Regional TAFEs like Port Macquarie have fewer students and less money, figures show. 

Senior officials confirmed today that chaos and division at the heart of the Turnbull Government sabotaged outcomes from the 1 April COAG meeting and has driven a stake through the heart of Federation reform. Officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Treasury gave evidence that Malcolm Turnbull had been contemplating a plan for double taxation for months before the meeting – but didn’t bother to tell the states and territories, or even his own department.

We have heard this afternoon that there are some senators in this chamber who are concerned about tobacco taxes taking money out of people's pockets. On the Labor side, we are more concerned about tobacco taking years off people's lives. We heard a quite moving testimony from Senator Bilyk about the very personal cost that came about from tobacco-related disease.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations should never be put through the Government’s disastrous and mismanaged blanket tender process again, according to the final report of the Senate Inquiry into the Indigenous Advancement Strategy.

Safe Schools is an important program. The last parliamentary sitting showed perfectly why we need it –there remain some who refuse to acknowledge the challenges faced by young LGBTI students.

I rise to take note of the document entitled ‘Minister for Women (Senator Cash) to a resolution of the Senate of 3 February 2016 concerning the Sex Discrimination Commissioner’.

The motion before this chamber is very, very broad in scope. I commend Senator Leyonhjelm for his broad and thoughtful speech, which ranged across a wide range of policy areas and pieces of legislation, although I think he will be unsurprised to hear that in so doing I do reserve to my right to disagree with him quiet vehemently in some respects.

I rise to address Australia's rental crisis. 2.7 million Australian households rent. They are the forgotten face of Australia's housing affordability crisis. They are forgotten in our national conversation and, unhappily, they are forgotten by the Turnbull government. 

In March 2015 I addressed the John Cain Foundation in Melbourne, arguing the Labor should return democracy to the centre of our story.

As we renew, Labor need leaders. We need intellectual leadership, we need political and organisational leadership and as always we need parliamentary leadership.

In this context, women’s leadership is not only right and just and fair – it is essential.