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March 20, 2023

Government taking acting to fix the REDcycle debacle

Australians diligently collected and dropped-off their soft plastics, and they were told it was being recycled. At the same time the Coalition spent millions of taxpayer dollars running ads to that effect. But in reality, for years, the REDcycle arrangement was a charade.

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March 8, 2023

Creative Industries are Vital to Australia’s Economy

We believe very strongly that Australia should be a place that makes things. As I said, we should make songs, stories, plays, screen drama, documentaries—all kinds of performance and all kinds of visual arts. It’s essential to who we are, and it is among the best things that we get to experience.

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March 8, 2023

Tabling of Convention concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment

It is worth noting that Australia has not exactly moved swiftly to ratify this convention and will in fact be the 176th country to do so. Considering that we exist in a region where relatively new nations have ratified the convention where preventing child labour is a relevant challenge, Australia’s ratification will strengthen our credibility when it comes to promoting strong measures to eliminate child labour in the Asia-Pacific.

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March 8, 2023

Pacific Engagement a win-win for Australia & the region

I think that what this will inevitably deliver is stronger person-to-person ties between Australia and Pacific island nations, and between Australia and Timor-Leste. We absolutely need that. It’s right because of our membership of the Pacific family. It’s right as a matter of our identity and values. It’s right as a feature of our concern for the broader wellbeing of all the communities in the Pacific, and it goes hand in hand with the additional $900 million of development assistance that this government will provide over the next four years.

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March 7, 2023

Climate Care is Health Care

It’s welcome that the Australian community is seriously focused on the risks and impacts of climate change, but perhaps the specific impacts on human health are not yet a large enough part of the conversation.

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March 6, 2023

Albanese Government delivering sensible measures for cost-of-living relief

We’re providing new investment in public health, child care and affordable housing. We’ve been prepared to identify fair and responsible sources of revenue to fund the things we share, to reduce disadvantage and to create a better future.

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March 6, 2023

Australian Government welcomes UN Treaty to protect the high seas

The United Nations High Seas Treaty is an historic global agreement which will place 30 per cent of the world’s oceans into protected areas by 2030.

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March 6, 2023

Australian Government should keep control of trade disputes

we don’t support the use of investor-state dispute clauses in trade and investment agreements, because they aren’t necessary for enabling secure and fair treatment of Australian investment overseas and they do put at risk Australia’s capacity to regulate in the best interests of our community.

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February 16, 2023

National Reconstruction Fund key to unlocking Australian innovation

It is absolutely right that we are prepared, through properly structured means like the National Reconstruction Fund, to try to kickstart and lean into all of the changes that should be the basis of a high-tech, sophisticated, resilient manufacturing future in Australia.

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February 15, 2023

Climate change action insulates against rising costs of living

It’s bizarre when you have … representatives in the National Party effectively, by their actions, seeking to condemn people in rural, regional and remote Australia to being second-class citizens when it comes to access to the cheapest, cleanest, most efficient form of energy.

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