Good night and good luck
I think that will do us for today. Over the course of the afternoon I’ve been reading up a bit on Paul Marks (Stuart Robert’s friend), who (as my colleague Daniel Hurst reports, donated $340,000 to the Liberal party in 2014-15.) What an interesting character he is.
Let’s part with a summary.
- The day started with more back pedalling on a GST rise, with a slight overtone of forward pedalling, and a random Biblical reference, as the treasurer Scott Morrison lamented that he was an accomplished fellow but not even accomplished fellows can deliver a tax rise followed by a tax cut and decreased spending on social services when the prime minister clearly isn’t that keen on such a package. You can’t always part the Red Sea, Morrison noted. (It’s true, you can’t, particularly when you are not Moses.)
- The finance minister Mathias Cormann tried manfully to say that a GST increase probably wasn’t going to happen but it might happen because the government had not yet landed the plane yet and things are sometimes different when planes land, an observation presumably derived from careful study of his last few years as a minister under two prime ministers.
- The innovation minister Christopher Pyne wondered who had the profoundly daft idea of a GST increase given that would mean poor people paid more in tax and rich people paid less in tax, which didn’t on the face of it, sound that politically saleable.
- The prime minister was asked whether he’d stop the waffling and rule out a 15% GST and in response the prime minister was moved to explain (MalSplain®) the relative merits of changes in the tax mix.
- Apart from the mildly chaotic and periodically passive aggressive route of the GST hike bus, the prime minister was moved to ask his departmental head whether or not one of his ministers, Stuart Robert, may have acquired a slight compliance problem with the ministerial code of conduct when he went on a holiday with a party donor Paul Marks which, strangely, involved him appearing at an official function in China, which Chinese officials evidently thought was an official appearance given Robert was a minister in the Australian government, not a tourist who had accidentally wandered into the wrong venue. Robert thought this was just a misunderstanding. As they say in our business, more to come.
- Then the government thought it might be a good idea to appoint the man who had devised the Pacific Solution during the Howard years as Australia’s special envoy on human rights. Yes, that happened. Bye bye, Philip, and thanks for the memories.
- Immigration officials made their contribution earlier in the day by denying reports that a five year old child had been raped on Nauru and then proceeded to blame advocates for cluttering up the government’s current ambition to project very very tough but actually (possibly) allow asylum seekers to remain in Australia. Won’t you people just shut up and go along with this nonsense was the (apparently) serious request from the head of Australia’s border protection effort.
- Bill Shorten for his part mangled a bush metaphor in Yass and wandered amiably past a poo collection vehicle, but these slight collisions with stationery objects got lost in the was of well ... Monday. In politics.
I’ll be back for Tuesday. I do hope you’ll join us then.
Updated
Estimates has also looked at the situation on Christmas Island, where the death of Iranian refugee Fazel Chegeni - re-detained under controversial circumstances and over the serious and repeated concerns of several senior public servants - sparked a riot in the centre.
Chegeni, who had been tortured in prison in Iran and had, doctors say, “exhausted his capacity to cope” in detention, escaped from the Christmas Island detention overnight on Friday, November 6. His body was found in bushland two days later.
Following his death, a riot in the centre caused about $10m damage.
Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg refused to tell estimates how it was that Fazel Chegeni escaped from the Christmas Island detention centre.
He would say only that “human fault” was part of the failure that allowed Chegeni to escape. “No-one” he pointed out, has managed to escape from the island.
Estimates is looking again at conditions on Nauru: a quick update.
Since October (the last estimates hearing) there have been zero reported cases of sexual assaults or harassment within the detention centre itself. In the community on Nauru, there have been four alleged cases of sexual assault or harassment, committed against three women and one man. There has also been one allegation of sexual assault/harassment committed against a child.
A couple of happy snaps from the prime minister’s office this afternoon, greeting the new human rights envoy.
It is twinkly fabulous how politics looks after its own, isn’t it?
Yes, that was sarcasm.
Ruddock has told reporters he will commence his new duties more or less immediately, but he won’t claim his salary for the new role until he quits politics. The constitution forbids it.
No regrets. Just thought I’d repeat that.
Ruddock is currently citing his various career highlights. Sky News host David Speers points out the list doesn’t seem to include the contribution he is probably most famous for, the Pacific Solution in the Howard era. Any regrets about that, Speers wonders? No regrets, Ruddock says.
From Ruddock’s own statement.
The role will, of necessity, require periods of travel abroad from now until the time of the next federal election. In order for me to devote myself to this task fully I cannot be active in a national political campaign and give effective time to my own re-election. For these reasons I have come to the view that I should not seek re-endorsement for the seat of Berowra. I am humbled to have enjoyed such strong support for my involvement in federal politics for over 42 years.
He’s on Sky News now, speaking about his passion for human rights.
Q: This had nothing to do with your preselection being at risk?
Philip Ruddock:
No.
Ruddock, human rights warrior, not recontesting
Finally now a minute to tell you that the government has appointed Philip Ruddock – the long serving Liberal MP – as special envoy for Human Rights. Doubtless the internet has been exploding about this development for at least an hour, which is when I first saw the reports Ruddock was moving on out.
Sorry. One woman, one brain, two ears, two hands.
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop:
Australia has a strong record of promoting and protecting human rights, at home and around the world. As a distinguished member of the Australian parliament for over four decades, the current chair of the parliamentary joint committee on human rights, and a longstanding member of Amnesty International, Mr Ruddock is well-qualified to advocate and represent Australia’s human rights views and record.
As Special Envoy, Mr Ruddock will focus on advancing Australia’s human rights priorities of good governance, freedom of expression, gender equality, the rights of indigenous peoples, and national human rights institutions. Mr Ruddock will actively in promote Australia’s candidacy for membership of the Human Rights Council (HRC) for the 2018-20 term. He will represent Australia at international human rights events and advocate our HRC candidacy in selected countries.
Mr Ruddock’s role will be consistent with the practice of past governments in approving Special Envoys to support our international campaigns, for example the United Nations Security Council bid.
He will also promote our broader human rights agenda, including global abolition of the death penalty, for which he has worked tirelessly over many years.
Mr Ruddock will be Australia’s first Special Envoy for Human Rights, reflecting the Government’s commitment to further strengthening Australia’s contribution to advancing human rights.
(In our office, we can’t help wondering – is this the job George Brandis attempted to offer Gillian Triggs in all the unpleasantness .. remember that?)
Given it’s been a crowded day, let’s step through the Stuart Robert story carefully.
What we know:
- Robert travelled to China in August 2014 to attend a signing ceremony with Nimrod Resources’s Paul Marks and Communist party officials who run the Chinese government-owned company Minmetals.
- Robert has told News Corp he was acting “in a private capacity” during the trip.
- Marks, by way of context, is a Liberal party donor.
- A press release from Minmetals characterises the Robert visit somewhat differently, recording Robert being at the signing ceremony on behalf of the Australian department of defence.
-
Scott Morrison said earlier today Robert had undertaken the trip while on leave, he’d paid for it himself, so there was absolutely nothing to see here.
- But those public remarks notwithstanding, the prime minister revealed in question time that he has asked his departmental head to make inquiries about whether or not there are any issues concerning the application of the ministerial code of conduct.
- The relevant section of the code reads: “A minister shall not act as a consultant or adviser to any company, business, or other interests, whether paid or unpaid, or provide assistance to any such body, except as may be appropriate in their official capacity as minister (this requirement does not apply where a minister has the prime minister’s permission to continue an interest in a family business – see paragraph 2.4 above).”
- Labor is also keen to know how Robert characterised the visit on his visa form – work, holiday, other.
- Attempts to get to the bottom of that in question time were binned by the Speaker, Tony Smith, on the basis the standing orders prohibit ministers being questioned on the previous portfolios.
What this all means:
Obviously we all need to be very careful not to prejudge this issue before key facts are known. I won’t be prejudging in advance of evidence and explanation.
But it does draw attention to a problem I bang on about very frequently in the Australian political system: the close relationship between parliamentarians and political donors. I’ve got a first principles question: what on earth was a minister doing on “holidays” in China with a key political donor and appearing at a corporate function? Seriously, what gives?
Updated
The prime minister has wrapped question time. I’ll be back shortly to walk you through the Robert developments just in case anything was a bit garbled in the real time reportage.
Bill Shorten persists with this issue. Will the prime minister make inquiries about the minister’s entry on his visa form and report back to the House as soon as possible?
If this line of inquiry seems a bit off piste it isn’t: obviously one cannot lie on a visa form. Not without getting yourself into serious trouble.
Malcolm Turnbull:
I deal with these matters very thoroughly and very seriously and in accordance with the code.
That’s what will be done.
Speaker Smith has binned the question. Here’s his reasoning:
I’ve obviously given this careful consideration and examined the practice carefully and for anyone who examines the practice carefully on page 555, and I just happen to have it with me, they will see that it says: “A minister may not be asked about his or her questions in a former ministerial role. However, in a case when a minister has issued a statement referring to early responsibilities a question relating to the statement was permitted”.
There has been one case of that in 2006. Beyond that, questions have not been allowed.
That’s certainly the practice and the history, I can assure the House from the best of my research. Whilst I want to see questions asked and answered if this question had been asked some time ago when the minister had different responsibilities, it would clearly be in order. But the person, the minister responsible for the code of conduct is the prime minister and it’s the PM that makes the determination on whether people have complied with it.
So having heard that patiently, and I apologise for detaining the House for so long, I’m not going to allow that question and we will move to the next question.
(House practice versus the ministerial code, essentially.)
Just so readers know, the current statement of ministerial standards reads:
-
A minister shall not act as a consultant or adviser to any company, business, or other interests, whether paid or unpaid, or provide assistance to any such body, except as may be appropriate in their official capacity as minister (this requirement does not apply where a minister has the prime minister’s permission to continue an interest in a family business – see paragraph 2.4 above).
Labor persists with Stuart Robert.
Q: My question is to the minister for veterans’ affairs and goes to whether he has complied with the prime minister’s statement of ministerial standards. On the official Chinese visa application form for his secret trip to China, what reason did the minister declare was the purpose for his visit? Official visit, tourism, non-business visit, business and trade or work?
Speaker Smith is intervening now. These questions are problematic, he says.
Standing orders make it very clear that the ministers can only be asked questions about matters for which they are responsible. The practice also makes it very clear that ministers can’t be asked questions about former ministerial responsibilities they have had. It makes that very clear indeed.
Manager of opposition business, Tony Burke.
It’s rare, it happens a few times each year, but it’s rare we have a situation where there is a question as to whether or not a Minister has been in breach of the code. Parliament must be able to examine that and there is no way of examining that without asking questions of the minister themselves. Otherwise we would be in the absurd situation of only being allowed to ask the prime minister information that could only be known by the minister themselves.
Manager of government business, Christopher Pyne.
Mr Speaker, given the minister was travelling privately to China at the time, this question is quite inappropriate. If the opposition want to ask the media to ask the member the question and he chooses to answer it, that’s another matter.
Burke is standing his ground, as is Pyne.
I have confidence in Stuart Robert, except ... perhaps not ... oops
Labor is moving on to Stuart Robert. Does the prime minister have confidence in the minister for human services? This concerns the trip to China.
Malcolm Turnbull:
I can confirm that I have confidence in all of my ministers, including the minister for human services.
But.
In relation to those media reports, I can confirm that I have asked the secretary of my department for advice in relation to the statement of ministerial standards.
Updated
What is point? What is life? What is love?
The agriculture minister speaks fondly of wine and cows.
Then Plibersek is back.
Q: Mr Speaker. I have a question for the prime minister. On the weekend Peter Hartcher asked in the Sydney Morning Herald: “Is the Turnbull government shaping up as the Abbott government with a more personable salesman? What is the point of Malcolm Turnbull PM?”
The prime minister chortles.
I’m glad that the... Honourable Member for Sydney is able to find a question ..
Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek.
Q: My question is to the prime minister. When the PM rolled the Member for Warringah ...
Speaker Smith:
The member for Sydney will resume her seat. I’m going to give the member for Sydney an opportunity to rephrase the start of that question.
The member for Sydney.
Tanya Plibersek:
Q: Thank you Mr Speaker. My question is to the prime minister. When the PM deposed the Member for Warringah he said it was because the former prime minister failed to provide economic leadership. But Jennifer Hewitt writes in today’s Australian Financial Review: “Turnbull himself now risks looking like a political leader without the courage of his convictions or worse no convictions at all.” Is this the kind of leadership the PM was speaking about?
Plibersek is gonged off.
Bill Shorten, who earlier today tried an unfortunate bush metaphor, is now trying a waffle.
Q: Reports suggest that government ministers are backing away from plans to increase the price of everything with a 15% GST. PM, today is the day to stop the waffle and come clean with the Australian people. Will the prime minister introduce a 15% GST?
First, derision.
The leader of the opposition invites me to rule out any changes to the GST. And, to be fair, there is something to be said for doing so because it would mean the green grocery aisles of Australia would be safe from the leader of the opposition. Thousands of lettuces would no longer have the leader of the opposition flinging himself in front of any would-be charges on them.
Then, the MalSplain®.
Let me say something about the GST.
The prime minister proceeds to explain the relative merits of switches in the tax mix while those opposite laugh at him at theatrical volume.
Malcolm Turnbull:
As I have said, we are not, the government is not yet persuaded that in the context of Australia today, such a tax mix switch would give an adequate growth, adequate improvement in economic activity. But those are the trade-offs.
Honourable Members opposite can scoff as much as they like.
Those are the trade-offs. It’s a question of balancing the increase on GST on the one hand and an offsetting reduction in income tax on the other. And the extent to which that is fair, that gives additional impetus to economic growth, depends on the design. There is a considerable amount of complexity there. I believe that all Australians expect this government to approach this issue not with slogans or with scare campaigns, but with careful analysis.
Scott Morrison, winding up on a dixer on Labor’s general intellectual deficiencies.
Now the contrast is clear. Those opposite, their plan is to tax and spend and borrow, Mr Speaker. Our plan is to ensure that we back Australians in who are working, saving and investing.
Bowen, back.
Q: My question is to the treasurer. What is the impact of the rate of GST on economic growth, what would be the impact on economic growth of increasing the GST?
Morrison isn’t impressed with the question.
His riposte? Welfare, it’s wicked.
Scott Morrison:
We have a deep empathy for people in this country who are working every day to pay for our expanding welfare system. We think we need to be thinking about their interests and trying to relieve their burden and we will leave no stone unturned to relieve that burden for them. Those opposite have no empathy for those who are working every day to pay for our burgeoning welfare system which they ramped up.
(It’s just ever so slightly inconsistent to argue we absolutely must give those strivers money unlike those non-strivers who get money. I know what he means, but just think about the logic sitting behind the Morrison proposition and ask yourself, does the confected actually contrast work?)
Speaker welcomes the former member for New England @TonyHWindsor in the gallery.
— BuzzFeedOz Politics (@BuzzFeedOzPol) February 8, 2016
Labor’s @GrahamPerrettMP yells: “THE NEXT MEMBER!"
From Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie.
Q: Treasurer, the government claims the recent change to the income test for defined pension recipients will principally affect superannuants on large incomes but most are not wealthy. Take one Tasmanian couple whose only assets are a caravan and car but have lost $164 a fortnight from their age pension. Treasurer, will you immediately reconsider this policy?
Social services minister Christian Porter (who takes the question) doesn’t appear at all interested in changing the policy, which has been constructed as a matter of equity, he notes.
Bowen is back.
Q: My question is to the treasurer. Last week the treasurer said: “We’ve got to do what’s right”. Does the treasurer still think that increasing the GST is the right thing to do?
Morrison is back too.
I can tell you what isn’t right, and that’s the tax and spend approach of those opposite. That’s what’s not right for jobs and growth in this country, Mr Speaker.
TPP. Still great.
Shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen.
Q: My question is to the treasurer. The government has previously said everything was on the table in relation to changing the tax system. Treasurer, is that still the case?
Treasurer, Scott Morrison.
The government continues to consider all the matters that are before it on tax, as the Australian people would expect us to do.
Wherever this government is able to properly and ably deliver support for those Australians who are working and investing, for those Australians who are earning every day Mr Speaker, not just receiving every day, but earning every day, we will always seek to ensure we leave no stone unturned to ensure we can provide them with support.
These proposals always have to stack up and actually have to work. This is a government that is not only good on policy but it is good on the implementation of policy – something the PM was referring to earlier and when he was referring to a different matter when it came to border protection, Mr Speaker, and the Member for McMahon will know all about failures when it comes to failures on border protection.
(Bowen is a former immigration minister.)
First Dorothy Dixer today is how great is that trans Pacific partnership? Answer, very great. The prime minister has spied something less great.
Now the Labor party at this stage appears to be reluctant to approve the TPP. I notice they are referring it to a separate Senate inquiry over and above that of the work of the joint standing committee on treaties. So it may be we’ll see their opposition to the TPP as we did to the China-Australia free trade agreement.
Question time
It being 2pm. Bill Shorten opens on asylum.
Q: My question is to the prime minister. We all agree that Australia cannot let people languish on Nauru and Manus indefinitely. Can the prime minister update the House on efforts to secure a credible settlement arrangement in other countries for asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru and Manus Island?
The prime minister responds by saying the current arrivals are all Labor’s fault.
He then addresses the substance of the question in general terms.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We inherited a number of people on Manus Island and Nauru from the period when Kevin Rudd, in his brief return to office before the 2013 election, overturned his own government’s policies. We are working to ensure they return to their countries of origin or are settled in other countries and third countries as quickly as we can. Not easy. But we are endeavouring to do that. We are working hard to do that.
But I can say one thing, Mr Speaker, we will not abandon our commitment to keeping the high seas safe, to keeping our borders secure, to ensuring that our policies have integrity and security.
Q: Given wages growth is slow, give inflation is sluggish, why is bracket creep a priority for the government now?
The finance minister gives very little indication that bracket creep is, in fact, a priority for the government. He’s still waiting for the landing point. Out with the binoculars. Plane spotting.
Don’t worry, question time will save him (and us) shortly.
The business I am involved in is a team game, the finance minister Mathias Cormann notes at the opening of an interview he is now doing on Sky News. Cormann approaches this task as he approaches every other task – as a challenge to remain ruthlessly on the talking points. His hosts are trying to disrupt this by time shifting, back to the Abbott period, forward to the present time.
Q: What’s changed?
Mathias Cormann:
The future.
I will try and get below the line today at some point. Some more analysis now. First my colleague Lenore Taylor on today’s tax developments.
Shoving the GST off the table has laid bare the ideological rifts that have muddled the tax “debate” for months. It confirmed what has been pretty clear – the Turnbull government is washing its hands of the looming funding crisis in health and education in the interests of an ideological commitment to small(ish) federal government. And it clarified the extent to which the prime minister and his treasurer are talking at cross purposes, again because of ideology.
Also, political blogger Paula Matthewson, who looks at tax as well, including some interesting thoughts on where Labor will go in this new phase of proceedings.
Labor will certainly claim Turnbull’s abandonment of the GST increase as a win, and have already laid the groundwork for it to be depicted as an embarrassing backdown for the PM. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen was quick off the blocks yesterday, saying the PM was in a “muddle” on GST, didn’t have the political backbone to back the policy, and if he didn’t “proceed with increasing the GST, which we all know he wants to do, it will be humiliating for Malcolm Turnbull”. It’s also likely the Opposition will try to confect a schism between the PM and his treasurer, who appeared to be gung-ho on the GST increase until as recently as a week ago. However, the most damaging criticism that Labor will level at the PM is that his GST backdown is yet another example of Turnbull abandoning his principles to mollify detractors within the Coalition parties.
Updated
For completeness, we need to note that Stuart Robert’s office gave the following statement to the Herald Sun about the China trip. (I mentioned earlier on today this story came from Herald Sun political reporter Ellen Whinnett.)
Mr Robert was on leave and attended in a private capacity. Mr Robert is not responsible for what is published by private companies such as Minmetals. As part of Mr Robert’s visit, he and Chairman Zhou exchanged lapel pins.
Back to Stuart Robert and that trip to China.
Robert China trips looks very messy. He says a private trip, Press release at the time quotes him as speaking on behalf of Defence Dept.
— Michelle Grattan (@michellegrattan) February 8, 2016
If you want to view the press release Michelle Grattan is referring to, you can find it here. That document references Robert’s presence at the event on behalf of the Australian department of defence.
Speaking of exclusion and inclusion, your border force, at senate estimates today.
Updated
Humphrey Appleby tributes all round today: when exclusion could be inclusion
The officials charged with securing the two parliamentary chambers were not included in a security review of Parliament House, a committee hearing has been told.
The Labor senator Joe Ludwig has been asking why the Senate’s usher of the black rod and the House’s serjeant-at-arms were excluded. “I find it extraordinary quite frankly that you’d have a security review and leave off the two people who are head of security of the two parliaments,” he declared.
The Senate president, Stephen Parry, gave a curious explanation: “They weren’t excluded … but they weren’t included.”
The Department of Parliamentary Services spilled the beans in an answer to a previous question on notice. In the answer, the DPS said the Australian Parliament House security review began in September 2014 and involved an AECOM security consultant and representatives from the DPS, the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Federal Police, prime minister Tony Abbott’s office and Asio.
The usher of the black rod, Rachel Callinan, told the Finance and Administration Committee today: “The review itself, the decision to undertake the review was made by people other than myself. I didn’t participate in that decision-making; I wasn’t invited to participate in the review. I would like to think I might have something to contribute had I been asked to participate, but that wasn’t the circumstance at the time.”
She confirmed the parliament’s security management board also did not directly participate in the review, although some of its members - DPS and AFP - were part of it.
A defensive Parry said it was not a “review” as such but “a collection of government departments that were going to be responsible for the implementation of a capital works program; and it did relate to security but it was a capital works program”. He said this issue was ventilated at a previous estimates hearing and since then the serjeant and black rod have attended taskforce hearings.
“This estimates process picked up a slight flaw and we amended it straight away.”
Manager of government business Christopher Pyne, just now, on Sky News, has just shared the most accurate reading of the government’s current circumstances that I’ve heard uttered to date.
We are responding to events as they occur.
(That’s certainly how it looks.)
Furthermore, Pyne notes he’s not a fan of a GST increase, which would, as he puts it, cut the tax applying to people who can most afford to pay tax and increase taxes for people who can least afford to pay.
Christopher Pyne:
Who decided economic leadership is increasing the GST by 50%?
(I think we are beginning to see why Scott Morrison couldn’t part the Red Sea.)
Lunchtime analysis
Given my recent “in case you’ve just tuned in” stocktake I’ll use the traditional lunchtime pause to work through the two main events of the day in some more detail.
-
Tax
A couple of weeks ago, Scott Morrison walked forward on a GST hike. Now the government is walking backwards. The basis for the walk back is not political, the prime minister says. He’s indicating, essentially, that the first run analysis of GST plus income and business tax cuts either doesn’t deliver the growth dividend the government is seeking, or it does, but the price tag is too high. Over the past few weeks, both Turnbull and Morrison have also locked themselves into a position of not increasing the overall tax take, which is a very rigid brace to wear if you are attempting to have the broad-ranging and mature conversation the government says it wants to have on reform. It’s also pretty strange to say you don’t want an increase in the total tax take but then in fact encourage state governments to increase their taxes to pay for essential services, because you’ve decided that funding those services is no longer your problem. Morrison was very frank today: he was never looking at the GST for either budget repair or for service delivery – he was looking at hiking the GST to give people and businesses an income tax cut (which does sound a lot like taking with one hand and giving with another). The government has also, along the way, raised community expectations about dealing with bracket creep without having a settled mechanism to fix the problem it has now told voters is there – which is a brave way to proceed. To put this all most simply: there has always been a strange sort of vacancy at the centre of the tax reform discussion. This vacancy persists. Perhaps the government is getting closer to filling the vacancy, but for now, just empty space.
-
Asylum
Today we’ve seen immigration officials use the opportunity of senate estimates hearings to take issue with advocacy on border protection. A helicopter view of what’s been said today is some of the claims made by advocates about events and conditions on Nauru are not factually correct, and in any case talking about all of this is spectacularly unhelpful given the people smugglers are watching every utterance in Australia, around the clock. The government is currently trying to talk out both sides of its mouth. Various people are trying to send a message that Australia will continue to be absolutely punitive in its approach to people who attempt to reach Australia via boat – but we won’t be punitive to absolutely everybody – and we won’t tell you who will be treated harshly and who will not be treated harshly. Sound mad? (Yes.) That’s because it is mad.
Onwards, upwards.
Back to immigration estimates. Green senator Sarah Hanson Young wants to know whether asylum seekers will be sent back to Nauru if the medical advice recommends against the transfer.
Pezzullo says he would need to understand the basis of the medical concern. He points out that there is a significant investment underway in medical facilities on the island. The suggestion here from Pezzullo is most medical needs will be able to be met in situ.
Hanson Young persists. There’s no doctor’s veto?
Pezzullo says doctors are a bit like lawyers. Often different doctors have different medical advice. They are a bit like lawyers. Pezzullo says contrary to some reports from advocates in journalist’s clothing – (his explicit inference, my rhetorical characterisation of it to be clear) – the current policy regarding medical advice is to make careful, considered decisions. He says there’s no directive from border protection command to go hard on assessments.
Mike Pezzullo:
I reject that out of hand.
I will expand my thoughts on the various events of the political day beyond dot points in due course – but not right now. Need to push on with keeping you across the various threads.
Also, not momentous enough to make the quick summary, but in the spirit of comprehensiveness, this also happened.
Bill Shorten walks past the "poo carters" on his way to a doorstop in Yass. https://t.co/MXbQON6Rmc
— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) February 7, 2016
Fly, fly away
Over in the Finance and Public Administration estimates hearing, Senate president Stephen Parry has been facing some robust questions about his travel entitlements.
Labor senators have cried foul about a push to change the procedures for approving travel by the Senate president. Previously, the prime minister was required to give “concurrence” for proposed travel. It appears Parry - who has been a strong advocate of the independence of parliamentary positions - has written to Malcolm Turnbull seeking a change to the arrangements to no longer require the prime minister’s approval.
Parry provides a bit of context to the committee: “Concurrence has been granted in every occasion for 19 years bar one, so really the presiding officers, both speaker and president - when determining their own travel - the letter that comes back from the prime minister says it acknowledges the presiding officers have the right to determine their own travel.”
Questions were raised after an answer to a question on notice revealed the Department of the Senate had met the $2,579 cost of an official visit to New Zealand.
Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, who is a member of the Senate’s staffing committee, says she believes the committee was kept in the dark: “I don’t believe there was a frank, transparent discussion about what you were proposing to change around your personal entitlements with the staffing committee and if the committee is not going to be run in that way we’ll consider our participation in it and we’ll deal with things in a different way.”
Parry: “I’m very happy to be guided by the appropriations and staffing committee ... I think I’ve been more than upfront.”
Monday, thus far
I think there is some merit, given the cracking pace of the morning, to post a very quick summary in the event you are just tuning in.
If you are just tuning in, Monday in Canberra is:
-
GST – a GST hike is now off, more than likely, (and now the government is confronting a new set of challenges which don’t end with the treasurer’s self confessed incapacity to part the Red Sea);
-
evidence given in estimates hearings on border protection (officials have denied that a five year old was raped in Nauru, and have testified that people will be returned to offshore detention in the wake of the high court decision, unless they won’t be returned in the wake of the high court decision, and it’s better if nobody talks at all about that); and
- Stuart Robert is facing questions about why it was ok to accompany a political donor on a trip to China when said donor was closing a significant business deal.
There will be more, and I will cover it as it happens.
Dr John Brayley, Chief Medical Officer and Surgeon General of the Australian Border Force, has been quizzed about the impact of detention on children. “The scientific evidence is that detention affects the mental state of children, it’s deleterious. Wherever possible children should not be in detention.” He said a series of mental health tools had found significant mental health issues among children in detention on shore and offshore, but this needs to be seen “in the context of the government and the department’s concerted efforts to remove children from detention”. Department secretary Mike Pezzullo said it was the government’s policy “to do whatever possible within the ambit of the policy to get children out of detention”.
As I know there will be a number of readers interested, just a heads up, you can now read border protection chief Mike Pezzullo’s opening statement to the estimates committee this morning in full.
Do note the language I’ve bolded below about people being returned to detention on Nauru in the wake of the high court decision. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be impressed with a formulation that reads, those people will go back, unless of course they won’t. We are very tough. Unless we aren’t.
What a complete absurdity this all is.
Mike Pezzullo:
With regards to transferees and refugees in regional processing centres, the department will continue to ensure that adequate medical services are provided to those who require it. For those transferees and refugees temporarily in Australia for medical treatment, or accompanying those in need of treatment, they will be returned to Nauru and Papua New Guinea at the conclusion of their treatment, noting that determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis. As the prime minister, the minister and others have said, we will exercise appropriate discretion and indeed compassion, but will do so quietly.
Furthermore ..
Immigration Secretary Mike Pezzullo denies reports of a child raped in detention -
— Charles Croucher (@ccroucher9) February 7, 2016
"There is no 5 year old child, it's a figment"
Departmental official counters rape allegation
Still in estimates, Cheryl Anne Moy, first assistant secretary of community and settlement division, has told the committee the allegation which aired last week on ABC television of the rape of a five-year-old child on Nauru is reportedly “untrue”. The circumstances of this child were widely publicised around the time of the high court’s decision on detention.
But according to the department of immigration, which investigated the allegation after it was broadcast: the child was not five, but was ‘more than double that age’. The offender was two years older, and was a fellow asylum seeker. The allegation was not one of rape, but a reported incident of ‘skin to skin contact’. The issue was raised in the Moss report into conditions on Nauru. The child is currently living in the community in New South Wales.
Back in estimates, immigration boss Mike Pezzullo has said that public calls to #LetThemStay “reduces our discretion” to allow people to stay in Australia longer. Pezzullo noted, articulating the rationale of Operation Sovereign Borders: “The more this is talked about publicly, the tougher we have to be.”
He said the policy was “tough”, even “harsh”, but offshore processing needed to be applied without exception, in order to deter people-smuggling operations. “It’s got to be applied universally, the moment you give a chink of light ... you open the doors to people drowning at sea.”
“The path [to resettlement] is shut with no exceptions,” Pezzullo said. “There is no compassion in giving people false hope.”
He said of the 267 there would be no “bulk determination” or mass return of the 267 asylum seekers. The removal of people will be “staged out”. Some may travel soon, some might be longer than six months.
Pezzullo also accused sections of the media of engaging in “advocacy masquerading as journalism”. He said coverage by some media outlets of asylum issues was “essentially pamphleteering”.
Updated
Passionate concern .. but ..
The prime minister is asked about the fate of asylum seekers in the wake of the high court decision. Again we get the hedged lines from Insiders yesterday. This is a delicate matter, the prime minister notes, that requires compassion ..
... yes, yes, with a passionate concern for those children ...
But the government can’t give people smugglers a marketing opportunity, Turnbull notes, because they will use it.
This situation requires a cool head and a big heart.
Updated
The prime minister is speaking to reporters after his session with the giant dominoes and the snakes and the ladders. Currently, he’s running through his explanations from yesterday about tax reform.
Malcolm Turnbull points out that everyone who wants to raise the GST wants to use the revenue for something different. He says tax reform does not necessarily require any adjustment to the GST. He says however the cookie eventually crumbles, the government is not interested in increasing the overall tax take.
The prime minister:
At this stage we have not made a decision about particular tax changes. We are looking at this very coolly and very rationally. We want to drive growth and more jobs.
Things that make you go mmmm.
Shorten is asked about Stuart Robert.
I think these are very serious matters. Malcolm Turnbull’s judgment is under question now. Minister Robert has to explain what he’s done, when he’s done, what have been his transactions. Has there been any conflict between his private relationships and his public role as a minister?
This is a most serious matter.
Shorten adds if the GST is now off the table, the prime minister will have to explain his swinging cuts to schools and hospitals.
It’s ok. We know what he means.
Q: Malcolm Turnbull has never said a 15% GST was going to be part of his tax plan. It’s only ever been Labor who have maintained this is the only proposal there. Given we have now seen senior ministers tell the ABC that the GST increase doesn’t appear to be part of the tax plan, does that make Labor’s attack here seem fruitless?
Bill Shorten:
Labor was right on day one when we said we were opposed to an increase. It was Mr Turnbull and his Liberals who said it was on the table. Australians in the last five months have seen reports from big business pushing for a GST, from some state premiers pushing for a GST, and there have been plenty of Liberals pushing for a GST. We didn’t come down in the last shower. If the Liberals think they can get away with a 15% GST they will do it. Clearly Liberal backbench MPs have been sufficiently concerned by the prospect of a15% GST that they, too, have joined the cry against a 15% GST.
I know what a Liberal government will do if they are re-elected at the next election. The 15% GST will be back on the table.
If you want to stop a 15% GST on everything, you can’t trust the Liberals, vote Labor at the next election to stop a 15% GST.
We have been the one consistent voice in this whole debate.
Politics is a game of snakes & ladders @TurnbullMalcolm & @cpyne early childhood center CBR @murpharoo @GuardianAus pic.twitter.com/HryuBbPbCw
— Mikearoo (@mpbowers) February 7, 2016
These men are not laughing at waffling with bushes. That is a complete coincidence.
Back to Shorten.
Waffling, with bush
I’d love to summarise the morning to date but I cant just yet because the prime minister is now beaming in a playground with kiddies in Canberra’s outer suburbs and the opposition leader is frowning in Yass.
To Bill Shorten first, on the GST.
Malcolm Turnbull has waffled up and down and all around the bush for the last five months.
Morrison is asked whether it is appropriate for Stuart Robert to use his prestige as an Australian government minister with his business mate in China? The treasurer is not amused. He says that categorisation is offensive and this morning’s story is a shocking beat up.
Here's your hat Jay, what's your hurry?
Q: Do you agree with Jay Weatherill’s comments that the Commonwealth is leaving the states to hold the can on health options?
Scott Morrison:
Jay has been making contributions to this debate. We have always welcomed that. But if the proposition was you should increase the GST to give the states a bucket of money to spend more, that has never been a proposition I’m sure you know I or the government have countenanced. I was very clear with the treasurers when we met last year. That has never been something the government has given any comfort to.
The treasurer has moved out of the studio to the Mural Hall to speak to reporters. He notes the reform conversation remains alive. Morrison, like the finance minister, is a man in search of a landing strip.
Scott Morrison:
Ultimately governments have to come to a landing. That hasn’t taken place yet but we are getting to the end stage of the process.
Q: A week ago you were talking about ready to go into bat for unpopular changes, boat turn backs, do you feel as though the debate has shifted since then because of political reality?
That’s for you to commentate on.
What I said last week right here was the government will seek to do what’s right for the national economy. That’s where we are at. We will do what’s right for the national economy.
Ray moves on to 457 visas. He doesn’t much like them. Then to the case of Stuart Robert. Ray senses a beat up here. Ray notes that Stuart went to China at his own expense. Morrison is inclined to agree with Ray about that, noting that Robert not only paid his own way, he was also on leave at the time. Ray notes that you tend to meet Communists when you go to China. Not too many fascists there. Treasurer: Haw haw haw.
Q: But you wanted to increase the GST?
Scott Morrison:
Not to raise spending, to deliver tax cuts. That’s the only way it could be done.
Morrison says people should know his focus as treasurer is on the strivers – the people who go to work and run businesses. Lowering the tax burden for them wherever I can.
But sometimes this can’t happen.
(Presumably like when the prime minister goes on Insiders and says no, I don’t think we’ll follow that particular road map.)
Scott Morrison:
On every occasion circumstances won’t allow it.
The treasurer is telling Ray when it comes to increasing the GST, the government was never going to increase the GST in order to give the states the money for schools and hospitals. Morrison says he was only interested in increasing the GST to deliver sizeable income tax cuts.
He says if that’s no longer possible, we’ll have to go the long road.
Speaking of no point in yielding to emotional gestures, the treasurer Scott Morrison is speaking now to his favourite radio host Ray Hadley.
Hadley sounds cranky about the Turnbull retreat in the GST. Morrison, who suggested the hike was on only a couple of weeks ago, and is now obliged to suggest that it’s off, sounds a little flat.
Tax reform is tough, the treasurer says.
The red sea is not going to part every time for you.
Outside estimates, Labor is turning up the temperature on Stuart Robert following his trip to China. Shadow defence minister Stephen Conroy says the trip (which I posted about at 8.56am) is a clear breach of the ministerial code of conduct. Conroy says if the facts are as reported then the prime minister should be asking for Robert’s resignation.
The head of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Michael Pezzullo, is first up in estimates. He’s pursuing a hardline against people who seek to come to Australia by boat, following a failed high court challenge against offshore detention. “You will never be settled in Australia,” Pezzullo said during his opening statement. “The path is shut with no exceptions.” The government has given the department very clear instructions on the matter, Pezzullo said. “The policy will not change ... there is no compassion in giving people false hope.” Pezzullo appeared to take a swipe at state and territory governments who have offered to resettle the 267 asylum seekers whose fate remains unclear as a result of the high court challenge, saying there was no point “yielding to emotional gestures” on the issue.
Updated
Senate estimates has begun its business for today. We have immigration, environment and regional affairs amongst other issues – I’ll tune in periodically and keep you up to date as much as possible considering the basic limitations imposed by being one woman with two ears, two hands and one brain.
Updated
A quick update about the fate of an Australian couple kidnapped in Africa. Foreign minister Julie Bishop has been on a media blitz this morning, talking about the release of Australian woman Jocelyn Elliott who was taken by an extremist group in Burkina Faso. Bishop has spoken to Elliott, who was in good spirits but the foreign minister remains concerned about the fate of her husband, Ken, who is still being held by the al-Qaida affiliated group. “We are greatly concerned about his safety,” Bishop told Sky News on Monday. “They [the Elliotts] are in their 80s.”
Updated
There is more to today than tax, so let’s catch up with a few other developments. A very good story this morning from Ellen Whinnett in the Herald Sun. Whinnett reports that the human services minister Stuart Robert made a “secret” trip to Beijing with a Liberal donor and friend who was finalising a mining deal.
Ellen Whinnett:
Robert told the Herald Sun he was acting in a “private capacity” when he attended a signing ceremony with Nimrod Resources’s Paul Marks and high-ranking Communist Party officials who run Chinese Government-owned company Minmetals. Mr Robert has previously said Mr Marks was a “close personal friend” and he’d bought shares in two of the Melbourne millionaire’s companies. Mr Marks has also donated $2 million to the Liberals in the past two financial years. Last year, then prime minister Tony Abbott flew on a taxpayer-funded jet to Mr Marks’s birthday party at Huntingdale Golf Club.
A bunch of ministers squatting in front of open microphones this morning have been asked about this story. No one is wanting to engage with the material. Everyone is saying they are not across the detail.
Updated
Over on Sky News, the assistant treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer is telling her host Kieran Gilbert that the government is currently kicking the tyres on all the options when it comes to tax reform.
Has the prime minister gone to water, Gilbert wonders?
O’Dwyer purses her lips ever so slightly.
This isn’t a masculinity discussion.
Right, now to business. The business community is Disappointed about this back track on the GST. We know this because the Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacot has also penned a tut tutting column this morning in The Australian Financial Review. If you are not an AFR subscriber, let me summarise: clap clap, chop chop, come along Malcolm, come along Bill you wicked terrible man. How can you go to water so quickly? Because, well, reform – which could, possibly not entirely coincidentally, involve lowering business taxes.
Jennifer Westacott:
The tax debate cannot afford to be limited to a simplistic fixation with one tax.
It has to be about how we organise the tax system to help grow the economy. This won’t be achieved by changing one or two taxes, but by changing the mix of taxes to create incentives that drive productive, growth generating behaviour.
It must be about lowering the overall deadweight burden of taxation including the burden borne by families and by businesses so our economy grows faster.
This involves the total tax package – income tax relief, reducing the tax burden on businesses and investment, how the states fund crucial services and how we compensate people for any changes we make, for example to the GST.
I have to keep ignoring business for the moment because the South Australian premier Jay Weatherill is taking his turn on the wireless. Unlike the finance minister, Weatherill is not searching for a landing point, he’s executing a Monday morning performance take off.
Politics Live readers will recall the South Australian premier has endured threats of foul deeds from his federal Labor colleagues in recent weeks for choosing to facilitate a national debate on a GST increase. Because, well, hospitals. Weatherill is facing a significant shortfall in health and education funding courtesy of an $80bn national cut to state government grants in the Abbott government’s first budget. He needs the money, and he’s been trying to give the prime minister some political cover to lead a debate that could lead to an improvement in his fiscal fortunes.
Given the prime minister’s decision to turn tail on national television yesterday, the South Australian premier has had happier Mondays. He’s penned a column for the Adelaide Advertiser which accuses the prime minister of being infantile.
Jay Weatherill:
Australians were promised a mature debate by the prime minister, but it now appears even he is not capable of having a debate that addresses both national revenue and expenditure together. Instead, we are back to the old Abbott model where the conversation about tax ignores the important debate about how revenue is spent. It’s infantile. We raise taxes to fund quality services — health and education being the most important.
Weatherill has been repeating these messages on Radio National. The premier notes he’s relaxed about the prime minister apparently dumping the option of a GST increase, but he won’t be letting him ignore the impact of the $80bn cut to services.
Weatherill also notes that it’s complete nonsense for Turnbull to argue that he doesn’t want to see an increase in the overall tax take when he is perfectly happy to see state governments increase their taxes to fund services. It’s a nonsense argument, he says.
- Note for readers. This post has been clarified from the original, which referenced the $80bn cut to state funding without making it explicit this was a national figure. Apologies, those summer cobwebs.
Updated
I’ll get to the business reaction on the GST switcheroos shortly, but first, a brief breaking update from the “heads we win tails we win” school of opposition politics.
Here’s Labor’s Doug Cameron, at the doors downstairs, having a crack (I gather) at the prime minister for not proceeding with a GST increase. This would be the same GST increase that Labor opposes.
Doug Cameron says Turnbull is the gov's "chief bed-wetter", for backing down on the GST #auspol pic.twitter.com/jpMLgm8PkJ
— Primrose Riordan (@primroseriordan) February 7, 2016
Hello, good morning, here we all are again
Good morning blogans, bloganistas, and welcome to the festival of dangerous ideas and borderline defamations that is Politics Live. It is truly delightful to be back with you for 2016.
Truly delightful to note too that despite the GST being fully on about a fortnight ago when the treasurer, Scott Morrison, gave his strongest suggestion yet that the goods and services tax hike was going to be on, (apart from on in health and education, where it would be off because that stuff was way complicated) – it is now off.
Well more than likely off.
Certainly not on.
Here’s Malcolm Turnbull, on the ABC’s Insiders program yesterday, on the subject of GST increases.
I remain to be convinced or be persuaded that a tax mix switch of that kind would actually give us the economic benefit that you’d want in order to do such a big thing.
Just in case that billboard-sized hint wasn’t quite big enough, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has been dispatched this morning in the direction of the wireless in order to tell Australians that the government’s tax reform package will be both growth-friendly and fair, and possibly will not contain a GST increase.
Unless of course, it does.
Cormann told the ABC’s AM program, then a bunch of hovering journalists in the corridor, that the government had not yet taken any final decision on this or any other tax related matter. The government was continuing the conversation and continuing to assess the evidence.
In an observation that could easily take its place in a merry light opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, Cormann, the very model of a modern major general, then went on to diagnose the government’s collective headspace.
Here is one man’s brave search for a landing point.
Mathias Cormann:
Right now, like the prime minister, all of us that are considering these issues, we haven’t reached a final landing point, so all of us remain to be convinced because that is obviously if we were convinced we would have made a decision by now.
So let’s open our collective proceedings this morning by noting a GST increase was more than likely on a couple of Sundays back, then more than likely off yesterday, then neither on nor off this morning.
My bet? Self evidently more off than on – but this is #auspol. Never leave the building.
Lots more on the go and I have all the cobwebs of summer to blast out of my head. I know you’ll help me with that which is why I’ve thrown open the comments thread for your business.
You can also reach both me and the Marvellous Mikearoo on the twits, even though I read reliably that Twitter is now dead. Despite those grim suggestions, do drive your chevy to that levee. Go on, you know you want to. He’s @mpbowers and I’m @murpharoo
Fasten your seat belt first though, because here comes Monday.
Updated
