Welcome back! Parliament returned for the first sitting week of 2023 and we had a lot of legislation to deal with.

BEST

We promised to deliver and we have
Strengthening Gillard Government’s paid parental leave scheme
Closing the gender pay gap and building more social and affordable homes
Chris Bowen highlights Opposition hypocrisy
Richard Marles and the answer that stopped Parliament

WORST

Tudge resigns after Robodebt Royal Commission
Sussan Ley finds a new low
Ted O'Brien asks “What can we learn from Hiroshima?”...
The Libs/Nats ignoring the majority again
What's the Opposition’s new favourite word?

1. The Prime Minister said we wouldn’t waste a day and we haven’t. Over summer the Government kept up the pace, delivering the positive and practical change Australians voted for:

Cheaper medicines kicked in on January 1st, the first price cut in the 75 year history of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
10 days of Paid Family and domestic violence leave began on February 1st.
Released the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report.
Launched Revive, our new National Cultural Policy (the first in a decade).

As the PM explained in Question Time: “This is a Government with a sense of purpose, not here to occupy the space, but to make a difference to people’s lives – and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

2. The Gillard Government legislated Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme in 2011. On Thursday we strengthened it, expanding the amount of leave parents can take and increasing flexibility in the scheme. PPL is an important Labor legacy and as Amanda Rishworth told Question Time, after a decade of neglect “it has taken the election of this Labor Government to deliver for working families and that is what we will continue to do.”

3. This week we also introduced important legislation delivering on our commitments. Katy Gallagher introduced a bill in the Senate that will publish gender pay gaps of employers with 100 or more workers. This is an important step towards pay transparency, which is crucial to closing the gender pay gap. In the House Julie Collins introduced legislation to establish the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund which will help build 30,000 social and affordable homes. This will be a gamechanger.

4. Chris Bowen highlighted the ongoing hypocrisy of the Opposition, who this week announced they’d be voting against reforms to the safeguard mechanism. Yes, that’s the same safeguard mechanism legislated by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Fast forward to 2020 and they were still in favour of it. As then Energy Minister Angus Taylor explained: "This is just about making sure that Australian manufacturing has the right incentives in place to reduce emissions.”

Three years on and they’re now against it. Chris summed up the Opposition’s approach nicely. “They know this is good policy but they are opposing it. … They don't care about the national interest in Opposition, why would they care about it if they were ever in Government?”

5. I’ve said before that every now and then you get an answer that just stops the Parliament. This time it was Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Richard Marles, who on Thursday answered a question about Australian troops training Ukrainian forces. What had been one of the rowdiest days in a while changed within seconds and the whole place was hanging on his every word.

He described the training exercises he’d seen and the reality of people who were clerks, builders and drivers only months earlier, being trained to fight for their country – and inevitably for some of them, die for their country – in a battle that has serious implications for the rules-based order and therefore Australia.

1. When you look at the scandals of the previous government their illegal and deadly Robodebt scheme has to be among the most shameful. The news this week that Alan Tudge – responsible for the scheme between 2016 and 2017 – is resigning from Parliament couldn’t be more welcome.

In his valedictory speech on Thursday Alan Tudge told the House, “My passion has always been in social policy” Really? The same person who used the media to intimidate anyone who dared complain about Robodebt – and went as far as threatening to send people on Robodebt to gaol reckons social policy’s his passion. Go figure!

Apparently as part of the Liberals attempt to fix its gender balance and deliver fresh generational change the two people likely to be preselected in coming weeks are Tony Abbot and Josh Frydenberg. Not sure they need Tony Abbott, they’ve already learned to say “no” to everything. And I can think of a trillion reasons why Josh Frydenberg shouldn’t be let anywhere near Australia’s budget.

2. OK, you be the judge. How senior would you think someone would be if this was their point of order, “Can the Prime Minister count to 100?” Well apparently comments as inane as that are enough to make you deputy leader of the Liberal party these days. Seconds later Sussan Ley had been expelled from the Chamber for an hour, if only it had been longer.

3. MPs and Senators often have good reasons to miss Parliament. But I’ve gotta say I was pretty surprised to hear why the Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Ted O’Brien, was absent from the first week of Parliament. Ted wasn’t in his electorate. He wasn’t even in the country.

Turns out he was in Japan – as part of his ‘Time to Talk Nuclear’ campaign. We know this because he posted a video on YouTube filmed at Hiroshima – yes I’m not making this up. In a campaign to say how good all things nuclear might be, the title of the video was “What can we learn from Hiroshima?”

4. Sadly it’s not just energy policy where the Coalition continue to shun the national interest. This week they also announced they’d vote against the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, which will kickstart Australian manufacturing. A decade after the Coalition dared the car industry to leave the country, nothing has changed. Here’s how Ed Husic put it. “The 'no-alition' roars back to life … wanting to say no to growing the economy, wanting to say no to growing jobs, wanting to say no to Australian manufacturing and wanting to stop that longer-term benefit that's required.”

5. The new Member for Bowman thought it would be a good idea to ask the PM about energy prices in his electorate, despite having voted against our Energy Price Relief Plan. In his question he specifically singled out one of his constituents, Brendan. Here’s how the PM answered. “I thank the Member for Bowman for his question, and I hope he tells Brendan that he voted against helping him ... I hope he says: 'Sorry, Brendan. Sorry about that, mate, but I had to put politics first.'”

The House of Reps is back next week and Senate Estimates is on again where our Senators work some extraordinarily long hours responding to some pretty inane questions.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. This week’s song goes out to the ‘No-alition’ on the Opposition benches.

5&5: Back better than ever in 2023