‘Nastiness is not strength’: PM erupts in question time as Palestinian visas questions continueAnthony Albanese on Peter Dutton:
And, I would think that people will be having a look at this bloke, who, ever since he walked into the parliament, as a new member, has always looked to divide.
Has always looked to bring Australians apart, not to bring Australians together.
Even when he has left his parliament, as he did during the [national] apology, it was all about divisions and then he apologised for it.
He said that Lebanese migration was a mistake under the Fraser government. And then, he said he apologised for it, it’s just he apologised to [ABC journalist] Annabel Crabb, not to anyone in the Lebanese community.
He has not apologised to Africans in Melbourne, [when he] said people can’t get out.
He continually, he continually looks to pretend, to pretend he’s so strong – but nastiness is not strength.
Nastiness is not strength.
And punching down on vulnerable people is not strength. That is what it is. It shows Australia who he is every day.
ShareUpdated at 06.41 CESTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureNatasha MaySt Vincent’s private hospital network has reached a new funding agreement with nib, meaning the private health fund customers no longer face the threat of higher out-of-pocket healthcare costs which have loomed since negotiations between the parties broke down.In July Australia’s largest not-for-profit health and aged care services provider St Vincent’s gave notice to NIB that it intended to end its funding agreement after a notice period which ended on 3 October.St Vincent’s, which operates 10 private hospitals in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, said NIB had failed to put a fair offer on the table that recognised the rising costs of providing private hospital care.While it was the first time in St Vincent’s 167-year history it had given notice to a private health fund that it intended to end an agreement, Ben Harris, the director of policy and research at Private Healthcare Australia predicted that a resolution would be reached, just as similar scenarios between other private providers and insurers had played out in the past, because it’s in both parties’ best interests to do so.St Vincent’s CEO, Chris Blake, said he welcomed the new funding deal which appropriately recognises the rising costs of providing private hospital care.While the details of the new agreement are commercial-in-confidence, Blake said the deal would allow St Vincent’s to cover its costs when providing care to nib members in its private hospitals.
Times have never been harder for private hospital providers in Australia. As a not-for-profit social enterprise, St Vincent’s needs to be able to cover its costs.”
I’m very glad both parties have been able to use the notice period to dig a little deeper and reach a fair and mutually satisfactory agreement.”
For private health care to operate effectively, health funds and hospitals need to work together, for the benefit of members and patients”.
Health service contracting group, Honeysuckle Health, acting on behalf of nib, confirmed St Vincent’s remains in contract with nib, ensuring nib members can continue to limit their out-of-pocket costs for treatment at St Vincent’s facilities.ShareMilton Dick agrees to review standards and behaviour as question time endsAnthony Albanese ends question time (a little earlier than usual) and Allegra Spender asks Milton Dick to make a statement on the standard of conduct in the house.
In this Parliament we have a behaviour code soon to be legislated, that requires parliamentarians to, and I quote, ‘treat all those with whom they come into contact in the course of their parliamentary duties and activities with dignity, courtesy, fairness and respect’. The conduct that is demonstrated in this chamber, particularly during Question Time, is unlike any workplace I’ve ever been in, and I think we would have a hard time convincing the public, including those perhaps in the gallery today, that we comply with this code.
I would like to ask the speaker to review the behaviour, language and standards in recent weeks and make any necessary statements relating to them.
Dick says he will.
I agree with her. We must find ways to better engage in debate that maintains respectful behaviour and in. Particular, upholding the Standing Orders. I shall reflect on standards and behaviour in recent times and report back to the member.
And we are all set free. Until tomorrow.ShareUpdated at 07.30 CESTThere is about to be a mass advertising campaign reminding people to check if their tech is on 3G.Michelle Rowland said:
There’s a subset of handsets which use 4G for voice and data, but are configured by the manufacturer to use 3G for calls to triple zero. Now, this category of handset is of concern, because it won’t be apparent to end users that they can’t call 000, and they’d only discover this during an emergency when they’re actually trying to make the call.
So following interrogation by my department earlier this year, industry figures showed that up to 740,000 devices in this category may be impacted.
On receiving the advice as to the scale, I immediately stood up. An industry working group overseen by my department that enabled fortnightly updates on device numbers and progress on community and customer outreach efforts.
The co-operation by the working group enables me now, Mr Speaker, to advise the House that the number of devices in this high risk category has reduced from 740,000 to around 73,000. Now, that’s a significant reduction, but both government and industry believe there is more to be done.
To that end, the government welcomes the announcement by Telstra and Optus that they will delay their respective 3G network switchovers until the 28th of October.
ShareAnthony Albanese continues:
Well, I say this to those opposite. You can continue to sledge people in western Sydney.
What I’ll continue to do as Prime Minister is represent the entire nation here, including the good people of Western Sydney.
They know that we take the same advice from the same security agencies as the previous government did.
We’ve rejected more than 7000 visa applications.
The member for groom might not know because he just asked the question he was given, so I don’t blame him, that the Rafah border crossing is controlled by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities, and it has been closed since May.
…I say this to the good, good people of Watson, Blaxland and McMahon that we will respect every one of you, regardless of who you are, regardless of your faith, regardless of your ethnicity.
ShareAnthony Albanese:
There were more people [who] came from Syria under visitor visas from when they were in government, when Isis was in charge of large amounts of Syria, than the 1,300 people who have come from the occupied Palestinian territories.
And can I note this as well? There have been 5,491 visitor visas granted from Israel as well. And let me say this. Those people are welcome here. They are welcome here.
But we see what is going on here. It is so obvious. And the member … is certainly very conscious of it, which is why, you know, it’s a shocker when no one on the frontbench will ask it.
That’s right, that’s right. Goes up the back, goes up the back in order to sledge a whole group of people who live in western Sydney.
That’s right, that’s right!
ShareUpdated at 07.25 CESTDaniel HurstIn one of the earlier questions in parliament this afternoon, Dan Tehan alleged that the government was “cutting corners on security assessments to bring in 1,300 people from the terrorist-controlled Gaza war zone”.In light of this claim, it might be worth re-upping this exchange with Asio chief Mike Burgess in a podcast interview with Guardian Australia in March:Guardian Australia:I’m raising the following question, only because it’s been raised by a major political party in Australia, not because I want to cast aspersions on an entire community. The Coalition has raised security concerns about the approval of visas for hundreds of Palestinians fleeing the conflict. And the Liberal senator James Paterson said in November that he’s “not reflecting on Asio … but I really hope pressure hasn’t been put on them or the Department of Home Affairs to cut corners, or do this more quickly than they already would”. What role does Asio have in the security checks for those visas? And can you give that reassurance?Burgess:
There’s many elements to that question, so let me break that down for you. Asio has a role in the visa process. I won’t explain that fully because we don’t want people to game that process, but I can assure you Asio is involved. Home Affairs has the lead and Home Affairs knows what it’s doing when it comes to these processes. If there was pressure put on my organisation, I have an obligation under Australian law to protect my organisation from politicisation or anything that’s inappropriate, and I would take action if that happened. I haven’t needed to do that. I’m confident we’re doing our job well and where we see problems we deal with them effectively. Of course, we’re not all seeing and all knowing and information available to everyone including Home Affairs is not 100%, but I’m confident the process is where it needs to be. But we keep an open mind to that. And we remain vigilant.
Guardian Australia:So if there was any doubt, you wouldn’t sign off on a particular individual?Burgess:
Well, our role – obviously, if we have grounds to say that we are going to impact that individual, we have to have the evidence and that’s subject to a rigorous assessment. It can’t just be I feel there’s it’s a bit of doubt, so we’ll do it. We don’t work that way.
ShareUpdated at 07.17 CESTCoalition MP labels Palestinian visas a ‘visa for votes’ scheme targeted at western SydneyLNP MP Garth Hamilton has been handed a question from the tactics team which he appears to be reading for the first time, given how he delivers it.
Prime minister, why is Australia handing out tourist visas to Gazans from the terrorist-controlled war zone in an average of 24 hours, and in some cases, as quickly as one hour, while bypassing all the usual checks, including those the former Coalition government used in Syria?
Will the prime minister admit that the government’s visa for votes scheme was only done to shore up votes in the seats of Watson, McMahon and Blaxton?
There is no proven suggestion of an “average” of 24 hours for approvals. The “one hour” reference appears to have come from reports on a group chat, which were raised in Senate estimates in February. It was not confirmed, but the immigration official said it was “feasible” a visitor visa could be approved so quickly, if someone had an established relationship with Australia (for example was a regular visitor, meaning that authorities already had a lot of your information).The head of Asio, Mike Burgess, said security checks were done – not just with his agency, but through the usual processes, set up under Home Affairs. Visas are also constantly crosschecked, which is how some ended up cancelled after they were granted (it is not a set and forget process).No one has been able to leave Gaza (except in the rare cases of medical evacuation) since Israel officially seized the Rafah border in May. As for “shoring up votes”, the Labor MPs are under extreme pressure because what communities have seen as a lack of action.ShareUpdated at 07.13 CESTKaren MiddletonGreens senator questions Labor on funding to end gendered violenceIn the Senate, the Greens senator Larissa Waters asks when the government will commit more funding to services for women facing violence, saying they need $1bn extra each year to meet the demand and noting that at least 45 women have been murdered this year by current or former partners. Her question follows the lunchtime address to the National Press Club from the domestic, family and sexual violence commissioner Micaela Cronin, in which she warned the services needed more support.Representing the social services minister, Senator Jenny McAllister says “too many women are killed by their current or former intimate partner” and that the statistics confirm it is a crisis.
It’s a pretty stark reminder of the human cost of this violence.
McAllister outlines what the government has done under the national plan to end gender-based violence.
We have been focused on supporting economic security so women don’t have to choose between property and violence. We’ve been investing in housing, so women know they have a place to go. We have been strengthening the legal system’s response to gendered violence.
She says the government is also sharpening the focus on prevention.
So we can end gendered violence in a generation.
Waters urges the government to develop an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander violence prevention framework for men and boys, given the prevalence of violence perpetrated against Indigenous women.McAllister says the government is committed to collaborating with Indigenous women to improve the situation.ShareUpdated at 07.04 CESTPaul Fletcher raises a point of order at the end of that answer about the imputation and asks that the prime minister withdraws it.There are a lot of heckles from both sides of the chamber.“Someone call the wam-bulance” can be heard coming from the Labor frontbench. Along with “it’s the truth”.Milton Dick rules that no one was named, so no one was maligned.ShareUpdated at 06.59 CESTCoalition ‘maligning a whole group of people’ who are ‘suffering enormously’: PMAnthony Albanese continues:
Because, there was a time when the Liberal party would have seen that people, whether they were fleeing Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Vietnam, Gaza at the moment, would have had some understanding, some understanding that this was the worst time, the worst time to try to just malign a whole group of people who are suffering enormously.
Something that we see on our TV screens every night. You know, this morning, you turn on the radio, the latest hit was a school in Gaza with real people devastated and losing their life.
We have faith in our security processes, we have faith in our intelligence agencies.
They work, our security and law enforcement agencies do their job on an ongoing basis.
We have faith in them.
The opposition apparently don’t, even though they’re the same security agencies and indeed, the same personnel [as when they were in power].
We talk about character. When it comes to targeting groups, whether it is Lebanese, people in the south Pacific, Chinese, the entire continent of Africa – they’re all fair game.
If you’re an au pair from Europe and someone can pick up the phone – no problem, you’re in.
ShareUpdated at 06.59 CESTAlbanese: Liberal party founder Menzies ‘wouldn’t recognise this mob today’Anthony Albanese answers the Tehan question by quoting the founder of the modern Liberal party:
Let me begin by quoting a character, Robert Menzies. This is what he had to say;
‘It is a good thing that Australia should have earned a reputation for a sensitive understanding for the problems of people in other lands. We should not come to be regarded as a people detached from the miseries of the world. I know that we will not come to be so regarded for, for I believe that there are no people anywhere with warmer hearts and more generous impulses.’
That was the founder of the Liberal party. He wouldn’t recognise this mob today.
ShareUpdated at 06.51 CEST