Taylor claims Albanese repeatedly ‘humiliated’ Chalmers
TayHow much more humiliation will Jim Chalmers endure before the PM puts him out of his misery and sacks him, asks Angus Taylor.
The leader of the opposition is trying to stoke the fire, and says the PM was forced to step in to clean up the treasurer’s mess on the ATO credit card ban and before that stepped in to stop the taxing of unrealised capital gains on small businesses.
Anthony Albanese tries to pour cold water over the commentary that he went over Chalmers’ head to delay the credit card ban.
Everything is, like, totally fine he says.
The whole premise of it is completely wrong. The treasurer and I had a discussion last week. We convened the expenditure review committee, and we unanimously, right across the leadership of the government, agreed that the decision by the ATO, to have a limited period of pause on the ban.
Taylor tries to make a point of order, but you regular readers of the blog will know that if the opposition leader – as he has here – has asked a broad political question, he’ll get a broad political answer.
Albanese then pulls out the Josh Frydenberg card:
Our version of aspiration is health, housing, jobs and opportunity. The Liberal party version of aspiration is Josh Frydenberg. There he is, a failed treasurer who couldn’t even hold his seat … And overcoming his innate shyness to be out there. You can’t turn on a TV without seeing Josh Frydenberg. He’s out there every single day.
Key events
“Miscommunication” over digital duty of care, Wells tells One Nation MP
Anika Wells gets another question on the DDOC, this time from One Nation’s David Farley, who asks about an issue which has strongly activated right-wing opponents of the bill – powers for regulators to establish “sock puppet” accounts online.
Wells said such fake accounts had been used by “malevolent” actors online for nefarious purposes, but that regulators would use it for “mystery shopping” purposes, like doing research on how platforms serve up particular types of content to particular types of users.
They need to mystery shop what is happening on platforms in order to test whether the platforms are actually doing what they say that they are doing. So if they say they are asking a 14 year old for their age, we need to test if they are actually doing that.
What the eSafety commission, or accredited researchers do, is create an account, as a 14 year old girl, and test those hypotheses. They do it for good purposes.
We think that we should be able to mark tech platforms’ homework, they should not get to mark their own homework. So that is the purpose of sock puppets.
Prime minister quiet on goldmine court case
Nationals MP Jamie Chaffey asks the prime minister about the federal court ruling that the government blocked a billion-dollar goldmine in central-west NSW without authority.
Anthony Albanese doesn’t want to bite – he says it’s a legal matter so won’t comment.
I understand the federal court found the declaration was not validly made. This was a complex legal case and as it’s a legal matter we will work through the judgment together with the attorney general and we’ll consider the findings very carefully indeed.
‘Magnificent, marvellous, magnetic’, the House plays a guessing game on Clare’s dixers
There’s a bit of a running joke on the education minister, Jason Clare’s, dixers.
Clare loves a bit of alliteration when thanking a backbencher for a pre-planned softball question.
Yesterday it was the “dazzling member for Deakin”.
Today the question comes from the member for Menzies, Gabriel Ng, and the opposition tries to guess the adjective as Clare steps up to the dispatch box.
They try, “magnificent”, and “marvellous”.
Clare laughs and thanks “the magnetic member for Menzies”.
Josh Butler
‘Put your politics to the side’, Wells urges Coalition on online safety
The communications minister, Anika Wells, says Labor’s proposed digital duty of care “moves the safety net upstream” to require tech companies do better, taking a shot at the Coalition for refusing to discuss the legislation.
Wells will introduce the legislation tomorrow, then give a major speech at the National Press Club about it. She tells question time Australia already has “one of the most comprehensive online safety frameworks in the world”, but more work is needed.
“An independent statutory review has found that it is not able to cope with the growing scale of problems in the online world. Just last week, the AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, warned that the police cannot be the only safety net when it comes to the radicalisation of young people online. By the time the AFP is knocking on a door, the harm is already done.
She said the digital duty of care would “shift the burden from the shoulders of victims … to the companies that are creating the environments where harms occur.”
It moves the safety net upstream to the people who design the product before it ever reaches the child.
Wells said she was surprised at the Coalition’s reticence over the bill, after shadow spokesperson Sarah Henderson said the opposition wasn’t interested in negotiating.
Last week, they were criticising our online safety laws for not having enough parliamentary scrutiny. This week, they’re criticising our online safety lords for having too much parliamentary scrutiny.
Put your politics to the side, listen to the AFP commissioner, and help us pass these laws.
Independent, Monique Ryan, is next and asks the health minister if he can guarantee that Victorian children won’t slip through the gap under Thriving Kids – which will replace NDIS services for children under nine with low level needs.
Mark Butler says that the state delivery of the program basically mean that those jurisdictions provide some of the services they used to before the NDIS was implemented.
He concedes there will be a degree of variation between jurisdictions about the type of service and the location of that service.
But he says there will still be standards they will have to meet:
We have been very clear that there are outcomes that we expect to see, performance indicators that we expect to have met by all state and territory jurisdictions. They are incorporated into the Thriving Kids bilateral agreements that all state governments have signed.
Aly says grant to Islamic media company being revoked
The Coalition sets its sights back on Anne Aly, but this time on her multicultural affairs portfolio.
Liberal frontbencher Julian Leeser asks why the government gave a $300,000 grant to One Path Network, an Islamic media company which he says compared Israel to Nazi Germany and claimed the firebombing of a Jewish childcare centre was staged.
Aly says the grant decision was made by the department, not her.
She adds the department has sent the group a “notice of intention to terminate which begins the process to revoke the grant”.
The grants process has supported a wide range of community media outlets and the department is now, as I mentioned – has now delivered a notice of intention to terminate.
‘Something you could look up on Wikipedia’: Bowen and Tehan fight over pre-Cop event
Shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, changes tack and asks the energy minister, Chris Bowen, if the pre-Cop meeting in Tuvalu was powered by diesel generators and whether Australian taxpayer dollars funded the event.
Bowen starts talking about the Fijian energy system which he says does primarily run on fossil fuels.
He quickly gets pulled up by the opposition, and initially denies that they asked about Tuvalu – not Fiji.
Lynda Tabuya (C), Fiji’s Minister for Information, Environment and Climate Change, and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa, in Nadi last week. Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images
Bowen then rephrases:
Whether it is Fiji or Tuvalu or Palau, they are all powered by diesel and a they’re all trying to change that. That’s a great revelation, something you could look up on Wikipedia. Yes, Pacific Islands are powered by diesel primarily. Something they are trying to change.
Bowen accuses Tehan and Angus Taylor of “utter contempt” having “criticised the prime minister and I for going to Fiji and wearing what we were asked to wear by the Fijian government and called them Hawaiian shirts. Fiji is not Hawaii.”
Taylor shouts “utter contempt for you”, from across the dispatch box.
Bowen says:
We don’t joke about climate change in the Pacific, we work with our Pacific family and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Taylor claims Albanese repeatedly ‘humiliated’ Chalmers
TayHow much more humiliation will Jim Chalmers endure before the PM puts him out of his misery and sacks him, asks Angus Taylor.
The leader of the opposition is trying to stoke the fire, and says the PM was forced to step in to clean up the treasurer’s mess on the ATO credit card ban and before that stepped in to stop the taxing of unrealised capital gains on small businesses.
Anthony Albanese tries to pour cold water over the commentary that he went over Chalmers’ head to delay the credit card ban.
Everything is, like, totally fine he says.
The whole premise of it is completely wrong. The treasurer and I had a discussion last week. We convened the expenditure review committee, and we unanimously, right across the leadership of the government, agreed that the decision by the ATO, to have a limited period of pause on the ban.
Taylor tries to make a point of order, but you regular readers of the blog will know that if the opposition leader – as he has here – has asked a broad political question, he’ll get a broad political answer.
Albanese then pulls out the Josh Frydenberg card:
Our version of aspiration is health, housing, jobs and opportunity. The Liberal party version of aspiration is Josh Frydenberg. There he is, a failed treasurer who couldn’t even hold his seat … And overcoming his innate shyness to be out there. You can’t turn on a TV without seeing Josh Frydenberg. He’s out there every single day.
Aly under the spotlight as Coalition continues crusade over small businesses
Nationals MP Alison Penfold is up next and asks Anne Aly a similar question – quoting an unnamed Labor source “not happy about these compounding attacks on small business” and asks when the government will “stop waging war” on small business.
Aly also gives a similar answer.
She says (again) that the country has seen “record numbers of small businesses opening”, and then reads out a few pro-small biz policies.
I meet with small businesses regularly and regularly they tell me that the two measures that government has introduced, the $20,000 instant asset write-off being made permanent. The two–year loss carry back being made permanent have made a huge difference to them.
Aly, for anyone interested at home, is wearing a large-ish pink brooch in the shape of a balloon dog.
It’s question time!
There is no respite for Anne Aly, who is under the spotlight again today.
The Liberal MP Mary Aldred says “Labor MPs are sounding the alarm about the minister’s war on small business” and asks when Labor will “stop waging war” on small business.
Aly defends herself and says a record 385,000 businesses were added to the economy last year and that 1.4m businesses have been registered since Labor came to office.
That’s 35% higher than under the previous government, and 2.5 times higher than under the Howard government. Insolvencies as a proportion is around half of what it averaged under the Howard government.
King says Beetaloo Basin emissions are ‘accounted for and offset’
My colleague Sarah Basford Canales asks Madeleine King if she’s personally comfortable with the decades’ worth of emissions that will be released from the Beetaloo Basin every year.
King was celebrating the project in the Northern Territory at its first gas tap last month.
She suggests that the emissions shouldn’t be a problem and that they’re all “accounted for”.
My understanding, from those recommendations, is that the emissions are accounted for and offset but I would have to check that. Having said that, we have a federal mechanism checking that. If there are emissions over a certain volume, those facilities connected to that come under the safeguard mechanism and that is how we manage dealing with emissions in this country.
What’s the safeguard mechanism, you ask?
My colleague Adam Morton has you (and me) covered:
High court decision will have no impact on federal fossil fuel project approvals, King says
Following a high court decision that will force the New South Wales government to consider climate change impact on future fossil fuel project approvals, Madeleine King is asked if this will have any impact on federal decisions.
No, is the short answer.
King says the NSW government had conditions aimed at minimising scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions in place which a planning commission had to consider. The majority of the court found the NSW Independent Planning Commission failed to consider those conditions.
She tells the press club:
What this decision has said, ‘Well, this part of what you had in your conditions were not looked at so you’re going to have to look at them again’, it really is a technical but important argument about planning commissions following the rules that state governments have put in place. Now, the federal government doesn’t have the same legislative set up around scope 3 emissions, so it won’t apply to federal government approvals.
It’s not in our legislation so no it won’t.
King says gas reservation plan will ‘push down’ prices at some stage
Madeleine King is asked how long it will take for the gas reservation scheme (that requires gas producers to reserve 20% of their gas for local use) to reduce energy prices.
She confirms that the reservation scheme will “push down” prices, but won’t specify when.
King does say there will be an implementation year for the changes to take effect, i.e. don’t expect cheaper gas immediately.
We are very focused in the design of this reservation scheme in making sure Australians, Australian consumers and Australian businesses, do get access to affordable gas.
We expect the oversupply part of the reservation to put that modest oversupply into the system which will push down those prices. So we do expect to see that downward pressure on prices.
Australia needs to counter Chinese dominance in critical minerals: King
The resources minister, Madeleine King, says China has had a several decades head start on Australia in building a critical minerals processing industry, so we need to move faster.
She says China’s dominance across the sector wouldn’t be a problem, except that they’ve in the last few years taken to imposing export controls and bans on other countries including Australia.
Speaking to the National Press Club, King says China has for decades “recognised minerals processing as a strategically important industry and built it up to such an extraordinary scale that midstream and downstream global supply chains are now wholly concentrated in that one country.”
This would be less of an issue but for the rapid increase in recent years in export controls, restrictions and bans right across the whole supply chain. Let me set out the scale of the challenge.
Australia has had to start, almost from scratch, to build an industry that our largest trading partner, and the second biggest economy in the world, has invested in massively and consistently for three decades. Pioneers of this industry have been highlighting this problem for years … And the truth is, together, we’re making genuine progress in meeting this challenge. Australia is stepping up to take on its responsibility to lead on critical minerals and rare earths globally.
Josh Butler
Labor’s digital duty of care legislation likely to face scrutiny in Senate
Anika Wells is expected to introduce the government’s digital duty of care legislation tomorrow, but it’s thought likely the contentious legislation will face the rigour of a Senate inquiry.
Labor sources are still confident the bill could pass by the end of the year, and say they’re not worried or surprised that it will be referred to a committee. But it is expected the Greens and Coalition, for different reasons, will look to have the bill probed before the Senate votes on it.
The Coalition is, at this stage, not prepared to even negotiate on the bill, with communications shadow minister Sarah Henderson saying this week that the government should scrap it entirely and that the opposition believed it was beyond amending. The Greens, however, are broadly on board with the proposed changes but want them to go further in taking action on big tech.
New Greens leader David Shoebridge said he was happy for the bill to pass by year’s end, but wanted an inquiry to look at it first.
It’s looking likely that, later this afternoon, the Senate will seek to push DDOC to an inquiry. Wells is at the National Press Club tomorrow, where she will give a speech on the legislation and take questions.
