Taylor claims Albanese repeatedly ‘humiliated’ Chalmers
How much more humiliation will Jim Chalmers endure before the PM puts him out of his misery and sacks him, asks AngusTaylor.
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.
That’s all from me on the politics blog today, thank you for following along.
I’ll leave you with the magnetic Luca Ittimani (to borrow from Jason Clare) for the rest of the afternoon, and will see you back here bright and early tomorrow!
Anthony Albanese said he and Jim Chalmers were in complete lockstep on delaying the ATO credit card ban, trying hard to pour cold water over commentary that the prime minister had gone over his treasurer’s head. Angus Taylor said Chalmers’ had been “humiliated” and called for him to be sacked.
Small business minister Anne Aly faced more questions from the opposition who accused her of “waging a war” on small business. She tried to counter saying small business numbers were going up.
Communications minister Anika Wells used a dixer to implore the Coalition to support the government’s digital duty of care bill.
Josh Frydenberg’s name got more of a workout by Labor - it’s getting old so here’s to hoping that soon ends.
And despite an at times pretty rowdy question time, as well as a few behavioural warnings, there were no ejections today!
NSW One Nation leader tours state parliament, says party is ‘living rent free’ in government’s head
The NSW One Nation leader, Mike Newman, has been a surprise presence in and around state parliament today, appearing in the upper and lower house and hosting an unannounced press conference outside.
The NSW party does not have any MPs in either chamber, but is polling at 25%, in second place behind Labor, according to a September Sydney Morning Herald Resolve poll. During question time in the legislative assembly, Newman stood just inside the doorway by the opposition benches. He was asked to leave by the serjeant at arms before the premier, Chris Minns, used a question to criticise Newman for rejecting a legislative bid to compel One Nation to cost their election promises.
Newman, the candidate for the lower house seat of Cessnock at next year’s election, told reporters this afternoon that One Nation was “living rent free in their heads”. “No seats in upper or lower house, they still have to mention us,” he said.
Mike Newman in Cessnock last week. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Newman was accompanied at a press conference by Libertarian upper house member, John Ruddick, who, like him, was also wearing a bright orange tie. Asked if Ruddick was joining One Nation, Newman, who later insisted he was not on a “recruitment drive”, said:
We haven’t had that discussion at all. John’s John, I’m me. Don’t let the orange tie fool you.
Newman, a former investment banker and trade bureaucrat, is not a Cessnock local and returned to Australia after spending 25 years working in Japan. He was quizzed on his knowledge of the electorate, fielding questions on his favourite Cessnock pub, restaurant, what he likes to order there and the name of the local footy team.
Nationals deputy leader Darren Chester asks the prime minister if he takes responsibility “for the average mortgage–holder now paying $30,000 more per year because of the 16 interest rate rises under his government.
Anthony Albanese says he does take responsibility for the two budget surpluses and budget improvements under the Labor government.
The fact that we’ve produced eight separate either budgets or budget updates – every one of which has had a savings measure in it. We take responsibility for the fact that over 260,000 Australians...
The opposition tries to interject – the PM hasn’t said he takes responsibility for the higher mortgage payments, and the Coalition are trying to back him into a corner.
It doesn’t work, Albanese opts to sit down, indicating he’s finished his answer.
Sharkie questions government over aged care funding
Independent Rebekha Sharkie is next and asks the aged care minister why the Australian National Aged Care Classification – the funding model for residential aged care – has only received a 2.55% funding increase, below inflation.
She asks:
We need 10,000 new aged care beds annually, last year just 800 were added. Thousands of our elderly are stuck in hospitals waiting for an aged care bed around our nation. Minister, this is a disaster on your watch. Will you lift the ANACC funding to at least match inflation?
The aged care minister, Sam Rae, says the government increases funding to the ANACC based on independent advice.
The government sets aged care funding based on the independent advice from the independent funding authority. It provides expert [advice] to myself and Minister Butler … with a view to working out the efficient cost of delivering care.
‘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 “sockpuppet” 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 sockpuppets.
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.
‘Magnetic’ … Education minister, Jason Clare. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
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”.
‘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.”
Australian communications minister, Anika Wells, during question time today. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
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.