Andrew Wallace, the member for Fisher, is booted under 94A.

Independent MP Rebekha Sharkie gets a question:

My question as to the Minister for Defence, in September 2020 for I asked if the Woodside barracks would remain operational and if the government would rule out selling the site for housing. The Minister responded and said the state audit received was awaiting response. After nearly two years no response has been published nor has the Minister responded to my letter of 13 this year. When will the Minister revealed the future of Woodside barracks? My community is very concerned about this.

Richard Marles:

It was … presented to government at that time and it is a very important piece of work which has looked that the state of fitness if I could put it that way of the Defence estate for what is defences needs in 2025, understanding there are a number of properties within the Defence estate that really have their history in the Defence estate as being part of something in the past and not necessarily focused on the future.

The really important piece of work that was undertaken as I have previously said did have implications in terms of personnel and to be frank it required more work concerns for the government response than we are nationally anticipated and it was to that end we took more time in terms of developing a response and I have previously spoken about that.

What I would say to the member now is we have been working on this out of pace since the election and we are, we will be in a position to respond to that audit in the very near future. And in the context of that response will be able to specifically reply to her correspondence in respect of the particular property. Making sure the Defence estate is fit for purpose in terms of what the fans needs are in 2025 is absolutely paramount, making sure it gives us the full basis upon which we can engage in our strategic purpose and that is to be able to engage in pack for protection is fundamentally important. I think those who had worked on the Defence estate audit and would also like to acknowledge the Assistant Minister for Defence, the member for Wills who has been working on this since the election and you will be hearing from the government very shortly in respect of this.

Sussan Ley is back:

In September, the Prime Minister was asked about returning ISIS brides and said, quote ‘the Australian Government is not providing assistance to this cohort’ but senate estimates of evidence suggested the government persisted with medical interviews and DNA tests for children and citizenship by descent claims and assisted with passports. Why did the Prime Minister to Australians bumping or doing the exact opposite?

My Dolly this is a long bow to draw. This is the first question the opposition has asked on this issue all week, despite Michaelia Cash and others trying to make it a primary issue and honestly – this is what they come up with when Ley finally capitulates and has a question included in their QT attack?

Because a department providing documents that Australians are LEGALLY entitled to, is not ‘providing assistance’ it is fulfilling a duty.

Tony Burke:

I’m glad the Leader of the Opposition has raised this, to be able to do that directly and personally after some of the claims made by Senator Paterson in senate estimates yesterday.

Everything that was just described as assistance by the Leader of the Opposition, would have been an offence for the government to do. Under the citizenship act once someone applies there is an obligation to make a decision according to law, under the laws governing passports. If someone is eligible for passport applies to one of our embassies, there is an obligation for them to be provided.

These individuals received what they were entitled to, no more, no more and no less. What is hidden behind the Leader of the Opposition is saying, what she is suggesting, maybe this is part of them being the party of Robodebt but one of the options in front of the government was not to follow Australian law.

Australian law has been followed no more and no less. These individuals, when they return to Australia and a small number of them have, a much larger number of them returned under those opposite, and those who returned under those opposite, to give a complete comparison with the example just provided by the Leader of the Opposition.

Sussan Ley:

My question as to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, what a 5-year-old child is abused and their attacker is back on the streets before that child has even turned 8, but is not justice, it’s a betrayal. In the last year alone there were an average of 226 cases of child sexual exploitation, each and every day. This morning Labor voted to delay the Coalition push a crackdown on child offenders. Why did the Prime Minister instructors Labor government to vote against the protection of children?

That is quite the take.

Anthony Albanese:

Child sexual abuse is abhorrent and is totally unacceptable. All children deserve to grow up safely and free from abuse. I would have thought of bills issued but should be free from partisan shots, it is not. Order. For new members of the house, private member ‘s business is dealt with on Monday after it is introduced. Everyone knows that is the case. It is being the case since it was 1996, since I have been here. People know that is the case. The government is committed to protecting Australia’s children from harm and will always seek to engage the opposition…(there are interjections)

We give credit where credit is due. I give credit to Peter Dutton for the work that he did as Minister and establishing the Australian Centre to counter child exploitation in 2018. This was a critical initiative but by the vendor opposition and supported by the current government. That is the way we deal with these things. In 2020 the opposition then under my leadership, without shots across the chamber, supported then coalition government introducing mandatory sentences for the most serious of offences and repeat offenders. Those laws from the former government remain in place today. After about 9 years in office. My government will continue to enhance Australia’s response to child sexual abuse including through implementing the national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse within states and territories on reforming their working with children’s cards. I know the Shadow Attorney General has written with ideas for further reform and my government will always consider any sensible proposals for reform because as our record makes clear, we are always ready and willing to work constructively in the interests of child safety, something I think we can findone issue which we can connect and actually work together, I would have thought this was it.

It starts with the Nationals Kevin Hogan getting in trouble for something he said which I didn’t quite catch but Milton Dick is NOT impressed.

And then there is a moment of indulgence to congratulate Professor Richard Robson of University of Melbourne who has been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Then we are into the questions!

Oh this seems healthy and very much an example of Australia’s ‘Shared values’ with the US (via AAP):

US President Donald Trump has promised “very threatening” steps against antifa and asked right-wing media allies for help identifying backers of the movement he has told the federal government to treat as a “terrorist organisation”.

Nearly a month after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Trump on Wednesday threatened action against left-wing groups and donors with no demonstrated ties to the killing.

The Republican president has also moved to push federal law enforcement and troops into Democratic-run cities from Chicago to Portland, Oregon, over the objections of local officials and despite ongoing judicial review.

We are now in the downhill slide to the final question time of the week – so prepare yourself by letting yourself get a little sweet treat.

We’ll see you soon x

The crossbench is getting BOLSHIE!

It seems like independent MPs are no longer willing to play the ‘least they can do is good enough’ game and is now actively pushing the government to do more and calling it out when it doesn’t.

Here is Monique Ryan on the CDC:

“Australians were promised a world-class Centre for Disease Control during the pandemic. What we’ve been given is a shell—underfunded, underspecified, and underwhelming,” said Dr Ryan.
Dr Ryan criticised the Coalition’s opposition to the CDC, describing it as “wilfully ignorant.”

“At a pre-election debate, Senator Ruston blamed the U.S. CDC for America’s COVID death toll, ignoring the Trump administration’s sabotage of its own public health agency. Ivermectin and bleach were not CDC recommendations. They were Trump political theatre, and they cost lives,” said Dr Ryan.

The U.S. CDC is now being defunded and politicised under the Trump administration, and riddled with ‘quackery’ courtesy of Robert Kennedy Jnr. This development is frightening; for decades the U.S CDC has had a global role in worldwide disease surveillance, data collection and analysis, and in providing evidence-based advice to both government and non-government bodies. The Trump administration’s evisceration of the U.S CDC has put enormous pressure on Australia to step up and build its own world-leading public health agency.

Dr Monique Ryan introduced today an amendment to expand the CDC’s remit to serious preventative health measures such as addressing the mental and physical health impacts of gambling addiction. This week, gambling harm has dominated public conversation. The government must respond to the urgency and scale of this issue.

In the next sitting period Dr Ryan will move further amendments to the CDC bill; to expand its scope and ensure it is equipped to meet Australia’s most pressing health challenges.

Among other things, the amendments would:

Address chronic diseases (e.g. heart disease, cancer, diabetes) from day one.

Ensure the CDC acts on preventative health strategies, such as addressing the mental health impact of gambling addiction and climate change.

Mandate that the CDC address pandemic preparedness and the health effects of climate change from day one.

Address injury prevention and occupational exposures from day one.

Ensure the independence of the CDC through regular review and reporting.

“A job worth doing is worth doing well. Once again, the Albanese government is trying to shortchange Australians, and risk the health of this and future generations, by walking back from the Prime Minister’s 2019 commitment to a CDC that ‘would play a role in preventing health threats posed by chronic disease as well as infectious diseases.’

Here is AAP on the NSW appeal court ruling on this weekend’s planned anti-genocide march:

A planned pro-Palestine march set to end at the Sydney Opera House has been scuppered after a court ruled the risk to public safety was too great.

The decision on Thursday, which allows officers to move on or arrest those in the iconic landmark’s forecourt, comes after NSW Police challenged the Palestine Action Group’s proposed protest in the NSW Court of Appeal.

The organisers are now pivoting to a new location after estimating about 40,000 people would have joined the march through Sydney’s city centre to the steps of the famed waterside landmark.

Justice Stephen Free said a protest of that size would have “given rise to a risk of crowd crush”, which was the unanimous view of the court, he said.

The appeal court judges pointed to the “exceptional risks associated with the particular route and ultimate destination of the procession” combined with the crowd size and its movements.

That informed the “court’s conclusions as to the unacceptable nature of those risks”.

The absence of consultation on how organisers would address risk factors, including emergency vehicle access, reinforced the court’s concerns.

“It is not a question of hoping for the best or hoping that things don’t go wrong,” they said.

Chief Justice Andrew Bell raised concerns over crowd safety during Wednesday’s hearing, pointing to the 1989 Hillsborough crowd crush disaster and evidence the Opera House forecourt could only safely accommodate 6000 people.

“The court proceedings did not go our way today and we won’t be marching to the Opera House,” Palestine Action Group organiser Damian Ridgwell told reporters after the decision.

“But we know courts often get things wrong.”

He said Sunday’s demonstration would instead head down George Street in Sydney’s city centre in cooperation with police, urging leaders to light the Opera House sails in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

“Our right to protest is paramount in a democratic society,” Mr Ridgwell said.

Nick Hanna, a lawyer for the organisers, characterised the legal showdown as a “David vs Goliath battle” after the Opera House Trust, Botanic Gardens and Jewish groups all gave evidence supporting the police court challenge.

He warned anyone thumbing their nose at the decision and rallying at the Opera House forecourt on Sunday could be considered in contempt of court.

NSW has a permit system that allows protest participants to block public roads and infrastructure unless a court denies permission after a police challenge.

Premier Chris Minns welcomed the court for making the “right decision”.

“It’s very important and very clear from this judgement that the protest should not take place down at the Sydney Opera House,” he told reporters.

Organisers had pointed to previous non-ticketed events at the Opera House, like popular light show Vivid, that were managed capably.

In the 1990s, Australian-New Zealand band Crowded House performed on the steps of the Opera House to a crowd of 100,000 people, Palestine Action Group noted in a post on social media.

But the court said entry points to the forecourt and requirements for security checks would have pushed protesters into a tight space that could lead to crowd crush.

Palestine Action Group has been organising weekly rallies for two years since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began in 2023.

The Israeli response came after 1200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage during a surprise attack by Hamas, which Australia deems a terrorist organisation, on October 7 that year.

The subsequent war has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Liberal senator James Paterson, who gets to live out his dream job under Sussan Ley’s leadership (talking about security all day long) is very happy with Sussan Ley. He told Adelaide radio 5AA:

I strongly support Sussan, and my assessment is that the overwhelming majority of the party room supports Sussan. We recognise that this is a very tough time to lead the Liberal Party. We’ve just come off the worst defeat in our 80 years of history, and we’re in a rebuilding phase, and some of that involves what looks like a messy public debate.
But it is necessary for us to do that. But I’ve also said that this debate can’t go on forever. It has to
have a time limit. And well before the next election, we have to demonstrate that we are united, and
focused, and disciplined, and that our priority is the priorities of the Australian people.

(Not sure that less than half is an ‘overwhelming majority’ but OK.)

The Senate Estimates of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee is happening today, and the tough-talkers are putting their toughness on display. Coalition senators — Michaelia Cash and Jacinta Price — repeatedly says “Chinese Communist Party” whenever they refer to the Chinese government. It is a well-established practice in American and Australian politics, especially by those who portray China as a menacing totalitarian state.

Of course, the Chinese state is highly integrated with the Communist Party. But the very same politicians who say “Chinese Communist Party” as an epithet would count other one-party states as Australia’s most important friends. 

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has been in power for 64 of the last 70 years, and its symbiotic relationship with the administrative bureaucracy is well known. Singapore’s ruling party, the People’s Action Party, has been in power since Singapore’s independence in 1965 without interruption, and holds nearly 90% of the seats in Singapore’s parliament.

Would Senator Cash and her colleagues call the US government the “Republican Party”? There is certainly a strong case for it if they apply the same logic. The Republican Party controls all three branches of the US federal government – including an increasingly political Supreme Court, which gave the US president immunity in carrying out (vaguely defined) official responsibility. The Republican administration in the White House is increasingly using armed forces domestically, against the American public. And the American system already expects top officials in government agencies to be political appointees.

When Canberra’s tough-talkers refer to the Chinese government as the “Chinese Communist Party”, they are trying to present themselves as being clear-eyed about the “real” China, and present China as a uniquely exotic and dangerous entity. By implication, China is an existential threat to Australia – perhaps the existential threat.

Very few of China’s close neighbours share that view: even Southeast Asian countries, with whom China has territorial disputes, have been maintaining good trade relations and regular diplomatic exchanges with China. To them, the “hard-nosed” alarmism about China only shows that some in Australia are simply not serious about doing foreign policy in a complicated real world.