The House was back this week, while the Senate continued with estimates. If you missed the first week of estimates - Murray Watt put together a helpful video that’s well worth a watch.

Also worth checking out - we’ve launched a podcast to accompany this email! Check out The 5and5 Live with Tony Burke - on whatever podcast platform you use. This week’s guest is the Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly.

Anyway, here’s the 5&5.

BEST

One step closer to the referendum
Methyl Ethel made it into Hansard
The PM called someone "lightweight but dense"
Michelle Rowland’s timely reminder
When Jason Clare brought the House to a standstill

WORST

The Opposition and the Greens are still against affordable housing
The Member for Gippsland not knowing about Hansard...
Angus Taylor's VegeMIGHTY blunder
Ted O’Brien's confusion
Andrew Hastie's own goal

1. This week we took one step closer to a referendum recognising First Nations people, with the House passing the Constitution Alteration Bill - 121 votes to 25. During a question from Marion Scrymgour on Wednesday Linda Burney summed up the importance of the moment, “we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting the Voice. It's time for recognition. It's time for a Voice. And it's time to say Yes.” As Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney-General, put it, “The change to our Constitution will rectify over 120 years of explicit exclusion and omission in Australia's founding document.”

2. It was another big week of getting legislation through the House. The Creative Australia Bill – which sets up Creative Australia, as well as establishing Music Australia and Creative Workplaces – passed on Thursday. A special shout out to the Member for Swan, Zaneta Mascarenhas, who mentioned Perth band Methyl Ethel during the debate on Creative Australia. Fairly certain that’s a new one for Hansard. Amanda Rishworth’s legislation increasing JobSeeker also passed and is off to the Senate.

3. Sometimes in Question Time a turn of phrase just lands perfectly. The PM had that moment this week, while describing Angus Taylor. “This is the paradox of the shadow Treasurer — lightweight but dense.”

4. Liberal shadow David Coleman decided to ask Communications Minister Michelle Rowland about gambling regulation. Without any notes she absolutely knocked him out of the park – highlighting the action we’re taking on harm minimisation and the lack of any action they’d taken for a decade in government. You could actually see him deflating in his seat.

5. Often the best answers in Question Time get the whole place going. The energy rises, the tempo increases and the volume goes through the roof. But every now and again, the best answers bring the House to a standstill. Education Minister Jason Clare did that on Wednesday. Answering a question about higher education he went around the chamber, addressing individual MPs, highlighting the huge disparity between levels of higher education in different electorates.

Wentworth - 67 per cent.
Rankin - 19 per cent.
Melbourne - 69 per cent.
Longman - 16 per cent.
North Sydney - 71.3 per cent.
Spence - 15 per cent.

“There is a cost to going to university, but what is the cost of those kids missing out? I don't want us to be a country where your chances in life depend on how rich your parents are, where you live or the colour of your skin, but these statistics tell us that that is where we are today, and that, at its core, is what the Universities Accord is all about.”

1. The Opposition and the Greens Party continue to stand in the way of tens of thousands of new social and affordable houses, refusing to vote for the Housing Australia Future Fund. Oddly enough though, nobody seems to have told the LNP member for Dawson, Andrew Willcox, that his party is opposing it.

On Tuesday Housing Minister Julie Collins revealed he’d written to her asking about the benefits of the HAFF! As she told the House, “I'm very happy to have the conversation with the Member for Dawson, and I'd say to the Member for Dawson that the Senators in his party should support it in the Senate. It's all very well to say that you want to access the fund, but you actually have to vote for it."

2. Last week the Opposition asked the Prime Minister about support for timber workers. Part of the answer he gave was that workers would be supported as part of the National Reconstruction Fund. $300 million in fact. This week they were at him again – arguing that he’d *somehow* mislead the Parliament. If only there was a record of everything that was said in Parliament. Oh wait - there is. The PM read back his own words from Hansard which left the Opposition attack with nowhere to go. So in order to claim the PM had mislead, the Opposition had to misrepresent. It’s an odd approach.

“Unfortunately for the Member for Gippsland, who I have respect for—he's been here a long time—there's this thing called Hansard and it records what you say. So if you're going to come to the dispatch box and make an allegation that there's been some misleading of parliament, which he did in a question, you don't get to put your own words into my mouth. What you get to do is ask a question and I get to answer it. I answered it very clearly. I answered it completely accurately.”

3. During Question Time on Tuesday shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor thought he was on a winner with a question to the PM where he rattled off these stats. “UBS data shows that in the last month alone the price of Vegemite has increased by eight per cent, peanut butter by nine per cent. Yoghurt has increased by 12 per cent.” Only problem with these numbers was they were the *yearly* figures, not *monthly* as Angus described. I guess if you get the two mixed up it means Angus gets a birthday party roughly every 30 days.

4. It wasn’t just the shadow Treasurer struggling with facts this week. The shadow Energy Minister, Ted O’Brien, was arguing that our energy price relief (that they voted against) wasn’t doing anything. That’s despite the Treasury Secretary, the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Operator all saying it was working. Chris Bowen had some ideas about what else Ted might have thought was responsible.

“What was it? Was it the coronation, Mr Speaker? Was it the final episode of Succession? No spoilers. Was it Sweden winning Eurovision? Was it the Honourable Member's videos from Fukushima and Hiroshima promoting nuclear energy? What could it have been? What possibly could have been?”

5. Liberal MP Andrew Hastie covered himself in glory on Thursday, scoring an absolute own goal while asking the PM about defence spending. The PM got up to answer, quoting word for word how Andrew Hastie had described defence spending under the Coalition when they were in government.

“As the assistant defence minister, I saw a lot of waste. And there are always savings to be made. So we're not arguing that there should be no cuts. We just want to make sure that these are done in a considered way”.

The House and the Senate are back on the 13th of June.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. Given the number of things the Opposition said this week that weren’t right – and the special mention from Zaneta Mascharenas – song of the week is ‘Proof’ by Methyl Ethel, featuring Stella Donnelly.

5&5: Facts and not so facts