MARK DREYFUS MP

Joeys Van provides healthy, nutritious meals to needy people in our local community. Joeys Van is an outreach ministry of St Josephs Parish, Springvale.

We have presented a credible pathway back to surplus in three years, and that time frame is half the time that it was expected to take when Australia first responded to the global economic crisis.

The Dandenong area - and, in particular, suburbs like Dandenong South, Braeside and Carrum Downs - provides a significant chunk of Victorias and the country's manufacturing output. So, when times are tough, manufacturing, retail and hospitality jobs in this area are often the first to go.

These real effects are what make it necessary for all industries, including agricultural industries, to adapt to the changes that are already occurring and will continue to occur.

We are going to see measured consideration of Australia's national security legislation. We are going to see discussion conducted slightly outside the atmosphere of partisan political debate about where the balance should be struck between the protection of individual liberty and arming our authorities with appropriate powers.

I very much hope that this terrific tradition which has now been running for five years at Edithvale Bowling Club continues into the future, because it provides an opportunity for those who have just entered the sport to compete in a way that might not otherwise be available to them.

Chileans are a strong and resilient people. As floods and fires are for many Australians, earthquakes and tremors are a part of life for Chileans. But the fifth most powerful earthquake on record - since 1900 - is one of the worst to have hit Chile and has left some areas of the country in ruins.

The only fraud that is really relevant to the debate on this bill is not the imagined fraud - the myth of electoral fraud - that the opposition continue to speak about, not the fig leaf of electoral fraud that the opposition relied on to introduce the measures that we are now removing as we are in office - the measures that they introduced when they amended the electoral act to reduce the right to vote, to reduce the enfranchisement of Australians, in particular to reduce the ability of young people to get on the roll and to stay on the roll - it is the fraud that is being perpetrated on the Australian people by those opposite.

In my electorate alone, nearly $100 million has been invested in primary and secondary schools under the Building the Education Revolution and Primary Schools for the 21st Century funding.

There is a great deal of care that has been taken by the government in devising the provisions not merely to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act but to continue with the measures which will be regarded as special measures, such as the income management regime.