My new chapter: a couch and some slippers
Well lovely people you’ve been magnificent. But I’m pulling up stumps for this evening. I’ll leave you with an evening summary and breaking news that Onions Australia (who knew there was an Onions Australia, but I’m supportive) will deliver prime minister Tony Abbott “a basket of onions, a cooked meal featuring onions and a list of onion recipes in a bid to promote its campaign against imported produce.” This is to reward him for biting into a Tasmanian brown onion, skin on. For reasons that remain somewhat opaque.
Besides that, today, Tuesday:
-
Christopher Pyne declared himself a fixer. Actually he declared himself to be the fixer. Labor declared the education minister a wrecker. While that gripping definitional debate raged, the higher education package rumbled towards defeat. It’s just come back on in the senate. There are some suggestions it could hit the fence as soon as tonight. Pyne is insisting he’ll bring it back.
- The Coalition and Labor have come to terms on metadata – well, as much as you can come to terms in the absence of any concrete detail. Labor says it will vote in favour of the government’s metadata package if the government produces an amendment forcing agencies to obtain warrants before accessing journalists’ private communications records. It’s not clear whether the government will agree to make the new warrants contestable, and whether Labor will insist that the government agree with that proposition.
- Tony Abbott offended Ireland on St patrick’s Day, which takes some talent. Bill Shorten probably offended monarchists by using a debate about the royal succession to say we need to become a republic.
That’s the guts of Tuesday.
Let’s do it all again tomorrow.
New chapters. Not so bad ..
The Australian Women’s Weekly is spruiking an interview with the prime minister’s wife, Margie Abbott, in the latest issue, which hits news stands tomorrow. Margie Abbott – who doesn’t exactly relish her public role – isn’t sounding troubled by the notion that high office could all end tomorrow.
Here’s a short extract.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a role I relish,” Margie Abbott has told The Weekly. “It’s a role I am delighted to be able to do, but when I don’t have to do it, that’s fine too.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Margie - who until recently was holding down another demanding day-job, managing a community child-care centre on Sydney’s north shore - says the prospect of Tony being turfed from office is one that fills neither her nor Tony with any great sense of dread.
“Well, it would be hard,” she says. “(But) life presents one with all kinds of challenges. Certainly (if Tony were no longer PM), it would be a new chapter, but new chapters are different, new chapters can be energising, they can test you. So I think I would view it in that way, and I think Tony would too.”
The metadata legislation must be coming up fairly shortly in the House. If you are just tuning in, here’s a compilation of what various people have said today.
Canberra blogger Paula Matthewson has written a terrific column for the Hoopla today on the collective Credlin fixation. It really is mad, the disproportionate focus on the prime minister’s chief of staff, and bizarre, how an unelected staffer has periodically loomed larger than the prime minister of Australia.
Paula’s had enough. And that’s utterly reasonable.
Here’s a taste.
Higginson’s description of Credlin as the harbinger of the earth’s final destruction, while evocative, is probably not the worst thing she’s ever been called. But it relegates him to the list of men apparently rendered powerless by the PM’s right-hand woman, who now cling to the idea that Credlin’s dismissal from that role will somehow magically cure the Government’s woes. As we’ve seen in recent months, that list of apparently disempowered men is not restricted to those who walk the halls of parliament. It also includes media moguls, senior journalists and conservative commentators. To a man, it would appear, each harbours an anxious resentment of Credlin’s close working relationship with the PM, and that he values her advice over most others’.
Is this a prop I see before me?
While we are wading through senate motions, the motion that Labor bowled up to criticise the Coalition for tying university fee deregulation to future research funding has also just passed on the voices, even though The Fixer has now uncoupled the two proposals. It’s all academic in any case. Forgive the pun.
Hours ago, I flagged a Greens motion in the senate criticising the prime minister for his aside about “lifestyle choices”. It feels a bit like a lifetime ago actually. It just passed on the voices.
While The Fixer is rebutting this outrageous allegation that he might, actually, be the messer-upperer – I have a moment to draw your attention to a “fact check” the AFP has issued today to refute various allegations today from the MEAA about authorities accessing journalist’s metadata.
Take it away AFP boss Andrew Colvin.
Commissioner Colvin said that over the past 18 months, the AFP has received 13 referrals relating to the alleged unauthorised disclosure of Commonwealth information in breach of section 70 of the Crimes Act. This offence specifically criminalises the activity of Commonwealth officials who have released Commonwealth information in contravention of their obligations, not journalists.
In the overwhelming majority of these investigations, no need was identified to conduct a metadata telecommunications inquiry on a journalist. AFP requests for accessing a journalist’s metadata are rare.
I appreciate Commissioner Colvin’s confirmation that metadata has been accessed in Crimes Act investigations – which is what many journalists are concerned about. We are not concerned about being terrorists or child sex offenders, or about George Brandis being able to peruse our playlist on Spotify.
We are worried about our capacity to deal with whistleblowers interested in public interest disclosures. We are worried about the impact on the people we have a professional obligation to protect. I think the commissioner has graciously proved our point.
Updated
Some brilliant Bowers pouring in from the chamber.
Three windows on the fixer.
This is a minister who has become a parody of himself.
Today’s matter of public importance concerns the fixer. Bill Shorten is speaking about the education minister. He suggests Pyne is not so much fixer as creator of problems.
The prime minister has placed further questions on the notice paper.
Madam Speaker has a dilemma.
Before people leave the chamber I might point out that I have a small dilemma. There is on the bench what I can only call a prop.
(A prop? Gasp.)
Madam Speaker:
This time it’s a soccer ball. I have to announce that there was a game this morning between the pollees and SBS augmented by professionals. It was Harmony Day and the pollees won 8-6. The prop will be removed but we will note that the Member for Ford was man of the match and he was indeed the goalie that was successful.
Balls down. As you were, blogans.
Back to Barnaby.
Q: My question is to the minister for agriculture. In his last answer the prime minister said that Dr Grimes had to go because of an irreconcilable conflict between Dr Grimes and you. Minister, what was this conflict and didn’t it really involve your handling of Hansard gate?
Joyce goes on the offensive, raising old allegations about Fitzgibbon.
Madam Speaker:
The minister will resume his seat. The Member for Hunter on a point of order.
Joel Fitzgibbon:
Madam Speaker, I have two choices available to me, I believe.
I can take a point of order on relevance or simply say I rest my case.
(Fitzgibbon means Joyce is stonewalling. The Joyce tactic here seems to be a rebuttal which suggests ‘you were so much worse than me.’ Which does not seem to be his strongest suit, quite frankly.)
Labor shrugs off Joel Fitzgibbon’s alleged Judas complex and comes back, on Grimes, to the prime minister.
Q: Given that the public service act requires that the prime minister advise the Governor-General of the reasons that he’s seeking the dismissal of a departmental secretary, will the prime minister advise the house of the reasons he gave the Governor-General for the dismissal of the secretary of the department of agriculture?
Tony Abbott says there is nothing to see here.
Well, Madam Speaker, let me just quote from the statement that was issued last Friday. It said that Dr Paul Grimes will step down as secretary of the department of agriculture. This follows a report under the Public Service Act of 1999 from the secretary of the department of prime minister and cabinet with which Dr Grimes agreed, that a relationship of strong mutual confidence between the secretary and the minister for agriculture was not a realistic prospect.
So Madam Speaker, there’s no question of wrongdoing by anyone here. Simply the absence of the relationship necessary between a minister and a departmental secretary.
My colleague Lenore Taylor has an update on the Grimes story today. “Tensions that resulted in the sacking of the secretary of the Department of Agriculture can be traced back to a decision by the prime minister’s office to appoint former environment department secretary Dr Paul Grimes to “babysit” the agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, government sources have suggested.”
After directing several Grimes questions to Tony Abbott, one goes to Barnaby Joyce today.
Shadow agriculture Joel Fitzgibbon wants details of a meeting with the former secretary on 27 October last year in which changes to the minister’s Hansard record were raised.
Joyce:
I think this issue was covered by the prime minister yesterday and he said that the questions taken on notice will be dealt with in the usual way. What I can say, Madam Speaker, is that we’ve had this fascination by the Member for Hunter for about five months on this issue.
In five months has been unable to prove anything. After two inquiries – two Senate inquiry, after an inquiry by yourself, Madam Speaker – he has nothing, he has nothing. Yet he has this nefarious pursuit, and it wouldn’t matter if he had Sherlock Holmes because we have told him the truth but he does not accept the truth.
He doesn’t accept the truth and why would he accept the truth ? This is the person who believes he’s been surrounded by Judases. Who would believe they were surrounded by Judases? Obviously someone who was paranoid or somebody who believes they’re Jesus Christ.
Updated
Labor is back with the curious case of the sacking of Paul Grimes. Labor poked about here yesterday. This is the story from last week. Grimes was terminated because of a breakdown in the relationship between him and his minister Barnaby Joyce. That was the rationale offered after the dismissal.
Bill Shorten:
Q: Why is the agriculture department secretary shouldering 100% of the blame for the issues and what steps did the prime minister take to acquaint himself with the conduct of the agriculture minister in this matter?
Tony Abbott:
As I told the parliament yesterday when I was advised that there were issues between the secretary and the minister I asked the secretary of my department to look into it. He did look into it. He brought some recommendations to me and I acted upon the recommendations, simple as that, Madam Speaker.
Labor’s Chris Bowen to treasurer Joe Hockey on his outing last night on Q&A.
Q: Last night the treasurer said, and I quote, “I’m always cautious about taking people’s money off them.” Was the treasurer cautious about ripping away $6,000 from Australian families? Was he cautious about ripping $80 a week away from Australian pensioners and was he cautious about abolishing the only tax concession low income earners get for their superannuation contributions?
Hockey doesn’t take kindly to that.
Well, I’m very cautious about policy announcements and making sure that they actually deliver what they promise. That’s why we haven’t promised things like Fuel Watch and Grocery Watch.
That’s why when we actually make promises we seek to deliver them. But I would say to the member for McMahon this, I have a great deal of respect for taxpayers. I have a great deal of respect for taxpayers that work damn hard to pay their taxes.
Labor is back to Julie Bishop, and a reference now to last night’s Four Corners program.
Q: I refer to the ‘Four Corners’ program last night. Was the minister consulted about the government’s decision to hold a competitive evaluation process to choose Australia’s future submarines and can the minister please explain what her understanding of the competitive evaluation process is?
(Four Corners reported that she was not consulted.)
Julie Bishop:
This shows an appaling lack of understanding of how our national security committee works but I’m not surprised, I’m not surprised at all given that the deputy leader of the opposition was such a supporter of the former prime minister who didn’t even bother to attend the national security committee meetings and used to send her bodyguard in her place.
So our national security committee deals with all matters of national security and if the deputy leader of the opposition had a more sophisticated understanding of how government works, she would understand that her question has an obvious answer.
(I think the foreign minister is trying to say she was briefed. Bishop never looks comfortable with these left field things, which I suspect is Labor’s intention in bowling them up.)
Labor has just attempted to ask Julie Bishop how hands on she’ll be in selling the budget in the future given she made an economic pitch to colleagues at a ministery meeting last night. This is a reference to a story in Fairfax Media today.
Pyne gets the question binned by Madam Speaker.
Pyne:
At best it could be hypothetical but it’s actually just based on gossip. I don’t know how the foreign minister can be expected to respond to it?
Madam Speaker:
It’s a reasonable point made by the leader of the House.
We only seek to make you happy, that’s all we seek to do, and you’re so easily pleased.
There’s exhibit A for that proposition sitting right there.
This is the minister for communications, Malcolm Turnbull, who is addressing his remarks to the opposition, and sledging Bill Shorten in passing.
Updated
Labor’s Mark Butler.
Q: Well my question is to the fixer, formerly known as the minister for education.
(Try again, Mark.)
Q: Given the prime minister promised a no surprises government, can the fixer tell us exactly where the $150m (for research) is coming from?
Christopher Pyne:
I can tell you where the $150m was not going to come from and it was not going to come from the Labor Party.
Pyne says the prime minister and he thought it best to link deregulation with research funding.
But.
When that became a distraction to the cross-bench I found the money. Why?
Because I’m a fixer. So I fixed it.
I found $150m and is the correct procedure, when the treasurer hands down his budget in May all of those things will be revealed as they should be in the budget process.
So I am fixing Labor’s problem. I’m fixing Labor’s failures because I’m a fixer, Madam Speaker.
Christopher Pyne.
Because no publicity is ever bad publicity. If people are talking about you, you are winning.
If you are Irish, step into the parlour
The Irish. They are everywhere.
From Ireland we have Minister Tom Hayes, minister of state at the department of agriculture ... that seems appropriate on St. Patrick’s Day and he’s accompanied by Mr Noel White, ambassador for Ireland to Australia.
Madam Speaker, introducing distinguished visitors in the gallery, today, St Patrick’s Day.
The prime minister has just noted that Christopher Pyne is the fixer needed to sort out Labor’s mess. Or perhaps the Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt was the fixer required to sort out Labor’s mess. It wasn’t entirely clear.
Madam Speaker is starting the offensive early. She’s already turfed the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke.
The prime minister is trying to get through a metadata Dorothy Dixer. There’s been some disruption in the chamber which has prompted finger pointing which is literally too stage managed and too boring to walk you through.
Tony Abbott:
Because changing business practices mean that the telecommunications providers are keeping less and less metadata, for shorter and shorter times, it is important that we pass the legislation that the currently before the parliament. It’s very important that we pass this legislation to ensure the telecommunication providers keep metadata records for up to two years.
Question time
Bill Shorten opens the batting at 2pm.
Q: Prime minister, what exactly in higher education has the fixer fixed?
The fixer, of course, is the education minister.
Tony Abbott:
Every single minister in every single portfolio is fixing Labor’s mess.
Behind the prime minister, the education minister is making a gesture of reeling in a fish. Abbott is off on the great Shorten inteviews of all time. Like an Irish joke, he notes. Perhaps not entirely helpfully, given he’s already offended the Irish once today.
(Not exactly backing in Pyne is it – for Abbott to note he’s not as terrible as Bill Shorten.)
Health minister Sussan Ley on the deployment to stricken Vanuatu.
Today we announce that an additional 20 Australian medical assistance team – known as Ausmat – personnel will be deployed to Vanuatu to work with local health professionals to provide emergency support and care at the damaged Port Vila hospital.
This team is made up of doctors, nurses, paramedics, a pharmacist, and all together will take our total health deployment to 27.
The team will work within the new wing of the existing hospital and with local staff to provide general practice and emergency care shifts.
I just heard Sky News replay this clip of George Brandis from this morning. I’ve pulled apart various contortions from the attorney-general through the course of the day, but I haven’t yet dealt with this one.
George Brandis:
This is not about journalists. We don’t think journalists or the journalist’s sources are likely to be involved in terrorism or in organised crime or in paedophilia.
Q: But sources can provide information relating to that and that’s the key here because it’s not so much to content that is the worry here it’s the actual metadata which provides agencies the identity of the source.
George Brandis:
And that’s why we have decided to provide special protections where an application in the hardly imaginable situation where a journalist or a journalist’s source might be the subject of investigation.
Let’s just pause Brandis here and make the obvious point that the AG forgets to make. Journalists are routinely subject to police investigation when there are unauthorised leaks. It’s a regular reality, not a hardly imaginable situation.
The metadata package will help agencies deal with all breaches of the law, not just breaches of the law that the government wants to focus on to make the sexiest possible case for its proposed policy change. The breaches of the law that touch on source protection are examples like breaches of the Crimes Act, or – God forbid – the new section 35P that prohibits disclosure of special intelligence operations.
Updated
Q: Ms Bishop, the Irish prime minister has made comments critical of Tony Abbott for his St Patrick’s Day message, maybe encouraging irresponsible consumption of alcohol on this most prestigious of days. I was wondering if the ambassador...
Julie Bishop:
Sorry, what’s the question?
Q: I was wondering if the Irish ambassador has complained about Mr Abbott’s statement?
Bishop:
I have not had the Irish ambassador complain about a conspicuous consumption of alcohol.
Julie Bishop’s interest in the economy, flagged in the last post, has been explored at a press conference the foreign minister is currently attending in order to update people on the damage in Vanuatu. Bishop is asked how important the budget is to the government’s political recovery.
Bishop thinks very important, actually.
We know that the changing demographic in Australia is going to put pressure on subsequent budgets, and unless we set our budget in the right direction, then the pressure will continue to grow on future generations. That is why the Howard government was spurred on to reduce debt and to put the budget back into surplus and save money to alleviate the burden of, for example, public expenditure on future generations. That’s what drove the Howard Government.
Now Labor knew that when they came into office. Labor knew that in 2007. They knew the consequences of debt and deficit on the Australian budget and the pressure and the burden it would put on future generations, yet they recklessly drove the budget into record levels of deficit and have driven up unprecedented levels of debt.
So that’s the challenge that we have.
And I believe that the intergenerational report will set that framework. We need to live within our means. We need to ensure that everyone who can work gets an opportunity to work, because we need to increase workforce participation. The figures in the intergenerational report spell out the challenge.
Feral senatez and peepz on the streetz
My colleague Lenore Taylor has been to the Coalition partyroom debrief.
She says the partyroom spokesman said that the prime minister had noted the recent Intergenerational Report had showed where the country had been going under Labor, and also showed that under the Coalition, the budget would be back in balance in five years. (Err, it didn’t actually. It showed that would happen if the government proceeded with savings measures that have now been dumped, so that account of the prime minister’s sentiments to colleagues is a teensy bit confusing. It could mean that billions in new savings are about to be unleashed. Don’t leave your desks folks.)
The prime minister also told colleagues the government had lifted the tempo of policy announcements in recent weeks, concentrating on things with meaning to people on the street. He noted the government had switched from things we struggled with because of the feral senate, to things that can be achieved without the senate.
Julie Bishop told colleagues the government needed to speak about the budget in broad thematic terms, which sounds positively Turnbullesque.
Christopher Pyne told colleagues if the education bill goes down, he will present it again in its current form. (A double dissolution trigger on higher education reform? I suspect the rest of professional politics would say make my day.)
Social services minister Scott Morrison thought Labor was intent in running the aged pension off the cliff.
Politics this lunchtime
Let’s take stock of the morning quickly. Tuesday morning, in five.
- Education minister Christopher Pyne has blamed the senate for the looming defeat of the government’s higher education reforms, and has vowed to press on with .. well, something else in due course.
- With legislation about the be introduced, metadata has been front and centre in the political discussion. Labor and the Coalition have executed a provisional handshake which might see legislation pass this fortnight with an amendment requiring agencies to get warrants before accessing material that could identify a journalistic source.
- The Labor caucus remains restive on this front, discussing the issue for 40 minutes in today’s regular party meeting. It is not yet clear whether Labor will insist on the new warrants being contestable – meaning journalists could be represented in cases considering whether warrants would be issued, and argue the toss about public interest and professional ethics.
- The Greens and Nick Xenophon remain restive as well – urging Labor not to jump on board with the government too quickly. Green Scott Ludlam says if journalists get warrants then why not ordinary people, who are entitled to basic privacy? Xenophon says warrants won’t protect sources, it’s just some new paperwork. Don’t kid yourselves peeps.
- Bill Shorten has used a debate about the royal succession to renew his calls for Australia to become a republic.
That’s the morning. Now here is the afternoon.
Looking back briefly for a bit more #BrickLOLs.
Here’s Nick Xenophon and Clinton Fernandes striding forth to deliver the news that journalists are stuffed.
Given the apparent proximity of end times, here is Nick Xenophon, mounting his Acropolyptic steed.
You see what we did there, right?
It is against the law to die in the British parliament.
This is Liberal Fiona Scott. Speaking in the chamber on the royal succession. A deluge of fast facts. I can’t currently keep up.
Just back to the caucus metadata debate, we will chase more particulars of course, but on the current facts, this broad point can be made: the Labor caucus has reached the end of its tolerance for simply rubber stamping national security proposals from the Coalition.
This end of internal tolerance is multi-factorial: part principle, part recognition that not enough detailed work was done on the first two tranches of legislation, part left wing MPs feeling some heat at the local level from the Greens and from their own progressive voters; and in this specific instance, a wary eye on growing opposition from the media industry.
Interesting times.
We need to stop borrowing a monarch from the other side of the world: Shorten
Down in the House meanwhile, the Labor leader Bill Shorten is all about breathing new life into the republic. The House today is debating legislation determining the succession to the British crown.
Shorten thinks Australia needs another it’s time moment. First, Australia needs to recognise indigenous people in the constitution.
Shorten:
We are no longer the nation of terra nullius and the great silence.
And it’s time, Shorten says, for an Australian head of state.
Our place in the world has changed and our constitution should change with it. We look outwards. We embrace the opportunities of our region.
We should go to the world proudly independent.
Labor MPs still nervous about metadata
The Labor caucus has met this morning and (not surprisingly) metadata has been one of the items on the agenda. It sounds like a substantial debate – which went for almost an hour. There were 15 speakers.
Senator Doug Cameron and a couple of other MPs, including Fremantle’s Melissa Parke, expressed concern that Labor had not gone far enough in the current negotiation with the government. Lots of questions about the detail. Some contributions were hedged – along the lines that Labor has achieved great progress through the intelligence committee and subsequently – and we need to keep going.
Caucus passed a resolution to support passage of the metadata bill contingent on the government producing satisfactory amendments.
Updated
Xenophon is also asked about Tsaoiseach-gate.
Q: What is your view on comments that have come from Ireland today about prime minster Tony Abbott’s St Patrick’s Day message?
What I would like to say would probably get me in trouble.
It is enough to drive you to drink.
Dear journalists – you are stuffed
Senator Nick Xenophon is continuing his efforts to argue against the metadata compromise. He’s brought along Clinton Fernandes, an academic with expertise in this field. Reporters are wondering why a system which imposes a warrant prior to revealing the identity of a source authority is worse than a system where currently, no warrant is required.
Clinton Fernandes
In the past if somebody were to try and contact a journalist, that person would have used a public phone, perhaps at a railway station or shopping centre. Today there is very few public phones accessible. You will use your own phone most of the time or a friend’s phone.
Q: The lack of public phones is the issue then isn’t it rather than metadata retention?
Nick Xenophon, moving in.
Look, the issue is fundamentally this – the warrant system being proposed will be completely ineffective because it means that the journalist or the media organisation will not have an opportunity to appear before the person issuing the warrant to argue their case in the public interest.
It will be a tick and flick way of dealing with it. It means there won’t be any protection. The warrant will give a veneer of protection when in fact it doesn’t do anything of the sort.
Unless you have an American-style system, our closest ally, where journalists and media organisations have the right to appear before the attorney-general and his office in order to argue the case for the public interest – then journalists, as a profession, will be stuffed when it comes to protecting their sources.
That is a fundamental difference.
I do love this from The Australian this morning. Reporter Rosie Lewis has had a chat with Zhenya (Dio) Wang, Clive Palmer’s only remaining senator, who is all on his own this week.
Wang remains the PUP whip.
This can involve whipping oneself.
I’ve always been whipping myself, anyway. I mean, who can whip the ‘Brick with Eyes’ (Senator Lazarus) and Jacqui Lambie? I’ve been going to the cross-whips meeting every day. Given Clive is not in Canberra this week, the partyroom meeting is just having a coffee with myself.
I did that three times already.
This St Pat’s day YouTube is threatening to become the greatest Anglo/Irish uproar since Iain Watters was oppressed in most unseemly fashion by Diana Beard on the Great British Bake Off. (Sorry if you haven’t seen this season and I’ve just spoiled it for you.)
When Irish eyes are not smiling
Oh dear. Tony Abbott’s St Patrick’s Day video, which I shared again in the first post, continues to go down like a lead balloon.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny is reportedly not amused. Take it away, Irish Echo. “Mr Kenny, speaking in the United States Of America ahead of a St Patrick’s day meeting with President Barack Obama, rejected the ‘perception’ internationally that Irish culture is synonymous with alcohol.”
Taoiseach Kenny:
I’ve heard the [Australian] prime minister’s comments. He made them. I don’t agree with that.
I think that it is perfectly in order for so many Irish people in Australia to have an enjoyable celebration of St Patrick’s Day and St Patrick’s week, and to do so in a thoroughly responsible fashion.
(Quick note to Kevin Andrews. Put down the Guinness.)
Updated
Tick, tock. Produce an amendment we can vote for, pronto, and you may be spared the spectacle of media bosses shouting at an intelligence committee hearing on Friday. Tick, tock. From a press conference a little earlier this morning.
Q: There is supposed to be a committee meeting later on to examine this particular issue. Will that committee still go ahead, the Coalition’s asking you to withdraw support for ...
Shadow communications minister Jason Clare:
That depends. It depends upon whether agreement can be reached on the amendment. The government’s got an opportunity over the next few days to develop an amendment and get the support of the opposition, the crossbench and Australian media organisations. If they can’t do that then it may be useful to have a hearing on Friday so that the chief executives of News Limited, Fairfax, Channel 9, Channel 7, Channel 10, ABC and SBS can provide assistance to the government to finalise this.
Updated
Just in case where we missed where the Greens are going with this pincer movement on Labor.
Turn up the heat on Labor: tell them not to side with Abbott on internet & smartphone surveillance #StopDataRetention pic.twitter.com/V5Cu4yoLXT
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) March 16, 2015
Ludlam says the Labor leader Bill Shorten needs to be eyes wide open in this transaction.
Do not throw this beleaguered failed prime minister a surveillance lifeline.
The parliament is better than that, and this country needs an opposition at the moment.
Get a warrant son. Greens senator Scott Ludlam, on ABC24, on metadata, and warrants for journalists – and for citizens.
Warrants ...
.. will raise the bar. It will mean it is not a simple exercise of paper shuffling to allow agencies to access journalists’ private communications.
But nobody is convinced that this fixes the bill apparently apart from Bill Shorten. The journalists’ union said overnight, they were scathing.
Why is the government so keen on coming after journalists’ sources in the first place and what about the rest of the population that will be subjected to the laws shortly?
We believe agencies, if they are doing intrusive snooping into peoples’ private information should be required to get a warrant – whether you’re a journalist or not.
The whole principle that the phone and internet records of millions of innocent people who aren’t suspected of anything should be archived for two years in case we turn out to be a security risk – that offends the principle of targeted, proportionate and warranted law enforcement.
Updated
Now for readers who weren’t with us yesterday, apologies for lobbing the apocalypse without context. The horsepersons of the apocalypse became a talking point yesterday ahead of a Four Corners story broadcast last night on the Liberal leadership turmoil.
A leaked text message referenced horsepersonship of the apocalypse. Very colourful, Liberals with axes to grind. In any case, I’m not sure the program broke any new ground. Judging by the flood of Coalition MPs who hit social media afterwards to declare the program completely and utterly boring, I’d say there was a considerable sense of relief after the show. Just poor old Ian Macdonald, being unhappy about everything again – but not in a mining costume, fortunately.
Meanwhile, the word for our newly minted Senate independent is on the T-shirt.
Updated
Full disclosure. #BrickPyne had to remove his tail before mounting his apocalyptic nag.
(Come, pestilence.)
Updated
Come.
We ride.
Who says a unicorn can’t ride an apocalyptic horse?
Proof positive. Magic happens.
Updated
Fifty shades of Fixer
More of The Fixer, who, like this blog, is off the reservation, in the badlands, beyond the reach of a warrant.
From whatever show Karl Stefanovic is on, this morning.
Q: Okay so you have overturned stones. You have said previously you would rather see the plan fail than be watered down too far. You also said you would not so adulterate the reforms that they are now meaningless. We’ve seen so many adulterated forms in this; it looks like Fifty Shades of Grey Chris.
Christopher Pyne:
Karl, only you would know about Fifty Shades of Grey, I haven’t read that book nor seen that movie.
Q: Well I wasn’t the one that said adulterated. That’s what it looks like doesn’t it?
Pyne:
I am not allowed to see movies like that Karl. That is a bit too racy for me.
But the point is, I have kept the deregulation, that has been the core. Now I’ve said that since the beginning of this debate in May that I would keep the core which is the deregulation. I’ve done that everything else I’ve stripped away so that the crossbenchers have no impediment to vote for these reforms.
But the core, which is deregulating and freeing up the universities to be their best – that very much remains at the centre of this reform.
Q: Okay Chris I am telling you this morning it’s a dead duck.
Pyne:
Well, Karl, I never give up.
Q: That’s it?
Pyne:
I never give up, no, I will not give up. It is too important.
Updated
It being Tuesday:
- The various party room meetings are under underway downstairs.
- I’ve mentioned that the metadata legislation is due to make its appearance in the House later on.
- The Senate is also expected to consider a Greens motion calling on Tony Abbott to apologise for his remark last week implying that living in a remote Indigenous community was a lifestyle choice. The Greens motion also calls on the federal government to reinstate the Municipal and Essential Services (MUNS) funding to Western Australia; and calls on the Barnett government to abandon its plan to close Indigenous communities and to instead work with those communities to deliver essential services and support.
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A bit like Tony Abbott’s rather unique St Patrick’s Day video – this little sequence from late yesterday will never get old. And when I say never, I mean never.
'I fixed it...I'm a fixer', @cpyne tells @David_Speers during debate about higher education bills #auspol http://t.co/H7zZlH1DhL
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 16, 2015
One verdict from the worldwide interwebz.
@murpharoo The Fixer - just when you thought the Higher Education Bill was dead and buried pic.twitter.com/tVWS3igifh
— Kate M (@KM2340) March 16, 2015
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Who says there is no joy in politics anymore?
Well, pretty much everyone.
There is, fortunately, joy still to be had on the soccer field. This morning’s case study is the Labor senator Stephen Conroy.
Victory is MINE.
(I’m told Conroy shouted in typically modest fashion “where are the cameras” when he booted one of his goals this morning in a match against a pro-SBS team to mark Harmony Day.)
Oh Foz, we didn’t know you cared.
So very much.
Step away from the broadcaster, Stephen.
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A lot of the fine-grained discussion around this morning about metadata and warrants revolves around whether or not the new warrant process for accessing journalist metadata should be contestable. Labor’s Jason Clare – the shadow communications spokesman – has been interviewed by Sky News this morning, where he addresses some of these points.
Clare is not quite at the point of saying warrants should be contestable, but he’s opening the door an inch or two.
This is a question that should be raised.
He says the media has put three positions: a complete exemption; a warrant-based process; and internal approval by a senior officer in law enforcement. Clare says Labor has gone with option two. The MEAA is pushing for a complete exemption for journalists, the media organisations seem to have landed on contestable warrants.
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I had to transition very quickly in the first post this morning from education to metadata – and in so doing, failed to mention that the education minister Christopher Pyne is saying today that the government will not give up if (when) the grand deregulation plan ends in failure this parliamentary sitting week.
The government will press on with reform to the higher education sector. Hopefully with a few lessons banked. Perhaps the foundation lesson might be don’t say one thing before an election and another thing after it.
Good God man, have some restraint.
Too early? Happy St Patrick's Day! #auspol pic.twitter.com/XT3kjVWztH
— Kevin Andrews (@kevinandrewsmp) March 16, 2015
Nothing to do with warrants or metadata – just a lovely picture which our technical outage prevented me publishing yesterday. It can’t be wasted. Madam Speaker and (former) Mr President.
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Now we’ve put Brandis’ position, here is what the MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy says about warrants, and why they won’t help.
Paul Murphy:
What needs to be understood is that no journalist, anywhere, can ever allow the identity of a confidential source to become known – that is a guiding principle of journalism the world over. It is a principle acknowledged by every Australian journalist in clause 3 of MEAA’s Journalist Code of Ethics: “Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.”
Accessing metadata to hunt down journalists’ sources, regardless of the procedures used, threatens press freedom and democracy. It means important stories in the public interest can be silenced before they ever become known, and whistleblowers can be persecuted and prosecuted.
It means journalists can be jailed for simply doing their job.
The so-called “safeguards” recommended by the parliamentary committee (on intelligence and security) were no safeguards at all because they still allowed government agencies to hunt down journalists’ sources.
Similarly, the prime minister’s proposal also allows those agencies to trawl through a journalist’s metadata in order to expose a confidential source. Putting a hurdle like a warrant in the way will not change the outcome: using a journalists’ metadata to pursue a whistleblower.
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For completeness, when the attorney general says there are new protections in the package, he’s nominated oversight by the commonwealth ombudsman, whatever this new journalist provision ends up being, and limits placed on the number of agencies that can currently access metadata.
Brandis:
First of all, the number of agencies, the number of government bodies that can get access to metadata, has been reduced from some 80 to about 20.
So it is now limited only to Asio, the police forces, state corruption bodies and the three big economic regulators, the ACCC, Asic and the ATO.
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Let me try and look through the obvious contradictions and contortions in Brandis’ framing in an effort to explain what I think he’s trying to say. The attorney-general is trying to say this package only formalises what already happens anyway (agencies can currently scoop up metadata, they do it all the time); he’s saying this new package from the government adds some safeguards that aren’t there now; he’s saying journalists should not fancy themselves above the law; but he also acknowledges that journalists do have special ethical and professional obligations to their confidential sources, therefore the government in its generalised benevolence will allow a situation where authorities will need a warrant for an inquiry that will identify a source.
I think that’s his basic rationale.
For the purposes of this discussion a journalist is a person engaged in the profession of journalism.
Brandis again. (You can see immediately how tricky this definition is going to get, can’t you?)
This is a very prosaic bill about business records.
George Brandis has already scampered out of the ABC studios and into the Sky News studios.
A very prosaic bill about business records that needs to pass the parliament with supercharged urgency. See what I mean about this? Really got to get these lines straight.
The point about letting media organisations have their say relates to part of the government’s motivation in trying to cut a deal with the ALP and push this through – the government would like to stop a committee hearing this Friday where media organisations intend to give this package a rocket.
By the by, I should have said. The legislation will be introduced into the House of Representatives today.
Q: Should media organisations be given an opportunity to argue their case?
George Brandis:
Media organisations are not the target of this law. The target of this law are criminals and paedophiles and terrorists. I regret that the debate about this law has diverted down this path about journalists, for heaven’s sake. Journalists are not the object of the law. This is a law that continues to guarantee the availability to the police, to the law enforcement, the national security authorities, essential evidence in criminal and terrorism investigations.
Q: How do you define a journalist because I mean that definition is pretty wide now? Are bloggers covered, for instance?
I wouldn’t regard bloggers as journalists.
(Uh oh. Politics Live is officially outside the law. Out in the badlands.)
Brandis says this metadata law, which the government says is so urgent it must pass the parliament this fortnight, is really nothing much major at all.
At heart, all this legislation does is to mandate the continuation of the status quo.
(It really is about time the government made up its mind on this question. It’s either vital, or it’s nothing. It cannot be both.)
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The attorney general, George Brandis, has hit the ABC studios to contend his metadata package has never been about journalists. He’s slightly churlish that the government has been moved to accept Labor requirements which he says have been raised late in the piece.
If it’s not about journalists, why not give journalists an exemption then?
George Brandis:
I don’t think journalists should be above the law but that having been said, we have recognised for some time in this country now, that the protection of journalist sources is something that the law ought to acknowledge.
We don’t think that this was really necessary because, as I said in answer to your earlier question, this was never about journalists, this was about law enforcement and national security, but in order to put minds at rest that this could affect journalists, we have agreed to create a limited exemption in relation to them.
Q: The MEAA, the journalists union, says even with the changes, the law still permits an outrageous attack on press freedom.
That is outrageous hyperbole.
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Good morning blogans, bloganistas, and welcome to gorgeous green Tuesday on Politics Live. Mike Bowers has been up with the sparrows chasing Tony Abbott around town on his early morning bike ride. I note that the prime minister has declined to wear green lycra for St Patrick’s Day. Ohhh, the outrage.
We’ll always have that video though.
The education minister, Christopher Pyne, is currently roaming the corridors of the parliamentary press gallery as we go live this morning explaining why he’s not to blame for the imminent failure of the government’s higher education package. That vote is expected tomorrow.
As Pyne just told Fran Kelly on Radio National, deregulation falling in a screaming heap is not a stuff up by him, or by the government – this is all the obstinate Senate’s doing:
I couldn’t have bent over further.
(I will get you out of this Benny Hill episode now, I promise.)
Rusted on PL readers know we had to part ways slightly early yesterday afternoon for technical reasons, so I missed telling you the biggish news of early Monday evening, which was Labor and the Coalition had come to terms on at least one controversial policy issue (well, sort of).
With angsty foot stamping in mogul row gathering pace, the prime minister agreed to Labor demands that police and intelligence agencies be required to get a warrant in order to access journalists’ metadata for the purpose of identifying a source. The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, has indicated that Labor will support passage of the government’s proposed metadata bill “subject to the text of (an) amendment being agreed”.
So it’s a provisional handshake more than a tied up agreement, right now, in any case. I suspect Labor thought bunches of congratulatory flowers might start turning up. Instead, the media union, the MEAA, said nup, not nearly good enough Bill; the Greens said ‘what the?’, and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon argued you can fool some of the people at least some of the time.
Xenophon:
The warrant will be a formality and journalists and sources will be investigated just as before. In the age of mass data retention, no journalist will be able to offer confidentiality to a source.
So that’s cooking away nicely. You can also cook away nicely because I’ve just opening the comments thread for your rolling insights.
You can also give me a shout on the Twits. I’m @murpharoo and the man chasing the other man on a bike is @mpbowers
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