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The government was well aware this week would culminate in a showdown.
Like a lamb sent for slaughter, Sam Rae stepped up to the dispatch box to answer his first of what would end up being 15 straight questions over a two-day period from the Coalition and crossbench on home care packages for older Australians.
Rae, a former Victorian Labor secretary, served for one term before being parachuted onto the ministry thanks to a factional dumping of Mark Dreyfus. He was handed the aged care portfolio and nestled under the wing of Health Minister Mark Butler.
The words caught in his throat. But he continued on, reading again and again from his talking points as Coalition MP after Coalition MP stood up to pepper him with questions about why Labor wouldn't approve the early release of 20,000 of the promised new 80,000 home support packages.
As the question times rolled on, his voice boomed throughout the chamber. Rae pointed to the number of packages that were already being rolled out every week (it's around 2,000 but primarily because people are dying or moving into residential care) and how important the aged care reforms passed in the last term of parliament were.
The questions, and the pressure, didn't stop. Fresh off a win last week to establish a snap inquiry into the rollout of home care packages,
the unlikely alliance of the Coalition, Greens and independent David Pocock stood their ground.
You see, the government had to pass a tweak to an existing bit of legislation this week in order to bring it into line with the aged care reforms before they were rolled out in November
. The non-government senators saw it as an opportunity to back Labor into a corner and force a vote to expedite the delivery of home support for older Australians languishing on a waitlist.
Labor may have a super majority in the House of Representatives but they're outnumbered in the Senate. While it could have struck out any changes and sent it back up to the Senate (where Labor was gambling the Coalition on its second go around wouldn't stand in the way), the optics of losing such a vote is embarrassing.
Also think of the newspaper headlines and the nuance that definitely wouldn't have been able to be captured in 50 or so characters.
So it capitulated
. And because an hour is a long time in politics, the government went from filibustering on the bill, to letting a vote on a Pocock amendment for the packages pass as long as the government's opposition was recorded, to full-throated support.
All within 35 minutes.
We know this because eight minutes after the vote occurred in the chamber, journalists were notified an already scheduled press conference with Treasurer Jim Chalmers was being bumped forward to accommodate Rae and Butler's own stand up.
Rae mostly watched on as Butler fielded questions from reporters trying to understand what had changed in such a short period of time. In a bit of selective rebranding, the pair repeatedly stressed it was great to have reached a bipartisan deal on the matter, the implication being that it was anyone other than the government holding out.
The health minister put it down to a morning of negotiations. By the accounts of those on the other side of the so-called deal, that definition of negotiation is questionable at best. Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston, who Butler has a good working relationship with, said she was "surprised" by the late change of tune.
"This isn't a deal … this is a defeat," Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said.
Clean up on aisle opposition
A week of discipline and etching up their first political win almost handed the opposition its first good week in a while.
The net zero hullabaloo of last week had mostly simmered to the regular musings of Barnaby Joyce and other National backbenchers
while a government decision to tighten Freedom of Information access gave the Coalition a free hit on Labor's record on transparency (which is … not great as
my colleague Jacob Greber explained).
There was also some early discipline in the response to the anti-immigration rallies held across the country last Sunday, which brought Australia's migration levels back into the spotlight
.
On the one hand the opposition condemned the neo-Nazis who attended, while on the other accepting that people who attended the rallies had legitimate concerns.
Enter Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Speaking with Sky News Australia, she condemned the neo-Nazis who "hijacked" the protests and congratulated the marchers. She also suggested migration levels were "vote stacking for the benefit of Labor".
The NT senator, who ditched the Nationals for the Liberals in a post-election bid for the party's deputy leadership, repeated the claim on ABC's Afternoon Briefing on Wednesday. Pressed by Patricia Karvelas twice on who she was referring to, she specifically referenced migrants from India.
An hour later, Price issued a statement, in which she described her remarks as a "mistake".
Then Ley sat down with the ABC's live blog and social media for a Q&A, where she continued the clean up job.
She didn't weigh in on Price's comments, other than to say as a migrant herself that Australia's migration program was bipartisan and non-discriminatory.
Later in the evening, Liberal senators Sarah Henderson, Alex Antic and Nationals Ross Cadell, Bridget McKenzie and Matt Canavan voted with Ralph Babet on One Nation's failed attempt to set up an inquiry into the "the impact of high immigration on the Australian economy".
Come Thursday, Ley and others from her frontbench such as Julian Leeser were putting further distance between themselves and Price's remarks.
"I'm fighting for every single Australian, no matter where you come from. And our Australian Indian community is amazing, you contribute as Australian Indians so much to our country," Ley said.
One MP described the saga to the ABC's Jane Norman
as a "head-in-hand moment", noting the claims have been widely circulated among Indian Australians, the second largest and fastest growing diaspora in Australia, and that "everything we'd been trying to do" had been "burned in a manner of minutes".
Meanwhile, Price wasn't taking any apologies.
Husic doesn't mince his words
For what it's worth, it hasn't been all smooth sailing on the good ship government on the matter either. While it was quick to denounce the rallies and the neo-Nazis who attended them, Anthony Albanese's remark that "good people" attended the rallies because they held concerns about immigration caused unease within the Labor caucus.
According to a Guardian Australia report, at least one backbench MP directed that concern within the party room. It was former Labor minister Ed Husic who became the first to publicly speak out.
"Those rallies were whipped up by far-right extremists and neo-Nazis. A lot of people were warned about that," he told ABC's Afternoon Briefing.
"I'm not in the business of doing the 'good people on both sides' argument. I think a lot of people in the Australian public would have been extremely unsettled by what they had seen, the way in which people had been targeted, in the way in which specifically Indian Australians have been targeted. I don't think there's any place for that.
He concluded by saying: "I haven't seen a good fascist yet."
A deal to deport
In the background of all of this was a curious deal signed by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke while on a secret trip to the tiny Pacific Island nation of Nauru.
The deal, inked on Friday, means Australia would spend around $408 million (and $70 million a year afterwards) to resettle up to 354 former detainees from the so-called NZYQ cohort on Nauru. The government repeatedly refused to answer any questions
or release any information about the agreement.
That was until a snap inquiry was held on Wednesday night. Department officials confirmed Australia would end up spending around $2.5 billion over 30 years, if the agreement is upheld, or more than $7 million per person if the entire NZYQ cohort ends up on the island.
David Pocock voiced what many in the public are probably thinking: that amount sounds "totally bonkers".
The purpose of the three-hour long hearing was to scrutinise a bill to bolster the government's deportation powers by removing the obligation to provide procedural fairness to non-citizens facing removal to a third country.
While we may still be waiting for answers about how this will all work, the government waits for no-one. The bill passed swiftly on Thursday afternoon. |
