Night-time politics
- As we leave parliament, the school funding debate continues in the Senate. The government would appear to still have the numbers, though no bold predictions until we see a vote overnight. As I said before, it has to go back to the House, so that will probably happen in the morning. The dual negotiations with the crossbench and the Greens yielded more money and a body to oversee funding. The first iteration of the funding body was not independent enough according to the Greens because it would only take referrals from the minister rather than doing its own digging.
- As a result, Sarah Hanson-Young managed to get an amendment to make the funding body truly independent and not simply subject to the minister’s direction, with annual reports on funding allocations by states and religious authorities that manage schools. This will identify when schools are being underfunded or overfunded, or not distributed on a needs basis. It will also measure the impact of increased funding on educational outcomes.
- Pauline Hanson has moved to clarify her comments on children with autism, even though she did not step back from them or apologise. She says she was saying all children have the right to education but there were not enough resources for children with autism and sometimes that was better down in “special classes”. There has been a lot of reaction to her comments, including from Emma Husar whose son Mitch has autism.
- The Speaker and the president of the parliament decided to release the Lionel Murphy documents from the aborted commission of inquiry. The documents will be available from 24 July.
- Question time was dominated from the Labor side by attacking the school funding policy and from the Coalition side by attacking Labor’s relationship with the CFMEU.
- The three Turnbull ministers Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar have revealed they will offer abject apologies to the Victorian supreme court after their comments on the judiciary related to terrorist offences. BuzzFeed also dug up comments from Tudge and Sukkar on Facebook, which inspired a range of comments regarding the judiciary. The ministers could face contempt of court charges.
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After Labor signalled it would not back the government’s citizenship bill, which delays citizenship applications to four years for permanent residents and toughens the English test, the Nick Xenophon Team has also raised concerns. With the Greens ruling it out all together, it makes it tricky for Peter Dutton to get the bill through the Senate.
That’s it for #politicslive for six weeks now until parliament returns on 8 August, barring catastrophes. Thanks for your company and thanks to my brains trust, Paul Karp, Gareth Hutchens and Katharine Murphy. Mike Bowers has gone above and beyond this week and he will sleep fitfully. And thanks to all the regular contributors, with a special call out to the Matt Hatter, who keeps us in full stock of wit and wisdom.
This is the moment that Christopher Pyne told the House it would have to wait for the Senate to deal with the school funding bill.
Good night.
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Stagnant wages? Politicians, judges, agency heads get a 2% pay rise
AAP reports: Federal politicians, judges and agency heads will get a two per cent bump in pay from next week.
The remuneration tribunal on Thursday decided to grant the increase to public officer holders starting on July 1.
It follows a 2% pay rise in January last year and 2.4% per cent boost in 2013.
The tribunal considers it important that remuneration for offices in its jurisdiction be maintained at appropriate levels over the longer term to attract and retain people of the calibre required for these important high level offices,” it said in a statement.
The tribunal received a “notable increase” in submissions asking for more money for offices and individual office holders based, in part, on pay in the private sector.
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A very shouty & pointy #QT & just announced a Friday sitting @gabriellechan @GuardianAus #politicslive pic.twitter.com/nHauldhueC
— Mikearoo (@mpbowers) June 22, 2017
The Brandis book list is always worth a look in the parliamentary expenses. It is much shorter for this reporting period: July to December 2016.
- Commonwealth Law Reports (Volume 256) $590.24
- Making Headlines by Chris Mitchell $26.99
- Albanese: Telling It Straight $28.63
- The Turnbull’s Gamble: Snatching Victory From the Jaws of Defeat $24.54
- Planet Jackson: Power, Greed and Unions $26.99
- Who’s Who in Australia 2017 $222.73.
Parliamentary expenses released
It’s Thursday afternoon at the end of the sitting period so it must be time for ... drum roll ... parliamentary expenses!
As we trawl through it, let me know if you spot any howlers.
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Pauline Hanson also said under the Gonski 2.0 package, funding for children with disabilities would double, though she said it was not a feature of her negotiations.
She said the autism education organisation Giant Steps had thanked her for raising it on the political agenda.
Giant Steps is saying thank you, we do need this. It was never on the agenda, it was never discussed with the Coalition or Senator Birmingham with regards of this in the package. They understood and realised the needs of needing to deal with it.
Hanson has another go at explaining her position.
Teachers are saying it themselves. These children need special care and attention. They are not getting it in a normal classroom. If they need special care and attention, then give it to them. You can actually have a special classroom to teach them in class hours. The rest of the time they are allowed to mix of the other kids in the playgrounds and sporting events. Whatever. You must consider their educational needs to help these children progress through.
Hanson says there is a problem in society – parents know it, as do teachers.
She says problems cannot be sorted because people on the left don’t approve of raising these questions.
We are not going to find the answers that we need .... Every child has the right to move forward with their lives. Every child has the right to an education ...
I am not apologising.
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Hanson will not apologise for her comments on autism
Pauline Hanson says she will not step back from her comments or apologise.
Since my comments, my office has been inundated with not only teachers, but also, I have a letter here that we resent to me from a young man who is autistic. He goes on to say: Hi Pauline Hanson, I am 15 and autistic. I understand what you meant. I did not fit in to mainstream schools, they hated me. That was as much as I hated being there. They sat me behind a bookshelf in my classroom, because they did not know what to do with me and my disability. The banned me from everything ... from camps and excursions even playgrounds. I was so depressed I just wanted to die. I had special teachers at time, but they do not stop the others from bullying you or fitting in. I finished school and my mum tried to enrol me into high school. Even the assistant principal did want me to be enrolled there. I did not want to go there any more. Who wants to go to a school knowing people don’t even want you before knowing you. Then my mum found a special Catholic school that takes kids with problems and they included me. I made friends, they let me go on excursions and a even like schoolwork now. Mainstream school segregated kids like me, but I know what you are talking about and there are lots of kids like me that do not fit in four mainstream schools.
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Hanson claims she was misrepresented on autism comments
Pauline Hanson is answering her critics on children with autism.
I want to go back to refer to my speech, actually what I said in context. I said: “I hear so many times from parents and teachers whose time is taken up with children, whether they have disability or whether they are autistic, who are taking up the teacher’s time in the classroom. These kids have a right to an education, by all means.
There is a number of them, these children who have a disability should be in a special classroom and be given the special attention...
For that Greens to come out and say I do not believe they should be in our classrooms is a complete lie. It is misrepresentation and it is a political point scoring.
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Given we are looking down the barrel of another late-night sitting, I wanted to bring to you a snippet of a longer essay by my colleague Katharine Murphy on political life in the Meanjin. It asks some hard questions on the political culture and life. I often do my own snap surveys when talking to “normal people”, that is outside politics, about the issues. Invariably it descends into complaints about the lack of results and various character readings for the main players. But when I ask them if they would submit their lives to such scrutiny, they invariably say no way. That is a problem. Anyway, here is Katharine.
Australian politics has a secret it can’t talk about. The culture is unhealthy. The demands of parliamentary life are unrelenting. Thinking participants inside the system are starting to feel, after ten years of leadership instability, bitter partisanship and take-no-prisoners hyperactivity, that politics has become not only unsustainable as a vocation, but hostile territory for human beings.
While good people continue to put their heads down and do their best to make a positive contribution to democracy, the environment parliamentarians work in is a pressure cooker, the tone of national affairs is reflexively hostile, trolling and takedowns set the tone of the day, and protagonists are being rewarded for their efficiency at treachery rather than the substance of their contributions.
Earlier this year I wrote a weekend column positing this hostile-for-humans thesis for Guardian Australia, and I was intrigued by the response. Politicians from across the spectrum expressed relief that someone was talking about it. One MP sent me a text shortly after the piece was published that summarised the tenor of the feedback. ‘I liked your questioning about politics as hospitable to humans. I guess we have to continue to act as though it is.’
The column was triggered by a conversation I had with a senior member of the government over the summer break. During this conversation, this person observed his vocation was becoming unsustainable for normal people. By normal people, he meant balanced people. If balanced people could no longer cop the life, the profession would shrink back to representation by a very narrow type of personality—people who live for the brawls and the knockouts, and can’t function without the constant affirmation of being a public figure. We would end up with representation by ideologues, adrenalin junkies and preening show ponies, posturing for a media chorus as unhinged as the political class.
This isn’t just some abstract first-world problem. Politics is fundamentally a people business, and we need good people, talented people, people of ideas and values and commitment to keep volunteering for public life. The health of our democracy depends on it. And right now good people are burning out and ending their political careers early, not because they lack commitment but because the rigours and demands have increased exponentially, particularly over the past decade.
From my vantage point in the system, but also outside it, I can feel the strain in it, which is stretched the tightest it has been in my 20 years of ringside observation. So we need to find voices prepared to tell the truth about contemporary politics. I decided that if most people inside the system couldn’t speak candidly, then I would do what big corporations do when they fear they are losing good people: I’d conduct some exit interviews, and share the impressions.
If good people can’t sustain themselves in public life because it is just too punishing and zero sum—if the opportunity cost of the life of public service is just too high, if a life in politics just doesn’t feel worth the personal sacrifices that are made—then we have a serious problem. The consequences of that really are too dire to contemplate.
If you can, have a read of the whole thing because the issues raised have material effects on the political outcome.
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Back to Gonski 2.0. Because the Senate is amending the school funding bill, which changes the money amounts (appropriations), the Senate needs to deal with the bill, then it has to go back to the House for approval and then back to the Senate.
This means in all likelihood the House, at the very least, will sit tomorrow. Unless the Senate does not deal with the bill tonight, in which case both chambers will be sitting tomorrow.
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Bowen to Turnbull: Under this prime minister, and this Liberal government, millionaires get a tax cut in just nine days’ time. But, on the exact same day, ordinary workers will get a pay cut. Prime minister, how exactly is that fair?
Turnbull:
Labor’s trying to run a most unconvincing politics-of-envy campaign. They’re not persuading anyone that they’re other than frauds on the economy and on jobs.
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#senateqt ends on a collegiate note, with @SenatorWong wishing A-G Brandis a happy birthday.
— Rachel Baxendale (@rachelbaxendale) June 22, 2017
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Shorten to Turnbull: Isn’t it now clear that, because of this government’s policies when the parliament adjourns, millionaires will win, parents with children in a King’s School will win but pensioners will lose, people with rising electricity prices will lose, weekend workers will lose, children of public and Catholic schools will lose? Why does this prime minister only ever look after the big end of town and punish everybody else?
Turnbull says Shorten poses as the champion of the workers while trading away workers’ penalty rates.
How much do you have to threaten people with to actually get slammed by the member for Watson or the leader of the opposition? I mean, let’s be quite clear. What John Setka threatened to do was take thugs from his union and follow hard-working public servants around, follow them home, threaten them with violence, threaten them in front of their children, threaten them at their clubs and you would think that a Labor party that cared about the rule of law, that cared about Australian values, would call for him to be sacked? What have they done? Nothing.
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Another Dixer to the justice minister, Michael Keenan, about the CFMEU, including the referral of comments by union official John Setka to the police.
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Warren Snowden to Turnbull: Can the prime minister confirm his hit list of 300 schools which he claims is overfunded is still secret, and that this list includes some of the most disadvantaged in the country, including 150 public schools in Lingiari, and he’s keeping government data on his cuts to schools hidden, including from members of his own government? Prime minister, how do you expect senators and members to vote on your cuts to schools when you’re refusing to be upfront about their full impact on the future of our children?
Turnbull:
I say to the honourable member, he knows as well as I do, as well as every member of this House does, that schools in his electorate are going to be massively better off as a result of this. There is more funding right across the nation and it’s needs-based, and he has many schools in his electorate which have very high needs. They’re getting additional funding under my government, under this program.
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Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce reaches peak Barnaby #qt @GuardianAus @gabriellechan @murpharoo #politicslive pic.twitter.com/XxQHOg4nRR
— Mikearoo (@mpbowers) June 22, 2017
Plibersek to Turnbull: Can the prime minister today guarantee that no parent will have to pay more to send their child to a Catholic school because of the prime minister’s schools policy?
Again, Turnbull says the funding to the Catholic system is increasing, how they allocate the money is up to them.
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There was a Dixer to Peter Dutton, which was a chance to talk about the CFMEU official John Setka and link him to Bill Shorten. He also went into a strange story about Setka staying in The Lodge with a future PM Shorten which involves broken arms.
Plibersek to Turnbull: The executive director of Catholic Education Melbourne, Mr Steven Elder, has said the prime minister continues to show “disrespect for a sector that educates 1 in 4 students in this country”. Why is the prime minister – and every member of his government – persisting with a Catholic schools policy that the Catholic education community do not want? And why is the prime minister making it harder for parents to choose to send their children to Catholic schools following a policy which will increase the fees?
Turnbull says every contention is false. He says every dollar goes to the Catholic system in a block form, the funding will increase and how the Catholic allocate their funding is a matter for them.
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George?
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Cathy McGowan to Julie Bishop, foreign affairs minister: Papua New Guinea will hold its national election from June 24 to July 8. Colleagues, you may be interested to know that there are 3,324 candidates, of whom 165 are women, and, since independence in 1975, only seven women have been elected to this parliament. There are 45 political parties and I’m sure everyone would like to know that there are 2,620, or 79% of the candidates, are independent. So my question to the minister is this: is the Australian government supporting an increase in the number of women candidates running for election? What is being done to ensure fair and free elections for the people of Papua New Guinea?
Bishop says the Australian government is supporting a range of initiatives, increasing voter awareness, but also increasing the opportunities for women to take part.
She says the government has trained 127 potential female candidates and 165 women are contesting this election.
It has also provided support through the Pacific leadership and governance precinct, which is providing training and opportunities for enhancing leadership among the PNG public service, particularly women. And it will support the PNG government through the electoral process and a delegation of parliamentarians from the Australian parliament will be deployed to PNG to observe the elections.
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Plibersek to Turnbull: Data from the New South Wales government confirms that Sarah Redfern Public School in Minto in south-west Sydney will lose $960,000 over the next two years alone. Today, I spoke to the principal of Sarah Redfern High, who says these cuts will mean up to eight fewer teaching positions, as well as reduced support for at-risk students, Indigenous students, English as a second language, and gifted and talented students. How is it fair that this high school loses money, while the elite Kings School gets a $19m increase?
Josh Frydenberg takes the question and repeats all the school funding figures and increases.
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Plibersek to Turnbull: Yesterday, the prime minister couldn’t answer when asked to confirm that Fregon Anangu School will lose over $100,000 next year compared to actual funding it received in 2015. The prime minister later added to his answer but refused to compare funding to 2015. So I ask – what is the difference between the actual funding that Fregon Anangu School received in 2015 and what they’ll get next year under this prime minister? They’re going to get $100,000 less, aren’t they?
Turnbull says the commonwealth allocation to that school has been consistent and growing.
There has not been, I’m advised, any reduction in the amount of funding per student allocated by the commonwealth in respect of the school at Fregon. The honourable member knows that the My School site shows the amount of commonwealth funding that a state decides to allocate to a particular school. Not the amount of money the commonwealth determines should be given to the school or given to the state in respect of that school.
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In the lower house: Shorten to Turnbull: Can the prime minister confirm that, because of his Liberal government when this parliament adjourns, if you are a pensioner, a weekend worker, a household with rising electricity costs or a parent of a child at a public or a Catholic school, you lose? And if you are a millionaire or a parent of a child at the elite Kings College, you win? Prime minister, how on earth is this fair?
Turnbull talks about the schools policy, Medicare and his gas reservation policy. Turnbull says Bowen describes the gas reservation as sovereign risk sotto voce, to which the PM says:
It removes an anomaly, it protects consumers, it protects businesses, and what does the member for McMahon say? ‘Oh, it’s a sovereign risk. It’s a sovereign risk.’ I tell you what the biggest sovereign risk to Australia is – a Labor government.
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In the senate, Labor asks the education minister, Simon Birmingham, to repudiate Pauline Hanson’s comments on children with autism in mainstream classrooms.
Labor’s Murray Watt: “Yesterday Senator Hanson told the Senate that students living with a disability or diagnosed with autism, and I quote, ‘are taking up the teacher’s time in the classroom’ and ‘should go into a special classroom’.
So far, the minister has been silent.
Why is the minister refusing to repudiate Senator Hanson’s offensive and discriminatory comments?”
Birmingham refuses to repudiate the comments, as Tony Abbott did last night on radio. He talks about funding for children with disabilities in the schools package.
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Condolence motion at the start of question time for former Labor minister Con Sciacca.
Turnbull ministers reportedly to make apology to Victorian court
Breaking news from James Massola and Nino Bucci at Fairfax.
A trio of Turnbull government ministers will make an abject apology to Victoria’s highest court on Friday, a week after they refused to apologise for comments critical of the judiciary.
Fairfax Media has learned that Health Minister Greg Hunt, Human Services Minister Alan Tudge and Assistant Minister to the Treasurer Michael Sukkar have now decided to reverse course and make the special apology.
The hearing on Friday is going ahead at the request of the ministers and is designed to bring the matter to an end.
The three ministers may not, however, be able to attend the hearing because the House of Representatives could have to sit in Canberra on Friday to pass the amended Gonski 2.0 legislation, and the Turnbull government has only a one-seat majority.
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How independent is the independent school body?
Greens Sarah Hanson-Young asks the education minister about the powers of the independent schools resourcing body. She says the independent body, as per the Gonski report, was meant to be able to shine a light into school funding systems and formulas which were not working as they should.
Hanson-Young says the independent body, according to the amendment, is more like an advisory body which can only look at matters when the minister refers them. The body cannot look at things off its own bat.
Which does not seem to be an independent body at all.
But the call goes back to Jacinta Collins so there is no answer from the minister on that yet and we are fast heading into question time.
Family friendly parliament.
Senator Waters’ breastfeeding baby made suspicious noise. Obvious comment: ‘I think the baby just moved a motion’.
— Derryn Hinch (@HumanHeadline) June 22, 2017
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The Labor senator Jacinta Collins has used the committee to go over the Labor arguments. But she has also asked what is the state-by-state impact of the delay to the Catholic and independent system.
The transition fund for 2018 provided under the crossbench deal is $46m. The education minister, Simon Birmingham, breaks down the different amounts for Catholic and independent schools for each states.
Jacqui Lambie asked about the cost of the independent body.
Birmingham says the the independent school funding body will cost $7.2m over four years.
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The school funding bill is currently in the Senate in committee, where the minister answers questions on the detail of the legislation. This is the great thing about the Senate review system. It’s like an ongoing question time on one bill and is usually very helpful at eliciting information on the bill.
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The citizenship bill, which requires a tougher English test, will come to the House this afternoon, according to the program.
Paul Karp has found an example of the test required.
Is a course that teaches skills from the “ground up” suitable for beginners?
Does a course that provides a “hands on” component give practical experience?
This English test govt proposes shd be needed for citizenship requires understanding of idiom like "ground up", "hands-on" #auspol pic.twitter.com/Tg8ZyJHQ8F
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 22, 2017
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Mark Di Stefano of Buzzfeed reports that two of the ministers critical of Victorian judges also posted their remarks on Facebook.
Not only did two government ministers facing possible contempt of court charges make incendiary comments attacking judges in interviews with the Australian newspaper, they also posted the same comments to their Facebook pages, BuzzFeed News has learnt.
The Facebook statuses, which have since been deleted, show that human services minister Alan Tudge and assistant treasurer Michael Sukkar spread their criticisms against the Victorian judges to potentially tens of thousands of Facebook followers.
Screenshots of the Facebook statuses obtained by BuzzFeed News show that Sukkar and Tudge re-posted criticisms of the judiciary on Tuesday last week, the same day they appeared on the front page of the the Australian newspaper.
It led to people flooding the comments section of the Facebook statuses with highly critical remarks directed at the judiciary.
I would be interested to hear from any lawyers as to whether having the comments and the resulting threads makes a material difference to this case, which has yet to be decided. The health minister, Greg Hunt, was also involved in the case.
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Rumours that former Cormann chief of staff Slade Brockman likely to replace Chris Back in Senate for WA #auspol pic.twitter.com/R15dtcxPHN
— Paul Osborne AAP (@osbornep) June 22, 2017
Katharine Murphy reports:
I just want to return to the decision by the Speaker and the Senate president to release the Lionel Murphy documents.
I have linked to Richard Ackland’s story from last year by way of background.
The Murphy case in 1986 was the only time a parliamentary commission of inquiry has been used thus far and in that case it was done by the Hawke government. Apart from the historical interest, the contemporary political interest is that this is the same sort of inquiry that the Greens are proposing for the banks. It essentially forces the executive government into a royal commission, something that usually only the executive government can decide.
In the Murphy inquiry, three judges were appointed to investigate the behaviour of the former Labor minister and high court justice Lionel Murphy, who was convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice, a finding later overturned on appeal. But the commission of inquiry was not completed because Murphy was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he died later in the same year.
This was part of Speaker Tony Smith’s statement as to his and the president’s reasoning for releasing the documents. He noted that neither he nor Stephen Parry saw the documents before making the decision.
It is important to recognise that the records of the commission reflect an incomplete process, insofar as it could not fulfil its ultimate purpose of formulating and reporting to the parliament its conclusions regarding the conduct of Justice Murphy. Of course the privacy or reputation of all people impacted by the documents was a factor that was carefully considered in deciding whether or not to release the records.
However, these concerns had to be weighed against the considerable public interest in having access to information relating to important concerns about the integrity of the high court and, more broadly, about serious issues of public governance and accountability at the time of the commission’s investigations. In seeking to serve this public interest, the president and I took into account the fact that the general and specific nature of the allegations relating to Justice Murphy and others are widely known and, after 30 years, are historical in nature. We also took into account the non-partisan, focused and highly credible nature of the investigative processes employed by the commission, which is reflected in the character of its records.
At the time it was wound up, the commission had provided Justice Murphy with a number of specific allegations to which he had been invited to respond, but the judge’s unfortunate prognosis meant that a response was never to be received.
I now advise the House that the president and I have decided to approve the publication of the class A documents.
So the commission of inquiry is a thing, as the then clerk of the Senate, Rosemary Laing, advised the Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
It would be open to the parliament to establish a commission of inquiry, to give it appropriate powers and immunities and to require it to report to the houses rather than the executive government, provided the inquiry was within the powers of the commonwealth as reflected in the constitution.
Any such commission would have the powers that the parliament saw fit to give it. They might replicate those of a royal commission or a parliamentary committee or be specifically designed for a particular purpose.
The Greens motion for a banks commission of inquiry now has the support of Labor and the crossbenchers. Indeed, the Senate passed the co-sponsored motion last week. It also came down the lower house where George Christensen said he would vote for a substantial motion on the inquiry but not a procedural motion. But a banks commission of inquiry is still a live issue, which could be brought on by a suspension of standing orders. It would need George plus one more Coalition MP.
So what the Lionel Murphy document release does is remind the parliament that a commission of inquiry is a more powerful inquiry than the average run-of-the-mill Senate inquiry.
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Leyonhjelm opposes schools package
The Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has decided to oppose the Turnbull government’s schools package.
Presumably the extra $4.9bn needed to speed the package up from 10 to six years made it too expensive for the libertarian, who prefers small government and was only considering supporting Gonski 2.0 when the parliamentary budget office suggested it would cut funding relative to current legislation.
Leyonhjelm’s vote isn’t vital for the government (yet). The crossbench group education minister, Simon Birmingham, has stitched together is the Nick Xenophon Team, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Lucy Gichuhi, Jacqui Lambie and Derryn Hinch.
If that groups holds, there’s no need for the Greens or Leyonhjelm but if someone falls out of the cart there’s now no margin for error.
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Negotiations continue through private senators’ business.
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For the record, the extra schools funding equates to $1.1 billion over the forwards #auspol
— Paul Osborne AAP (@osbornep) June 21, 2017
Our neighbour Shane Wright of the West Oz is always consumed with things in the west. He notes you have to go back to John Curtin before you find a prime minister from the west. So, given he is a numbers man, he thought he would do the numbers on who is the next best chance. Julie Bishop’s position as deputy Liberal leader pushes her to the front but you may be surprised as to who comes second.
First-term Labor member for Perth Tim Hammond has been installed by bookmakers as a better chance to be prime minister than experienced cabinet minister Christian Porter.
A market compiled by sportsbet.com.au on who will be the next West Australian to take up residency in The Lodge puts Mr Hammond — who only entered parliament after last year’s federal election — as second-favourite at $4.50.
The favourite is Liberal deputy leader and foreign minister Julie Bishop at $2.50.
Sportsbet.com.au spokesman Will Byrne said Ms Bishop was the frontrunner because of her position.
“Julie is the favourite as she’s the one closest to the throne right now and her progression from deputy to becoming a resident of The Lodge is not beyond the realms of possibility,” Mr Byrne said.
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#FakeNews
here's Pauline claiming her autism comments were taken out of context, and telling followers to complain to the Courier Mail pic.twitter.com/XosaosG0yC
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) June 21, 2017
Parliament to release Lionel Murphy documents in the public interest
Speaker Smith opens parliament with a statement on whether he and the Senate president would release the documents relating to the Lionel Murphy Class A documents.
Richard Ackland reported on this last year:
Sunday marks the end of the 30-year statutory embargo on the release of what could prove a treasure trove of documents dealing with the alleged misbehaviour of the former high court justice Lionel Murphy.
These are what are known as the Class A documents that were collected by the parliamentary commission of inquiry that was established in May 1986 to examine 14 allegations against the high court judge.
Speaker Tony Smith says he will release them “in the public interest”.
He says the documents are historical in nature.
President Stephen Parry is giving a similar statement in the Senate.
The documents will be scanned and released on 24 July at 10am.
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Emma Husar to kids with autism: even when it's hard, you're better than her on her best day
A lot has been said about Pauline Hanson’s comments regarding children with autism.
This is what Hanson said.
These kids have a right to an education by all means but, if there’s a number of them, these children should actually go into a special classroom, looked after and given that special attention.
Most of the time the teacher spends so much time on them they forget about the child who wants to go ahead in leaps and bounds in their education but are held back by those.
It’s no good saying we have to allow these kids to feel good about themselves and we don’t want to upset them and make them feel hurt.
Of all the reactions, this is one of the best from the Labor MP Emma Husar, whose speech on her personal experience with domestic violence was one of the best speeches I have seen in this parliament. It still brings me to tears when I watch it.
She has done it again, talking about Hanson’s comments and her son Mitch.
Her message to every single child on the autism spectrum:
Even on the days that are hard – when you’re frustrated, and your disability makes you angry – you are still better than she is on her best day.
Just going to post @emmahusarmp's comments here. #auspol pic.twitter.com/zHj9OJzxwc
— David Sharaz (@DavidSharaz) June 21, 2017
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Labor’s education shadow, Tanya Plibersek, says Labor is continuing conversations with the crossbench right up to the Gonski 2.0 vote.
While there’s life there’s hope and we’ll be continuing our discussions with the crossbench until the very last minute, until all of these amendments are voted on and until we get to vote on the legislation itself.
This is worth watching rather than writing it off as a done deal. There is no doubt the bill is expected to pass with that qualifier by Jacqui Lambie. At this stage there will be government staffers staking out crossbench offices to make sure there is no wavering.
But the scary part for the government is that there is private senators’ business scheduled all morning in the Senate, then a short window of government business before question time.
Then, as per the Senate vote yesterday, “if the Australian education amendment bill 2017 has not been finally considered by 2pm, the Senate shall consider government business only from 4.30pm pursuant to the order agreed to yesterday”.
That leaves a lot of time for arm-twisting and ambushes. Hence, TPlibs: “Where there is life, there is hope”.
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Readers have reminded this doughy brained blogger that the Bell report landed late yesterday.
Matt Doran at the ABC reports:
Attorney general George Brandis has been labelled “evasive” and accused of trying to curtail the independence of the solicitor general by a Labor and Greens-controlled Senate inquiry.
But government senators argue the entire inquiry into Senator Brandis’ conduct in the most complex commercial litigation in Australian history amounts to a personal attack.
A Senate inquiry was investigating the extent of the attorney general’s involvement in the bid to claw back close to $1bn from the late Alan Bond’s failed Bell Group of companies.
It followed allegations a secret deal was struck between the commonwealth and the West Australian government to allow the state’s claim to take precedence in the carve-up of company assets.
Brandis has repeatedly denied the claims and sought to distance himself from any dealings in the matter.
Labor committee chair Louise Pratt and the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, put out a statement last night.
It also became clear that Senator Brandis only reluctantly gave former solicitor general Justin Gleeson permission to intervene in the high court case on behalf of the commonwealth to defend its interests and that the ATO had received indications that it could have been blocked from intervening in its own right.
Senator Brandis has attempted to hide behind legal professional privilege, ignoring the rules of the Senate which state this is not an accepted grounds to refuse to provide information.
We even had the farcical claim from Senator Brandis that he could not recall having a conversation with WA treasurer Michael Mischin about the matter, despite Mr Mischin being able to recall every detail ... How much longer must we put up with this hapless and destructive attorney general before he is exiled to Wellington?
The Liberal senator Ian Macdonald, who attacked Gleeson throughout the inquiry, wrote the dissenting report.
The ludicrous and frankly offensive proposition that the attorney general interfered with the ATO’s intervention in the Bell Group litigation has been comprehensively disproved by compelling evidence presented to the inquiry by senior officers of the ATO and the [attorney general’s department].
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In the lower house today, the citizenship bill resumes debate so I expect we will have a vote on that at some stage today.
Labor is opposing elements of it, relating to the English language test and the four-year delay before permanent residents can apply for citizenship.
There is “government business” all morning from 9.30am til 1.30pm
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This is very confusing.
Greens say rolling over $50m for Catholic/independent sectors makes govt deal "THE ANTI-GONSKI" #auspol #Gonski pic.twitter.com/uRK5rkOp3y
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 21, 2017
Rachel Siewert just told RN Greens haven't made final call on #Gonski ... um this email just sent to members?!? #auspol pic.twitter.com/q1tAKmkbXm
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) June 21, 2017
Good morning,
Two words for the morning. Schools. Robodebt.
The amendments for Gonski 2.0 came up last night in a debate that ended at midnight without a vote. The government amendments were as foreshadowed:
- states funding percentage locked in
- $5bn more, in six years rather than 10
- NT specific package
- independent body
- $46m transition fund for Catholic and independent schools
There were also amendments from the Greens, Labor, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm and Australian Conservative Cory Bernardi. None of those will pass, unless the crossbench fall in a heap and the government have to deal with the Greens.
That debate will continue today and we don’t expect a vote until tonight. Jacqui Lambie says she is supporting “at this stage” so there is that little qualification but, all things being equal, the bill is expected to pass.
On robodebt, Christopher Knaus reported the Senate inquiry called for Centrelink’s controversial automated debt recovery system to be suspended until its many flaws can be resolved.
The social services minister, Christian Porter, has described it as a political report and rejected any need for an apology.
This is not a matter for apology.
Porter said his department pays out $150bn a year and the taxpayer expects those dollars to be administered properly.
We are not inclined to end a process, a proper process that ensures people are not overpaid. And where people are overpaid, whether that’s because insufficient information is applied or where people are giving the wrong information, they must pay that money back.
Porter said he preferred the ombudsman’s view, “which is essentially that this is a fair and rational system to recover taxpayers’ money where it has overpaid”.
Helen Davidson reported on this in April:
An ombudsman’s report on the roll out of Centrelink’s automated debt recovery service has identified multiple failures that placed unreasonable burdens on welfare recipients and staff.
Stay with me for the last day of the autumn sittings. After this, parliament is in recess for six weeks. Talk to me in the thread, on the Twits @gabriellechan or on Facebook.
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