That’s where we will leave Politics Live for the day. For those asking, the minister representing the home affairs minister is yet to table the strategic review in the Senate, but we will keep an eye on it.
We will follow that, and everything else the last sitting day before the winter break throws up from early tomorrow, so I do hope you’ll join us.
Given all the talk on Newstart though, I thought I would leave you with this picture, of Shelly Hayes and Ellen Kronen, who travelled from Lismore to parliament today with the Australian Council of Social Service to talk to MPs about why Newstart needs to increase and to remind them that Newstart recipients are humans.
They shouldn’t have to. We punish people for being poor, because there seems to be some deep-rooted sense that poverty is a choice. It’s not and never has been. It’s circumstance. It’s existing within systems which are set up by those already privileged enough to access the opportunities. It is not and never has been as easy as ‘having a go’. And yet, increasingly, it seems that until we have direct experience with someone else’s circumstances, or something approaching what their circumstance might be (a politician on a six-figure salary ‘doing it tough’ on a lower six-figure salary, for instance).
We shouldn’t have to have people explain that to us. And yet, here we are.
Take care of you – and those around you.
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Pat Dodson has also spoken out in the Senate against the Cpac conference speakers:
This could be a pantomime. This is a serious matter for the integrity of Australia.
I stand in support of my colleagues Senator Wong and Senator Keneally in expressing concern about this conference, CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, and about the standards that our leaders, particularly the Prime Minister, need to make clear when it comes to the participation of leaders from this place and other places.
In the US, CPAC is an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States. CPAC is hosted by the American Conservative Union. Now we have CPAC down under, with a conference in Sydney from 9 to 11 August.
What’s this about? Is this a sign that our fierce Australian characteristics of independent thinking are finally capitulating to rejected offerings from overseas?
There was a time when we were concerned about how our national discourse was informed. Now it looks like we’re submitting to poisonous ideas without reflection. You can buy a Reagan VIP Freedom Pass to the conference for $599. No one from Newstart will be there; that’s more than their fortnightly allowance. The one-line blurb promoting CPAC in Sydney bills the conference as a chance to ‘learn’, ‘have fun’ and ‘protect the future’. Learn – what are they going to learn? What do those attending hope to learn from rightwing proselytisers from other hemispheres?
Why should our political discourse be polluted by imported poisons and propaganda? Fun – locked up in a conference room with a clique of visiting rightwing nutters who shouldn’t be allowed in the country. Protect the future – God save us, if all of those that are in this bunch see themselves as our protectors.
Mr President, I invite you to go to the Cpac website and take a look at the line-up of visiting speakers. Some of them shouldn’t be allowed in this country.
They obviously have not come by boat! That should not be the reason for them being banned from coming here – they are more likely to fit into an ‘intellectual terrorist’ category than that of a tourist. Their demagoguery is a danger to democracy.
Australia is so intent on protecting its borders from refugees, but how about protecting our borders from prejudiced zealots and intellectual terrorists?
Why do we need to hear the US congressman with a questionable record, Trumpified and infecting Australian politics?
And what’s there to learn about rightwing Americans? Or why do we need to hear from someone who is promoted as a ‘British political activist’–someone who is really a racist bigot?
Don’t we have enough homegrown fascists and fanatics? We already have too much homegrown bigotry and racism in our country. Cpac has taken to social media to defend their invitation to this man. Apparently Cpac is proud to have him at the Sydney conference, arguing that free speech is at stake here.
Like both of my colleagues, I am a strong defender of free speech, but, like my colleagues, I reject any right to hate speech.
We already have enough homegrown bigots and racists in Australia. Extremism should not be allowed into our country. And if Cpac sees itself as the exemplar of Australian conservatism – look out, everyone. It’s time for the Prime Minister to act on this matter, as it is a threat to our nation.
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Arthur Sinodinos calls for 'bullying' review to be expedited
In case you didn’t listen to that Afternoon Briefing interview with Patricia Karvelas, what you have there is a senior member of the Liberal party calling for the bullying review, which was set up after the leadership spill, to be brought forward.
Arthur Sinodinos:
The women in question did not get the support that they deserved and they decided to go public. It appears that these incidents sometime back that they were either compelled not to go ahead with them or action was just not taken, or they were ignored or whatever.
So I feel for them, there is a review under way at the moment about what happened last year in terms of the allegations around the culture in some parts of the Liberal party because of the bullying around the time of leadership tensions, but that hasn’t come to fruition yet.
One of the things I’d like to do with the end of the week, this federal executive meeting, and the margins of that, I’m not attending the meeting itself, and in the margins of that I want to talk to others about how we expedite the review.
I think we can’t have a situation where people feel the only option is to go public in this way.
I know some of my colleagues have said that the people in question should have gone straight to the police. That’s true, but I can understand some circumstances people are reluctant to take that route because of the concern about the backwash on them, and if they are entirely innocent of anything, it’s a very galling and very public process as you’ve seen in other high-profile cases, so I think we need to get on with it and get the review completed as a measure it is to be taken to strengthen our internal processes and address these matters.
... The review was commissioned after the matters of August last year, so it has been going on a while now and I can understand that we’ve had state elections, federal elections getting in the way, but the reality is that this is a priority and should be treated as a priority and finalised as a priority.
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Arthur Sinodinos also commented on the allegations put forward by two Liberal staffers regarding how they were treated when they reported alleged sexual abuse to the party.
This is one of the stronger comments we have heard from a government MP.
Sinodinos will be departing the Senate soon, to take over from Joe Hockey in Washington.
“The women in question didn’t get the support that they deserved and they decided to go public… Some of my colleagues have said they should have gone to the police. That's true, except I can understand in some circumstances people are reluctant,”@A_Sinodinos tells @PatsKarvelas pic.twitter.com/Et9SfGNWuR
— ABC News (@abcnews) July 31, 2019
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How Mike Bowers saw question time:
Soz
Tfw you’ve answered a question without knowing the context
Do I smell toast?
‘Merit’ in action
Updated
On the flipside, Patricia Karvelas asks Arthur Sinodinos about the government MPs and former MPs who are speaking at the conservative conference next month, which features some ... shall we say ... people who have said some terrible, awful, disgusting, bigoted and every other Trump adjective, things.
Kristina Keneally has called for Peter Dutton to step in and, consistent with what happened with Milo Yiannopoulos, stop some of these speakers coming to Australia on the grounds of hate speech.
James Paterson has been among the government MPs who have taken umbrage at the claim that Coalition MP speakers at this conference, which include Craig Kelly and Amanda Stoker, as well as former PM Tony Abbott, are tarred with the same brush.
I mean, that is obviously completely different to tarring the Labor party for everything the CFMMEU and John Setka have done, but I digress.
Sinodinos:
Until it was raised in the parliament today I wasn’t aware that he was coming and I don’t know much about his background. People like that would get vetted on character grounds, and I know a number of other cases where other commentators, Milo Yiannopoulos for example.
I must say on the whole though, often with these characters it is better to take them on publicly rather than to seek to drive these things underground, and what they mean by that is to take on the arguments and demolish them.
If someone is a Holocaust denier, it is quite straight forward to prove that the Holocaust happened and that 6 million people needlessly lost their lives, and I don’t think we should be afraid to show these people up for what they are.
If you are asking me about the decision of some of my colleagues to appear at a conservative action conference, that is their individual decision, but people like Amanda Stoker and Craig Kelly are not the sort of people who would say some of the stuff that was alleged in question time. I think that they would be attending the conference and putting up the mainstream conservative views that they have heard them say in the parliament and elsewhere.
Sinodinos says he believes any Coalition speaker at the event will call out those sorts of views “if they get the opportunity”.
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Kim Carr continues, to explain what he means about ‘identity politics’:
Any group of people that are quite affluent, people who are articulate, people who are well-connected and often in the centre of the cities of our country. This is a problem that has emerged over time. The communication system is geared as city centric, it’s channelling in to a cultural elite that’s not necessarily reflective of the broader community.
So when we talk about issues, and climate change for instance, we were not actually talking to the wrought mass of people, which reflect the seriousness of the issues, were getting to the heart of the question, and I’m not saying that we abandon the science or misunderstanding how important these questions are, but we have to talk to people in a manner that we are able to be understood.
We might say one thing but the people of this country might hear an entirely different thing.
This has been happening for a while and I think too often is a presumption that we are talking to people who are already quite affluent, quite powerful, well-connected, and when talking broadly enough to those communities that have traditionally looked to Labor, who need government the most, who need to be able to see the resources of the government deployed to even up the score, who understand the political and economic system in this country, is not exactly working for the majority of people.
And we have failed, I think in some respects, to be effective in our communication strategies.
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Kim Carr is asked by Patricia Karvelas about this story from Katharine Murphy:
I’ve had a very good response. There is a review under way but if there is a broad discussion going on between the Labor party membership my proposition is simply this.
We need to examine the methods by which we determine our policies and the circumstances under which we determine them. The Labor party platform is determined by the Labor party conference – the commitment to make in terms of the party, the parliamentary executive, these are not matters you can simply remove with a clean sheet of paper.
We do have to examine the campaign that was run, have to examine the techniques that we pursued in the messaging be pursued because there are separate questions on the question of the policy substance versus the capacity to communicate.
And clearly what’s happened in the last election was a big shock. It’s a big shock around the country and a lot of money was spent on travel insurance. It had to be cashed in as a lot of the party people who have holidays planned had to cash those in.
They didn’t anticipate hanging in office any more than we anticipated it, so we need to look at the circumstances where the political system has not been able to respond adequately to people and we have got a Senate inquiry that revived some of these opportunities as well as the party review.
[But it it is interesting] just to know, how it is that our messaging has gone so wrong.
How it is that we have allowed ourselves to be separated from blue-collar communities and the way we have, and the manner by which identity politics has become so important in the modern discourse in the capacity for ordinary Australians to actually hear what is being said the manner of which is being said.
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Kristina Keneally is also asked about Labor voting for the temporary exclusion orders, when it had serious concerns about the legislation.
I think you might be referring to the temporary exclusion orders legislation that passed through the parliament last week. There is an important principle there, that we have a scheme in place to safely control and manage the return of foreign fighters, to put them on trial or to control them when they come back into the Australian communities. That is an important principle and not one I am going to just jettison but I am going to make the point that Peter Dutton is delivering a scheme that is questionably constitutional, that doesn’t conform to the recommendations of a Liberal-dominated committee, but Patricia, I’m going to be quite frankly putting the public interest first.
If the choice is we have no scheme or we have a scheme that is flawed, I am going to go for the scheme that is flawed, and that is going to be on the government if it is proven to be flawed, because the alternative no scheme at all is not a good solution for the Australian community.”
Which makes sense, but as Keneally said earlier, when asked whether Labor would vote to extend Asio’s detention and questioning powers for another 12 months, if the government didn’t accept its three-month amendment, given the government has the numbers, it doesn’t matter what Labor does, in terms of the legislation passing.
So the only reason Labor would vote for something it doesn’t agree with is to make a statement.
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Labor will not be joining the challenges Paul Karp has reported on today. From acting national secretary, Paul Erickson:
“Labor is disappointed by the tactics employed by the Liberal party at the election, which went well beyond the accepted bounds of a vigorously contested campaign – especially in the divisions of Chisholm and Kooyong.
“The Chinese-language signs used by the Liberal party in those contests were clearly designed to look like official Australian Electoral Commission voting instructions using the AEC colours, for the clear purpose of misleading Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking voters into voting for the Liberal party.
“While Labor believes there is a strong case that the signs were a breach of the Electoral Act, the significant cost and protracted nature of a legal challenge means we will not be seeking to overturn the outcome through legal action in the court of disputed returns.
“Instead, our focus will be on holding the Morrison Liberal government to account and working hard to secure a majority at the next election.
“I spoke today with Jennifer Yang, who contested Chisholm on behalf of the Labor party, who echoed her disappointment at the tactics engaged by the Liberal party.”
Ms Yang said: “Over the last two months, many members of the local community raised with me how deeply concerned they were about the deceptive tactics employed by the Liberal party.
“It is disappointing that the Liberal party engaged in such disgraceful and misleading behaviour. The people of Chisholm deserved better.”
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Kristina Keneally is the first guest on Afternoon Briefing. She is talking about the CPAC conference and why she believes Australia needs to stop some speakers from entering, because of what she says is their past hate speech:
I think it is incumbent on the government to consider two things here. One, will other people that are coming into Australia for this conference really fit within the definitions under our visa system? The immigration system gives the minister latitude to bar entry to Australia for people who seek to create division in the community, promote division in the community. They have seen fit to do that with other speakers in recent months.
They haven’t yet seen fit to do it here and I would encourage them to do so. I will also encourage the prime minister who says that he will speak out against extremism in all forms, to speak out against extremism that is coming into Australia through this conference, and particularly to call on his Liberal members not to go through with their appearance at this conference because when the Liberal party and its members go on stage, they give a tick and ... an OK to the type of hate speech that is being imported through this conference. And free speech is different to hate speech, and I’m all for free speech. Amanda Stoker says we can talk to racists and decide how it will all be OK.
That’s not the case here because the government has already taken decisions to ban people who would seek to create racial division in Australia, and they should do that here.
... I find it disturbing; we saw it in Senate question time, [Mathias Cormann] could not bring himself to say that it was OK for senator Stoker and Mr Kelly to appear on stage. He took these questions on notice; he condemned the remarks. Quite frankly, we cannot as an Australian community sit back and watch the values that make this country so successful, that Malcolm Turnbull often said, we are the most successful multicultural nation on earth, we should uphold that and we shouldn’t sit back and have a relaxed attitude when we have conferences being organised ...
The point I’m making is that we should not sit back and let this happen without calling it out, and calling on the Liberal National government to oppose same standards they have applied in recent months.”
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My inbox is now full of statements from Labor shadow ministers with the title “government misleads on ...”
So liar is out, but mislead is in. Potato/potatoh lives on.
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Authorities in Western Australia have charged live export company Emanuel Exports and two former directors with animal welfare offences over a shipment to the Middle East in August 2017, in which more than 2,400 sheep died of heat stress.
Footage of the voyage was leaked by whistleblowers to Animals Australia and prompted the review of the heat stress standards for sheep export, which saw both the live export industry and the federal regulator place a ban on the export of sheep from Australia to the Middle East during the northern summer this year.
The charges follow an 18-month investigation from the WA primary industries and regional development department, which began before the whistleblower footage was leaked.
Emanuel Exports’ managing director, Nicholas Daws, said the company would “vigorously defend the matter in court”.
The court date has not yet been set.
Updated
David Gillespie is delivering a personal statement on the reporting of his comments at the doorstop this morning.
He says he has been misrepresented because he was unaware of the allegations raised in the SMH and the Age, because he hadn’t read the story, and thought it was in relation to the leadership spill last year.
So he was “misrepresented” because he commented on something without knowing anything about it.
And apparently thought it was normal journalists would be asking about a story almost a year after it was first aired. Just randomly bringing it up on a Wednesday morning.
Cool. Beans.
Updated
Mathias Cormann condemns CPAC conference speaker's comments
Labor’s Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally have been asking Mathias Cormann about the objectionable views of attendees of the CPAC conference, using them to attack the government because MP Craig Kelly and senator Amanda Stoker have agreed to speak at the same event.
For the most part, Cormann took the questions on notice, but Keneally quoting Raheem Kassam’s comments about taping Nicola Sturgeon’s mouth shut and her legs “so she can’t reproduce” finally elicited a response.
Cormann:
The comments that senator Keneally just quoted are disgraceful, highly objectionable and completely outrageous, that I entirely abhor and I’m sure anyone in this Senate chamber abhors. I don’t think that that is a partisan position. These are disgusting comments and I reject them entirely and utterly.
I would make the general point that just because you are at an event, you’re not expected to agree with everything that everybody says at that same event. We’ve all been at events in our electorates where people have made highly objectionable points.”
When Keneally asked if the Australian government will cancel Kassam’s visa, Cormann replied that he won’t comment on individual cases but all non-citizens must meet the character requirements.
“The strong provisions to refuse or cancel a visa where a person is not of good character will be considered balancing the risk with well established freedom of speech/beliefs.”
Wong is now taking note of answers, describing the CPAC conference as an “academy to learn the dark arts of hate speech”. Wong called on Scott Morrison to make good on promises to promote harmony after the Christchurch attacks and prevent Coalition members from attending.
Senator James Paterson said it is a “cheap and nasty smear” to tar Coalition members with the opinions of others speaking at an event.
Updated
Mark Coulton has a statement to make.
He says for the information of the House, the Labor party did instigate a number of trade agreements.
Mark Coultan, adding to an answer about trade. He says Labor did in fact conclude trade agreements when in office (he said the opposite in an answer earlier). He notes the agreements Labor concluded were initiated by John Howard #qt
— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) July 31, 2019
Updated
Question time ends. And it ends when the papers aren’t even stacked!
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The government is on the side of flood victims. It will personally yell at the clouds for the next six years for inflicting this tragedy upon you.
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
In May the prime minister said his government had “introduced some passed legislation to deal with the threat of wildlife extinction”. Legislation that at the time didn’t exist and still doesn’t. Why does the prime minister just make stuff up?
That is in relation to this story.
Morrison:
Our government is committed to taking action on the concerns of Australians when it comes to protecting the local quality of our environment. The member for Latrobe, now the assistant minister, during the last election, and in the lead-up to that election, mounted a campaign amongst his local community to ensure that our government was taking action to protect species. That is what our government has been doing and that is what we will continue to keep doing.”
Siri, show me “non answer”.
Updated
The government is so on the side of workers, it will cover your shift and give you the money no problem. It will deal with Karen in finance for you. It will talk to the Michael McCormack of your office at the Christmas party and act like a human shield. And it will never eat your lunch in the office fridge.
Bill Shorten to Stuart Robert
The government’s given an absolute undertaking that the debt recovery in the Townsville area hasn’t commenced. Why was that absolute undertaking given when people in Townsville are currently receiving debt recovery notices as recently as this month including this $2,000 robodebt issued on the 8 July?
Robert:
The far north Queensland floods are no different. During natural disasters, such as cyclones, bushfires or floods, it is routine practice of the department of human services to temporarily suspend all complaints activities within an affected local area. This occurred in New South Wales and Victoria after the devastating bushfires earlier this year, as well as in previous natural disasters under governments of all persuasions. I agree is the right thing to do.
As a general rule, this suspension is in place for six months unless extended. I have asked the department to extend the absence of debt recovery in northern Queensland for the foreseeable future until I’m satisfied that the region has recovered. For the benefit of the house, when the department sends a notification to a citizen, this is what the notifications is.
And I’ll table it so we are all clear exactly what communication is sent to Australians. It says we need you to check and update your past income information. We need to make sure you receive the right amount of payments from us in the past.
The ATO has given us information about how much income you earn from work in the past. The information from the ATO is different to the information you’ve reported to us.
We need your help to check and update your information, you need to do this even if you haven’t received any CentreLink payments for a while.
Then has a nice big box on what you need to do. You have 28 days from when you receive the letter to update your information.
Over the page, you’ll find the information we have received from the ATO. Please check this carefully, and then go to human services.gov.au,/ confirm income, or go to MyGov. Documents like payslips or bank statements will help you do this.
This might mean you will have to pay back money. If you need help, go to human services.gov.au
I table that documentation for the benefit of the House so everyone can be quite clear as to the type of information that the department sends out. It is sensitive, it doesn’t seek to raise a debt in the first instance, it simply says to Australians, there is a discrepancy between what your assessment is and what the ATO has told us, and please call us. I reiterate to all Australians: if you receive a letter like that, call the department, because it is here to assist.
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The government is on the side of Australians who can’t find car parks. It is so on your side, it will personally carry your car, wearing bread packets on its feet, through the snow and floods, to make sure you can grab that Newtown piccolo. It will insert molecules into its DNA to turn itself into a bus and get you to where you need to go. It will drive around the block for three hours while you watch Top Gun II.
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Meanwhile Mark Coulton, who Labor says has misled the chamber in his answer through his characterisation of Labor’s trade agreement record, has so far received counsel from Barnaby Joyce, David Littleproud and Michael McCormack.
Updated
Jason Clare to Paul Fletcher:
Why did the assistant minister for home affairs claim that the rate of homelessness is quote “not ahead of population growth”, when in fact homelessness is nearly growing at nearly double the rate of Australian’s population?
Fletcher:
I think our government has a strong track record when it comes to housing, including a strong track record, $1.5bn under the national homelessness agreement to support homelessness services and under that agreement $125m is set aside for homelessness services in 2019-20.
The states are matching this funding and have a focus on women and children affected by family and domestic violence. And of course the prime minister earlier this year announced that hundreds more women and children are escaping domestic violence to a safe place to sleep with a $78m investment by the Morrison government, including forming part of our $328m investment to support the fourth action plan of the national plan to reduce violence against women and their children.
And I would certainly hope, Mr Speaker, I would certainly hope, that there is acknowledgment of the bipartisan commitment to the importance of government action in this area under the fourth action plan of the national plan to reduce violence against women and their children. And of course, as part of that, Mr Speaker, one of the very practical ways in which we are responding to the challenge of homelessness is $60m in grants to eligible organisations to provide new or expanding emergency accommodation facilities as well as $18m to support keeping women safe in their homes initiatives.
So, Mr Speaker, we have a strong program and commitment when it comes to homelessness, $1.5m, and of course, funding of which can be provided thanks to our strong management of the economy.
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The government is on the side of Australians concerned with reducing our waste. It is so on your side, it will personally follow you around spraying air freshener, if you need it. It will personally grow the worm farms and collect your compost. It will build statues in your honour out of your left over take-away containers.
Updated
We are back to Melissa Price:
Why did the government say that 90% of the work on the submarine project would be Australian, when it won’t be? The minister for defence industry?
Price:
Back in 2016 we announced a $200bn Australian defence white paper. Included in that is our $90bn naval shipbuilding project.
There will be thousands of opportunities within that naval shipbuilding program with respect to jobs for Australians, small businesses. There is an enormous supply chain with respect to shipbuilding and we aren’t done yet.
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Melissa Price just got in trouble for straying off topic in a dixer answer her office wrote.
#deathtodixers
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The government is on the side of the defence industry. It will give the defence industry a kidney if it needs it. Both of them. It is so on the side of the defence industry, it will camp outside the Apple store for the new iPhone for it, three days in advance of its release.
Madeleine King to Mark Coulton:
In his last question, the minister for trade and investment said that Labor didn’t sign a trade agreement in its last period of government. Is that true?
Coulton: (Simon Birmingham is in the Senate.)
... When this government came to power, 30% of our trade was covered by three trade agreements. It is now 70%.
Updated
The government is on the side of local investors. It would take a bullet for local investors. It will tell your wife you’re actually at their place, playing poker, and not at the local Furry club, if you’d like.
Ged Kearney to Greg Hunt:
The minister for home affairs said Australians in waiting lines at public hospitals would be “kicked off those waiting lines because people from Nauru and Manus would be accessing those health services”. Minister, did that happen?
Hunt:
The significant thing that has happened is this government took steps through the prime minister to make sure that there wasn’t a waiting list of people coming to the mainland. That is what the prime minister did when he opened up Christmas Island. That was a significant step ... That we did not encounter the very problem that the minister for home affairs warned about. The minister for home affairs identified the problem [and] the prime minister solved it.”
Solved it ... by it never actually being a thing? In which case I have solved the problem of Idris Elba’s undying love for me, and Rihanna’s and Beyonce’s constant friend requests.
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Sunrise has apologised for the wording in a tweet containing its Newstart story which said “New figures have been released showing just how many dole bludgers are trying to take advantage of the welfare system” after many, including journalists Sam Maiden and Juanita Phillips, called out the language.
To be clear, no one was talking about the actual story, which was a straight up and down, balanced report on the figures release and the motivations of the government in releasing them. But the language in the tweet is exactly what we have been talking about all day – and it’s wrong.
We made a mistake today Juanita. We’re sorry for it. I’ve apologised. It shouldn’t have happened. Nat https://t.co/due66foGX0
— nat barr (@natalie_barr) July 31, 2019
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Tony Burke to Christian Porter:
Why did he advise the House that the former Labor government cut funding to the fair work ombudsman by 70% when in fact it increased funding by 96%? Why did he also claim that staff were cut by 20% when in fact staffing rose by 97%?”
Porter:
I advised the House that when Labor were last in office they cut funding to the fair work ombudsman by 70% and there stopping by 20%, and the reason I advised the House of that is because it is true.
What happened with the funding is that there was a time when it reached a peak, and when you were struggling around for your four surpluses delivered in one night you cut the funding from underneath them. The funding and staffing went radically down and the number of investigations went radically down, and Australian workers who wanted a robust organisation to investigate underpayment were left in the lurch. That is what happened, and that is why I informed the house of that.”
He goes on to the ensuring integrity bill. Honestly though, the workload must be getting to him (he is basically carrying the whole government’s agenda at the moment, plus trying to run the House) because his answer is certainly a certain Porter de vivre.
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Karen Andrews is talking about how the government is on the side of manufacturers which, sure, unless you are a car manufacturer, because that didn’t go so well.
“Under the Morrison government we are making manufacturing great again,” Andrews says in a statement, so *Karen* managers everywhere get a shiver down their back.
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Chris Bowen to Greg Hunt:
“Why did the minister yesterday claim that the granting of an MRI Medicare licence to Sound Radiology was ‘not under an independent process’ when in fact they were signed off by him in his ministerial office?”
Labor MPs pretend to be shocked by this question. To be honest, their ooooohhhhhhh could do with some work.
In case you haven’t worked it out, the theme of this QT as far as Labor is concerned is ‘Why did you [insert minister here] make this misleading statement? LISTEN TO ALL THE MISLEADING STATEMENTS.
I mean, the party has been banned from using the word liar except in extreme cases, but if they could paint you a picture with pants on fire, that’s something completely different.
Hunt:
That is not an accurate representation of what I said. As I confirmed in the House, final decisions ... there are two parts to this, as I said yesterday. No, no. Its application was assessed by the department against a mandatory and substantive criteria outlined in the ATA documentation and all MRI licences are located in the expansion round met the department’s criteria and as they sat in the House yesterday, final decisions were signed off by the Minister.
Now this is very interesting. Absolutely. This is very interesting because I’ve been doing a little bit of research into historic processes in this space. (“Were you looking up Wikipedia again,” someone from Labor yells.)
And I was hoping she might intervene because this morning the leader of the opposition made an interview in South Australia where he referred to what the Labor party did and he made four errors in one minute in one answer on this. And apart from misrepresenting from what we said yesterday, he also said that Labor went through a process in these matters were determined as they were, but in fact we have gone back and we know from the AMA report that they were determined by the minister.
He also said, and I quote ‘People weren’t making a profit by definition’. Labor awarded these licences to public hospitals. I actually go to the member for Sydney’s release of the 1 November 2012, the member for Sydney, the member for Sturt announced 11 licences in South Australia. And I’ll just list some of them. Doctor Jones and partners, Tennyson centre, Adelaide, Adelaide area, Adelaide diagnostic imaging. Doctor Jones and partners in South Terrace, one in North Terrace in Adelaide. What we see as Benson radiology, Salisbury.
All of these show that what the leader of the opposition said this morning was absolute bunk. What he said was the difference is Labor awarded these licences to hospitals, public hospitals, that went to processes. So people weren’t making a profit by definition, and that may be why the ANAO looked at what Labor did and slammed the member for Sydney ...”
Catherine King yells out something like “Let’s see what the ANAO says,” and is thrown out under section 94a, which is not the punishment the Speaker seems to think it is.
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Bob Katter appeared to just blurt a bunch of words out at the microphone, or maybe I just had a stroke. I don’t smell toast, but I just can’t tell. All I know is that I can make no sense of those words.
Richard Marles to Josh Frydenberg:
Why did the treasurer say yesterday Australians were certainly better off than in 2013, when the data shows that since 2013 wages have been stagnant, household debt has risen, growth has slowed, and median household income has declined in real terms?
Frydenberg:
Well, Mr Speaker, Australians are better off than they were in 2013 because we have created 1.4m new jobs, Mr Speaker. Thank you for that question, because unemployment was 5.7% in 2013. Today it is 5.2%. Mr Speaker, when we came to government, the gender pay gap was 17.2%. Today it is 14.2%, and a record low, Mr Speaker.
When we came to government, employment growth was around 0.7% per year, Mr Speaker. Today it is 2.4%. And Mr Speaker, the other reason why Australians are better off today is because tax cuts have passed this parliament, Mr Speaker. $13m Australians are getting tax cuts because of what we have done on the side of the house. Because unlike Sir Taxalot over there, we are not telling the people of our electorates that we are going to put a retiree tax on them, but they are. We’re not telling them is going to be an increased tax on superannuation, but they are, Mr Speaker. And we are not telling them that we are going to burden family businesses and income earners with higher taxes, because on this side of the house we want Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn.”
That question is because Frydenberg cherry picked the Hilda data yesterday to answer his question. SHOCK. Also, I think someone needs to explain to the treasurer how a microphone works. In that you don’t need to yell into a microphone because its literal job is to amplify your voice so that you don’t have to yell.
I am aspirational that eventually this message will sink in. As will the idea that just because you think something is clever, doesn’t mean everyone else will. I mean, Sir Taxalot was a mild burn at best.
Updated
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has addressed allegations of “bullying, harassment and assault” in the media from two former Liberal staffers, describing them in a statement to the Senate as “deeply distressing and concerning”.
The statement was heavy on detail of what current or former staffers should do with a complaint and light on detail about what the Liberal party did or didn’t do with these two particular complaints.
Cormann explains that legislation which governs hiring of staffers gives them a right to have complaints investigated confidentially by the department which will tell the member or senator with the consent of the complainant to “allow them to address remaining risks in their workplace and take other actions that could or should be taken”.
Cormann said that alleged criminal assault “should be referred to the police for investigation”.
“There is no place for any form of bullying, intimidation or harassment in any workplace – and the Australian parliament is no different.”
Michael McCormack is summoned to the despatch box and the chamber shows the same level of enthusiasm one would face four-day-old sliced bread for breakfast.
The question also includes the phrase “demonstrate to the Australian people how the government is on their side” which is a series of words which now cause my eyes to involuntarily roll so far back inside my head they end up somewhere in January.
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Linda Burney to Stuart Robert:
My question is to the minister for government services. On Monday night, when speaking on ABC television about the robodebt program, the minister said: “The department won’t be going back after seven years in terms of recovering that.” Why did the minister say that when he knew at the time it was untrue?
(I wonder what the theme is today, thinking face emoji.)
Robert:
The department is moving forward on collecting or seeking income compliance debts from 2013-14.
There are still existing debts, where customers have been sought to respond to from prior to that year.
But when it comes to the issue of income compliance, Mr Speaker, it is important to understand where this all began. I refer to an article in the Australian in 2017, by Rick Morton, who writes that Labor’s leadership team pioneered the robodebt scheme.
The member for Sydney and the member for Maribyrnong other virtual godparents of robodebt. Where would Rick Morton have got that from? Rick Morton got that from a media release dated 29 June 2011, a joint media release issued by the member for Sydney and the member for Maribyrnong. It says that they are data matching to recover millions in welfare dollars.”
Robert goes on to read from Labor’s press release.
A new data matching initiative is expected to claw back millions of dollars from welfare recipients who have debts with the Australian government.
The minister for human services, Tanya Plibersek, and the assistant treasurer, Bill Shorten, today said the new initiative will enhance Centrelink’s debt recovery ability and is expected to recover $71m over four years. Beginning on 1 July this year, Centrelink and the ATO will automatically match data on a daily basis as a way of crosschecking former welfare recipients who have a debt with the commonwealth.
If people fail to come to an arrangement to settle their debts, the government has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover that money. Can I say to the former leader and deputy leader, we agree! We absolutely agree!
Can I say to the godfather and godmother of income compliance from 2011, from the media release, and I will table it just for the efficacy and good memories of the leader of the opposition and the deputy leader. Income compliance, data matching on a daily basis, was started by those opposite, and now they seek to stop it in some faux degree of indignation that the income compliance lovechild of the godparents isn’t what they hoped it to be. Will we have news for the opposition: what they began, we will continue to move forward in the interests of the Australian taxpayer.”
I mean ... as a love child (or bastard, depending on how much romance you want to attach to my conception) I’m not sure Robert made the best analogy there. Plus there is the whole issue of who actually raised the robodebt bastard.
Updated
Over in the Senate, Mathias Cormann is addressing Eryk Bagshaw’s story.
Scott Morrison has not said anything on it as yet, so this is the first senior minister comment.
Updated
The chamber is ROWDY today.
Keith Pitt asks Scott Morrison to explain just how on the side of Australians the government is. VERY is the answer.
In fact, the government is so on your side, when you look back and see just one set of footsteps, that is when it carried you*.
*Unless you are on Newstart, an asylum seeker, or an inner-city coffee quaffer.
Updated
Question time begins
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
(Morrison looks a little surprised by this call up. Lately he has been ignored by the Labor party, as it puts it “weak link” strategy into action.)
The prime minister said that tax cuts would be legislated before the 1 July. He said that member for Durack would remain environment minister, and he said that the government would create a national integrity commission. Where any of those commitments true?
Morrison:
I’m very thankful for the leader of the opposition for raising the issue of our commitment to tax cuts. Mr Speaker, those tax cuts, which not only provide tax relief today, but provide tax relief to Australians out in the future as well, for Australians, so the harder they work, the more they earn, and the more they keep of what they earn. That is what we promised and that is what we delivered.
And the Labor party sought to oppose us every step of the way. They remain opposed to tax relief, and if they have the opportunity they will roll back the tax relief that has been legislated for the Australian community.
Even now, several months after the election, the Labor party continues to tear itself apart about his $387bn of higher taxes. They have members over there who are clinging on to those taxes for dear life.
They worked so hard to put that massive tax burden in their election platform to take to the Australian people, and now they know they have to make a choice.
Are they going to tax Australians more or follow the government’s approach to make sure they get expenditure under control, that the government lives within its means, that it can deliver the central services that Australians rely on? That is what my government is delivering.”
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Speaking of the chamber, this is worth taking note of.
Federal Parliament forecast to drop back to 150 seats at the next election, with Victoria adding one seat while WA and the NT dropping one each https://t.co/SiGRdyLoiH #auspol pic.twitter.com/CimVc91meW
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) July 29, 2019
We are in the chamber, so who’s that MP?
It’s Andrew Laming, from Queensland.
This game is as much for me as it is the blog – I look into the chamber every single parliament sitting day and swear there is someone I have never seen before in my life sitting down there.
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It’s almost question time.
Who will be anointed Labor’s weak link target today? Or will it be targets? WHO KNOWS?
All I do know is: the GOVERNMENT IS ON YOUR SIDE.
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Given a climate emergency has been declared in Darwin, our Pacific neighbours keep screaming at us to pay attention and Siberia is currently on fire, this from Helen Haines (speaking to the ABC) is timely:
I don’t think people have fully realised yet the impact that climate change is already having and potentially will have on Australia and our near neighbourhood of the Asia-Pacific region.
What we see with climate change is extreme weather events and when we have extreme weather events, we have higher incidence of flooding, higher temperatures. We see problems, then, with crop production, with water sources being polluted and, in those situations, the food sources for many people, and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, can be ruined, and particularly in lower-income countries this has a dramatic effect on people’s capacity to gather food and have adequate nutrition.
Over a longer term, if this is persistent, that has a bigger effect across wider populations, including higher-income countries too.
A lot of research has come out of Canada and been studied over some time that when pregnant women are exposed to traumatic events and, in this case in the Canadian study, in extreme weather events and extreme ice and snowstorms during the early stages of pregnancy, it raises cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone that human beings have and when the stress hormone is raised in early pregnancy, it can have serious effects on the developing foetus and in these studies it’s shown conclusively that the babies born of women who experienced this event had up to 14 IQ points lower than like peers and had longer-term learning development issues.
First things first: prevention is better than cure.
We need to seriously get on with the business of lowering emissions in Australia, encouraging other countries to do so too, particularly to assist our nearest neighbours in lowering emissions through adoption of renewable energy sources and other mechanisms.
That’s the first thing. But we must invest in climate adaption research and one of the things I’m joining with the Global Health Alliance is to call for a multi-institutional research facility to be set up in rural Australia where we can work on innovation and mechanisms to adapt to climate and particularly in the area of health.
I’m calling on this for rural Australia because rural Australia is being affected right now. Rural Australia is experiencing extreme weather events which are right now having an effect on rural Australians’ health, with respiratory diseases, with heatwave, responses to heatwave and multiple other impacts on health, including mental health as people try to adapt to prolonged periods of drought.”
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Just a reminder that the deadline for Peter Dutton’s representative to table the strategic home affairs review which was completed but not made public in the Senate, is rapidly approaching.
Meanwhile ...
The Gov has just confirmed in the Senate that 1,054 people have enquired about coming off the Cashless Debit Card. That's 1 in 12. It's a direct result of Labor's successful amendment earlier in the year to allow people to get off the Card.
— Linda Burney MP (@LindaBurneyMP) July 31, 2019
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There hasn’t been a lot of praise flowing between these two parties recently, so this is notable:
Can I just say that @KKeneally was straight up 🔥 in the Senate last night. Thanks for taking on the far right. https://t.co/ysLehHnMlW
— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) July 31, 2019
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Jacqui Lambie says she will consider telling the government “where to stick their bills” if the federal integrity commission it comes up with doesn’t have “more teeth than Jaws”.
The government needs her vote for the medevac repeal and wants it for the ensuring integrity legislation.
Updated
Two more challenges in court of disputed returns
There are two more challenges in the court of disputed returns: one by Naomi Hall against Liberal MP Gladys Liu in Chisholm and one by independent Oliver Yates against Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong.
Both challenges are based on Chinese-language signs which instructed voters that the “correct voting method” was to vote 1 for the Liberal candidate, arguing that these signs were “likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote” in breach of the Electoral Act.
The first petition notes that more than 20% of voters in Chisholm speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home and are likely to be able to read Chinese; and in Kooyong the figure is about 12%.
Hall’s case argues that as a consequence some voters were likely to have voted 1 for Liu “notwithstanding that such was not the vote that they otherwise intended to cast” and argues “had it been the elector’s intention to direct his or her first preference to a candidate other than Liu, that intention was not realised”.
Hall wants a declaration that the election in Chisholm is void.
Updated
Maybe certain representatives are too busy watching city dwellers “quaffing” coffees, to tackle this issue from the National Farmers’ Federation:
Fed-up farmers, doctors, surgeons, farm safety experts and rural community members will deliver an ultimatum to the Government in Canberra this week: take action on quad bike safety or more lives will be lost.
Unbelievably, the Government continues to stall on implementing recommendations to improve the safety of the popular but dangerous farm vehicle.
Led by the NFF, today and tomorrow, the group will continue its call for the adoption of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recommendation to mandate the fitting of Operator Protection Devices (OPDs) to all new quad bikes with 24 months.
“Already this year, seven Australians, including children have lost their lives in quad bike incidents,” NFF Workforce Committee Chair, Farm Safe Chair and NSW farmer, Charles Armstrong said.
More than half of the deaths caused by quad bikes are a result of a rollover, often by crushing or asphyxiation, which OPDs prevent.
“Deaths and life-altering injuries from quad bikes continue to cut at the heart of rural and regional communities.
“The Government has the opportunity right now, to stem these incidents, but for reasons which aren’t clear to us, has failed to act.”
Seems the “unfunded empathy” comment has made it’s way out of the Canberra bubble*
WARNING!!! #UnfundedEmpathy is evidence of @ScottMorrisonMP 's warped prosperity theology. WE ARE IN DANGER! #Auspol pic.twitter.com/H11PQaCGzn
— Fr Rod Bower (@FrBower) July 30, 2019
*TM
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Mark Dreyfus on the ensuring integrity (some, but not all unions and leaders are terrible, probably) bill:
Putting to one side the many problems with the Liberal party’s preferred model for a commonwealth integrity commission – their title – it is notable that we haven’t heard a peep from the attorney general or any other member of the government about their proposed commonwealth integrity commission since the election.
There have been no sermons from them about ensuring the integrity of this parliament or the government of Australia. They are so allergic to ensuring integrity – that’s the title of this bill – and ensuring integrity in their own ranks that they can’t even bring themselves to talk about an election commitment that they made, which was to bring legislation for a commonwealth integrity commission to this parliament.
Just to go back to the list, published by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, of legislation that’s proposed for introduction to this parliament in 2019. There is nothing about the commonwealth integrity commission. They have listed, however, the overseas welfare recipients integrity program bill as a priority; the social services legislation amendment (payment integrity) bill is also apparently a priority – again, these are very small, focused, targeted integrity measures – but nothing at all about a national integrity commission, which would grapple with integrity at the national level and across government.
When it comes to welfare recipients, you might observe that these phoney tough guys are all about ensuring integrity. When it comes to the union movement, they love to talk about integrity, but if they’re putting their own house in order you’d be left wanting.”
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Federal Liberal party vice president Karina Okotel spoke on the allegations raised in Eryk Bagshaw’s story this morning while on Sky. She says there does need to be proper processes put in place.
.@KarinaOkotel on Liberal sexual assault allegations: It’s not enough that it be just dealt with by an internal process. I would say that’s sweeping it under the carpet.
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) July 30, 2019
MORE: https://t.co/ykweMevBOK #firstedition pic.twitter.com/DeLbsuSJcU
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My eye twitched just writing the words “section 44”.
Updated
Section 44 citizenship challenge filed against Josh Frydenberg
Michael Staindl, a constituent of Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong, has launched a section 44(1) case against the deputy Liberal leader and treasurer in the court of disputed returns. A spokesman for the court told Guardian Australia the petition was filed today, the last day for such applications.
Staindl has confirmed the challenge, explaining that it queries whether Frydenberg has Hungarian citizenship by descent.
Staindl said:
The long and the short of it is: I’ve known Josh for many years. I’ve been trying to get action on climate change and he makes you feel well heard but I think he’s consistently betrayed me, the electorate and the country on climate change. In the last parliament he gave assurances [of action on the issue] that weren’t convincing to me at all. And as our legislator I think he owes us better integrity than that. He should show us he’s entitled to sit. He might well be, but he’d be stupid if he hasn’t renounced citizenship or can’t prove he [holds only Australian citizenship].”
Frydenberg has previously rejected the claim of dual citizenship, arguing: “It is absurd to think that I could involuntarily acquire citizenship of a foreign country from a stateless mother and grandparents – it invokes the North Korean example of conferring citizenship on someone against their will.”
Under Hungarian law, anyone born in the country between 1941 and 1945 is automatically a citizen, in a bid to address the plight of stateless Jews who fled the Holocaust.
Earlier this month a Victorian lawyer, Trevor Poulton – who has written a novel called The Holocaust Denier – said he was considering such a challenge, but it appears not to have materialised.
Staindl said he noted “with great alarm and grief that whenever this issue is raised [Frydenberg] raised the Holocaust denier cannons and fires in every direction”.
“This has nothing to do with denial of the Holocaust; it is simply a matter of whether he is an Australian citizen only.”
Staindl said if Frydenberg shows evidence he is not Hungarian he could drop the case “otherwise, yes, I’ll see it through”.
Updated
The CPAC organisers have responded to Kristina Keneally’s Senate speech, calling for some of the speakers to be banned for hate speech. The headlines, in bold, are theirs:
REMARKABLE ALLEGATIONS
Last night senator Kristina Keneally launched an extraordinary attack in parliament against the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Sydney next week. In a remarkable display of twisted logic, she claimed that conference speakers British political commentator and Muslim, Raheem Kassam, was Islamophobic and that Indigenous conservatives Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price were racist.
VISA BAN
She called on minister Peter Dutton to reject any visa application by Mr Kassam to visit Australia. Raheem Kassam is a Brexiteer and popular commentator and is attending and speaking alongside the head of the UK Brexit party, Nigel Farage. CPAC is proud to bring Raheem Kassam to Australia and rejects senator Keneally’s embarrassing attempt to shut down political opponents. Australia is a country with a long history of free speech, something authoritarian hard left opponents such as senator Keneally seek to change simply because they sometimes do not like what their opponents might say.
GUILT BY ASSOCIATION
Ms Keneally cast aspersions on other speakers and attendees of CPAC including senator Amanda Stoker and Craig Kelly MP, by using the underhanded tactic of “guilt by association”.
The implication of her attack is that speaking at the same event as those she basely accuses of racism is an endorsement of such views. Ms Keneally went so far as to describe the CPAC event as a “talkfest of hate”, a ludicrous accusation that merely makes use of the kind of language that is used to shut down healthy debate – a fundamental component of a liberal democracy and a free society. She also describes the speaker list as a “who’s who of right-wing extremism”, a claim that is objectively false.
CPAC organisers, the nonprofit LibertyWorks and the American Conservative Union, view these accusations as a clear indication that CPAC Australia conference is viewed by some as a threat to Ms Keneally’s handlers in the Labor party.”
*end statement*
Updated
Jason Clare was also talking about this on Sky this morning. But here is Labor’s official response to the Newstart figures which came out today, from Brendan O’Connor’s office:
The government’s attack on job seekers is a blatant attempt to distract from the division within the government over raising the rate of Newstart.
Everyone other than this government knows the current labour market system must work better, connecting unemployed Australians with decent, stable jobs.
Publicly shaming people struggling day by day is not helping them get in to work.
Labour market programs should be geared to making people more work-ready, help them get the skills they need, and help them to get a secure, decent job.
The government is not getting people into work, failing to even respond to the Jobactive Senate inquiry, which reported in February this year.
Labor believes in mutual obligation arrangements for jobseekers, but that means the government has an obligation to ensure that the job active service is value for money.
Rather than simply attacking people struggling to get work in order to distract from their own internal division, the government should help people to get decent, secure work.”
Updated
Michaelia Cash’s office just put out the transcript of an interview she had with 2GB this morning, about Newstart and Jobactive and how the jobs are out there. After a few minutes of just how many jobs are out there, in places like Kalgoorlie and Townsville, there was this exchange with a caller:
Barbara: I’m good. Michaelia, I’ve just turned 65. When you turn 65, you get no help whatsoever from any provider. I look for a job every single day, have done for the last three years. I get no response from any employer from my applications, and I try my hardest to get a job. You want us to work till we’re 70 but I cannot get a job. Even those over 50 I speak to cannot get a job.
Cash: Barbara, absolutely we need to – if you want to work, we, as a government, need to ensure that we can find a job for you. What I will do is, offline we’ll take your details and we’ll get someone to contact you and have a chat.”
I’m sure Barbara and those she knows can just move though, right?
Updated
Thank you to the readers for pointing out that Mitch Fifield is off to the UN, not the US (although he will be based in New York). Post amended.
Mark Dreyfus is standing up in the House talking on the government’s ensuring integrity bill (short title: unions are terrible, probably) and using it as an opportunity to talk about Angus Taylor and the need for a federal Icac.
Dreyfus’s main point is that the government wants integrity for unions but not when it comes to themself.
“They are so allergic to ensuring integrity in their own ranks, they can’t even bring themselves to talk about an election commitment that they made, which was to bring a national integrity commission [to the parliament],” he said.
Kevin Andrews, who is sitting in the Speaker’s chair, is not having a good time, insisting Dreyfus stick to what is relevant to the legislation.
Updated
The crossbench has put forward its federal anti-corruption agency demands. Paul Karp was at the press conference and will bring you something on that very soon. In the meantime, here is what the crossbench members and the Australia Institute have to say:
Integrity and accountability are critical features of a healthy democracy. Without a federal integrity commission with teeth, public trust and confidence in our federal parliament will continue eroding,” said David Harper AM, former Victorian supreme court judge and member of the Australia Institute national integrity committee.
Centre Alliance crossbench MP Rebekha Sharkie said independents and minor party members wanted the 46th parliament to establish a transparent, publicly accessible and properly resourced agency that could do the job the Australian people expected it to do.
“This is a once in a generation opportunity so let’s do it once and let’s do it right,” said Sharkie, member for Mayo.
“This is such an important area of public policy but the government is ignoring it,” said senator Rex Patrick, Centre Alliance.
“I will introduce legislation for an Icac with teeth. The latest Crown saga reinforces the need for a real Icac,” said Adam Bandt, Greens member for Melbourne.
“There’s an urgent need for a national integrity commission and not the woefully inadequate model the government has put forward. The community is sick and tired of dodgy behaviour in Canberra. They want to see real action to tackle corruption – not just a pretence or half-baked measures,” said Andrew Wilkie, independent member for Clark.
“Australians have an expectation that the parliament and public service meet the highest standards of integrity. We urgently need an effective, national anti-corruption body that is independent, well-resourced and with broad jurisdiction. It’s time for transparency and accountability,” said Zali Steggall, independent member for Warringah.
“Australians’ trust in parliament is very low. I will work with my crossbench colleagues in the House and Senate for the establishment of a fully resourced commission that has independent authority to investigate, to hold public hearings, to deal effectively with political and public sector misconduct and corruption and to publish its findings. This is a clear way forward to restore trust in our Parliament,”said Helen Haines, independent member for Indi.
“The parliament is less than four weeks old and already we have seen four cases that would have been referred to a federal Icac, and according to the government there’s nothing to see here? It’s disgraceful. We need to get the dirty money out of politics and a federal Icac with teeth is the way to do it,” said senator Jacqui Lambie, independent senator for Tasmania.
The Australia Institute national integrity committee of retired judges has put forward a design blueprint and implementation plan for any national integrity commission.
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Just checking the receipts.
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'I got a massage and played ping pong,' says Raheem Kassam of Kristina Keneally's speech.
One of the people mentioned in Kristina Keneally’s speech to the Senate last night has responded:
Australian senator @KKeneally wants me to freak out publicly over her lies about me in her Senate.
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) July 30, 2019
I got a massage and played ping pong instead.
I'll see her in court if she repeats her defamation outside the chamber, where she currently hides behind parliamentary privilege.
Updated
Michaelia Cash says she is just delivering “factual information” to the Australian people.
Updated
Michaelia Cash has defended the timing of her “I’m not saying they are dole bludgers, but here are the numbers of people bludging on the dole” when talking to Sunrise this morning:
I am from the side of politics, people are allowed to have an opinion. The prime minister has made it very clear we make no excuses as a government for getting people off welfare and into work.
That is our commitment to the Australian people. We are a job-creating government; we are elected to create more jobs which we will do. And our focus is ensuring people are safe.
No one has said it would be easy to live on Newstart. The focus of this government is getting you off welfare and into work so that you have a job. The best form ... David, you know this, all of the work you do with small businesses, you know the best form of welfare is a job.
This government unashamedly, we will focus to get out of the welfare system and into sustainable employment.”
Updated
Brett Mason from SBS was kind enough to play me the audio of that doorstop with David Gillespie.
Here is how the conversation went down:
Reporter: Do you have concerns about how the Liberal party handles allegations of harassment and sexual assault?
Gillespie: I don’t know how they handle it. I am in the National party.
Reporter: The Coalition in a sense … Is the Coalition a welcoming place for women?
Gillespie: Of course it is, yeah.
Reporter: How so? Why?
Gillespie: It’s a bit confected. The Coalition is a very welcoming place for women in general. Women politicians in the National party – we just had three women elected – and similarly in the Liberal party, there’s plenty of incredibly talented women who are representing Senate position and House of Reps. It is all a bit of a beat-up, I think.
Reporter: Well, what do you say to the women who have raised those allegations?
Gillespie walked off.
Updated
“A bit of a beat-up,” says Coalition male MP about whether the Coalition is a welcoming place for women on the day two female Coalition staffers talk about their treatment within the party.
Is the coalition a welcoming place for women? "Of course it is" replies @DaveGillespieMP How so, why? "It's a bit confected. The coalition is a very welcoming place for women in general. It's a bit of a beat up, I think." #auspol @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/xu3fA3lWQD
— Brett Mason (@BrettMasonNews) July 30, 2019
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The bells are ringing – which means parliament is about to start.
I am already on my fourth coffee, so this is going to be *fun*.
*not at all fun
Updated
We are also talking about abuses of metadata access today because, butter me up and call me milk arrowroot, it turns out that everything people said would happen has happened and the powers aren’t being used as they are meant to be.
Paul Karp has done quite a bit of reporting on this lately. The Oz has picked it up today as well.
Updated
Bill Shorten is also continuing to lead Labor’s attack on robodebt.
Following a litany of high profile bungles, Stuart Robert was forced to apologise to a mourning mother whose deceased son was the subject of robodebt hounding even after his death.
When the minister was asked how many robodebt notices had turned out to be wrong, he responded: “Of the 800,000 income compliance reviews since 1 July 2016 that have been finalised, 80% have resulted in a debt being collected.”
He would not say how many of that 80% had erroneous debt claims reduced. But that still leaves 20% – or 160,000 debts – that the minister has confirmed the government got wrong.
Mr Robert does appear to have seen the error of his ways when grilled about his false claim on the 7.30 Report that robodebts were not being claimed that were older than seven years.
He changed position, stating “as at today” robodebt hounding of historical debts before the 2013-14 financial year would not occur.
The question remains: what happens to the people like 82-year-old Canberra woman Wilma Spence who have already been hit with notices for alleged debts big and small dating back to the 1990s?
The robodebt farce needs to be addressed, not denied. We support legitimate debt recovery but not for inaccurate debts and not without human oversight.
Time’s up for this harsh and inaccurate system. The government needs to go back to the drawing board.”
Labor only explicitly said robodebt needed to be scrapped after the election.
Updated
The push for a proper federal integrity commission from the crossbench is getting serious. The group are speaking today, to discuss what they believe is necessary to bring trust back into the federal political system.
From their alert:
Crossbench MPs have joined with eminent retired judges and corruption fighters to call for the government to legislate for a national integrity commission – but one that has real teeth.
Who:
The Hon David Harper AM, former Victorian supreme court judge
Rebekha Sharkie, member for Mayo
Andrew Wilkie, member for Clark
Adam Bandt, member for Melbourne
Helen Haines, member for Indi
Zali Steggall OAM, member for Warringah
Jacqui Lambie, senator for Tasmania
That’ll be held at 10.45 this morning.
Updated
'The Liberal party has a cultural issue and it needs to address it' – Kathryn Greiner
Michaelia Cash, fresh from releasing stats on Newstart recipients who hadn’t met their mutual obligations, just randomly and at a completely coincidental time to when the push is on to raise the payment, was asked about assault claims raised by Liberal staffers in Eyrk Bagshaw’s story. She said:
These are serious allegations and I would say to the parties concerned that they should be referred to the appropriate authorities.
Asked if the Liberal party had a problem with women, she had this to say:
No, and our record in particular in regards to participation and employment shows that.
Ahhhh, still getting in the talking point. What a trooper.
In regards to the appropriate authorities comment, Kathryn Greiner, a key and influential member of the Liberal party, had this to say on RN:
What did we get out of the royal commission? It starts at the top. That is what I am on about. If we want to bring transformative, conclusive change into the Liberal party, which we clearly need to do, then it starts with the prime minister. And saying to women, ‘Go to the police,’ is simply another way of shutting people up, so it’s not good enough.
And to my view, the Liberal party has got a cultural issue and it needs to address it.”
Greiner spoke to Bagshaw for a story a little earlier:
Ms Greiner said the Liberal party organisation was less female-friendly than during the 1980s and ‘had not kept pace’ with broader society.
“Young men in particular, with very little experience of the real world, they are on the up, and they will knock over anyone who gets in their way,” Ms Greiner said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.
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Andrew Wilkie had a chat to ABC Breakfast this morning about the need for a federal Icac:
I’m confident more whistleblowers will emerge with more stories, adding to the pressure both on the federal government but also the Victorian government. This gives impetus to the push for a federal anti-corruption agency. Some allegations are not necessarily of criminal behaviour, especially in the case of serving politicians but they go to whether behaviour is occurring which might be quite improper, so it might not be criminal but would be in the remit of an effective anti-corruption body so you will see a renewed push by the crossbench.
The federal government did go to the recent election with a commitment to establish some corruption body but, you know, many of us had concerns that it would be a relatively ineffective organisation.
It’s something with real teeth, not unlike the anti-corruption body in New South Wales which I know has the Icac. There are people who criticise that, but we can remedy the things that are criticised and come up with a really effective federal body.”
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Mitch Fifield also delivered his valedictory. He’s off to the UN as our ambassador. Fifield left with this final message for his colleagues:
If I could, I would leave a few messages as I depart. Firstly, the ordinary norms of human engagement should apply in politics. Too often in our business they’re left at the door. You can’t have as your starting point where you want someone to be or where you think they should be. You’ve got to have as your starting point where they are, respect that and then work back from there. When you do that, you can get good outcomes.
Secondly, there are some commentators whose thesis is that the system of politics in Australia is broken, that it’s not possible to achieve reform any more and that the press, the 24/7 media cycle, hung chambers and new quasipolitical groups make it all too hard. I could not disagree more. How challenges manifest themselves certainly changes, but the essence of politics is the same.
Our core business is advocacy. Our core business is persuasion: to stake out some territory on an issue, to make a case, to argue it and to carry people along with you. The extent to which political practitioners fail to achieve their objectives is a failure of persuasion and of advocacy. So I encourage all my colleagues to reject the thesis that the system is broken and to embrace core business.”
Which is a good message. If we ignore Fifield’s role in helping to bring down two prime ministers, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, which only helped to cement the thesis that the system is broken.
But hey, he also sang Ita.
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Amanda Stoker thanked Kristina Keneally for her contribution.
And Keneally finished her Senate speech with this:
I would like to know if senator Stoker is comfortable sharing the stage with these people. If senator Stoker cancelled her CPAC appearance it would not be the first time she has withdrawn from such a commitment. In May, during the federal election, the senator was billed to join the Sunshine Coast Safe Communities group. Much like CPAC, it is innocent by name but not by nature. They describe Muslims as ‘incompatible people’ and Islam as ‘the destroyer of multiculturalism’. The senator did cancel because she had the flu.
I wouldn’t fault her for cancelling her appearance at CPAC. I would say that it would take a lot more than the flu to keep the member for Hughes off the stage.
This is a test for the prime minister, Scott Morrison. Is he comfortable with his members of parliament sharing the stage with people like this? Will the prime minister direct them not to attend? Will he step in and show leadership?
In John Howard’s time the Liberal party was a broad church but, boy, are the sands shifting now. This is not political activism; this is the normalisation of extreme right wing in Australia.
And why is Nick Cater from the Menzies Institute allowing a once-reputable institution to be behind this ugly intolerance? Australians will be uncomfortable with this.
The question is: who in the Liberal party will stand up? Will it be the prime minister? Will it be the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg? Will it be the attorney general, Christian Porter? Senator Payne and senator Birmingham: are they comfortable with this type of conference and their colleagues standing up?
I can’t speak for Robert Menzies but I have to think that the founder of the Liberal party would be turning in his grave at what this party and the institute in his name have become.”
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In her speech to the Senate, Keneally continued:
The speakers at CPAC and their views don’t stop there. US congressman Mark Meadows is taking the stage. He has advocated conspiracy theories about US President Barack Obama being born in Kenya and in 2012 he vowed to send the then president home to Kenya. Those were his words – “I will send the President home to Kenya.”
The congressman opposes any restrictions on gun purchases and opposes gun registries that would list detailed information about firearm ownership. Late last year Mr Meadows, the US congressman, was fined $40,000 for failing to deal with sexual harassment allegations in his office. He was also recently accused of using an African American public servant as a racist prop. Yes, he’s slated for speaking at Cpac.
US congressman Matt Gaetz is also welcome at Cpac. He is best known for inviting Holocaust denier Charles C Johnson to the 2018 state of the union address in the United States. The person Gaetz invited, Johnson, was permanently banned from Twitter in 2015 after asking for help “taking out” a Black Lives Matter activist. In 2017 he denied that over 6 million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust.
Congressman Gaetz apologised later for providing the ticket to Mr Johnson. To quote the US lawmaker, he said, “Mr Johnson showed up at my door.” Apparently you just have to show up at the congressman’s door and you get to go to the state of the union address. At the same time, Congressman Gaetz insisted that Johnson was not a Holocaust denier – “He’s not a white supremacist.” How does he know, if he just showed up at his door? For heaven’s sake. These are the people.
Congressman Gaetz is also currently under investigation by the House ethics committee in the US for intimidating a witness. He’s a lifetime member of the NRA – a commonality for these speakers – and says that the open carrying of weapons is a right granted not by government but by God. These are the people attending this event and speaking at it.
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Kristina Keneally also called in parliament for Peter Dutton to step in and ban one of the speaker’s from entering the country, for hate speech:
Let’s start with Raheem Kassam, one of the headline speakers at Cpac. Mr Kassam is described as “a British political activist” according to Cpac’s website.
However, the organisers of the event chose to omit the details of what Mr Kassam thinks being an activist is. Mr Kassam has an extensive history of vilifying people on the grounds of their race, religion, sexuality and gender. He has described the Qur’an, the holy book of the Muslim faith, as “fundamentally evil”.
Mr Kassam has campaigned for “limited migration” against what he describes as “large-scale Muslim immigration”. He has regularly attacked the LGBTI community with homophobic and transphobic comments on social media.
And, there’s this one: after the Scottish National party leader Nicola Sturgeon suffered a miscarriage, Mr Kassam tweeted: Can someone just, like … tape Nicola Sturgeon’s mouth shut? And her legs, so she can’t reproduce.
The question is simple: why is the home affairs minister allowing this individual into the country? Section 501 of the Migration Act exists so that the minister has the power to refuse the visa of an individual of such a character. The minister can refuse a visa if there is a significant risk that an individual would “vilify a segment of the Australian community”, “incite discord” or “represent danger” to them during their time in Australia.
We should not allow a career bigot – a person who spreads hate speech about Muslims, about women and about gay and lesbian people –to enter our country with the express intent of undermining equity and equality.
If the home affairs minister allows Raheem Kassam into the country, he is encouraging a cavalcade of intolerance to continue at Cpac’s talkfest of hate.
Another speaker taking to the stage is Matt Schlapp. He is chair of the American Conservative Union, the people behind the event. He is a self-described “lover” of the National Rifle Association.
He has defended the chief of the NRA for saying, “People who want gun control hate freedom.” Mr Schlapp said that, having a Republican politician of colour in the role of chairman of the Republican national convention in the United States was “the wrong thing to do”.
Regrettably, that is not Mr Schlapp’s only instance of racist dog whistling. This is yet another speaker those opposite are willing to share a stage with.
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Reading through the Hansard last night, and it seems Kristina Keneally had a bit to say about the Cpac conference coming to Australia next month. It’s like conservative Christmas, where people who have been in power for a really, really long time, blame all of society’s problems on people who have not been in power. Sort of how I imagine the Monkeypod lunches went down.
Keneally delivered this speech while Amanda Stoker was in the president’s chair, so you know, it certainly was direct.
I have always welcomed political debate; I have chosen a career where I get to engage with people who hold different views to me, such as Senator McGrath.
However, there is a difference between engaging in political debate and spewing vitriolic bile.
There is a difference between meeting up at a political conference and associating with racists.
And there is a difference between listening to political leaders and influencers and giving a platform to hate speech.
Whilst Cpac may have an innocent name, it definitely is not innocent by nature.
I’d like to highlight that both the member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, and our senator from this place Amanda Stoker, the Liberal senator, are scheduled to be speaking at this event.
Now I also note Warren Mundine – who the prime minister handpicked to be the Liberal candidate in Gilmore – is attending and speaking, along with the Liberal candidate Jacinta Price.
That is their prerogative if they would like to do that but I would like to bring to the Senate’s attention the company these Liberal members of parliament will be keeping, associating with, and sharing a stage with next week.
The speakers list is a who’s who of rightwing extremism, with numerous guests having long records of attacks on women, on gay and lesbian people, on Islam, as well as having links to antisemitism.
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The new Labor senator Tim Ayres used his first speech in parliament to respond to Scott Morrison’s latest invocation of the phrase “unfunded empathy” (he’s used it a few times in the past, from at least 2015 onwards).
I’m proud to raise that. Yesterday the prime minister described raising Newstart as unfunded empathy. The grotesque, cowardly and dishonest comment. It’s an insult to the 1 million Australians trapped in poverty and unemployment by the current rate.
This raises unfunded only because his government refuses to fund it, presumably to defend his own surplus. It reveals a deeper, darker malice, a cruel pea-part beats inside the chest of this mean-spirited government.
Labor has only recently openly and publicly called for Newstart to be raised, having hesitated before the election and committing to only reviewing it.
That left the Coalition with plenty of room to move – it didn’t even commit to reviewing it, because, well, it didn’t have to. Labor’s change of heart has now led to a Senate inquiry being set up to review the payment, to investigate by how much it should increase, and the cost to the budget.
At the moment, the only side in the parliament not supportive of raising Newstart, or even reviewing it, is the Coalition. There are some outliers, but it is government policy to not touch it. Because it’s too expensive. And it’s not meant to be a substitute for a job. But no one says it is. And living on $350 a week is not exactly living large. But it might make the difference between eating or not. Or being able to get a bus ticket to get to that job interview or not. If anyone thinks that $350 a week is overly generous, well, I suggest you try it.
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Good morning
We are at the halfway point for the sitting – it is all downhill from here.
Thank Rihanna.
Once again, it is not legislation we are talking about. Eryk Bagshaw from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age published this story overnight, which once again has focused attention on the culture within the Liberal party.
There are, by my count, three reviews under way within the Liberal party at a state and federal level on how to bring more women into the party. There was, after the leadership spill, also a massive push, led by Kelly O’Dwyer, to install a formal complaints process within the federal party.
Since then, the party has once again closed ranks, repeatedly assuring those who ask that processes are in place and everything is fine. But this story is bound to put those uncomfortable questions back into the spotlight.
Speaking of uncomfortable questions, the Crossbench Five are getting louder in their calls for a federal Icac, after both Labor and the Coalition voted against a parliamentary inquiry into the Crown allegations and possible involvement of former and current parliamentarians. The government referred the allegations to the law enforcement integrity commission, which it, and Labor used as the reason it was rejecting a parliamentary inquiry push. But the commission has no powers to investigate parliamentarians, which is why the crossbench are once again pushing for a federal integrity commission to deal with these issues.
Before the election Christian Porter promised to install a commission. But it was seen by critics as being too limited, given that anyone before the commission would have their cases heard behind closed doors, with no one able to report on any investigation until any future court cases had concluded – and only then, when someone had been found guilty. Given how much the NSW Icac has uncovered from public hearings, that, understandably, had people upset. We haven’t seen much move on that since the election, and the crossbench appear to have lost patience.
“Missed it by that much” Adam Bandt & his colleagues, Helen Haines, Zali Steggall, Rebekha Sharkie and Andrew Wilkie for a Joint Standing Committee on Crown Casino-they were defeated 127 to 5 when the government and opposition voted together @AmyRemeikis @murpharoo @GuardianAus pic.twitter.com/cWWIXjENrc
— Mikearoo (@mpbowers) July 30, 2019
Oh, and the issue of Newstart just won’t go away, so suddenly we see the release of figures on the number of people who have missed their “mutual obligations” (jobseeker meetings) from the government.
DEIDRE CHAMBERS.
Michaelia Cash had this to say:
The Coalition takes the mutual obligation of welfare recipients very seriously.
When participants have their payments suspended up to 52 times in less than a year, they are not living up to what the taxpayer expects who are giving their hard-earned money to the government.
I mean, she didn’t say the words “dole bludger” but she hopes you get the gist. Anyone who has had to deal with Jobactive services knows that these aren’t always the most positive of experiences. Plus, we have seen increasing numbers of people who had been on disability payments moved to Newstart – while still struggling with the health issues which kept them away from work in the first place – with all the obligations that come with it. But hey, what’s a chronic health problem when you have a box to tick for the government?
We’ll bring you all of that, and more. You’ve got Mike Bowers, Katharine Murphy, Paul Karp and the rest of the Guardian brains’ trust – and I am at least 25% capacity, so that’s exciting.
Ready?
Let’s get into it.
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