Good night
Ian MacDonald has removed my will to live. No, not really. He’s just given us all a timely lesson in why one should always take the air or do some crochet or phone a friend before sharing one’s innermost thoughts with the world via some respectable means of self publication. He’s reminded me that you just have to step back from the keyboard. So I’ll do that after posting our evening summary.
Today, Wednesday.
- Welfare was the focal point. The long awaited McClure report landed with recommendations that the payment system be radically streamlined. The social services minister Scott Morrison liked the cut of the report’s jib, but was artfully non-specific about what recommendations he might ultimately adopt.
- The New Zealand prime minister announced that Australian troops would shortly enter Iraq on a renewed mission. The Australian government said we’ll get back to you shortly.
- The prime minister zipped to Sydney to announce that foreign investment was ok except when it wasn’t at an estimated cost of $3,300.
- When Tony Abbott returned to Canberra, the parliament wanted a piece of him concerning the matter of Gillian Triggs and alleged inducements to depart her position as president of the human rights commission. There were no inducements and this was all so beltway, the prime minister reasoned. Lying isn’t beltway, the Labor leader Bill Shorten noted, before withdrawing the unparliamentary term.
- In between 3 and 4, communications minister Malcolm Turnbull went to Queanbeyan and thought the focus on Gillian Triggs was somewhat counterproductive given the government actually had a good story to tell on kids in detention; and he thought political parties needed to take transparency very very seriously. He was sure that the Liberal party executive would take matters of transparency very very seriously. These were matters previously described by the prime minister as a storm in a teacup.
There was more, but that’s the main arc. Have a calm evening. Breathe deeply. See you all bright and early tomorrow.
#BrickIan jumps #BrickShark in #BrickParliament.
Updated
I read the addendum. What are these people raving on about?
Ian MacDonald. More.
Apologies for the random capitalisations. They are not mine. To understand this (and good luck) you need to understand that MacDonald mentioned at some stage during yesterday’s hearings that he had not read the report which formed the basis for all the controversy.
Some people looking on at yesterday’s antics thought this passing strange. MacDonald thinks it is not strange at all.
Thanks to all of those who have kindly (and not so kindly – they are the majority and are all Labor/Greens staffers, union heavies and staff and good old Get Up and old leftie journalists) – made media and social media comment on recent media reports on the Senate estimate committee on Professor Triggs and the partisan-ly titled report on children in detention, Forgotten Children.
If any of those who have abused me for not reading this partisan, inaccurate report had themselves bothered to read the facts on children in detention from any number of estimates on immigration – which sadly the Human Rights Commission [AHRC] itself didn’t bother to read – then they may have not been so quick to rush to social media.
Enormous effort has gone into caring for the children in detention with the very best medical and mental health and lifestyle support at significant cost. These children are anything but “forgotten” – maybe they were under Labor but not currently.
In estimates a year ago, and in November last year, the partisan nature of the inquiry was becoming evident. The actual evidence of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection which commented on the draft report, was largely ignored by the AHRC. See the addendum to the report where the department’s objections are published – but unfortunately mostly ignored.
I did read that addendum to the report – which confirmed the partisan nature of the report and confirmed also my decision not to waste my time on a report which was clearly partisan, about an issue which had largely been addressed – both getting the children out of detention, and looking after those with trauma issues from their time in detention. As the boats have been stopped, there is little likelihood of children ever again being put in immigration detention and therefore the report is worthless and irrelevant – unless of course Labor/Greens are returned to government.
Updated
I can't help it if there were all these women there
The Liberal senator Ian MacDonald – who had a shocker of a day yesterday chairing the star chamber-like estimates hearing that considered whether the Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs was a) guilty of blatant partisan hackery and thought crimes or b) was the recipient of a highly inappropriate offer of alternative employment while the occupant of a statutory position – has issued a statement that is not only shark jumping, but potentially Canberra’s first recorded episode of Sharknado.
Ian MacDonald.
Venting.
For those who have accused me of being sexist for trying to protect witnesses by admonishing senators who were shouting, yelling and interjecting constantly in an orchestrated campaign of disruption, my admonishment was to the perpetrators regardless of their gender.
It just so happens that all of the Labor and Greens Senators at the hearing, who were the perpetrators, were females.
Given the welfare outing today, we really could not resist. Sorry.
Scott Morrison, a chap of carrots and sticks. And after today, charts. One could almost think he might have his eye on a job where charts and power points and pie charts and statistics are front and centre. A job with a big annual event around mid-May.
Updated
Interesting sequence in defence estimates just then on the vexed business of the submarine purchase. We learned this morning, more or less, that the Abbott government basically ruled out Sweden from the possibility of building our new submarines in early December. That fact has been confirmed again this afternoon. A brief knocking out Sweden went to the defence minister in December. The formal decision was taken in January.
Late in January, Admiral Zammit, from the Defence Material Organisation, emailed Saab indicating that DMO would likely visit its facilities in February or March. (This was after the decision to exclude them.) Then on 10 February, David Gould from the DMO told the Australian Defence Magazine conference that Australia was in discussions with Japan, France, Germany and Sweden and “none of these have developed to a point of choice”.
This clearly wasn’t true. Sweden was already out. When pressed why a misleading impression was given, the defence secretary, Dennis Richardson, said the decision had not yet been announced by the government. Therefore it would be inappropriate for officials to preempt the minister.
True enough. But rough on the Swedes, you’d think.
Updated
VIP flight wars seems to have broken out in defence estimates. Liberal senator Chris Back is now seeking details of several flights undertaken by Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan, her former treasurer, during the previous government.
Air Vice Marshal Gavin Davies:
We’ll get those answers for you senator – but they are in the public domain.
Updated
Just a few more fabbo pictures from the chamber.
Updated
$3,300 for a press conference
I’ve poked my nose back into defence estimates. Labor’s Stephen Conroy has been pursuing the cost of Tony Abbott’s rather eccentric trip to Sydney this morning to announce foreign investment was good but foreign investment in real estate was not good (sometimes).
The cost of the return flight: $3,300.
Yowsers. That’s from Air Vice Marshal Gavin Davies.
Updated
OK.
Chums.
Chum bucket.
Updated
A complete treasure, this still from Mike Bowers. Work your way down the faces.
I’ll share some more shortly.
Updated
Not that it adds much value, but given the focus on Gillian Triggs I should have mentioned the Australian federal police has issued a statement following the referral of the estimates evidence yesterday.
The AFP will evaluate this referral as per usual processes. While this process is ongoing it would not be appropriate to comment further.
Updated
The suspension failed. The prime minister has asked that further questions be placed on the notice paper.
Speaking of chums.
Not chum buckets.
Updated
Pyne has done the entire Shorten back catalogue. That at least has cheered up some of their flagging colleagues, who are indulging a restorative shout.
We will be getting on with good government as soon as we have dispatched this particular motion.
Labor’s Mark Dreyfus has this by way of retort.
What on earth happened to good government, or was this before the period of good government because it was 3 February?
Updated
Christopher Pyne – manager of government business – grabs the chum bucket.
The Labor party are putting their head in the chum bucket. That is what they want to talk about. They want a big argument about a matter the Australian public would be thinking, ‘Surely our elected politicians have more important things to do.’
So we won’t be supporting this suspension of standing orders because we have a whole raft of business today on the daily program to deal with.
The Australian public know that this government is getting on with the job – getting on with the job to make their lives easier because that is why we are elected.
We aren’t elected to be involved in beltway discussions about what happened at Senate estimates yesterday. That is what the Labor party wants to do.
For the Frank Underwood of Australian politics to be lecturing us about trust and integrity is really the height of hypocrisy.
Updated
Lying is not 'insider nonsense'
Shorten:
Prime minister of Australia, lying is not insider nonsense. It is proof the attorney general and his government have failed the test of leadership.
When powerful men in remarkable positions of strength use their authority not to lead the nation but to attack critics, then we have a severe problem with the strength of our community and our government in this country.
Yesterday we saw the embarrassing and scandalous situation where the president of the Human Rights Commission was forced to sit two people down from the attorney general – a target – as the attorney general turned on her and attacked her.
Then what we see is she’s had to put up with the assassination of her character by the attorney general and by this man.
(This man. Shades of a certain ginger.)
We have seen an assassination of character. This is the tool in trade. I believe Australians are sick and tired of an angry Tony Abbott.
I believe Australians are sick and tired of the constant overreach of the prime minister of Australia.
Updated
Bill Shorten attempts to censure George Brandis over the Triggs allegations
Here’s the attempted censure motion. Shorten is attempting to censure the attorney-general, George Brandis. But first he must suspend the standing orders.
Shorten:
The House censures the attorney-general, one, for launching an unprecedented attack on the Australian Human Rights Commission designed to undermine its independence. Two, for treating an independent statutory office holder with contempt, and, three, for directing the secretary of the department of attorney-general to an offer or inducement to the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission in return for her resignation.
Updated
Well, I don’t know what Shorten QC is trying to establish here, but all he is establishing is he is not interested in the real issues that concern the Australian people. Yet again, Canberra insider nonsense – that’s all this is. Canberra insider nonsense, all he is interested in.
This riposte from Tony Abbott followed another Shorten question in which he attempted to reconcile the clear evidence to estimates yesterday with the attempt by the government today to change the subject and walk swiftly by.
Abbott:
Members opposite have no judgment that they are engaging in this dangerous nit picking now.
Shorten.
Q: My question is to the prime minister. Does the prime minister believe that the secretary of the attorney-general’s department gave truthful evidence to senate estimates yesterday?
Abbott:
Of course I have full confidence in the secretary of the attorney-general’s department. And I have absolute faith in the veracity of the secretary of the attorney-general’s department.
Madam Speaker, I welcome this line of questioning though. Because what it emphasises is the core problem, the core problem – and this is why this government has lost confidence in the president of the Human Rights Commission is that the president of the Human Rights Commission chose not to enquire into children in detention when there were almost 2,000 in detention.
The only way to get the children out of detention is to stop those boats and that is exactly what this government has done. That is exactly what members opposite weren’t capable of doing and that is why the most compassionate thing you can do, the best thing you can do, is stop the boats.
You failed, we succeeded.
Updated
More foreign investment is good but bad when Labor governments don’t enforce the rules.
Then. Bill Shorten.
Q: Yesterday, the secretary of the attorney-general’s department was asked about Professor Triggs. ‘Did you understand that he wanted her to resign?’ Moraitis replied, ‘That was an option I understood from the discussion.’ But today the prime minister directly contradicted the secretary of the department. So, prime minister, who is telling the truth?
(Looks like the prime minister might have been listening to Malcolm Turnbull. Pure speculation on my part.)
Abbott:
Let me make it crystal clear. Members of the government are happy to take any number of questions on this subject because, Madam Speaker, the president of the commission has not been asked to resign.
No inducement has been offered. The president of the commission herself seems to agree that no inducement has been offered.
And, Madam Speaker, all of these questions indicate, Madam Speaker, that this government has succeeded in stopping the boats and getting children out of detention, which is the real issue. It is the real issue, getting children out of detention. This government has succeeded – members opposite monumentally failed.
Updated
Shorten is back to inquire how Bishop’s answer tallies with the evidence yesterday in senate estimates given by the secretary of the AGD. The departmental head said Triggs was offered another role in the event she was to resign.
Bishop:
Madam Speaker, yesterday in estimates the secretary of the attorney-general’s department said that no inducement was offered to Gillian Triggs and that she was not asked to resign. Madam Speaker, I have spoken to the secretary of the attorney-general’s department this morning and he confirmed to me that Professor Triggs was not asked to resign, that she was not offered an inducement to resign and I would back the secretary of the attorney-general’s department over any one on that side.
The prime minister is then invited to tell the chamber why foreign investment is good right up until the time it is bad. He duly obliges. Abbott says foreign investment must be in the national interest. He must have forgotten that we have a national interest test.
Question time
It being 2pm. First question is on Gillian Triggs. Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus asks the foreign minister could she supply the answer she promised yesterday – Bishop undertook to inquire what situation Triggs was offered by the secretary of the AGD when they spoke on February 3.
Q: What was the alternative role the government wanted Professor Triggs to take?
Bishop:
I can advise that no such offer was made.
Semantics Wednesday, evidently.
The Turnbull transcript has just very helpfully lobbed. He has really hammered the Higginson stuff. Laid it on in fact.
Malcolm Turnbull:
You’ve got to understand, I’m not a member of the federal executive. So I don’t know the full nature of the problem.
All I can say is that transparency and accountability are critically important. It is very important that public organisations - and political parties obviously fall into that category – are as far as possible, and obviously there are going to be issues of confidentiality. Some contracts should be confidential and so forth, at least in some respects.
But really, the more open and transparent you are, the better. It is absolutely critical. The best antidote to suspicion or anxiety, questions about propriety even, is sunlight, the best antidote to all of those things is sunlight. Just put the facts out there.
Turnbull wades into the Higginson fracas
Morrison has wrapped. Thanks very much to The Australian’s David Crowe, who has filed after the Turnbull sweep to Queanbeyan. I don’t think we ever got a live feed of that event, so I’m indebted to colleagues who went out.
Interesting that Turnbull has bought in on the internal row sparked by the leaking of the incendiary email from the Liberal party’s honorary treasurer Phil Higginson.
This is what he said.
Transparency and accountability are very, very important in any organisation. From what I’ve read of the recommendations they seem pretty standard recommendations about corporate governance. Phil Higginson is an experienced director, company director, he is a corporate governance expert, he is regarded as an authority in that field. So I’m sure the federal executive will pay very careful attention to his proposals.
(This was the fracas dismissed by the prime minister as a storm in a teacup. Turnbull evidently begs to differ.)
Q: At moments like this it’s a chance for the public to try and understand what the government’s really talking about and your excellent speech didn’t go to the specifics. So can I ask you in terms of this report and the five new pillars of payments being considered – can you explain to me, because I’m a bit confused, for young people, just picking one area – what are you suggesting Australia needs to look at in terms of what access they would have to particular payments if they’re not working under 22, not studying. What is the actual plan and can you explain it in a way we can understand?
Morrison, vibeing it out:
Well I’m not making a proposal today and I think that’s the point. Patrick has made a range of proposals today about how the system could be simpler in the future and I’ve said that’s a worthy goal to work with, over a decade, over a generation – and that process needs to start now about how you frame that up, and where you start, and so all I’ve sought today, I think, is to lay out the ground work, if you like.
While invoking elegant non-specificity, he also makes a more than legitimate point.
One of the things often that governments are criticised for is they rush much too quickly to the solution without actually engaging in a broader conversation with the Australian people about what it is we’re trying to fix – and what we’re trying to solve – and that’s what I’ve endeavoured to do today.
Captain Cronulla transforms himself into chart man.
Updated
Q: You talked about the need to upgrade the quality of political debate. What specifically needs to happen in terms of the way politicians behave and interact with each other for that to happen? And how much responsibility can the Coalition take here for the current state of play?
Morrison says Labor has a chance to be bipartisan on childcare now. That’s what he thinks new politics is. There’s no mea culpa from him.
Q: Can I ask the simple question, are you still going to go ahead with the plan to require under 30s to wait six months before they can access the dole? Is that still going ahead or is that scrapped?
Morrison:
Every measure that’s on the table in the Senate remains on the table.
I want to be really clear about that and if someone wants me to take one of those measures off I’m going to put something else on because the rules are the same for other members of parliament as they are for the government. The budget needs repair.
Laura Tingle, the Australian Financial Review, keeping it light and bright.
Q: Taking on board what you’ve said, I plan to be here long after I’ve seen you off.
Morrison:
Wonderful.
Tingle:
I thought you’d be pleased. I just wondered, looking at your various areas of interest, the biggest spending area is in the aged pension; I wonder – and this follows a bit from Sid’s question – do we actually have to change people’s expectation or thoughts about the aged pension?
Morrison says he thinks there’s an intergenerational shift about what our expectations are of the system. For pensions on the pensions now, it’s situation normal.
But for the future generation, I think the deal changes.
Updated
We are into questions now.
Q: How do you actually convince people to work until they’re 68 or 69? I know I don’t want to work when I’m 68. Is it a carrot approach or is it a stick approach? Do we have to look at death duties?
Morrison:
No. No, no!
Q: And also, just - you seem to be trying to get more women into the workforce. Are you saying now that we’re at a point where Australia can no longer afford for women to stay home and look after their kids?
No, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that.
I said that was a matter of choice for Australian families.
Morrison says the capital held by older people has to be unlocked. He means wealth, assets.
These charts show how we hold on to our wealth and capital in our latter years. We can’t take it with us but we’re not convinced, it would seem, because we hold on to it for as long as we possibly can. And the question we have to ask ourselves in the conversation we’re having about this issue is: Is it a lost opportunity?
He says he’s not talking about putting the family home in the assets pension test.
I think I made that pretty clear to Fran Kelly that that wasn’t on last week. It’s not on.
There are two areas I would suggest that we need to look at. Obviously, labour force participation and encouraging people as they grow older to work longer.
Morrison says this means women in particular. They need to work for their grandchildren. Who need Christmas presents.
One of the ways you can supplement and support and increase your income in older years is to work longer and if you’re healthy and happy in your work then please keep going. That’s what we’d like you to do.
It’s good for you, it’s good for your family, it’s good for the country and every Christmas the grandchildren will be stoked, absolutely stoked.
So I would encourage you, even for your grand children and that happy smile on that wonderful morning, to work those few extra years.
The third issue is ageing.
Morrison:
I don’t have the view that the ageing of the population is a terminal illness for the country. That’s not my view.
(Thank God for that.)
So where do we start? There are three areas that I would nominate to you as being the areas that I’m keen to work on and my colleagues are as we work through the course of this budget and the budgets that follow.
Morrison says participation by families (he means women really) is very important. That’s the first issue of the three. This means childcare and making that more affordable. Quality is important, he says, but it’s not the only issue. (There is a powerpoint. Red lines, triangles.) Oh here’s his favourite line – unfunded empathy. Labor are the unfunded empathy people.
The second issue is getting young people into work.
Morrison:
We need them to be learning or earning. The level of employment has been falling off, the level of unemployment has been rising, those not in the labour force have been increasing – the one bright spot is those in fulltime education has also been increasing and that’s a good thing.
But when it comes to addressing this problem and this challenge we are going to have to take I think, a very novel approach.
There’s a quite interesting leg in the address now about reform fatigue.
Morrison:
My concern is that right now there seems to be no appetite for the change that is necessary.
Unless we are able to move to a better system that better reflects the needs of the next generation and even this one, then change even incremental change will not be possible. That is the modern political reality.
Morrison says failing to act now is consequential for future generations.
It is not just about whether we are better off or worse off as a result of any individual measure that is introduced. It’s about will the next generation be better off or worse off?
I understand the focus on whether people will be better or worse off under precise changes that are introduced into any system. Of course we understand that. But at the end of the day, as a member of parliament, as a minister – and I’m sure echoing the views of my colleagues in this room – we don’t want to leave something worse for the next generation.
I think that needs to impact on the political debate in this country. Change will not happen if there’s not an appetite for change and we need to work on that appetite for change because the need for it is very real – and there are millions of Australians who, in the future, are depending on it for it.
To the substance of the McClure recommendations.
While these proposals have been put forward as a report to government, not from government – and that’s a very important distinction to make – they do point a way forward, I believe, for the next generation of necessary change in this area.
The changes proposed and the way to achieve them are not revolutionary but medium to long-term change that can be achieved incrementally.
Our welfare system must respect those who need our help and depend on that help but it must, as I said before, respect those who pay for it and that is the taxpayer. Our welfare system must be based on need not entitlement. Every payment must have a purpose and it must deliver the outcome, the benefit that the taxpayer is paying to provide.
Another zinger, to round out a section about how welfare reform will require an overhaul of IT systems and streamlining of benefits.
Morrison:
Implementation of policy is as important as the development of policy. I think that is one of the key lessons out of the last government. Lots of ideas, you could say it was a festival of dangerous ideas running for six years, but nevertheless, even when they had a good idea the implementation of that policy always let them down. We won’t be repeating that mistake. We want to ensure the sort of change we can implement are changes backed up by the systems that need to drive it.
Morrison is trying to work the light and shade. We’ve had a Kevin Rudd joke and a walkman joke, a Cliff Richard reference and a Duran Duran reference.
Hungry like the woolf. (Sorry, that was me, not Morrison.)
Scott Morrison addresses the National Press Club
Honey, welfare just swallowed the budget. Scott Morrison opens an important outing for him today thus.
Morrison:
It’s very important that we understand that every single benefit paid is paid for by a taxpayer and there are two partners in that process, the people we’re trying to help and the people who have to pay for it.
Australia has historically kept the cost of its welfare system below the costs of some overseas models through its flat-rate structure and its means testing and means-based approach.
In many ways we’re world leaders in these areas however social security and welfare payments are still the highest growth areas of government.
Unless there is major structural change that is made to our welfare system over the next decade and beyond, over a generation, our social services expenditure will swallow the budget.
Quick stocktake, el desko
Very quickly let’s just put some foundations under our feet. Politics, this Wednesday lunchtime.
- The McClure report has recommended streamlining welfare payments into five categories, restricting access to the DSP, and witholding payments in some instances for young people under 22.
- Tony Abbott has declined to confirm the John Key-inspired newsbreak from across the ditch that we will shortly be upping our commitment in Iraq. No final decision yet. I’ll tell you when I’m ready, the prime minister has said.
- The government is proceeding (with a discussion paper in any case) with some new procedural hurdles placed before foreign investors in Aussie property. Tony Abbott told reporters Australia would be open for business except in instances where it would not be open for business because foreigners must play by the rules that the government might change.
- Malcolm Turnbull, out and about, thought that all the focus on Gillian Triggs and her heinous thought crimes might just obscure the policy progress the government had actually made in getting kids out of immigration detention. Is this man mad?
Now, here comes the social services minister at the NPC. Refresh beverages. Stretch necks. Roll shoulders.
Over in defence estimates, they are rolling around to submarines and the competitive evaluation process the prime minister invoked abruptly in the middle of the muddle of the leadership spill debate.
Labor’s Stephen Conroy would like to work through the processes behind the scenes prior to the February 8 (sort of) announcement by the prime minister. Defence secretary Dennis Richardson says the department came to the view late last year that Sweden would not be part of the process. He said work had been underway with the Japanese, French and Germans for some time.
We were working on those three options, really, for a long time.
Conroy says he’ll come back with further questions after the lunch break.
I’d best start our transition back to McClure. Social service minister Scott Morrison is coming up shortly at the NPC.
Malcolm. Moving on out.
Straight from the textbook of quotes with multiple meanings.
I did mention earlier that the communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has been in Queanbeyan. We are yet to see a full live feed of that event. The ABC has broadcast one quote. This one.
Malcolm Turnbull:
I know Gillian Triggs - I’ve known her for some years. She’s a very distinguished legal academic but this debate about Gillian Triggs, it misses the main point. The main point is the children. Children in detention is something nobody wants. We certainly don’t want that. What we have – our policy has demonstrably resulted in children being taken out of detention so that’s what we should be focused on.
Choose your own meaning. A criticism of Abbott and Brandis for making the messenger the focal point rather than the government’s progress in getting kids out of detention? Possibly that.
Updated
Back down in defence estimates.
Stephen Conroy to the attorney-general George Brandis (the minister at the table for this hearing, given the defence minister Kevin Andrews hails from the House.)
Q: Have you had a phone call yet from the AFP senator Brandis?
Brandis:
[Silence.]
Bit rude.
Ok.
Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane may have just won Wednesday.
Back at the office - defending and promoting human rights. Pres @GillianTriggs addressing @AusHumanRights staff pic.twitter.com/TVZTKk7AlK
— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) February 25, 2015
Big call I know.
Dignity. Always dignity.
Updated
It really is remarkable how confused the daily messaging is becoming as the government transitions from being on the front foot to the back foot. All the new slogans have to line up against the old slogans – problem is, they contradict one another. Pretty much constantly.
Will Australian troops go to Iraq?
(Abbott: I’ll get back to you.)
Q: Why jump on a plane and come to Sydney to announce this during a sitting week rather than doing so in Canberra?
(Good question. It’s pretty eccentric, this.)
Tony Abbott:
Because Sydney is the epicentre, if you like, of these sorts of real estate pressures and I think it’s very important that we are here where the problem is, where the issue is, to make this announcement.
Updated
Q: Prime minister, it’s been revealed at estimates today that the department of defence, that you had a dinner on 25 November which include the secretary of the defence department and I think the chief of staff to the US Air Force. Was there any discussion at that about this whole idea of Australia sending troops into Iraq?
Tony Abbott:
Look it was a very wide-ranging discussion but there was a story which your newspaper ran, and the secretary of defence, who was there at the dinner, said that the story was false.
(In terms of “your” newspaper – the questioner was Peter Van Onselen from The Australian.)
Updated
Good foreigners and less good foreigners
Abbott tells reporters he’s not here to consider longstanding alternatives to improve housing affordability like getting rid of negative gearing.
Q: Is this actually going to make it easier for first home buyers?
It will mean that foreigners who aren’t playing by the rules won’t be there in the system, that the only foreigners that will be in the system, competing, are those who are playing by the rules, not those who are playing outside the rules.
Open and shut to foreign investment, in continuation
The prime minister says he’s releasing a discussion paper floating various things. Treasurer Joe Hockey says the various things include:
- a range of civil penalties and fees associated with foreign investment in Australia;
- any foreign investor that wants to buy a residential property under a million dollars faces a $5,000 application fee;
- over a million dollars, it will be $10,000 for every extra million dollars in the purchase price;
- a new register set up so that we know how many foreign residential and agricultural property owners are in Australia;
- if anyone does break the law then we can fine them up to 25% of the value of the property as well as forcing them to sell the property.
Abbott:
There will be a system of application fees for the first time for the foreign investment review board. It’s comparable to the system which has long operated in New Zealand.
While we do want the rules to work, we also are open to foreign investment and we welcome foreign investment but it’s got to be foreign investment which in our national interest.
Yes, foreign investment has been very, very good for Australia but it’s got to be the right foreign investment under the right circumstances properly policed and it can’t disadvantage Australian home buyers.
Tony Abbott is wheels down in south west Sydney.
It’s great to be in the electorate of Barton, great to be in the heartland of our country. This the heart of Sydney, the heart of multicultural Sydney and it’s good to be here with the treasurer. Obviously, part of the Australian dream is owning your own home and we certainly want the dream to continue. Joe’s been a home buyer, Margie and myself have been home buyers, there are millions of Australians who want to real these dream of owning their own home.
(Err, wut?)
Ah, this. The prime minister is announcing Australia is both open and shut to foreign investment, which is how the lines roll these days.
It’s not easy but the job of government is to try to ensure that there are no unnecessary obstacles put in people’s way and unfortunately the rules against foreigners purchasing existing residential land simply weren’t enforced by the former government.
Updated
We have the prime minister in Sydney and the communications minister is in Queanbeyan. While we wait for stars to align – I missed it in multi-tasking, but folks out of estimates tell me that Richardson and Binskin did tell the committee that they attended a dinner with the prime minister and the US ambassador on November 25 – which was the date cited in The Australian as the point where Abbott floated the idea of Australian troops going into Iraq solo.
As I reported earlier in the running coverage of estimates, Richardson has restated this morning that Abbott never raised the idea of troops going unilaterally with him, or the CDF.
The former DLP senator and current independent John Madigan famously declared recently that submarines were the spaceships of the sea. Today he’s concerned that Binskin, an airforce man, may not be best placed to be a submarine expert. Binskin isn’t happy with the inference.
Back to estimates. Stephen Conroy is asking about the reports last weekend in The Australian about the prime minister mulling in November last year a unilateral Australian invasion of Iraq. Conroy wants to know about the statement that was issued subsequently by Binskin and Richardson. Why did it take days to issue a statement?
Richardson says the statement was his initiative. He said he was moved to issue a statement because the journalist, John Lyons, continued to repeat the suggestion beyond the Saturday publication.
Dennis Richardson:
I will not make any comment in respect of the journalist. He obviously sincerely believes what he’s been reporting. I would simply note that this report in The Australian is very specific.
Dates, numbers, floating the idea with Australia’s leading military planners. Richardson says he’s checked with everyone who could plausibly be considered a military planner.
As far as we are concerned, the claim is false.
Updated
Q: There are suggestions Australia may be sending more forces to Iraq. Is that something Labor would support?
Bill Shorten:
The government hasn’t briefed us directly on this matter. When they do, we will look at the matter with great seriousness.
On Triggs.
Q: Why does Labor think the AFP needs to investigate?
Shorten:
Well, that’s part of what the AFP does. And the other thing is, this wouldn’t be an issue except the government has decided to shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message of this report about children in detention.
The government’s got to stop trying to shut down and hound out people who disagree with (them). What we need in Australia is not a government yelling and shouting and using the full force of its bully pulpit to force people into silence, surrender or resignation. What this government should do is to its day job.
The off campus visit is about childcare. The first question is on welfare – and whether Shorten is concerned his shadow spokeswoman Jenny Macklin hasn’t read the bit in the McClure report which says people won’t be made worse off. Shorten is not concerned about that, no.
We’ll work on welfare reform with the government if that’s what they want to do but Labor will never sign up to harshly kicking people when they’re already down.
The Labor leader Bill Shorten is out and about in Canberra. His opening salvo is on the bad frozen berries.
I speak of course of the public health scandal arising from the contaminated berries imported from China. Not once but twice during the week, in the parliament of Australia, we have asked the prime minister of Australia simple questions: how many people have possibly been exposed to the contaminated berries? He did not know the answer.
How many people have been exposed and the prime minister cannot tell us is it 100,000 Australians, 200, 300,000 – half a million Australians? That’s simply not good enough.
Back to defence again. Conroy is getting prickly about not being in the loop about this obviously just set to be announced troop deployment. He’s citing recent statements from Key and from the Cameron government indicating that Australia is leading a new training coalition behind the scenes. Everybody seems to know about this apart from the opposition and the Australian voters, Conroy suggests.
Dennis Richardson:
No final decision has been taken by the Australian government.
I should have noted earlier, ahead of Scott Morrison’s outing to the National Press Club on the McClure report, that Labor (and others) will make today about the level of the reconfigured benefit payments. It’s all very well to talk welfare reform in theory, but Scott needs to show us all the money.
Labor’s families spokeswoman Jenny Macklin.
I say to Scott Morrison today he needs to guarantee to vulnerable Australians that there will be no cuts to their income support. No cuts to pensions, no cuts to benefits that would see these vulnerable Australians worse off.
Three years is more realistic: Richardson
I think two years would be optimistic.
That’s the defence secretary Dennis Richardson on the time span involved in training Iraqi forces. Three years is what the Americans speak of and that’s more realistic. Richardson says Islamic State is not a rabble of foreign fighters, it’s a brutal fighting force lead by former Iraqi generals. This is about as hard as fighting gets. Richardson says addressing the ethnic divide between Sunnis and Shias is critical to any resolution.
Ultimately this is Iraq’s fight and the Iraqi government has to want the unity of their country.
[Note to readers: the original post attributed the timeframes cited by Richardson to an exit from the conflict in Iraq. I misunderstood what the defence secretary was saying. He was speaking about the timeframes required to strengthen the Iraqi military, not to exit timeframes. Apols.]
Updated
On timing again. Binskin says deadlines for exits can’t and should not apply to this conflict. He suggests Australian forces are just getting their eyes in – we are just starting to get an idea of their abilities. (This is the Iraqi forces). Right now it would be difficult to put a time on it, nor do you want to put a time on it, Binskin tells Conroy.
You put a time on it and the enemy waits you out.
Conroy asks Binskin how long we are likely to be Iraq on the current mission. Binskin notes diplomatically that there is an opportunity to change the focus of the mission. But that’s a decision for government.
The prime minister has zipped. To Sydney. To Kogarah to be precise. For an event mid morning.
Updated
Binskin: no decision yet on Australian troop deployment
Labor’s defence spokesman Stephen Conroy.
Q: Now, just while we’re mentioning training the Iraqi forces – did I read correctly that the New Zealand prime minister announced yesterday on the floor of his parliament that New Zealand is sending forces?
Binskin:
You did. For training.
Q: And did I read correctly he announced that Australia is sending forces as well?
No, I think the New Zealand prime minister made a broad statement there. And I and my New Zealand counterpart have worked very, very closely on developing options that were put to both governments.
The government of Australia is yet to make a final decision.
Q: So the fact that the prime minister of New Zealand’s announced our deployment, you’re saying there that’s no such decision been made?
Actually I don’t think the prime minister announced our deployment.
I think he said contingent on an Australian decision.
Just while I’m listening to the CDF, brilliant pictures from Mike Bowers. Here’s the prime minister from the ovarian cancer function just before.
We can go all Doctor Phil and be silly so let’s avoid that. Instead let’s just note the demeanour and body language and walk on by.
Updated
Their leadership hides.
This is the CDF, air chief marshall Mark Binskin, making an opening statement to defence estimates. He’s talking about Islamic state. We are bombing. They are hiding.
I will be encouraging other Senators to support a censure motion against Brandis. Character assassination of Triggs, is the last straw.
— Jacqui Lambie (@JacquiLambie) February 24, 2015
Ok. Stay tuned. Estimates this week obviously. Incidently I’ll tune in to defence at 9 just in case there might be clarity on troop deployments. Isn’t is wonderful that 18 years in this building haven’t dimmed my optimism? (Perhaps because it’s actually 16 years. I spent a couple of years with bairns.)
I run my office.
Updated
The shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus is digging on on referring the Triggs allegations to the police. The ABC’s Michael Rowland says Gillian Triggs – an eminent lawyer – didn’t use the term inducement in her evidence before senate estimates yesterday. So why does Labor think this is an inducement?
Mark Dreyfus:
She knows it’s a term that’s got a particular meaning in the criminal law. She’s not going to characterise it and what I’m saying is is that it’s for the Australian Federal Police to investigate further, to interview those concerned and if appropriate to refer it to the director of prosecutions.
Even if we get there though it’s already apparent that this attorney-general is not fit to hold the office that he holds.
It’s his job to defend holders of high independence office like Professor Triggs, the president of the Human Rights Commission. Just like it’s his job to defend the judiciary. It’s his job to uphold the rule of law.
And rather than defending Professor Triggs and the Human Rights Commission, what this attorney-general has done is to join with and assist in the prime minister’s attack on the Human Rights Commission.
A statement just now from Tony Abbott regarding his visit to New Zealand later this week. Still no concrete confirmation of the troop deployment.
This week I go to New Zealand for the annual Australia-New Zealand leaders’ meeting. Australia and New Zealand are family thanks to shared history, deep integration and the ability to work seamlessly together. On 27-28 February, prime minister John Key and I will discuss a range of bilateral and international issues, including combating terrorism, foreign fighters and the situation in Iraq.
At the Auckland war memorial museum, I will lay a wreath to mark the 100th anniversary of world war one before attending the 10th Australia-New Zealand Leadership Forum, which brings together business, government and community leaders to discuss how to develop our bilateral partnership. To celebrate our co-hosting of the Cricket World Cup, I will attend the Cricket World Cup Australia-New Zealand match. I look forward to meeting New Zealand firefighters who have battled bushfires alongside their Australian counterparts in our times of need.
Updated
McClure also argues that people currently on Newstart could be better off if the recommendations of his report are adopted. There has been a substantial debate about Newstart, with both business and welfare groups reasoning the current benefit is currently low enough to be counterproductive – that recipients have little chance of having the means to get themselves work ready.
Q: You also say that new unemployment payments should be adequate enough to afford a basic acceptable standard of living. Do you think that the current system does because many people say Newstart, for instance, isn’t enough to live on and should be lifted?
McClure:
It would be extremely difficult to live on that level of payment, there’s no doubt about it.
But in what we’re proposing many people will be better off than in the current system because we are advocating a supported living pension which would take the place of a disability support pension – but we’re also proposing a working age payment with an upper, a middle and a foundation tier.
Many people that are currently on Newstart would be either on the upper or the middle tier. So it would mean that they’d be significantly better off and closer to the supported living pension level.
Updated
The prime minister and the opposition leader have addressed a function in the House for ovarian cancer awareness.
The author of the welfare review, Patrick McClure, meanwhile, has been interviewed by the ABC. He’s asked about one of the recommendations in his report that income support shouldn’t be generally available to young people under the age of 22. What happens to the kids on youth allowance? McClure says that recommendation reflected evidence that kids are living at home for longer.
Patrick McClure:
If a person was living independently obviously if there are exemptions, they are living independently, for example, they could be homeless, could be a range of circumstances that they had to live independently. (If they) could show that they were living independently then they would get access to the payment. But 22 was the age that we’ve set for the child and youth – child and family payment.
While we are still vaguely in the Higginson space I should mention something I evidently missed in the hurly burly of yesterday. Thanks to the Australian Financial Review’s Phillip Coorey, who reports today:
Clive Palmer has fuelled unrest at the highest levels of the Liberal party by revealing he quit the organisation because he was unable to find out how his large donations were being spent. Mr Palmer, who plans to make further allegations in Parliament this week, spoke out on Tuesday after the Liberal Party’s honorary federal treasurer Phil Higginson effectively resigned, citing a lack of adequate governance over the organisation’s finances. “I have attempted at times, without a great deal of success, to maintain a close watch on where the money went, due to stonewalling and obfuscation by management,” he said.
Just a note. Apply the obvious Cliev discount, but it’s interesting, so we’ll watch and wait.
Updated
Facts and insider LOLs
Finally the foreign minister gets called on her cute formulation. I’ve flagged in the first post this morning that Julie Bishop is doing the rounds of breakfast television this morning to clean up bits and pieces.
She’s called by the Sky News studios.
Bishop was asked about the leak yesterday which we covered on Politics Live which exposed concerns from the Liberal Party’s honorary federal treasurer Phil Higginson about conflicts when the prime minister’s chief of staff is married to the party’s federal director. The question this morning was (as it often is along this corridor) – should Peta Credlin go? (Whether Brian Loughnane should go is less often asked in my corridor. It is asked sotto voce around the Liberal party. But let’s not digress too much with the feminist outrage.)
Since kicking Peta Credlin for sport became authorised conduct in Liberal party and amplifying media circles, Julie Bishop has crafted a mildly passive aggressive formulation on this “should Credlin go” point – “I don’t tell the prime minister how to run his office and of course he doesn’t tell me how to run my office.”
In fact efforts were made to tell Julie Bishop how to run her office: this is an open secret in Canberra, which makes her formulation more insider LOL than fact. Finally Kieran Gilbert at Sky calls her on the formulation.
Q: But they did tell you how to run your office.
Julie Bishop’s smile would stop traffic.
I run my office.
Updated
The immigration minister Peter Dutton has just been interviewed on Radio National and he’s been asked about the referral of the Triggs allegations to the police.
Nothing in it, says Peter Dutton:
If they’re referring a claim off to the police that’s fine, there’s nothing in it. I think it will be an unsubstantiated political letter that Mr Dreyfus will wave around for his own political benefits. It’s without foundation.
I think Senator Brandis has acted entirely appropriately. It’s a very difficult issue. The government has responded appropriately and in particular to point out that under Labor there were 2,000 children in detention, the number is now getting much closer to less than 100.
Updated
Good morning and welcome to Wednesday – welfare day. The McClure report has been so long in gestation you could be forgiven for forgetting it even existed. It exists and the social services minister Scott Morrison will unfurl it at the National Press Club this lunchtime. As Lenore Taylor reports, the recommendations include restricting a new disability payment to people unable to work more than eight hours a week because of an incapacity that is expected to last for at least five years. The reports also recommends the current complicated system of government social security payments be collapsed into five types of assistance.
While we are on fives, high five to the New Zealand prime minister John Key, who has told Australians (via a parliamentary address yesterday) that more Australian troops will shortly be deployed to Iraq on a joint training mission. Good of Key to mention this because the Australian government has thus far forgetten to tell us. The defence minister Kevin Andrews gave himself an opening to disclose this development in parliamentary question time yesterday – responding to a Dorothy Dixer which invited him to update the chamber about events in Iraq – but the new training mission must have slipped his mind. Andrews referenced a new commitment of New Zealand troops but said zip about a joint mission. On breakfast television this morning the foreign minister Julie Bishop says only that the issue is under review and if there is an announcement to make then the prime minister will make it.
Q: Has Mr Key preempted an announcement?
Bishop:
Not at all. Mr Key is talking about what New Zealand will do.
Yeah, nah. Anyhow. Moving forward. Readers with us yesterday know the story of the day was Gillian Triggs – the Human Rights Commission president – who was supposed to come to Canberra to be chastised meekly by the intellectually impressive and intensely charming men of the senate’s legal and constitutional commitee, and instead lobbed a grenade by mentioning that a government emissary had suggested in February she resign because there was another nice job waiting. Labor and the Greens now would like the police to have a look to see if this kind offer from the secretary of the AGD was actually an illegal inducement.
Lots more swirling about, so let’s get cracking. The comments thread is wide open and waiting, and we’ve fired up the Twits. You can reach us there @murpharoo and @mpbowers
