THORPE SUSPENDED
Lidia Thorpe’s suspension from Parliament got significant coverage overnight, with AAP reporting the independent senator received the punishment after she threw pieces of paper at One Nation’s Pauline Hanson as a row over racism erupted.
On Wednesday Hanson had attempted to refer Senator Fatima Payman to a parliamentary committee over her dual Afghan citizenship, questioning her eligibility to sit in the upper house.
Payman said in response to Hanson’s actions yesterday morning: “You’re not just vindictive, mean, nasty, you bring disgrace to the human race. No dignity whatsoever as a senator,” the ABC reports. Thorpe, in supporting Payman, shouted “convicted racist” at Hanson and threw torn-up documents at her, AAP said.
Labor Senate leader Penny Wong later moved a motion to suspend Thorpe due to “the gravity of the conduct”. The government, Coalition, Hanson, David Pocock and Ralph Babet voted in favour of the motion while the Greens voted against it. Coalition Senate leader Simon Birmingham called the motion a “line in the sand” and accused the Greens of a “shameful double standard”.
While that was going on, WA Premier Roger Cook was saying in a press conference he was confident the government’s “nature positive” legislation would not be progressed in its current form. Turns out he wasn’t wrong, with Guardian Australia among others flagging how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped in to kill it at the 11th hour even though negotiations between Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Greens’ environment spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young “were progressing this week towards a compromise”.
Elsewhere, the site flags Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell are involved in an administrative spat over the typography and map of Tasmania they both use in their respective logos.
Finally, the AAP highlights that up to half of the country’s adult population is “lining up for a share of $100 million in the sixth largest lottery jackpot in the nation”. The draw closes at 7.30pm AEST.
FINAL MAD SCRAMBLE
Another calm and sensible day awaits us in Canberra with the government attempting to ram almost 40 bills through the Senate in the last scheduled sitting day of the year.
Guardian Australian reports the Albanese government hopes to pass key legislation on migration, electoral reform, privacy, the social media ban for under 16s, and to implement a new Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) structure. The site reckons at least 37 bills will be attempted to be pushed through the Senate on Thursday.
Yesterday’s scenes in the chamber, which saw independent senator Lidia Thorpe suspended for the remainder of the parliamentary sitting week, could have an impact on the government’s plans. Guardian Australia flags Thorpe’s suspension leaves the government “short of the numbers required for the guillotine motion which would truncate the usual debate time and bring on rapid-fire votes”.
Apparently independent Senator David Pocock has offered his support “but at a high price”, the site says and reports crossbenchers are considering voting as a bloc to oppose all of the government’s legislative wishlist in protest at the frantic end to the sitting week.
The ABC had led overnight on the suggestion the government’s election finance reforms are potentially in trouble after a breakdown in negotiations with the Coalition at the last minute. The broadcaster said sources claim the opposition has concerns over the proposal to limit election donations and spending. The apparent concerns are regarded by some as a tactic to drag talks beyond the end of the week and therefore potentially the end of the parliamentary term, if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls the election for early next year.
If unable to come to an agreement with the opposition, the government will try to pass parts of the legislation with the help of the crossbench, the ABC adds.
With that said, the Nine papers reckon that the reforms actually look set to pass the Senate “after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton held informal talks with Labor powerbroker Don Farrell to negotiate the deal”. The papers add Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes à Court has held last-minute talks with Farrell to warn against the plans, while mining billionaire Clive Palmer raced to Canberra to try and intervene.
In another example of mixed messaging, the ABC reckons the government is still negotiating over its earnings tax on super funds with balances over $3 million. At the same time, Guardian Australia has led overnight with the reform being “all but abandoned” while (as flagged in Tuesday’s Worm) the AFR said at the weekend it looks unlikely to pass before the next election, even if this Parliament does return in February.
So who knows, everything is changing all the time. For example, the AFR flags the plans to reform the Reserve Bank of Australia’s board were declared “effectively dead” back in September but are now back in contention after the government reopened discussions with the Greens yesterday as part of the plans to push through as much legislation as possible today using the guillotine motion.
Brace for endless twists and turns with plenty of blatant tactics playing out in Parliament House over the next 24 hours.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A cat that got lost in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park has made it back to its home in California after an epic 900-mile journey.
The Associated Press reports Benny and Susanne Anguiano took their two pet cats to Yellowstone’s Fishing Bridge RV Park on June 4. Not long after arriving one of the felines, Rayne Beau, got startled and ran into the trees.
After a fruitless four-day search Benny and Susanne had to return home to Salinas, California, without him.
A whole two months later in August, the couple were informed by a microchip that Rayne Beau was at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Roseville, California, almost 900 miles from Yellowstone, the newswire said.
A woman had spotted the cat wandering the streets of the northern California city and taken him to the local SPCA after feeding and watering him. The Anguianos then went and picked him up.
The couple say they have no idea how Rayne Beau travelled the 900 miles and are hoping people will come forward and provide details if they saw him on his odyssey.
Say What?
LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors.
The career networking site told the Senate inquiry it is too boring to be included in the government’s plans to ban under-16s from certain social media.
CRIKEY RECAP
Two scandals continue to bubble away that reflect poorly on Richard Marles, the deputy prime minister and, as head of the Defence portfolio, both the biggest spending minister and most important manufacturing figure in the government. Neither, however, looks set to damage him.
Marles has led a charmed life over the past two parliamentary terms. He is only Labor’s deputy leader because, due to Anthony Albanese’s ascendancy, the deputy leader couldn’t be from the Left faction or from NSW. He has sailed through numerous problems in his portfolio that would have bogged down other ministers.
It is bad enough that 2024 was a record high for global greenhouse gas emissions. It is extra bad because the number we’ve ended up at is higher than all of the old projections of what this year would end up at. That is to say: we are overestimating our ability to stop using fossil fuels.
There have been incredible advances in renewables and climate policies, but also, “fossil fuel subsidies remain at an all-time high and funding for fossil fuel-prolonging projects quadrupled between 2021 and 2022”. Why? What is justifying this weird refusal to back away from the fossil fuel economy?
It’s many things, but a big one is the false promise of a machine that cleans up fossil fuels, rather than us needing to find a replacement for them.
Back in 2022, I contributed an essay to Greta Thunberg’s Climate Book. It was about the weaponised false promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS). I wanted to talk about it not as a technological phenomenon but a rhetorical one. A tactically deployed promise that is never meant to come true. Failure as a feature, not a bug.
The subject line of the November 25 edition of US politics newsletter Tangle, which came out a few hours before I spoke to founder Isaac Saul, was “A trans bathroom controversy in Congress”. But that was not the subject of the lead item. The first thing a subscriber would read that day were two corrections to the publication’s recent coverage, featuring not just the facts that had been printed erroneously, but a candid explanation as to how those errors came about. The correction ends by noting that these represent the “120th and 121st corrections in Tangle’s 277-week history”.
This is as good an introduction to Tangle — which calls itself “an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter” — as one is likely to get.
“It all comes to the question, ‘how do we improve trust in media?’” Saul told Crikey. “We show our work. If we screw something up, putting it as a footnote and ghost-editing the piece is not a way to build trust.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
As Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire takes hold, Biden heralds new push for truce with Hamas in Gaza (CBS News)
Two presidents, two policies, one superpower: America in transition (The New York Times) ($)
China’s CO2 emissions have peaked or will in 2025, say 44% of experts in survey (The Guardian)
The rest is not even close: Inside Gary Lineker’s goalhanger revolution (Esquire)
Drake takes legal action over song’s ‘sex offender’ claim (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why I’ve changed my mind about the social media bill — Andrew Wilkie (Guardian Australia): There is also the fact that, despite all the histrionics about protecting children from harm, the government has dropped plans to ban gambling advertising, shelved their Environmental Protection Agency, kicked environmental law reform into the long grass and continues to cheer on fossil fuels. Surely our kids deserve protection from predatory gambling companies and the climate emergency too.
If we truly want to get serious about protecting our kids online we could better regulate social media companies and their algorithms. We could put the onus on them to implement safety by design. And we could steer kids towards more respectful behaviour.
This proposed ban is a blunt instrument being rushed through before an election. It ignores the nuances and restricts young people rather than focusing on those responsible for the harm. There are any number of things the government could be doing if they were serious about preventing harm, but I reckon in this case they are just playing pre-election games and the opposition is more than happy to go along for the ride.
Karen Webb’s response to Clare Nowland verdict shows some lessons have been learned — Lia Harris (ABC): “Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
That was the response from NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb when asked if she wished she had handled things differently after 95-year-old Clare Nowland was tasered by a police officer last year.
And based on the speed with which she fronted the media on Wednesday afternoon, less than four hours after senior constable Kristian White was convicted of Mrs Nowland’s manslaughter, it certainly seems some lessons have been learned.
It was a pivotal moment in a case that has plagued the last 18 months of commissioner Webb’s leadership.
