Labor toughens penalties for assaulting frontline workers amid ‘a lot of agro’
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has introduced laws that will increase penalties for attacks on frontline services.
Bill Shorten, the government services minister, represents 30,000 people frontline public servants, these are the people that do Medicare, Centrelink and child-support.
Shorten told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing:
What I realised is that of our public servants are carrying a lot of stress, there’s a lot of agro, there’s more increases in assault and violence – not from most people that use the system but from a small group of people.
I think one of the things to improve their safety is to increase the penalties. If you hit a cop – I mean a cop shouldn’t ever be hit, or a judge - but they’ve got very strong protections. In the case of police, they are armed and trained.
Our frontline staff, they don’t have any of that but their work is as important as anyone else’s, so we are increasing the penalties.
I’m not saying that will guarantee that no one will ever get assaulted but it is part of my commitment to these 30,000 people and other public servants, what you do is important and you don’t have to put up threats of abuse.
Anti-nuke campaigners have ‘constructive’ meeting with Albanese and Wong
Representatives of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) have been marching the halls of power in Canberra this week. They have been meeting MPs and senators to encourage them to press the government to sign and ratify the relatively new UN treaty aimed at enforcing an outright ban on nuclear weapons.
Anthony Albanese previously championed the idea. The Labor party’s commitment to join the ban treaty was couched in language that also said the government was “taking account” of three factors, including the need to work to achieve universal support. At this point, the US and other nuclear weapons states oppose the treaty.
Melissa Parke, the former Labor MP who is now based in Geneva as Ican executive director, told Guardian Australia today:
We had a constructive meeting with the prime minister and the foreign minister [on Monday]. We handed over a petition that was done on behalf of both Ican and the Australian Conservation Foundation with over 11,000 signatures from Australians calling upon the government to sign the treaty.
The government has said that they stand by the platform commitment, but that they have a lot on their agenda – they’re very busy, and it’s not high on the list of priorities, so we intend to ensure that it is higher on the list of priorities for the government.
Parke said there was “quite a lot of anxiety within the region and among many Australians about Aukus”.
She said:
We consider that Australia signing up to the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons would be a reassurance, both to the region and to fellow Australians, that Aukus is not a precursor to Australia hosting or acquiring nuclear weapons.
Shelter WA has called on the state government to invest its substantial budget surplus and GST windfall into fixing the housing crisis as new data shows Western Australian homelessness hitting an all-time high.
The By-Name List, which tracks homelessness in Perth, Geraldton, Bunbury, Mandurah and Rockingham, counted a record 1,889 people experiencing homelessness in February 2024, up from 1,373 two years ago.
A total of 1,029 were sleeping rough, exceeding last month’s record of 947, up from 655 two years ago.
In Perth, the crisis is so bad that only 39% of the 1,355 people experiencing homelessness, including 689 rough sleepers, have a case manager and only 18 could be permanently housed in February.
A homeless person in a Perth park. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP
Shelter WA’s chief executive, Kath Snell, said:
WA’s housing crisis is breaking all the wrong records, but we have an incredible opportunity to solve it with this budget.
After five years of large surpluses and a GST windfall, the government must centre this year’s budget on housing and homelessness.
With rents soaring, homelessness surging and the housing shortage worsening, Shelter WA’s budget submission, released today, is calling for immediate action to ensure everyone has a safe and affordable place to call home.
Linda Burney welcomes 'circuit breaker' Alice Springs curfew after unrest
The federal minister for Indigenous affairs, Linda Burney, has welcomed the Northern Territory government’s announcement of a temporary curfew in Alice Springs after violent unrest.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Burney said:
I hope this is a circuit breaker that will improve community safety.
I welcome the announcement by the NT Government of a temporary curfew in Alice Springs.
I hope this is a circuit breaker that will improve community safety.
I will continue to work with the NTG, the local community & leadership for a better, safer future for Central Australia.
Senate panel accuses PwC of trying to cover up tax leaks scandal
Henry Belot
A Senate committee has accused consultancy firm PwC of attempting to “cover up” the tax leaks scandal and criticised extensive leadership failures by the firm’s former executives.
An interim report by the Senate standing committee on finance and public administration, titled “the coverup worsens the crime”, has accused the firm of withholding information about the conduct of its international partners - a criticism the firm rejects.
The interim report focuses on the scandal triggered after a former PwC Australia partner shared confidential Treasury information about draft multinational tax laws with colleagues, who then sold the information to US companies.
A Senate committee accuses PwC of trying to cover-up the tax leaks scandal. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, who is a member of the Senate inquiry, said she was disappointed that “much is still unknown about the actual misconduct by PwC and its partners amidst the efforts by the firm’s domestic and global leadership to minimise their reputational damage”.
She said:
The report highlights both the immense failures of leadership, professionalism and ethics which enabled the tax leaks scandal to occur in the first place, and the gross failures of professional accountability which saw it go unacknowledged and unpunished for so long.
There is no question that PwC has engaged in misconduct by creating and sharing a product that was expressly designed to deny Australians taxation revenue which they were fairly owed.
The reputational and financial damage that the firm has deservedly suffered as a consequence of their misconduct is not easily erased despite the firm’s attempts to cauterise its Australian operations from its global network.
The Australian federal police is still investigating the tax leaks scandal after a referral from the Treasury department. No finding of criminal wrongdoing has been made.
The parliament is starting to wind down (finally, we can all take a deep breath) and MPs are eyeing the exits.
There is no sitting tomorrow, so that regional and rural MPs have a chance of returning to their electorates in time for Good Friday church services. This was decided last week, despite the dates for Easter being known well in advance (it is very Auspol that MPs suddenly began thinking of their travel issues at the last minute for an event that has been set in stone since, well, the rise of Christianity).
So there won’t be any Politics Live until parliament resumes for the budget week sitting on 7 May.
No doubt we will be talking about all the same things.
Parliament is winding down until May. Photograph: Simon McGill/Moment Editorial/Getty Images
Stay tuned to Guardian Australia, though – there are still updates coming here, with Natasha May, and Paul Karp will be watching the home affairs spillover hearings, so he’ll bring you anything from that tonight. And of course the general news blog, Australia Live, will be back from tomorrow morning.
A very big thank you to everyone who followed along this sitting – and in general. The world is pretty overwhelming at the moment, so thank you for continuing to engage in your democracy and for letting us know your thoughts. It matters, and so do you.
Almost 25,000 people have signed this petition – 25,000 people who support Mel’s call for change, 25,000 people who expect action.
I hope the government is listening.
I will be pushing them to respond to Mel and her supporters. Not with an acknowledgement of the petition but a public commitment to back up words and policies with funding and determination.
Violence against women doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It thrives in environments where boys are taught to feel entitled. It thrives in a society that tolerates gender-based inequality.
Ending violence against women and children will take time and energy but is absolutely essential for a fairer, safer, more inclusive society.
It wasn’t alcohol but we will make sure that all people in Alice Springs are safe.
We want people in Alice Springs to be able to walk down the street, feel safe, be able to go to the shopping centre, pick up their kids from school and not be concerned about their own safety.
NT declares Alice Springs youth curfew from tonight
The Northern Territory chief minister, Eva Lawler, has announced there will be a curfew enacted in Alice Springs for young people from tonight.
The curfew will run from 6pm to 6am.
An additional 50 or so police and liquor inspectors will be deployed in the town, following recent unrest.
Crackdown: Alice Springs. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
The NT police commissioner, Michael Murphy, said:
The government’s listened to what I’ve had to say as well and we’re responding to that.
You’ll see a real increase in tempo and visibility engagement to drive down the crimes associated with youth activity.
We saw, you know, really violent behaviour yesterday associated with the death of an 18-year-old male on 20 March. That’s led to family feuds and that’s what erupted in Alice Springs yesterday.
The Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn 15th CEO Sleepout will take place on 20 June – at Parliament House.
Which means you will see more politicians than usual taking part in the charity event.
The house speaker, Milton Dick, will be one of those participating in the sleepout, which is being held with support from the department of parliamentary services and this year hopes to raise $800,000.
(Still think having CEOs and leaders live on Jobseeker for a few months, without access to their bank accounts, and have them try to secure housing and a job on the payment, might give a better idea of what it’s like to live below the poverty line.)
The changes mark the government’s first legislative response to the review, which recommended the scheme shift its focus to providing supports for functional impairment, rather than a focus on diagnosis.
This is a piece of legislation that was developed behind closed doors, with disabled people being forced to sign NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] in a completely inappropriate way.
Jordon Steele-John: ‘We will not get good results for disabled people if a bunch of non-disabled ministers … decide for us what is best for us.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Western Australian senator said the Greens supported delaying the legislation until an inquiry could be held, adding there was frustration within the community about the political bickering between states, territories and the commonwealth over funding for the scheme.
Steele-John said:
We will not get good results for disabled people if a bunch of non-disabled ministers, federal or state, get together in a room and decide for us what is best for us. We need to have the principle of ‘nothing about us, without us’ genuinely at the heart of this.
Q: The plaintiffs in the high court both argue there’s no obligation to cooperate with deportations. This bill creates that obligation. Investigation. And yet officials last night were not able to explain the connection between the bill and the ASF 17 case. So, my question is, please, what is the connection? Would this bill have improved the Commonwealth’s prospects? And do you think that the Coalition has imperiled your chances in the case?
Clare O’Neil won’t comment on the high court matters and then says:
What we are talking about is a group of people who have exhausted every legal option.
They have been found not to owe the protection of the Australian people, and yet they will not work with the Australian government to manage their appropriate removal from our country. Now, I’d say to you again, this is one of the most common sense things that I have seen come before the Parliament.
How can we have a situation where we have no legal power to compel people to work with us to remove them from the country when they have no right to be here? Now, I would say to you, if you sat down with any Coalition MP, they’d probably nod their heads and say “that sounds very sensible”.
They did it yesterday. When they voted for it in the House of Representatives. And yet they come into the Senate today and play politics again. And I would just say once more, we have a government here trying to do something in the national interest and an opposition that chooses politics every day of the week and it is destructive and it needs to stop
Well, as you just said, the Opposition recognised the urgency of the legislation yesterday in agreeing to the debate management which would have enabled the bill to be enacted today and to come into law tomorrow. This is an area where the opposition have continually pressed us on the need to act urgently to ensure the community is kept safe. They have an opportunity to do that just now to put into the migration act a power that we believe always should have been there.
Ahead of question time there was also a very well-attended press conference that Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles held on the deportation legislation hold-up.
Q: On March 5, the department started working on this legislation. On March 15, you briefed journalists in terms of the problem here that you’re attempting to solve, why only bring in the opposition at five minutes to midnight, if you were fair dinkum about getting this bill up? Why not include them earlier in terms of discussions about these drastic changes that you’re proposing and trying to rush through parliament?
O’Neil disagreed with the characterisation and then said:
The reason that we need it is because we seek to run an orderly migration system in this country. We have come to office with the migration system in a categorical mess. Don’t take it from me, take it with the numerous eminent Australians who have looked at this system and said that because of 10 years of wilful neglect, we have a migration system which Dr Martin Parkinson said was fundamentally broken.
Now we are attempting to pursue the national interest, to protect the community and to give our government legislative powers that we need to help manage this system.
The opposition is standing in our way and they need to account for that. Now, the question over here is about the timing. I think you need to talk to the opposition about what they would have done had they had more time.
What I have seen with great disappointment is consistency in this debate where the opposition, instead of supporting us, instead of being constructive, instead of working with us on these things, tries to play politics.
And we saw that this week. Don’t forget that the Liberals came into the parliament yesterday, voted for this bill, voted for a debate management solution which helped us debate the bill, and then suddenly had a change of heart overnight.
And there’s only one reason for that, and that is because they are playing politics, and they’re doing [it] with everything.
Bandt urges PM to publicly release religious discrimination bills
Back to the Greens presser and on religious discrimination, the Greens say they still haven’t seen either of the bills the Albanese government has drafted.
The leader, Adam Bandt, said he thought Labor was not serious about passing the legislation and was walking away from an election promise.
Anthony Albanese told his party room on Tuesday morning the Greens could be an alternative pathway to passing the bills but said it could only choose this option if the minor party was “willing to support” the rights of people to practice their faith.
The Greens were offered a short briefing on Tuesday but Bandt said he still hadn’t seen either of the two bills Labor is holding close to its chest.
Asked whether the leader had been briefed on the bills’ contents, Bandt said:
It’s critical to see these provisions because we know that the words in the law matter ... show us the legislation so that we can cast our eye over it, work out whether it’s doing what the government says because we’ve seen many other examples of the government bringing new legislation that they say does one thing but, in fact, does another.
Bandt reiterated the Greens would work with the government on anti-vilification laws for faith groups but urged Albanese to release the bills publicly.
But not without a final swipe from the prime minister:
I asked that further questions be placed on notice, given it is the last before the budget and not a single question from the opposition on the economy.
Not one.
There were also no questions on the legislation the Coalition had enough concerns over that it thwarted the government’s attempts to push it through the parliament in just over 24 hours, despite having passed it in the house.
And that is it for about five weeks. The next question time won’t be until 7 May.
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