I fear this won't be the last time that I rise in the Senate to talk about the ways employers are working around the safeguards of the Fair Work Act and it won't be the last time that I rise to talk about the ways big companies are seeking to avoid their tax obligations—and, in doing so, seeking to deprive all Australians of the revenue that government needs to provide hospitals, schools, infrastructure and apprenticeships.

This Government is creating a myth—the deserving and non-deserving poor, where poverty and unemployment are recast as personal or moral failure rather than a result of complex people facing complex challenges.

Quite often, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to an individual—someone who has used their power or their platform to achieve a worthy end. However, ICAN is something very different. It didn't inherit any pre-existing platform; it willed it into existence through a gradual accretion of individuals and organisations to its cause.

The Government's attempts to fundamentally alter superannuation governance laws is not about improving outcomes for ordinary people who have their money invested in these funds. This is simply an ideological obsession with eliminating the role of trade unions from public life.

Labor is deeply disappointed with Minister Scullion’s response to the Senate Inquiry into the Community Development Program (CDP). Labor secured the Inquiry into the CDP in March after communities across the Northern Territory and Western Australia told us that they were trapped in a cycle of poverty, waiting on the end of a phone line for hours and then giving up, feeling hopeless and still struggling with an infuriating bureaucratic reporting process. 

The Senate inquiry report released today into the fraught Community Development Program (CDP) calls for a total overhaul of the unfair CDP system.The report confirms what Labor and First Nations people, organisations and communities have been saying since the CDP was implemented in July 2015 – that the current CDP is not working. 

ExxonMobil must answer to new allegations claiming it is engaging in tax avoidance and aggressive tax minimisation practices. Parliament, this week, granted the Senate Economics References Committee an extension on the Corporate Tax Avoidance Inquiry to 30 May 2018.

On 27th November 2017, I had the honour of speaking in favour of the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 to make marriage equality a reality in Australia.

Today, Australia voted for equality with the marriage equality postal survey returning a overwhelming victory!

Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion needs to face the reality that the CDP is harming, not helping communities. Minister Scullion used a report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) into the Community Development Programme (CDP) to justify the Government’s failed CDP Program.