Australia politics live: NSW premier Chris Minns to visit site of bus tragedy; Linda Reynolds threatens to sue Tanya Plibersek
More precious minutes of our lives are wasted as Paul Fletcher objects to a government dixer question. Not because dixers are a time waster (which they are) but because the question includes:
How is the Albanese Labor government fixing the patchwork of policies and poorly implemented cyber security measures left behind by the previous government?
Fletcher thinks that goes against Milton Dick’s ruling that questions can only be about current government issues from yesterday. Tony Burke fails to hold back his exasperation as he points out that the question is what the government is doing now, and that some reflection on why it has to do that is allowed and normal.
Fletcher disagrees.
Burke disagrees with Fletcher’s disagreement.
Dick says he will listen to the answer, but some reflection is fine.
Clare O’Neil is allowed to answer the question.
Peter Dutton asks Anthony Albanese
Yesterday the Minister for Finance stated that she did not communicate to the Member for Grayndler or anyone his office any aspect of information she had received concerning an alleged sexual assault prior to 15 February 2021. Prime minister, did the minister for finance mislead the Senate.
There are some immediate interjections and heckles from the opposition benches as Albanese gets to his feet, and Milton Dick shuts it down.
Albanese then answers
No.
(that is the whole answer)
Barnaby Joyce makes what Tony Burke says is an unparliamentary comment during an answer Tanya Plibersek was delivering, and asks him to withdraw it.
Joyce does, although it seems reluctantly.
We did not hear the comment.
Mark Butler takes another question on the dispensing changes to 300 medicines which will see pharmacists lose handling and dispensing fees (the government has promised to re-invest the money into community pharmacies but will not back away from the cost saving measure for patients) and David Littleproud gets so worked up he gets booted from the chamber.
Liberal Marise Payne is next, asking about Gallagher’s statements yesterday that she wouldn’t talk about the information she may have received from Higgins and partner David Sharaz, because it was received with the understanding it would remain confidential.
It wasn’t my story. It was Ms Higgins’ story,” Gallagher said.
I don’t intend to breach that confidence now, and I didn’t then.”
Gallagher said she had been contacted by multiple women in the last day who were “extremely concerned with how this discussion is occurring”.
Gallagher went on to say that she only received information from Higgins and Sharaz, denying she ever heard anything from The Project or representatives.
Senate president, Labor’s Sue Lines, has at several points called for order and demanded senators stop interrupting. Several Coalition[1] senators could be heard calling out across the chamber to Gallagher, yelling “hypocrite”.
What about the consideration you had for Senator Reynolds. None,” yelled one Coalition senator we couldn’t identify.
Coalition scrutiny on Katy Gallagher continues in Senate
The Coalition’s scrutiny on Katy Gallagher continues in the Senate, as several opposition senators yell “hypocrite” across the chamber. The chamber is quite unruly and tense.
Before her time runs out in one answer, Gallagher says:
This chamber should think about how this debate and the ongoing coverage of it is impacting on all the women out there, who we are with one mouth saying ‘stand up and we will support you’, and with the other tongue, if you dare to do it ...
The shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash, begins by asking Gallagher about the settlement payment given to Brittany Higgins (she has long said she had no involvement in the process, which was commenced under the former Coalition government).
Gallagher responds that “it never came to me ... it never crossed my desk, I never got a brief”, saying she would have listed a conflict of interest if it had.
Gallagher then takes a dixer from a Labor colleague on the budget and the government’s economic management.
Anthony Albanese speaks on Labor’s housing fund and then, as it so often has in this debate, turns personal with Max Chandler-Mather.
The member has never seen a housing development that he wants to support, that he wants to support.
If you look at the member’s website, it currently hosts at least three separate petitions against housing! Against housing supply! He opposes 855 new homes including apartments, townhouses and detached townhouses on a 20-hectare site for over 2,000 extra residents.
This is what he has to say. ‘I also have significant concerns over what 2,000 extra residents will do for traffic.’
He opposes new homes for another 960 residents. In another petition, he is opposing turning a vacant block of land into a retirement village … So do not come in here and say you support housing when you will not support any in your own electorate and when you are opposing 30,000 new, additional, social and audible housing units including 4,000 designated for women and children escaping domestic violence.
No rent freeze, PM tells Greens MP
Max Chandler-Mather has the first of the crossbench questions and it looks like the gloves are off when it comes to the Greens as well.
Chandler-Mather makes note of Anthony Albanese’s comments that rent freezes would be ‘absurd’ and asks the prime minister was it absurd when he coordinated with the states to lower energy prices – as well as when the ACT Labor-Greens government put in rent controls.
When will he finally act on rent increases and freeze rent increases in the states?
Albanese jumps right in on this:
I say to the member for Griffith that he is a member of the House of Representatives and in our federated structure, there is commonwealth government, state government and local government, and state governments have controls over housing issues. The matter that he refers to once again is disingenuous. There is no rent freeze in the ACT, none. There is no rent freeze in the ACT. There is no rent freeze in the ACT. There is not a jurisdiction in the ACT that has done that.
Chandler-Mather yells out: “I said rent controls.”
PM: There is no rent freeze in the ACT.
Chandler-Mather: “I said rent controls!”
Ahhh yes – Scott Morrison is very likely in the UK or on his way to the UK[2].
He announced he was headed to the UK to ‘promote Aukus bipartisanship’. How lovely that it coincides with Boris Johnson’s latest woes – always nice to have friends around when you’re feeling low.
Morrison announced:
The trip to the UK is privately funded with flights and accommodation provided by the International Democratic Union. Mr Morrison is an honorary member of the IDU strategic advisory board. Declarations regarding these arrangements will be made, as usual, on Mr Morrison’s Register of Interest in due course, as required by the Parliament.
Due to these commitments in the UK, Mr Morrison will be absent from the Parliament from June 15-22. Following his formal visit to the UK, Mr Morrison will be taking some time to spend with his family, who will accompany him to the UK, on a private vacation overseas, during the parliamentary break and school holiday period.
Anthony Albanese continues:
He went on to say, maybe Angus does not go shopping much because we know inflation is bad and grocery prices are up but he should have seen that question prepared by his staff.
He went on about the figures. And questioned it. We know before, what he said about his staff. Remember the Clover Moore incident? Always the staff.
And so, clearly, the thing is after speaking to the shadow cabinet, bringing out the shadow treasurer. The thing is, this is one of a number of gaffes, Mr Speaker.
How can you tell there is a gaffe coming? Because he opens his mouth.
This answer is a little bit of a surprise because in the last parliament sitting, Labor had decided not to go there with Angus Taylor, and not just because he was on leave because of a family issue, but because of the attempt at a ‘gentler parliament’.
But given the opposition’s attacks it seems like that has now gone out the window. And it is once again open slather.
Taylor slings interest rate question at PM
Angus Taylor and his sling asks Anthony Albanese:
The budget highlighted the expectation that interest rates would stay at 3.8% until early 2024 and then fall. Following an 11th rate rise under this government, rates are now at 4.1%. Prime minister, why did the budget fail within a month?
Jim Chalmers and Taylor then start debating each other across the chamber:
Chalmers: “It was the average of the market” (expectations of interest rates).
Taylor: “But why did you highlight it? You knew it was in the budget” (references page number).
Albanese:
You can’t trust anything [the member says]. When you look at what the budget papers actually say, the budget papers actually say that in the question that is reflected by the shadow treasurer it refers to what expectations are by economists. It is not a Treasury document … Because we know that this is something that just doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t exist.
But the last time I got a question, of course, from the shadow treasurer, he stood up here and he said: I question the prime minister. UBS data shows in the last month alone the price of Vegemite has increased by 8%. Peanut butter by 9%. And yoghurt has increased by 12%. He went on about all this. And then he went on; Australians love Vegemite, it is up 8%. Not in a year, in a month. He doubled down.
Of course, Andrew Clennell of Sky News, and I always watch Sky News – those opposite would have seen this for sure. For sure. He went on to say that I have got a shadow cabinet leak. And that is Angus Taylor yesterday was castigating his shadow cabinet ministers.
(There are so many interjections there is a general warning for the house.)
Taylor tries to bring a point of order on relevance, but Speaker Milton Dick says Albanese is being relevant, so Albanese continues:
I am certainly speaking about – they are not happy little Vegemites over there, Mr Speaker. They are not happy little Vegemites.
I can’t see Scott Morrison in the chamber, so it seems like the former prime minister is missing this question time.
Angus Taylor is back though, with his arm in a sling.
We are straight into question time today and Queenslanders are once again the flavour of the day with the Herbert MP, Phil Thompson, getting the first question.
It’s almost like there is a byelection in Queensland coming up?
Thompson wants to know:
Despite the promise to cut power bills, the Albanese government has had 12 months and two budgets to fulfil this promise but has failed to do so. With small businesses struggling and Australian families having to find an extra $22,000 each year to service their mortgage let alone pay electricity bills, when will the prime minister take responsibility for the growing cost-of-living crisis?
(Insert line about the promise being for 2025.)
Anthony Albanese switches up his answer (after including the line that Thompson voted against the energy price relief) to include a little Queensland flavour:
I can imagine people in Queensland today, giving a big shoutout to the Palaszczuk government.
He goes on to talk about the energy rebates the Queensland government announced which will see some pensioners’ electricity bills reduced to zero (there is a $550 rebate – Queensland still owns the poles and wires).
Albanese:
I am sure that when the member for Herbert returns to Townsville on the weekend, what he will see, he will be able to talk about it. He will be able to say, sorry constituents that I voted against energy price relief.
Albanese then goes on about surpluses.
Moving to the chamber and the Labor MP Graham Perrett is using his 90-second statement to pay tribute to one of his favourite authors – Cormac McCarthy.
He recommends those who have not yet read him to find a sunny spot and wait until they are feeling ready – and then dive in.
We are now in the downhill slide into question time.
Don’t expect the opposition to stray too much from what we saw yesterday.
The Reserve Bank hasn’t had the best couple of years – not least because of mistakes like forecasting in late 2021 that the official interest rate wouldn’t rise until 2024.
And, of course, there was the fairly critical RBA Review which recommended splitting its roles[3], plus an unnerving habit of regularly surprising most pundits and investors by hiking those rates.
Now there’s another straw to add to that overloaded dromedary.
After a review of its “more complex remuneration arrangements” by PwC (a firm not in Governor [4]Philip Lowe[5]’s[6] – or anyone’s – good books), the RBA has concluded 1,173 current and former impacted employees were short-changed “around $1.15m”.
“Most of the payments relate to the calculation of termination benefits payable to former employees,” the bank said, adding all affected people had been notified and monies were flowing.
On the scale of recent underpayment announcements – eg BHP’s $430m[7] – the amount is not huge. It’s also only a tad more than Lowe’s annual compensation of about $1.04m (at least in 2022).
Still, with many mortgage holders slashing spending to meet soaring debt repayments, penny-pinching (literally) by the central bank is not a great look.
References
- ^ Coalition (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ in the UK or on his way to the UK (www.scottmorrisonmp.com.au)
- ^ which recommended splitting its roles (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ not in Governor (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ Philip Lowe (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ ’s (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ BHP’s $430m (www.theguardian.com)