The senate is gearing up for the final fight over the salmon farming laws, which Labor and the Coalition are teaming up on to pass through its final hurdle, so that is pretty much that. There has to be a vote on it tonight, with the parties already passing a guillotine debate motion (to cut off debate and force a vote).

We’ll bring you the outcome of that in the morning, but I think you can see where that is going. Sigh. Vale Maugean Skate. Survived the dinosaurs, but not us.

If you are coming to our Politics in the Pub event tonight – Huzzah! You’ll have me instead of Richard Denniss, who is a bit unwell, so apologies for the poor stand in. But I am pretty annoyed at all politics at the moment and the budget hasn’t helped – so put a glass of wine in me and WHO KNOWS where the evening will go. Alice Grundy and senior economist Matt Grudnoff are very sensible though, and will keep me in check.

If not, hopefully we will see you tomorrow? We are really loving the little community we are building here. There are still some bugs to work out, and we are also working on how to introduce comment functions, because we know you love a below the line chat as well. Stay tuned for all of that.

In the mean time, we’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning (well some of us will. I most likely won’t be bright, but I will be early.) Until then, take care of you. Ax

And as an extra treat, I’ll leave you with the ramblings of the man behind Scott Morrison’s PMO media team, Andrew Carswell. All those mis-steps from the Coalition? They are actually a mark of the GENIUS of the Coalition campaign team. You’re probably just not smart enough to see it.

It might not feel like it, deep within the bowels of a usually unflappable Coalition campaign team.

But the Coalition’s recent policy stumbles and missteps, the unexpected brain farts, the outbreak of ill-discipline that have all combined to take the wind out of the Coalition’s sails in the last three weeks is, well, highly advantageous.

Fortuitous, even. Probably even a Godsend. Yes, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Given the political commentary suggesting this pre-campaign mensis horribilis has damaged the Coalition’s chances of taking the fight up to Labor in the upcoming election, such a claim may appear either hopelessly naïve or wilfully delusional.

But better to have your worst three weeks in opposition before the election campaign kicks off, than during it — when voters are actually paying attention to what’s going on in Canberra.

Even that term “worst” is a bit harsh. Under Peter Dutton, this Coalition has been a picture of discipline and unity, the latter being the Achilles heel of the Liberals and Nationals marriage of convenience, usually because of the latter’s tendency to grandstand on behalf of its regional folk.

Dutton has not only kept the ship steady, its cannon have been firing with precision.

So yes, we are unfairly judging Dutton and his team for three unfortunate weeks, ignoring the three years of good behaviour up to that point.

How many public servants does the Coalition want to cut?

Angus Taylor:

“Well, I’ve been clear. I’ve said we want to get back to where we were last year.

Q: And how many is that?

Taylor: “Well, you know, it’s pretty clear that they’ve increased it by 41,000 and that’s the increase on where it was.”

This man was a Rhode’s Scholar don’t you know.

Anthony Albanese will do the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing today, then tomorrow is the Peter Dutton day while the senate is in estimates.
Albanese is also the Insiders’ guest on Sunday, so you KNOW the election is ON on.

Will he drive from the Insiders studio to Government House? I mean, stranger things have been done, but either way you will no doubt get live footage of a car driving up a drive way. What a thing to look forward to.

Just in case you haven’t had enough budget content, here is Grog’s and Matt running through the budget, after the budget lock up. (Hence the slight mania)

David Shoebridge has taken a look at the budget from the defence side of things and this is what he has come up with:

The Albanese Government has cranked up funding for AUKUS to $18 billion over five years, largely as a tribute payment to President Trump, in the recent Federal Budget. 

This represents an additional $6 billion compared to last year’s budget for nuclear-powered submarines. This AUKUS cost will keep growing year by year, with a total project cost now hitting $375 billion.  

This is funding that will not be going towards the things the public needs, like dental and mental health into Medicare, public housing or funding public education. 

This budget also sees the Albanese Government paying $1.6 billion to make a nuclear submarine base for the US off the coast of Perth at HMAS Stirling. 

Labor has also budgeted to pay $445.4 million as a payment to “sustain” nuclear submarines over the next five years, which are submarines we don’t have. This funding will likely instead sustain US nuclear submarines, having Australian taxpayers subsidise Donald Trump’s military.

There will also be $28 million to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for “international policy advice and diplomatic support for the nuclear-powered submarine program.” Effectively, funding to send diplomats to beg Donald Trump to give us nuclear submarines. 

Largely due to AUKUS, the total Defence budget is now almost $59 billion a year and now makes up 6.6% of all Government expenditure. 

One of the less big front-page aspects announced yesterday was the banning of non-compete clauses for non-executives.

These are very good changes that the Productivity Commission has called for and which Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz also called for last year when he visited Australia as a guest of the Institute. Traditionally non-compete clauses are to stop executives who are privy to commercial in confidence information moving to another executive role at a competitor. That is fair enough. But now these non-compete clauses ae being used to stop normal workers from going to work for a competitor – such as preventing McDonalds workers going to work for KFC.

This is bad because it means if you have skills you are most likely to find work in the same industry – but if you find a better job at another company in the same industry a non-compete clause prevents you from doing this for a set period of time – for example 12 months.

That means it is harder for workers to find better paying jobs, and it also means companies don’t have to worry about competitors poaching their workers so they don’t have to worry about increasing wages to try to keep their workers.

So it is no surprise at all that business groups hate the changes. ACCI for example says “employers are disheartened that legitimate uses of non-competes to protect legitimate business interests have been successfully demonised by the union movement.” Both it and the Business Council of Australia are saying the changes are not needed because the courts can decide if a non-compete clause is unfair. So yeah, a worker just needed to take a company to court! So easy!

There are not many things you can count on, but if the BCA and ACCI are against something, you know that something is good for workers and bad for profits.

Question time ends and Anthony Albanese has a decided spring in his step.

It’s not a ‘I’m about to spring to Government House’ step, but it is a ‘this has gone better than I expected’ step.

He’ll head to Government House this weekend.

The senate is still recovering from the fish stunt Sarah Hanson-Young shocked them with.

And Angus Taylor has appeared to have distanced the Coalition from expectations it will announce its own tax cuts in tomorrow’s budget-in-reply speech – after he raised expectations in his 7.30 interview last night.

It is very possible Taylor actually doesn’t know what the position of the Coalition is. Don’t discount that either.

In case you missed it earlier this morning, Jacqui Lambie continued her run of being Jacqui Lambie:

Tony Burke continues:

With net migration, the key driver any government has over it is how many visas you issue. There are some visas where we have taken action like we have with respect to student visas, action which they voted to make unlimited. Other actions we have taken, we got rid of the golden ticket fees are, one of the things that would feed into net migration figures, that is what we previously described as cash for visas, something that the Leader of the Opposition wants to bring back.

The overriding control you having immigration is how many visas you issue. In terms of the concept of record highs on that input, it has only happened twice in Australian history that a Minister for Home Affairs or immigration is issued more than 9 million visas. It has only happened twice. It was not myself as minister and not my predecessors. Who possibly would have issued more than 9 million visas two consecutive years? Know what else is caught up with this record.

Over in the house and Angus Taylor is still on his migration bent:

Q: I refer to the government’s increase the migration program of 1.8 million people over five years. Will the Treasurer guarantee it will not go higher than 1.8 million? (Mostly due to international students)

Tony Burke:

So good to get a question from them on net overseas migration because if there is ever a gap between their rhetoric and what they have done, it is on this issue. The latest figures that came out last week showed a 31% fall in net overseas migration year on year. 31%. And what measure that had been a particularly fast growing area of net overseas migration had been student visas. The government’s action on student visas also a 31% fall. When we put that measure to the Parliament, which way did they vote on student visas? They call for them to be unlimited? This government has taken action. You don’t like it, do you? It is terribly sad but it is the record you are responsible for and there’s a lot more to come.