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Bill Shorten calls for commonwealth lead on reparation for stolen generations – politics live Government grilled on energy policy – question time live
(35 minutes later)
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Question time: In the Senate...
Shorten to Turnbull: Why is the prime minister holding the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme hostage to his cuts to families, carers, pensioners and young people? One nation leader Pauline Hanson during #QT in the #Senate @gabriellechan @GuardianAus #politicslive pic.twitter.com/ljDxjLgIcq
It is hard to imagine more gall than we’ve got from the Leader of the Opposition. There he is - he told Peter Van Onselen that the NDIS was good political motivation, good stuff, he said, and we’ve all signed up, we all supported it, as Prime Minister I’ve signed up every jurisdiction. But there’s a little thing the Labor Party forgot, Mr Speaker - it’s paying for it!
The problem with socialists is eventually they run out of other people’s money.
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A government question to immigration minister Peter Dutton: Will the minister update the House on steps the government is taking to ensure that the 457 visa program is a supplement to, and not a substitute for, Australian workers? How would an alternative approach jeopardise job security and opportunities for hard-working Australians?
Then Tony Burke to Barnaby Joyce: Yesterday in Question Time, the Deputy Prime Minister ridiculed anyone who received preferences from the Green political party. Given the WA Nationals have now retaliated against the WA Liberals by cutting a deal to preference the Greens Party ahead of the Liberals, does the Deputy Prime Minister stand by the answer he gave in this place yesterday? Is he now determined to just ridicule himself for the sake of consistency and every other member of the WA National Party?
Joyce begins with a long circuitous answer on Bill Shorten’s personal poll numbers. The vibe is about Labor leadership tensions but I can’t really give you an example of a whole sentence.
Tony Burke takes a point of order:
I refer to page 505 of practice, which reads, “Although there is no specific rules set down by standing order, the House follows the practice of requiring members’ speeches to be in English.”
Barnaby does not answer the question.
The question relates to reports, including this one from the Oz:
The WA Nationals have preferenced the Greens ahead of their Liberal colleagues in two upper house regions, including putting the state’s agriculture minister Mark Lewis behind a sitting Greens legislative councillor.
The move will deepen a rift between the two Coalition partners who have clashed over the Liberal Party’s decision to do a “grubby” and “disgraceful” preference deal with One Nation to help Colin Barnett cling on to power in WA.
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Shorten to Turnbull: This year it is reported Queensland has experienced more than 23 times as many extreme power price spikes, and that NSW almost four times as many as South Australia. Given that NSW and Queensland are the states with the highest dependence on coal, and the lowest levels of renewable energy in the nation, how does the prime minister explain these massive power spikes in Queensland and New South Wales when he can’t blame renewable energy?
Turnbull starts up with the vaudeville.
There’s a wonderful retro quality about the leader of the opposition’s performance today. He reminds me as one of those old Soviet leaders whose country slipped backwards and backwards and they would be able to produce some figures from Gosplan showing the umbrella factory was beating production levels and he would be able to produce all the...
....and he holds up The Guardian!
( Much thigh-slapping on the government backbenches and frontbenches.)
The story he was holding up:
Extreme price spikes in Queensland’s fossil fuel-dominated electricity market this year have far eclipsed those seen in South Australia last July, which sparked calls of a national inquiry into renewable energy and led the federal Coalition to call for a halt to state-based renewable energy targets.
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2.23am GMT Barnaby Joyce gets a question on the importance of the dairy industry to the Australian economy.
02:23 He uses it to belt Labor on electricity prices (given dairy and irrigation businesses use a lot of power).
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Lunchtime politics Bob Katter asks about Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour’s $5m salary. In 2014 Australia Post sacked 900 staff and in the same year, the CEO donated $2.2m to his brother’s Islamic museum. In light of Australia Post’s generosity, minister, can I get $30,000 to repair the Catholic church in Julia Creek?
Nick Xenophon has said nyet to supporting the omnibus savings/childcare bill, sending the social services minister, Christian Porter, back to the drawing board. The Coalition will continue negotiating with the crossbench, given Labor and the Greens have also ruled out support. Barnaby Joyce says notwithstanding Xenophon’s decision, the Turnbull iteration has got more through than the Abbott iteration. (Australia Post did not donate the money, Fahour did as a private citizen.)
Malcolm Turnbull has presented the Closing the Gap report. The target to improve life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by 2031 is not on track to be met. The target to halve the gap in child mortality by 2018 is also not on track, despite longer-term improvements in child mortality rates between 1998 and 2015. Just one of the seven Closing the Gap targets – halving the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020 – is on track to be met. Minister rep for communications Paul Fletcher says the prime minister has already expressed disapproval at the salary and if you want money for the church, apply through the “building better regions” program.
Turnbull also committed to an Indigenous commissioner in the Productivity Commission and $50m to assess and research Indigenous policy.
Bill Shorten has called for the commonwealth to take the lead on reparation for the stolen generations of Indigenous children removed from their families under government policy. His senator Pat Dodson has addressed the Labor caucus and Labor has added the Indigenous flag and a welcome to country into their party room process.
Cory Bernardi’s new Australian Conservatives party could win support from 18% of Coalition voters according to the latest Guardian Essential Report, which also shows the two major party leaders in the doldrums with voters.
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Gareth Hutchens Labor’s Meryl Swanson to Turnbull: On Friday, prime minister, a supply shortage in coal-dependent NSW meant power was cut to Tomago, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter in my electorate. Yesterday, the CEO of Tomago said, “The way the energy system is working at the moment is dysfunctional, what we saw on Friday was a genuine system security risk.” When will the prime minister stop blaming renewable energy and admit he has an energy crisis on his hands?
Meanwhile, in the Senate the Greens have ambushed the Coalition over its refusal to produce documents into a commonwealth investment in the Roe Highway. The energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, is yelling, another lie, another lie, another lie.
The Roe Highway is looming as a key issue in the Western Australian state election. He is forced to withdraw.
The federal government has a policy that for any commonwealth investment of more than $100m they need to produce a business case and a full cost-benefit analysis. Frydenberg takes the question after a short introduction by Turnbull. Frydenberg says:
The Greens want the analysis of this road project but the government have refused even though the Senate has ordered the Coalition (on the numbers) to produce the documents. Tomago, as the prime minister said, makes up around 10% of NSW demand. Now, since their contract with AGI, I think, goes back to 1991, there is a provision when prices go high for AGL to enter a relationship to reduce the supply to Tomago and the key point is that the member for Port Adelaide said there was residential load shedding. Now, in the press release at 7:30pm on 10 February, he said that didn’t happen. Now, this is a consistent pattern. You’ve been found out. Mistruths, misleading the parliament again and again.
$1.2bn of your funds are going to fund this environmental obscenity, says Greens senator Scott Ludlam.
The Greens “stopped the clock” at 12.30pm, and Senate business has been given over to a statement by the finance minister, Mathias Cormann.
(Stopping the clock means the Senate won’t be dealing with government business or anything else from 12.30pm at least until they hit the question time marker at 2pm.)
The government has said it is a matter of commercial in confidence.
Ludlam says bollocks. Just redact any sensitive bits so we can see the rest.
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Bill Shorten: Government question to Scott Morrison: Will the treasurer update the House on the action government is taking to promote investment that creates jobs and reduces costs of living pressures on hard-working Australian families? Is the treasurer aware of any alternative approaches that put the Australian economy at a competitive disadvantage?
It’s time for truth-telling. Our ancestors drove the First Peoples of this nation from their Bora Ring. We scattered the ashes of their campfires. We fenced the hunting grounds, we poisoned the water holes. We distributed blankets infected with diseases we knew would kill. And there has been plenty of damage done in different ways, with better intentions. By the belief that forced assimilation was the only way to achieve equality. Answer:
It’s time to write a new story. And it is a story of belonging. Because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people belong to a proud tradition, to nations who fought the invaders, brave people who fought and died for their country as Passchendaele, Kokoda and Long Tan, now in the Middle East and Afghanistan, who have fought and continued to fight for justice, for land, for an apology, for recognition. He will.
You belong to a tradition of sporting brilliance in the face of racism from opponents, teammates, administration and even spectators. You belong to humanity’s oldest and most continuous culture. You do not belong in a jail cell for an offence that carries an $80 fine. You do not belong strapped into a chair with a hood on your head. You do not belong on the back of a windowless van away from your family and loved ones. You do not belong in a bureaucrat’s office, begging for money. You do not belong on the streets with nowhere to go. You belong here. As members of parliament, as leaders of this nation, you belong in the constitution, recognised at last. He is.
You belong in schools, teaching and learning. You belong on construction sites, building homes, gaining skills. You belong on country, caring for land. You belong here, growing up, healthy, raising your children in safety, growing old with security. You belong here, strong in your culture and kinship and language and country. You belong here, equal citizens in this great country, equal partners in our common endeavour. This is your place. This is our place.
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Bill Shorten wants a justice target included in the Close the Gap report and a new priority on stronger families, adding a target for reducing the number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. You can’t handle the truth.
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Bill Shorten calls for commonwealth lead on reparation for stolen generation First government question to Turnbull on energy policy.
Shorten references Paul Keating’s Redfern speech, when he asked, how would we feel if it were done to us? Mark Butler to the prime minister: Last week in NSW, power was cut to households in the electorates of Bennelong, Reid and Robertson. Power was also cut to the Tomago smelter whose normal power consumption is equivalent to 1 million households – this is despite the fact that NSW has the highest dependence on coal power in the nation. When will the prime minister stop blaming renewable energy and admit he has a national energy crisis on his hands?
Shorten also pays tribute to Kevin Rudd, who is in the gallery, for his apology. Turnbull starts up.
And he raises the prospect of reparation to the children who were removed from their homes, known as the stolen generations. That blackout in September cost Arrium $30m. And what did the member for Port Adelaide describe it as, Mr Speaker? It was a “Hiccup”! It was a hiccup! Just another hiccup! And he complains about one hiccup after another in South Australia. You are seeing businesses being put to the wall in his own state.
We know that many members of the stolen generation are still living with the pain of their removal, the harm done by years of having their story rejected and denied. It was why I applaud the state governments of New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania, already taking steps towards providing reparations to families torn apart by the discrimination of those times. Decency demands that we now have a conversation at the commonwealth level about the need for the commonwealth to follow the lead on reparations. This is the right thing to do. It’s at the heart of reconciliation, telling the truth, saying sorry, and making good. Butler takes a point of order, the Speaker turns him down and Butler argues the point. Speaker Smith throws him out for defiance.
The honourable member who is leaving the chamber now – he cannot cope with the truth.
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Bill Shorten calls for a cross-cultural approach such as the use of Aboriginal healers for health assessments or the Koori court in Parramatta which uses diversionary sentencing as an alternative to jail. Question time:
And if these young people muck up, the elders address them with that straight-talking freedom of family and culture, a frankness and reassurance that even the judge can learn from. There at this court, the police, the prosecution and defence show sensitivity to culture, yet still deal with a young person who has behaved in an antisocial way. This cross-cultural approach enhances the system. Bringing Aboriginal cultures to the centre, allowing justice to be done without diminishing the individual or denying identity, Shorten to Turnbull: Why is the prime minister holding the future of the national disability insurance scheme hostage to his cuts to families, carers, pensioners and young people?
It is hard to imagine more gall than we’ve got from the leader of the opposition. There he is – he told Peter Van Onselen that the NDIS was good political motivation, good stuff, he said, and we’ve all signed up, we all supported it, as prime minister I’ve signed up every jurisdiction. But there’s a little thing the Labor party forgot, Mr Speaker - it’s paying for it!
The problem with socialists is eventually they run out of other people’s money.
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