For the benefit of those who didnt receive it - go this handy summary of last week in Parliament from Tony Burke: It’s been a weird week in Parliament. There’s been lying about lying, gagging of gags and Warren Truss is Deputy Prime Minister. Here’s the #5and5 from Anything But the Budget Week. BEST: 1. Bill Shorten really put Tony Abbott under the spotlight during every Question Time this week. Day after day Bill asked the PM questions he just couldn’t answer. The reality is, all of Tony Abbott’s broken promises and lies are in his own budget papers and no matter how hard he tries, the PM can’t run away from them. 2. Early on Tuesday morning great news came out of Doha. The World Heritage Committee rejected Tony Abbott’s attempt to delist 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian wilderness from the World Heritage List. In just seven minutes the World Heritage Committee threw the proposal out, with one member calling it “feeble”. 3. Labor MPs made sure Tony Abbott didn’t get away with his cost of living argument this week. In speech after speech Labor MPs stood up to Tony Abbott’s $6000 cut to families, $4000 cut to pensioners and $1600 cut to self-funded retirees. Tony Abbott can’t keep claiming he’s cutting cost of living for families, while at the same time taking thousands of dollars off struggling families in his budget. 4. Anthony Albanese won his seven month infrastructure battle with the Government this week, forcing it to undertake cost-benefit analyses on major infrastructure projects. It took 29 amendments to make it happen, and now hopefully Albo will stop drawing on whiteboards and making train noises. 5. Finally, on Monday Wayne Swan got so sick of Tony Abbott lying and then lying about lying that he got himself kicked out of Parliament. When asked to withdraw calling Tony Abbott a liar by the Speaker, Swanny replied: “I withdraw, but he’s still a liar.” This got him booted out for a mandatory 24 hours. WORST: 1. Freedom of the press suffered a serious blow this week when an Egyptian court handed down a seven year sentence to Australian journalist Peter Greste. In the hours following the sentence it was good to see all sides of politics and the media coming together in support of Peter, a respected journalist who was simply doing his job. Our thoughts are with the Greste family during this difficult time. 2. Last week Tony Abbott said he wouldn’t cut cleaners’ pay and working conditions. This week the Government introduced legislation that did just that. Labor amended the legislation to protect cleaners and the Government caved in. What the Government hid from the Parliament was that Eric Abetz was secretly finding another way to make his cuts. This fight isn’t over. 3. The government moved more than ten gag motions this week to stop MPs from debating parts of the budget. Given that even the Ministers keep getting details wrong, I’m still not sure whether the Government’s priority was to try to shut Labor up or avoid the embarrassment of having its own people speak. The classic was the “Direct Action” policy debate, which was shut down after only one Government backbencher had spoken. 4. How much will Tony Abbott’s unfair budget cost an average single-income family with two kids? At the same time Tony Abbott is claiming a win for cost of living, he’s hitting families by up to $6000. It was just odd seeing Tony Abbott try to complain about cost of living issues without it actually clicking in his head that the pain he’s inflicting is around 10 times greater than even his claims. 5. For years now there’s been two visa classes for people to have their parents join them from overseas. One has a long waiting period and a standard visa fee, the other has a short waiting period but costs more than $50,000. The Government has abolished new applications for the affordable visa. So now if you can’t afford $50,000 you can’t have your parents join you. There’s more on this to come. Finally, on Thursday I reminded the Prime Minister about one of his commitments before the election – it’s worth a watch. The House of Reps isn’t sitting for the next fortnight, so the #5and5 will be back in two weeks. ‘til then, Tony (Burke)
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 06:13:47 +0000
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