I’d like to start off by thanking the Diversity Council Australia for the opportunity to be here today.I’d like to acknowledge the importance of the work that you do in developing the ideas, information and strategies to increase workplace diversity & inclusion.

The ABS confirmed today that it still hadn’t worked out how to survey remote and overseas voters, but that the methods it was contemplating included SMS. The ABS’s evidence before a hearing of the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee demonstrated how the government’s rushed process was threatening the integrity of their marriage equality ‘postal survey’.

Labor welcomes the Senate’s support for an inquiry by the Finance and Public Administration Committee into the government’s digital transformation program. The government’s spending on digital transformation and ICT has doubled since it came to office. 

The British futurist and writer Alan Moore said: The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic.

The truth of this government, of course, is that it is utterly chaotic.

This government is at war with the young, from cuts to education funding through to a deliberate attempt to sabotage any meaningful action on climate change. This government shows every time that the only thing it cares about less than young people's present is their future. 

Today Labor is calling on the Senate to set up an inquiry into the Turnbull Government’s beleaguered digital transformation efforts. During its time in government, the Coalition has doubled its digital spend to $10 billion but witnessed digital project after digital project run into trouble.

Labor Senator Louise Pratt has lodged a motion to refer the Government’s ridiculous plan to conduct a non-binding postal survey on marriage equality to the Senate References Committee for Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Today I visited the Zaatari Camp in the desert in northern Jordan which hosts about 80,000 Syrian Refugees.

Senator Jenny McAllister met with the Coffs Harbour Neighbourhood Centre.

The Turnbull Government’s crack digital team has confirmed they didn’t lift a finger to fix the NAPLAN online failure.

All Australian states and territories pulled out of NAPLAN online in April, blaming technical glitches and failures – meanwhile the Turnbull Government’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) didn’t try to help get the project back on track.