For reasons known only to the Liberal tactics committee and we assume, the Very. Smart. People. that inhabit Ted O’Brien’s senior staff, Ted O’Brien gives Jim Chalmers a dixer:

My question goes to the Treasurer. Under Labor there has been 12 interest rate increases (inflation started rising under the Coalition), inflation remains too high (lol, it is at 2.4% – well within the RBA target band), A 5 per cent productivity collapse, a household recession and the fastest fall in living standards on record yet the Treasurer has boasted about to unemployment rate. What does the Treasurer tell the Australian people now that the unemployment rate has spiked to its highest level in almost three years? (omg – this is just a gift to Chalmers, considering what unemployment was under the Coalition)

Chalmers is on this question like tipsy me on a slippery slide:

I say to the Australian people that unemployment is average lower than any other government in the last 50 years. That’s what I say to the Australian people. If you compare every single government of the last half century, Mr Speaker, the government led by this guy has overseen the lowest average unemployment of any of those governments for half a century.

This is precisely why the people in front of the member for Fairfax are more excited about his promotion than the people behind him.

Because he bowls up these absolute Dixers. He’s doing his best to make the former Shadow Treasurer look good. Mr Speaker,

I’m asked about the progress that Australians have made in our economy. I invite the Shadow Treasurer, I invite the House, to cast their mind back to the day that we were elected in 2022. Interest rates were already going up. He forgot to mention that. Inflation was much higher and galloping. It had a six in front of it. It now has a two in front of it. We saw a substantial fall in living standards in the last quarter of those opposite. real wages had been going down, not by accident but as a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. We don’t pretend that every challenge in our economy has been solved but we do acknowledge that Australians together have made substantial and now sustained progress in our economy.

Inflation has ha two in front of it now. It has a six in front of it under those opposite.

Real wages have been growing for 18 consecutive months under this government. Again not by accident but a deliberate design feature of our economic policy. Living standards have turned around and are starting to grow again, recovering some of the losses that they made under those opposite. When we came to office, there were only deficits in the budget. We turned two of them into surpluses.

When we came to office there was a trillion dollars..

Ted O’Brien gets in trouble for interjecting 14 times in one answer (interjecting is truly is one of his only talents) and Dugald Dick makes an appearance in telling him to cool it.

Chalmers:

Because of the progress we have made on the budget, not pretending that the work is done, but we have made progress, a couple of surpluses, much smaller deficit this year, less debt than we would have inherited this year, saving on interest costs, all the progress the Australians have made room. We’ve been able to find room with the cost of living, make their medicines cheaper, cut their taxes three times, all of the other way that is we’re helping Australians with the cost of living. The Shadow Treasurer was asked on 14 July on 2GB what the main feedback was from the election. He said he’s been getting lots of feedback and he said his feedback was people liked their policies. That’s news to me. Their policy was for higher taxes and bigger deficits.

Monique Ryan has the first independent’s question and it is on when will the government get rid of the Jobs Ready Graduate program that the Morrison government put in place and create a more equal fee structure for university degrees.

Ryan:

My question is for go education minister. Minister, the legislation we are set to pass this week will cut HECS debts for 2.9 million Australians which is fantastic. However, the legislation does not help current students undertaking law and arts degrees whose fees were massively inflated by Scott Morrison’s job ready graduate scheme. I put an amendment to this bill which would scrap job ready graduate program.

Will the government accept my amendment so we can get rid of the scheme tomorrow?

Jason Clare:

Can I thank the member for Kooyong for her question. Probably the best member for Kooyong the Parliament has ever had. (There is some cheers from the public gallery)

Bit of support up there in the public gallery. Your focus on education and your focus on fairness and also thank you for your support for the legislation to cut student debt by 20 per cent.

20 per cent is a big cut. It’s not as big as 33 per cent, that’s how much the Australian people cut the number of Liberal MPs in the chamber at the election.

But 20 per cent is still a big cut. It’s gonna help a lot of Australians, 3 million Australians.

It will get their student debt cut when this legislation passes the Parliament. Mr Speaker, the truth is we’ve got a good education system but it can be a lot better and can be a lot fairer. That’s what this universities accord report is all about. It’s a blueprint for reforming our higher education system over the next decade and beyond. The job ready graduate scheme that you referred to in the question is the subject of recommendations in that report. We have already begun the task of implementing that report. I think we have bitten off a big chunk of it already, about 31 of the 47 recommendations in part or in full. Now that includes paid prac and the Australian tertiary education commission that began this month. It also includes measures in the bill that we’re debating this week in the Parliament to fix the repayment system for HECS, something that Bruce Chapman, the architect of HECS, described as the most important change to the system in 35 years. There’s more works to do. We’ll keep working through the recommendations in the university’s accord report and take advice from the tertiary education commission as well

That is code for ‘we are getting to it, but we are not in a rush’ which really, is the least the government can do.

Sussan Ley is back (along with her very sensible voice – a bemused Coalition MP was telling me that it is part of the ‘we are being very sensible’ decree from Ley, as well as the Liberals are hoping for some sort of juxtaposition between a very cool and calm Ley and a ‘raving’ Albanese. That’s pretty obvious, but doesn’t account for the fact that Albanese is not Morrison and doesn’t instinctively talk down to women.)

Ley:

My question is to the Prime Minister. Since coming to office, Labor has added $144 billion of debt and the most recent budget says Australia will be in deficit for at least the next 10 years. Treasury has now advised the government that the only way it can fix its broken budget is by raising taxes on hard working Australians. Last week the Prime Minister refused to rule this out. Will the Prime Minister now rule out raising taxes on hard-working Australians?

Jim Chalmers has a lot to yell about this, and Milton Dick tells him to shut it. No doubt there will be dixers for that.

Albanese:

We have just been through an election with two alternative propositions. One on this side of the House, giving tax cuts to every single Australian taxpayers and pair, all 14 million of them, building on the tax cuts that we introduced and from 1 July last — and implemented from 1 July last year, making a saving of around about $50 for people out there, average workers, making a difference, not just representing people who are members of Parliament, representing the people who are in our constituencies. When we made that announcement, those opposite, I well recall saying that they would roll it back absolutely, they would roll it back. I well remember that. (INTERJECTIONS)

So we thought when the Treasurer came to the budget in March of this year, with a proposition for not one but two tax cuts over the next term – this term now of government, we thought, ‘Well, they’ll just wave it through. They’ll wave it through. They won’t commit the same position that they did last time, which was to say they oppose odd it before they knew what it was.”

Then they said they’d roll it back and then they said we should have an early election on it. But sure enough, the as night follows day, we overestimated them because what they did was they said that they were opposed to it.

They then voted against it and then they said they would introduce legislation into this Parliament during this term to increase taxation for all 14 million Australians. (INTERJECTIONS) But it takes some credit given the question also asks about debt as well as taxation to actually not only have a plan to increase taxation, they had a plan to increase the deficit over two years (INTERJECTIONS) as well. Creative if nothing else are those opposite. (INTERJECTIONS) We have reduced the debt by $177 billion. We produced two budget surpluses and a reduced deficit in the current year and for the year’s…

Sussan Ley has a point of order that is not a point of order.

Albanese finishes with:

Less debt and lower taxes on this side of the House. More debt and higher taxes on that side of the House. They’ve got a private members’ bill to wipe out every bit of emissions policy going back to John Howard in the year 2000. Will they introduce a private members’ bill to increase the income tax for all 14 million Australians? I await for one of their backbenchers to do that.

OK, after letting everyone know that we are all very sad about the Pope, we have moved on to questions.

Sussan Ley:

My question is to the Prime Minister. Australians rely on the government to confidently and competently advocate for our national interest. But yesterday the trade minister seemed to be hallucinating on national TV when he invented a conversation between the US President and the Prime Minister about beef. How can Labor be trusted to secure tariff exemptions when the trade minister confuses a public statement from the President with a leader to leader phone call that never happened?

Good times.

Albanese:

I’m asked about statements by the US President, and I recall on 5 May 2025 he said this. ‘Albanese, I’m very spendly with, he’s very good, he’s a friend of mine. I can only say that he’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me. And you know we’ve had a very good relationship. I have no idea who the other person is that fan and ran against him.”

Ahhh, yes – always good to remind people that the nonsense-in-chief knows who you are.

After a bunch of interjections, Albanese gets back to it:

During the campaign when it came to tariffs, the former Leader of the Opposition said that he would be able to fix it and that there would be no problem. The truth is that no country in the world has a lower tariff than Australia has right now of 10 per cent.

And the arrangements that have been put in place are all, at least that, but in most cases have, of course o been higher, 15 per cent, 25 per cent, some substantially higher. What we will do is to continue to engage in Australia’s national interests, to advocate, to get the best outcome possible with the United States. I have said very clearly that tariffs are an imposition of a higher cost by the country on itself that imposes them. That is what is happening. Americans are still importing goods from the global community.

They’re just paying more for them, which is why I argued that tariffs are an act of economic self-harm and which is why Australia hasn’t reciprocated with tariffs. Of course Australia has a free trade agreement with the United States. We impose zero tariffs on them. That is our ideal, but the President of the United States has made it very clear, with statements including that tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language, that that is not his position.

We’ll continue to argue our case. Those opposite will continue to argue against Australia’s interests.

And yes, that didn’t answer the question, but this is question time, not answer time.

Question time is delayed for a condolence motion for the former Pope, Pope Francis.

This is going to delay the questions for some time.

(A reminder we don’t actually have a national religion)

Surprising take on Australia’s gun laws from Senator Babet from Victoria on Saturday. He says there is “mathematical certainty” that future generations will suffer.

In this reality, Australians have benefitted from the reforms instituted by the Howard Government. Since the National Firearms Agreement was introduced and the government bought-back 600,000 firearms there has not been a single mass shooting in Australia. Firearms homicides and suicides have drastically decreased. There is still room for improvement though. Australia has a higher firearm homicide rate per capita than Spain, Germany, the UK, South Korea and Japan.

Rather than a constitutional amendment to give Australians the right to bear arms, Australia Institute polling shows that most Australians (64%) think our gun laws should be tougher.

There’s more to do on firearm reform and it doesn’t involve outlier positions such as trying to model our legislation after the United States where there were nearly 500 mass shootings last year.

It has Sky News all a-flutter, so naturally NSW Labor is also clutching its pearls over it, but the Greens have backed in the right to protest, by warning police against challenging the planned march across Sydney Harbour Bridge this weekend, in support of Palestine and calling for sanctions against Israel.

The NSW Greens have written to police minister Yasmin Catley and Police Commissioner Karen Webb to warn that similar court challenges against peaceful and lawful protest, have failed.

 NSW Greens MP and Justice Spokesperson Sue Higginson said,

As Greens MPs and as people with a conscience, we are all in full support of Palestine Action Group’s desire to hold a community march across Sydney Harbour Bridge at 1pm this Sunday. 

Labor Premier Chris Minns must support this community march too. Any other position will display a catastrophic lack of human compassion and understanding of the people’s need to take action and communicate their political expression”, 

It is impossible to overstate the gravity of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Children’s organs are caving in on themselves due to malnutrition. Men are running away from aid sites with bags of flour soaked in blood. Israel’s Government is targeting innocent civilians and contradicting international law – and the F35 fighter jets that are slaughtering Palestinians operate because of parts made right here in NSW.

This is a Premier who accepted an award from Israel’s President months into a genocide, and who lit up Sydney’s Opera House in support of Israel the moment their illegal war on Gaza began. Chris Minns can be remembered as a man who spoke out in the face of genocide, or he can be remembered as a man who blocked the people of NSW from protesting as children starved.

The NSW Police must permit the people of NSW to peacefully protest. Any challenges to this protest by NSW Police will fail and will be a waste of public resources. It’s Police Minister Yasmin Catley’s responsibility to ensure no challenge occurs and that NSW Police work cooperatively with the community to facilitate this important protest action.

The people of Australia are completely aghast at our Government’s inaction, and marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge will be a powerful symbol of solidarity between the nations of Australia and Palestine.

The Palestine Action Group’s protest is legal, it is moral, and it must go ahead.” 

We are into the downhill slide towards question time, and really, it can’t get much worse than it has been already today.

So go and enjoy some freedom.

The local share market has moved higher after the US and the European Union agreed on a preliminary trade deal over the weekend, apparently avoiding the threat of a global trade war.

At noon AEDT on Monday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 26.8 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 8,693.7, while the broader All Ordinaries had gained 25.4 points, or 0.28 per cent, to 8,958.3.

During a meeting at Donald Trump’s Scottish golf course, the US president and his EU counterpart announced they had reached agreement on the framework for a trade deal, days before a US-imposed Friday deadline to strike a bargain.

The details remained vague and nebulous, however.

Traders were also watching for this week’s Federal Reserve meeting.

Despite Mr Trump’s threats, a rate cut is seen as unlikely, with the futures market giving it just three per cent implied odds.

ANZ’s research team said it would be looking at any tweaks to the language of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee statement, as well as comments from Fed chair Jerome Powell that might signal the September meeting is “live” for a rate cut.

Closer to home, the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday will release second-quarter inflation data that could determine whether the Reserve Bank cuts rates next month.

Eight of the ASX’s 11 sectors were higher at midday, with energy, materials and utilities lower.

In the energy sector, Boss Energy had plunged 41.5 per cent to a more than three-year low of $1.99 after the uranium producer flagged higher costs and other challenges at its Honeywell uranium mine in South Australia, which resumed production last year.

Other uranium companies were lower as well, with Deep Yellow dropping 7.1 per cent and Paladin retreating 3.9 per cent.

In the materials sector, BHP was down 0.9 per cent, Rio Tinto had lost 1.1 per cent and Fortescue had retreated 0.5 per cent.

All of the big four banks were higher, however, with CBA, ANZ and NAB all expanding 0.6 per cent and Westpac growing 0.3 per cent.

WiseTech Global was down 0.2 per cent as the logistics platform named a new chief executive.

The Australian dollar was buying 65.75 US cents, from 65.81 US cents at 5pm on Friday.

The Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson says the biggest threat to farmers is actually Barnaby Joyce and his net zero scare campaign:

There’s never been a more important time in history for farming advocacy groups to form a united front, advocate for climate action, and rebuke attempts by The Nationals to undermine critical net zero targets. 

Few industries are more impacted by climatic disruption to ecosystems and biodiversity than farming.

Farmers and agricultural communities are on the frontline of our climate emergency, with droughts, heatwaves, pests, floods and fires expected to worsen with rising emissions and a warming planet. 

Climate change is costing the average Aussie farming family $30,000 a year – clearly, advocating for climate action is advocating for farmers.

Barnaby Joyce’s predictable attack on net zero – fueled this week by the Institute of Public Affairs – is out-of-touch, reckless and at odds with various agricultural bodies’ stated policy on achieving emissions reductions and net zero. 

My message to the National Farmers Federation and other peak agricultural groups is this: now is not the time to be silent on the real systemic climate action needed to reduce emissions and tackle the climate crisis. Now is the time to call out the political bullshit that puts farmers at risk”.