We’ll have more from the PM’s early press conference very soon, but of course he was asked about the Trump tariffs and said:

The Australian Government is clearly continuing to make its case to the US Government as March 12 US Government as March 12 approaches.

That case being ‘don’t put tariffs on us, we import so much more from you than you import from us and also, we just gave you $800m for the Aukus deal to help build your shipyards and who knows if we will even get those submarines because you’re so far behind in your own building program, so why are you doing this to us?’

Why indeed.

You know how we were just talking about interest rate hikes just being a wealth transfer from workers to the banks/

Well Dave Richardson has the receipts:

Between them, the big four banks extracted approx $17.6 billion profit from households with owner-occupier home loans in 2023-24.

That means the profit on owner-occupied housing loans is 39.5% of the big four’s total profit while those loans are just 24.6% of their business.

Australia Institute research shows the big four banks take profit of approximately $9,130 in the first year from households with an average owner-occupier home loan.

This is $761 each month, or $176 per week, from homeowners.

Over the life of an average 30-year loan, that will amount to $200,880. This is almost 35% of the average mortgage.

Profit in home lending

Stephen Jones also included a defence of the public service in his final speech, ahead of what the Coalition wants to make an election issue, as they continue to travel the Temu Trump path of politics:

Today, there are government workers on the ground in Townsville providing post-flood support, and it’ll be those frontline service agencies, whether it’s the disaster relief agencies, Centrelink or the other services, providing those first-in emergency services and that information to thousands of Australians when we need it.

They’re coordinating disaster relief, they’re patrolling the oceans to our north, they’re going out in boats for weeks at a time—they’re public servants. They’re patrolling our borders. They’re doing the detailed work and design to procure submarines or the equipment that keeps our troops in the field safe and secure.

They’re processing veterans’ entitlements, access to essential mental health supports or payments to keep them sustained. They’re providing cybersecurity, they’re preparing budgets, they’re mapping our oceans or they’re ensuring that we have a detailed knowledge of all the minerals that this great nation has as a part of its bounty. It’s a really important reminder to me that our government,
our national parliament and the people who work for it really matter.

And I’ve got to say, you can get a headline for saying, ‘We’re going to slash 35,000’—or 45,000—’workers from our government,’ but these are the people we’re talking about. You can do it. We’ve seen the movie. You can slash those workers. We’ve seen the movie; we know what’ll happen. There’ll be winners and there’ll be losers. The losers will be the Australian people; the winners will be the labour hire companies and the consultants. We can go back there, it is available to us, but I would suggest that it’s a really bad call.

We have said it before and we will say it again – the only people who benefit from cuts to the public service is the private sector.

Assistant treasurer Stephen Jones delivered his valedictory in the house late yesterday afternoon.

He spoke about the personal impact the royal commission into childhood sexual abuse had on him:

We often speak in this place of strength and weakness, and we reduce it to that concept of strength meaning power over others. I think there’s another kind of strength; it’s the strength that comes from the things that you overcome and the strength that knows it’s more important to do things with and for people than to them. The royal commission was a really painful experience for survivors but a necessary piece of truth-telling and reconciliation.
Survivors, including me, appreciate it—a point I’ve never disclosed because I didn’t want to be defined by it and because I didn’t want to detract attention from those who, unlike me, didn’t have a voice or didn’t have access to power to tell their story. There is power in being seen, being heard and being believed.

Just before Scott Morrison won the 2019 election, Labor and independents used the government’s complicated numbers in the house to pass the Medevac legislation, which allowed for the medical evacuation of detained asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea to be transferred to Australia for medical treatment, on the advice of doctors.

When Morrison came back to government one of the first things he did was repeal it. Greens senator David Shoebridge is re-introducing the law and says close to 100 people held in detention by Australia for more than a decade “are in desperate conditions”.

Given Labor supported the law in 2019 he says, should clear the way for Labor to support it again, now.

Shoebridge:

Offshore detention is the result of long-standing toxic politics in the Australian Parliament. 

These are people who have been separated from their families, many forced to watch their friends die in cruel detention facilities, and who are denied the basic dignity we all should have. We need to remember that these are people who came to Australia seeking safety.

When Medevac was last passed in early 2019, the Labor Party supported it. Now that they are in government, they seem to have forgotten this humane policy. It is needed now more than ever. I was in PNG late last year and met with dozens of refugees who were forced to PNG from Australia. 

The people I met in PNG were all in urgent need of medical care, they are denied critical care and the Albanese Government cannot pretend they don’t just don’t exist. This Parliament did the right thing in early 2019, we can do it again now and show Australians how politics can be better than the anger and division offered by the likes of Peter Dutton.“

A reminder that hiking interest rates is a wealth transfer from workers to the banks.

As AAP reports:

The Commonwealth Bank has hiked its dividend after delivering a $5.1 billion first half cash net profit, up two per cent from a year ago, against a weaker economic backdrop.

Australia’s largest bank will pay shareholders a dividend of $2.25 per share, fully franked, up five per cent from a year ago.

CBA’s net interest margin, a key gauge of profitability, was broadly stable at 2.08 per cent, up two basis points from a year ago.

Anthony Albanese was out in the Bega shire super early this morning, talking about the government’s contingency plans for Rex airlines:

We’ll work with the bidders We’ll work with the bidders to maximise a successful sale. This to maximise a successful sale.

This will be contingent on commitments to will be contingent on commitments to provide an ongoing reasonable level provide an ongoing reasonable level of services to regional and remote of services to regional and remote communities. And the need to provide communities.

And the need to provide value for money for taxpayers. value for money for taxpayers.

Dai Le also dished on the independents evening at the Lodge last night. Anthony Albanese invited the crossbench to the PM’s Canberra residence for drinks and Le was asked what was on the agenda:

Nothing. There was nothing! So it was just, you know, hello, I saw the Lodge, and it was the great, you know, first time for me to see the Lodge. It was quite historic.

But you know, for me that the bill is not even, we were not told when is going to come to back, back to the house, so we’re still waiting for that.

But anyway, yeah, nothing happened last night, just to assure people. I mean, I left early. Rebekha Sharkie and I left early because we had work to go back to Parliament. So we staedy for about, probably, you know, an hour max.

The electoral donation changes the Labor government offered up after over a year of delay are…disappointing to say the least. The legislation mostly entrenches the two-party system and will make it difficult for first time independent and minor party candidates to get a foothold in the electoral system, given how the bill sets out a very uneven playing field.

But the Coalition have come on board to help Labor pass the bill (shocking) as neither party wanted the crossbench to have negotiating power here. That is probably the strongest campaigning line from this bill – that the major parties are so afraid of independents and minor parties changing the two-party system in the parliament, they’ll come together to fend them off. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

Independent MP Dai Le defeated Labor’s Kristina Keneally at the last election with just $80,000 from her community. Well before Kendrick taught the world how to be a world class hater, the people of Fowler came together to tell Labor they didn’t appreciate being taken for advantage and they would elect their own candidate thank you very much.

Le looks like being re-elected this time round as well, with Labor’s selection of Tu Le, who should have been preselected before the decision was made to parachute in Keneally to solve a senate factional fight, coming too late.

Le laid out her issues with the deal on ABC radio RN Breakfast:

You know it’s supposed to enhance integrity and, you know, improve transparency and accountability. That’s what the government said, and obviously that’s what the major party is sort of trying to sell. Now, I think there are quite a few disadvantages for an independent from my perspective.

You know, the real time disclosure, the administrative burden of that for an independent who running for the first time, makes it difficult for them to try and do that. From my perspective, you know, it’s just you focus on your campaign, and you try and and get out there and meet with the people and get your message across.

Secondly, I think look that for me, the cap, like you said, I raise about $80,000 from my community. And you know, there’s people who donate 100 bucks, so the cap for me, for me, I’m in a unique position, because I’ve been in the community for over a decade. So people know me, so therefore they know who they’re voting for, but for independents, who’s its the first time they would need to spend money in order to campaign, in order to actually compete with the incumbent, with a major party, I think the cap, you know, for individual, I think its $640,000 each calendar year that seems like a lot. But for some other independents, that is not, because it takes a lot to actually, you know, put up billboards, corflutes , mailing out all of that costs a lot of money.

So therefore for the other independents, they find that’s a real challenge for them, and it’s a real blockage. I think that the part that it concerns me the most is the administrative funding for parties and incumbent independent members to offset compliance. So that’s it.

That’s going to give all of us who are sitting about $35,000 each. We already got an office, but they’re going to give us increase money to administer this new change in that that they that the major parties are proposing, and also to give to increase the the funding to candidates, you know, for currently, I think it’s about three, $3 but it’s going to go up to $5 if you get 4% you know, of first preferences votes at the federal election.

So does that mean that Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price would scrap Closing the Gap?

I wouldn’t go so far as scrapping Closing the Gap, but understanding where the actual gap exists is, I think, the most important thing that we can do in moving forward. Obviously, over the years, things haven’t changed. Things haven’t budged for the better, for as I said, marginalised Indigenous Australians, and they would absolutely be a focus priority under under a Coalition government.

Price was the face of the No campaign during the referendum. Price and the Coalition repeatedly say that ‘things haven’t changed’ for Indigenous Australians, after torpedoing one of the options put up as offering meaningful change. Since then, the idea of ‘regional voices’ that the Coalition floated as solutions have completely disappeared. So ‘meaningful change’ needs to be put into context.