5&5: Circus animals

We’re back in Parliament after the spring break. As the House was sitting, the Senate was in estimates mode. A lot happened. But before we get into the 5&5, I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister’s marking of the October 7 anniversary this week. On Tuesday, he stood before the House and spoke of the tragedy, horrific losses and our government's backing of a two-state solution. “In our original motion here in 2023, carried with the support, bipartisanly, of both parties of government or potential government, we explicitly recognised that Hamas does not recognise the Palestinian people or their legitimate needs and aspirations. We have never wavered from that stance. That is the only path to enduring peace and security in the Middle East—a future without Hamas and a future that encompasses two states, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine, living side by side within internationally recognised borders and recognising each other's right to live in peace and security. That is the possibility of the future that is before us. It is our duty to do everything in our power to seize it.” The end of the week finished with the announcement that provided a new level of hope for peace.

Here’s the 5&5.

BEST

  1. Historic signing of the Pukpuk treaty

  2. Stronger powers for the Triple Zero Custodian

  3. You’ve been, thunderstruck

  4. Pests, footy and loyalty

  5. Service is service

WORST

  1. It is an insult

  2. Andrew Hastie’s division failure

  3. I watched it so that you don't have to

  4. NOT a climate change denier

  5. Unedifying spats

2. On Tuesday the Minister for Communications, Anika Wells introduced a Bill to increase the powers of the Triple Zero Custodian. Triple Zero is the most important service in our telecommunications system, and Australians must have trust that their calls for help will be answered when they need it most. As Anika said in the Chamber, “We can all agree that the outages that occurred last month by Optus are completely unacceptable. Optus's failings are under multiple investigations, including by ACMA, the independent regulator, and by state authorities. No-one should be under any illusion: this outage was the fault of Optus and Optus alone, and they will be held accountable.”

3. Anyone who references AC/DC in the Chamber gets an automatic mention in the 5&5 email. On Wednesday night Dr Mike Freelander spoke to our Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill or ACDC. Dr Freelander took the opportunity to use as many AC/DC song references as possible in his statement. Here’s a snippet, “I am back almost in black to talk about something that I am very fond of, and that is ACDC. I am thunderstruck that the opposition would even think to criticise our health policy since they have had none for a number of years.” It’s excellent and absolutely worth the watch.

4. If you’ve never heard Bob Katter ask a question during Question Time, you’re really missing out. On Wednesday the Member - in a very Bob Katter way - asked a question about pest control. So, naturally during his question about getting rid of wild pigs and cane toads he also apologised to the PM for the Brisbane Broncos’ Grand Final win. Before handing the question over to the Minister for Agriculture, the PM looked towards the Opposition side and added, “As a South Sydney supporter, we've been 40 years in a drought, and we always have hope! And we have something that those on this side of the House have in abundance: it's called loyalty.”

5. Now, ignore the fact that I’m a coeliac while you read this one. On Wednesday the new Member for Moore, Tom French asked a question to the PM on legislation we had just introduced cementing our two-year freeze to the Draft Beer Excise. A previous Publican, Tom was the perfect person to ask this question and the PM didn’t miss the opportunity to draw on the similarities to his new role. “The work he did engaging with people and how it motivated him to go into public life, to represent the people he used to serve across the bar. He's now serving across his electorate and doing a fantastic job.”

1. 5% home deposits are already making meaningful shifts for thousands of young people around our country who need and deserve our government's support. But not everyone is happy with our plan to help get more Australians into their first homes. As Minister for Housing, Clare O’Neil pointed out to the House on Wednesday, “The Shadow Housing Minister is particularly opposed to this expansion of homeownership. He's called it bizarre and ridiculous and he's said that this policy will ‘help the children of billionaires get into their own homes’. How absolutely out of touch do you need to be to make a foolish statement like that—as if the children of billionaires are taking out 95 per cent loans to buy a two-bedroom home. It's an insult to the 180,000 people who have already used this program and the thousands more who will get into it.”

2. The news from Parliament these days isn’t confined to the Chamber and there's some fantastic posts that Members are putting out that have become an essential part of the political debate. Zaneta Mascarenhas took the two issues that Andrew Hastie has been talking about - immigration and manufacturing - and showed how in Australia they’ve always worked together. Take a look.

3. The Opposition seem to enjoy making youtube videos about nuclear power. I mean who can forget Ted O'Brien's video titled, “What can we learn from Hiroshima?” and the current Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Dan Tehan seems to be following in his predecessors footsteps. As Chris Bowen pointed out in Question Time on Tuesday, “The current shadow minister continues in the same vein. He's spent the last couple of weeks in the United States—good on him, fair enough. He put up an eight-minute video on YouTube about his trip. I watched it so that you don't have to. You're welcome! Having watched that video, we can tell some things. He did not visit any small modular reactors, advanced modular reactors or micro reactors, perhaps due to the small technical detail that none exist—there were none to see—but he did go to the national laboratory in Idaho. What his video didn't tell us is that that was the site for the new-scale small modular reactor, which was cancelled last year because it was so expensive and because no-one would buy at the power from it, because the power was so expensive. That was the small modular reactor that the member for Fairfax had as the image on his website, Time to Talk Nuclear. There is no nuclear renaissance; there is just a renaissance of silly ideas from the opposition.”

4. A truly remarkable thing happened at the end of Question Time on Wednesday, Liberal MP Colin Boyce stood up to make a personal explanation about how he wasn’t disputing that climate change is real but he was saying that he’d never seen any scientific evidence that man-made emissions were having an impact on the earth's changing climate. I mean seriously, you’ve got to watch this one for yourself.

Grateful to Penny Wong and all the Senate team for their work in estimates this week and congratulations to our new Senators on their first of many estimates.

We’re back in two weeks for double sittings of both the House and the Senate.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. The song of the week is ‘You’ve got nothing I want’ from Cold Chisel's album Circus Animals. If you’re wondering why Circus Animals, here’s why.

Tony Burke