Townsville, and now, of course, they’re even in northern Western Australia. They are a terrible scourge.

There was the introduction up my way of prickly acacia, a bush that was meant to be fodder for dry times. It is now choking massive tracts of land in Central Queensland and in the Central West.

So I exercise a voice of caution with new technologies. I know nothing about this technology. I can’t extend an invitation, but I’m certain that the relevant minister—I imagine it is perhaps the environment minister, given it’s to do with matters of landfill—would provide Senator Hanson with a full and complete briefing with respect to this and any other emerging technologies that might be under active consideration. In the

meantime, Senator Hanson, whilst I do agree with you on many occasions, I can’t share your view that a government funded initiative through ASEC, when providing advice to state and federal government and to local authorities, would ignore best practice and best technology that had any potential whatsoever to provide a safer environment for the removal and disposal of asbestos and for the good health of everyone in this nation. My invitation stands. I’ll wait to hear from you.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 15 FEBRUARY 2018 I can only hope that the valium has kicked in. I sat here and listened to the hypocrisy of this party raise this issue in this place.

Senator McKim: You want to talk about hypocrisy?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: No, do you want to talk about it, Senator McKim? Do you want to talk about relationships?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O’Sullivan, I remind you to direct your comments to the chair.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Through you, Madam Deputy President, I’m asking Senator McKim if he wants to talk about office relationships and the conflicts that come with them while you are a member of the parliament.

That’s what I’m asking. He can respond now or at some later time, if he chooses to. This is a party that did not ever make comment on Sam Dastyari’s conflict—not one word. He was a member of parliament who had a monstrous conflict in accepting money from foreign

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interests. He got demoted and then promoted—and there was not one word from you.

YOU PULL DOWN JOBS WHILE BARNABY BUILDS THEM. YOU PULL DOWN THE BUSH AND ALL THE DEVELOPMENTS THAT OCCUR IN RURAL AUSTRALIA WHILE BARNABY BUILDS THEM. HE, ON HIS WORST DAY, WOULD CONTRIBUTE MORE TO THIS NATION THAN YOUR WHOLE MOB WOULD IN YOUR BEST MONTH. Craig Thomson—go back to the attitude of the Greens when that embattlement was on over a period of time.

Tony Burke—not one word; Senator Hanson-Young— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O’Sullivan, please resume your seat. I appreciate this is a serious debate, but please refer to senators in this place by their correct title and people in the other place by their correct title. Please continue.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Senator Hanson-Young was with the family on the whale watch trip—thousands of dollars that it cost. Their hypocrisy knows no boundary. I never heard them reflect on themselves when they took a $1.5 million or $1.8 million donation.

You come in here and attack him through this hypocrisy. You have been silent on so many other matters. I will bet you London to a brick that not one single lick came out of your mouth in relation to the Dastyari matter. You want to talk about conflict and seriousness? You want to talk about that? Let’s talk about that. If you want to talk about interoffice relationships and its impact on people’s performance, I could start today, go alphabetically and get to about 50 or 60 people here and right across the community.

You people need to take a breath and think about what you’re saying. It is grubby. It is below the point.

The only reason you have brought yourself in here today is that you know that the Australian people have moved past this. The media have run out of any opportunity to put one more word in the paper.

They’ve run out of pictures. So what you’re trying to do is add a bit of water and turn a cup of soup into enough for the whole eight of you. I’m telling you now, you’ll fail at this, just as it’s failed at the moment. The reason it’s failed is that there’s been no weight in the indictment. There is nothing to see here. These things are tickety-top. There are movements of staff in the hundreds around this building every week. You do it yourself. You share resources. You sit your resources in the one room over there with the Greens. They’re attached to you, but you sit them in a common office.

You come in here and try to lecture us because you’ve found some sliver of a thing, some lightweight sliver of a thing, and you think we’re going to fold. I will tell you that biting into us is like biting into a stone fish. It won’t end with your story.

Senator McKim: It’s got nothing to do with this!

Senator O’SULLIVAN: It’s got everything to do with this! If you want to talk about someone under influence because they’ve got a free flat for $7,000, I’ll have a talk about you with $1.5 million or $1.8 million—whatever the figure was— Senator Williams: Two point two.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: My colleague tells me I’m out by hundreds of thousands of dollars. You people are hypocrites. You need to concentrate on the terms of some indictment that you imagine in your mind has been done here, because you behave like that in this place every day. You pull down jobs while Barnaby Joyce builds them. You pull down the bush and all the developments that occur in rural Australia while Barnaby Joyce builds them. He, on his worst day, would contribute more to this nation than your whole mob would in your best month—every time. Barnaby Joyce has done a phenomenal job and there’s nothing, nothing, in the indictment that you have so loosely laid down that would in any way compromise him in doing the great job that he has done. He remains the leader of our party with absolute confidence. He will be there for as long as he chooses to be. You will not see our party move on it. You suggest that we are the ones with their career and their reputation at stake here. We will stand with this man. He’s a fine leader of our party. He’s a fine member of parliament. He’s a fine Deputy Prime Minister.

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VALE DICK BITCON SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 14 FEBRUARY 2018 I rise to give in the short time allocated to us tonight a synopsis of the life of the great Dick Bitcon. He was a community leader, a successful family and business man, and, for almost 50 years, a great political activist and advocate for the conservative side of politics— more the agricultural side of politics in my home state of Queensland.

Dick’s life story is typical of his generation. It started with not much at all—kerosene lamps and hardships.

From a beginning with little help or assistance, he was able to go on and eventually make a very successful life for himself and for his family. In business it was principally along agriculture lines. He started out managing properties and farms and then he bought an agricultural supply agency. He then went on to become a trader of many of the agricultural commodities that were produced on the north central coast of my home state of Queensland.

He was an extraordinary man in terms of his contribution to the community. He was a very distinguished and popular community leader. He worked his way through many of the important tasks in a community in a region that one expects

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from someone of his calibre—leading the Bundaberg Chamber of Commerce and being involved in the rural race club at Bundaberg, both as the president and later on as the patron.

DICK BITCON WAS A POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND ADVOCATE. HE DIDN’T JUST PLAY FROM THE SIDELINES. DICK WAS A ZONE VICE-PRESIDENT FOR ALMOST A DECADE WITHIN WHAT WAS THEN THE NATIONAL PARTY—A PREDECESSOR PARTY TO THE LNP. The bit I really want to concentrate on is that for 49 years Dick Bitcon was a political activist and advocate. He didn’t just play from the sidelines. Dick was a zone vice-president for almost a decade within what was then the National Party—a predecessor party to the LNP. He served in the era of the great Joh Bjelke-Petersen and under the tutelage of Sir Robert Sparkes, Mike Evans and other well-recognised names in Queensland. He served in an era when Queensland progressed at a pace that has never been seen again and I doubt will ever be seen again in the future.

Dick was one of those leaders in politics who didn’t seek any sort of a political career. In fact, what I know of Dick is that he probably exercised more influence from the sidelines than he may have ever done as

a political member of parliament. He was certainly responsible for, in a large part, the career of the great Paul Neville, who was in the House of Representatives here for a long period of time. Dick was responsible for nurturing Paul’s career. He played a large part in ensuring that the critical advocate from his region was returned here to parliament on many occasions, despite the fact that it was a very difficult seat for us to hold.

Dick’s contribution—like so many of his type—was delivered quietly. It was influential. It would be impossible, I suspect, to measure the impact that he had on state policies, initiatives and programs, and also at a federal level. There are many Dick Bitcons.

We all know our own Dick Bitcon, but he gave 50 years of his life for free—he sought nothing in return— and contributed to influencing regional affairs, state affairs and national affairs. I think recognition of his efforts deserves being enshrined in the Hansard of this federal parliament. To his family and his many friends who are feeling Dick’s passing just a month ago, we send the message that his contribution on all of those levels, and most particularly to his regional community, is well-recognised here in the Senate. We wish them all the best as they work their way through the process of life without the great Dick Bitcon.

HE WAS AN EXTRAORDINARY MAN IN TERMS OF HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMMUNITY.

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VOICE FOR ANIMALS (INDEPENDENT OFFICE OF ANIMAL WELFARE) BILL 2015 SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 8 FEBRUARY 2018 If I nod off during this presentation, I’ll need my whip to keep an eye on me, because I have delivered a response to these sorts of arguments from the Australian Greens so often I’m tired of hearing my own voice. If I look like I’m nodding off, Senator Williams, you need to intervene.

My favourite story—and we’ll start on where the good senator finished; she’s well aware of this—is about the chicken prosecution in Western Australia.

The chickens are in these big sheds with adequate space that is air-conditioned and climate-controlled.

They wanted to free range them, so they hunted all the chickens outside, but as quick as they could get them out the chickens wheeled back in. The chickens preferred that environment—the environment that you don’t want them to operate in. They preferred it over free range.

Let’s get all this in perspective. I decided the other day that I needed to understand the green movement, the environmental movement, better than I have. You’ve heard the senator say that I’ve been labouring under ignorance. So I found what the equivalent is of a peak body for the environmental movement worldwide, and I went to their site. It was very illuminating. Here’s where they think the problems are in the world, in part. They tell us that we need to make sure that we don’t offend and displace the hidden people, the elves in Ireland or the hags. I didn’t know until I read their site that there are not just Italian fairies; there are Welsh fairies, there are Irish fairies and there are Transylvanian fairies. They have big red eyes, the Transylvanian fairies. There are fairies from the Isle of Man. We have wall-to-wall fairies in the environmental movement in this country. I’ll laugh as I go through this, but this is serious stuff. This is what you have to do to get inside their heads. This is what’s in their heads as they’re going through the process to determine what should happen. You are a lone voice in this room, senator—through you, Acting Deputy President. Not even your colleagues have come down to support you, as you try and present this legislation.

The chamber’s as empty as I’ve ever seen it.

Then there are the Brazilian shape-shifting dolphin men— Senator Williams: The what?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: The Brazilian shape-shifting dolphin men, and then—you’ll recognise this one— there are the gnomes. They are, I’m told, not related to the Russian firebirds or the West African evil tree spirits. We’re all familiar with goblins. I’ve seen the odd goblin myself, as I’ve left, later than I should, from some of my local pubs! We’ve got hobgoblins. Now,

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they’re not related to goblins, apparently; they’re a whole other species. We’ve got gremlins and harpies, otherwise known as the Greek wind spirits, and we’ve got nixies.

This is all off a credible site, according to them. This is what’s in their minds—these fairies and hobgoblins and goblins and gremlins and tree nymphs and wood nymphs. There are also skinwalkers, vampires, gryphons. Then there are the dodore, Solomon Islands’ little people. They’ve got one eye, one leg and long red hair. They’re automatically qualified for membership of the Greens! There are Tibetan disease demons, and we’ve got pixies and trolls.

YOU DON’T WANT TO CHANGE THE WAY THAT WE EXPORT LIVE ANIMALS OUT OF THIS COUNTRY; YOU WANT IT TO STOP. YOU’VE GOT NO PLAN FOR THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE EMPLOYED IN THE INDUSTRY. We can have some fun here, but my all-time favourite question is: how does it impact? In Iceland—Senator Rhiannon, you’d be aware of this, because it’s close to where you spent a bit of time being educated— there is a road there that they’ve been trying to build since 1930, but they haven’t been able to because it’s referred to as ‘the world of the hidden people’. There are no photographs. They’re a bit like the one we’ve got running up at Nambour—a yeti or something. But this was a serious discussion in public discourse that affected the development of sites.

I had my ear up to the glass one day when the Greens were developing policy on what they’d do with something in this place. On the whiteboard, they had this big word: ‘no’. They hit the printer button and they printed off 100 pieces of paper with the word ‘no’ on it. That’s their policy on everything: no jobs; don’t support rural industries and remote communities like ours; don’t support industries like the cattle industry.

I’ll be honest; I do find the good senator the most honest of the Greens. I think she’s a true warrior and a true believer, but she has got too many elves running around in her head when she starts to make recommendations. They are anti sugar; they are anti cropping; they are anti development; they are anti progress; they are anti breathing; they are anti animal flatulence. This would be laughable, hilarious, if it were not so serious.

So, what’s happened in Iceland as a result? Companies planning large-scale projects try to pre-empt problems with the supernatural world. I’m serious; you can go and check it out. One company planning a significant dam project in the east of Iceland consulted with clairvoyants. Clairvoyants’ skills were engaged by the company to do a report for its planning application.

Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or to break

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down and cry as I deal with what these people want—this lone voice, who I debated on ABC Rural, who would tell all the Australians who were listening that the kangaroo population was under risk of being wiped out completely, a population that the good senator knows full well is ten times larger than it would be if natural circumstances applied.

I invited her, as I’ve often done the Greens, but they’ve never taken it up, on air—thousands of Australians heard it—’Senator, I’ve got a few bob. Let’s do something. The next time you get a new car, I’ll pay to ship it up here to Longreach, and we’ll sip a bit of coffee until it just gets on dark and we’ll go for a drive to Ilfracombe.’ But the good senator has never contacted me, and I can only assume she has not bought a new vehicle recently. I said, ‘Make sure you don’t insure it, though, before you get there.’

This is crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. It’s crazy and it’s deceptive. Last year alone, the RSPCA and other organisations dealt with 350,000 complaints of cruelty to domestic animals. We all find it abhorrent, including you, Senator, I suspect. Listen again: 350,000 complaints about the welfare of domestic animals. Has one word ever been spoken by Senator Rhiannon or her colleagues in relation to that? Not one single word. But where do they want to go? They want to go to the live export cattle job. Again, Senator, you need to start being totally honest with the people of Australia. You don’t want to change the way that we export live animals out of this country; you want it to stop, full stop. You’ve got no plan for the tens of thousands of people employed in the industry— Senator O’SULLIVAN: I will, Sir. Through you, Senator Rhiannon has a zero plan for dealing with the economic impacts that will wipe out northern Australia. There will be tens of thousands of families losing their properties, as they almost did in 2011. Let’s have a look at how that happened. This very chamber that we

stand in gave due consideration to the circumstances of that and made a very measured decision. I don’t know whether you were here, Senator Williams. They made a measured decision to withdraw four licences out of Indonesia for the processing of these cattle.

And then, somewhere that night, some hairy armpit sitting in Melbourne or somewhere hit a send button and put 48,000 emails into the Australian Labor Party, and they buckled. They made a decision that wasn’t taken through this chamber to cease the live cattle trade.

IF ALL OF THE CATTLE THAT WERE EXPORTED LIVE WERE SLAUGHTERED AND CHILLED FOR THE LOCAL MARKETS HERE IN AUSTRALIA, THERE WOULD BE NO BUYERS. That decision brought devastation to large tracts of northern Australia. It drove cattle onto the domestic market. These are the cattle that Senator Rhiannon doesn’t want exported—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. She wants them slaughtered, chilled and then put on a shelf where no-one’s going to buy them. If all of the cattle that were exported live were slaughtered and chilled for the local markets here in Australia, there would be no buyers. I can’t imagine that she wants to take a live beast that’s going to Indonesia, put it into a box and chill it and deliver it to the Indonesians where it will rot at the port. These poor people have no refrigeration. Large parts of China where our live export goes have no refrigeration.

Senator Williams: And Vietnam.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: For centuries in Vietnam— thank you, Senator Williams. I’ve got to say, in the same period that there were 350,000 complaints of welfare issues around domestic animals, there were 145 ESCAS regulatory complaints—millions of cattle, handled for tens of millions of hours from when they come off the properties and get into the export system, and there were 145 ESCAS regulatory complaints. I’m going to tell you something. I’ve got an advantage, Senator Rhiannon—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am a cattleman. I’ve been a lifelong cattleman, and I will not be lectured by you on the welfare of looking after beef cattle. Most cattlemen—and we’ve got Senator Williams here, who reputedly takes lambs into the house with him when they’re in distress. Is there any truth in that, Senator Williams?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: No, no; he’s not a Kiwi. He’s from Inverell. He’s okay. It’s just a welfare thing. But, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, I will tell the chamber: cattlemen and cattlewomen have monstrous respect for these animals.

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Parliament House ABC studios

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I don’t think you have ever been outside, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—I corrected myself. I know that the only kangaroos that the good senator has seen are at Taronga Zoo, and she thinks that’s all of them! She thinks that all their brothers, sisters and cousins have gone!

I’ve got to say to you: you’ve got no regard for the 167 staff, for example, in the packer industry near Caboolture, who process kangaroo and leather hides; you’ve got no regard for them. You were actively part of pulling down the industry that exports hides into California, successfully—two years now. That’s a company I think will survive. It’s third generation— decent men and women. They will survive because they’re people of that type. They’re not your type of people. But, I’ll tell you what: you’re making it awfully hard for them. You sit there in your cotton clothes, but you don’t want us to disturb one square metre of earth— Order! Senator O’Sullivan, resume your seat. The words ‘you’ and ‘your’ shouldn’t be part of your speech if you’re referring to someone in the chamber, because you should be directing your comments through the chair. Use the third person if you must.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Senator Rhiannon sits here in her cotton clothes, yet she would not have us disturb one square metre of the earth to move the trash, to plant the seed. She would not have us take one cupful of water from the river to irrigate the cotton. As I said in a speech just the other day: God forbid the filthy puff of smoke that comes out of the harvester, which takes the cotton to the gin to be processed so that we senators, including Senator Rhiannon, can come here in our cotton garments—and our woollen garments, Senator Williams—and our leather shoes and our cotton socks, and sit on these leather or vinyl chairs,

whatever they are. There’s not a single thing within sight of any of us that has not been produced, in part sometimes, from the gift that animals provide as we propagate them for food and clothing and as we take the land, disturb it, and irrigate it in some instances, to provide food, fibre and all the other necessities of life. There’s not a single thing! We would all be naked, standing in a virgin forest and sucking on day-old tofu if some of these Greens had their way with respect to how we are to live.

WE HAVE GOT SOME OF THE SHARPEST REGULATIONS AND LEGISLATION AROUND BIOSECURITY , ANIMAL MANAGEMENT & WELFARE IN THE WORLD. This is very serious. They get up with a bland face as if they’re serious and, in their narrative, they pretend to believe what they’re saying, when none of it is true. It is a gross act of dishonesty. There was not one single phrase in the speech by the senator— and I listened very carefully—about what alternative provision she may have for the 200,000 coalminers in Central Queensland who’ll be displaced, and their families, and the businesses that rely upon them, the industries that employ— Senator Rhiannon does not, on any occasion, make any reference to the alternative plan. Here they are, wanting to create yet another bureaucracy. We have got some of the sharpest regulations and legislation around biosecurity and the management of animals, the welfare of animals, anywhere in the world. We are world leaders in these areas. And don’t take my

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With partner, Kirstina and LNP stalwart/Flinders Shire Mayor – Jane McNamara and a little friend

word for it; you need to take the word of a number of your colleagues. At the live export exchange conference, held in Darwin in November 2015—I’ll bet you a carton of beer that nobody from the Greens was in attendance to have a look, to meet the people, to come to understand the industry, to make a contribution; I’m happy to be proven wrong but I’m pretty certain about that—Dr Temple Grandin, who’s a world-renowned animal behaviour expert, in reference to Australia and the conditions in which we operate, stated that we were light-years ahead of anyone else in the world with our handling and animal welfare under the Export Supply Chain Assurance System—anyone else in the world!

What gets a bit inconvenient for the contributors to this debate is PETA—and we all know about PETA. I’m not talking about Peter Pan; I’m talking about P-ET-A, an organisation that I think it should be illegal to participate in. Nonetheless, PETA and the Humane Society of the United States give an award. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, said:

DR TEMPLE GRANDIN, WHO’S A WORLD-RENOWNED ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR EXPERT, STATED THAT WE WERE LIGHT-YEARS AHEAD OF ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WITH OUR HANDLING AND ANIMAL WELFARE UNDER THE EXPORT SUPPLY CHAIN ASSURANCE SYSTEM—ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD! I applaud Dr Grandin… I admire her work— I’m sorry; I referred to her before as a gentleman— in the field of humane animal slaughter.

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So, as I close, let’s consider something. Senator Rhiannon has made a contribution in the chamber. It is crystal clear that none of her colleagues agree with her and they have not joined her in this enterprise.

They’re listening—they can scurry down here in their dozens if they think they can. Nobody here agrees with Senator Rhiannon. Nobody in the Labor Party agrees with the thrust of her arguments here today. The crossbench is absent; nobody from the crossbench agrees with her. The humane society for animals in the United States doesn’t agree with her.

PETA doesn’t agree with her. Leading world experts don’t agree with her. The people don’t agree with her.

The industry doesn’t agree with her. Australians don’t agree with you, Senator Rhiannon, otherwise you’d have seats in the bush.

You need to give away your soft little seat in the Senate—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President— and I’ll give away my soft seat in the Senate, and both of us will run for the seat of Kennedy. How’s that; you, me and Bob. We’ll have a crack—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. We’ll see just how many votes you garner in Kennedy. You’ll have to put a mo and a wig on, otherwise, if they recognise you up that way, you’ll be riding on the tail of the kangaroo on the back of the plane! You wouldn’t be on the inside!

This is ridiculous. This is a consistent thing. Senator Rhiannon reminds me of one of those toys I bought for my kids, where you punch it, it goes down and up it comes—those ones that are weighted in the bottom— because this isn’t the first time this argument has been made and it’s not the first time it’s failed. It will fail each and every time that she brings it into this chamber. Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President: all the Greens should stop listening to the elves and the gnomes and start listening to the Australian people and people in industry, and maybe at some stage they’ll get something right.

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SPECIAL REPORT

BANKING ROYAL COMMISSION The appalling behaviour by the Commonwealth Bank, AMP and Westpac has been revealed at the royal commission Take a bow, Queensland backbenchers Barry O'Sullivan, George Christensen and Llew O'Brien. You did everyone a service.

-Veteran Press Gallery Reporter Michelle Grattan, April 2018

BANKING ROYAL COMMISSION

A Royal Commission into the finance sector is firm but fair action to address a long standing community demand and comprehensively and pragmatically ensure our financial bodies restore their public trust at a critical juncture in national economic development.

Myself and my LNP colleagues have stood firm in our belief that a public inquiry into the corporate culture of the finance sector is in the national interest.

I have repeatedly expressed my view that when there is a widening chasm between institutional behaviour and public expectations then I believe reasonable action must be taken to address this course.

The Australian people want to trust the finance sector.

But to achieve this, we first must allow their grievances to be heard.

Leaders of the banks and other financial institutions have repeatedly expressed their desire to restore their position of public trust and I welcome their participation in the commission’s investigations.

The finance sector has every right to balance the need for profit with their important community service obligations.

I want to see our institutions flourish and I believe it is the role of government to provide the assistance required to assure the continued longevity and sustainability of these pillars of our economy and community.

I believe a Royal Commission into these matters is another step our Government has taken to ensure we serve the expectations of the Australian people.

Only a few chapters into this saga and the Royal Commission already appears to be the cathartic experience the public has long demanded.

with excuses, evasion and blame shifting before such a commission.

When I met with Malcolm Turnbull to discuss my public push for a banking inquiry in November, I left with a clear understanding the Prime Minister held a genuine conviction that dozens of government policies and decisions would improve legal compliance by our financial institutions.

These are wide ranging and important measures whose benefits will be seen in the fullness of time.

However, we disagreed about how best to instigate the less easily defined institutional culture change that is essential to restoring public confidence.

This national intervention into arguably our most powerful private sector can only be considered a success if it leads to actual and obvious culture change in our banks.

Along with the Prime Minister, I am one of the few serving politicians who has actively participated in a Royal Commission and witnessed first-hand the cultural change these inquiries can bring about.

As a Queensland police officer I was directly involved in the implementation of the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and the black deaths in custody Royal Commission.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry, for which I was appointed one of its ‘change agents’ to introduce its recommendations,

Joseph Heller, a man prone to outbursts of absurdist logic, infamously wrote that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”

And so it has proven that after decades-long accusations of cover ups, rip- offs and gouging, financial service customers are finally being vindicated with proof that Australian bankers really have been silently sneaking into their accounts – whether they are alive or dead - and pilfering their savings.

Despite previous claims from Australian Bankers Association CEO and former Labor Queensland Premier Anna Bligh that investigations into our banking sector is “populist, unnecessary or unwarranted,” we are now witnessing a revolving door of leaders in our biggest economic institutions embarrass themselves

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BANKING ROYAL COMMISSION

demonstrates how a maligned yet integral public institution can rebuild public faith through honest appraisal of its shortfalls and a lot of tough choices.

So as both a former drug squad detective and one of the instigators of this banking inquiry, I might offer some advice.

I have seen first-hand how life can spiral out of control when someone refuses to seek permanent rehabilitation.

The first thing any offender is told to do is confront the fact their lives have become unmanageable and admit they have a problem.

However this realisation and contrition can only come from within.

The long standing resistance of bank executives to the birth of this commission and their recent responses and explanations to the airing of their dirty laundry only reinforces the view that there is a serious lack of leadership in our financial sector.

From the moment I proposed the banking inquiry in November last year, the purpose of this commission was always focussed on exposing the fatal flaws in the culture of our financial sector.

Our bank barons need to accept their conceit of avarice and anti-social behaviour has upset the lives

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of millions of Australians and destroyed its social licence with the community.

It has also undermined public faith in our corporate regulators.

Our bankers need to accept they have overplayed their hand and must take full, frank and unreserved responsibility.

There can be no more window dressing. There can be no more tinkering on the edges.

There can be no more diversionary stunts such as media campaigns claiming “banks are for everyone” or reminding us they donate profits to good causes.

Our financial leaders need to take a cold shower, repent for their sins and begin the long and uncomfortable task of mending the bridges that will restore public trust.

The banks need to admit they have a real problem.

The financial sector should not be waiting for the recommendations of the Royal Commission to commence this genuine and heartfelt cultural change.

It takes courage to defend your position from outside interrogation.

It takes more courage to admit it might be this same defence that is causing many of the problems.

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BANKING ROYAL COMMISSION

“A Royal Commission is unnecessary and unwarranted.”

Australian Banking Association CEO and former Labor Premier Anna Bligh

“I just think those of us in the LNP-National party who supported this have sent a strong message that you need individuals in the Parliament who are prepared to stand up and not back down when it comes to matters of national interest. It’s a great win for millions of Australians who are now going to see a serious inquiry looking into the culture of banking.”

Senator Barry O’Sullivan

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EXPORT CONTROL BILL 2017 SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 5 FEBRUARY 2018 I actually concur with some of the contribution of Senator Brown. I do concur with the comments about ensuring that there is sound consultation in the process as we develop these changes around live exports. Mind you, I had anticipated having to defend this Export Control Bill 2017, but I’m very pleased it would appear that the Labor Party are supporting it.

I was interested to see what contribution the Greens might make to this legislation but, as at this moment, it looks like they don’t intend to participate in the debate, which I take as a positive sign that they find that the amalgamation of the features of legislation brought under one roof here to control and to manage exports is something that attracts their attention.

A part of my contribution will concentrate on live exports, and particularly live exports of beef because we have a history in this space that would guide us in what it is we need to do to produce an environment where our reputation as being one of the most prudent exporters of livestock in the world is maintained. There are about 100 countries exporting live product in varying degrees of volume across borders in the world, and we in Australia are proudly at the forefront of best practice when it comes to managing the movement of livestock with our TRACE program, where we follow the livestock all the way to processing to see that world’s best practices are maintained. In fact, we committed a long time ago to putting in place world’s best practices and we now comply with world standards, one of the few countries that can make that declaration.

Let’s just go back on a little journey in relation to the live export of cattle. I was very pleased to hear my colleague from the Labor Party saying that we need to go very carefully in terms of measures that we put in place around this particular trade so as it doesn’t impact on the industry and the tens of thousands of stakeholders in this country who are engaged in this industry. As we know full well, that sort of care and attention was absent in 2011 when we suspended the live cattle trade into Indonesia, bringing a billiondollar industry to its knees overnight with no warning and no assistance to the producers who were impacted. Hundreds of thousands of head of cattle stood in the paddock with nowhere to go, nothing to eat and, of course, we all know what happened next— those cattle, for some years, were flooded onto the domestic market in Australia, suppressing prices to unprecedented low levels.

I will tell the story of being at a sale soon after this where I had a neighbour who had a pen of heifers and he got 58 cents per kilogram for that stock. Today, the same heifers would bring late 200 cents, perhaps 300 cents on a day when there was good wind in their sails. The price that my neighbour received for that pen of heifers just marginally covered the cost of

production, transport and commission on the sale. In effect, his entire property had operated for whatever his economic period was—probably 13 or 14 months, as it is when you turn off cattle—and he and his family could declare that they made absolutely nothing as the result of an atrociously poor decision by the government of the day. That’s where I share the view of the former speaker. I’m pleased to see that since 2011 the Labor Party too has come to understand the impacts that bad planning, bad legislation and bad regulation can have on an industry and the impact it can have on the families, producers and broader regional economies that rely upon this.

AUSTRALIA ARE PROUDLY AT THE FOREFRONT OF BEST PRACTICE WHEN IT COMES TO MANAGING THE MOVEMENT OF LIVESTOCK WITH OUR TRACE PROGRAM, WHERE WE FOLLOW THE LIVESTOCK ALL THE WAY TO PROCESSING TO SEE THAT WORLD’S BEST PRACTICES ARE MAINTAINED. This legislation is driven by a need. There are sunset clauses around any number of pieces of legislation that control exports. They have sunset clauses coming, I think, around 2020. In anticipation of this, a review was undertaken in 2015—a very careful review over a long period of time. It is, in part, the fruit of that review that is driving government to consider the amalgamation of various pieces of legislation so that we have, in effect, a one-stop-shop piece of legislation that governs exports, including live exports. The intent of the review was to scope for improvements in the legislation by amalgamating it, bringing it under one roof. The review sought to verify whether farmers and exporters have been supported by a piece of legislation that might be regarded as contemporary, flexible and efficient. It’s my view that this piece of legislation meets that trifecta of objectives. It’s significantly important. For example, the cost burden on exporters of live cattle was, as an element of cost in the production and sale of cattle, the biggest single ticket expenditure item related to costs associated with the export of the animal.

One of the things that is often lost in speeches in this place is some belief that these industries themselves, almost to a man and a woman in the industry, do not strive to meet absolute world best practice with respect to the production and export of these commodities. We’re not a producer on volume on almost all the commodities that we compete with in the world, and therefore we have to take an edge.

Our edge is the clean, green, well-produced product and commodity that we sell to the rest of the world.

We get paid a premium for that. Our farmers are amongst the best in the world. Our producers are amongst the best in the world. They compete with

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At meeting with people in Birdsville

other countries where there are massive subsidies to farm production, to the extent that some farmers— particularly in the United States—might never plant a crop for two or three years, but make as much and sometimes more with their subsidies than had they planted in the rotational arrangement.

I understand that there has been a significant process of consultation to date to develop this legislation in the form that it is, but remember that our producers and our farmers can only do so much. They can do what’s within their control and they look to their governments of the day to provide them with an environment that will support them in trying to get an edge on the export of their commodities.

We talk about non-tariff barriers. We can impose nontariff barriers. We ourselves can do that here in this country. We can create an environment that impedes the good and profitable production of goods, if we’re not careful. Typically, we do that with decisions of government, not just by the Commonwealth government but at the state level and, indeed, the local government level on occasions. There can be in place restrictions that are industry related. So it’s significantly important that we get out of the way of our producers to allow them to do what they do best in a very challenging environment, which is to produce these high-quality products and produce— in this case, the focus of my attention, live animal exports. We need to take a feather touch; we need

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to stay out of their way. We need to assist them, and I think our export controls play a significant part in that. In this chamber, I think a year ago—the minister, Senator Ruston, might be able to refresh my memory with the exact date—we reformed a lot of the issues around biosecurity to enhance our reputation around the world. They’re the sorts of measures that we ought to be focused on.

There are those who don’t ever want to see any live exports, for example, leave these shores. They don’t understand the industry. They don’t understand the impacts this could have on domestic production.

These people don’t want us to grow wheat or cotton, yet they refuse to stand naked in this place or anywhere else in their cotton clothes. They don’t want to move around bare foot. They’ve got leather shoes on. They remind me of the story of the little red hen. There are only a few of us here—sadly, Senator Molan, you may be one of those who are old enough to remember the story of the little red hen. Do you remember the little red hen? ‘Will you help me clear the scrub so I can till the land and plant some wheat?’ ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Will you help me tend the crop?’ ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Will you help me harvest the crop?’ ‘No, I won’t,’ her companion said.

‘Will you help me grind the grain to turn it into flour?’

‘No I won’t.’ ‘Will you help me knead the product and turn it into a loaf of bread?’ ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Will you help me bake the bread?’ ‘No, I won’t.’ For those of you old enough to remember the tale, of course, when

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the bread was set on the window ledge to cool down ready for consumption, all of the people who didn’t want this to happen lined up one after the other for a slice of this beautiful bread that the little red hen had produced.

We have to be very careful, as we bring about legislation, that we avoid everyone but the little red hen. These people would have us not grow cotton.

They would have us not export livestock. They would have us not export any commodities, because at some stage we had to disturb the land and plant the seeds and harvest, and we had a puff of smoke coming out of that dirty, filthy harvester as it took the grain off our crops ready for export to another nation. They have nothing to contribute to this debate. They have nothing to contribute to this debate and I’m pleased to see that any number of them haven’t made their way onto the speakers list to make a contribution.

It’s significantly important that we do our job. If I can use the term ‘centralising’, the guidelines, the support, the measures—each of them giving equal weight to our reputation of being one of the finest producers of agricultural product in the world—can only help our exporters. The fact that we follow livestock, for example, to the point of slaughter to see that this $1.8 billion industry is done in a humane and healthy manner will eventually be one of the sharpest edges some of our exporters have, because it’s a world now where those whose purchasing is transitioning from price sensitivity on consumption. My daughter-in-law had my four grandchildren convinced that apricots cut into little pieces were lollies. Thank God grandad came along and set them straight—the apricots weren’t lollies—but here was a fine mother looking after the interests of her children. She wanted first of all to know about the product. She wanted to see that it didn’t have hormones and didn’t have traces of herbicides and pesticides. But, more recently, they’re

looking for the providence of the product. They’re starting to look now at where it was produced and what impact it had on the environment—important questions. What were the labour arrangements around the production of this commodity, this food that I’m going to buy and reward some corporation for the production of? With things like this Export Control Bill, we will reinforce an environment where we see that these animals are kept in a very healthy state and managed in a very humane condition. It’s not only about how they’re produced but how they’re transported, how they’re moved to port, how they’re loaded, how they fare on the ships, how they’re received and how they’re cared for at the other end, all the way to a point of humane slaughter. I’ve seen some of the resisters of this process, in their leather shoes and cotton trousers with their woollen coats, sitting down, hoeing into a big steak. And only the day before, of course, they were somewhere under a placard saying: ‘Let’s not kill animals. We shouldn’t keep cattle in a yard. We shouldn’t do this; we shouldn’t do that.’

THESE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE US NOT GROW COTTON. THEY WOULD HAVE US NOT EXPORT LIVESTOCK. THEY WOULD HAVE US NOT EXPORT ANY COMMODITIES, BECAUSE AT SOME STAGE WE HAD TO DISTURB THE LAND AND PLANT THE SEEDS AND HARVEST. It is significantly important that a government of the day, a government like ours, a coalition—and I will again commend the fact that Labor is joining us with respect to the passage of this bill—pays clear attention to the environment in which our goods are processed and the way in which our animals are treated, taking it all the way to the point of sale.

People question live exports, for example: why don’t we chill the beef? Well, there’s a novel idea. Let’s chill the beef and send it to Indonesia, one of our biggest trading partners where beef’s concerned, a country with 250 million people where virtually nobody owns a fridge. We don’t know what they’re going to do with the chilled beef. Those of you who’ve been through Indonesia, the Philippines and many of these developing Asian neighbours we rely upon for trade relations, will know that you’ll see cattle and chickens tied up under coconut trees and banana trees, and that’s where they’ll remain.

An honourable senator interjecting— Senator O’SULLIVAN: That’s right—that’s their fridge.

That’s where they’ll remain until such time as they are processed for personal consumption by the people in the village or a community.

No longer can we say to people, ‘We have a commodity,’ and jam it into their marketplace on our

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terms. Those days have been gone for decades. Now they’re looking for the providence of the product.

They’re looking for these issues—for the ticks around animal health care, transportation, impacts on the environment and labour arrangements for people who are working to produce these articles. They are setting very high standards to be met in the market sphere that we are in. We’re not in a volume market. We are producing the best we possibly can, comparable to other points in the world, who are our competitors. We have to produce it at a competitive price because in most agricultural industries we are price takers, not price makers, particularly around beef. If you’re starting to sell beef at a premium, above what commodity beef is processed as, then you need to meet all of these very high standards.

Through this Export Control Bill, the government is demonstrating that it will create the environment so the producers of these articles—products, commodities, livestock—can get on with the very, very important job of competing in tough international marketplaces, producing that article for which we are so well known, that high-quality, pristine piece. I think the fact that this bill is not receiving resistance in this chamber is evidence that the people who drafted the bill and the people who conducted the review and pulled this together into one piece of legislation need to be congratulated—clearly, given we haven’t got a resistance movement on the floor of this Senate.

There are those who might wish it to be something else. They might wish it to be, ‘We’ll stop all of this sort of trade.’ But the fact is they know that these measures provide a significant improvement to an already high-quality environment for the production of commodities and the export of livestock.

It’s a great pleasure for me to first of all thank the drafters and those staff in the minister’s office, in the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

and in other departments who’ve been involved in the production of this. They’ve done a terrific job.

In closing, I commend the adoption of this bill to the Senate.

VALE BOB HARPER SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 6 DECEMBER 2017 I rise today to speak briefly about the life of Robert Malcolm Harper, who recently passed away in my home state of Queensland. Bob Harper was a giant in our political movement and previously in what was the predecessor Liberal Party in Queensland. Whilst we lose many colleagues and members over our time in parliament, I think there are very few who whose lives were so exceptional that they attract a speech onto the Hansard. But in the case of Bob Harper, that is particularly warranted.

It could be said that Bob was born with Liberal blood in his veins. His parents bestowed upon him the names of two of their personal friends—one being Sir Robert Menzies, and the other Bob’s godfather, Sir Malcolm Ritchie, who was the founding president of the Australian Liberal Party. Bob was the youngest of four children, with brother and sisters Neville, Dot and Jan, and he was born to Neville and Hazel Harper at Nundah Private Hospital in Brisbane. And, with the exception of his experiences in the bush—where he worked for a long period of time at Wandoan on a cattle property; his brother, Neville, was a respected minister in the Queensland parliament at that stage in Bob’s life—most of his life has been concentrated in and about metropolitan Brisbane. In 1972 Bob married his darling wife, Rhonda. I attended his funeral, and there was evidence that Rhonda was not an easy catch for Bob: he had to spend some serious time in pursuit of the woman who went on to be his darling wife for so many decades.

IT COULD BE SAID THAT BOB WAS BORN WITH LIBERAL BLOOD IN HIS VEINS. As I deliver this speech, I will add that many of my colleagues from the Liberal-National Party in Queensland have contacted me this week to ensure that it is on the record that they support my speech.

In particular, Senator McGrath wanted me to note that he attaches himself to my remarks, and will be delivering a tribute of his own to Bob in the fullness of time.

Bob’s love of family and of his wife were matched only by his love of politics. It’s fair to say that Bob devoted his life to politics, both as an active member of a political movement and by going on to represent his local area in the state parliament. Of course, this

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is after Bob had run for the state seat of Nudgee in Queensland. During the course of that campaign he was chased down the road by a man with an axe.

Despite this, Bob persisted in his pursuit of politics not only as a member of the state legislature but also—in my time knowing Bob, and for so many of his friends and colleagues—as a very serious and influential honorary member of our political movement, to which he devoted so much of his time over such a long period of time. Bob was the second-ever nominated life member of the LiberalNational Party on amalgamation, behind the father of the party, the honourable Lawrence Springborg.

With an inaugural party membership that touched on some 14,000 people, to be granted the second-ever life membership—second only to the father of the party—I think in and of itself speaks massive volumes about Bob’s contribution.

As a state member, he made terrific inroads for his electorate: he got the Mount Ommaney Police Station—this is now a thriving, quite dense suburb in Brisbane in my home state—the Centenary State High School and the war memorial for his constituents.

He served as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and then as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Premier and the Treasurer. Bob lost his seat in 1998; however, that wasn’t the end of his political career. He went on to administer the office of our current Attorney-General. Bob’s devotion over a long period of time and over many thousands of hours needs to be properly noted.

Bob was, I think, almost without peer as a campaigner in my home state, particularly in state politics; although he was responsible for supporting many of our federal members, and I think can be credited with maintaining two of our federal seats and at least one of our state seats. That was as a direct result of his stewardship.

themselves and therefore expected in their members of parliament.

I THINK WHAT MOST OF US WILL RECALL ABOUT BOB HARPER IS THE INTENSE HONESTY OF THE MAN. He was a strong man, although he presented himself in a gentle form. Bob wasn’t prone to raising his voice or inflicted by one of the conditions that I suffer from, from time to time: using shearers’ language. He put his cases very simply and plainly, and as a result he was much respected and had great influence. When I started, I said Bob was a true warrior. There are so many things that attract people into political life and political influence; but it’s the true warriors and the true believers, who believe in the ideology and the value that they believe that their political franchise or political movement brings to life, who are the most dangerous. They don’t bend, they don’t sway and they don’t come in the dead of night. They are out there and rely upon their intellect and their ability to communicate their position and their own great personal values. This fellow was front and centre, and head and shoulders, above his peers in relation to his approach to this. He believed in his state and he believed in his nation, and it reflected the way that he operated. He wasn’t just a true warrior; he was an inspiration to multiple generations of political activists and practitioners on the conservative side of politics.

He was a campaigner extraordinaire. There was no question about that. I think many who didn’t know him personally but remember him professionally will remember that first and foremost.

More importantly, he was a devoted husband, father, grandfather and uncle to so many. His three daughters

I think what most of us will recall about Bob Harper is the intense honesty of the man. Bob always believed that politics played a significantly important role in the stability of our communities and he believed that the people ought to know what was on the minds of candidates who were seeking their endorsement in this framework of representative democracy as we know it. Bob believed that the calibre of the candidates came first. He often successfully supported candidates.

Bob was a man of great influence. You hear about people having the numbers around political parties.

Bob had his share and someone else’s at most times. Particularly in metropolitan seats, he had great influence around the success or otherwise of candidates. I know from conversations that I had with him over a long period of time about the value that Bob put on the family circumstances of candidates, people who were experienced in business and in life.

He would always come back to where he started and say that they had to reflect the standards and values of honesty and integrity that people expected of

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paid him the most enormous tribute at his funeral. I leaned over to my wife and said, ‘If there’s a possibility, I want to hire those three girls to deliver the eulogy at my funeral.’ It was a wonderful, moving presentation by those girls. Bob will be fondly remembered and respected, notwithstanding that he’s no longer with us. He made a substantial contribution to state and national affairs. I say: Bob, you’ll be well remembered respectfully by so many of us.

MURRAY-DARLING BASIN SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 5 DECEMBER 2017 It’s very important that something goes on the record about the conduct of this particular inquiry of which the Senate has just received an interim report. This is a very, very important inquiry, looking into the affairs around water marketing in the Murray-Darling Basin.

It has within its terms of reference an ability to look at allegations such as those that were aired on the Four Corners program, which essentially went, in part, to some governance issues around the management of water in the Murray-Darling Basin. It brought concerns with respect to the conduct of the New South Wales government and, indeed, the MurrayDarling Basin Authority itself in relation to how they have oversighted.

SHE WAS LIKE A RABBIT IN THE LIGHTS OF A CAR WHEN SHE WAS CALLED UPON TO PUT EVIDENCE BEFORE THIS SENATE INQUIRY. The problem is, colleagues, that one of us, in this case, Senator Hanson-Young, went public and crippled the work of this committee. She made an allegation that the committee, referring to this Senate—because it is a committee of this Senate— was running a protection racket for people who were offending along the Murray-Darling Basin. I recused myself as the Deputy Chair and the government members recused themselves from the hearing. We don’t intend to return to the hearing until such time as this allegation is either withdrawn or particularised with accompanying evidence. Senator Hanson-Young has been called on, on two occasions, to produce evidence, but she has sat mute. There’s a reason for that: she has zero evidence. She’s been called on to particularise the allegations that the committee—a Senate committee; your committee; this Senate— was running a protection racket for people along the Murray-Darling Basin who are subject to allegations that there is wrongdoing. She has refused to particularise.

There is a reason for both of these refusals: the woman has nothing. Senator Hanson-Young has zilch.

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She was like a rabbit in the lights of a car when she was called upon to put evidence before this Senate inquiry. It remains under consideration as to whether she should be sent to the Privileges Committee. The fact of the matter is: you have to ask yourself why she would do this. She does not want this committee to proceed. She does not want this inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin to proceed, because, if it were the case that it turned up no evidence, or evidence different to the allegation she is making, she will be once more—as is a frequent state for her—seriously embarrassed.

I call on my colleagues in the Senate to take note of the fact that Senator Hanson-Young has made an allegation about one of their committees. It includes members of the crossbench and members of the Labor Party. The chair is Senator Sterle. I’ve got to say, you’d think twice when allegations are made about someone’s integrity in this place, unless it is around people like Senator Sterle. That fella is way above any suggestion that he, or Senator Gallacher, would participate in any process that even remotely resembled a protection racket for the government in relation to the allegations about the Murray-Darling Basin. Today, a motion laying down these nefarious sorts of allegations was supported by the Labor Party, indicating that they’ve got a zero tolerance if they form a view that something is happening.

Additionally, to make the committee’s work almost impossible, Senator Hanson-Young collaborated with the Minister for Water and the River Murray in South Australia. He is regarded by many as one of the most inept politicians in the nation. He has no peers in that space. In fact, he was ordered from a public hearing at one of our Senate committees by a Labor chair.

Here’s a Labor minister of the Crown in South Australia who embarrassed himself. I’ve got to tell you, I don’t often get embarrassed about the conduct of Labor members, particularly state Labor ministers, but I felt embarrassed for this poor individual as he attempted to take over the committee. He was a bully, he was boisterous, and he did so because he knew he had the support of the Greens—in particular, Senator HansonYoung.

I leave it with this: Senator Hanson-Young needs to have the courage to come onto this floor—or she can do it out on the footpath if she wants—to make her allegation on the basis that she particularises it and she produces the evidence. There are 76 of us here, so this could cost me a quid, but I bet all of you—London to a brick—a carton of beer that she will never appear in this chamber and repeat the allegation with anything that resembles evidence or particulars in relation to it. I bet you a carton of beer.

For the ladies, I don’t want to make it separate, but if you want something else, I’m happy to consider that.

Senator McGrath: Can I take rum?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Rum? Any other bids here? I’ll get rum for Senator McGrath. This is a serious matter.

She has brought this committee, a committee of this

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place, into disrepute by her allegation which is not particularised and which has no evidence. The reason is she has none, zilch and zero. She is absent from this chamber. I’ve talked long enough. She is up there watching me on the television. I thought she might have darted down now to take up the offer, but, of course, you won’t see her in this place on this subject.

EUTHANASIA SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 30 NOVEMBER 2017 I’m going to try and keep my comments brief. I am and have always been opposed to the state or, indeed, humankind being involved in the termination of the lives of human beings. It matters not whether it’s abortion, euthanasia or, of course, capital punishment.

As someone who served as a detective for 16 years and had been involved in the investigation of many heinous crimes, you would have thought that at some stage I would have converted my thinking to support the idea of capital punishment. I do not. In fact, I had quite a unique experience as a detective in that I was appointed to study at the FBI behavioural science facility at their academy south of Washington, where I spent four months looking at serial killers. Every day, I was confronted with a diet of slides and reports and photographs and videos of crime scenes where the victims were, more often than not, women or children and where the circumstances were heinous beyond description in most cases. You would think that an experience like that would bring an individual to consider capital punishment as being an appropriate punishment in particular circumstances.

But it did not because, at the same time, research had been conducted—and I took a great interest in it—in a number of cases in the United States, particularly in that jurisdiction, where it was determined that people

who had been killed through capital punishment had been wrongly convicted. They were innocent people.

The state created a rule, or a law in that case, to take their lives as a result of a process. So what it said to me—and I am not for one second trying to compare those circumstances to the circumstances of patients who find themselves in most difficult circumstances— is that human kind is not developed enough, nor do I think it will ever be, to make decisions around the lives of people, including some of the people themselves who are confronted with circumstances where they make that decision. We have a situation in Belgium where euthanasia is lawful, even to the extent where parents are able to make a decision on behalf of their children. In one cited case—and I place on the record that I have not tested the references—there were two young girls from one family who, through a genetic condition, were born deaf. Through that genetic condition—these children were twins of 12 years of age—they were going blind. A decision was taken by the parents—I can only imagine that it was perhaps in consultation with the children—that the two children, who were otherwise totally healthy, would be euthanised. I can’t imagine the sort of pressure on a family like that, including the two young ladies and their parents, in having to make such a decision. But I would never support a law made by the state that would allow those sorts of decisions to have been taken.

I AM AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OPPOSED TO THE STATE OR, INDEED, HUMANKIND BEING INVOLVED IN THE TERMINATION OF THE LIVES OF HUMAN BEINGS. I suspect that there are hundreds and hundreds of occasions each month in our country where, with the use of palliative care, people’s lives come to an end perhaps earlier than they might otherwise do if acute medical attention were continued. In fact, I’ve had the experience myself. My late wife passed away after she had an aneurysm that left her with no prospect whatsoever of living without the aid of a life support system. Events there, without me particularising them, brought her life to a close where perhaps she may have continued with, might I say, no life at all on a life support system. So I think that in some instances, in extreme cases, our society is also, in effect, through the withdrawal of medical care or continued medical care, allowing people to die with dignity when they are way beyond any prospect of help or recovery.

I feel very, very strongly about this matter. I feel for the people who find themselves in these circumstances.

But if this parliament were to be confronted with legislation like this on a national level, we would need to go very, very, very carefully. There is a very large body of research around the implications of these

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things. Mine is a practical position, but as a practising Catholic I am often guided by faith in these matters. I would urge very, very steady and careful consideration of these matters. I remain satisfied that each of us, to the extent that we can, will become a scholar on the topic. Many people will share my view that humanity does not have the capacity to put in place the protections that would prevent assisted suicide from taking the lives of people whose prospects were not quite as the seemed—people who perhaps had a future—through misdiagnosis and a whole range of those issues. I urge colleagues to think very carefully about it. I cannot support the motion.

I just want to open by reflecting on the fact that the contributions from those opposite in this space are an example of what we need to be careful of. We know that there are members of the opposition who want to support these amendments, but they’re denied the ability to do that. You won’t see them in the chamber speaking, because the party has pulled the veil down on them in terms of making a contribution and expressing what they truly believe—

SAME-GENDER MARRIAGE AMENDMENT (DEFINITION AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS) BILL

Senator Jacinta Collins: No, he didn’t.

SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 28 NOVEMBER 2017 My contribution, too, will be short. I voted no in the plebiscite and will vote no here in the chamber today, but that’s not in conflict with me as an individual acknowledging the courage of those people who have campaigned for this change in our national law, in our social structure, for so many decades. I always admire the courage of people who pursue their conviction. I can disagree with them but I admire their effort. I want to congratulate our chamber—I think we have dealt with this debate in a very respectful manner. I was one of the people instrumental in lobbying, eventually successfully, for a plebiscite, which eventually was a postal plebiscite. I do think it aided our parliament by indicating to us the will of the Australian people on the fundamental and substantive question of marriage equality. I have always said that I would be guided by that vote and would vote yes to the eventual legislation subject to, I felt, moderate protections, if you like, or adjustments to the legislative environment brought on by a significant change to fundamental and long-standing law in this country.

I’m not going to labour this because I know so many people are waiting to get to the point with the third reading; I just didn’t feel, myself, satisfied that those protections had been put in place. I, too, have the courage of my convictions and that will drive me to vote no for the bill, even though, and I underline this, I want to recognise the change in the law and all those millions of Australians who will be affected positively by this and just call out to Australians on both sides of this debate and say it’s up to us to now go forward respectfully. I said in a previous speech that we need to behave in a way that will bring our nation back as one around this social change rather than divide it. I say to those on behalf of whom I have pursued my conviction in this that they ought to go steadily forward and pay due respect now to these circumstances that I anticipate will be carried by this parliament.

Senator Jacinta Collins: That’s not true, Barry.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Well, the Leader of the Opposition made that very clear in an earlier debate today—

Senator O’SULLIVAN: that a conscience vote—well, it’s a ‘she’; I’m talking about the leader in the Senate chamber.

Senator Dastyari: Stop trying to be gender neutral.

I WANT TO RECOGNISE THE CHANGE IN THE LAW AND ALL THOSE MILLIONS OF AUSTRALIANS WHO WILL BE AFFECTED POSITIVELY BY THIS. Senator O’SULLIVAN: But—good contribution, Sammy.

Of the responses to all of these amendments, the one that confounds me absolutely, both from members of the opposition who are unable to make a contribution and those who might resist these amendments, is that around the rights of parents. For goodness’ sake, it’s around the rights of parents. For thousands of years people have fought within societies and family structures, of whatever form they may take, for these rights for which we’re seeking simple protections, which will also be afforded to same-sex couples who may have children in their family unit in education, not just to do with matters around sexuality and sex education but on so many frontiers. Parents must always have the right to choose what teachings their children will be exposed to and what exercises they engage in. If they fundamentally do not believe in teachings or modules of education that their children are to be exposed to then they must have the right to insulate their children from those. That is their choice.

That is the primal right of parents who are taking care of children who haven’t reached the age of majority.

It’s as simple as that. I don’t necessarily want to be one of the people who tie Safe Schools to this debate, but there you go: Safe Schools, a most horrible module of education. I can’t even repeat some of— An honourable senator interjecting— Senator O’SULLIVAN: I’ll do what I find difficult and just ignore you. The fact of the matter is Safe Schools had some atrocious material in it. Even people in the LBGTI community resisted it. It was condemned. If this principle were to remain, parents would be able

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to choose to take their children out of the education system, because they do not want them to be exposed to particular teachings that are so inconsistent with their determined value base. We all have different value bases. Many elements of them are common to us all. I grew up in a Catholic household and a Catholic community and was educated at Catholic schools; I remain a tortured Catholic at 60 years of age. These are values that I have upheld, and they are a part of my life. They guide me in certain circumstances and have served me well, in my view.

I REALLY URGE MY COLLEAGUES IN THIS PLACE—IT’S DIFFICULT BECAUSE SOME ARE BOUND, APPARENTLY, BY ACCEPTING CONDITIONS PLACED UPON THEIR ABILITY TO EXERCISE THEIR FREE SPEECH. If you tell me now that I can’t be allowed to engineer the lives of my children or grandchildren—where I have responsibility for them, before they’ve reached that age where they can make their own minds up—particularly about what teachings they will be exposed to on these serious matters in educational forums, then I reject that. I’ve sat and tried to think of a government in my lifetime, in my life’s experience in Australia, that has ever done this. They have never done this: until this point in time, parents have had the right to remove their children and protect them from particular teachings, without fear that they will be subject to actions of discrimination. I find it astonishing that amendments such as this are resisted. I love the contributions when someone is talking about freedom of speech and freedom of religion: ‘We will go to the trenches supporting your freedom to practise a religion, except for these elements that aren’t consistent with our argument now. We’re happy for you to practise your religion, speak about your religion and express your beliefs, except in certain circumstances.’

was not a licence for us to ignore the concerns of the almost five million Australians who voted against the change to the Marriage Act. I said—like we all have, I suspect—in the last six or seven months, I will be happy after this fortnight if I can go all the way to Christmas without hearing the word ‘marriage’ again, to be honest.

I had experiences with people who indicated they were going to vote no because of their concerns around an absence of a debate around these protections.

They were people who indicated that they were quite agnostic about two people of the same gender being married but they were not agnostic about the prospects that a change to the Marriage Act might create an environment that caused new forms of discrimination, as articulated by the colleagues.

Suggestions that we should somehow push this off and kick it into the grass and come back next year have only been made by people who haven’t been here struggling with the provisions of 18C for three years—minor amendments were required but couldn’t be agreed upon in this place or in the other place. Imagine if we have to come back here and sit down and start to talk from scratch about religious freedoms and all the things that go with it? That push wasn’t here before this. I think there are currently quite adequate provisions to protect from that.

I say as I close, we need to think carefully and steadily.

This isn’t a competition. This isn’t a contest about what you get and what we don’t get—about they’re the yes-ies and they’re the no-ies—so we should resist moderate, sensible, fair, justifiable provisions that protect people, particularly parents in the raising of their children. It is the most fundamental and primal consideration for parents who want to look after their children and we not only need but we have a serious obligation to consider them fully and carefully and so

I really urge my colleagues in this place—it’s difficult because some are bound, apparently, by accepting conditions placed upon their ability to exercise their free speech and vote in accordance with their value systems—to think seriously about this issue. This is the cornerstone and the touchstone of a civilised society. We are charged with the responsibility to raise our children—in my case and in the case of many colleagues—on Christian values; Judeo-Christian values underpin our codified law. If you go back, the foundations, as we legislated in life, drew very heavily on Christian beliefs.

This set of amendments can cause no harm. If these amendments are not accommodated, the potential for harm exists. I will more than willingly go on the record to support my colleague Senator Abetz when he spoke about the result of the postal plebiscite. It

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it’s in that vein that I urge my colleagues to support these amendments.

SAME-GENDER MARRIAGE AMENDMENT (DEFINITION AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS) BILL SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 28 NOVEMBER 2017 Like many before me, I rise to make a contribution to the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017, Senator Smith’s bill.

I’ve been watching the debate as it has proceeded today and towards the end of the last sitting, and I just want to address this question around the government having reached out to the Australian people to engage in this process to allow the parliament to have a clear indication of where they ought to go with this. It’s well known that the government—the coalition—took this opportunity as an election promise. We took it to an election and we were elected into government. I find it increasingly difficult to hear advocates indicate that for some reason or another any side of parliament that takes a promise to the people, and is endorsed with being given the government benches, should then abandon that promise. That’s the first thing.

We’d have been criticised for that equally, had we not proceeded.

I was one of the people who pursued a plebiscite—not a postal plebiscite, I must admit. I was successful in getting a unanimous motion before some 700 or 800 delegates of the Liberal National Party conference in Queensland. Notwithstanding the fact that there were speakers strongly against the proposition, including the Attorney-General, the conference overwhelmingly supported the question of a plebiscite. I’d been watching this closely with colleagues and, mind you, I have been long on the record, as a private person, that I would vote no if the opportunity presented itself in a plebiscite, but my argument was I had engaged with so many colleagues, both here in the Senate and in the other place, who I think had abandoned their fundamental role in representative democracy. There were colleagues who indicated to me that, had they followed what they believed was the appropriate position on behalf of their electorates, they would have voted differently to what they were intending to vote.

believe that we then have something of an obligation to pursue what we consider are their interests.

Remember that there have been 24 attempts to change the Marriage Act from when the legislation was introduced under the Howard government, including four bills that made their way into full debate and failed: 24 occasions. Suddenly, we wake up with some collective wisdom that after those 24 attempts somehow society had moved on— measured in months—and that now we should ignore the history of evolution on this question, we should all suddenly simply vote yes and immediately come into these places and produce legislation to support that position.

IF YOU WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS IN MY HOME STATE, PEOPLE LIVING IN ABOUT 80% OF THE LAND MASS VOTED NO—VERY DECIDEDLY NO. If you want to look at things in my home state, people living in about 80 per cent of the land mass voted no—very decidedly no. In those circumstances you might think that someone like me, particularly as a senator, ought to take that into consideration and support a ‘no’ vote against— I said in this place the other day that, given this question has been before society now for decades, this place and the other place should not rush with undue haste simply because there are two weeks left. I, too, want to see this matter resolved by the end of the year. I have made the statement, and since reaffirmed it, that if the Australian people indicated that they wanted a change to the Marriage Act I

In a representative democracy each of us goes to our communities and we present ourselves, we present our policies and we present our promises. We have an obligation as we vote in this place to take their wishes into account when we make decisions. There are occasions, of course, when information not available to us at that time comes along which might cause us to change our position. At that point, we have to try and anticipate what our electorate, if you like, might want us to do in those circumstances. I personally

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would support that, subject to the details around these basic protections that so many of us want.

So many Australians—five million of them, of course— didn’t support the ‘yes’ case on this occasion. I have spoken to a lot of people in my circle and in my capacity as a senator. I think it’s fair to say that some people who voted no were not so concerned about the fact that gay people would be allowed to marry at the other end of the process; they were concerned about an absence of any detail around the protections that may be afforded them. So many said, ‘I really don’t care what two people want to do; it’s their private business.’ They indicated that—this is a position I support entirely—government has no place in the sexuality or the sexual lives of consenting adults. I’ve held that view for a very long period of time.

MARRIAGE, IN THEIR VIEW, IS BY ITS NATURE A GENDER-DIFFERENTIATED UNION OF MAN AND WOMAN. THIS VIEW LONG HAS BEEN HELD—AND CONTINUES TO BE HELD. This is no longer a question about a debate allowing two people to marry. Even those of us who are proceeding cautiously and have a view around these protection issues and some amendments have effectively conceded that the Australian people have spoken and that the effort of both this chamber and the House of Representatives ought to be to give effect now to what the Australian people have said.

But this isn’t about that. I have listened carefully to all of the speeches, and so much of it has been about the support of the question on the Marriage Act, but it’s no longer about that; it’s about a series of very sensible, I think, amendments that are being proposed and will be presented during the course of our debate on this bill.

The first, I think, is a very simple amendment and I don’t understand why it would be resisted. We have a situation where we want to change the Marriage Act and there is no reason why it could not identify marriage between a man and a woman, as has been traditional and held dear for so many people, as well as exercising the power for two people of the same sex to marry. In fact, the Supreme Court decision that gave effect to gay marriage in the United States talked about marriage in part of the ruling. It said: Marriage, in their view, is by its nature a genderdifferentiated union of man and woman. This view long has been held—and continues to be held—in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.

That’s the consideration of the Supreme Court’s majority decision in 2015. So one of the first amendments on which many in this place will be

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seeking to have the support of the chamber will be to recognise and make changes to the Marriage Act to allow for same-gender marriage but at the same time include equally a preservation of the definition that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I find it difficult to understand why anyone in this place would resist freedoms to express traditional beliefs without fear of vilification laws provided that the expression does not threaten or harass a person or group of persons. That’s a fairly simple proposition.

We can’t say that we have religious freedoms in this country that allow us to express all of our religious beliefs, except one, now changed by the potential changes to the Marriage Act. You can’t do that. If we are to give freedom of expression of traditional beliefs, it must be unconditional—and nobody wanting these amendments supports any expression that threatens or harasses a person or group of persons.

One of the amendments is freedom from being required to express, associate with or endorse a statement or opinion about marriage that is inconsistent with a person’s or organisation’s genuine religious or conscientious convictions about marriage. Now, I’m not about to start citing all the examples that have been provided, many of them in the contributions prior to mine by other senators. But where could resistance come? Where could resistance come, in a fair and reasonable argument, that we deny people the freedom from being able to express, associate with or endorse a statement or an opinion about marriage that is inconsistent with a person’s or organisation’s genuine religious or conscientious convictions about marriage? Just as the government has no place in the bedroom, it has no place in starting to create a regulatory environment—or an absence of protections, in this case—that prevents people from having that freedom.

One of the other propositions is an anti-detriment provision protecting individuals and organisations with a traditional marriage belief from unfavourable treatment by public authorities. Many examples have been cited in this place. And remember that at the last census, in 2016, about 70 per cent of Australians identified as religious—mostly Christian, Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist. It’s clear that many of those people voted yes for marriage equality. But they did not do so on the basis that it might open up an environment where their freedoms to express their religious beliefs would be impaired. As I understand it, the North Melbourne council in Victoria is giving particular benefits to people of the LGBTIQ community and not to those who are engaged in traditional marriage. There were instances where another council had indicated that applicants for public funding within their community would need to demonstrate that they previously had a body of work around supporting the LGBTIQ community before they’d be considered for funding.

The Australian Medical Association, much divided over this issue, used their resources to lobby members of parliament to support a ‘yes’ case. I wrote back to the AMA and I inquired. I said, ‘I’ve been a senator

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Taking the measure on farm

for four years, and I haven’t heard from you on other important issues such as domestic violence and inadequate health services in rural Australia.’ I listed about six or seven issues where, if they had positive policies to solve those issues, none of them had been shared with me. I had not been lobbied before.

Again, we’ve seen this with corporate Australia using its power in many instances to influence, in a way, against the ‘no’ vote in this country. Corporations have been using their funding in many instances against what may well have been the majority will of their shareholders and their customer base.

Another protection sought, of course, is for religious bodies in schools to act in accordance with traditional marriage belief. How can that be resisted? In no instance do I advocate, nor does anyone advocating these amendments advocate, that any of those protections should open up the possibility for any person, group or organisation to behave in a manner that would threaten or harass a person or persons.

Then we come down to the issue of protection of rights of parents, until their children reach the age of majority, with respect to teachings within the schools.

This has to be one of the most fundamental rights of parents who are charged with the guardianship of their children: to make a determination of what their children would be exposed to in education, not just around some of these issues of social contest but in a very general sense. We’re seeing manoeuvres now where there is resistance to the prospect that we would give parents the right to, for example, withdraw their children from classes where material to be taught conflicts with their moral or religious beliefs. How can that be resisted? I don’t understand how than can be resisted.

We recently, of course, over the last couple of years, had a battle over the Safe Schools Program. I’m not one of these senators who say, ‘I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of people and had thousands of emails,’ but, to the extent that I’ve had conversations with dozens upon dozens of parents about the Safe Schools Program, they indicated to me, quite properly, that as a school community they ought to have the right to veto the introduction of education modules, if you want to even call them that, into their schools, and then, notwithstanding that, that they would have the right to make decisions about their children not being exposed to educational material that did not fit with their value system, their moral system or their religious conscientious beliefs.

THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF PARENTS WHO ARE CHARGED WITH THE GUARDIANSHIP OF THEIR CHILDREN: TO MAKE A DETERMINATION OF WHAT THEIR CHILDREN WOULD BE EXPOSED TO IN EDUCATION. Civil celebrants are the subject of another amendment. They are not ministers of religion, but many people who are attracted to the professional role of a civil celebrant themselves, by nature, come from a Christian background. But they afford a service to people to get married on the basis that it is not a religious service. It doesn’t mean that they don’t conscientiously object to the marriage of two same-gender people. They ought to be afforded a protection to be able to do that.

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I suspect that in the fullness of time, as generations pass, this will be a bit like when we crossed over into decimal currency. There was that lovely letter to the editor where some old lady said, ‘Why couldn’t they have held off on making this transition until all of us old people have died?’ I think, in the fullness of time, the need for protections will lessen. But right now we’ve had five million Australians—and I’m not going to start playing with the figures and add back, subtract and multiply; five million is enough—who have indicated ‘no’ on the question of same-gender marriage. It could well be argued that most of them, if not all of them, would have a stronger view about the need for some of these protections to allow them and our society to transition with the adoption of this inevitable legislation, of this inevitable change to the Marriage Act, in a manner that doesn’t cause disruption.

I said here on the day the bill was introduced that it is our duty now to go cautiously and steadily— and I don’t mean measured in weeks; it could only necessarily be in days as we properly consider some adjustments to this bill—so that the end product unites Australians and doesn’t have the potential to divide them.

WELFARE REFORM SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 15 NOVEMBER 2017 I want to concentrate my remarks on an issue that is playing out in the mid-coast of my home state of Queensland, in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay area. Tragically, unemployment in that part of the country is double the national unemployment figure—somewhere in the order of 10 per cent. We are hoping that that will be alleviated in due course

with some of the developments we are happy to support just north of there, including the continued development of the Bowen Basin and the Galilee Basin, particularly with the onset of investment by Adani, one of five corporations who are intending to invest very significantly—billions of dollars—in that Central Queensland region.

UNEMPLOYMENT IS HAVING AN IMPACT ON FAMILIES. WE KNOW THAT 1,000 CHILDREN RECEIVE BREAKFAST WHEN THEY ARRIVE AT SCHOOL IN THIS AREA. THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT—1,000 CHILDREN LEAVE HOME AND MAKE THEIR WAY TO SCHOOL WITHOUT HAVING HAD ANY NOURISHMENT FOR THE MORNING. Unemployment is having an impact on families. We know that 1,000 children receive breakfast when they arrive at school in this area. Think about that for a moment—1,000 children leave home and make their way to school without having had any nourishment for the morning, and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that sometimes that breakfast is the only meal that they receive on a given day. One of the problems is that these children largely come from a sector of the community who are likely to be, I suppose, challenged by their economic circumstances, and, whilst there are no figures available, arguably many of them will be on some sort of social welfare. Many will neglect their children because of their own circumstances, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse and gambling abuse—not all; I don’t want to reflect on an entire group particularly when the stats aren’t available, but that seems to be the anecdotal evidence, and where surveys have been taken that’s the sort of argument that is borne out.

The government has taken it upon itself to roll out the cashless debit card into this area—it’s one of the areas that have been selected. This is enormously supported by the community of Australia. People fully expect that if social welfare payments are made to anybody then those payments are for the vitals of life, including making sure, to the best of their ability within the limited economic assistance that these payments provide, that they support their children so that we don’t have a thousand children arriving at school without having received nourishment in the form of breakfast. Tragically, the Queensland Labor government have decided to select this as a key issue in politics, and they are undermining the government’s effort to roll out this program in that area. Sadly, they have been joined in this by one of our colleagues, Senator Watt. I’ve often said of Senator Watt that he makes expressions with a thought to follow, and up there he has attacked the government by saying

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that there has been no consultation between the federal government and the local member in this case, Ms Donaldson, and their social services minister.

Ms Donaldson repeated that in a Senate legislation committee hearing. Perhaps there’s an argument there that she has even misled the Senate through her statements, because, when the evidence had been produced—and I’m happy for anybody who wants to explore this further to produce the physical evidence—we found that our minister had responded in writing to a letter from Ms Donaldson on 1 August and had agreed that they would meet, to clarify some of the issues around the program, and that the minister’s office would be in contact to arrange a suitable time.

TRAGICALLY, THE QUEENSLAND LABOR GOVERNMENT HAVE DECIDED TO SELECT THIS AS A KEY ISSUE IN POLITICS, AND THEY ARE UNDERMINING THE GOVERNMENT’S EFFORT TO ROLL OUT THIS PROGRAM IN THAT AREA. In the week of 7 August, Minister Tudge’s office contacted Ms Donaldson’s office to organise a time to meet. Dates in September were offered. These were declined by Ms Donaldson’s office as being unsuitable.

On 20 September, Minister Tudge’s Melbourne office arranged and confirmed by email a meeting with Ms Donaldson for 4 October. With plenty of notice, there was a change of venue—for her to come to Canberra rather than Melbourne. She declined. On 4 October, Minister Tudge called Ms Donaldson’s office

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and left a response. No calls were returned. On 15 October, the minister’s office called Ms Donaldson’s office and, again, offered to meet. On 16 October, the following day, Minister Tudge’s office emailed Ms Donaldson’s office—given there had been no reply to their offer—to organise a teleconference for 9.30 am on 23 October. These times were arranged and locked in. This is something that happens for many of us in our day-to-day lives. When Minister Tudge’s office rang at the agreed time, Ms Donaldson’s office said that the minister was not available. Minister Tudge’s office called Ms Donaldson’s office to arrange another teleconference time. Her office replied that they would provide a suitable time. That was on 23 October—and they haven’t heard from her since.

There is a reason for this. Ms Donaldson is playing serious politics—along with Senator Watt, my colleague here in the Senate—because they want the vote from these people. We have a state election happening, you might have noticed, and that’s what drives behaviour like this. There is no regard for the general benefit of the community and no regard for the thousand children going to school each day and not receiving nourishment. Ms Donaldson, when confronted with that, made the defence that she thought these children were double dipping—that they were eating at home and eating again when they got to school. In fact, she admitted her children were engaged in that practice. Well, for a woman who has had as much time as she has had around social services, she ought to know that that was a misleading and very dangerous statement to make.

We had a direct mail-out to over 32 constituents of this community, to engage with them on the rollout of the program. A phone poll of about 500 people showed overwhelming support, as is the case across Australia. There was 67 per cent support when formal

THE BUSH TELEGRAPH WITH SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN – JULY / AUGUST 2018 EDITION

Goodwood Station, Boulia

contact was made. There were also about 5,500 direct emails sent to the constituents of this area to advise them. In every instance, they were afforded the opportunity, as they ought to have been, to engage with government on how this program would be rolled out. I don’t want to blame her for politics and then start to play politics, but she has misled the Senate and the community on the government’s efforts to engage with her, on the rollout, as an appropriate courtesy.

THERE IS NO REGARD FOR THE GENERAL BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY AND NO REGARD FOR THE THOUSAND CHILDREN GOING TO SCHOOL EACH DAY AND NOT RECEIVING NOURISHMENT

Disappointingly, she is joined by Senator Watt of the Labor Party, a current member of this chamber.

Senator Watt ought to come down now into this place and put on the record that he doesn’t agree with Ms Donaldson’s protest that there has been no contact with her, because he knows full well there has been contact. Senator Watt is always a little bit careless around the facts in relation to matters, but here is an opportunity for him to clear the air. Ms Donaldson may well have misled a Senate inquiry, and we’ll have a look at that over time, but for the good people of Bundaberg and the good people of Australia, whose taxes are to be wisely invested, this program is going to proceed for the benefit of the community.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Let me leave you with a quote from someone who was a very popular Labor member for Hinkler, Mr Brian Courtice.

Courtice was a legend in that district. He had this to say about Ms Donaldson: What she is looking for is votes out of it but she is going to lose the votes from the people who pay tax.

She is trolling for votes from the unemployed. His words, not mine.

But I wouldn’t expect anything different from her... she is a political dud. She is a very disappointing member.

They’re the words of Brian Courtice, not mine. They’re the words of a Labor legend—about a Labor dud.

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BUDGET REPORT

BUDGET REPORT “It is the private sector that provides all the welfare that is needed for a family and their community to be able to take a position, create an income and make a contribution to the tax base. For them to do that, from time to time the government of the day have to get out of their way.”

– Senator Barry O’Sullivan

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BUDGET REPORT

THE 2018-19 BUDGET BALANCES THE EQUALLY IMPORT TASKS OF GROWING OUR ECONOMY AND RESPONSIBLY REPAIRING THE BUDGET. I believe Australia’s economy is pulling out of a tough period and has momentum.

KEEPING A REIGN ON SPENDING My Government has kept a tight rein on spending

The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that almost a million jobs have been created since we were first elected, as promised.

and is now no longer borrowing to pay for everyday

According to the ABS, 2017 saw the strongest year of jobs growth on record, with 415,000 more jobs created.

average annual real expenditure growth remains

From my travels across Queensland, it’s clear businesses are responding to improved conditions by investing again, confidence is up.

More new businesses are being started.

expenses.

Through careful management of the nation’s budget, below two per cent, which is the lowest of any government in the last 50 years.

Average growth in real payments is expected to average 1.9 per cent over the period 2013-14 to 202122.

Government payments are forecast to fall to 24.7

We’ve backed small and medium sized businesses with legislated tax cuts and investment incentives.

per cent of GDP by 2021-22. This is one of the few

We have invested at record levels to build the roads, railways, airports and energy infrastructure Australia needs for the future.

are projected to fall below their historical average in

Landmark export trade deals are backing our farmers, miners, manufacturers and service industries to crack new markets.

The Budget deficit is less than half what it was two years ago.

We are on track for a modest balance in 2019-20, increasing to a projected surplus of $11 billion in 202021.

A stronger economy is enabling us to deliver record support for services – including $30 billion in additional hospitals funding over five years (a 30% increase).

times since the Global Financial Crisis that payments a sustainable manner. This represents a significant decline from the high levels of spending following the Global Financial Crisis.

Spending is being directed to more productive uses such as infrastructure and my Government is taking further action to ensure that everyone pays their fair share by protecting the integrity of the tax system and addressing the black economy.

The 2018-19 Budget includes funding of $24.5 billion for new major projects and initiatives that will benefit every State and Territory.

These form part of my Government’s $75 billion investment in transport infrastructure over the next decade.

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BUDGET REPORT

It is the private sector that provides all the welfare that is needed for a family and their community to be able to take a position, create an income and make a contribution to the tax base.

For them to do that, from time to time the government of the day have to get out of their way. – Senator Barry O’Sullivan Since the 2016 election, the Government has legislated over $41 billion of budget repair measures that have strengthened the bottom line.

This is consistent with the Government’s budget repair strategy requiring that all new spending is offset.

My Government is also keeping taxes under control so higher taxes do not slow our economy down, costing jobs.

My Government is committed to staying under the tax ‘speed limit’ of 23.9 per cent of GDP. As a result of our responsible economic management we have retained our AAA credit rating from all three major credit rating agencies, making Australia one of only ten countries in the world to do so.

To build a stronger economy – to create jobs and guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on – we must ensure the tax system does not act as a drag on growth and aspiration. There must be reward for effort and incentive to get ahead.

In this year’s Budget there are

5 things we must to do to further strengthen our economy to guarantee the essentials Australians rely on.

Provide tax relief to encourage and reward working Australians and reduce cost pressures on households, including lowering electricity prices, Keep backing business to invest and create more jobs, especially small and medium sized businesses, Guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on, like Medicare, hospitals, schools and caring for older Australians, Keep Australians safe, with new investments to secure our borders, and, as always, Ensure that the Government lives within its means, keeping spending and taxes under control.

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BUDGET REPORT

NET DEBT IS EXPECTED TO HAVE PEAKED THIS YEAR

RETURNING TO SURPLUS

The return to surplus in 2020-21 and continuing projected surpluses over the medium term will enable a reduction in debt.

The underlying cash deficits of $18.2 billion and $14.5 billion forecast for 2017-18 and 2018-19 are the smallest since the surpluses delivered under the Howard Government.

As a result of living within our means, the Government has turned the corner on debt. Net debt as a share of GDP is expected to peak at 18.6 per cent of GDP in 2017-18 and is projected to fall to 14.7 per cent by 2021-22.

Gross debt will peak in 2019-20 at less than 30 per cent of GDP. Over the medium term gross debt will fall and be $126 billion less in 2027-28 than was estimated at MYEFO last December.

We are also clamping down on multinationals and those who think they are above the tax laws by targeting the black economy. The Diverted Profits Tax and the Multinational Anti‑Avoidance Law combined with a number of other integrity measures mean that Australia has some of the most robust tax rules on companies applied globally.

The Budget remains on track to return to balance.

The Budget returns to balance in 2019-20, with the surplus increasing in 2020-21 and beyond to more than one per cent of GDP over the medium term.

This is achieved while delivering much-needed tax relief and investing to further strengthen our economy and deliver a more prosperous future for all Australians.

The underlying cash balance is forecast to return to balance in 2019-20 at $2.2 billion, before increasing to a projected surplus of $11.0 billion in 2020-21 and $16.6 billion in 2021-22.

Budget surpluses are projected to continue into the medium term, building to a projected surplus of over one per cent of GDP by 2026-27 consistent with the Government’s budget repair strategy.

This is the sixth successive Budget update where the underlying cash balance has remained on track to reach a surplus in 2020-21.

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BUDGET REPORT

SUPPORTING MORE AUSTRALIANS INTO JOBS A strengthening economy along with my Government’s action to ensure our welfare system is well-targeted have resulted in welfare dependency for working age Australians falling to its lowest level in 25 years.

It is important we have a strong safety net to protect all Australians. The system must support those who are most vulnerable and genuinely in need - it must not be taken for granted.

Stronger economic growth and Government policies have resulted in a decrease in welfare recipients across most categories of working age payments since 2015.

Around 15 per cent of Australia’s working age population are currently receiving some form of welfare payment. This is down from around 25 per cent two decades ago.

My Government remains committed to ensuring the welfare system is targeted to those who need it most while ensuring that those who are able to work are encouraged to do so. This has seen welfare payments fall from around 7 percent of GDP in 2014-15 to a forecast figure of around 6 per cent of GDP in 201819.

The 2018-19 Budget builds on a number of measures the Government has introduced to strengthen the integrity of the welfare system.

My Government will save around $300 million over three years from 2019-20 by extending fraud detection and debt recovery activities.

The extended debt recovery activities will focus on high value debts and individuals who are no longer receiving welfare payments.

Income data matching activities between the Department of Human Services and Australian Taxation Office will be extended to enhance the integrity of social welfare payments.

This helps to ensure the sustainability of the welfare system for those who most need it.

I have seen first hand how jobs growth has been broad-based across regions and industries, with the improved employment prospects encouraging more Australians to look for work.

This strength in the economy and jobs market is expected to continue, in line with leading indicators of employment growth such as job advertisements and business survey measures of hiring intentions.

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BUDGET REPORT

Some key initiatives…

SMALL BUSINESS TAX CUTS Tax cuts for 3.2 million businesses employing 6.7 million Australians.

SECURE BORDERS No boats in three years. 17 detention centres closed, saving the Budget billions.

INSTANT ASSET WRITE OFF Used last year by 300,000 small businesses to invest in new equipment and machinery.

FIGHTING TERROR 14 major terrorist plots have been foiled.

The Government is boosting our security agencies, has introduced tougher anti-terror laws and is revoking citizenship of dual nationals who engage in terrorism.

AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE ENERGY National Energy Guarantee will ensure reliability and reduce bills. More gas supplies have been secured. Snowy Hydro 2.0 feasibility study has been completed.

RECORD INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT Record $75 billion investment over the next decade in highway upgrades, congestion busting roads, rail projects, improved local roads, inland rail and a new airport.

FIXING THE BUDGET Over $37 billion in Budget savings since the election. We have halved the growth in spending. We are on track for a balanced budget in 2020-21.

MORE EXPORTS Rural exports up 19% last year, as we are locking in benefits from landmark trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea. Australian exporters will also benefit from the new Trans-Pacific Partnership - a Trade Agreement between 11 major economies in our region (collectively worth $13.7 trillion).

TACKLING UNION LAWLESSNESS Australian Building and Construction Commission restored to protect small businesses and the economy from CFMEU lawlessness. Secret payments banned between businesses and unions.

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DEPORTING CRIMINALS We’ve changed the rules to deport noncitizens who commit serious crimes. The Government has cancelled visas of 3,000 serious criminals – including murderers, rapists, child sex offenders, armed robbers and drug dealers.

TACKLING SCOURGE OF ICE AFP has seized over 14 tonnes of Ice since 2013. Record funding for law enforcement and treatment. Wastewater surveys show a recent drop in Ice use.

MORE AFFORDABLE CHILD CARE Landmark reforms targeted to working parents. Abolishing the $7,613 annual cap for families (incomes up to $185,000) and introducing a new Child Care Subsidy, meaning around one million families will benefit.

MORE SCHOOLS FUNDING Extra $23.5 billion over a decade – a 50% funding increase for the average student.

RESTRICTING GAMBLING ADS As part of the Coalition Government’s media reforms, gambling ads will be removed during televised sports before 8.30pm on free-to-air television.

THE BUSH TELEGRAPH WITH SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN – JULY / AUGUST 2018 EDITION

t u o k loo

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WHITE SPOT OUTBREAKS IN SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 14 NOVEMBER 2017 Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, I know that I probably don’t do your promotional prospects much good as I continue to remark on the great work that you have done in chairing our beloved Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry into white spot. I want to put some things on the record about the committee’s inquiry and its report, Biosecurity risks associated with the importation of seafood and seafood products (including uncooked prawns and uncooked prawn meat) into Australia. Firstly, I mention the aquaculture community, particularly in my home state of Queensland, which was so affected by this. From memory, there were nine growers or nine farms affected. There is simply no question that the negative economic impacts and the stress visited on their lives as a result of this outbreak of the white spot disease or virus will take many years for them to work through. They are a very resilient community and they worked diligently and patiently with government, both at a state and a federal level, until we were able to bring about something of a compensation package to support them financially, not only to deal with the impacts of the outbreak but also to ensure, to the best of our ability, that their businesses remained viable until they were able go back into production.

Just for the record, briefly what happened was that there was an outbreak of a virus that got into the wild. There were any number of pathways, but, unfortunately, and I might say embarrassingly for our government, one of the potential pathways resulted from failures in our biosecurity system. I need to be careful because at least in one case there are people before the courts and I think there are another four briefs pending with the Director of Public Prosecutions. I’ll be very careful in my language, but the assertion is that there was behaviour on the part of some import traders, which, coupled with a failure on the part of some of our biosecurity people at the coalface, created an environment where, over a long period of time, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of infected prawn—and I doubt the volume will ever be well known—made their way into the retail chains around our country. The prawns were being sold in retail outlets for human consumption and, it was clear from the evidence that the inquiry took, there were recreational fishermen—and I don’t blame them for this—who bought the prawns and used them as bait. Whilst we’ll probably never know what the established pathway of the infection in the Logan River was, it was felt, certainly by the people affected, that recreational fishermen using retail prawns was probably the pathway.

There is some good news around the story, and I would like to say, without trying to embarrass him, that Senator Sterle drove a very probative inquiry, supported by colleagues from this side and indeed others, as we went in search of the truth around these biosecurity vulnerabilities that I’ve identified.

Consequently, I think it is fair to say that, by the time the report was published, the department of agriculture had well and truly gone down the pathway of reviewing their practices and procedures and putting in place new architecture, you might say, that would minimise this happening in the future.

THERE IS SIMPLY NO QUESTION THAT THE NEGATIVE ECONOMIC IMPACTS AND THE STRESS VISITED ON THEIR LIVES AS A RESULT OF THIS OUTBREAK OF THE WHITE SPOT DISEASE OR VIRUS WILL TAKE MANY YEARS FOR THEM TO WORK THROUGH. So it disrupted the supply chain. It disrupted trade.

There were implications for imports of prawns that are still playing out. I think we’re in strained relations with a couple of nations who haven’t been happy about the increase in the testing regime that’s been implemented. The test is now a more sensitive test than in the international standards—it is world’s best practice—and I think it’s fair to say that, as long as everybody does their job, and as long as importers act in good faith, we may well have at least mitigated the risk that might come from imports.

I don’t intend to take all of my time. I want to congratulate the chair of the references committee, Senator Sterle, and his colleagues and my own

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A Senators work is never done

colleagues. It was a very collegial inquiry. We were very well received and there was a high level of confidence that this wasn’t going to be just some sort of a brushover on the part of a federal government references committee. We really did establish good faith, I think, with most people in the industry. So congratulations, Senator Sterle and others. I just wanted to have the opportunity to speak on this, given all the work and effort that had been put into it.

IMMIGRATION POLICY SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 14 NOVEMBER 2017 It’s often not what the Greens say when they speak; it is about the things that they ignore. The Greens often come into this place and argue that laws should be broken. In this case, the good senator forgot to mention that these events are as a result of a ruling of the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea, so it was an order. For the entire time that I have been here, these people have called for the closing of this detention centre, and, when the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled accordingly that it ought to be closed, of course overnight their voice changed. So it is not just hypocrisy; it is a concerted effort on their part to mislead the people of Australia with respect to these circumstances.

Senator McKim—can I say to you, Acting Deputy President—continued to refer to these events as a policy of the government. This is not the policy of the government. This is the government respecting the sovereignty of a foreign nation and indeed a partner in the Pacific, in Papua New Guinea, and fulfilling its wishes as ordered by the Supreme Court.

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But let’s just get back to the beginning. Come back to the beginning. What happened here was not the making of the government of the day. Fifty thousand people arrived illegally on over 800 boats over a period of time. It was an issue that the government inherited. The policy to put these people on Manus Island was a Greens-Labor policy, and our government had to arrive in government with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other to clean up this mess.

THERE WERE OVER 8,000 CHILDREN DETAINED, NOT UNDER THIS GOVERNMENT, BUT UNDER A LABOR GOVERNMENT, AND IT TOOK THIS GOVERNMENT TO GET THESE CHILDREN OUT OF DETENTION. You would’ve noted, colleagues, that not once—not once, ever—have the Greens protested about the 1,200 souls being lost at sea. Not once did they ever mention it. They want to talk about a calamity. Twelve hundred men, women and children—people whose names we don’t know, in many circumstances—perished at sea, under a policy that the Greens supported in this place for many years. There were over 8,000 children detained, not under this government, but under a Labor government, and it took this government to get these children out of detention. We were able to do that, despite resistance. We’re all well aware of the famous evidence by the Human Rights Commission President, who admitted, virtually, to colluding with the Labor Party, while the government was in a transitional phase, to bring criticism and to bring an inquiry onto the incoming government about

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children in detention. That was despite the fact that, in the early periods of this government, we removed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children out of detention and got them to the smallest numbers.

These people on Manus Island have choices. They have an opportunity, many of them, to go to the United States. But we have, particularly, Senator McKim up there, falsely misleading these people, so that they are resisting the opportunities that they have. They can settle in Papua New Guinea. They can move to— Honourable senators interjecting— Senator O’SULLIVAN: Well, they’ve got the choice already. If they’ve been determined to be refugees, they can settle in Papua New Guinea or they can apply to go to the United States. As to all of this rhetoric that comes out of the Greens about going to New Zealand: they already know what will happen.

That will re-open people coming on the high seas into this part of the world, and more men, women, and children—whose lives you do not and have not valued or ever recognised—will perish at sea again.

More people will die.

So we’ve got these people at Manus Island who’ve got choices. We’ve had the government of PNG declare publicly that there are other facilities to which they can go today. So they can move to these facilities. As to the standards and the care that they will receive, that, to date, has cost the Australian government $11 billion. That’s $11,000 million to support these people.

And here you would think that somehow we’ve left them with a fig leaf over their vital parts, that we won’t feed them or water them and that we won’t give them health and psychiatric support.

One of the things that has never been recognised is this: say I were a refugee or had determined myself to be a refugee, and I had fled my country and had come, via all sorts of routes, on the high seas, on boats that should have had 50 people on them but had 500 on them, and had gone through the immense trauma of that journey to this place, and had watched my brothers and sisters and mother and father and children die, nameless, with no ceremony, no grave and no place to rest. It does not surprise me that many of these people find themselves in a conflicted position. It does not surprise me that many of these people feel traumatised. And what has our government done? We have provided exceptional health and support services for these people—so much so that many Australians in need of health and psychiatric care do not get care of the same standard that these people get it and don’t get it within the same time frame. And Senator McKim knows this.

This is the problem. These facts are inconvenient.

And that’s why we hear him over here, bellowing like an old bull caught in a barbed wire fence. Seriously, Senator McKim—as to what you’ve tried to portray here, you’ve been a single voice. You don’t have any support from your colleagues. They’re all silent around this question.

Senator McKim interjecting—

Senator O’SULLIVAN: No; they’re all here today to wave their arms around for 10 minutes while you speak, but they’ve been silent on this in the public.

You are a minority voice, and often—as I’ve said about other colleagues in this place sitting opposite—you are simply an expression waiting for a thought to follow. You do not think through your statements, and you come in here with this confected anger that you’ve directed at the government, who have unravelled what was a humanitarian crisis— Senator McKim interjecting—

WE HAVE PROVIDED EXCEPTIONAL HEALTH AND SUPPORT SERVICES FOR THESE PEOPLE—SO MUCH SO THAT MANY AUSTRALIANS IN NEED OF HEALTH AND PSYCHIATRIC CARE DO NOT GET CARE OF THE SAME STANDARD THAT THESE PEOPLE GET IT AND DON’T GET IT WITHIN THE SAME TIME FRAME. Senator O’SULLIVAN: Mr Acting Deputy President Gallacher, I suffer from a condition called sensitive ear, and I have to step away from foghorns, and senators are interrupting me while I am speaking. I would ask that you ask Senator McKim to give me the respect that I give him.

There are difficulties up there. There are difficulties up there, because Senator McKim and his predecessor, Senator Hanson-Young, have been going up there consistently to stir these people up there. They go there to give them absolute false hope. They go up there to convince them to engage in civil disobedience—which, of course, is one of the tools in their tool bag. They want them to resist. He talks about communicating with them all the time and giving them advice. Why don’t you release any communications that you’ve got—texts and emails— with any of these people in this camp, so that we can make an assessment as to what sound advice you’re giving them or, more likely than not, not giving them.

Senator Rhiannon interjecting— Senator O’SULLIVAN: Senator, fancy that coming from you! Fancy you suggesting to me that I’m not telling the truth here. I just asked a question, and you need to get your colleague to provide those communications so that this Senate can make a judgement on them.

Senator McKim interjecting— Senator O’SULLIVAN: I had an old utility that had a squeak like that and I got rid of it, and the Senate ought to get rid of you. In closing, this government has set an example to the world in terms of managing what has been a very difficult situation that it inherited from Labor and the Greens.

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Senator McKim interjecting— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order on my left!

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Jiminy cricket, he makes a lot of noise, that fellow! All I can recommend is that everybody looks carefully at the facts. Have a look not at what Senator McKim and the Greens say; have a look at what they don’t say, because, when the inconvenient truths are presented, their protests sound very, very hollow.

the coast almost all the way to Cairns. There is not one of those small coastal communities on the eastern side of the Great Divide that would not be affected by this continued instability in the sugar industry.

We don’t even need to return to our contemporary inquiry to understand why this became necessary.

There was a royal commission in this country in 1932, I think it was, into the sugar industry because the sugar industry was not developing. That was because of the concern about the power imbalance of millers with respect to this particular commodity.

SUGAR SUPPLY CHAIN SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 17 OCTOBER 2017 This matter has now been lingering around this place for multiple weeks. Without directing my attention to Senator Bernardi, I think there’s been adequate time for any senator to explore all sides of this equation in order to make their mind up about whether they should or shouldn’t support this disallowance motion.

Indeed, reference to the report that Senator Williams has spoken about would have articulated it clearly.

That was a massive inquiry. Senator Macdonald, who is the father of the Senate, told me he’d never been at a Senate hearing with as many stakeholders present.

In Townsville there were over 350 in a massive hall.

They just attended to observe the conduct of the inquiry. All the millers were there and all the growers were there. So that would have aided it.

But can I say, Senator Bernardi, that the reason this motion was brought on today is that this has been continuing to cause great angst back in this industry.

It has had nearly three years where people weren’t able to plan. Planning around sugar is a big deal; you’ve got to make a decision now about a five-year business plan. So, the investment that you make this season will have impacts on your business operations for five years. After three years of uncertainty, which was stabilised with the application of the code, there was a massive sigh of relief across the canegrowers in my home state of Queensland, which is largely where the production in this country is. I know that Senator Williams has cane production in the northern part of New South Wales, but Australia’s cane production is largely in the state of Queensland. There was a huge sigh of relief—and I mean from people in their thousands. I’ve been here nearly four years now, and I’ve never had so much correspondence and traffic— phone calls and contact events—made over an issue as I did over sugar. There are, on average, 4,500 families and something like 67 small communities involved, and if the sugar industry is disrupted it will disrupt their economies and their social circumstances right across my home state. They are small communities, some of them with only a couple of hundred residents.

You could probably argue that this instability ran from somewhere north of the Tweed and up through Childers with a break and then through to production areas around Serena and Mackay and all the way up

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PLANNING AROUND SUGAR IS A BIG DEAL; YOU’VE GOT TO MAKE A DECISION NOW ABOUT A FIVE-YEAR BUSINESS PLAN. SO, THE INVESTMENT THAT YOU MAKE THIS SEASON WILL HAVE IMPACTS ON YOUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS FOR FIVE YEARS. I just want to pick up and elaborate further on a couple of points made by Senator Williams. This commodity has to be harvested in a very short period of time. It’s measured in weeks. It’s not as if you can just throw the crop in and say, ‘I’ll come back from holidays in January, and I’ll take the crop off, or, if that doesn’t suit me, I’ll wait until Easter,’ or use any of the other rotations that can occur with other commodities. Once it’s harvested, its life, its productivity, is measured in hours, not even days. What happens to it is that it goes onto a little, flimsy carriage on a little, flimsy rail line, and it can only go to one place. That’s the mill.

It can’t be stored. It’s not efficient to transport it by any other method to another mill—and, even if you could, you are likely, in my home state of Queensland,

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to arrive at another mill owned by the same miller you were trying to avoid 60 kilometres down the road.

I had some colleagues who wanted to talk to me about the free market. Well, I’m a free marketeer to a certain extent. I’m not going to make out that I’m a total free marketeer; I don’t mind protected markets.

But the thing you need, to be able to make decisions around a free market, is a free market, and there is no free market with respect to this sugar.

What the royal commission almost a hundred years ago, 70-something years ago, decided was the principle of economic interest—so the relationship between the miller and the grower. It didn’t matter that the mills were sometimes cooperatively owned by the growers. This principle of economic interest was the safeguard.

Now, when this mob came along, of course, they made undertakings when they came through the Foreign Investment Review Board that they weren’t going to disturb these marketing conditions that had prevailed and operated successfully in this space for all of this period of time. One thing I can tell you about the corporation Wilmar is that they are very persistent, and they are very patient. This won’t end here today.

With this episode today with Senator Leyonhjelm, I’ve got to imagine that they have persuaded him or convinced him of the merits of his activities here today. There can be no other reason. Senator Leyonhjelm didn’t wake up one day in his apartment in Sydney and say, ‘Golly gee, by the end of the day I’d better fix this business around sugarcane marketing in a state that I rarely visit.’ And, of course, he won’t be able to visit it any longer. He won’t be able to go to any beach community between Noosa and Cairns unless he’s got a wig and a moustache on.

I wasn’t even going to speak today, but I was persuaded. I listened to this in my office. He started to make allegations in here that were not accurate. One was that the National Party somehow had some kneejerk reaction with the code of conduct. Well, I’ve got to tell you: it’s a pretty slowly operating knee, because it started in 2014 and it didn’t come into play until any number of years later. And, on the suggestion that somehow a government in which I’m involved has done some dirty deal with any crossbenchers, such as One Nation, I know that One Nation genuinely support agriculture, growers and small farmers in my home state. You couldn’t put a Tally-Ho paper between One Nation and the National Party in their attitude to small communities, agriculture and supporting these industries and these particular economies. It wouldn’t matter what the circumstances were. It was of no surprise that One Nation themselves turned their attention to this particular issue with the sugar industry and joined us, in effect.

have attended 25 or 30 meetings. When Senator Leyonhjelm says there was no consultation, I’ve got to tell you that I couldn’t even go into my bathroom; representatives of Wilmar and other mills were sitting on the bench there waiting for me in my suite. So any suggestion that we didn’t talk to, listen to, debate and argue with every element within industry—and I’m not just talking about canegrowers and cane processors.

THESE ARE PLACES WHERE THE KIDS OFTEN WORK ON THE FARM, OR NOT FAR AWAY, AND THERE ARE FOUR OR FIVE GENERATIONS INVOLVED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUGAR. I travelled that country up there as many do and my colleagues here do. I’ve travelled it dozens of times. And this was a topic of conversation with local government, with local business associations, with everybody. So every stakeholder was consulted, and we arrived, at the end of the day, with the decision around the mandatory code. The mandatory code was mandatory as opposed to voluntary because Wilmar indicated that they wouldn’t comply with a voluntary code. So it had to be made mandatory for it to have any sort of effect. I like Senator Leyonhjelm and I’ve got on well with him while I have been here. But— I like Senator Leyonhjelm and I’ve had cooperation with him since I have been here. But I will not tolerate any senator coming in here and attacking the agricultural base of these great families, 4,500 of them, who have provided enormous input to the economy of my state and the economy of this nation. These are decent family men and women. You go there; these are real family communities. These are places where the kids often work on the farm, or

I’m happy to say we were there because our circumstances allowed. We were there well before it.

We had spent, in my case, hundreds and hundreds of hours travelling in these inquiries, poring over reports, making adjustments and changes. I must

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Eromanga Natural History Muesum

not far away, and there are four or five generations involved in the development of sugar. And I’ll say to any senator that wants to attack it front on: I won’t sleep until I defend these farmers at every level; and if I have to default, if someone has to be favoured, it will be the farmers.

THERE’S BEEN A COMPLETE AND ABSOLUTE COLLAPSE OF TRUST IN WILMAR OVER THE LAST THREE OR FOUR YEARS. The big boys, the Wilmars, one of the biggest processors in the world, can look after themselves.

I don’t want to attack Wilmar. They’re a company and I’m always very cautious in this place not to do reputational damage to corporations. But one of the telling questions was that Wilmar wanted to enter the marketplace and have the right to sell the sugar of these growers—and they have been granted that right. The old single desk that was around, QSL, was expanded. So Wilmar can, if they choose, entice the growers to allow them to market their sugar, to pick up this other premium that they think is there to be had.

But why don’t the sugar growers use them? Because there’s been a complete and absolute collapse of trust in Wilmar over the last three or four years as these dealings evolved. They don’t trust them. They understand that, if they go off there for a fortnight, it’s like having a new girlfriend and leaving the wife at home. If QSL is not there, at the end of the day we do have a single desk, a Wilmar desk, controlling the ports and the logistics—and that’s when you know you’ve got trouble. That’s when you’ve got ‘farm

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gate’. That’s when you have those little railway lines that go off to the mill and come back still full of cane.

So we will be vigilant on this while ever we’re in power.

I really appreciate the support of One Nation. I have to correct my colleague, Senator Williams. I think he was a bit hasty in jumping on the Greens. I don’t know what the Greens will do with this vote. But there was an indication earlier today when they supported bringing this on and restoring stability into the sugar industry for sugar growers.

I want to close by saying this. My message to Wilmar is: look straight down the barrel. You’re not the only one that’s patient. You’re not the only one that knows how to exercise power. It’s a long way between now and when you cripple our sugar industry. It’s a long way between now and when you get sole power over this important industry. The message to you is clear: it won’t matter whether I’m here, whether Senator Hanson and her colleagues are here or whether Senator Williams is here, our side of politics will continue to protect the interests and integrity of industries that are so important to so many thousands of our families, so many hundreds of our communities, from now until the end of time. So, Wilmar, if you don’t like those circumstances, pack your bags and go to Brazil or somewhere else.

REGIONAL INVESTMENT CORPORATION SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 16 OCTOBER 2017 I rise to speak on the Regional Investment Corporation Bill 2017. As I make a contribution, I think I should reflect on some of the contributions by Senator Leyonhjelm, to come to the defence of the

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‘bleaters’, if that’s the term. We’ve had fairly unique circumstances around agricultural conditions both in my home state of Queensland, where some 93 per cent of the landmass is devoted to agricultural production, and in large tracts of the western part of New South Wales and the northern parts of South Australia, due to weather conditions. Of course, the struggles and the challenges in the dairy industry, for example in Victoria and Tasmania, are well known in this place.

I don’t agree with Senator Leyonhjelm that these people—and there are tens of thousands of them— have engineered their own circumstances, as opposed to having been subject to the insidious encroachment of periods of drought, some of which are now the longest in recorded history. In fact, 78 per cent of my home state remains droughted at the moment, and most of this is impacting on broadacre beef production, on pastoralists.

So we have the dingoes, the kangaroos and the drought, and we have the suspension of the live cattle trade in 2011—and I know that some listening will roll their eyes and wonder when we’re going to put that chestnut to bed. Well, the fact is that it affected tens of thousands of very viable generational producers in my home state, particularly in the northern areas of Queensland and into the Northern Territory. Those who are not students of the world of agriculture, particularly broadacre pastoralism, wouldn’t remember that the live cattle trade suspension impacted for two to three years on the balance sheets of producers. We had massive numbers of cattle that had been particularly bred for export but then, because of the suspension of live exports, found their way onto the domestic market, competing with cattle produced for domestic purposes, which put downward pressure on the price that pastoralists could get for their product. I remember—and I have cited it in this place before—standing beside a neighbour who got 58c a kilogram for store heifers; if that neighbour went back into the marketplace today to replace their female seed stock, they would pay well above $3 at certain times.

So I’ve always been fascinated by this attitude, as expressed by Senator Leyonhjelm, that farmers are whingers and that all they want to do is to reach out to the federal government to support them. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are very proud people who find themselves in difficult circumstances beyond their control.

If we have a cyclone go through Fiji, 20 minutes later we will have a Hercules flying over, dumping out millions worth of aid and support. If we have a cyclone go through our coastal areas, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars, as a federal government, subsidising the re-establishment of those communities and the businesses that support those communities and support employment—hundreds of millions of dollars.

And we do so without pause; we mobilise immediately to provide them with support the following day.

There have been some great bushfire tragedies in this

country, in South Australia and Victoria in particular.

Massive bushfires have wiped out entire regions and districts and taken away people’s livelihoods and homes. And, in those cases of natural disaster, we, as a generous nation, immediately mobilise to support these people. But, because we’re dealing with a more insidious, slow and creeping form of natural disaster in the form of drought, somehow these people become whingeing ‘bleaters’, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I CAN NAME FOR YOU HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS OF PASTORALISTS IN THE BEEF INDUSTRY IN MY HOME STATE—I CAN TELL YOU THE NAMES OF THEIR PARENTS AND IN SOME INSTANCES THEIR GRANDPARENTS— WHO HAVE BEEN ON PROPERTIES FOR UP TO 100 YEARS. I can name for you hundreds upon hundreds of pastoralists in the beef industry in my home state—I can tell you the names of their parents and in some instances their grandparents—who have been on properties for up to 100 years, dealing with all the elements and with the challenges that exist when producing beef, in this case, in otherwise arid conditions. They are the best in the world at this.

Sometimes remarks about these pastoralists show a great deal of ignorance on the part of the people who express them. Sixty-six per cent of the production of beef in the entire country happens in my home state of Queensland and, of that, over 70 per cent—some 72 per cent—is exported. We are a trade-exposed nation. We are not a volume exporter of beef. We can’t compete with the Brazils, Argentinas and others, and so we have to produce quality product if we are to get our share of the marketplace. You can’t produce a quality product unless the producers—these farmers, these ‘bleaters’ that Senator Leyonhjelm referred to—apply the very best practices they can to the operation of their properties, to everything that is within their control.

Those of us who have been around these industries— for the last three or four decades in my case—have watched these people adopt technologies. I’ve watched them improve their properties, living hand to mouth, effectively, while they reinvest in the properties to create the best pastoral arrangements, to bring into play the best genetics that exist, so that their production rates go up. My grandfather and great-grandfather would produce bullocks—aged male beasts which might be five or six years of age before they were sold off the properties. In place of that we produce and sell an article—a fattened steer or a steer in forward condition—each year. Over the last 30 years, these pastoralists have improved production levels to such an extent that the volumes they produce

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per hectare on their properties as a result of some of the changes I’ve mentioned and others—better water reticulation; better water management; the capping of bores with literally millions of kilometres of poly pipe to introduce water points at particular intervals, which science has told us will attract cattle walking a particular distance each day—maximise the grazing of these properties. We’re a country that doesn’t subsidise the production of beef as happens in many of the nations that we compete with.

I CAN TELL YOU THIS AS A WORD OF WARNING: IF WE CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE WE START TO GET MASS CONSOLIDATION OF PROPERTIES AND LOSE WHAT’S KNOWN AS THE FAMILY FARM, WE’RE GOING TO CHANGE THE FACE OF AGRICULTURE TO A POINT THAT IS NOT IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST. I reject absolutely any sort of blanket assumption that a large number of the people in this industry or these industries are bleaters, that they’re not efficient, that they’re not amongst the most efficient producers in the world. Like everything, there are some who don’t do it as well as they could or as well as they should.

There are some who, from a financial point of view, have found themselves, starting from a very difficult base, not having or ever achieving the economic capacity to grow their property and improve their business to a standard that would improve productivity and would mean they could operate in a more self-sufficient manner. But the largest volume of them are very, very efficient operators.

socks to put on. They are things that are produced by these farmers in agriculture. Unless we support them in much the same way that we do with so many other sectors when there are natural disasters, then, I say to you: we will pay a price in the fullness of time—we’re already paying a price.

The Regional Investment Corporation, from a legislative point of view, is simply a consolidation of what has been going on for decades with federal government support to agriculture. Currently, where you are drought affected, you are entitled to certain support from the federal government through concessional loans, and there are other measures that the government implements from time to time to support these people to put bread on the table while they survive these drier conditions. At the moment, these loans are administered by the states. One of the driving forces behind this was that we’ve found— certainly in the near term, in the last four or five years— that some of the states have not administered these loans properly. You can have a property in Queensland and go across the border into New South Wales and be confronted with different loan conditions set down by the states. This inconsistency has caused a great deal of difficulty for many producers around the country. This bill is about consolidating this work into one central point where we’ll have a national body that administers these loans.

The modelling has been done. The cost to administer the loans at a federal level is almost netted off by the costs that currently exist, where the states are paid to administer these loans in what, I would argue, is a most inefficient fashion. The loans are paid and they get 2.5 per cent of the gross value of the loan to administer it at state level. Mind you, I think—and I’ll stand corrected; I don’t mean to do anything to mislead the Senate—that Victoria and Western Australia have put the Commonwealth on notice that

I can tell you this as a word of warning: if we create an environment where we start to get mass consolidation of properties and lose what’s known as the family farm or the living property—that is, a property that’s probably operated by mum and dad with one or two adult children, or certainly the support of their children as they grow up if they happen to remain in the district for their schooling—we’re going to change the face of agriculture in our more regional, rural and remote areas to a point that is not in the national interest.

We’ve seen this happen with corporatisation. I am not against corporatisation; I think there’s a place for it.

Foreign ownership and corporatisation have changed the face of rural Australia by the way that they behave in their interaction with these lifeblood communities, which are out there to support these pastoralists, who, in turn, support our economy. Agriculture’s one of the second pillars in our economy. It’s been number one before and it will be number one again—without it nothing else matters. You can turn your iPad on, but without agriculture you’ll have nothing to eat, no shirt to put on, no trousers to pull on and no shoes or

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THE BUSH TELEGRAPH WITH SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN – JULY / AUGUST 2018 EDITION

they intend to increase that management fee to about five per cent. If you want to talk about an abnormal cost to administer the loans, that’s the way to do it.

Leave it until these states, one by one, increase their share of these loans that they administer to a point of around five per cent and then we will start to deal with the ratio of the cost to administer to the cost of the loans and we’ll be in a fairly inefficient space.

This bill will provide a body that will consolidate and manage these loans across the country in a fair and equitable fashion.

The corporation will also administer the government’s water infrastructure promises: the $2 billion in the National Water Infrastructure Loan Facility. It is a facility that will allow states to make applications to put much-needed water infrastructure into our various states. It provides the states with concessional loans over a period of time. In both of these instances the money doesn’t leave the balance sheet. The money remains on the balance sheet of the Commonwealth.

It’s not as it was once, where grants were made to people that offset their interest costs. That money never came back. This money will never leave the balance sheet of the Commonwealth, apart from the administration costs, which, I understand, will be offset against the slight uplift in the loans between the Commonwealth and particular producers.

I do share Senator Leyonhjelm’s concern about some producers who get access to these concessional loans. There’s quite a bit of work being done that will set some of the guidelines into the future—certainly it’s a policy position that I’ve been pursuing—that will tighten up and incentivise these producers to make themselves more resilient in certain circumstances, such as these dry conditions. I mean, it is an arid nation.

As sure as night follows day, dry periods are going to follow more prosperous periods. These people are the subject of market conditions. Consequently, when it gets particularly dry, they’re forced to sell their commodity—in this case, livestock. You can watch the marketplace over the last 30 or 40 years. I’ve studied it. Study the graph. When they most need a form of income, this natural disaster causes them to have to sell their livestock at a much reduced price, as is the case now. If we had drought-breaking rains right through the west of Queensland, you would find these producers—as I said in the earlier part of my presentation—having to pay 400 or 500 per cent more than the sale price of their old stock for breeding stock to replace their stock.

nimble enough to intervene in the lives of producers and people in agricultural pursuits by supporting them at a much earlier stage; therefore offsetting some of the critical issues that occur when they get into such distraught financial circumstances that there’s no recovery.

I HAVE A SERIOUS PLACE IN MY HEART FOR PEOPLE IN AGRICULTURE AND PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN PROVINCIAL AUSTRALIA. I’ve met with the banks over a long period of time, and the banks are anxious to ensure that they too support their customers in this space. They get it. They have been very tolerant. This is the private sector. Senator Leyonhjelm suggested it doesn’t have a tolerance.

Well, it does have a tolerance. Many of the banks or most of the banks, despite some of the publicity that’s directed at them, have dealt with these producers in a very even-handed way. They’ve stood with them for many years, understanding that the cycles in the bush are more like the cycle of a decade than a cycle we might have in parts of the country where things are more predictable in terms of the weather conditions for producers of agricultural commodities.

I really do commend this legislation to the Senate. I think everyone in this place knows I have a serious place in my heart for people in agriculture and people who live in provincial Australia. I can tell you: I’ve looked at this legislation very thoroughly, and there is no aspect of it that I fear for our government either from a financial point of view or in creating artificial structures or architecture around primary production in this country. I do accept Senator Leyonhjelm’s reference, though we disagree on volume.

This is not legislation that’s come into this chamber or anywhere else for an appropriation of money. This money exists. This money sits in the budget, and this money is administered as has been directed by this place and the other place with the governing legislation to date over time. It’s not looking for additional funds; it is about managing the existing funds much more efficiently than we have seen in the past. By consolidating it under one Commonwealth roof, the Commonwealth will have the ability to move nimbly across the nation. In this case, it will make us

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l a r Ru

A I R FA R E I N Q U I R Y I have travelled tens of thousands of kilometres across Queensland since I became a Senator in 2014. I have driven the roads and I have flown the rural and regional air routes.

One of the issues that always draw strong discussion is the costs of airfares and reliability of air services across rural and regional air routes.

Currently, some states and territories provide subsidies; there are some allocated seats for locals; there are additional costs placed on the airlines – these are all factors that we need to examine closely to understand how regional airlines provide their current services.

Currently people in the bush are foregoing funerals, weddings and medical procedures because booking flights at short notice is too expensive.

High travel costs are also preventing people from settling down in regional centres, slowing potential population growth and greatly impacting on the liveability of these areas.

I decided it was necessary to investigate these matters and launched a new inquiry

into rural and regional air routes that would focus on the social and economic impacts of fare costs and service delivery for non-metropolitan communities.

There is no doubt that airfare cost and service reliability were vital issues for rural communities.

Regional air routes were a lifeline for access to major community and health services and the lifeblood of special economic drivers in the bush.

If you want to access a medical specialist in the bush you often need to fly to the nearest major city.

If you want to bring specially skilled workers to a rural and regional business, you often require them to fly to your area.

These air routes are a necessity for the people in the bush, which makes it an important issue to examine thoroughly using the committee process.

This inquiry also commenced following approaches from LNP members of Queensland parliament and their contribution has been important as our investigations have progressed.

It has been an extremely well attended and debated inquiry with constituents and media from across Australia making their voices heard.

Senator Barry O’Sullivan 2018

Speaking in a panel discussion at the Revloution at Calvary Church conference

I think by centralising this we will be able—I understand there’s a mood for this—to put incentives and conditions around potential lending, when these people are fronted with natural disasters, which will incentivise them to somehow mitigate the prospects of drought or dry periods of time in their life. I think a lot of thought has gone into this. It’s a very plain piece of architecture, for those who have studied the bill. It’s not complicated. It’s about centralising the distribution and management of the loans along with the water facility. I think it is a much better position than what we have at the moment, where each of the states is putting its own rules on. So it’s my position that I commend this bill to the Senate.

LANDS ACQUISITION SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 14 SEPTEMBER 2017 I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Lands Acquisition Amendment (Public Purpose) Bill 2017 presented by Senator Hanson. I must say, I have empathy around the arguments made by Senator Hanson with respect to the processes for the compulsory acquisition of land, particularly where those acquisitions affect not just the land of an individual but, in many cases, our constituents in provincial, rural, remote Australia—describe it as you will—for whom this land also happen to be the foundation asset of their businesses, their livelihood.

We’ve all known of circumstances in which a compulsory acquisition of land has occurred in metropolitan areas for the building of highways, for the development of public utilities generally, for rail lines and for port expansions. An equal degree of anxiety exists amongst the owners of that land, as

may be the case particularly with the cited example of the acquisition of land in Central and north Central Queensland.

BEING A BEEF PRODUCER MYSELF, I UNDERSTAND THE CONFLICT THAT WOULD CONFRONT MANY OF THE LANDOWNERS But there is a distinct difference, which I think Senator Hanson has touched on, and that is that these acquisitions can impact on land that is also the primary source of the livelihood of the people who operate that land. In this case it was almost exclusively in areas that were involved in beef production. Being a beef producer myself, I understand the conflict that would confront many of the landowners in this particular case. Unlike with other businesses, the business plans that are developed for many properties have a long intention. It can be a plan to develop your property that might take you 10 to 20 years. In the course of that, there are various stages where you are developing your asset for the purposes of your livelihood, where in effect you are partially through developing the land. At that stage, that may impact negatively on the value of the property as opposed to positively, and Senator Williams would be well aware of the things I’m referring to. You may have purchased a property because it appealed to you, in that it may have had rundown assets and facilities, so you’ve set about to develop it. In many cases this is the life’s work of people. When they come onto a property they may have a 10-year plan to fence it and, in the case of cattle, to replace cattle yards and cattle

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handling facilities; to improve the waters; and to improve the pasture, which could involve land clearing and pasture production. If you’re at the wrong stage in the development phases of your asset, it can have less appeal, might I say, in the marketplace, for others who might not have the same strong will to develop the property.

areas. The genesis of this for Senator Hanson was obviously the issues around Central Queensland and North Queensland. I’ve got to say—and I’ll probably get a call from the headmaster after this—that this was not well managed. Despite the pleas that there had been public consultation and engagement with the communities that were impacted by this, that wasn’t 100 per cent correct in all of the cases.

MANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THE GRAZING AND PASTORAL COMMUNITIES ARE MULTIGENERATIONAL. MANY OF THESE PROPERTIES HAVE BEEN IN THE HANDS OF THEIR PARENTS OR IN SOME OTHER FORM OF FAMILY PARTNERSHIP.

I made the point at the time that, had our government engaged with some of us representatives of government who have an affinity with the people in these regions, we might have made more progress or been able to establish exactly where we were with these communities before this all fell to pieces.

Senator Hanson, I understand completely the spirit of the proposal being made here with the amendments in this legislation, but I’m inclined to think—using this as a case study—that we can make all the rules we like around this but, unless culturally the people in the bureaucracy, and in this case the Department of Defence, approach this in a more compassionate manner, we’re going to end up with the same set of circumstances again and again, notwithstanding what rules, regulations or framework of operation we put in place.

But it is about connection to the land. Many of the people who are in the grazing and pastoral communities are multigenerational. Many of these properties have been in the hands of their parents or in some other form of family partnership. And so there is an enormous attachment. Their life’s work is there, on that land. They may well be in an age bracket or in circumstances that prevent them from starting again. This might not be something that is understood by many in this place, but I can tell you from personal experience that, when you’re on the land, if you’ve undertaken a significant campaign to improve pasture, fence it, put in proper water facilities, reticulating water through a particular area—these are big expansive properties; the greater Canberra city would be the horse paddock. People have put decades into these properties.

I was recently with one of these graziers in Casino, not more than a month ago, and I reminded this pastoralist that we had known each other 35 years ago, when he was a miner in a mining community in Central Queensland and when I was the local detective. He informed me—and I knew it at that time—that he had bought a property in the Marlborough district and was affected by this. He was one of the main protagonists against these acquisitions. He filled me in on the fact that he had been 35 years developing this property, and it was not yet where he wanted it to be. People don’t quite understand that, for example, when your cattle become acclimatised to a particular area, if there is massive disruption in their lives—if they’re taken to other pasture types, if they’re moved, particularly in the coastal areas, to more marginal country—the value of those cattle can be significantly impacted upon.

I think that this was, in large part, a poor effort at the front end of engagement with these communities in these particular cases. I know that Senator Hanson played a very active role, as did a number of us.

Fortunately on this occasion the Deputy Prime Minister took an interest in it. Had he been commissioned to take an interest in it at a date sooner than was the case, we might have had some resolution at an earlier time. But the Deputy Prime Minister did visit the area, on 3 February, and had meetings with local people who were affected and, indeed, other stakeholders in the community, not just those who might have been the subject of the acquisition. It is a matter of record

Senator Williams: They will lose weight.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: They will lose weight, as they precondition them. Sometimes it’s actually only their progeny that become acclimatised to the country and perform better. So I do understand this nexus between the people and the land, particularly in rural

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that, the following day, the government made the commitment that no-one would be forced to sell their land against their will.

There was a division of thought in the area. There were some landowners who were willing to part with their land, on just terms—if I can make reference to my favourite movie, The Castle. In fact, there were landowners who engaged contractually with the government and did sell their land. So we had the willing sellers. But then equally we had—and I suspect there were more of them—the people that I have mentioned here in this contribution today, the people who had put a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears into their land, who were at some stage within a development program for their property and for whom an acquisition at that time would not have realised the great potential that their property might have had. They might have been wanting to upgrade their circumstances, perhaps because of retirement, and, given some more time, they might have had their land more adequately valued.

IT WILL BE A LONG TIME BEFORE SOCIETY REALISES JUST WHAT IMPACT THE GREENS AND THEIR POLICIES, WITH THE SUPPORT OF THEIR COALITION PARTNERS, LABOR, HAVE HAD IN OUR RURAL COMMUNITIES. A great example of that—I touched on this earlier— is that you might purchase a large area of land that requires 200 kilometres of fencing to be done. No matter how energetic you are, that will take you a long period of time. It will have a serious investment impact from a money quantum point of view. If you haven’t started that program or you’re early into that program but it is not completed, and your property is valued, it won’t matter what value is put on it; only one in 100 buyers will show interest in it. If the program has been finished and all the facilities are upgraded and in a functioning form, you will find that 90 per cent of potential buyers capable of buying that property will be engaged. These are serious challenges. I say to Senator Hanson, we talked about this and explored where there may have been other communities where these facilities could have gone, but I suspect, not knowing, that if the process were not managed properly we would get resistance in those other areas as well.

of thousands of acres. But they couldn’t clear the land, to make it look like the land through the fence, because of impacts on the environment. It was a most ridiculous situation. We wouldn’t even have had to confront these challenges with this community. It will be a long time before society realises just what impact the Greens and their policies, with the support of their coalition partners, Labor, have had in our rural communities. But one day, when people are sitting naked and hungry— Senator Siewert: You’re right! It will take you a long time—a long time to fix your impacts on the environment.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I can hardly hear myself think, Chair—please provide me with some protection from that shrill noise!

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Williams): Interjections are disorderly. Please continue, Senator O’Sullivan.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Here sit our colleagues in their cotton and their wool, with their leather shoes, sitting on a leather chair, with a timber desk, yet they would resist at every opportunity the ability of people in rural Australia to produce those commodities. As I have said before, Senator Hanson, my friends over here in this little corner have something you and I haven’t got.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O’Sullivan, you are directing your comments to the chair, of course?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Yes, I am. They have these fairies, Mr Acting Deputy President, with magic knitting needles and as soon as these knitting needles touch they generate all the energy you need for your house and out the end of them, just as we see with

Central Queensland, and particularly the Shoalwater area, has been devoted to defence activities, but I want to make a point, Senator Hanson: the intent of these acquisitions was to try and get some land where particular operations could occur. This was to do with visibility and engagement. Right next-door to the areas to be acquired, through the barbed wire fence, there were massive tracts of land owned by the defence department—hundreds and hundreds

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spiders and beautiful silk, come cotton and leather and wool— Senator Dastyari: That sounds awesome!

Senator O’SULLIVAN: It is. If Senator Dastyari were to join the Greens—and I believe membership, depending on which cult part of the Greens you go to, is not very expensive; if you’re a bit short, Sam, I’ll throw a couple of bob your way.

I DO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEFENCE TRAINING INDUSTRY ON ANY TERMS UP IN THAT PART OF THE WORLD. I do support the development of the defence training industry on any terms up in that part of the world. It is a big industry. It employs a lot of people, and billions of dollars are invested in Central Queensland.

In any event, that was one of the other challenges that occurred up in the Shoalwater Bay area. We had the land. When you can’t confront those challenges, when there are other commonsense, practical solutions to these things, the government of the day—it won’t matter who is on the leather, it won’t matter who’s in government, whether it is colleagues on the other

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side in coalition with the Greens—has to acquire land to broaden highways and byways and to run railways.

We are about to embark on that massive generational signature project, Inland Rail—brought on, might I say, very proudly by members of the National Party in coalition with their colleagues; a transformational project that of course has been on the books for so many years but is now being delivered by this government. We will confront these same challenges again on land acquisition.

In closing, my contribution would be that I don’t see any problem with calling for a review, and I do not mean some inquiry—I just mean the government of the day has to be involved in these matters. Our government should look carefully at how we go about it. Public engagement, as pointed out by Senator Hanson, is absolutely essential, and, if done properly— these are clever people—they will understand. These are dedicated Australians who understand that, from time to time, there is a need to acquire land as we expand the facilities and infrastructure of our nation, as with Defence’s relations with another country. By sitting with them, speaking rationally and hearing what they have to say, we can, on occasion, dismantle some of the concerns that they have and some of the pressures that these things bring into their lives. If they are willing to transition from their land to some other point and if the transactions happen on just terms, as we have heard both in The Castle and in

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the reading of the Constitution, I don’t think we’ll be confronted as frequently with the circumstances we found ourselves in around Shoalwater Bay in Central Queensland.

I do support the development of the defence training industry on any terms up in that part of the world. It is a big industry. It employs a lot of people, and billions of dollars are invested in Central Queensland. So there are stakeholders in decisions like this beyond the landowners in Shoalwater Bay, even though, in my view, they are the most important in the consultation process. There are businesses in Townsville, Charters Towers and Rockhampton that rely significantly on the activities around defence training in particular in that part of the world. Given that the Greens and the opposition are determined to shut down the black coal industry in that region of my home state, we need to continue to look at development and investment that will offset and mitigate the impacts of their poor public policy. I agree with the spirit of the amendment. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think a review of how we approach these things culturally is more important.

BEEF INDUSTRY REPRESENTATION SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 13 SEPTEMBER 2017 I had intended to speak on other subject matter today, but we’re seeing some evolving responses from within the beef supply sector in response to the report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee which was tabled yesterday in this place on behalf of Senator Sterle. I want to once more pay credit to Senator Sterle—he happens to be in the chamber—for having chaired a very difficult, long-ranging inquiry into the beef supply chain from a set of references that this Senate provided to him 18 months ago. It was a long, arduous, and very, very thorough Senate inquiry into the beef supply chain.

The report is well supported by our side of politics.

In fact, there was no dissenting report—in effect, one could say that this is bipartisan, or tripartisan, or—I’m not sure what the term is once you get past three— Quart-partisan? Whatever it is, it has the support of all of the elements of this Senate, and there have been some interesting responses.

The genesis of this was what we call the Barnawartha event, where nine of these agents, represented by Mr Madigan, boycotted the Barnawartha saleyards— it’s called the ‘Barnawartha Boycott’. There were thousands of head of cattle there, waiting to go to market, and the nine agents never turned up. The ACCC got involved and conducted an investigation.

What were the reasons given by the nine agents?

They certainly denied any collusion. They certainly denied any agreement. No. 1 said: ‘The dog got my lunch. The dog took my lunch and I couldn’t go all that way without something to eat.’ Another one had a flat

tyre, and the third one said the wipers didn’t work on their car—and on and on it went. The ACCC reported to us in evidence that there’d been an increase in traffic in communication between these agents, some of whom had never spoken to each other before.

It suits the agents to have no reform. It suits the agents not to have Senate inquiries or anyone else in authority looking at the behaviour in the saleyards.

We opened the inquiry with a leading processor in the industry. Senator Sterle will remember this—it was a magic piece of evidence. Forty years, he said, he had been in the beef industry, and not once had he ever heard, not even in a conversation down at the pub, that there was collusion in the saleyards in this nation.

I say to the industry and to others in the industry: the more you tell us there’s not a problem—because your credibility is in question—the more inclined we are to look more thoroughly again and again until your workplace, your marketplace, is reformed so that small producers around this country are not subject to collusive behaviour. If they thinks that we in this place are going to roll up into a ball and forget about the recommendations that we have just put through to the minister, then they have another think coming.

QUART-PARTISAN? WHATEVER IT IS, IT HAS THE SUPPORT OF ALL OF THE ELEMENTS OF THIS SENATE, AND THERE HAVE BEEN SOME INTERESTING RESPONSES. Then there is the Cattle Council of Australia. Deary me! I have no friends left in the beef sector, and, I suspect, neither do you, Senator Sterle, after our efforts over the last 18 months, but the Cattle Council represent literally nobody. There are 60,000 producers in this nation, and there is evidence that they quite literally represent nobody. There are eight stakeholder groups who wanted to come together and create what I’ve called a new cattle house. We have been putting pressure on them and engaging with them to consider that, because it was our intention that industry should sort its own problems out. The most brutal and inelegant way to resolve any problems in any sector is to have a Senate inquiry make recommendations to resolve them.

They have come out today. For the last year—they blew the candle out on the cake recently—they have been working in what’s called a transition committee.

A very prominent cattleman and administrator in this country, Mr Troy Setter, has headed that up.

We have in recent months been hearing snippets of information, anecdotal, some of it coming from members of that transition committee, to say that the Cattle Council really don’t have their heart in it. They want to remain as the Cattle Council. They

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don’t want to commit to the establishment of a much more transparent, skills-based board structure that will give these 50,000 or 60,000 producers around the country a voice. The Cattle Council have come out today—they’re finally out; the closet doors have swung open—and said that, actually, closing down the Cattle Council of Australia and creating a new entity would require a lot of work and time. I don’t have time in this contribution to articulate all the points that they have come out with in the media today. I know I’m going to be a few Christmas cards short this year, but here’s my message to the Cattle Council: this is the second time that recommendations have been made to my own government to strengthen the peak body, again as a result of the work of Senator Sterle and this Senate committee. The first ones have not been enacted. We will not rest now. We will persist until you restructure, until you properly operate in a transparent way that proves to your government and proves to your industry that you do represent the tens of thousands of small producers around this country who are getting it in the neck every time big processors or market conditions put them in a vulnerable place.

This reference was, I think, stimulated by events that occurred in the Barnawartha saleyards in Victoria.

Knowing that Senator McKenzie is going to speak, I probably will refrain from spending too much time on that aspect of the report and its recommendations. I want to acknowledge the support of Labor, through the chairmanship of Senator Glenn Sterle. This was a difficult inquiry and a very long one—in fact, it spanned two parliaments. It is fair to say, and I am sure Senator McKenzie will visit on this, too, that we didn’t always receive the level of cooperation and assistance from the industry stakeholders that one may have expected. I can place on Hansard that Senator Sterle did an exceptional job in chairing the committee as we navigated through some of those challenges.

WE HAVE IN RECENT MONTHS BEEN HEARING SNIPPETS OF INFORMATION, ANECDOTAL, SOME OF IT COMING FROM MEMBERS OF THAT TRANSITION COMMITTEE, TO SAY THAT THE CATTLE COUNCIL REALLY DON’T HAVE THEIR HEART IN IT.

One of the recommendations is in relation to the operations and capability of AUS-MEAT, particularly in their role in oversighting objective carcass management in beef processing plants—a significant role, one that has been challenged by, I think, almost a majority of producers at one time or another.

This is where the rubber meets the road—when it is determined what they will be paid for the carcasses of livestock they have sold to the works on what is called the grid. There are positives and negatives about the inspection of carcasses and I think it is fair to say that, in this particular case, over a long period of time there has been a collapse of trust and

There’s been market failure around beef now for 30 years, and it has to come to end. The power inequities that exist have to be addressed. The recommendations of the Sterle report were 100 per cent supported by us all—not one alteration to the report, not one dissenting report and not one qualifying addition to the report made. I say to my own government and to the industry: ‘Listen up; you need to take these recommendations seriously.’

We need to put our shoulders to the wheel and we need to get this back to being a fair, transparent and equitable market environment for the many tens of thousands of Australians who make a big contribution to our nation’s wealth.

The early recommendations are to consider an inquiry into pre-sale and post-sale weighing in saleyards, to try to bring some consistency, particularly on the eastern seaboard, with respect to practices in saleyards.

Again, I will yield that aspect of the report to Senator McKenzie, because I am sure she is going to touch on that, including the recommendations around what we have named ‘the standards of practice in saleyards’.

Again, I will yield to Senator McKenzie on that.

BEEF INDUSTRY REPRESENTATION SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 12 SEPTEMBER 2017 I want to acknowledge my colleagues Senator Williams and Senator McKenzie, who jointly were involved in the development of the reference. Senator McKenzie drove this process. Senator Williams and I joined the reference almost as an afterthought, I suspect.

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confidence between producers and processors that this process is as objective as they might like. It was often challenged. There were, and remain, reasonably inadequate options for producers to be able to themselves objectively assess and perhaps even challenge processors on some of the descriptions of their carcasses that resulted in payments that they thought were less than what they had wanted.

The advent of technology coming into the meat processing sector, particularly the technology known as DEXA, a dual X-ray system, will allow processors to more accurately—now in the 90 per cent—assess what the meat yield is of a carcass. It will separate meat, bone and other, and this is a positive step in the right direction, even though there has been, I suppose, caution around how this technology is to be introduced. Nonetheless, anything that increases the prospect of objective carcass management in our processing plants in this $11-plus billion industry is a step in the right direction.

ESTABLISH A JOINT GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY TASK FORCE TO EFFECTIVELY REVIEW ALL ASPECTS OF THE MEAT PROCESSING AND THE MEAT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PRODUCTION SECTOR. We have made recommendations that the operations and capability of AUS-MEAT be looked at by the minister, through the agriculture department, to see that they have adequate powers and that they are adequately resourced and that we ourselves can have oversight over their operations to see that they are doing the job to the best of their ability.

is up there with the top recommendations made in the report. It is for government to do virtually whatever it takes to support the establishment of a new peak industry body for cattle producers. Various numbers have been given to us over time of between 30,000 and 60,000 different producers in this country in the beef sector, ranging from small operators who might only have half a dozen livestock through to big family corporations and, in fact, public companies who oversight an industry that has, or ought to have, about 29 million head of stock at any time. We believe those numbers are down quite considerably due to the advent of droughts all over the country. But what is, I think, agreed to by everyone in the industry is that we need to beef up—if I can use that term—the peak industry body that— Senator Siewert: No bad puns!

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I thought it was a good pun, and it actually came to me spontaneously, Senator, so I’m very proud of it. We need to beef up the peak industry body that represents these producers. The advent of new technologies and legislation passed here—I think we all were involved in supporting the legislation—allow the peak body to find out who those levy payers are that, collectively, pay about $50 million plus a year into the Meat & Livestock Australia for the support to the industry in research and development. This is about getting a peak industry body. I said at one of the inquiries: ‘We’ll know when we’ve arrived when members of the Meat & Livestock Australia, and senators and other politicians in this place, break into a sweat when they hear that this peak body has arrived in the building to come and see them.’

I want it to be a powerful body. I want it to get its way on behalf of producers around the country. It needs to be a very transparent body. It needs to have its strength and its power embedded in a grass-roots

There are two recommendations that I really want to focus on—and I’ll leave the main interest to me until last. The final recommendation to government and to the minister was that they establish a joint government and industry task force to effectively review all aspects of the meat processing and the meat supply chain and production sector. I think this is very timely. The current structures that they operate in are complicated—relationships are complicated. There is disparity in power bases within the whole sector. Of course, they’re working under operations that were put in place about 19 years ago in 1998 by the then Deputy Prime Minister and minister for agriculture, the Hon. John Anderson. It is almost overdue for that entire sector to be reviewed by this joint government and industry task force. It will be a skills-based task force if the recommendations are accepted. We anticipate it will take them some considerable period of time to do their work, as a comprehensive review in such a big industry and sector would be the case.

Let me use the final time I have to speak about what I think is the key recommendation—or, certainly, which

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movement within the industry. It needs to have a skills-based board that I personally believe needs to be remunerated. I don’t care how much they have to pay the members of the board and the chairperson to administer this very important industry in agriculture and, indeed, to our whole national economy. It needs to make sure that its structure allows it to represent and reflect the ideals and the ambitions of producers all around the nation.

I want to commend the report and, in the last moments, I want to pay great tribute to the secretariat under Dr Jane Thomson. This was a difficult report to structure.

There was a lot of work and effort, and there were a lot of amendments and restructuring of the report as we got towards this tabling date. Their work, as is always the case, was first class.

SPINAL MUSCULAR ATROPHY SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 6 SEPTEMBER 2017 I rise to bring the attention of the chamber to a cruel disease called spinal muscular atrophy or SMA. It’s a relatively unknown illness, despite it being the No. 1 genetic killer of infants under the age of two in Australia. It is largely unknown because babies born with it rarely live beyond their second birthday. I’d like to share with the chamber the story of one couple who have had their world shattered by this illness.

Their names are Rachel and John, and all members of the parliament would have received a letter from them introducing you to their young daughter, Mackenzie, who suffers from SMA. Mackenzie was the couple’s first child and they told me they couldn’t have been any happier. But, shortly after, their world was turned upside down. At 10 weeks of age, their little baby daughter was diagnosed as having SMA type 1.

This disease is a neuromuscular disorder characterised by the loss of motor neurons and progressive muscle wasting, often leading to death. It manifests over a wide range of severity, affecting both infants and adults, and is broadly divided into five types in accordance with age or onset of symptoms or from the highest attained milestone of motor development.

In the case of Mackenzie, she was diagnosed with having the most common form of SMA, which is type 1. Type 1 is terminal. The prognosis for Mackenzie is devastating, cruel and quite unforgiving. The average life expectancy for infants with the condition is nine months at best.

In December last year, a clinical trial was commenced in Australia of a drug that, in some cases, can delay the onset of symptoms. It has also shown itself to be a big step forward in medical advancement and is currently being assessed by the TGA. However, it is not a cure and the prognosis for little Mackenzie remains the same. Rachel described to me how she felt as the medical expert advised them that Mackenzie had a terminal illness for which there was no known cure

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and that her life expectancy was likely to be less than one year. Rachel described how, as their world fell away, everything went blurry for her. Sounds muffled and she felt like she was collapsing. She remembers looking at her husband, John, and saying, ‘What just happened?’

FOR MOST OF US, IT IS DIFFICULT, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, TO IMAGINE HOW SUCH A DEVASTATING AND SHATTERING EXPERIENCE WOULD FEEL—FROM BEING ON SUCH A POSITIVE HIGH WITH THE BIRTH OF THEIR DAUGHTER TO BEING TOLD THAT THEIR PRECIOUS LITTLE BABY WILL DIE For most of us, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how such a devastating and shattering experience would feel—from being on such a positive high with the birth of their daughter to being told that their precious little baby will die, perhaps before her first birthday, and that there’s nothing she or they can do to change the situation. As I’ve said, the disease is a cruel and unforgiving condition. From planning and dreaming for the future of their daughter, their time is now spent arranging and giving the best palliative care for Mackenzie. In Rachel’s words: ‘I cannot adequately express the love we feel for Mackenzie.

Rather than dreaming of Mackenzie’s future and imagining all the beautiful experiences of life that lay before her, we are now going to have to watch our baby slowly lose muscle movement, lose the ability to feed and swallow and, finally, lose the ability to breathe.’

Before Mackenzie’s diagnosis, Rachel and John had never heard of SMA. Neither had anyone amongst their families or friends. They were soon to learn that it is the No. 1 genetic killer of children under the age of two years. It begs the question: how is it that noone has heard of this disorder?

One in 35 people in Australia are carriers of SMA. If two carriers have a baby, there is a one-in-four chance of their baby having SMA. These statistics are simply astonishing. This rare neuromuscular disorder is clearly not so rare. Rachel and John undertook all the tests offered to them before and during pregnancy, including genetic testing for more common genetic illnesses, such as Down syndrome. But they were not offered genetic testing to check whether either was an SMA carrier prior to conception. In most cases, such genetic testing is offered only if you have a family history. But four out of five children born with a genetic disorder do not have a family history of the disorder.

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Fighting for sensible vegetation management laws

Today SMA is not curable, but it is 100 per cent preventable. A couple planning for a family today can find out if they are carriers through having a blood test during the pregnancy screening. Not only can this testing be undertaken before conception, but tests can also be undertaken for more severe genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis and fragile X. I’m instructed that this simple test to protect our community obviously only works as a prevention if people know about it.

Rachel and John are both proud to be federal police officers. They are made of fairly stern stuff. When confronted with such a personal tragedy, in their grief they looked to ways to help others and to turn their suffering to something of a benefit for others.

They know they cannot change the outcome for Mackenzie, but perhaps their campaign can prevent others from going through such pain and suffering.

Accordingly, while caring for Mackenzie they also make the time to push for greater awareness of SMA and increased access to carrier testing. It is through this initiative that I got to know Rachel and John and to know about their story and their aims.

When I met Rachel and John, I asked them what they were hoping to achieve and how we could help them.

As Rachel explained to me, they have three main aims—although there is much that can be done in this space. They want to help raise awareness of prepregnancy genetic testing amongst people planning a pregnancy and among healthcare professionals.

This testing already exists; people just need to know about it so that they can make an informed choice.

There is a general lack of awareness of these genetic tests, and SMA more specifically, even amongst healthcare professionals. Secondly, they would like to encourage the federal government to consider subsidising pre-implantation genetic diagnoses during the IVF process for those couples known to be carriers of genetic disorders. This is currently being looked at by government and should be approved

without further delay. They hope that eventually genetic testing becomes routine and subsidised to make it more accessible to all Australians. It is so much more effective for us to spend our money on increasing access to carrier testing than to pay for the medical, palliative and social costs associated with these disorders, to say nothing about the emotional impacts on in this case a child and their parents.

ONE IN 35 PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA ARE CARRIERS OF SMA. IF TWO CARRIERS HAVE A BABY, THERE IS A ONE-IN-FOUR CHANCE OF THEIR BABY HAVING SMA. THESE STATISTICS ARE SIMPLY ASTONISHING. THIS RARE NEUROMUSCULAR DISORDER IS CLEARLY NOT SO RARE. I’m pleased to say that there appears to be broad support across parliament for what Rachel and John are trying to achieve. Both the Minister and Assistant Minister for Health have begun looking at ways to assist in achieving these outcomes. In addition, the New South Wales health minister, Brad Hazzard, has met with Rachel, John and Mackenzie and has made a commitment to create a change for Mackenzie.

In fact, our own federal Minister for Health has indicated that he has taken a personal interest in their representations. Rachel and John are thankful for the support they have received from some members of parliament, and now they hope that this support turns into action. For my part, I also pledge to do all I can to assist Mackenzie and her family to realise these sensible ideals. Our hearts remain with John and Rachel as they confront what is a very personal and enormously difficult struggle. I promise you that your efforts won’t be in vain.

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JOBS

. … s b o J , s b o J , s b o J “Opportunity comes in the shape of a job” -Senator Barry O’Sullvain

My Government is committed to backing business to create more jobs for Australians, including older Australians.

New laws have closed loopholes for multinationals – with an additional $4 billion raised from multinationals last year.

Our economic plan is working. Record numbers of jobs are being created (over 400,000 in 2017 – the highest number of any year on record) and a brighter future is possible for Australian families.

A new major bank levy will ensure the big banks pay their fair share. We will fight Labor’s plan for $200 billion in new and increased taxes – on electricity, small and family businesses, incomes, homes, savings, investments and retirement.

More than 1,000 Australians have been getting jobs every single day over the past year, and more people aged over 55 are moving into the workforce.

Three quarters of jobs created in 2017 were full time jobs.

Jobs growth over the last 12 months is almost five times stronger than Labor’s last year in government.

The skills and experiences of older Australians are valuable and the Government is working with business to ensure they see and appreciate that value.

For older Australians who need some help to stay or get into the workforce, the Government is ensuring that they will have the targeted support they need.

My Government’s plan is focused on the long term, making difficult decisions to cut wasteful spending to fix the Budget and keep our economy strong, so we can guarantee funding for essential services such as schools and hospitals.

In the past year, exports have increased by 4%, while rural exports have increased by 19%. Our landmark export agreements with China, Japan and South Korea - and recently, Peru - will generate more export opportunities for Australian agriculture, mining, manufacturing and service industries. We are continuing to work to secure better export access for Australian businesses.

Australia took a lead role in negotiating the new Trans-Pacific Partnership - a Trade Agreement between 11 major economies (collectively worth $13.7 trillion) in our region, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

But there is more to be done and we must keep working to strengthen our economy.

Bill Shorten and Labor don’t have a plan to strengthen our economy. They are only interested in playing politics and can’t be trusted with Australia’s future.

After Labor racked up $240 billion in deficits over six years, debt would be on track towards $1 trillion without our sensible savings.

Labor left our economy in a mess last time. They are now even less responsible and more of a risk to our economic security.

We have halved the growth in spending (from 4% increase per year under Labor, to 1.9%). The Coalition has reduced growth in debt by two-thirds. We are on track to balance the Budget by 2020-21.

Bill Shorten and Labor will spend and borrow more, meaning higher taxes, fewer jobs and more debt for future generations to pay off. Bill Shorten wants to increase taxes by more than $200 billion – equivalent to more than $8,000 for every Australian – which will increase the cost of living, cripple small businesses and hurt our economy. All Australians will pay a high price under Labor.

We’ve cut company taxes for 3.2 million small businesses and income taxes for 500,000 middle income Australians.

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JOBS

When you get people into jobs, all of this impacts on the economy and, amongst other things, results in a reduction in the cost of social security and an increase in receipts for the Commonwealth. And what does the Commonwealth do when it is in good economic circumstances? It invests that money, mainly in infrastructure projects and the provision of services for the nation. That is regarded as an investment in those economies. That turns to creating opportunities and jobs and in the wonderful economic cycle, the circle joins and goes on forever.

– Senator Barry O’Sullivan

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JOBS

Key Facts 

 After four years of Coalition Government, there are now 996,800 more Australians in jobs.

“When people have the dignity of a job, it creates a much fairer Australia.

In 2017, employment increased by 415,000 – more jobs than any calendar year on record.

– Senator Barry O’Sullivan

 The Australian economy is creating, on average, more than 1,000 new jobs a day.

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



In the last 12 months (March 2017 – March 2018), full time employment rose by 226,900.

By comparison, in Labor’s last 12 months, full time jobs went backwards (declining by 16,800).

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New jobs created in the last 12 months represents around four times the jobs growth in the last year of the previous Labor government.

VALE ROD WILSON SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 5 SEPTEMBER 2017 I rise tonight to reflect upon the life of a friend and fellow political traveller in Alexander Rodney Lockie Wilson, known affectionately to all as Rod Wilson.

Rod passed away less than a week ago. He was a pastoralist, a cattleman of serious note, having built very substantial interests in that sector with his wife, Sylvia, and members of their family.

Rod was a political activist. I had known him for more than 35 years. He was a fellow traveller. Rod was a giant within the movement of the National Party of Australia, both at our state level in the state of Queensland and at a national level. He was a community leader, having resided in the Callide and Central Queensland area for most of his life.

Rod and his family, including extended family, have made enormous contributions to those communities over that period of time. He also provided very clear leadership over the decades in agripolitics as well as general politics. I have memories of any number of speeches or groupings and activities organised by Rod in his capacity as one of our leaders in that part of our state. His influence was enormous.

ROD WAS A GIANT WITHIN THE MOVEMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA, BOTH AT OUR STATE LEVEL IN THE STATE OF QUEENSLAND AND AT A NATIONAL LEVEL. Rod was a very fair and measured individual who had a very practical and very, very acute political intellect. He demonstrated often that he was before his time in work that he had done around issues that we now refer to as workplace health and safety.

Long before that, the people who worked for him and Sylvia and their family, and indeed members of the broader community, were in the core of his mind as he developed measures and practices around pastoral enterprises that he owned with an emphasis on improving the safety and working conditions of those people. He was responsible for many innovative designs and process changes that have been adopted by so many in that industry. He was a pioneer in developing the use of hydraulic mechanisms that were used in double-decker cattle trucks so that cattle on the top deck could be loaded and unloaded safely using that system. He also had done a bit of work using some innovative engineering adjustments around the design of windmills. I know a number of my colleagues here and those who are not present have had to do the laborious job of pulling bores.

Rod designed features around bores and windmills that made that job so much safer. He was an early

adopter, for example, with the use of solar energies and retrofitted bores at great expense very early when that innovation of the use of solar pumps and solar energy came into the marketplace for use in pastoral pursuits.

With his wife, Sylvia, Rod built what I think could be referred to as a cattle empire with their daughters, Zoe and Eliza, and their son, William, and their broader family. Rod always acknowledged the contribution of the people who worked with him. They had built a very substantial business, and very frequently, being blessed with those things that come with being a successful businessman, Rod would reinvest not just his time and energy but also financially in the community. And there were other pursuits where he and Sylvia shared the goodness of life that they’d been blessed with.

Rod will be remembered as an individual who had great strength of character. He was a tall and quite imposing man, quietly spoken and very measured.

His intellect and intelligence were often very evident in the delivery of his arguments, which were always well structured and very persuasive. Rod was a man who did his homework on issues. He thoroughly understood his subject matter before he put forward his arguments. He will be remembered also for his integrity and his honesty. He and Sylvia, and their entire family, were enormously respected in the communities in which they lived, which I referred to earlier.

Rod also had a great sense of humour. When his darling twin daughters, Zoe and Eliza, were born, he put an ad in Queensland Country Life in which he referred to ‘welcoming two spring heifers’. Sylvia, I understand, has never forgiven him for that, but nonetheless it was entirely consistent with Rod’s way of life and his sense of humour. He will be remembered as a giant of a man and he will be remembered for his

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contribution and serious influence around state and national agricultural policy. He was a leader in the field, and for my party, the National Party of Australia, he was responsible for building and maintaining a very significant presence in Central Queensland. He had great influence and was very respected by our political movement there.

If I had had the opportunity, which I did not, to ask Rod how he would like to be remembered, I am quite certain that his answer would have been very simple.

He would have wanted to be remembered, clearly, as a very good and sound member of his community through life, but he also would have wanted to be remembered as the magnificent husband, father, and grandfather to eight grandchildren that he was.

He is missed greatly by members of the Calliope and Central Queensland community. He is missed greatly by members of the inaugural National Party of Queensland and the National Party of Australia.

He will be remembered for his legacy of policies and initiatives that he drove and nurtured over many years.

It’s only been in recent months that Rod, very unwell and battling a condition that eventually overtook him, rang me about labour reforms in agriculture—about how people who would otherwise have difficulty getting employment because of age or disability might be accommodated by changes in policy that would make it easier for them to be employed.

Rod, you will be well remembered for all the things that I have spoken about and much, much more. I wish Sylvia, the children, the grandchildren and Rod’s extended family condolences on behalf of all of those in our political movement over a long period of time who came to know Rod and work with him. I felt it was important that a contribution as significant as his be recorded in the Hansard of our federal parliament.

I just hope that Sylvia and the family are able to confront Rod’s loss and find peace in the knowledge of the enormous contribution that this man made to our state and, indeed, to our nation.

approach taken by her parents as they celebrated this little girl’s life was inspirational—nothing short of inspirational. Supported by the broader family, the grandparents and, indeed, the entire community of the district, in so many ways it really was a restoration in the faith of our communities. I’m reflecting on this on the basis that these are rural communities. I think that the opportunity to provide support in these circumstances—the very nature of those communities, where everybody knows each other and everybody feels affected by these things, makes it easier or more likely for that support to happen in some of our smaller rural communities than we might sometimes see in larger metropolitan areas.

THE STOIC AND RESILIENT APPROACH TAKEN BY HER PARENTS AS THEY CELEBRATED THIS LITTLE GIRL’S LIFE WAS INSPIRATIONAL—NOTHING SHORT OF INSPIRATIONAL. The entire Central West was affected by this enormous tragedy. It is an area that’s remained under the heavy hand of drought now for four or five years. It remains one of the districts—there are many—in Australia that have not recovered from the impacts of drought and of market forces that have really challenged the economic and social stability of these places. In the midst of that, to see them rally around the Walker and Collins families around the loss of this little angel, Willow Walker, was something that I am unlikely to forget.

I felt so moved that I believe the circumstances need to be placed on the annals of our Hansard here in the federal parliament, to let all the Brookes and Daniels

WILLOW WALKER SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 15 AUGUST 2017 I rise tonight with a heavy heart to reflect upon a tragedy that has happened in recent weeks that resulted in the loss of a little angel named Willow Walker in the Central West part of my home state.

I have decided to reflect upon this for a number of reasons. Willow Walker, the daughter of Brooke and Daniel, and sister to her brother, Harley, was a child of the Collins and Walker families of the Central West in Queensland.

I had the privilege to be able to join the family, extended family, friends and, indeed, almost the entire community of the Central West as Willow’s life was celebrated. I was particularly moved by a number of things that I saw. Firstly, the stoic and resilient

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of Australia, who each face their own tragedies, many of which we don’t learn about, know that we recognise their strengths. We recognise the strengths of their communities. They go to the very heart of what makes us Australians. They are deeply held in the culture and psyche of our people, who endure very difficult circumstances as they make their contributions to this nation. So I just wanted to say to Brooke, Daniel and Harley: the loss of Willow has not gone unnoticed. The impacts of how you celebrated her life were inspirational, and they will continue to play a part in underpinning this enormously important culture.

JOBS SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 14 AUGUST 2017 I want to thank Senator Wong for the opportunity to make a contribution on issues such as secure jobs, rising power prices, investment in education and health care, and addressing housing affordability. I think it is fair to say that most people who have a basic understanding of economic principles understand that most of the generation of wealth in a nation happens from the private sector. We know that the public sector, governments, can borrow more money, and my colleagues on the other side of the chamber know all about that; cut services, and nobody in this country wants to see an unnecessary reduction in services; or we can increase the receipts of the nation by higher taxes and charges. Of course, it is two out of three for my colleagues in the Labor Party and the Greens, who support those anti-economic measures in terms of their management of the economy. It’s well known that whilst the Labor Party, historically, has made great contributions to this nation over many decades, it cannot manage an economy. It

mismanages every economic opportunity that it has.

It’s also well known that it has no interest in rural, what I refer to as provincial, Australia.

I DON’T THINK IT MATTERS AT WHAT STAGE IN LIFE WE LOOK, THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO FIND THEMSELVES LEFT BEHIND—HAVE FIRST-CLASS LIVING STANDARDS AND EDUCATION COMPARED TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND HAVE SOME OF THE BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD. This government, the Turnbull-Joyce government, has created some 240,000 new jobs—a quarter of a billion new jobs—since it come to power. I don’t know how many more jobs the Labor Party think there are to be had, but this is an outstanding record.

As you all know, when people have the dignity of a job, it creates a much fairer Australia. The missions we’ve created with reductions in taxation create opportunities for private sector businesses to go ahead and employ more people and give people the dignity of employment. It creates these opportunities.

Investment creates opportunities, and opportunities come in the form of jobs, which see a reduction in the impacts on the social security net in our nation. It gives us improved living standards, and Australians, generally—not all; I don’t think it matters at what stage in life we look, there are some people who find themselves left behind—have first-class living standards and education compared to anywhere in the world and have some of the best health care in the world. When you get people into jobs, all of this impacts on the economy and, amongst other things, results in a reduction in the cost of social security and an increase in receipts for the Commonwealth.

And what does the Commonwealth do when it is in good economic circumstances? It invests that money, mainly in infrastructure projects and the provision of services for the nation. That is regarded as an investment in those economies. That turns to creating opportunities and jobs and in the wonderful economic cycle, the circle joins and goes on forever.

I find it difficult that the Labor Party would talk about creating a stronger and fairer Australia when their current tax policy is to increase taxes. This is a well known 101 of economics. Increasing taxes simply stifles investment. It reduces investment, and, therefore, these opportunities that I spoke of, these jobs that are created, don’t appear. In fact, jobs are lost.

Let’s just link that to what they’re talking about: to tackle rising power prices. It is well known that the Labor Party—it almost defied logic for me as I watched them over the last decade—abandoned blue-collar workers in provincial Australia and particularly those

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who were involved in our coal industry up in central Queensland. There were 14,000 jobs gone. There were 14,000 real jobs gone in Central Queensland between Townsville and Gladstone. The Turnbull-Joyce government has compensated with the creation of 240,000 new jobs, but, nonetheless, 14,000 jobs are gone.

Let’s talk about how the Labor Party might support us in dealing with this. It’s no surprise that my speech concentrates on Queensland, my home state, and on projects that will lift the economic fortunes of all the people in Central Queensland. We’ve got the Adani Carmichael project, with 2½ thousand direct jobs and nearly 4,000 indirect jobs once that goes into operation. We’re talking about a total employment impact of 11,800 jobs when the secondary jobs are taken into account—those businesses and industries that will support the development of the Carmichael project. With GVK there are almost 3½ thousand jobs in construction, along with 3,200 when it’s in operation. We haven’t even touched on some of the ancillary stuff that happens here. We haven’t even touched on the $1 billion rail line that has to be built and the increase in the port facilities in Central Queensland.

I have invited colleagues from across the chamber more than once—to save having to do it every time I speak, the invitation stands open—to make contact with my office. I’m happy to meet the costs of travel.

We’ll go up into Central Queensland, into the public bar of the Black Nugget Hotel, into the town square at Blackwater or into the main street of Emerald and you can meet the people who will be directly affected by your policies that you continue to espouse. You can meet these people. You can meet the small-tomedium-sized businesses for whom you resisted a tax cut that would provide them with some surplus that they—most of them at least—would inevitably reinvest

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in employment opportunities. Going back to my cycle: employment creates opportunities, increases the receipts of the nation, puts the Commonwealth in the stronger economic position and allows us to invest in projects like the development of northern Australia, a $5 billion fund.

WE HAVEN’T EVEN TOUCHED ON THE $1 BILLION RAIL LINE THAT HAS TO BE BUILT AND THE INCREASE IN THE PORT FACILITIES IN CENTRAL QUEENSLAND. I cannot believe that Senator Wong selected some of these issues for the debate under standing order 75 today. She forgot to mention or wasn’t aware of the $2 billion dams package that will be invested in infrastructure in so many of our states. She forgot about the $1.7 billion invested in the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing to get our commodities from provincial Australia, particularly the central west and the south-west of my home state. There is $1.5 billion already invested in the Inland Rail, with a further $9 billion committed to be invested in that project.

There is $10 billion invested in upgrading the Bruce Highway to make it flood-proof. There are all those commodities in the north. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the banana industry and the sugarcane industry, and they can all have secure jobs, knowing their commodities can make their way down to port.

I want to finish where I opened. The Australian Labor Party has a long tradition of poor economic management. It’s reflected in their policies today and the fact that these policies will impact on rural Australia.

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HOUSING AFFORDABILITY SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 10 AUGUST 2017 That was a disappointing contribution from the senator, particularly when he invoked references to homelessness in the context of an overall argument trying to be advanced by the Australian Labor Party on the question of inequality. He well knows that there are any number of things that impact unfortunate people who find themselves in homeless situations, very few of which have to do with the availability of housing and shelter. This country, Australia, culturally is a very generous nation. For any individual who finds themselves in tough circumstances, there are any number of measures that this country provides, supported by this government and supported by many organisations, wonderful organisations, many that are based on religious faith and others that are just altruistic in their efforts to assist people in their situation in homelessness.

THIS COUNTRY, AUSTRALIA, CULTURALLY IS A VERY GENEROUS NATION. FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL WHO FINDS THEMSELVES IN TOUGH CIRCUMSTANCES, THERE ARE ANY NUMBER OF MEASURES THAT THIS COUNTRY PROVIDES. The senator well knows that many of the people who find themselves in those unfortunate circumstances do so because of some form of addiction or, indeed, have psychiatric challenges. Any number of houses

and any number of efforts by this government—and there are many—and the altruistic efforts of churches and other community organisations would not bring about the changes that he is endeavouring to blame the government for. Here’s a man who owns three houses and recently paid— here’s a senator who just spent nearly $2 million on a house in Tasmania, and he has the hide to stand up in this place and attack.

This is class warfare.

The argument that Labor have started on the question of inequality is about class warfare. If they consider that there is inequality out there—and I support this part of the senator’s contribution—the best way to address it is to get people a job, so you might start by supporting this government’s efforts in that regard. You resisted when there were some adjustments recommended for corporate tax changes for these businesses you call millionaires. They’re not millionaires. These are people who operate pizza shops and small retail outlets—newsagencies, small logistics businesses and the like. Everyone who has even a moderate understanding of economics knows—and this evidence has existed for decades— that this will stimulate reinvestment in the economies where these businesses operate and they will employ people.

If the opposition want to insist on this question of what they consider to be inequality, they might start supporting us to get the 2,500 direct jobs that will come with the Adani Carmichael coalmine in Central Queensland, rather than continue on the course that they have been on for a decade now, which has seen us lose 14,000 direct jobs in Central Queensland. The senator wants to talk about unemployment; let’s talk about youth unemployment in Townsville, which is at 20 per cent. And let’s imagine what will happen if we get the Carmichael project going—and Hancock’s Kevin’s Corner, MacMines’ China Stone, Waratah Coal’s Galilee project, the South Galilee project and the GBK project. I don’t have the time and I’d need a calculator to add up the jobs there, but my memory is that there are about 14,000 direct jobs, and that will feed into the 180,000 support jobs that are already at risk in my home state of Queensland as a direct result of these policies of the Australian Labor Party. So I do find it rich for the good senator to stand up and pretend to be a representative of the people, the blue-collar workers, yet fight against every initiative of this government—and I am a proud part of this government and its efforts in rural and regional Australia. You attack that, yet you won’t even support the government in bringing about measures that will improve employment opportunities around the country.

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Rural & Regional Affairs and Transport Senate Committee hearing underway

SCHOOL FUNDING SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 21 JUNE 2017 Let me open by saying that Labor’s position on these matters and the contributions by the senators are based on lies—great lies. The facts as presented by them are completely inaccurate. But it had me cast my mind back to a pop group in the 1960s and 1970s called The Great Pretenders. What we have now with the Labor Party in this place, and particularly with this legislation, is ‘The Great Resisters’. In fact, everything the government has endeavoured to do over the last couple of years and certainly in the term of this current government has been resisted by Labor. There are no arguments, of course, on the merit of their argument, and never have they produced any alternative ideas.

Many of these recommendations are in parallel to or adequately supplement ideas the Labor Party has presented in the past. However, when it comes from the government side, from the government benches, they will just resist it. They will say and do anything to resist the passage of government adjustments, particularly in the space of education.

THEY WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING TO RESIST THE PASSAGE OF GOVERNMENT ADJUSTMENTS, PARTICULARLY IN THE SPACE OF EDUCATION. We saw in the earlier parliament an enormous amount of effort over a very long period of time come up with some structural reforms around higher education and education generally, reforms that were supported by the greater majority of the universities around the

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country, reforms that would bring more equalisation into the space, more fairness in relation to funding and the abilities of those educational facilities to operate. And what happened? The Labor Party resisted the reforms. In fact, their resistance put paid to them. This is another effort here. Every one of their quotes in relation to these matters, as I have heard over recent days and since this debate commenced, has been very selective. For every negative quote they have produced, my office and the offices of colleagues on the government side have received strong, resounding endorsements, often from people in authority in education who are superior to the individuals selectively quoted by the Labor Party.

This is an area that has been crying out for some serious reform for a long period of time. This is an area that has required some sort of stabilisation around fairness and equity with the distribution particularly from the Commonwealth in relation to funding in this space. As is the case with large transformative policies at their introduction, not everybody will be happy. It is impossible.

We go to an election and a large part of the Australian population wants to support one line of ideology and the other wants to support another, so it is going to be impossible of course to bring about reforms that please everybody in the community. These reforms have been endorsed by very substantive, important and influential figures in the education marketplace and by schools—right across the board, whether it is public schools or private schools or indeed the very important Catholic education system, it has been largely supported. They do not agree with the issues that have been raised by Labor. There is no body to their resistance.

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In fact it is, as we have seen, their practice over recent years to go from being the great pretenders to the great resistors. They pretend first; there are the crocodile tears about how we are somehow all going to be affected—partially sympathetic to reforms. This is how they go on, until of course we get to where the rubber meets the road. Then they slip out the side theatre and they change and come back as the great resistors, and their tune is completely different.

I just urge the Labor Party, and I urge our colleagues in the Senate, to sit and think carefully about this. If this reform opportunity is lost at this time, then what is going to happen is we are going to have the status quo for a long, long period of time and the inequities that this legislation deals with will remain and the students and schools that they pretend to represent will continue to be affected.

RETIREMENT OF SENATOR CHRIS BACK SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 20 JUNE 2017 My contribution to these valedictory speeches for Senator Back will be quite short, because I may be the only senator today who is expressing some joy that Senator Back is leaving us in the near future. In a late-night moment, I shared with Senator Back some anxiety that I will refer to as ‘secret men’s business’, and he indicated to me that whilst he was not a medical practitioner he did have the requisite skills to be able to allay some of my fears, for those of us who are aged six decades or so. So, you can imagine how I felt when I came in today and found that he had left me a gift on my desk about the fight against prostate cancer and then looked over to express my gratitude and saw that fierce, stainless steel instrument and that pair of gloves! For my part, I hope you are not regarding me as unfinished business in the Senate!

Again, I want to attach myself to all the remarks. As a newbie here, in essence, I attached myself to you, Chris, on matters and relied upon you significantly, as you know, on some very complex matters of science of which I had no knowledge and still have no knowledge. I have a blind faith in the guidance you have provided. I said to Senator Macdonald the other night that if there was one word I had to use to describe you it would be the word ‘solid’. It takes everything in, solid. You cannot be solid unless you are competent. You cannot be solid unless you are genuine, polite and a statesman, and you are solid. I, too, wish you and your wife all the very best as you go into the future.

GREENS STOP ADANI BILL SPEECH

BY SENATOR BARRY O’SULLIVAN 15 JUNE 2017 If I seem disappointed and a bit flat, Madam Deputy President, it is because I feel robbed. I thought I was going to have 20 minutes to respond to our colleagues the Greens, and to be reduced to just four minutes is going to make my effort difficult. In doing that, we need to be crystal clear on what we are being asked to consider here by the Greens in this bill.

THAT BEING THE CASE, I DO NOT THINK IT IS UNREASONABLE FOR US TO DRAW THE ONLY INFERENCE THAT CAN BE DRAWN—THAT IS, THIS IS NOT ABOUT ADANI, THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE INTEGRITY OF ADANI AND THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE PROFILE OF ADANI. This bill is not about some new found interest in the Greens about the integrity and profile of foreign companies who invest in our nation. If that were true, one would suspect that they would have been in this place with bills previously on the hundreds and hundreds of occasions that foreign investment occurs in this nation. They were in coalition with our friends in the Labor Party for six years, and not once did they introduce legislation when they had the power to do so, to influence a decision about investment in this nation by a foreign company.

That being the case, I do not think it is unreasonable for us to draw the only inference that can be drawn— that is, this is not about Adani, this is not about the integrity of Adani and this is not about the profile of Adani. This is about killing any future development in the coal industry—in this case in particular—in my home state of Queensland. This is about denying thousands of young men and women who are currently unemployed. Some of the figures around Townsville and some of the areas in Central Queensland are up to nine per cent. This is about killing the prospects of their jobs. This is about denying the 14,000 workers who did work in the coal industry and all the allied support industries at one stage the opportunity to return to the dignity of full employment. This is about stifling the ongoing investment that comes with transformational, generational opportunities like this to develop the economy of a region and a state and then, indeed, all the benefits that flow from that to the nation. This is about stopping people— owners of empty homes in their thousands in Central Queensland—having the opportunity to have them tenanted once more by people coming to develop this wonderful opportunity.

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Startling facts regarding

ACCIDENTS AND INJURIES IN COUNTRY AUSTRALIA

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9x

WORKPLACE INJURY FATALITY RATE

TWO-THIRDS OF DROWNINGS OCCURRED IN COUNTRY AUSTRALIA

The injury fatality rate for farm workers is nine times higher than any other industry.

INJURY DEATHS FROM ASSAULT

3.8x 4.2x METRO

REMOTE

VERY REMOTE

Australians in remote areas are 3.8 times more likely to die from an injury caused by assault. Australians in very remote areas are 4.2 times more likely.

3.5x

MORE LIKELY TO DIE FROM ACCIDENTAL POISONING Death rates from poisoning are 3.5 times higher in remote and 2.5 times higher in very remote areas, than in major cities.

Last year 271 people drowned in Australia – with a disproportionate two-thirds of drownings occurring in rural and remote areas.

ROAD

FATALITIES Although more than two thirds of Australia’s population live in major cities, more than half of all road fatalities occur on rural and remote roads.

All of these injuries and accidents are preventable.

Public policy, research, strategies and funding must give all Australians a fair go.

Data from multiple sources

persist until I DOCTOR get it restored. > “I’ll HELP THE FLYING RESPOND INJURIES I’m taking TO it to mayors in the

www.flyingdoctor.org.au/help_us bush and I’ll raise it in the Senate if I have to. I want to see the ink on the paper. The bush has been hurting for the past five or six years and any further reduction, particularly in life-giving health care, is unacceptable.”

-Senator Barry O’Sullivan, February 2018

> READ OF OUR THELATEST 335,000 RESEARCH REPORT PEOPLE CARED FOR

IN

www.flyingdoctor.org.au/research THE LAST YEAR, THE

RFDS DELIVERED: •

17,094 primary health care clinics in different remote locations

•

88,541 tele-health and video-health doctor and nurse consultations

•

10,832 episodes of dental care

•

36,799 air retrievals of patients

•

70,576 road transfers of patients

s e i l f Barry DS F R R O IN F

One month after Barry first began “RFDS cared for 335,000 RFDS funding single last year in the air, on raising the issue with cabinet Australians ministers in Canberra, the Federal the ground, or via telehealth. Our aeromedical and dental services Government expanded health care across country Australia, with now have certainty. We can now also deliver a new mental $327 million committed to the Royal Flying Doctor Service of health service to underserved Australia (RFDS). country areas in all States and the Northern Territory.”

The four year funding, including Barry said the funding was $84.1 million in new funding, further evidence of the LNP’s will support continued fly and commitment to the families drive in medical, nursing, and of Western Queensland and dental services in remote areas, Australia. and a new national mental health program.

“The good people in our rural and RFDS CEO Dr Martin Laverty said remote communities have always stood by the LNP and we won’t “All who live, work, and travel take a backward step in delivering in country Australia can do so knowing the RFDS is on standby if for them.” needed, thanks to support of the This May marks 90 years of Liberal-Nationals Government. the RFDS overcoming barriers in access to health care for country Australians.

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