Shorten repeats emotive evidence from the robodebt inquiry
Bill Shorten has taken two questions on the robodebt royal commission. We will wait until we have time to go through the transcript and make sure it is correct.
However, in his second answer, Shorten spoke about parents whose children had died by suicide after receiving robodebt notices:
Kath describes Jarrod and perhaps we cannot bring him back, but we can listen to the mother’s evidence.
‘He was a polite boy, had really good manners, but he also, if [he] applied himself to something, he would do well at it. He was captain of the school at his primary school, he was very good at swimming and rugby. The best thing about him is he was very unique in his way that he showed our closeness.
‘We were so very close. He displayed his love to me quite openly.’
After his death, Kath wrote to various politicians, including the then prime minister, the member for Cook and then minister for government services [and] the member for Fadden. She says she’s never heard back from them. Not even a sorry for your loss, she said.
Paul Karp reports Labor MP Tania Lawrence yelled across the chamber “how do you sleep at night”.
Stuart Robert is on his phone, head down. Morrison also had his head down.
Key events
Voice working group close to providing advice
Prof. Megan Davis from the Indigenous Voice to Parliament working group gave a short statement outside parliament ahead of a meeting with the PM tonight.
She says the group is close to finalising the advice of the working group to government ahead of the constitutional alteration bill being introduced into parliament next week.
She said:
Members of the referendum working group will meet with the Prime Minister tonight, Minister Burney, Senator Dodson, Senator McCarthy and the Attorney-General. We are so close to finalising our advice so that the Government can introduce the constitutional alteration bill into parliament next week.
So close to doing what grassroots communities across the country have asked for. So close to taking the next historic steps towards a successful yes vote. We are putting the finishing touches on this historic change.
She said the voice will “hold bureaucracy to account” not be another layer of bureaucracy, and will make a practical difference on the ground in communities.
Because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people know and understand the best way to deliver real and practical change in our communities.
Davis said the working group had already agreed to key design principles:
That the voice provides independent advice to the parliament and the government. That it’s chosen by First Nations people based on the wishes of local communities, that it is represent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. That it’s empowering, community-led, inclusive, respectful, culturally informed and gender balanced and includes youth. That the voice is accountable and transparent and it works alongside existing organisations. The voice will not have a veto and will not have a program delivery function.
Australia, let’s get this done together. Walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.
Amy Remeikis
Amy signing out
Things are starting to wind down in the chambers, so I am going to hand you over to Josh Taylor to take you through the rest of the day’s news.
We are getting to the pointy end of the government’s negotiations on the safeguard mechanism. There will need to be some movement soon if it is going to meet the 1 July trading deadline (other than next week, there are no more sittings until the budget in May).
Stay tuned for more of the day’s developments and I will be back with you tomorrow just after 7am. And please – take care of you.
Amanda Meade
Billy Bragg serenades striking ABC workers
In between gigs at his sold-out concerts at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney UK singer Billy Bragg turned up to support striking workers at the ABC this afternoon.
Bragg was made aware of the strike when he went to the Ultimo headquarters on Tuesday for an interview on the morning show on ABC Sydney Radio with Sarah Macdonald. He saw the posters all over the building and asked when he could come and support the workers.
Members of the Community and Public Sector Union walked off the job for an hour at 7am and 3pm today, briefly disrupting the broadcast of Radio National.
Bragg posed for photos with staff and sang Union Maid by his hero, Woody Guthrie.
Daniel Hurst
Somoan PM comments on Chinese state company winning port contract in Solomon Islands
During question time, the prime minister of Samoa, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, held a solo press conference in the ministerial wing of Parliament House. It spanned a long range of issues including climate, sporting links, strategic competition and the Pacific Islands forum – but let’s begin with her answer to a question about the announcement today that a Chinese state company had won a contract to upgrade an international port in Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands:
This is not a new issue that’s just emerging. And the Australian government has also conveyed their views and had their discussions with … Solomon Islands. I also understand that they also have an agreement with Australia with regards to not only development issues, but also security issues.
I think, at the outset, we’ve all recognised the sovereign rights of countries to make decisions. And this is a commercial port, although I think the fears are that it might morph into something else. What do they call it – dual purpose or something? Well, I suppose we have to address that if and when it might happen.
At the same time too, you know, let’s be quite clear, other countries also have military or naval stations within the region as well.
Roberts: as soon as I received legal advice I closed down robodebt
Stuart Robert has a second personal explanation:
The prime minister said that once I’d been informed that robodebt was unlawful, we continued to raise debts. That is incorrect.
I’d been sworn in as a minister for something like 39 days – I’d asked for legal advice, noting there had none being given.
As soon as that legal advice was given to me, within two hours I walked into the prime minister’s office and closed down [robodebt]. Of apparently the 1m records that had been provided to the royal commission, you will not find a single document that shows that any legal advice was provided to me to the contrary.
Robert: debt notice which Shorten referred to was not robodebt and was raised lawfully
Stuart Robert is now asking to make two personal explanations:
The member for government services said today that no one responded to Mrs Madgwick’s correspondence. As I told the House on the first of December 2020, Mrs Madgwick’s son’s debt was lawfully raised. It was not a robodebt.
It was not part of the robodebt cohort. I also made the point at the time … probably not dissimilar now, a million Australians owed $5bn.
The Department gets one escalation of serious harm every single day. Notwithstanding that, the Department contacted Mrs Madgwick.
I went and personally reviewed the correspondence and phone calls between my department and every call to her son and reviewed the text to ensure my department was acting appropriately.
A deputy secretary for my department went and visited Mrs Madgwick in her lounge room to talk her through the lawful basis of which the debt was raised.
There are a lot of people with questions for the speaker/claims of being misrepresented today.
Paul Fletcher is up first with a question – he wants to know whether Mark Dreyfus can be made to apologise and withdraw the comments he made yesterday about the Coalition and the Nazis who attended the anti-trans rights agitator’s rally in Melbourne.
Tony Burke is on his feet saying that parliament is a “robust” place of debate at times, and mentions when Peter Dutton claimed Labor was backing “pedophiles over Australian kids” and that Albanese had sanctioned abuse of a woman by a bikie member.
Burke said those comments were not true, but they weren’t made to be withdrawn, as it was part of the debate: “My point, that I am asking you to take into account, is there has been for a long time a gap between things being said, which have been allowed to be said within the parliament, and have not been viewed as unparliamentary”
(Unparliamentary being the standard to withdraw a comment.)
Milton Dick says there was no request for withdrawal at the time and he gave Dutton time to give a personal explanation addressing the comments at the end of question time. He says he reviewed the hansard and there was no unparliamentary terms, but he acknowledges that the topic will draw more emotion than most.
Almost half of the Coalition’s side of the chamber left after hearing Dick’s ruling. They are not happy.
So another question time ends
The Coalition focussed on the cost of living, while the government used its dixers to try and gather some support for its safeguard mechanism legislation and housing fund.
It’s basically using question time as a soapbox.
Amy Remeikis
Tanya Plibersek is giving a dixer on recycling. The Liberal MP Tony Pasin yells out “you would have been a great education minister”.
So that is where the standard of heckles stands at the moment.
We are pretty close to the earth’s core. This is why people thought Aaron Sorkin shows were clever.
Morrison leaves chamber after Shorten speaks on robodebt
Paul Karp says Scott Morrison has left the chamber.
He heard Stuart Robert say “absolute rubbish,” as Bill Shorten finished his answer on robodebt.
In response to an [unheard] Labor sledge, he responded:
I will, don’t you worry. I won’t be lectured by that man.
Shorten repeats emotive evidence from the robodebt inquiry
Bill Shorten has taken two questions on the robodebt royal commission. We will wait until we have time to go through the transcript and make sure it is correct.
However, in his second answer, Shorten spoke about parents whose children had died by suicide after receiving robodebt notices:
Kath describes Jarrod and perhaps we cannot bring him back, but we can listen to the mother’s evidence.
‘He was a polite boy, had really good manners, but he also, if [he] applied himself to something, he would do well at it. He was captain of the school at his primary school, he was very good at swimming and rugby. The best thing about him is he was very unique in his way that he showed our closeness.
‘We were so very close. He displayed his love to me quite openly.’
After his death, Kath wrote to various politicians, including the then prime minister, the member for Cook and then minister for government services [and] the member for Fadden. She says she’s never heard back from them. Not even a sorry for your loss, she said.
Paul Karp reports Labor MP Tania Lawrence yelled across the chamber “how do you sleep at night”.
Stuart Robert is on his phone, head down. Morrison also had his head down.
Zoe Daniel asks if Australia will sign treaty on nuclear weapons
The independent MP Zoe Daniel has the next crossbench question and it is to the prime minister:
In your speech you spoke to Australia’s proud leadership in non-proliferation. Constituents tell me they fear a nuclear arms race because of Aukus. Does the government plan to merely make safe dies or now join the treaty on the progression of nuclear weapons in line with emotion use successfully proposed at the Labor national conference in 2018 seconded by the now Defence Minister and reaffirmed in 2021.
Albanese (after running through the history of Labor’s support for non-proliferation):
On the issue of nuclear propulsion for submarines, it is important to draw the distinction, they are nuclear, they have nuclear propulsion and will not have nuclear weapons. We are not acquiring nuclear weapons.
Daniel:
The question was does the government plan to sign the treaty?
Albanese:
We have said publicly that myself, and the defence minister and the foreign minister spoke to more than 60 world leaders and briefed them.
We also did was we had the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency secretary general in close liaison with us, the political leadership of this country as well as our defence leadership, to make sure that everything we were doing was completely in compliance with our commitments on the treaty of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
But also, that everything that we have done is completely in accord with the Treaty of Rarotonga.
Which is very important with our Pacific Islanders friends. We made sure that we got that right. On the issue of the treaty for the provision of nuclear weapons, Australia certainly has a view, very clearly that the world without nuclear weapons would be a very good thing. We don’t acquire them ourselves, we wish that they weren’t there.
We will do is we will work systematically and methodically through the issues and in accordance with the commitments that were made in the national platform.
Meanwhile in the Senate, Nick McKim was not holding back
I could not be more proud of my home state of Tasmania for drumming those Nazi-supported transphobes right out of town. ?️⚧️? pic.twitter.com/i3xbEE9VyK
— Nick McKim (@NickMcKim) March 22, 2023
Albanese says Coalition love scare campaigns ‘but there is nothing so scary as their lack of ambition for Australia’
The Liberal MP for Flinders, Zoe McKenzie, asks the PM a variety of questions, which include ‘why does consumer confidence always collapse when Labor is in government and why do families always pay more?”
Which brings a few exasperated lols from the Labor side of the chamber.
Anthony Albanese responds (in part):
What we are doing is a range of things that will assist Australians and that’s what the National Reconstruction Fund is about – new industries and new jobs. Those opposite just say no to that.
We just heard from the housing minister about the measures that are there in the housing Australian future fund and the specific measures that are there from the veterans’ affairs minister to help our veterans. But they say no to that as well.
They had the opportunity to vote with the government on energy price relief and they voted against that as well last December.
On every measure, on every measure, those opposite, those opposite just say no to any measure that is put forward that is going to make a positive difference.
They come in here, the talk the economy down, they talk Australia down – remember when our industrial relations legislation was being debated, they said that would be the end, we would all have general strikes by now. Where are they? Where are they? They just run a scare campaign, they just run a scare campaign but there is nothing so scary as their lack of ambition for Australia.
Monique Ryan presses Labor on ‘flaw’ in safeguard mechanism
Monique Ryan has one of the crossbench questions today:
Under your safeguard mechanism, big emitters can buy as many offsets as they want, there is no ceiling to the offsets that they can buy. The cost of the offsets will be less than 0.1% of the profits, giving polluters no reason to cut the remissions. Will you concede that there is a flaw in your lack of ceilings?
(Adam Bandt also used the term “flaw” when speaking about the safeguard bill on ABC radio this morning)
Chris Bowen:
I thank the member for the question and her engagement with her colleagues in this issue and further engagement to come this afternoon, Mr Speaker, but I do not accept the premise of the honourable members question, I do not.
It is the case the government is allowing access to offsets to safeguard because of the reform, absolutely we are and as we should.
Because this is an ambitious plan, Mr Speaker, and when you’re engaging in an ambitious plan, you need to give the industry the flexibility to implement that plan. Implement that plan.
Now, I would invite the honourable member and I say with all due respect, the honour member if the people are going to argue on the cap on the use of carbon credits, the need to explain how hard sectors will achieve the targets.
How they will cement and achieve its targets? With a technology that is currently emerging and it’s not yet available without access to Accu (Australian carbon credit units) and carbon credits?
When you’re applying this reform to 215 of the country’s biggest emitters, with the goods of technology available to them, it is absolutely vital to give them access to the carbon credits, what this framework does is provide the incentive to firms to invest in abatement as it emerges.
There are some sectors with good technology available to them today. There are other sectors where it will be available in the next couple years and other sectors I will be hard to abate for some time to come, our regime implements that and I say to the honourable members and all senators, amendments and suggestions and improvements are fine.
The most important thing is that the package passes the parliament, Mr Speaker, because then we have the framework in place not only for today but for years to come.
Discussion about this post