By any measure – and we know the bar is fairly low – the behaviour in the parliament this week has been, as speaker Milton Dick put it, “particularly combative”.
It kicked off on Monday when members of the Community and Pharmacy Support group, protesting against the government’s 60-day dispensing changes, took their rally outside Parliament House inside.
Fight or flight?
But with the voice, the Qatar Airways decision and questions over the government’s transparency, including Richard Marles’ use of special purpose flights, tensions in the house were high. By the time the Coalition raised a motion of dissent against the speakers’ ruling on Wednesday, the house was a pressure cooker, and it blew. The “debate” descended into chaos, with Tony Burke, in a rare show of public anger, shutting down the motion. The crossbench, which has publicly stated it will not involve itself in “stunts”, voted with the government, leading to what the North Sydney MP, Kylea Tink, said on Thursday was an “aggressive” response from some in the opposition, which made her feel “unsafe”. Tink said she was yelled at by an opposition MP, “looking at me in a way that I found to be aggressive, and honestly, quite confronting”.
House Party understands the speaker was “properly angry” at having to make another speech to the house about behaviour, given the warnings he had given in June, and that the house had just debated the Set the Standard report.
House Party has contacted the opposition member involved, but received no response. As Tink did not name him, we are respecting her decision to make the matter about the overall standard of behaviour, not one individual. But Peter Dutton said he sees no issue – he told ABC radio RN Breakfast he had spoken to the MP, asked him for his account of what happened and didn’t have “any concerns in relation to the tone or what was said as it’s been explained to me”. Dutton said the house was “much more civilised” than it had been in years gone past.
Tink told House Party Dutton’s response proved the MP was “a product of the system within which he exists”.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept & I guess the Leader of the Opposition has shown he continues to hold the standards so many found unacceptable leading into the last election.
Ultimately I haven’t heard from anyone involved in the leadership of the Liberal Party nor the person who I felt threatened by. But I actually didn’t expect too. I’m just hoping they heard me.”
Meanwhile, there is still a section of the opposition backbench vying for attention through the use of “humour” and spent their time in question time coming up with “puns” around Marles’ love of golf.
Swing and miss
As the shadow defence minister, Andrew Hastie, attempted to confirm whether Marles had taken any golf clubs with him on any of his special purpose flights, backbenchers including Keith Pitt trotted out every golfing term they could think of. “Double Boogie”, “hooked that one” and Terry Young’s contribution of “it’s a bigger number than your scorecard” kept the LNP backbench amused for most of the week. Pitt is also trying to get the nickname “Hollywood” to stick to Burke, because, “he’s all about the show”. Yup. Surprisingly, given the time for puns, there did not seem any time to acknowledge the 10th anniversary of Tony Abbott being elected prime minister. (Abbott did retweet the kind offering from the Young Liberals though).
10 years ago today, Australia got itself back on track by electing @HonTonyAbbott and @LiberalAus to end the chaos of Labor. #auspol pic.twitter.com/x27QHKkEIe
— Young Liberals 🇦🇺 (@YoungLibs) September 7, 2023
NSW Senate seat jostling
Marise Payne finally confirmed the biggest open secret of this term when she announced her retirement – confirming she would depart the Senate at the end of the month. NSW Liberals had been jostling ahead of the announcement to make their case to the base, with articles beginning to appear about potential candidates, including the no campaigner Warren Mundine. House Party is told the former NSW minister Andrew Constance is also in line for the spot, although there is a very big push to have Payne replaced with another woman.
Hilma’s Network, a group dedicated to increasing the number of women in the Liberal party, were out in force in support of Maria Kovacic’s first speech to the Senate this week, and are working to ensure Kovacic is not the last. Founder Charlotte Mortlock told House Party she would always push for more women. The group have also turned their not-insignificant attention to preselections.
Liberal women descending on Canberra for Senator Maria Kovacic’s maiden speech this arvo 👸 pic.twitter.com/CcLkpXL2jQ
— Charlotte Mortlock (@CMMortlock) September 5, 2023
Speaking of preselections and despite the federal executive requesting some, including Macquarie, Greenway, Robertson and Mackellar, be finalised early, Paul Karp has heard they won’t be. As always, the reasons are mixed, but it seems that there are some potential candidates weighing up whether or not they run again – and they would want a guarantee that not only would they be preselected, but they would almost certainly win the seat. Among those – the former Mackellar MP Jason Falinski, who is biding his time as the president of the NSW Liberal party. There is also the issue of the Australian Electoral Commission abolishing a NSW seat – leaving some wondering what is the point of going early. The main reason seems to be the moderates in particular are biding their time. So stay tuned.
Babet’s top Trump
We end this column on what we assume is the highlight of the UAP senator Ralph Babet’s life – after relentlessly tagging the former US president Donald Trump in a variety of Truth Social posts, Trump took time away from his busy schedule fighting four indictments to thank him. Josh Butler saw Babet had posted a letter he wrote to Trump using his parliamentary letterhead, assuring Trump he was “cheering him on”. We assume a Fox slot for Babet is only a few tags away.
