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Barnaby Joyce warns NSW Liberals as spill is called off – politics live
Bill Shorten says the robodebt scheme is 'unlawful and immoral' – politics live
(about 2 hours later)
Now that what was obviously the biggest scandal of the day has been cleared up (her office confirmed we were right)
It was 25 degrees yesterday
EXCLUSIVE RECREATION: @AmyRemeikis confirms normal-sized hands cannot hold saladas in this fashion, CHEDS CONFIRMED pic.twitter.com/Vkx2nnItxE
Kevin Andrews is to chair an inquiry into the family court system.
It might be worth noting that we haven’t heard from any senior federal Liberals on the NSW mess.
This is alternatively known as ‘giving Pauline Hanson a bone’.
March 24 seems like forever ago:
Labor MPs have resolved to negotiate with the government on a host of legislation, including changes to the Crimes Act that put in place mandatory sentencing for child sex crimes.
An ebullient prime minister, Scott Morrison, warmed up the crowd before the premier arrived on Saturday night, taking to the stage to declare: “How good is Gladys Berejiklian and how good is the Liberal party here in NSW?”
The opposition has reaffirmed its opposition to mandatory sentencing on the basis that it has not been proven to be effective and can make it more difficult to prosecute.
And here Richard Marles gives us some idea of where Labor is going today:
But MPs will not vote against the legislation if it comes to a vote before the legal and constitutional affairs committee reports back on the bill.
The fact here is that the single biggest factor in terms of where the Australian economy is at, is this government’s failure to manage it over the last six years. And I understand that when people I represent are making really difficult decisions about what they go without, that is about the way in which this government has managed our economy far more than it is global factors which are going on, or not going on, over the last few years.
Shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus will prepare a second submission on the issue for MPs to consider before the party decides its final position.Labor MPs have agreed to oppose a government push to drug test welfare recipients and will seek “substantial amendments” to the cashless welfare card expansion, which extends the card into the NT and Cape York.
Richard Marles stopped by a doorstop interview after his ABC interview this morning, where he was asked about Donald Trump’s “locked and loaded” tweet (plus, no one in “any history” has ever been this prepared, yadda, yadda).
It will oppose the bill in its current form.
Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!
On government changes to the character test that will make it easier to deport people who commit crimes while in Australia on a visa, Labor will write to immigration minister David Coleman offering conditional support, wanting changes to address “unintended and undesirable consequences”.
Well, obviously that language causes anxiety. Clearly it does. I think it’s also important to take a moment and just understand firstly that there has been a walking back of that language overnight. But secondly there’s a big difference between language and action.
Addressing MPs, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said the weekend just passed had been a “turning point” for the government after it had been on a victory lap. He said the discipline within the Labor caucus had allowed the opposition [free kicks].
And we’ve seen that in respect of the language of this president in the past, in respect of other conflicts.
Here is a bit more from last Thursday’s MPI that Murph was talking about.
But I note Josh Frydenberg has pointed to that language, he’s pointing to a whole lot of issues around the world, which I think he’s going to be doing in his speech tonight, about why there is every reason in the world for Australia’s economy at the moment and not the actions of his own government. Let us be clear: we’ve had record low wage growth in this country for the last six years.
Bill Shorten:
That predates the events of the last few weeks. No matter where Josh Frydenberg points, at the end of the day I know that people in my electorate are doing it tough and they have been for a long time. They’re having to go and make decisions about what they will not be able to afford on any given night. And the treasurer going out this evening and pointing to every issue in the world other than his own government’s performance is cold comfort for the people I represent.
We say today that robodebt is both unlawful and unethical in the way that it seeks to recover debts from people, by requiring supposed debtors to disprove a data-matched debt. It should be Centrelink who makes the case.
With everyone in party room and caucus at the moment, it might be a chance to have a look at the “big stick” energy legislation.
Leaving aside all the humour of having the member for Fadden as the minister, there’s a serious issue here.
In that, currently, it doesn’t exist. Not as a final-draft hard-copy bill.
How is it the case that in 2019 individual Australians can receive a letter of demand from the government and, immediately upon receipt of the letter of demand, it is the recipient of the letter, the Australian citizen, who then has to argue with the might of the Australian government to say the debt is not correct?
So far, it has been discussed through briefings.
We put very clearly here today that the onus of proof for these debts lies with the government, that the sheer process of an algorithm data-matching annual ATO data with fortnightly payments paid by the Department of Human Services does not discharge the obligation of the government to a satisfactory level.
Which means we won’t have an answer from Labor, because Labor hasn’t seen it. No one has. Including the government backbench committee.
It is not enough to rely on a robotic letter of demand, with no proof and no supporting material, and simply reverse the onus of proof on Australian citizens.
So don’t expect too many answers on that today.
It is not the job of the government of Australia to oppress individual citizens. That is not the role of the state.
I’ve said it before, and I say it again today: @GladysB was brave to allow this long overdue reform to come forward. She deserves congratulations and respect, not this nonsense.
The onus rests with the government.
Samantha Maiden had a story on one of the donations Gladys Liu was connected to, overnight in the New Daily:
When there is a serious allegation saying that you owe the government money, I would put that the burden is even greater than just the data-matching process, because consequences flow from saying to a citizen that they owe the government money. You get the private debt collectors on to you.
The mystery of a $105,000 donation linked to Liberal MP Gladys Liu has been solved and it involves her Chinese employer dropping six figures to dine with then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
If you have a finding of debt, you can’t get finance. If you’re a law student with a debt finding, you can’t be admitted as a lawyer.
But in a plot twist, the dinner never occurred and Brighsun, the Chinese-owned company that won the auction, never asked for a refund.
There are consequences from the government’s assertion that the individual owes a debt with no supporting evidence.
Victorian Liberal Party sources have told the New Daily that Ms Liu’s employers still agreed to pay the Liberal party $105,000 – for nothing.
There are consequences of that which make it more grave and more severe. And because of the severity of the consequences of a finding of debt it increases the obligation upon the government to prove the system.
You can read the whole story here.
There is no lawful basis for the government to just assert debt on the part of citizens with a cursory algorithm and data matching and then say it’s up to the citizen. But this is not just a question of whether or not it is lawful; it is also immoral.
Siri? Show me “lack of self-awareness”.
Robodebt causes hardship. It causes stress. This flawed, inaccurate data, where people are required to pay a debt when it is not clear how the debt is constituted, leaves individuals stranded.
Here’s Barnaby Joyce:
The process for appealing these debts is inadequate.
Now, I respect Gladys Berejiklian. I think she’s a good premier. I think she’s been badly advised and I believe now that the fate of the government rests in the upper house of the New South Wales parliament doing the right thing and properly fixing bad legislation.
In closing, not only is the system unlawful, not only is it immoral, along with the consequences and the stresses it has, but we are seeing a calculated strategy of cover-up by the government.
That’s what they’re paid money to do. Turn your answering machines back on and listen to the people and listen to their issues. They have a right to be heard.
That media event from Bill Shorten looks interesting.
And the Senate demand for documents, put forward by Kristina Keneally, has resulted in this report on Paladin from Paul Karp:
Last week, in a little-noticed matter of public importance debate, Shorten flagged concern that robodebt might be unlawful.
Offshore detention security contractor Paladin has had to pay back $3.1m to the Australian government for hundreds of breaches of its key performance indicators.
“There is no lawful basis for the government to just assert debt on the part of citizens with a cursory algorithm and data matching and then say it’s up to the citizen,” Shorten said.
Documents produced to the Senate on Monday reveal that from May 2018 to April 2019 the contractor was forced to credit back $3.1m of its $423m contract value and is facing an adverse assessment of $8.1m for the month of July 2018, for which there appeared to be no final outcome yet agreed with the home affairs department.
He went on to say: “But this is not just a question of whether or not it is lawful; it is also immoral.”
In that month the department assessed that Paladin would owe $5.6m for 928 failures relating to timely delivery of transport services, $1.4m for 592 breaches of entry and egress processes and $973,500 relating to 649 breaches of training and qualifications requirements.
Given today’s event is with Peter Gordon, I’d say he’s going to expand on that theme.
Paladin agreed to pay back $753,900 in May 2018, $701,100 in June and $921,900 in August 2018.
The bells are ringing for the official start of the parliament session.
In the documents Paladin explained the failures by describing its “inability to deploy expat personnel”, but the department found this was no excuse for failure to deliver training to staff and “should not prevent … incident reporting, particularly as incident reporting is generally overseen in Australia”.
Bill Shorten has announced a press conference for 1pm with “Gordon Legal Senior Partner Peter Gordon, and will be making an announcement on robodebt”.
In case you didn’t see it, the latest Guardian Essential poll is out (yes, I know, all the caveats on polling). As Katharine Murphy reports:
This is the official release on that:
A majority of Australians either approve of the medevac procedures, or think more needs to be done to protect the health and welfare of asylum seekers offshore, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
Minister for drought David Littleproud announced the Future Drought Fund Consultative Committee as an important milestone in taking action on drought.
While the fortnightly survey of 1,093 respondents finds majority support (52%) for offshore detention, with 25% signalling strong support for Australia’s harsh deterrence framework – 41% of the survey thinks the medevac procedures strike a balance between strong borders and humane treatment for people in offshore detention, and 23% argue the legislation does not go far enough to provide humane treatment for people in offshore detention.
The committee will now develop the drought resilience funding plan for the fund, which begins with a $3.9bn credit that will grow to $5bn.
The Morrison government wants to repeal the medical evacuation procedures imposed on the Coalition by the crossbench, Labor and the Greens during the period of minority government before the May election. The procedures give clinicians more of a say in whether sick people are transferred from Nauru and Manus Island to Australia for medical treatment.
... chair, Mr Brent Finlay, and committee members Dr Kate Andrews, Dr Wendy Craik AM, Dr Elizabeth Peterson and Ms Caroline Welsh will begin their work in Canberra later this month.
Jacqui Lambie is yet to make her mind up on the bill to repeal medevac. She is the swinging vote in that one. It won’t come up until November, after a parliamentary committee looking into the policy completes its report.
This in from David Littleproud, who was in Queensland for a press conference with James McGrath two seconds ago. He was looking at the fire damage in Stanthorpe. He’ll be back for question time, but he had this to say about the drought package the government is looking to put together:
There is also no law against stupidity, and so, here we are.
If we don’t put the right governance around this, it will be politically attacked. We do not want that. We want this to continue on in a bipartisan approach for governments in perpetuity. It is important we get this right. The plan that the panel will bring back to me will, in fact, sit on the parliament table and is a disallowable instrument.
'There's no evidence that I will rob a bank but there's definitely a law that stops me from robbing a bank,' Nats MP @Barnaby_Joyce on the need to specifically outlaw sex-selective abortions under the proposed NSW #abortionbill
In fact, the parliament itself can disagree with the panel, but they are independent of myself and the government.
The Business Council of Australia head, Jennifer Westacott, is having a chat to Hamish Macdonald on ABC radio – she is very against the big stick legislation. That’s the one bit of consistency we have with this bill – the business community don’t like it.
We expect them to come back with a plan that strikes to the heart of resilience and building a resilience in communities in the agricultural sector.
Before we move into the theatrics of politics, just a note to say our thoughts and hearts are with the Greens senator Janet Rice, her family and her loved ones, after the death of her wife, Dr Penny Whetton.
That is what they have been charged with. They are the ones with the skill set. It is then my job to make sure that the Australian parliament respects that and we deliver it.”
The only other spill I can think of to be called off this quickly is when rogue Queensland LNP MPs attempted to move against the then-opposition leader, Lawrence Springborg. Turns out there was basically just three of them pushing the motion, although they had handily created several alternative shadow ministry lists they were distributing, which had different names on them, as they attempted to build support. Apparently no one thought their colleagues would compare the lists and discover they were different.
The Coalition party room meeting looks to have broken, given the line at Aussies (the parliamentary cafe. Yes we pay for our food and drink).
But no one can ever talk to me about how insane #qldpol is, ever again.
We’ll have some idea of what went on for you very soon.
pic.twitter.com/RuEytUZqy9
Business, business, business:
It’s snowing in Canberra. But it’s still not as chilly as the NSW Liberal party room, where, six months after winning an election, and just a year a a bit after their federal colleagues said never again, Gladys Berejiklian’s leadership is under threat.
The US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) will lead a senior US delegation to Australia this week to meet with Australian government and parliamentary decision-makers.
The spill doesn’t look like being successful, given the number of Liberal MPs who rushed to Twitter to give their support to the premier. But it does put the NSW government majority under threat. Because we all know that once these things start, they don’t stop.
Based in Washington DC, the US Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million business of all sizes, sectors and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations.
It’s all over the bill to decriminalise abortion. Barnaby Joyce, who spoke at a rally against the bill (“everyone here was born”) as well as the federal parliament, and has done his best to gee up his state colleagues, told Sky this morning the spill wasn’t a great idea:
The delegation, comprised of representatives from the US Chamber of Commerce’s member companies, is in Australia as part of the GIPC’s efforts to champion innovation and creativity through enhanced intellectual property standards around the world.
Remember it is not so much how many people stand for the spill, you have to look at your majority and say how many in that. If more people move for the spill than you have in a majority, you have a big problem.
So my advice, having yes, I have seen a number of these bills, I have seen them up close, I’ve seen how quickly they go from nothing to massive, so now the fate of the premier, who I believe should keep her job – it won’t matter if you change the premier and the bill still goes through, is in the hands of the upper house members, the MLC of the NSW parliament, and they if they choose to throw her off a cliff, then be it on their heads.
The NSW rumbles are a headache the federal government doesn’t want right now. They were quite enjoying the NSW Labor issues and now those are overshadowed. There are more questions over Gladys Liu’s fundraising. Josh Frydenberg is having to warn the business community to stay calm as tensions in the Middle East hit a new flashpoint. And Scott Morrison has to practise walking a middle line before his meetings with Donald Trump, so as not to irk China.
As the prime minister would say – how good is it?
Meanwhile, as Katharine Murphy reported, the backbench committee signed off on the big stick energy bill, despite not having seen the actual legislation, after a briefing on the bill, but there remains jitters over what the Senate might do to it.
We’ll bring you all of that, and more, as the day unfolds. It’s party room and caucus day, so the morning will be pretty quiet. Lucky that state politics steps into the breach!
Mike Bowers is wandering around, and you have Murph, Sarah Martin and Paul Karp on deck, as well as the rest of the Guardian brains trust, keeping an eye on what my caffeinated pupils miss.
