Australia politics live: Angus Taylor ejected from question time amid fierce RBA debate; Bridget McKenzie walks out of Senate chamber after warning over slogan t-shirt

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The questions about variations of sex characteristics will not be going ahead.

Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) president Nicholas Stewart said:

While the decision to include questions on sexuality and gender is welcomed, the decision to not include a question on innate variations of sex characteristics is profoundly disappointing. It means that governments and services across Australia will not have access to much-needed information on the health and wellbeing of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex variations).

This decision is at odds with the 2020 ABS Standard, and new standards for health and medical research.

The Intersex community is the most invisible and under-counted population in the LGBTI umbrella, with complex ongoing health needs, including mental health needs. People with innate variations of sex characteristics suffer from serious health inequalities across a range of metrics and are poorly served in terms of mental and physical health support, particularly as adults.”

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie asks Anthony Albanese:

Prime Minister, in defending the census debacle, the Deputy PM said, “We’ve seen how divisive debates have played out across our our country and the last thing we want to do is inflict that debate on a sector of our community right now”.

So, Prime Minister if your government is so concerned about divisive debates, will you enact comprehensive vilification protections and appoint an LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner and an equality minister?

Albanese:

We value every Australian. Every Australian should be valued, their sexual orientation or their identity.

That is really important in the development of the 2026 census. The ABS came to the government with potential changes.

It planned to trial, including changes it had not itself recommended for the census.

We paused the process to make sure that we get it right, so that there weren’t the sort of implications that were contained in the question by the member for Clark.

The truth is that for many people, if they’re marginalised in parts of Australian society, we don’t want to add to that and to add to the pressure, which is there. We engaged with the community and held additional discussions with the ABS to make sure that we got the direction right, and I believe that we have and that we can move forward in a way that doesn’t have the unintended consequences that the Deputy Prime Minister was precisely talking about.

I would say it’s a responsibility of everyone in this Parliament to engage in debate respectfully and not to inflame community tensions. Sadly, um, there are examples of us failing of that test being failed.

The government will be introducing legislation this week to create new criminal offences and strengthen protections against hate crimes. These offences will protect the community, including the LGBT community and other targeted groups, from the threat of force or violence and from those who would urge violence against them, which we know is only too real. Our government does support the work of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

We already have in place a commission which works to ensure that human rights of all Australians, including those from the LGBTQ+ community, are protected and that is really important and my government will continue to be committed to that and continue to work with the community towards that objective.

(“paused” the process is like when one “pauses” a manual transmission car in a hill start while being watched by a bunch of Gen Zs)

Question on why government is ‘fighting with the RBA’

Yup, Angus Taylor was next to ask a question (but got booted) so Paul Fletcher picks up the mantle:

Last week’s national accounts revealed productivity is going backwards, real disposable income collapsed and Australians are paying more tax and more for mortgages. RMIT economics Prof Sinclair Davidson said, “All the economic indicators are going the wrong way and what is the government doing fighting with the RBA? Having created a disaster for Australian families, why is the Albanese Labor government fighting the Reserve Bank while Australian families go backwards?

(The great thing about economists is that they are like flowers – you can pick any one you want.)

Jim Chalmers:

I thank the honourable member for asking the question the shadow treasurer was supposed to be asking before he got turfed out a few months ago. The question goes to the pressures that people are feeling in our economy right now and we acknowledge them, but more than acknowledge them, we are doing something about it. It beggars belief in the context of an economy which is slowing considerably and an economy where people are under considerable cost-of-living pressure, it beggars belief that those opposite oppose our cost-of-living relief for people doing it tough.

Chalmers continues, but his heart just isn’t in it, now that he doesn’t have Taylor to bounce off of.

Bridget McKenzie walks out of Senate after warning over slogan T-shirt

Over in Senate question time, the Coalition is focusing its questions on live sheep export bans in response to the rally outside Parliament House earlier today.

The Farmers’ Federation takes issue with a number of Labor agricultural and trade policies, with the federal government’s proposed ban on live sheep exports by 2028 at the top of the list.

The s senator Bridget McKenzie, who earlier stood on stage with other Coalition members at the rally, is singled out for wearing a shirt under her blazer that reads the slogans “keep the sheep” and “save the merino”.

But the Senate president, Sue Lines, says it counts as a prop and that’s a no-no in the chamber. Lines instructed McKenzie to “turn it inside out or leave the chamber”. McKenzie buttoned the blazer but it wasn’t enough.

Lined said:

Senator McKenzie, unless you intend for the whole of question time to sit there and hold the blazer, that is not appropriate. I’ve given you an option.

After that, McKenzie stands up and leaves the chamber.

Angus Taylor ejected from question time amid fierce RBA debate

Jim Chalmers takes a dixer on the RBA legislation just so he can slam Angus Taylor a little more (it is his favourite past time).

He is so successful at riling Taylor up, Taylor gets booted. (Continuing today’s theme with these two, we think that confirms that Taylor is Drake.)

Taylor gets sent out and looks immediately regretful, because he obviously had a question coming up on this and now he doesn’t get to ask it.

Chalmers:

I tried to work with the shadow treasurer in a bipartisan way. Accommodated every single one of the six issues he raised with me. I have accommodated every single one of the concerns he raised with me by making sensible changes to what had originally been proposed as I met with him, arrange briefings for him, engage with him genuinely and respectfully and publicly and privately on this really important matter.

That’s because my preference was and continues to be a bipartisan agreement between the major parties.

I say respectfully, I’d rather not deal with the crossbench in the Senate because they want these changes to endure any future changes in government.

That is why I tried to take the shadow Treasurer seriously even if he is colleague so.

Unfortunately all along in this process we have been hostage to the shadow treasurer’s ability to carry an argument internally in his show so he’s been unable to do that.

And so again if the House listens closely they will hear the familiar sound of the shadow Treasurer getting rolled once again.

And the decision they’ve announced today is a responsible so it creates uncertainty, it is disappointing but is not surprising because this is what happens when the opposition leaders’ destructive negativity collides with the shadow treasurer’s weakness – this is why they have no credibility on the economy.

They are always looking for unnecessary conflict to distract from the fact they have no credible or costed economic policies and they won’t tell us we are $315bn in cuts are going to come from.

(That is quite the spin – that the government can’t get its own legislation through because a shadow minister can’t win an argument with his own party, but it is smart because it has the ring of truth to it.)

Question on government’s ‘anti-farming policies’

Rick Wilson (Liberal MP from O’Connor) asks Anthony Albanese:

Today thousands of farmers from around Australia have travelled to Canberra protesting Labor’s decision to ban live sheep exports and other anti-farming policies. After two years of bad ideological rhetoric and job-killing policies it’s been reported the mining industry, representing 10% of GDP, the prime minister’s mineral wheat speech, as a declaration of war. Can the prime minister explain why he has fixated on policies that in West Australia risk jobs and make life hard for families and businesses in my state?

(Now I know the farmers were telegraphing they expected at least 2,000 people at the rally, but our reporter thinks there were “about 500” at the protest this morning.)

Albanese:

It’s a very broad question from the member for O’Connor. An electorate I was in just last week. In Collie, a place where there is going to be a nuclear reactor sometime in the 2040s or 2050s if those opposite are to be believed.

We are yet to have any costings … yes, you have a process but that is what they say. And, of course, Collie used to be, for a long time a place where coal mining and through the coal-fired power station was a major generator of jobs and economic activity but that is a region that is in transition.

And what’s happening is the government is working with the private sector, including the resources sector on that transition. And there you can see on the site right next to the power station there, 500 people at work building a big battery that will store enough energy for 860,000 homes.

Wilson is on his feet and Dick warns him that it will be hard to be on relevance, because the question was loosey-goosey and therefore the prime minister is being relevant.

Wilson does not take the warning and says it is on relevance.

Dick calls upon the strength of a thousand Queensland woodchoppers and tells Wilson he will ensure the prime minister is relevant.

Albanese continues but it is nothing we haven’t heard before.

PM asked about live exports

David Littleproud is next up and he asks:

In the gallery today are farmers whose livelihoods depend on the live sheep export industry. If the government continues with its ban on live sheep exports, Sudan is one country that will take up Australia’s share of this market. Prime minister, who has higher animal welfare standards - Sudan or Australia?

Anthony Albanese:

I met with the leadership of the Farmers’ Federation once again early this morning to discuss this issue, just as I had, have had constructive discussions with sheep farmers, here in Canberra and their families in Kalgoorlie.

One of the things I pointed out is when the leader of the party came into government in the first year, in 2014/15, 2.1m sheep were exported by sea at a value of $224m last year, in which they held office, there were 475,000 sheep, were exported by sea at a value of $80m. Over the decade, the Liberals and s were in government, live sheep exports by sea decreased by over 1.5m. That is just a fact of what occurred. At the same time, at the same time, exports of sheep meat have escalated to some $4bn in value.

Littleproud wants to know RELEVANCE because IT WAS A VERY TIGHT QUESTION (emphasis Littleproud’s own)

Milton Dick says the prime minister is being relevant.

Tony Burke wants to know how many more times opposition members can made ridiculous points of order claiming relevance. Dick tells him to sit down too.

Albanese:

Australia’s lamb and mutton exports were worth $4.5bn in 2022, 2023. They are escalating in places like the UK, we have hopefully have an announcement soon about an agreement with the UAE, where as live sheep exports by sea were less than $77m in that first year – less than 0.1% of Australia’s estimated agricultural production in that year. We are giving certainty to sheep producers and supply chains by legislating the phase-out.

Littleproud yells a little more and Dick tells him to save it for the matter of public importance debate after QT.

PM fields question on Orange goldmine

Independent MP Andrew Gee asks Anthony Albanese:

The decision by the minister to make a section 10 declaration over Blaney has been met with shock, anger and concern. These concerns include a lack of transparency, lost jobs, the timing of the decision, with state and federal environmental approvals given, the contrary opinion of Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council and the impossibility of moving the dam in existing boundaries – will you meet with me and consider reversing this decision?

Albanese says his door is open to any member and then hands the question to Tanya Plibersek who says:

I have a lot of respect for the member and he has been to my office to discuss in project with me and he brought with him Scott Ferguson, the mayor of Blaney, I was pleased to meet with him.

I understand the company in question wants the most cost effective option for the building of their tailings dam, [that’s] doing their job for shareholders. Me doing my job for the people of Australia and parliament is applying the law on the basis of the evidence.

There were people who wanted to stop this project, who wanted to go ahead unchanged. I haven’t taken either course. I have said that the tailings dam can’t be built on the head waters and springs of the Bulubula River.

If the company want an alternate design they said they looked at four sites, 30 design options, they can do that. This is a 2,500-hectare site. My section 10 declaration applies to 400 hectares. That’s about 16% of the existing site. I haven’t blocked the mine.

My decision protects the springs of the Bulubulah River. I would say to the house, I have ticked off more than 40 mining projects. This is not about a project that is about making sure that when we tick off on mining projects they have all the necessary approvals based on the evidence in front of me as the decision maker.

What I certainly wouldn’t do is do what those opposite seem to be doing, which is saying, we don’t need to look at the evidence, we don’t need to read the reports. We don’t need to hear from the experts, we will tick it off because we like the look of it. That is not the way to make decisions and it’s exactly that attitude that led to the problems that those opposite had with robodebt, car park rorts, sports rorts, secret ministries, visa scandals, Origin 360, the Leppington Triangle, back-lands, the visa privatisation scandal – I mean the list goes on. People want consistency.

Coalition no longer supporting government’s RBA legislation: Taylor

Angus Taylor concluded with:

I’ll finish by saying, it seems to me that the treasurer and Labor’s objective in driving this legislation is two fold. Number one, to put the Reserve Bank in a position where it can direct it as to what it should do. This is going back to the bad old days pre-1996*, of Bernie Fraser and Paul Keating, where Paul Keating would boast about directing the Reserve Bank on what it should do.

It’s clear that’s the picture that a treasurer, who indeed wrote his thesis as a love letter to Paul Keating, it’s clear that that is the objective of this treasurer in this process. It’s also been clear in recent days that the Labor party is prepared to, and the government is prepared to, use the Reserve Bank as a punching bag, as an excuse, as a means of blame shifting for its failures. We think it’s completely unacceptable, and we’re no longer in a position where we can work with the government on this legislation.

(The transcript includes the * and notes it ‘indicates a minor correction.)

‘This is not how you conduct a negotiation’: Taylor on Chalmers and RBA

Ahead of question time, Angus Taylor held his press conference in response to Jim Chalmers’ press conference, where he dropped his own diss track about the RBA legislation negotiations.

Chalmers listed off a bunch of concessions he said he had given Taylor as part of the negotiations in his press conference, concluding that because the Coalition had decided to stand against the legislation, despite seemingly being in favour of it, Taylor got “rolled again”. Chalmers also included a diss that he was taking Taylor seriously, even if his own party wasn’t (like we said, it’s Kendrick and Drake, but for lame people).

Taylor responded:

This is the treasurer’s legislation, not ours. And from the start, we’ve made clear that we were concerned that this strategy from the government was a sack and stack strategy for the Reserve Bank board. He ignored the recommendations of the review when he made his first two appointments on the day the review came out. On the very day the review came out, he ignored the recommendations of the appointment process. He ignored the Coalition’s feedback when introducing the legislation in November, our notes and letters went unanswered for the best part of the year. And throughout, we were resolute, both publicly and privately, in our focus on making sure that we had continuity and stability in the Reserve Bank board, and that the sack and stack strategy wasn’t going to be useful. Now frankly, over the last 10 days, our concern about the motives of this government, with respect to this review, have only deepened.

This is not how you conduct a negotiation. Spend 10 days bagging the Reserve Bank, and then introducing legislation into the parliament was completely unacceptable from our point of view, and it’s why we can’t support this legislation. The Reserve Bank now needs to be able to get on with the job of doing what it’s doing within the context it has. It needs stability, it needs certainty, and now is not the time to be pursuing these reforms, given what we’ve seen from the government over recent times.

Dellaram Vreeland

Vietnamese restaurant owners in Bathurst granted permanent visas

Shoebridge urges two-way weapons trade ban with Israel

Returning to the earlier presser, the Greens also want the government to follow the United Kingdom and prevent exported military components from being on-sold to Israel, after Penny Wong endorsed Britain’s move to suspend 30 arms export licences.

Senator David Shoebridge said Australia had not done as much as the UK to apply pressure to Israel.

But Shoebridge criticised the British government for continuing to supply F35 aircraft parts to a “common pool” in the United States, which he said it knew would be re-exported to Israel but over which it argued it had no end-user control.

He said Australia’s F35 component exports also did not prevent re-export to Israel.

We are again saying that the Australian government should urgently have a two-way weapons ban with Israel, to not provide F35 weapons parts or other weapons parts to Israel, either directly or indirectly, and to end the import of weapons from Israel, from Israeli companies that are profiting from the appalling war crimes, in genocide in Gaza.”

Israel denies it is committing genocide.

The foreign minister has backed the British move and told Guardian Australia that the government was working with counterparts including the UK to apply pressure to change the situation in Gaza.

Wong reiterated that Australia “has not supplied weapons or ammunition to Israel” for at least the past five years:

Earlier this year we made clear the only export permit applications approved for items to Israel are for those items returning to Australia for our own defence and law enforcement.

This refers to temporary transfers for repairs and maintenance by Israeli firms.

‘Social media is causing social harm’: Albanese

Milton Dick has to interject again to warn people for interjecting.

Anthony Albanese:

Social media is causing social harm. It can be used as a weapon for bullies and a vehicle for scammers, worst of all a tool for online predators. And that is why we ensuring that we will get the legislation right. As part of this we will consult across the parliament. I don’t think this should be an issue in which we are yelling at each other. I think this is an issue in which we should be yelling at social media companies to do the right thing.

And that is what I seek. And I hope the parliament has the maturity to do that.

(There are a lot of interjections at this and Dick has to step in again)

Dick:

This is a serious issue. We need to do better. I’m asking everyone in the house to show some restraint, ask questions respectfully and listen to the question respectfully as well.

Albanese:

The government may not be able to stop every threat on social media but we have a responsibility to do everything we can to help as many young Australians as we can. We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is a change that will change our country for the better.

Question on age verification for social media

David Coleman gets a question. He is the shadow minister for communications, in case you needed a reminder.

Coleman:

The prime minister announced in May the government would fund a trial of age verification for children accessing social media. Can the prime minister confirm the trial has not started and that the tender documented for the technical trial was issued today?

The Coalition benches think this is hilarious.

Anthony Albanese:

There were three stages of the preparation of this. The first two stages are done. This is stage three. Of issuing the contract to make sure …

(There are jeers from the Coalition benches and Milton Dick again tells people to shut it)

The government funded this trial in our May budget. The minister and department have been working through the first two stages, the third stage to make sure the tender you need to know what you are putting a tender out for … to make sure the technology has got right.

We been cooperating of course with the eSafety commissioner. A body for which we quadrupled funding, quadrupled.

Social media has a social responsibility to have a social licence. We want to make sure arising out of this age verification that we are able to move forward in a way which no country in the world has been able to solve this problem.

We are seeking to do the best in the world. That is why you have to actually get it right.

And I am surprised that those opposite seek to make this a partisan issue. Because I think this is an issue which is of concern for all parents. Because social media is causing …(there are more interjections)