There Is No Plan B: Five Best And Worst Moments In Parliament This Week
Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke brings you his top five best and worst moments from Parliament this week.
Best
1. Bill Shorten gave a great speech in defence of Qantas employees and condemned the Coalition for their plan to send Australian jobs overseas.
2. Labor and the Coalition came together on Monday to jointly express our deep concern about the situation in Ukraine, and called for the tensions to be resolved peacefully.
3. Jenny Macklin was called ‘Labor’s sharpest policy mind’ by The Australian this week, and it’s great that Jenny will be spearheading Labor’s social policy reform agenda.
4. Kingsford Smith MP Matt Thistlethwaite, whose electorate is home to Sydney Airport and many Qantas workers, slammed the Government in Parliament after they tried to prevent him from speaking about the Qantas Sales Act bill.
Matt spoke anyway – and stood up for his community.
5. Finally, Anthony Albanese pinged Liberal MP Bob Baldwin on Thursday for taking selfies with Koalas while re-announcing Labor tourism grants that had been cut by the Abbott Government.
We think Bob should keep his paws off our funding.
Worst:
1. Treasurer Joe Hockey said the Government had “no Plan B’” for Qantas jobs, despite knowing Labor wouldn’t support their proposed changes to the Sale Act because it would lead to jobs going overseas.
When your Plan A is sacking Australian workers, you’ve got a problem. The Coalition will never fight for jobs – we saw that clearly this week.
2. Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen showed, by quoting their own words back to them, that the Coalition’s position on Qantas is just another hypocritical, cynical political stunt.
3. The Senate was forced to censure Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash on Tuesday for misleading the Parliament about the conflict of interest in her office that led to the resignation of her Chief of Staff, a former junk food lobbyist.
You can check out the full story over at news.com.au.
4. Liberal MP Dan Tehan was sent out by his political masters to suggest that penalty rates should be cut, despite the Government’s pre-election commitment that no worker would be worse off under its industrial policies.
5. Finally, it’s not very often that both sides of Parliament unite to interject and heckle one MP. Liberal and Labor MPs couldn’t help themselves however when Canberra MP Andrew Leigh claimed Canberra to be Australia’s most liveable city.
Additionally, we all know the Coalition’s default position on any issue is to say no. But this went to a whole new level on Thursday when in asking people to vote, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop announced “all those in favour, please say no”
