It was the first week back after Budget and Senate Estimates had started. Here’s what happened in the House.

My guest on the podcast this week is the Minister Regional Development, Local Government and Territories Kristy McBain.

Here’s the 5&5.

BEST

Mr Burns or Peter Dutton 🤔
A round of applause for Angus Taylor
Madeleine King's call out on hypocrisy
Catherine King's contrast call out
More Kiwis to become Australian citizens

WORST

The Oppositions track record with Veterans Affairs
Barnaby Joyce out-Barnaby Joyce-ing himself
The Opposition's immigration questions
Petter Dutton's unhinged rage directed at the crossbench
The Liberals politicisation of serving defence members

1. Andrew Charlton played a fun game before Question Time on Tuesday. Guess who said it - villainous nuclear power billionaire Mr Burns from The Simpsons or Peter Dutton? Definitely have a watch. I’d like to say you’ll be surprised, but if you know anything about Peter Dutton you probably won’t be.

2. If you’re a regular reader of this email you’d know that the Angus Taylor *never* asks the Treasurer anything in Question Time, not even during Budget week. Well there was applause in the Chamber on Tuesday when Angus did finally get up to ask the Treasurer a question. While he was answering Peter Dutton jumped on a point of order. Jim didn’t miss with his response: “The irony of being asked about coherence by two guys who can't explain a budget reply which was given two weeks ago. Give me a break!"

3. A whole lot of the mining jobs that are available with the growth of renewables are because of resources that we have here like critical minerals. Madeleine King was great this week going through the Opposition’s hypocrisy on not supporting measures in the Budget to get those jobs going.

4. It’s a pretty stark contrast between the Government and the Opposition, not least when it comes to supporting manufacturing. As Catherine King told Question Time on Wednesday: “Where the Albanese Government is working to deliver a future made in Australia. The coalition wants a future made overseas."

5. On Thursday the PM was talking about changes the Government had made to allow more Kiwis to become Australian citizens. As he explained - there are 20,000 New Zealanders who’ve taken up the opportunity. Anne Aly and Stephen Jones interjected - “Including Barnaby!” At least there’s 19,999 others to balance Barnaby out.

1. Underfunded, under-resourced and facing a crisis, with a backlog of 42,000 claims which had never been looked at. That was the reality at the Department of Veterans Affairs when we came to government. Why? As Matt Keogh explained in Question Time on Wednesday, because the previous government (in their own words) didn’t see prioritising funding as a political advantage. In this year’s Budget we’re fixing that backlog, allocating the funds needed to clear it. As Matt Keogh said: “This is not about politics; it's about doing the right thing."

2. It’s amazing, but Barnaby Joyce continues to out-Barnaby Joyce himself. As Chris Bowen explained in Question Time on Tuesday -the former Deputy Prime Minister recently took issue with the CSIRO’s findings that nuclear remains the most expensive source of energy. Here was Barnaby’s issue (this is actually a quote): 'The CSIRO is of course an Australian organisation it's like getting Mongolia to write a report on tropical rainforests they don't have them we don't have nuclear power in Australia so we do have a nuclear reactor in fact we've got one smack bang in the middle of Sydney one in Sydney seems to worry about it much but the CSIRO if it is.' As Chris Bowen told Question Time: “That clears that up!"

3. On Monday the Opposition asked a whole bunch of questions about immigration detainees. Two of the examples - one was the US, one was the UK, but they didn’t name the country in the question. The only ones that were named were - you guessed it - either African or Middle Eastern countries.

4. By now you’ll know that Peter Dutton is pretty angry, but there’s something that makes him particularly angry during Question Time. Whenever members of the crossbench raise points of order, there is a level of aggression and shouting from Peter Dutton is just out of control. I wonder why?

5. It wasn’t just veterans who’d left the Defence Force that the Liberals politicised. They also used serving members politically. As Richard Marles told the House this week:

“On 9 February 2021, former Prime Minister Morrison attended RAAF Base Williamtown for a Defence announcement. For those opposite, the substance of that announcement was less important than the theatre. We had Top Gun music. We had pageantry. We had hoopla. A year earlier, on 4 January, at the height of the Black Summer bushfires, those opposite produced an ad featuring the Australian Defence Force to raise money for the Liberal Party. These two incidents characterise the essence of the Liberals. As they see it, defence is all about politics; defence is all about them."

Senate Estimates continue next week and our senators have been doing, as always, an extraordinary job. The House will be back next week as well.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. Song of the week is in honour of Peter Dutton’s capacity for instant anger. ‘I See Red’ by Split Enz.

5&5: He sees red