source : the age
Manager of opposition business Dan Tehan has called for the House of Representatives to censure Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy for comments he made at the National Press Club earlier today.
“The minister called former prime minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies a Nazi appeaser,” Tehan said.
Leader of the House Tony Burke tried to interrupt Tehan, which led to a shouting match across the chamber, before a vote was called.
The move was dismissed because the Coalition hold a minority in the House.
Liberal frontbencher Henry Pike suggested Labor was involved in a “protection racket”. Before that comment could be addressed, Tehan was back on his feet, saying a Labor MP had just called Menzies a coward, and urged the person to stand up.
After some more back and forth, and Tehan’s best efforts, it looks like the House is moving on.
We reported earlier that a mortgage broker who campaigned against Labor’s budget changes had won a charity auction to play tennis with the prime minister.
Liberal backbencher Ben Small brought it up during question time, asking whether Anthony Albanese would “tell him why his word on negative gearing and capital gains taxes was broken”.
“If I was someone on that side, led by this leader of the opposition, I wouldn’t be mentioning last night … I would pretend it was all a bad dream,” Albanese said, hinting at the reception to Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s speech at the Midwinter Ball.
The Midwinter Ball is a Chatham House event, and the speeches from the prime minister and opposition leader are off the record, so we won’t go into any more detail here. But we can say the Labor benches found the jibe hilarious; Coalition MPs were less impressed.
Health Minister Mark Butler has defended reducing the subsidy for health insurance for over-65s.
“As I’ve said on a number of occasions publicly and in this chamber, the additional support that over-65s have received since about 2004 for their private health insurance premium is something we did revisit, given the significant pressure on our aged care system, and the need to find additional funding to deal with the demand,” Butler told parliament in response to a question from Nationals MP Pat Conaghan.
Modelling suggests the change would affect about 44,000 people, according to Butler.
“Let’s be clear: the additional premium on the rebate has meant that households next to each other on the same income – on exactly the same income – have been receiving a different level of support for their private health insurance base,” he said.
The Coalition benches have erupted during question time after Tony Burke criticised opposition senators for voting with the Greens in the Senate.
Arms flailed as MPs furiously gestured at the Labor benches, and calls of hypocrisy rang out.
The opposition has spent the past week lambasting the government for doing a deal with the Greens to pass its changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing entitlements.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has accused Opposition Leader Angus Taylor of being a friend to people smugglers after a boatload of asylum seekers were deported overnight after landing in Far North Queensland.
This is what Burke told the House in response to a Dorothy Dixer from the Labor backbenchers:
Anyone who saw last night on the news that a number of people had tried to enter our country without a visa should know that by the time they woke up this morning, every single one of them had been removed from Australia.
There are two things that the opposition right now is wanting to deliver for people smugglers that people smugglers would be tremendously grateful for. People smugglers want there to be footage of Australian voices claiming that people smuggling will work.
They want access to information about operations and surveillance, which is why I was surprised that only this week in the Senate, all three right-wing parties voted with the Greens to make sure that surveillance information would be made available to people smugglers.
Under this leader of the opposition, he thinks it’s OK for the information that the people smugglers want to be made public and handed over directly to them. He’s the friend they wanted that previous opposition leaders haven’t been.
Kyiv: Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv overnight, killing at least eight people and injuring more than three dozen, as drones and missiles struck residential buildings and started a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier warned of a possible overnight attack and said he was cutting short his visit to Dublin for the start of Ireland’s six-month term in the rotating presidency of the EU.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said eight people had been killed and about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said separately that 34 more were injured, adding that among the damages, the first to sixth floors of an apartment building collapsed after a direct hit.
Liberal MP Simon Kennedy has been kicked out of question time for interjecting on a pointed question about gambling while the prime minister was speaking.
Anthony Albanese was responding to a question from his own MPs about the government’s attempts to boost penalties for tech companies that breach the social media ban for teenagers. Labor is taking aim at the Coalition for sending its amendments to an inquiry over the winter break.
The prime minister was saying that the beefed-up penalties were aimed at stopping companies “exploiting young people”, when Kennedy yelled: “Don’t you care about suicides from gambling?”
As we’ve reported this week, gambling advertising reform is an issue that has dogged the government for years, as it navigates the arguments of reform advocates on one side, and the sports, media and wagering industries on the other. Advocates argue the government’s new laws, which were introduced to parliament earlier today, do not go far enough to protect families.
Nationals senator Ross Cadell has hired former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro in an attempt to re-engage the National Party base.
Barilaro will begin a constituent and stakeholder-facing role with the senator this week, Sky News reports.
Cadell told the broadcaster that the appointment was about “broadening the knowledge and reach” of his office.
“John’s experience … will be of great value as we develop policy and also engage in the lead-up to the next election,” he said.
In question time, the Coalition is going after the government over its aged care assessment tool, after the Senate passed a bill without Labor’s support.
The bill, backed by the Coalition, Greens and other crossbench senators would make humans, rather than an algorithm, responsible for decisions about the level of aged care support older Australians receive. However, the bill can’t pass the lower house without Labor’s support.
The prime minister said assessments were “always conducted by qualified human assessors with clinical input documented from start to finish”.
Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said the government would establish a new legislative escalation option.
“This means that in a small number of cases where a person’s complex circumstances are not fully captured by the [automated] tool, under this new pathway, their assessment can be escalated,” Rae said.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy is speaking at the National Press Club this afternoon.
The first question thrown at him from the floor related to a story doing the rounds today that the Albanese government has managed to quash anti-AUKUS manoeuvring at the upcoming ALP conference, due in late July.
“What does it say [about AUKUS] that debate still hasn’t been settled?” Conroy was asked.
He said: “There is very strong support for AUKUS within the Australian Labor Party. At the national conference, it got well over an 80 per cent vote. For any contentious issue, that’s an overwhelming majority.
“It’s natural for all parties to look at this issue, not just in Australia, but in the UK and the United States. This is a huge, multi-decadal undertaking that requires significant investment.
“I’ll keep making that case, but support remains strong, but it should always be examined because it’s not just a concept of this project – it’s about delivering the project.”
