On the eve of Poverty Week the Australian Greens have called on the ALP to avoid the tendency to match the Coalition's blatant vote-buying tax cuts and to commit to give a fair go to Australian families living in poverty instead.

"The tax cuts announced by the Prime Minister today bring the total cost of tax cuts announced in the last three years to $100 billion – but a pay rise for pensioners is still seen as unaffordable," said Senator Rachel Siewert today.

Today's release of monthly unemployment figures highlight the need for the development of new data to enable a proper examination of the employment situation in Australia according to Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert.

"The figures released today point to a trend that has concerned me for some time and that is the growing level of underemployment in Australia," Senator Siewert stated.

The Howard Government has squandered the opportunity offered by the good economic times to make Australia fairer and invest in our future prosperity, say the Greens.  

"Prime Minister Howard's economic agenda has failed the most disadvantaged of our community" said Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens spokesperson on community services.

The Greens support the motion to have the Wheat Marketing Amendment bill 2007 referred to committee. We believe it is essential that sections of this bill are referred. We believe that substantive sections of it need to be thoroughly reviewed. We believe there is unnecessary haste to force this bill through this place. While we acknowledge that there are areas that need to be dealt with more urgently, we believe that those should be dealt with first and the rest of it thoroughly reviewed and considered.

"The Australian Government is about to embarrass us internationally through its shameful attempt to downgrade a United States proposal to end the trade in sawfish to help ensure their survival," said Greens spokesperson on Fisheries, Senator Rachel Siewert today.  

"The proposal to downgrade the trade in Sawfish is scheduled to be debated at the UN conference on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in The Hague today."

"The decision by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to strip Aid/Watch of its charity tax status is another attack on Australian democracy," said Senator Rachel Siewert today.

"Aid/Watch is only the first of a large number of community organisations, from environment groups to welfare organisations who we can expect to lose tax deductibility status in an attempt to either silence them or starve them of funds."

"Aid/Watch is only the first in the line of dominos to go down in the start of a major campaign to silence dissent."

I am aware that there is a long list of speakers here and that we probably need to be fairly quick and to the point so I will try to meet those goals. The Greens will be supporting this amendment.

The government claims that this is not a political scandal and that there was no illegal activity. Mr Cole was not asked to find illegal activity.
In the report Mr Cole stated:

It is not my function to make findings of breach of the law; my function is to indicate circumstances where it might be appropriate for authorities to consider... criminal or civil proceedings...

"Secret advice to government on the impact of the IR 'reforms' confirms that the Government's real agenda was always about lowering wages, and their claims about boosting productivity were spurious," says Senator Siewert.

"These laws were always about reducing wages and attacking unions."

The Government derided academics and those opposing these laws for criticising its productivity claims and saying the minimum wage would drop - but the Treasury advice confirms both points.

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by 30 March 2006:

The involvement of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme between 1999 and 2003, and consequent revelations that such involvement led to payments that were directed towards the Iraqi Government, with particular reference to the conduct of Commonwealth regulators including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Wheat Export Authority and any other relevant agencies.