5&5: No such thing as a free lunch
Both the House and the Senate were back in session for the first time in 2025.
Here’s the 5&5.
BEST
Childcare guarantee
Free TAFE
Hate speech crackdown
Hospital help
Best and worst
WORST
Liberals who lunch
Under the knife
Golden ticket
Greens’ hypocrisy
The coalition 🤝 big tobacco
1. One of the ways the Albanese Labor Government is helping families with cost of living relief is providing access to cheaper childcare. This week Anne Aly announced three days of subsidised care - guaranteed. “The three-day guarantee will mean real cost-of-living relief for over 66,000 families, saving them an average of around $1,370 per year. About half of those families earn less than $100,000. Lower-income families get to save even more, an average of around $1,460 a year. It also means that over 100,000 families can get more subsidised hours of early childhood education and care if they want or need it. This bill will help parents get back into the workforce and give meaningful support to families struggling with the cost of living.”
2. Labor’s Free TAFE bill is a step closer, after passing the House on Wednesday. Almost 600,000 Australians have already benefited from the program - people like Bradley Edwards - a young father from South Australia - who was able to retrain as an early childcare educator. “There is more to do to support Australians, and that's why we are making free TAFE permanent. But the Liberals continue to call it wasteful spending. The Leader of the Opposition says he's going to cut 'wasteful spending'. The last time they were in government, the coalition left Australians with the second-worst skills shortage in the OECD. They cut $3 billion from TAFE and training. They failed to land a national skills agreement with the states and territories for nearly a decade. And they haven't changed.”
3. Ever since I was elected to Parliament, I’ve spoken out against hate speech - while the Liberals have fought to protect a person’s “right to be a bigot”. Whether it’s antisemitism or Islamophobia - all Australians have the right to be safe and protected from bigotry, and this week, the House passed Australia’s toughest laws against hate crimes.
4. We know Peter Dutton will come after Medicare if elected - quite simply because he’s done it before. This week, Mark Butler announced a massive $1.7b boost to public hospital funding, to ensure all Australians can access high quality care - for free. “I'm asked if there are any approaches that would leave Australians worse off. Well, perhaps the approach of the Leader of the Opposition when he was health minister might be instructive. Although he promised there would be no cuts to health in 2013, in 2014 he tried to rip $50 billion out of our public hospital system. His approach this year is a little different: he admits there will be cuts; he just won't tell people what they will be. We know what they will be, because this man favours long lunches over public hospitals and he needs to find $600 billion for nuclear power stations. He will come after Medicare again; you can be sure of that.”
5. Gone are the days when Prime Ministers 'didn't hold a hose’ during a national emergency. Straight after Question Time on Wednesday, Anthony Albanese made his way to the flood zones in North Queensland to see the devastation for himself. The worst of times bring out the best in the Australian people, unless you're NSW Senator Hollie Hughes, who said it was “convenient timing” and that “the floods will still be there after today”. Senators Murray Watt, Nita Green and Federal Member Graham Perrett stood up and condemned Senator Hughes’ disgraceful comments.
1. Peter Dutton’s finally announced a new policy and - spoiler alert - it’s not more money for health or education. His one big idea? Getting workers to pay for their employers’ lunch.
On Tuesday, Jim Chalmers and Anika Wells had the Opposition Leader for lunch. Jim said: “This is the only kind of policy that could have been agreed at the tail end of a very long lunch. You can imagine them sitting around with the blue teeth and the soy sauce on the tie coming up with the big ideas. Either they didn't know how much it cost when they announced the policy, or they didn't want Australians to know. They have refused to come clean on the cost of their long lunch policy or what they will cut to pay for that policy. “
Daniel Mulino and Meryl Swanson’s statements on the subject were excellent.
2. Peter Dutton let slip over the weekend he’s planning to slash the budget - but is refusing to give any details about where the axe will fall, until after the election. If history is anything to go by, he’ll target education, childcare and of course, Medicare. The PM summed it up perfectly, “The Leader of the Opposition is out there talking about 'economic surgery'. On Insiders, just on Sunday, he confirmed that massive cuts are coming. But he won't tell Australians what they are until after the election. He wants you to vote for them, and then there will be cuts coming after the election. He wants to put the whole country under the knife, but he won't tell you what he's cutting until after the operation.”
3. Remember when Peter Dutton got caught by a boom mic “joking” about rising sea levels? Well he’s been caught out again - this time pledging to bring back “golden ticket” visas - something our government scrapped. The founder of the Magnitsky Act and global corruption fighter Sir Bill Browder says Peter Dutton’s plan is an ‘invitation for crime'. "It’s hard to imagine that it’s good politics to be standing in front of the Australian people and saying, ‘we want to have potentially dodgy criminals buying their way into Australian residency and Australian passports’. It seems like the kind of thing that someone might be doing just for a narrow group of political contributions.”
4. As the Greens push for a ban on political donations from the gambling industry - Michelle Rowland on Wednesday laid bare their hypocrisy in Question Time. "I find it interesting that the honourable member, who is a member of the Greens political party from Queensland, should ask this when the Queensland Greens have accepted over nearly half a million dollars in donations from a highrolling gambler. This is despite pushing for a ban on political donations from the gambling industry.”
5. Our Government has made real progress in the fight to stop young people getting hooked on vaping. And as Mark Butler told the House on Thursday, the tobacco industry doesn’t like it. Just ask the opposition. “Why is the coalition so determined to roll back our laws and bring back the vapes? Well, at the same time we announced our determination to crack down on vaping, you wouldn't guess who emerged from the shadows and fired up their donations to the coalition again: British American Tobacco. Deirdre Chambers, what a coincidence! They have donated $360,000 over the last two years to the coalition, more than they donated in the past 18 years combined.”
Look out world, there’s a new Manager of Opposition Business in town, Michael Sukkar. When he says something that makes an impact I promise to let you know.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to be back next week alongside the Senate to round out this sitting fortnight.
‘til then,
Tony
PS. In honour of Jim and Anika’s lunchtime take down of Peter Dutton, the song of the week is Spacey Jane’s Lunchtime.
