And on that note, we will close off today’s Australia Institute Live blog and go and rest some tired brains so we are ready for you bright and early tomorrow.

Thank you for checking in on this first ever blog – it is a bit of an experiment, but we hope it adds some value amongst all the Auspol noise. There are a lot of news blogs and the aim isn’t to compete with those – they play a very important role and let’s face it, we don’t have the resources to do that. But what we do hope to do is add in some context where needed and do as many fact checks as possible at the time the fact needs to be checked. And well, you have a bit more freedom to call some of that stuff out at a think tank.

So thank you to those who joined us in our soft launch – we have taken your feedback on board and are working through some of the bugs. But I just wanted to say a special thank you to web development manager Andrij Stachurski who built this thing entirely from scratch and took on board my increasingly frantic requests. There is always a big team of people who go unsung in the creation and roll out of these things, and while my name may be on the front, I am merely the typing monkey. It’s all those others who keep it ticking over and I thank them.

And I thank you for coming over and taking a look and spending some of your day letting us know your thoughts. It matters more than you know. I remain a ball of nerves held together by coffee, perfume and sugar, but you all make it easier.

We’ll be back tomorrow morning with another Australia Institute Live – until then, as always, take care of you. Amy x

The senate is about to move on to debating the Greens motion on Trump, so to get you in the mood, here is a teaser from today’s After America podcast:

At his inauguration, Trump said he wanted to plant the ‘stars and stripes’ on Mars (the planet, not the chocolate).

Says Deakin University’s Clare Corbould on today’s episode of the After America podcast:

“That was clearly a sop to Elon Musk, who has no greater ambition than to go to Mars.”

“I mean, dude…don’t wait!”

The Coalition are running with the line that the Labor government has shelved the nature positive legislation because of a “Green-Teal-Labor deal’.

Which is quite hilarious, given the Greens and independent MPs known as teals are not exactly thrilled with Labor for discharging this bill once again. Labor is discharging the bill because the Coalition won’t work with them on it and Labor doesn’t want to do what the Greens want to do, even on the compromised bill.

So even though Labor is pulling the bill, it is not promising to never ever bring any legislation like it ever again, and therefore this is part of a big 4D chess game to align the Greens and independent demands in a future minority government.

Galaxy brain must be exhausting.

Sarah Hanson-Young is responding to the Liberal urgency motion to stop anything resembling the nature positive laws every darkening the senate chamber again (because apparently that is how democracy works) and she reads out some of the headlines in response to the government shelving the legislation:

‘Miners rejoice as Albanese shelves environmental watchdog’, ‘Albanese kills off nature positive laws’. ‘Albanese abandons environment reforms’.

Hanson Young continues:

“We can all see what has happened here, that the Labor Party has caved in to the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry and the likes of Gina Rinehart, rather than standing for what is right, protecting nature, putting in place laws that actually stop the destruction, look after our environment, stop our koalas from going extinct – the Labor Party has gone weak.

The Labor Party has caved in again. Now, the Greens have been working hard to try and get meaningful reform that would protect our ancient forests, that would stop our wildlife going extinct. We worked hard with the government to try and get a sensible package agreed to. We even put aside our policy and demands for a climate trigger, because that is what we were told by the government that they couldn’t do because the miners wouldn’t let them.

So we said, okay, we’ll compromise. We’ll be pragmatic. We’ll stand for the forest. We’ll put climate aside, the climate trigger aside until after the election, and we’ll look after the forests and the koalas today. They couldn’t even come at that. They couldn’t even come at that. The Labor Party has abandoned the environment, and if you want change, you want protection, you’re going to have to vote for it.”

Labor senator Anthony Chisholm says the government will not be supporting the motion to ban the nature positive legislation from ever seeing the light of the senate, asking if the Liberal senator wakes up wondering “what scare campaign he’ll be running today”.

Chisholm says the government “has been clear” that it will not progress the bills, and tomorrow the nature positive bills will come up with a discharge motion (which has to be voted on).

Chisholm says the government wants to “provide certainty” to the state and territory governments through the legislation, but because the Coalition “won’t work constructively” with the government, so…the government wants to shelve the bills (this was announced on the weekend)

But the Greens Sarah Hanson-Young has indicated the Greens were willing to bend on its demands, so that the bills could pass. But this is another case where the government doesn’t want to work with the Greens, so once again is pretending that the Coalition is the only side of politics it can work with to pass legislation. Because that has worked so well in the past.

Also on the senate, where senators do senate things, Liberal senator Jonathan Duniam wants the senate to block the nature positive laws (always and forever) with this urgency motion:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Nature Positive bills to be withdrawn from the Notice Paper, and for the Prime Minister to guarantee that this legislation will never be returned to the Parliament

Over in the senate, Greens senator Nick McKim has signaled the Greens will move this motion:

That the election of President Trump is a threat to Australia and the world, including his attacks on human rights, democracy and climate action, that the toxic influence of billionaires and corporations in political decision making must end, and that we must do everything we can to stop Trump-style politics coming to Australia

That will be debated in the next few minutes and will no doubt have a lot of, let’s say ‘passionate’ opinions.

Not a lot, other than we have just made it through our first QT of the year.

Well done to all of you – take a moment for a breather. Maybe get a Zooper Dooper. Or bang your head against the wall – whatever seems less painful than what we just went through.

In terms of the politics of it all, it seems like both major parties are still trying to find their footing in this parliamentary year. The Coalition spent their time asking about existing tax write offs for company lunches like it was some sort of gotcha, when in reality it just let the government jibber jabber on about their own costings of the Coalition’s small business Schnitty tax breaks.

Labor want the focus to be on what they have done to address cost of living, while the Coalition seem content to focus their energy on what is happening outside of parliament, where they are dominating the media cycle.

But it was a fairly low energy return in general to what is meant to be the centerpiece of the parliamentary day.

FINALLY.

Anthony Albanese’s office might just be reading this blog (waves) as Albanese comes back to add to his answer to Sussan Ley’s question earlier in QT:

“I was asked a question by the deputy leader of the opposition about the food prices and the figures, the latest figures to the December quarter…(there are a bunch of interjections from Ley and Dutton and Dick tells them to shut it)

Albanese:

“Year to year, food and non alcohol beverages…so those figures are the inflation rate is 3.0% and their (the Coalition) last year in office, it was 5.9%.”

Ley is OUTRAGED but Dick is not in the mood to hear the faux outrage and tells her to sit down.

And we can all move on with our lives.

For some reason, question time is continuing. Taking what is left of our life force.

Tony Burke takes a dixer to address some of the Peter Dutton rah-rah talk on visa cancellations from earlier today.

Why did the Albanese Labor Government abolish the golden ticket visa? Is the minister aware of proposals that undermine the integrity of our visa system?

Burke:

“When the member for Blair refers to the golden ticket visa, it’s the name often given to the significant investor visa. This is a visa that was abolished by this Government, and abolished for very good reason. Because it was not consistent with the integrity of the visa system that Australians would expect.

I had thought that that was bipartisan because of the serious national security reasons associated with its abolition. But over the weekend, over recent days, we’ve seen that once again, the Leader of the Opposition didn’t realise that there was a boom mic overhead. And when asked about this visa, he said, not realising that he was being heard, “I think we’ll bring it back.” Whether we do it before the election, we’ll have to consider all of that.”

Now, there has been a response from… (INTERJECTIONS) from the founder of the Magnitsky Act, Sir Bill Browder. And if those opposite want to discredit someone of that esteem, I suggest that they first go to the home page of Senator Paterson. You’ll find both Sir Bill Browder being praised in the Parliament and you’ll find his image on the home page of Senator Paterson. Here’s what he had to say about the proposal, and these are all quotes: “Reopening the door to organised crime.” I quote again, “The types of people who have taken advantage of this in the past are often the ones you least want to have coming to your country.” I quote again…”Australia is not such a poor country that it needs to prostitute itself to Chinese and Russian criminals.”

And one further quote “It seems like the kind of thing that someone might be doing just for a narrow group of political contributions”.

When it comes to immigration policy, I suggest the Australian people don’t look at what he says, but look at what he does. He opposed limiting the number of students coming in. He issued more visa than any other minister in history, and now, he is wanting his policy cash for visas.”

Burke sits down but there is a back and forth over whether or not he needs to withdraw an imputation against Peter Dutton. Burke says it was quotes. The Coalition are not having it. Burke withdraws to assist the house but Milton Dick warns it is going to have ramifications on using quotes for all sides moving forward.