And on that note, we are going to close the blog for the evening and pick up again early tomorrow morning.

Go, be free – LIVE YOUR LIFE – before the last sitting day of this sitting. And the last one before the unicorn budget set down for the end of March (although we will also be whirring this thing up at times for estimates at the end of the month)

And of course there could be an election called anytime, so there is that as well.

Until then, you have us back early tomorrow morning – and I’ll be asking for more of your feedback on the blog and what you would like, other than comments (we are working on it, I promise).

Until then, do good and take care of you. Amy x

Over in the senate, David Pocock has moved a motion to suspend standing orders and bring on the electoral changes legislation, but that has been knocked back by the major parties who look like they are going to then ram through the bill in a guillotine debate (which has a strict end time to speeches/debate and a vote must be called).

So the majors have come to an agreement to have an agreement to get the bill done.

Remember how there was that whole ‘calm your farm on the culture wars until after the election’ dictate from Peter Dutton to the Coalition (particularly the Victorian branches)?

Well looks like it is going really well.

As Guardian Australia reports:

The Coalition frontbencher Bridget McKenzie and the Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming, along with key figures from News Corp, are to attend a UK conference led by Jordan Peterson which aims to “re-lay the foundations of our civilisation”.

A list of attenders seen by Guardian Australia showed more than 50 Australians, including figures from rightwing thinktanks and churches, attending gathering staged by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc), which is associated with the Canadian psychologist and self-help book author.

Deeming will miss a sitting week of state parliament to attend the event just weeks after returning to the Liberal party room.

Sky News contributor and bathroom police Chris Uhlmann, who once went viral when he appeared on his then-employer’s Nine network breakfast show that Sky (his current employer, NewsCorp and Sydney radio 2GB were “waging a war” against Malcolm Turnbull is also listed as a contributor to the event, along with Tony Abbott.

Sounds like a roaring great time.

We covered this off earlier, but it is worth repeating; Dave Richardson and Greg Jericho have crunched the numbers on where housing affordability is going if no one does anything.

First, let’s look at where we have come from:

In March 2002, the cost of an average dwelling in Sydney was 8.3 times the average annual full-time wage. That of course is expensive, but alas now it looks incredibly cheap. In June 2024, the price of that average dwelling in Sydney is now equivalent 14.4 years earning the average wage in New South Wales.

In dollar terms, the difference is quite shocking. The current average dwelling price in Sydney is $1.45m, but if the price was the same 8.3 times as it was in 2002 that average price would be just $835,000.

In effect, people in Sydney need to pay $615,000 more in today’s dollars for a home than did Sydneysiders 20 years ago.

And where they could go without intervention:

Sydney is clearly the worst place at the moment to buy a house as is well known. However, on recent trends all cities will catch up and pass where Sydney is now. Sydney itself will still be worse than the other capital cities if present trends continue. If the current trend of the past 20 years continues, the average price of a dwelling in Sydney in 2044 would be 23.7 times the average salary – or equivalent in today’s dollars to $2.4m.

The average home loan in NSW has just cracked the $800,000 mark for the first time. That’s the average. So, yeah. Yikes.

Clare O’Neil says:

This is something the government’s obviously incredibly worried about. And when we say we’re tackling the housing crisis the number one problem we’re focused on is housing affordability. If I can step back, a couple of things about that quarterly data that was released today. It showed us some quite positive things that are happening in the market. One thing is we’re seeing an increasing number of first home buyers be able to get into housing and that is without doubt a reflection of some of the work Labor’s been doing with young people. The home guarantee scheme is something we have expanded significantly since we’ve been in office. If you’re watching at home and buying a house is on the agenda in 2025 talk to your bank about that. It’s a really important scheme that helps young people get in. But we are seeing – I think the increase I saw was something in the order of 1.4% over the quarter. I lie awake at night worrying about the situation young people are in.

What does Clare O’Neil think is the positive of the bill?

Two really important changes. One of them is we’re setting caps on how much a candidate could be given money by an external provider so this is really important. Effectively before there were no limits on this. You could have Clive Palmer or other people coming in and giving essentially as much as money they wanted to a candidate. That’s not a healthy thing for your democracy. The other thing is improving disclosure laws. Those watching at home will notice after an election tit takes a very long time for there to be some transparency around who is giving money to who and we’re going to fix that problem as well. It’s a really important reform and part of our ongoing work to make sure we protect our Australian democracy.

Among the problems Bill Browne and Josh Black have identified:

Among the concerns with the bill are:

• The extreme haste shown by the government in introducing and trying to pass the bill. Four in five Australians (81%) agree that major changes to electoral law should be reviewed by a multi-party committee, which has not happened.
• The caps on political donations are per “party” (or per independent candidate) but what Australians think of as political parties – like the Liberal, Labor, Greens and National parties – are actually groups of parties, each party in the group being able to receive donations up to the cap. This would limit the ability of independent candidates, new political parties, and political campaigners to fundraise, while leaving established parties much less constrained.
• The nominated entity exception to donation caps intended for the major parties may in practice allow a billionaire-funded minor party to escape spending limits.
• In exchange for having their fundraising limited, established parties and incumbent MPs would receive tens of millions of dollars more in public funding; in some cases, far more than the political donations that they are missing out on. Independent candidates, new parties, their candidates and political campaigners would receive nothing to compensate them for lost revenue.
• The bill would also limit spending on election campaigns. In practice, independent candidates will be far more limited in their spending than party candidates.

Labor minister Clare O’Neil is speaking to the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing host and she is asked about the electoral bill deal between the two major parties:

This is driven by the Labor Party’s long-standing commitment to try to get big money out of politics. What we don’t want is to live in a democracy where effectively billionaires can buy themselves or their proxies, seats in the Parliament. So this is a reform we’ve been working on for a long time. I know there’s been a lot of conversations not just with the Opposition but with other parties and Independents. This deal’s been struck with the Coalition and we’ll see what the Independents and others have to say about it.

Stepping outside of parliament again and Community Leader Antonia Burke is addressing the Climate Integrity Summit about what she and her community is doing to protect her home of Tiwi Islands.

She is speaking about how First Nations peoples are reshaping the battle against fossil fuel expansion, giving a heartfelt and emotional address about the devastating impact fossil fuels are having on her and other communities – not to mention the oceans and wildlife.

Her address is directed at those who have ever felt powerless in the face of environmental destruction – and offers hope from First Nations’ leadership in the global movement for climate justice.

“We changed the regulations of this country and gained the right of all Australians to be consulted on these [offshore gas projects],” Ms Burke said.

“But we do not have a right to veto. The only ones who can veto are our governments.”

Who wants an update on the electoral change bill shenanigans in the senate? I know you do!

It looks like the senate is having its own version of a bottle episode (a bottle episode is when budgets get a bit tight on sitcoms, so they have to have an episode where the entire cast remain on one set location – locked in a room, an elevator, you get the idea (the guy who created the 1960s show the Outer Limits came up with it, as a way of explaining how you could pull the cost genie out of the bottle)

So we are all stuck in the senate, where Labor is going through its own worse timeline as the Coalition continue to screw it over on the electoral reform bill.

There is an in-principle agreement between the two major parties. But the Coalition doesn’t seem to be in support of the hours motion Labor wants to put up to deal with the bill (which would change the senate’s sitting time to have the debate and vote by a certain time) one – because it seems it wants more, two – it enjoys toying with Labor by making it seem like it is across the line and then yelling SIKE at the last moment, three – it has done this before when Tony Abbott was leader and he backed out of a deal at the last moment to increase taxpayer funding for political parties at elections and four, because it wants to screw with the legislative agenda Labor has agreed to with the Greens and independents (you extend this one out and then you run out of time to do the other stuff).

All of this means WE HAVE A BOTTLE EPISODE.

For now. Things in the senate change quicker than my food fixations and let’s not forget that the Coalition doesn’t actually want the crossbench involved in any serious negotiations with Labor on this bill.

Along with making announcements about new bills and highlighting why decision makers need to take ethical responsibility when making decisions that impact future decisions, Independent Senator for the ACT David Pocock has given some insight as to how strident the fossil fuel industry can be when lobbying.

The fossil fuel industry has a very big stick and they’re not afraid to use it and as soon as they get what they want, that’s okay, ad this is the next thing and this is the next thing,” he said.

Whereas the climate environmental movement has been so focused on ‘okay, we’re going to try and influence this minister and there’s not that hard price to pay publicly’.

I don’t know, maybe people are just too nice, but it is a stark contrast now.”

A call on environment groups to up the pressure perhaps?