ADJOURNMENT
Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (20:46): I wish to start this evening by acknowledging and thanking my good friend Wendy Askew, who resigned from this place yesterday afternoon. Former senator Askew leaves this parliament having made an enormous contribution to the Liberal Party, to this Senate and to the people of Tasmania. Having come to this place in 2019, she has continued a proud family legacy of public service, following her father, the Hon.
Max Bushby, who served in the Tasmanian parliament, and her brother, former senator David Bushby. One of former senator Askew's many contributions to the Senate was her commitment to the work of its committees and the work of parliamentary scrutiny. It is work which does not always attract headlines or public attention, but it is among the most important responsibility entrusted to senators.
It is through the committee process that this parliament can examine issues in depth and hear directly from Australians to help drive the serious and lasting policy changes that our country needs. In particular, former senator Askew is someone that hasn't tried to draw attention to herself but has instead done the work of the Senate. Former senator Askew participated in more than 100 committee inquiries during her time here, serving as chair or deputy on 47 of those.
Her contribution to the community affairs committee reflected her genuine interest in people, especially in Australians whose circumstances or challenges meant that they were often not heard. Her advocacy on rare cancers, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy has made a difference to many lives. Through that work she helped bring to this parliament the stories, experiences and recommendations of everyday Australians.
I acknowledge former senator Askew's service as Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate for the last four years. It's her shoes that I will attempt to step into as I take over that same role. It is an enormous honour to take on that same responsibility.
I am grateful for her guidance and mentorship not only throughout this transition period but since I first arrived in this place some three years ago. Wendy was one of the very first people to reach out to me when I was elected to the Senate. From those earliest days, she was extraordinarily generous with her time, her advice and her friendship—and I noticed that it was not just to me but to others as well.
Former senator Wendy Askew, thank you for your friendship and for your guidance. Thank you for your service to our party. Thank you for your service to this parliament and to this chamber.
Thank you for your service to the people of Tasmania and thank you for your generous service to your country. My mind's now going to turn to the economic circumstances in our country at this time, and I want to reflect on the conversations that we had in this chamber today around the widows tax and the most recent tax changes in the budget. It makes me think of a statement: 'one rule for me and another rule for thee'.
That's become a creed of this government, sadly. This is a government content to tax the widow grieving the loss of her partner while its own members are able to keep the negatively geared properties they were able to buy before the rules changed for everyone else. My biggest concern is that those opposite knew that this would have an impact.
It was brought to their attention before the legislation was passed yet they chose to proceed with it regardless. That's something that we need to reflect on as a problem, when we are actually passing legislation in this place for a political agenda, for a media outcome, rather than for outcomes for the actual people that we're meant to be in here representing.
We need to have a think about that. These tax changes have impacted many people. Australians hoping to build a nest egg are told that ambition is no longer for people like them, while institutional investors are seemingly the only landlords that this government is now prepared to tolerate.
In fact, they have the red carpet rolled out to them to buy up housing on concessional terms. Beneath this hypocrisy sits something much more troubling, because this government doesn't understand what makes a country prosperous. Prosperity rests on confidence.
People in Australia no longer have confidence. People start businesses, take on debt, back an idea and drive productivity when they can trust their government and trust that the rules they start under will be the rules under which they can finish. A government that moves the goalposts to suit its politics of the day makes risk fundamentally unsafe and makes people afraid to invest.
A person who cannot plan is a person who will not build. That is not the bedrock of a modern liberal economy; it is the reflex of a Soviet style one. Confidence is not born of control.
Just look at our housing situation. A private housing market exists because the government concedes it cannot build all the homes Australians need. But if you rely on private investment, you need to give it a reason to turn up.
Labor has removed the incentives to invest in housing, and what are the results? Record high rents in every capital city and auction prices tanking. I wanted to finish tonight on the Prime Minister's remarks on the Japanese Prime Minister.
We've all heard a lot about it today, but I can't understand how the Prime Minister can defend the distasteful and deeply offensive joke at the expense of Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. It is to that display that I want to make some comments. So much has already been said, but I need to make some facts very plainly stated.
On a podcast, invited to reminisce about Pamela Anderson, the Prime Minister of Australia chose to describe a carefully chosen gift of two prized crown melons from Japan's first female Prime Minister, with hand gestures that left nobody in any doubt about the offensive joke he was making, and his office now insists that everyone who watched it simply misunderstood.
It was a gesture beneath the office of the Prime Minister. We didn't misunderstand. We all know exactly what it meant.
To the Minister for Women, who sits in this chamber, and to the Minister for Social Services, it is not right that you have had to defend this. We all know that if those words had come from anybody else in this chamber or in the other place, they would not have been accepted for a moment, and nor should they have been accepted. Instead of finding the courage to stand up for a woman subjected to blatant sexism, they have spent this week explaining it away and saying that we have all gotten it wrong.
Respect for women is worth very little as a principle if it evaporates the moment the offender is a powerful man who leads your own party. When a former Japanese ambassador to Australia writes that the joke was insulting and beneath this nation, it is quite something for Australian ministers to respond by telling Japan what it is and is not entitled to find offensive.
Japan does not need this Labor government's permission to be insulted. This is a leader who has stared down threats from Beijing and who has endured slurs about her body and her gender, who runs the fourth largest economy on earth and who came to our country bearing a gift only to be reduced to a punchline on a podcast by our prime minister. The Prime Minister managed an unequivocal apology to Kylie Minogue and rightly so.
The Japanese Prime Minister is still waiting. The decent course here is not complicated. You apologise personally to the woman you offended, and, until the Prime Minister does, every lecture from him about respect for women will ring hollow.