Ahhhh, a friend of the blog tells me that it was The Art of Fague BWV 1080: No 18 Fuga a 4 Sogetti (unfinished) which is exactly the sort of name a piece like that should have.

Intense.

The chamber is almost finished filling. Special guests are in place – the theatre is about to start.

The parliament is playing some very intense organ holding music on the house of representatives broadcast channel, while the house is adjourned.

VERY intense.

So how is the Australian stock market feeling ahead of the budget being handed down (at 7.30pm).

AAP reports:

The Australian share market had a volatile session, swinging high early but losing most of the gains by the close as banks dragged on the bourse.

The S&P/ASX200 closed 5.6 points higher, or 0.07 per cent, to 7942.5, while the All Ordinaries finished 8.8 points higher, or 0.11 per cent, to 8166.7.

The leading index had jumped more than 0.7 per cent by 11am – buoyed hopes of a more targeted tariff approach from the US government – but gains were all but gone by the close after banks sold off.

“There seems to be a dovish toning down in rhetoric around tariffs coming from the administration, which I think is a good thing,” IG Markets analyst Tony Sycamore told AAP.

“Whether that is sustained or not, I guess we’ll find out.”

Three of 11 sectors closed in the red, with seven finishing higher and financials ending the day flat despite rising 0.8 per cent by midday.

That sound you hear is Andrew Leigh shouting with joy in the streets. The Canberra Labor MP has been on a mission to have non-compete clauses banned from contracts (especially since it began applying to yoga teachers and hairdressers) and he has had a win.

As AAP reports:

The federal government will ban non-compete clauses for most workers in its budget.

Labor has long taken issue with the measures as they can prevent Australians from moving jobs or force them to take months off work, and addressing the clauses could alleviate cost pressures by allowing workers to boost their wages more easily.

Though this specific measure is new, the government says it’s part of a budget that builds on the efforts of its predecessors and provides cost-of-living relief without fuelling inflation.

So people earning under $180,000 a year (which is all but about 95% of us – huzzah) will no longer be subject to non-compete clauses. Which means that if you want to leave a job and work at a similar one in the same area – you can.

Hello and welcome back to this evening’s Australia Institute Live coverage of the 2025 budget. (Well the budget before the election – who knows what happens after)

We will run you through some of the measures announced in between we left you and now and then we’ll bring you Jim Chalmers’ speech – which is due to begin in about halfa.

We are going to put the blog on pause for a little bit – and pick her back up again when the budget goes live, so if you’re in the mood to join us again, come by then.

But also, if you want to choose life – we completely understand.

We’ll have all the news, reaction and the truth behind the spin not only this evening, but also throughout tomorrow. It can be handy having economists to answer your questions.

So if you are coming back – we’ll see you soon. And until then – do good and take care of you. Ax

A secret squirrel who just watched question time passed on this little quip to us:

The only thing more toxic than Tassie salmon is the shit sandwich Albo just made Tanya Plibersek eat

And question time ends.

The chamber moves on to Ted O’Brien’s matter of public importance, which is a punishment that no one deserves, no matter who they are in that parliament (except maybe for Ted O’Brien who wakes up every day choosing to be this Ted O’Brien) so we will exit the chamber now.

Labor’s environmental gutting laws will be back in the chamber for ‘debate’ this afternoon, where it will be passed before the budget is handed down at 7.30pm.

Well, it had to happen.

Zali Steggall asks:

50% of Australia’s GDP is reliant on nature. Yet the bill that your government is ramming through today will further weaken environmental protections by creating an exemption to national nature laws for polluting industry. It will reduce accountability and risk pushing the world heritage valued morgue skate to extinction. Will your government and you as PM already breaking the 2022 promise to strengthen nature law now accept there can be no trust this election on commitments on protecting the environment?

Anthony Albanese:

Let’s be very clear about what happened with our environmental laws. We went to an election in 2022 saying we would have a national Environmental Protection Authority. That legislation passed this House and sat over there, sat over there in the Senate, for month after month after month while the crossbench, tried to connect it up with a whole range of other issues that were not related to the legislation that was there. Publicly they did it. This isn’t any secret here. That is what they said. They said, “Unless you taking action to stop all forestry, unless you do a whole range of things”, that they wanted connected to that legislation, they would not pass it. And then when the legislation was eventually before the Senate, the crossbench, including Fatima Payman, who was elected as a Labor senator but ratted out Labor Party to sit on the crossbench, made it clear that she would not. Having received under about 0.1% of the vote, said she would oppose that legislation along with other crossbench members. So be careful what you vote for when you vote Independent because you never know what you will get. What you know from us…

…What you know from us is that we will stand up for the environment. The Greens political party held up that legislation and to vote for it for month after month after month. If they had voted for it they could have at any time.

Not only did they not vote for it. ..there were deferrals just like there was over housing legislation, just like there was over so many issues. Standing in a corner pretending that they had no responsibility. We have 25 votes in the Senate out of 76.

I suggest people who want Labor government legislation, they should vote Labor in both Houses when it comes to the election coming up.

OK, a reality check. The EPA legislation was held up, because the EPA legislation didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and strengthen environmental protections. And yes, the crossbench held it up, but that is called ‘negotiation’ which is a normal part of the senate when the government doesn’t have the numbers. And as part of negotiations, political parties and independents try and see what will stick – just how much extra can be added to the bill, that the government wants passed. But that doesn’t mean that demands won’t be dropped or compromised on as part of the negotiation process. The government didn’t want to negotiate with the Greens or crossbench because it would have made the bill stronger than the government wanted when it came to environmental protections. And the Coalition weren’t interested in an EPA, weak as it was, at all. So the legislation was pulled.

That was a decision of the government.

WA senator Fatima Payman received a small personal vote because that is how the senate works when you run for a political party, but she still received more first preference votes than Glenn Sterle despite his longevity in the senate. Payman left the Labor party over its refusal to call the Palestinian genocide, a genocide. Not over bill negotiations.

For those still questioning what this legislation Labor is ramming through the senate could potentially mean for other nature-destroying projects – here are some of the receipts: