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Peter Dutton under pressure after inquiry finding that he misled parliament – politics live
No-confidence motion attempted against Peter Dutton – politics live
(35 minutes later)
Rachel Siewart had a bit to say about the tiny, tiny, indexation increase to Newstart:
Just a reminder – this particular motion is just to suspend standing orders in order to be able to debate the no confidence motion.
I’m astounded that the Government thought that Newstart rising through indexation by $2.20 – or about 30c a day – to $275.10 a week will make a difference to people trying to survive on Newstart, she said in a statement.
Tony Burke says Labor will support the motion – and says it just comes down to what Peter Dutton said, when he answered Adam Bandt’s question about whether or not he had any personal connection to anyone involved in the cases, and it was a simple open and close case that he misled the parliament when he answered no.
“It’s not news that the Government is out of touch with the community and their cost of living struggles. But saying that a $2 increase to Newstart is going to “help people keep up with cost of living” is a new low, you would think it was a joke if this issue wasn’t so serious.
Andrew Wilkie is now listing all the cases where the federal court had to intervene on cases in Nauru, where children were diagnosed as needing “urgent medical attention” by doctors, requiring being taken to Australia, because the minister would not act.
“How can they not be embarrassed by their ignorant comments? People are living on $38 dollars a day for a long time and the best the Government can do is let Newstart increase by indexation?
“There is no integrity for misleading the parliament, there is no integrity in bringing nannies into this country on humanitarian reasons, for a mate once or twice removed,” he says.
“Just this week Deloitte Access economics has released research showing that an increase to Newstart by $75 a week would have a boost to the Australian economy by $4.0 billion as a result of extra spending.
The division has been called.
“It’s shameful that in a wealthy country like Australia we have so many people living in poverty simply due to Government inaction.
Meanwhile, I forgot to show you the big truck Scott Morrison got to play in today:
“The Greens have a bill before Parliament right now that would increase Newstart and Youth Allowance by $75 a week. Newstart could have a $75 a week increase by the end of October.”
And also the prime minister looking at things:
And again, I can not recommend you check out the Guardian’s Life on the Breadline series, where people forced to live on benefits, talk about their lives.
Big trucks are a big mood, apparently.
It didn’t get a lot of attention yesterday, because the Peter Dutton report was tabled at around the same time, but the Future of Work and Workers report was presented to the Senate yesterday.
“There has not been one shred of credible evidence presented by the Labor party or the Greens,” Christopher Pyne says, to suggest Peter Dutton had misled parliament.
Murray Watt:
He says the Liberal party never moved a motion of no confidence in the Julia Gillard government.
This was a very big topic that undertook a very long inquiry, and it covers some really important issues facing our country, such as what the impact of robots, automation, artificial intelligence is going to be on workers. We know that some jobs will be created, we know that there are some jobs at risk, and we also know – as a result of this inquiry – that we have a government that has no plan whatsoever to deal with the change that is coming to Australian workplaces. We already know that Australians are suffering from some of the lowest wage growth that we’ve ever seen. We’ve got more and more people working as casuals, labour hire and in non-standard work, and we have a government that’s just sitting on the sidelines letting all of this happen to Australian people and not taking action. This report highlights that we need a national plan. Hope is not a strategy. Hope is not going to get us there. We need a government that’s prepared to work with business, with unions and educational institutions to make sure that Australian workers do have a bright future and we think that that is possible.
The parliament is now fighting over what role the Greens played in the “instability” we have seen over the past decade.
Punters have updated their stakes on who will win Dickson, with Sportsbet offering odds of $1.72 for Labor’s Ali France to take the seat from Peter Dutton ($2.10), if you put any stock in this sort of thing.
Wait – no, now they are laughing because Pyne just referred to Dutton as being “beyond reproach”.
Peter Dutton, the home affairs minister, had his weekly spot on Sydney’s 2GB radio with Ray Hadley earlier this morning.
.@AdamBandt has moved a motion of no confidence in @PeterDutton_MP as scrutiny ramps up over the Minister's intervention in au pair cases.MORE: https://t.co/3SUAVjLSCu #SkyLiveNow pic.twitter.com/RsGoLgNgt0
They talked about the strawberry contamination scare, the au pair cases, and a few other things.
There has been no indication anyone from the government benches is even thinking about crossing the floor, even for a second.
Au pairs:
Which tells you – the numbers are not here for the motion.
Hadley, interestingly, admitted that he didn’t see the harm in breaking the law to pay some tourists a few dollars to babysit some kids, and Dutton appeared to agree with him.
Christopher Pyne isn’t exactly doing a rousing job of defending Peter Dutton, instead arguing that the parliament has too much important work to do to suspend the standing orders.
Hadley began the conversation by saying he felt “compromised”.
Quite a few minutes in, he gets to the “absolute” confidence the government has in the home affairs minister. But it’s the tail end of the speech, not the crux.
He said he’d seen a Sky News story revealing some of the texts that had been sent and received by the Italian au pair, which made it clear that she had agreed to do some babysitting for cash in violation of her visa.
“He has been caught out, he has been caught out, which is why nothing can be more important to suspend standing orders, before question time,” Adam Bandt says.
Hadley said he couldn’t see the harm.
“The one thing I would say to people who are considering which way to vote on this; this is not about whether you agree with the government’s border policy ... this is not about whether you agree with the decisions [that] have been made ... this is about whether you can trust the ministers in place.”
“I know that these people come here as tourists, but if there’s a young person in my area and someone said ‘Oh, she babysat my kids a month ago and she’s a really good person’ or ‘I know that person and she is here on a tourist visa and I may be acting illegally’, but I couldn’t see the harm in saying ‘Look, I’ll give you $10, $15, $20 an hour to look after my kids, you know, for a couple of hours if you don’t mind’.”
Adam Bandt says the motion does nothing to change the numbers in the house, but is about whether or not Peter Dutton is fit to sit on the frontbench.
He then continued.
Andrew Wilkie seconds the motion to suspend standing orders – which is the precursor to any no-confidence motion – but Christopher Pyne, of course, says the government does not support the motion, as it has “important work to do”.
“I know strictly in the way the law’s laid down that that would be contravening the tourist visa, but are we really going to hunt down young people who come here on a holiday and might, because they babysit someone’s kids for a couple of hours, throw them out of the country?”
“... In respect to the minister for home affairs you can not trust what he says,” says Adam Bandt.
Dutton appeared to agree with him, saying common sense needed to be applied.
He says when Dutton answered his question about whether he had any personal connection with the au pair family, he said no – but later admitted it was a former colleague.
“I think it’s an application of common sense, Ray,” Dutton said, “and people that have lived in the real world get it.
“What is also becoming crystal clear is the department and the minister’s office bent over backwards to help this person, in a way that has not happened for anyone else, anyone else, except with the exception of another au pair.”
“The Greens, of course, don’t live in the real world and don’t get it.
Adam Bandt is in the House attempting to move the no confidence motion against Peter Dutton
“I had put the ‘no work’ requirement in the undertaking that these two women had to sign, they had no criminal history, they didn’t overstate their visas and I’m being lectured to members of the Labor party and Greens who support hate preachers coming into our country, who give references to crooks and criminals.
Rachel Siewart had a bit to say in a statement about the tiny, tiny, indexation increase to Newstart:
“Mr [Shayne] Neumann, my opposite number, who would be Bill Shorten’s home affairs minister, supporting a convicted murderer, wanting his visa sorted out, all the rest of it.
I’m astounded that the government thought that Newstart rising through indexation by $2.20 – or about 30c a day – to $275.10 a week will make a difference to people trying to survive on Newstart.
“So it’s galling, really, to take a morals lecture from some of these people.
It’s not news that the government is out of touch with the community and their cost-of-living struggles. But saying that a $2 increase to Newstart is going to “help people keep up with cost of living” is a new low; you would think it was a joke if this issue wasn’t so serious.
“As you say, I just think it’s a common sense application and people can draw their own conclusions, make their own judgments but, I’ve not had one thing that I’ve said contradicted. Everything I’ve said in the parliament, outside, has not been doubted, hasn’t been proven wrong, and in all of this inquiry they were hoping for a smoking gun, hoping Mr [Roman] Quaedvlieg was actually telling the truth, in the end none of that proved to be true.”
How can they not be embarrassed by their ignorant comments? People are living on $38 dollars a day for a long time and the best the government can do is let Newstart increase by indexation?
Senate inquiry into the au pair case:
Just this week, Deloitte Access economics has released research showing that an increase to Newstart by $75 a week would have a boost to the Australian economy by $4.0 billion as a result of extra spending.
They also talked about the Senate report into the au pair scandal.
It’s shameful that in a wealthy country like Australia we have so many people living in poverty simply due to government inaction.
Dutton said he wasn’t surprised that the report, which was written by a committee dominated by Labor and Greens senators, had found against him.
The Greens have a bill before parliament right now that would increase Newstart and Youth Allowance by $75 a week. Newstart could have a $75 a week increase by the end of October.
“Well Sarah Hanson-Young and Nick McKim and the other Greens, will they say something nice about me?” he asked.
And again, I can recommend you check out the Guardian’s Life on the Breadline series, where people forced to live on benefits, talk about their lives.
He and Hadley then chuckled together.
Dutton said the au pair scandal, and the short Senate inquiry, had been a “political stunt from the start”. He said the former border force chief Roman Quaedvlieg “went down in flames”.
Hadley then had a go at Quaedvlieg, saying “I think, at best, he’s a discredited witness” and said even Fairfax Media had distanced itself from Quaedvlieg now.
Dutton agreed.
Strawberries:
Dutton said Scott Morrison needed to move quickly on the food contamination scare, so his announcement yesterday was welcome.
He said the law had to change to act as a deterrent to copycats.
“It’s a necessary change to the law, it toughens it up, and it sends a very clear message from the government,” he said.
Jennifer Westacott delivered the Alvert Street lecture, and the Business Council head urged her audience to embrace inclusion:
I want an Australia where you are not denied opportunities because you choose to live in regional areas like Shepparton, Busselton or Toowoomba.
But to ensure our regions can thrive and retain their brightest people, we need to coordinate infrastructure in these areas outside metropolitan Australia, drive investment, and drive skills investment development.
And mostly, I want you to live in an Australia that is united, not divided.
One country.
The divisions that exist, not too far from the surface, must end.
The division between the regions and cities, the division between small and big businesses, and the division between religions.
We must call out those on the extreme, devoid of goodwill, who seek to isolate one ethnic group from the rest, and those who attempt to fan division by seeking to resurrect the archaic notion of classes.
After all, Robert Menzies long ago observed that:
“In a country like Australia the class war must always be a false war.’’
I want you to live in a country with one society shared by all its citizens -– whether you are a refugee, the grandchild of post-war migrants, an Indigenous Australian or the descendants of First Fleeters.
One country where we all belong.
A country that values inclusion, equality, tolerance and diversity.
A country that embraces freedom, the rule of law, and fairness through opportunity.
As we endeavour to leave you this nation, we need to remember it will not all be plain sailing.
It hasn’t been for my generation, and it won’t be for yours.
Just as they are tailwinds, there are also headwinds.”
Louise Pratt, who headed up the Senate inquiry which found Peter Dutton misled the parliament, told the ABC why she believes why he should be censured:
Given the evidence that the inquiry has found, I would call on the crossbenchers to do the same. People with personal relationships that are able to call the minister’s office and get that high-level of personal service –the kind of service that we saw these cases get was absolutely extraordinary.
It involved the minister making sure that he could sign an intervention before he left the country, instead of passing that intervention over to minister Keenan, who would otherwise have been responsible for it.
Why did he do that? Well, probably because this intervention didn’t go through the normal departmental processes. It came through his office. The standard departmental processes would have meant that these cases had gone through the department, that you send an email with your ministerial intervention request to the department.
On the other hand, what we found in this case is at the border Australian Border Force recommended in both of these cases that these people be deported. That is not a standard ministerial intervention request. The only reason this ministerial intervention request came forward was because the minister’s office themselves put that request forward.
Normally those requests come through migration agents and have to go through the department. In part, that was because the paperwork that the department provided was completely inadequate.
For example, ministerial interventions are tabled ... in the parliament. We matched up those tabled documents with the ones that the department gave us in the course of the inquiry.
And the dates and the numbers of interventions simply didn’t match. So, it’s very, very hard for us to draw conclusive evidence about whether this is the limit of the number of interventions the minister has made through his personal connections.
We’ve gone back through as many of those as possible. To try and match them up. But it doesn’t give us much confidence in those processes. It’s very difficult for us to take it further because the inquiry has closed. It is up to the Senate, what it would seek to do in terms of making further inquiries on the matter.
Labor is on board with the strawberry laws – but wants a review built in after 12 months.
Mark Dreyfus sent this letter to Christian Porter:
I and the opposition were provided with a draft of the criminal code amendment (food contamination) bill 2018 at 6.02pm on 19 September 2018.
As you will know from the speech I have just delivered in the House, the opposition will be supporting this legislation.
As I indicated in my speech, the opposition seeks an amendment to the bill to provide for a statutory review of the provisions introduced by the bill within 12 months of their commencement.
This is to ensure that any unintended consequences (which often occur with legislation as rushed as this has been) are able to be identified and dealt with.
The opposition is prepared to work with you to ensure that any procedural steps needed to support this amendment are expedited.
The whole suite of Australian Berry Force laws can be found here.
The Senate passed that motion asking for the religious freedoms review to be tabled.
Derryn Hinch, Centre Alliance, the Greens and Labor voted for, while One Nation, Fraser Anning and Cory Bernardi voted against it.
After Anning tried, and failed, to get the outrage he wanted with another ridiculous adjournment speech on Tuesday night, this time on Safe Schools, Hanson is attempting to crank it up with a motion which basically says “it’s OK to be white”, later today.
We all deal with RDS in our own way, I guess.
Bill Shorten just told the parliament to buy a “punnet for yourself and a punnet for the nation” as the Australian Berry Force laws go through the House.
The Senate passed a motion yesterday demanding the government produce the Ruddock religious freedom report.
Late yesterday, the government responded with the Senate version of “yeah, nah” by saying it was confidential.
Which it is. Right until after the Wentworth byelection is over.
But now Labor and the Greens are yeah, nah, but yeahing the government, by passing another motion demanding the government table it.
1. Notes the claim of public interest immunity in response to the Senate order to produce Religious Freedom Review Expert Panel.
2. Cites the Senate’s Grounds for Public Interest Immunity Claims, where it states:
It is accepted that deliberations of the executive council and of the cabinet should be able to be conducted in secrecy so as to preserve the freedom of deliberation of those bodies. This ground, however, relates only to disclosure of deliberations. There has been a tendency for governments to claim that anything with a connection to cabinet is confidential.
3. Acknowledges the report does not relate to the deliberations of cabinet; and therefore
4. Insists the order for the production of documents be complied with by 3pm 20 September 2018.
