MARK DREYFUS MP

For 50 years Labor has fought for the right of all Australians to access decent, affordable health care and for every one of those 50 years the Liberals have fought to tear that down.

And here we are, again, with Medicare again under attack and once again, it's the people right across Australia, including in my electorate of Isaacs, who will pay.

Twelve months on, COVID still threatens aged care residents and we have a Federal Government failing to protect aged care workers and the people they are caring for.

What we're witnessing right now is a government that believes that it can act with complete impunity. The Prime Minister appears to believe that, no matter how disgraceful his conduct or the conduct of his ministers gets, time will march on, journalists will move on and people will forget. It's incumbent on all of us to ensure that the Prime Minister is wrong about that. Australia needs a powerful and independent national anti-corruption commission, and only a Labor government will deliver one.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an extraordinary act of generosity, friendship and reconciliation. It is a gift we must accept in that same spirit, for the benefit of all our people

The Morrison Government intends to strip one million Australians of their only means of employment support, during a pandemic, with no plan for good, secure, well paid jobs to replace it.

No Australian Government should do such a thing.

We expect, and deserve, better, much better than this.

Today, on the lawns outside this parliament and in demonstrations across our nation, tens of thousands of women and their supporters marched and spoke for justice. They were powerful, they were eloquent, they were courageous and what they said needs to be heard, which is why the decision of the Prime Minister to refuse to come out of hiding and walk the short distance to hear directly from the thousands who came to this place to call for justice tells us so much about what kind of leader he is.

Rorts, rorts and more rorts, that's the standard Australians now expect from the Morrison Government, because this is a government whose members are only in it for themselves.

Labor supports the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2020. We welcome the long-overdue repeal of the questioning and detention warrant power, a power which has never been used and which, since 2016, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and multiple independent national security legislation monitors have repeatedly told the government to repeal.

There's a wonderful richness and variation across the Jewish festivals. And to me Chanukah has always been a particularly uplifting celebration.

As one of the most difficult years in recent memory draws to a close, I want to pay tribute today to the fantastic community spirit of the people in my electorate of Isaacs.