We’re back for the final week of the sitting fortnight. Both the House and the Senate had a lot going on.

Here’s the 5&5.

BEST

Win for women's health
Stephen Jones, Maria Vamvakinou and Graham Perrett
Our journey to close the gap
Stuffed policy
Give peace a chance

WORST

Disgraceful tactics
The worst of the worst
Rex wreckers
Lack of credibility
Pointing the finger

1. On Sunday, Senator Katy Gallagher, Mark Butler and Ged Kearney made a massive announcement for Australian women. The Albanese Labor Government is strengthening Medicare with $500 million for women’s health. As Katy said in Parliament on Monday, “This is a big package for women's health. While we have costed it, we have also funded it. We're in a position in government to make that change. We've found half a billion dollars that will make women's health care cheaper. It will provide better care and ensure that there are more choices available for women in this country, and we are very proud of this policy.”

Merryl Swanson had a very personal take in her 90 second statement on Monday.

2. This week Parliament heard another three Labor valedictory speeches as Stephen Jones, Member for Whitlam, Maria Vamvakinou, Member for Calwell, and Graham Perrett, Member for Moreton (and more importantly, bass player in our Parliament pub rock band ‘Left Right Out’) bow out of politics.

Stephen Jones spoke about one of his proudest achievements, superannuation. “Some of the best things you contribute to in this place are not the things you start but the things you stop. I was very proud to be a part of an opposition where I worked with my friends former prime minister Keating and former prime minister Rudd, and the Treasurer and the Prime Minister to stop this idea that we were going to freeze the superannuation entitlements of Australians at 9.5 percent. It always struck me as crazy for us to suggest that we should collect 15 but the mob should only get 9.5. At the end of June this year, all Australians will be receiving 12 percent superannuation, and that's a damn good thing.”

Much of Maria’s work over the past 23 years has been promoting multiculturalism. “As a migrant myself, I share a common story with my local communities, and this experience has been critical to my ability to represent them in this place. I would often be asked both here and abroad how it is that a person of Greek heritage could be supported by migrants of Turkish heritage. The answer has always been simple—that, as an Australian, I live in a multicultural country where waves of generations of migrants have settled with a common purpose. It is our shared migrant experiences that bind us as Australians and outweigh the polarised divisions emanating from the original homelands.”

Graham Perrett, in a brilliant speech, made a series of really incisive comments on policy, but I’m not going to give you any of that, because he also talked about my band. “I give a special thanks to the Leader of the House in his capacity as leader of the band. Thanks for inviting me into Left Right Out. I have had an absolute blast. Finally, we did our own original song last Tuesday. I will leave it to the Leader of the House to reveal when it's coming out. Playing with the Wiggles in the Great Hall was a highlight and playing for the Pharmacy Guild in the same venue—and that gig cost Mark Butler only $26.5 billion over five years. Gigs with some of my rock heroes like Mark Callaghan and Buzz Bidstrup were amazing, but truly not as much fun as jamming here on a Tuesday night. Thank you for the music and friendship, and I look forward to buying that single.”

3. This week marked the 17th anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s national apology to the Stolen Generation and on Monday, the Prime Minister delivered his annual closing the gap speech. When speeches like these are made, you can feel the weight of its importance in the Chamber. You should watch the entire speech, but Anthony finished with this, “To Close the Gap would ultimately erase the gulf that lies between us and our true potential as a nation. It’s about ensuring all Australians get the same chance in life. It’s about working towards the reality in which all Australians have power over their destiny. It’s about living the reality of the fair go. Ours is a remarkable country. A nation that is not an accident, or the mere jackpot of good luck. A nation lifted both by the vast sweep of our history, and the bright possibilities of its future. A great nation with an extraordinary potential to be even greater. And that is a story we will write together.”

4. One of the ways we’re helping Australians battle cost of living pressures is by cutting student debt by 20 per cent. While we’re looking out for young people, they’re looking out for their mates with free lunches for employers.. Jason Clare hit the nail on the head: “If we win the election, we will also do something else. We will cut student debts of three million Australians by 20 per cent. If those opposite win, that won't happen either because they're opposed to that too. Here's the press release from the shadow Treasurer on 3 November, on the day that they said they're opposed to cutting student debt by 20 per cent. I promise you I'm not making this up. Their argument for opposing it is this: 'There are no free lunches in economics.' It turns out there is, but only for the bosses. A bit of vichyssoise on the taxpayer Visa card, a bit of taxpayer funded turducken. If you don't know what that is, that's a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey, which is the perfect analogy for this policy because I think most Australians will think it's stuffed.”

5. Speaker of the House Milton Dick was sporting an unusual adornment during Question Time on Monday - a shell necklace symbolising peace and tranquillity. It was a gift from the Speaker of the Kiribati Parliament, who was visiting Canberra. “I thank the speaker for his gift that I'm wearing today to bring peace and tranquillity to the House of Representatives. I am the eternal optimist!” Did it bring harmony to the House? Keep reading to find out…

1. It was the most offensive Parliamentary tactic I’ve ever seen. Mark Dreyfus was responding to a question about hate crimes legislation and referred to the evils of antisemitism and how offensive it has been to watch the opposition politicise the trauma and the experiences of the Jewish people. Michael Sukkar, as the new Manager of Opposition Business then stood up, not to raise a point of order on relevance, not to ask for something to be withdrawn, but bizarrely, to move that Mark Dreyfus be no further heard. That’s right, Michael Sukkar moved that the most senior Jewish member of the Australian Parliament be silenced, so that he could not talk about antisemitism. There was an immediate vote. Every single cross-bencher voted with the Government, 91 to 52. Mark Dreyfus, showing a level of dignity and grace that those opposite would never understand said: “I’m the son and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. I went to the commemoration of the liberation about the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place where a million Jews were murdered, a place where my great-grandmother was murdered on the 13th of October 1942. I say to members of this house that we’ve had a wave of antisemitism in this country, and right now, what we need is unity. We need bipartisanship, and that’s the effort that our government made.”

2. All the worst of Peter Dutton’s ‘achievements’ were summed up by the Prime Minister on Thursday. “The Leader of the Opposition was a senior Minister for every day of the former government. Every day. Every Australian will remember all too well what he means when he speaks about going back, back to rising inflation, back to wages being kept deliberately low, back to aged care in crisis, bulk billing in freefall, childcare being out of reach, back to chasing manufacturing offshore, back to Australia being completely isolated on the world stage, back to secret ministries and robodebt, back to wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on community car parks that were not anywhere near train stations. At the beginning of the show, he was appointed Health Minister, he was so bad that he was dumped by Tony Abbott but you know what was worse? He was replaced by Sussan Ley.”

3. Unlike the Coalition, Labor believes regional and remote communities deserve reliable, affordable and accessible air travel. It’s why we’re taking steps to keep Rex Airlines in the air. The Liberal Party claims to have an ideological objection to governments investing in airlines, but they’re quite happy to have government spend $600 billion of taxpayers money on nuclear reactors. Catherine King summed it up: “We have been clear that the Commonwealth is not a bidder in this second sales process and we want to see a successful, market led outcome. This is a strong signal to the market that we are willing to work with them to land a deal. But we have also been clear that, if there is no sale, we will look at contingency options, including preparations necessary for potential Commonwealth acquisition. When markets fail or struggle to deliver for regional communities, the government absolutely has a role to ensure that people do not miss out on opportunities, education and critical connections. The same is true of telecommunications as well. We're recognising that today and stepping in to keep these routes flying.”

4. Now that Peter Dutton’s favourite interviewer Ray Hadley has retired, he’s been forced to find another sympathetic “journalist” to put a spin on his lack of policy detail. Chris Bowen had a funny take.. “To be fair to the Leader of the Opposition, he's been out talking about his policy. He was out last week. He subjected himself to an interview with that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Peta Credlin. He was asked, during that interview, about his nuclear policy. I've got to say, this interview is being compared to the Frost-Nixon interviews for its searching intellect and for the tough questions! Ray Hadley wasn't available that evening. But this interview saw the Leader of the Opposition talk about his nuclear policy—I'm going to defend the Leader of the Opposition, because I thought it was a good choice. They could talk about old times, like the 2014 budget, where they took $50 billion out of the health system. As my friend the Minister for Health and Aged Care has pointed out at the despatch box once or twice, the Leader of the Opposition was voted Australia's worst health minister because of the $50 billion he cut. Now, he'd need to cut $600 billion to pay for his nuclear policy, plus $10 billion a year to pay for the free lunch policy, plus the $350 billion of cuts that they admit to. The 2014 budget would look like a Sunday picnic! We know the Leader of the Opposition has said there'll be cuts, but he'll tell us about them after the election. So we have this policy, which will cost $600 billion, and you know what will follow: a horror budget—cigars and all—with cuts to health and cuts to education to pay for his nuclear fantasy.”

5. Our government’s $3.5 billion investment in Medicare has been called a ‘game-changer’ by doctors, to stem the free-fall in bulk billing. The opposition seems to have forgotten it started when Peter Dutton froze Medicare rebates when he was Health Minister, as Mark Butler pointed out on Tuesday. “Why is there a bulk-billing crisis in Australia? Hmm! Who said, 'There are too many free Medicare services in this country'? Who tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether? And who, when he couldn't get that GP tax through, froze the Medicare rebate for six long years?”

Well, that’s all for another sitting fortnight. We’re not scheduled to be back until budget week at the end of March.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. In honour of Graham Perrett retiring - AND his amazing feat of becoming the most ejected Member of Parliament under 94A - AND for being our bass player in Left Right Out, song of the week is the first one we play at every gig - Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash.

5&5: Someone else’s lunch