Mr HILL (Bruce—Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and Assistant Minister for International Education) (18:48): I also acknowledge my friend the member for Fisher's work on mental health. I enjoyed greatly our time working on the defence subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Committee and elsewhere. I wish you a long and illustrious career serving in opposition on parliamentary committees! Here we are. We've survived the world's worst job interview; it's my fourth in a row! I give very grateful thanks to the people of Bruce. The defining characteristic of the Bruce electorate is its human diversity—people of every background, from literally everywhere, speaking hundreds of different languages every day, getting on with daily life together. Stretching from the rural shire of Cardinia through established greenfield areas of the city of Casey and the hyper-multicultural Greater Dandenong, and to touch the city of Monash, Bruce has the largest number of voters of any seat in Victoria and tens of thousands of future citizens as well. Whilst campaigns are always tough, this one was especially brutal. The Liberals and News Ltd were convinced they'd win Bruce. But it turns out the magnificent people of Bruce felt differently. We achieved the largest to swing to any incumbent MP in the country—9.31 per cent, thanks to the team. It was an incredible team effort due to hundreds of volunteers who lived their values. But this election wasn't just difficult; it was the most disgraceful and dirty campaign locals have ever seen. You might ask, why so? This time it wasn't the far-right Fraser Anning neo-Nazis, which we endured in 2019, or the Palmer cookers of 2022, and not even the One Nation folks, who actually turned up this time—last time they had a candidate from Queensland, no-one even turned up, but to everybody's surprise, they were very decently behaved. No, in 2025, the truly vile and disgusting behaviour, day in day out on the ground, emanated, radiated like a nuclear cloud from the Liberal Party—the supposed alternative government over there, or what's left of them, fuelled by their choice of the dodgiest major party candidates ever seen, Mr Zahid Atal Safi and the collection of largely intimidatory, discriminatory goons he surrounded himself with. Mr Safi and his party advertised him as 'a successful small businessman' who had 'a deep commitment to his community'. A deep commitment to lying, dodging and weaving would be more accurate, as it became clear as the campaign unfolded. What my community endured during this campaign deserves to be recorded here. What happened in Bruce is bad for Australia's democracy, and it shines light on the ongoing failure of the Liberal Party, including its new leadership cabal, to face up to it, apologise, or reform itself. I quite liked and respected my three previous Liberal opponents—I did; I never heard from them again, but I did like them. But from the moment Mr Safi was mysteriously chosen to be the Liberal candidate, locals started calling, whispering and writing to me, raising serious concerns about his personal integrity and business dealings. Over months, a number of local Liberal branch members—the small number of decent people they still retain—quietly shared their unease that someone so manifestly unsuitable to sit in our national parliament had been preselected by a party of government. As things progressed, they shared their deep dismay at the sort of campaign they were embroiled in. Nobody has ever properly explained why he was chosen. Some have concluded it was basic idiotic racism, a simplistic offensive view that if Mr Safi was the choice then all Muslim voters, and especially all Afghan voters, would automatically vote for him, as if they were Daleks with one brain cell that would vote along ethnic or religious lines, not Australian citizens with their own hopes or dreams and diverse thoughts and views. Others quietly explained to me that Mr Safi had access to significant mysterious funds which helped to fund his own campaign as well as his patron and mentors. Whatever their reasons, as a result, my community endured a toxic, nasty, negative campaign replete with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and good old-fashioned intimidation, largely at the hands of Mr Safi's associates. It was consistent, I suppose, with their national campaign, where they literally ran out of groups of Australians to offend and alienate with their culture wars. The serial and daily disregard for the law and community amenity in Bruce saw the most bizarre signage wars we have ever seen. There was a Liberal Party truck, which we have a video of, that went around every night, rain or shine—it wasn't shining, because it was night—nailing hundreds of signs, literally hundreds, to trees, roundabouts, schools, churches park fences, and everything that didn't move. People called my office en masse—we've never had this before—enraged that Mr Safi's face had been nailed to their own fence in the night without permission. They even tied political signs to the RSL. You can imagine how well that went. Then one night massive banners that were homophobic appeared across south-east Melbourne, on freeways, overpasses and park fences right through Isaacs and La Trobe. They didn't know the boundaries; they were actually trying to capture people going in and out work—in some bizarre personal smear. For the record, I don't have a husband, but at least they chose a nice photo of me. The broader community was appalled. It was personally unpleasant at the time, I will acknowledge. But my heart went out to all the young people grappling with their own identity who had to see that toxic rubbish in 2025. We weren't surprised by the banners and their vile WhatsApp groups—yes, we got the screenshots. An insider had tipped off, for months, that this was their central campaign tactic. Geniuses! I wish I could send whichever of their goons organised the banners a lovely thankyou note. Not only has it showed the broader community what they are really like but also their tactics generated generous donations and a hell of a lot more volunteers. Unfortunately, though, they forgot to authorise their handiwork in breach of various laws and electoral regulations. The police remain on the case, so let's see who gets outed now. But I'll go back to Mr Safi, the man that the Liberal Party still thinks should've been elected to sit in this House. Turns out Mr Safi, the businessman, actually owns three NDIS providers. One of them, Willow Support Services, was registered to a residential address, yet the people living there said they had no idea about the business. They did, however, receive mail for it from time to time, which they put in the bin—exactly what the Liberal Party should've done much earlier with their candidate. Another business, No. 2 of Mr Safi's NDIS businesses, was recently deregistered for unpaid fees. But then there's Infinite Community Supports. This seems a bit more promising if you read the glowing online reviews. I'll read some. John lswanto from St Kilda wrote: The ICS team broke down my plan in a way that was easy to understand and helped me find the best providers to suit my needs. Another positive review was left by Numen Khan from Richmond, who said: They helped me set and achieve meaningful goals. A basic Google search though reveals all is not as it seems. Mr Iswanto's photo actually fronts hundreds of fake reviews globally, including as a student in London and the head of marketing at crown plaza sweets in Sydney. He's even a general project coordinator in Azerbaijan. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): Wow, talented! Mr HILL: I know! He gets about. Numen Khan is also a tech engineer in Germany, a talent recruiter in Amsterdam and a marketing manager in Wisconsin. Mr Safi's website reviews were entirely made up—naughty! Dodgy. Full credit to the formidable journalist Charlotte Grieve at the Age for both exposing dodgy Zahid Safi's fake business empire and for her tenacious pursuit of journalism's holy grail of the 2025 Bruce campaign—an interview with the Liberal candidate. For 23 days she doggedly pursued Mr Safi, trying to land an interview. For 23 days, Mr Safi dodged and weaved and went into hiding, but predictably, when she finally tracked him down on the big day, he literally ran away. But, fortunately, Charlotte pursued him and had a camera on her phone to record the epic moment. Mr Safi had made it to what he thought was the safety of his car, about to drive away, but—you couldn't script this—in a moment of genius, the Liberal Party official who was minding him physically ordered Mr Safi out of the car. You have to watch the video to really get the full gist of it, as the Liberal Party dude was also inexplicably dressed in shorts, a fedora hat and a colourful shirt like he'd wandered out of a Bavarian beer hall. Anticlimactically, just as Charlotte got him, he refused to answer any questions about his businesses. Instead he gave a very credible impersonation of one of those dolls where you press the button and they repeat the phrase, and he said 'cost of living', 'crime', 'cost of living' and 'crime' until he drove away. There were further revelations through the campaign later including actual victims of Mr Safi's dodgy NDIS businesses, with multiple referrals now to regulatory authorities for investigations. These are not trivial matters. Numerous laws may have been breached with fake website reviews, false addresses and phone numbers, and other worrying reports that attract serious civil and potential criminal penalties in breach of the NDIS Act, the Corporations Act and the Criminal Code Act, including 'failure to comply with the condition of registration as an NDIS provider or the NDIS code of conduct by failing to act with honesty, integrity and transparency' or 'false or misleading information in registration'. Terms of imprisonment are provided under other acts, such as the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act and the Victorian Crimes Act. The Australian Consumer Law also creates specific offences, including 'making a false or misleading representation relating to the supply of goods and services' such as things like false testimonials on the website. Further tip-offs about Mr Safi's previous, now deregistered, training businesses allegedly selling fake qualifications have been referred to the appropriate authorities. Even News Limited eventually couldn't stay out of the action and they dipped their toes into the cesspit, exposing Mr Safi for faking his own master's degree at Monash University, which is still featured on his LinkedIn. His excuse to the media was that he'd lost his LinkedIn password. Of course, Mr Safi was a very good fit with his campaign team. His campaign manager, a local Liberal elder affectionately known in their crowd as 'Uncle Andrew McNabb', had to resign as campaign manager due to a slew of misogynistic social media posts using terms I cannot repeat here. Some of Mr Safi's more charming volunteers really excelled themselves on the polling booths, using multiple different languages to advise Australian Hazaras that Mr Safi was the reincarnation of Abdur Rahman Khan—he was brought back again—and warning voters that voting for me would betray Khan's legacy. Now, for most Australians, that's a rather obscure historical reference. For those not in the know, Abdur Rahman Khan is known for perpetrating the Hazara wars and genocide in Afghanistan in the 1800s. You might be forgiven for thinking that this was just a rogue volunteer, an extremist whose views didn't align with Mr Safi's campaign. But no: as the Guardian reported extensively, in 2021 Mr Safi co-authored an inflammatory anti-Hazara submission to a Senate inquiry. The Taliban has of course pursued and killed and persecuted people of every ethnicity in Afghanistan and continues to do so. But Mr Safi's and his associates' denial of specific atrocities against Hazaras is dishonest and deeply hurtful to those who've lost family and loved ones in countless acts of targeted violence. And the intimidation of Hazara Australians exercising their vote is disgraceful. After all of this, you'd think that a functional political party would have dumped a candidate like Mr Safi. But nope: they didn't just tolerate him; as the scandals kept unfolding, they were falling over each other to embrace him—Senator Hume; multiple campaign videos, sans cocktails and sundowners; and glowing endorsements from the member for La Trobe, who described him as a 'phenomenal candidate. He was pictured with Liberal heavyweights like the shadow minister for defence and the Leader of the Nationals. The wonderful Senator Henderson blessed him as 'the exceptional candidate for Bruce'. Senator Paterson hailed him as 'an outstanding candidate'. 'A fantastic candidate', said the now Leader of the Opposition, 'fighting hard for the people of Bruce every day'. In her defence, I suppose Mr Safi did fight hard every day—to get away, run away and stay away from all those pesky journalists. All that said, to be fair, perhaps you could explain away their professed admiration for Mr Safi as just the heat of a campaign: 'stand by your man'. As the old saying goes, 'He may be an idiot, but he's our idiot.' But even that cannot explain the most concerning and perplexing part. Even after the election, even after all the scandals and revelations and referrals to investigation, this mob are still embracing Mr Safi. In the last few weeks, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the shadow minister for immigration have already had meetings with Mr Safi, described up there on social media as 'very productive'. Maybe Mr Safi was teaching them how to create fake profiles and fake positive reviews for the Liberal Party! This is now a test for the Liberal leadership—to come in here and apologise for their candidate choice, apologise to the people of Bruce and admit that what they are doing is wrong. Now, they should—but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting. Of course, one giant problem for them is that if they did say sorry then they couldn't get away with pretending it was just one bad apple, could they? Their problem is that the whole tree is rotten. Their whole rotten Liberal enterprise needs root-and-branch reform. A senior journalist did suggest to me that one reason Mr Safi didn't get the attention nationally in the media that he deserved and wasn't dumped was in part because they had so many appalling candidates that there just wasn't the bandwidth in the media to pay attention to all of them! Let's not forget the Liberal candidate for Wills, who pled guilty last year to obtaining financial advantage by deception, and the Liberal candidate for Whitlam, who said we need to 'fix the military' by removing women from combat and that the ADF had been weakened by diversity and equity quotas and all those woke Marxist ideologies. So they sacked him. But get this: their replacement candidate for Whitlam was just as bonkers as his predecessor. His big agenda was gender fluidity and other forms of Marxist brainwashing in schools. The Liberal candidate for Bradfield, who's still off at the High Court now, was named in a $650,000 settlement over discrimination and harassment claims brought by a former staffer. This is my personal favourite, though: the Liberal candidate for Kooyong, who thought she'd relate to everyday Australians by describing herself as a renter. The only problem was, she forgot to mention her giant trust fund and investment properties in Canberra and London worth millions of dollars. Twitter was possibly just a little unkind, with the pony club and nepo baby monikers—possibly. Perhaps she just misspelled 'rentier'! Then there's the candidate for Leichhardt, who described my home state of Victoria as a fascist state and bemoaned the 'feminists who helped kick Trump out'—whatever that meant. Not content with that offering, though, the Liberal Party has now launched its latest civil war over there about gender quotas—you know: whether it's maybe time to ensure that half the population is properly represented in the parliament. Apparently it's okay to have quotas for National Party blokes and seemingly for dodgy candidates but not for women. Mr Tehan: Talk about your electorate! Mr HILL: Oh, I have been talking about my electorate. You weren't here. You should check the transcript. Then you can come in and apologise for standing with that dodgy candidate who you ran against us. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): Order! We don't need a two-way conversation. Mr HILL: But let's move on from the 'so what'—make this bloke happy. This isn't just about some postelection catharsis— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member shall refer to other members— Mr HILL: Yes—make the shadow minister happy. This isn't just about some postelection catharsis; this is about the state of our democracy. In my firm view, the Westminster system relies on strong, functioning political parties that can perform public goods; develop realistic, costed policies for people to choose from; campaign for those policies; and vet and select candidates who are suitable to hold public office in the parliament. A strong democracy requires a proper, functional opposition, yet what the Bruce campaign and, indeed, the entire national campaign and their postelection civil war has starkly revealed is the rotten, broken shell that is now the Liberal Party. They were a terrible government and they weren't much good at opposition, but beneath that sad fact is that they are now barely a functional party. In Victoria, their main pastime is suing each other in the courts. They're back there again in September. Can't wait for Moira for PM and those stickers; that'll be great! They've well proven their inability to vet and select proper candidates. They have literally not a single policy—not one—except those forced upon them by the National Party to avoid the messy divorce: climate change denial, economic populism and risky nuclear reactors. But don't worry, the Leader of the Opposition says. 'We have our values. We'll always be guided by them.' The only problem is they're not actually sure what they are, so they've now embarked on this soul-searching exercise to find their values. Good luck with that. Eat, pray, love to you all. One of the best things about the 2025 election was the resounding rejection by Australians of the politics of fear and division in the community, voting instead for a politics of unity, care and optimism. To me, an Australian is anyone committed to our country, to its institutions and to that basic principle of mutual respect for their fellow Australians, who may be very different to them. The people in this chamber may be very different to each other. They may have very different beliefs, identities and world views. Perhaps one day the Liberal Party will get that. Miracles do happen; I'm not giving up on you! I'm proud to be a member of this government. I've known the PM since 1996; he's the real deal. He's kind, he's smart, he's strategic, he's tough, he's experienced, he's authentic, he's an insanely hard worker and he's actually fun. In my first speech, I spoke about the fun faction back then. I'll finish on this. I'm especially proud to be part of a parliament that now reflects more modern Australia. In my first speech to this place, I spoke about institutions of power. The judiciary, the military and this parliament have to reflect the communities that we serve, and these are without doubt the best first speeches I have ever heard in my time here. I could not imagine a better collection. They're people who have real problems, have had real lives and actually reflect the community, so full marks and a shout-out to my new colleagues. The country is going to be well served by this government under this Prime Minister.