This was one of those weeks when the Senate has estimates committee hearings while the Reps has its normal routine of legislation (what little of it there is) and Question Time. Here’s the #5and5:

BEST

Tag team
Albo finally gets his say
Friends, rorters, countrymen
What was that?
Back in black?

WORST

Sports rorts scandal deepens. Again.
A committee of one
Morrison sinks to a new low
Erotic anime
Alinta

The tag team between Labor Senators and the House of Reps has never been more effective. Information uncovered in the morning about sports rorts or the risks to the economy was put directly to the Government later that day. And there was no greater example of the impact of this than when the Chief of Defence General Angus Campbell and the PM were asked the same question within minutes. General Campbell confirmed he was “discomforted” by the Liberal Party ad about the bushfire response that used images of the Defence Force and confirmed he had called the PM about it. But when we asked the PM about whether there had been a phone call, you guessed it, he refused to say. So the next day Anthony Albanese asked the PM why General Campbell could say “yes” but the PM couldn’t give a straight answer to a simple question? Now here’s where it gets really weird. The PM then stood up and claimed he had answered that question the day before and had confirmed the phone call. Which he hadn’t. And we all saw he hadn’t. And it was live broadcast on TV that he hadn’t. And it was recorded in Hansard that he hadn’t. And there he was. The Prime Minister of Australia telling the Parliament something that everybody, including himself, knew was entirely untrue.

The many faces of Labor’s Penny Wong. PHOTO: Alex Ellinghausen / NINE

2. Every time Anthony Albanese stands up to move that we debate the misleads, the spin, the failures, the obsessive secrecy, and the rorts of this government, they move that he be no longer heard and use their numbers to prevent parliamentary debate. So Anthony stood up during the debate on the appropriations bills. These are the only bills where there is a standing order that says you don’t have to be relevant to the legislation, and he laid out all the points they’ve been trying to make sure were never put on the record. Watch the speech here.

3. On Tuesday before Question Time Ed Husic suggested all Government MPs should begin their speeches on grants with the rhetorical flourish “Friends, rorters, countrymen, lend me your taxpayer dollars.” Watch it here.

4. I’m still not quite sure what happened here but the Government moved to postpone consideration of a bill that was aimed at partially addressing multinational tax avoidance. No reasons were given so I immediately spoke against it and took the opportunity to remind the Government backbench that since the last election there have been almost no divisions on legislation. This means their main contribution to the Parliament has been to vote to silence debate. Stephen Jones stood up next and argued on the same themes with some more detail about multinational tax avoidance. After that the Government withdrew the motion to postpone and we went back to debating the bill that dealt with multinational tax. Plenty of colleagues have asked me to explain what the Government was trying to do and why it backed down. I still can’t make sense of it. They’re just a mess. You can watch my speech here.

5. This was the week where Josh Frydenberg started to crabwalk away from his claim the budget was “back in black”. Jim Chalmers put the Treasurer’s own words back to him and Frydenberg refused to repeat them. In his answers to Government questions he kept up his usual inane attack on Labor. Sometimes you need to make clear that the mud being thrown around by Government ministers doesn’t hurt you at all. So when Josh Frydenberg was going all “Labor, Labor, Labor” and then happened to use the phrase “back in black” Labor didn’t ask the Speaker to shut him down. We moved to give him an extension of time.

Tuesday was quite comical. Senators Katy Gallagher and Don Farrell had done an extraordinary job making sure we had substantial new material on sports rorts. But Scott Morrison, ever the ad man and marketing guy was determined to try to stop the story from running on TV. So for every answer he kept his eyes down and almost whispered in the softest voice he could get away with so the TV had as little as possible to run with. It didn’t work. The rorts still ran that night on every network.
What do you picture when you hear the word “committee”? Maybe a dozen people? Maybe a small or large group sitting around a table. Well this week we heard about the Government’s Cabinet Office Policy Committee. Guess how many members it has? One. Yes. Just one: Scott Morrison. It’s pretty obvious the whole thing is a sham so he can claim almost any discussion he has is “cabinet-in-confidence” and therefore secret. Anthony Albanese asked the PM what the meetings he has with himself are like? Does he argue with himself? Do the meetings simply occur in his head?
Scott Morrison made the extraordinary claim that Anthony had missed a meeting with the Chief Medical Officer about coronavirus. On Thursday afternoon Anthony used the standing order for “personal explanations” to make it clear what had really occurred. When you read this you’ll see how disgusting Morrison’s claim was: “Today in question time the Prime Minister repeated a claim he's made outside this House: that there was a refusal to have a briefing from the Chief Medical Officer last Wednesday. That is not true. The facts are these. At 7.25 pm last Wednesday the health minister's office rang the shadow health minister, Chris Bowen, saying that there'd been a mix-up in CMO Brendan Murphy's office, and that he had arrived at Parliament to give the Opposition a briefing. That briefing went ahead at 7.30 pm with the shadow health minister, my chief of staff and my senior health adviser. At that time, I was with the Prime Minister at the vigil for Hannah Clarke and her children. That's where I was when that phone call was made. I was unaware of any of this until the next day, and I confirmed with Brendan Murphy when I met with the CMO this week that that was the fact of what occurred.”
In Senate estimates Deb O’Neill and Tony Sheldon exposed just how bizarre and inappropriate appointments to the Fair Work Commission have been from this Government. Tony started by checking with the Fair Work Commission that it is good we have moved beyond the old days where inappropriate calendars would be common in Australian workplaces. The Commission was in full agreement. Then it was over to Deb who started asking about Liberal appointee Gerard Boyce and how he had his part of the office decorated. What followed was a description of, and I’m quoting here: “hand-painted, scantily-clad, erotic anime”. After that, colleagues complained he had set up spy cameras in his office. Oh, and he brought in a life size Donald Trump, as you can see. Oh and I hadn’t mentioned: Boyce isn’t some junior staff member at the Fair Work Commission. Thanks to this Government, he’s a Deputy President of the Commission paid $460,000 a year until the year 2038.

Interesting décor for an impartial office. PHOTO: Supplied

5. There’s a company called Alinta which had to make undertakings in response to the Foreign Investment Review Board to make sure the privacy of one million Australians were protected. Jim Chalmers asked when the Government first became aware those conditions were not being enforced. And guess why Frydenberg refused to answer? To protect the privacy of the company! Jim hit straight back asking why the government would protect the privacy of the company but not the privacy of one million Australians.

The whole idea of this email has always been to let you know what’s happening in Parliament beyond the tiny glimpses that make it onto the news. Sadly the news coverage is about to become much thinner. For many decades, national newswire AAP has been covering the Parliament. This week it was announced they’ll be shutting down in June. They have typically been the only bureau that is always watching what’s happening in the chamber, holding all of us to account for what we do in there. They are first class journalists and they’ve also been an essential pillar in making sure the other news organisations receive word of what happens, beyond the coverage of Question Time. The end of AAP is another sad blow to the public interest news coverage which should underpin a democracy.

The AAP Canberra team as they learn their fate. PHOTO: Mick Tsikas / AAP

Parliament is scheduled to return after a two week break.

‘til then,

Tony

5&5: Tag team