It’s a pretty simple summary of the best and worst. Best week for Labor. Worst week for the Liberals and Nationals. Best week for Anthony Albanese. Worst week for Scott Morrison. Best week for workers. Worst week for the government’s extreme agenda. Best week for questions about integrity. Worst week for answers. We fought hard. And in the final vote of the week, we won.

BEST

A massive win for workers
Labor speeches
Eliminating violence against women
Aged care
Robodebt

WORST

Angus Taylor
Garrad
Morrison’s misjudgement
Morrison’s misleads
Workers beware

1. There was nothing better this week than the work of Labor Senators. The Government’s union bashing bill was in front of the Senate. The Government thought it had the vote in the bag. Christian Porter had already scheduled his victory media conference. Facebook posts declaring a Liberal National victory against working Australians started to be posted and then the bells stopped ringing. Senators sat on each side of the chamber. The Government tellers counted the votes. Then wanted to count them again. And each time they kept counting the number of people voting on each side didn’t change. Labor’s Sue Lines was in the chair and announced the result: the Bill had been defeated . A lot of you were involved in the campaign to expose how dangerous this legislation was. The ACTU did an extraordinary job making sure members of parliament could directly meet with grassroots union members to understand the impacts of what was proposed. This win belongs to all of you. And the Government Senator’s faces says it all:

**Liberal MP Anne Ruston in shock over the union-busting vote. Photo: ABC/Luke Stephenson**

2. Every one of Labor’s 26 senators spoke against this bill. The Government could only muster one - Andrew Bragg, the same bloke who has been complaining about so many workers receiving superannuation. The Labor speeches were fantastic and I’ve posted links to as many as I could find below. Every example of the hypocrisy of the Government when it came to integrity was mentioned:

A bank breaks the law 23 million times and Scott Morrison says “it’s a matter for the board” but if a union makes three paperwork errors the entire organisation could be deregistered
The government didn’t want to say a word about the integrity of a Cabinet Minister who is under criminal investigation
The Registered Organisations Commission that had been found to have conducted an unlawful investigation was going to be rewarded with more power.

**Penny Wong leads Labor’s resistance to the union-busting Bill. Photo: Lyndal Curtis**

3. On Monday a series of speeches were made about violence against women. Linda Burney led the debate saying “One woman a week is murdered in Australia. It is a national crisis. But it's not just about the murders; it's also about the injury, the permanent disability and the maiming. Eight women a day are hospitalised as a result of assaults from their partners and others, and Indigenous women's experience of violence is three times higher than non-Indigenous women. Preventing violence against women requires fundamental cultural and attitudinal change through awareness and education, especially the education of young people.” There were powerful examples in every speech from Linda , Anne Aly, Luke Gosling, Jo Ryan, Meryl Swanson, Peter Khalil, and Sharon Bird. I also spoke about a recent unprovoked attack on a woman in a local cafe.

4. Julie Collins tore to shreds the government’s claims that they were doing enough in aged care in a speech to the House on Wednesday. Think of some of the numbers Julie quoted: They have announced $537 million in funding. But when Scott Morrison was Treasurer they cut $1.2 billion. The Government announced 10,000 new home care packages. But there are 120,000 on waiting lists. In fact 10,000 is “less than the number of people who died last year waiting for a package”.

5. I’ve written to you a few times about the government’s Robodebt scheme. This week it was found to be unlawful. Bill Shorten spoke in the chamber about the court’s decision on Thursday saying: “What this means is that your government, the current government of Australia, has been engaging in illegal, systemic extortion of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians.”

1. Angus, Angus, Angus. Where do I begin? During the break he sent an apology to Clover Moore for using false travel figures to try and discredit her, so on Monday Mark Butler checked whether he would also accept he had misled the House. He refused. So his position is that a document which on all the evidence never existed on the City of Sydney’s website was downloaded from the same website where it never was. Mark Butler put it all into perspective beautifully when he questioned the Rhodes scholar’s primary school maths:

“What I find utterly baffling is that no-one appears to have asked the question: how could 10 councillors spend $14 million on domestic travel in a year? Do some basic maths. If you're a Rhodes scholar you could do the maths. There are 10 councillors; it's pretty easy to divide figures by 10. This equals $28,000 per councillor every single week on domestic travel, which I work out as being 20 return trips to Melbourne and six or seven business class return trips to Perth every single week for every single councillor across the entire year. Every councillor would be spending 80 to 90 hours in the air every week for every week of the year.”

We need to remember Angus Taylor used to be reported as one of the brightest in the Liberal ranks. So either (a) he is and the rest are even worse than him, or (b) whoever was briefing journos about his brilliance was the same person who typed on Facebook:

2. The next day the police launched Strike Force Garrad into the scandal. When Anthony Albanese stood to make a speech calling on the PM to stand Angus Taylor aside while the criminal investigation is underway the Government moved that he be no further heard. Mark Butler stood, got a few words out and he was shut down. Richard Marles stood and only got a few words out but they were pretty funny. He instructed everyone to look up the meaning of “Garrad” in the Urban Dictionary. This is a G rated email so you’ll have to check yourself. Language warning if you do.

3. What the PM did next was extraordinary. He personally rang the NSW Police Commissioner. He then brought back to the Parliament information that went further than what the police had chosen to put in the public domain. The lack of judgement here is breathtaking. So once he was under pressure guess who Morrison blamed? Yep. It was apparently all Labor’s fault because we didn’t tell him that he shouldn’t make the call. The fact that when Anthony stood up to speak they voted to prevent him from speaking was conveniently forgotten. In fact, the Government shut down debate on this issue over 20 times during the week.

**In the frame: both Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison showed shocking judgement this week. Photo: Mike Bowers**

4. In defending Angus Taylor for misleading the Parliament, Morrison went on to mislead the Parliament. Four times. That’s right. Four times.

He attributed words to a Victorian detective that were in fact from radio host Ben Fordham;
He claimed we had shut down a member who was talking about veteran suicide when in fact at the time he was getting stuck into the Queensland Labor Government and talking about the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund;
He claimed we voted against a Bill at the second reading stage when we in fact voted for it;
And then he claimed we had in voted against the Bill at the third reading stage – but we didn’t.

5. As the Parliament finished up, Christian Porter announced they would bring back the union bashing legislation soon. This is a two-stage attack. Stage one is to attack unions - the organisations that fight for better pay and conditions and safer workplaces. Stage two is to directly attack pay and conditions. They flagged these attacks earlier in the week when they were sure they were going to win yesterday’s vote. There’s a big battle ahead. It’s a direct attack on Australian workers. We’ve won round one but there’s a lot more to come.

Next week is the final week of Parliament for the year. We have an end of year event just after the House rises on Thursday for caucus and staff. This year we are doing it as a fundraiser for Support Act. It’s the organisation that looks after people in the music industry with mental health challenges and when they hit hard times. There’s a covers band that I help organise which plays. This year we are to be joined by a real professional musician! Which is sort of the opposite of the rest of us. Mark Callaghan from the band GANGgajang will be coming along to make us closer to musical. I’ll let you know how it goes.

‘Til then

Tony

LABOR SPEECHES ON UNION BILL: