On Australia Day I announced the winners of the 21st Annual Griffith Australia Day Awards, a tradition started by my predecessor as member for Griffith and former Prime Minister the Hon. Kevin Rudd. Each of the wonderful people who received an award this year has made an enduring contribution to our community as a volunteer, seeking neither financial reward nor recognition.

This seven-year-old chaotic government was supposed to deliver water security for Australians, but instead our country is desperately seeking national leadership on water. Australians have faced the worst drought on record and are crying out for the federal government to take water security seriously, but water security is a mess. Regional towns at the point of or on the brink of running out of water have been forced to truck it in, and they have been calling out for help. Independent body Infrastructure Australia has noted that crises like the Menindee fish kill have undermined confidence in the governance and management of Australia's water resources.

As happens every day in this place, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. Here in the Canberra region, the traditional owners are the Ngunnawal people and the Ngambri people. I also want to acknowledge my colleagues and fellow parliamentarians who are Aboriginal people: the Hon. Linda Burney, Senators McCarthy, Dodson and Lambie, and the Hon. Ken Wyatt.

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) the importance of grassroots youth arts organisations, including Backbone, based in the electoral division of Griffith;

(b) that for thirty years Backbone has helped young people find purpose, develop skills and contribute to our nation's culture; and

(c) that despite Backbone's success, the Government has cut its funding, and the organisation now faces closure; and

(2) calls on the Government to urgently commit to restore funding to Backbone.

Last week's brutal killing of Hannah, Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey has devastated our southside community. I want to give my condolences—and, I am sure, those on behalf of the House—to Lloyd, to Sue, to Nathaniel and to their entire family, who were so brave at last night's memorial service in Camp Hill.

How weak is this Prime Minister? He misleads the House in an attempt to cover up the fact that this hopeless government, this tired, third-term government, is so embarrassed by the fact that one of its own ministers won't fess up to the fact that his implausible story about downloading a document from a website is completely wrong.

There’s a decrepit, vacant Commonwealth-owned property in my electorate that has fallen into disrepair and disuse. The property is riddled with asbestos and has now been sitting empty for many years, with nothing between it and the footpath but some temporary fencing that has been there for much too long.

It's been a very strange day here in the Australian parliament, of course. We've seen the really unedifying spectacle of a Prime Minister coming into the chamber to say that he will not be taking any action in relation to a minister with a criminal investigation hanging over his head. I think that most Australians would be quite gobsmacked that the Prime Minister—who is responsible for ministerial standards—is taking this quite remarkable step of saying: 'Nothing to see here. There might be a New South Wales police strike force—Strike Force Garrad—investigating this minister, but I'm just going to take no action whatsoever.' I think that's weak, and I think it's a real indictment of this government. There are a couple of things I think you need to have in order to be Prime Minister: you've got to have guts and you've got to have principles. And this Prime Minister has just demonstrated that he has neither. So it's an odd day to be standing up to give a speech in the address-in-reply debate, because, traditionally, the address-in-reply debate is an opportunity to reflect on the election and the term ahead. Here we are, six months or so into the term, and Australians are rightly looking at this government and saying: 'Well, what do you stand for? If you don't stand for integrity, if you don't stand for upholding standards, what actually does this government stand for?'

I rise on behalf of the people of Griffith to pay tribute to our former Member for Griffith, Benjamin Charles Humphreys AM. I thank the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their kind reflections.