If you are after a guarantee that the tax cut will increase wages, you are not going to get it. They can't give it. That is simply not what their modelling tells them.

A few weeks ago, the Labor Party, together with minor parties and crossbenchers, met with Hands Off Our Charities, a group representing organisations as diverse as the Uniting Church, Oxfam and the ACF.

The gender pay gap is a multifaceted problem. It arises from a complex mix of cultural and economic factors, which range from gender segregation in the workplace through the availability of flexible working conditions to outright discrimination.

Early childhood educators perform some of the most valuable work in our society for less than half the average Australian wage. Anyone who has had a child attend child care knows the importance of a good teacher and how central they are to a child's life.

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.

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.

Australia faces a huge challenge to protect our unique wildlife. An unacceptable number of our animals such as the hairy nosed wombat and the iconic koala are vulnerable, endangered or face extinction.