Follow the day’s news live
14m agoIt’s question time!
31m ago‘An angry little woman’: Lambie escalates verbal attack on Hanson
1h agoNew head announced for the main public-sector union
2h agoThree Greens senators to cross the floor on koala park bill
2h agoNSW government’s Great Koala national park carbon credit plan to go ahead
3h agoBen Carroll backs South Australian premier on value of migration
4h ago‘She should take it down’: Taylor joins criticism of Hanson and One Nation's cartoon
4h agoDigital duty of care draft bill ‘unacceptable’ to the Coalition
4h agoLabor won’t race One Nation to the bottom on migration, Hill says
5h agoFormer Liberal MP Moira Deeming announces she will join Family First party
6h agoLambie furious over ‘disgusting’ One Nation video calling Hastie a ‘traitor’
6h agoHastie labels Hanson ‘weak and glass jawed’
7h agoDon’t appease One Nation on migration, Malinauskas warns
8h agoAustralia should ‘put shoulder to the wheel’ on multilateral diplomacy: Rudd
The main public-sector union has appointed a new national secretary after its former head Melissa Donnelly was named the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ secretary last month.
This morning, the Community and Public Sector Union’s deputy secretary, Rebecca Fawcett, was promoted to national secretary. Fawcett worked as the CPSU’s lead in the first round of APS-wide bargaining and played a role in the Your Rights at Work campaign against the Howard government’s WorkChoices laws in the mid-2000s.
CPSU members do essential work for the Australian community every single day. They deserve secure jobs, fair pay, safe workplaces, and public services that are properly staffed, properly funded and properly valued. Together, we have won important improvements, but there is more to do. We will keep fighting to bring public sector work back in-house, strengthen protections around AI and automated decision-making, and make sure workers have the pay and conditions they need during a cost-of-living crisis.
CPSU members do essential work for the Australian community every single day. They deserve secure jobs, fair pay, safe workplaces, and public services that are properly staffed, properly funded and properly valued.
Together, we have won important improvements, but there is more to do. We will keep fighting to bring public sector work back in-house, strengthen protections around AI and automated decision-making, and make sure workers have the pay and conditions they need during a cost-of-living crisis.
Two MPs booted as Chalmers asked about government debt
The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson is up next asking why debt as a proportion of GDP is increasing under Labor and if the government will concede that’s leading to higher interest rates.
About halfway through Jim Chalmers’ answer (which we’ll come back to in a sec), Milton Dick boots Nationals frontbencher Kevin Hogan and Labor MP Basem Abdo for their non-stop interrupting.
Chalmers says his budgets have been better than the Coalition’s and that “I will compare this any day with the shameful record of those opposite.”
The Coalition tries to make a point of order on relevance, but Milton Dick says Wilson asked a broader-than-normal question, which means he gets a broader-than-normal answer.
Chalmers says there are a bunch of factors involved in determining debt, including the war in Iran.
I was explaining where the debt came from: overwhelmingly from the former government.
Angus Taylor starts off at the despatch box today, and asks how many Australians owe more money to the bank than their house is currently worth – ie are in negative equity?
He says: “Data today shows half of all homes bought in Melbourne and Sydney in the past 12 months are now worth less than what Australians paid for them.”
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, takes the question, and says that the reserve bank governor recently said that negative equity in Australian housing is “very limited”.
To quote the Reserve Bank governor, she said this: ‘The most recent data suggests that notwithstanding the price falls, negative equity remains very limited affecting less than one per cent of borrowers’, and we saw again in the earnings data released by the Commonwealth Bank in August, which showed that just 0.5% of the Commonwealth Bank book was in negative equity.
The opposition tries to make a point of order on relevance, but the speaker, Milton Dick, rejects it and says he won’t take “frivolous” points of order.
Chalmers decides to take a more personal jab at the opposition.
Earlier than usual in question time, [it’s] the daily reminder that the Coalition was doing better under Sussan Ley than under this opposition leader.
Jacqui Lambie has escalated her attack on Pauline Hanson over the One Nation cartoon video that labelled Andrew Hastie a “traitor”.
Lambie, a Tasmanian crossbencher and army veteran, has unleashed a slew of insults at Hanson and accused her of not having achieved anything during her time in parliament.
The independent senator also says Hanson delayed the establishment into the royal commission on defence and veterans’ suicides. Speaking to News24, Lambie is at one point brought to tears:
This is the same woman, the same woman that held our royal commission up for veterans. All she wanted, she said, no you can just have a commissioner, that’s what Pauline Hanson did to us. We waited nearly six more months to get that through. So you know what? She’s no friend of a veteran … Don’t attack veterans, and you don’t stand like a coward behind your goddamn cartoons, which I can tell you that in itself, they are shocking. [Hastie’s] come from Special Air Services, mate, the SAS. Only the best of the best get in there, and by god, they’ve got to be the toughest, and the country asks them to do so much more than anybody else can imagine. So you bloody show … respect to Hastie because I tell you what, he’s bloody earned it. Leave him alone.
This is the same woman, the same woman that held our royal commission up for veterans. All she wanted, she said, no you can just have a commissioner, that’s what Pauline Hanson did to us. We waited nearly six more months to get that through. So you know what? She’s no friend of a veteran …
Don’t attack veterans, and you don’t stand like a coward behind your goddamn cartoons, which I can tell you that in itself, they are shocking.
[Hastie’s] come from Special Air Services, mate, the SAS. Only the best of the best get in there, and by god, they’ve got to be the toughest, and the country asks them to do so much more than anybody else can imagine. So you bloody show … respect to Hastie because I tell you what, he’s bloody earned it. Leave him alone.
Lambie says Hanson is deliberately dividing the country rather than uniting it.
She’s dividing this country … she’s an angry little woman with so much baggage on her, that everybody else and her supporters think that is acceptable behaviour, and think it’s everybody else’s fault besides theirs.
More on Lambie’s position here:
In pictures: pub choir comes to parliament
Politicians across the divide put down the political playbook and picked up a music score instead, this morning singing from the same song sheet for the parliamentary pub choir.
I’m told they sang Weather with You by Crowded House – a pub classic!
One Nation video ‘contemptible’ and ‘lowest of low’: Canavan
Jumping back to the earlier Coalition press conference, the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, was also asked about the One Nation cartoon video and said it was “contemptible” to call anyone who has served the nation a traitor.
Canavan said the it was difficult for Pauline Hanson to distance herself from labelling Andrew Hastie a traitor because the video was branded and authorised by her party.
He also called for the video to be taken down.
It’s, I think, contemptible to call anybody that’s served our nation those words … It was the lowest of low political acts, particularly from people who haven’t served themselves. Now they’re distancing themselves from it, it’s like ‘oh it’s not us, we didn’t say it’. Well it’s got their branding all over it, it’s authorised by them, give me a break.
It’s, I think, contemptible to call anybody that’s served our nation those words … It was the lowest of low political acts, particularly from people who haven’t served themselves.
Now they’re distancing themselves from it, it’s like ‘oh it’s not us, we didn’t say it’. Well it’s got their branding all over it, it’s authorised by them, give me a break.
Carbon credits for native forests bill expected to pass, despite Greens split
The plan to allow states to earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging is expected to pass the Senate despite three Greens crossing the floor.
It will be backed by Labor, seven Greens and other crossbenchers, including independents David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe. The vote has been brought forward to this afternoon.
The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, said in a statement that the party would support the disputed carbon credit method after improving it, but would oppose other upcoming carbon credit legislation that would produce a larger number of credits.
The fight against Labor’s carbon credit greenwashing starts with the Greens opposing 40% of the offsets used by these big polluters to hide their emissions. For years, Labor has created a system that allows big polluters to buy get-out-of-jail-free cards instead of cutting their emissions, and the consequences of this broken system are being felt around the country by communities living with the floods, fires and heatwaves. That ends now.
The fight against Labor’s carbon credit greenwashing starts with the Greens opposing 40% of the offsets used by these big polluters to hide their emissions.
For years, Labor has created a system that allows big polluters to buy get-out-of-jail-free cards instead of cutting their emissions, and the consequences of this broken system are being felt around the country by communities living with the floods, fires and heatwaves. That ends now.
Waters did not directly address in the statement that three senators would cross the floor. The Greens said the deal with Labor would ensure credits from a native forest project could not be sold to coal and gas companies if the state government promised that would be the case.
The NSW premier Chris Minns said this for the koala park, but his commitment was not legally enforceable.
Other changes include an increase in how much logging has to be reduced in an area for a project to qualify for any carbon credits – rising from 20% to 30% from 2030 – and closing a loophole that could have been used to classify regrowing native forests as a loggable plantation.
Back on the fight inside the Greens over the use of carbon credits to create a koala park that we mentioned earlier – three Greens senators have declared they will cross the floor and vote with the Coalition against the deal the minor party reached with Labor.
Tasmanians Nick McKim and Vanessa Bleyer and Western Australian Jordon Steele-John said they did not support the carbon credit method that lets states earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging and would vote “according to our consciences”.
As we have reported, the issue has sharply divided the party and the broader environment.
In a statement, the trio said “people of good heart and clear mind can, and have come to a different position on this issue””
We understand the position that others have taken, and we hope they can understand ours. We want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to keep emitting as [this method] does.
We understand the position that others have taken, and we hope they can understand ours.
We want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to keep emitting as [this method] does.
Majority believe government moving too slowly on domestic violence, polling shows
Nearly three quarters of Australians believe the federal government has been moving too slowly on domestic violence, while just over a quarter (27%) of Australians believe the federal government’s response to recent high-profile gender-based violence instances has been adequate, according to new polls.
Polling for the Women and Girls’ emergency centre, conducted in July and September, of more than 1,000 Australians shows the majority believe the government isn’t doing enough to curb domestic violence and would support an increase in funding for services.
The July poll found 71% Australians believe Labor has responded either “much too slowly” or “somewhat too slowly” to domestic and family violence.
Nicole Yade, the chief executive of WAGEC, said two years after the government declared domestic and family violence as a national crisis, “Australians are clear that the pace of change does not match the scale of the crisis”:
The message from the community is simple – Australians are saying enough is enough. Action simply cannot wait until after yet another woman or child is harmed. These results that show that the response to the devastating headlines that have dominated the news over recent weeks simply does not meet the moment.
The message from the community is simple – Australians are saying enough is enough. Action simply cannot wait until after yet another woman or child is harmed.
These results that show that the response to the devastating headlines that have dominated the news over recent weeks simply does not meet the moment.
Tanya Plibersek delivered this speech yesterday responding to the sobering results of Australia’s latest domestic, family and sexual violence report, released yesterday.
Greens call on Labor to abandon gas reservation plan and legislate gas export tax
The Greens say Labor should ditch the gas reservation plan – which will require producers to hold up to 20% of their production for domestic use – and slap on a 25% gas export tax instead.
The government this morning released draft legislation for the scheme, with a slight watering down of the requirement from producers to hold a firm one-fifth of produce to “up to 20%”.
The Greens have been on this train for an export tax for a while – and just a few months ago so was seemingly every second person on social media (recall David Pocock’s viral video asking department officials why Australia makes more revenue from the beer tax than the petroleum resource rent tax).
The government says the reservation scheme will lower power bills, but Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May says it “won’t raise a cent for Australian households”:
When gas corporations say jump, Labor asks how high. Now the 20% reservation requirement is being watered down to appease the gas industry. A gas export tax does what Labor claims its reservation scheme will do, but it also raises revenue to compensate Australians who have seen gas prices triple since exports started a decade ago … A gas export tax would raise at least $17bn a year. That’s our gas and our money.
When gas corporations say jump, Labor asks how high. Now the 20% reservation requirement is being watered down to appease the gas industry.
A gas export tax does what Labor claims its reservation scheme will do, but it also raises revenue to compensate Australians who have seen gas prices triple since exports started a decade ago … A gas export tax would raise at least $17bn a year. That’s our gas and our money.
A controversial plan for the Minns government to allow big industry to use a new Great Koala national park to offset its climate pollution will go ahead after the Greens reached a deal with Labor, and decided not to vote with the Coalition to block it.
The minor party and environment advocates have been divided over a regulation introduced by the Albanese government that lets state governments earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging.
The Nationals want to kill the regulation, known as a carbon credit method, on the grounds it would hurt the forestry industry. They have introduced a disallowance motion scheduled in the Senate next Tuesday.
The Greens have the casting votes. They want the park – a promised 476,000 hectare reserve, including 176,000 ha of newly protected areas - but have been divided over whether it should be allowed to happen this way.
They reached a decision this morning to allow the carbon credit to stand. The details of the deal with Labor are expected shortly. More to come then.
