The Point Live: Digital duty of care legislation to be introduced, while private health changes fall. As it happens

Alice Grundy

There will be lots more on trusts today. It’s worth noting some Australia Institute research from earlier in the year that calculated around one quarter of Australia’s total economy was run through a trust in the financial year 2022-3 was run through trusts. That includes $489.4 billion in business income and $111.4 in incomes such as rent, dividends and interest. 

And just a reminder, the number of trusts have risen significantly since 1996. 

Anna Chang

In Parliament when you have the numbers, you can do anything — and that’s exactly what we saw in the Senate last night.

A motion introduced by Senators Jacqui Lambie and Anne Ruston, which gained enough support between the Coalition, Greens, and crossbench, successfully discharged the Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026 from the Senate Notice Paper.

On facebook, Monique Ryan, one of the leading voices in the House against this bill, wrote:

“That feeling when you knock off the government’s pensioner cash grab 🥳

“The government has had a shocker with this Bill, as they’ve refused to reveal the full extent of its unfair impacts. But this is such a big win for older Australians, who will retain the support they’ve invested in for decades, and keep the pressure off our overstretched public hospitals.”

Credit: Dr Monique Ryan facebook

According to Monique Ryan, this is only the tenth government bill in the past decade to have been discharged from the Senate.

A flurry of press releases were issued, with all parties and MPs part of the vote seeking their share of the credit.

As one of the co-sponsors of the motion, Senator Jacqui Lambie said:

“You’d be hard pressed to find a public hospital in this country that isn’t already at absolute capacity. This bill would have made it so much worse.

“Older Australians are already paying through the nose for private health insurance and many would have been forced to choose between putting food on the table and looking after their health. It’s unbelievable that anyone should have to make that choice in modern day Australia. 

“These were not going to be small increases. Older Australians could have been paying hundreds of extra dollars a year, and the worst part? Thanks to Monique Ryan MP’s costing request, we know the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that pensioners would account for around $1.5 billion of the projected $3 billion in savings. You do not balance the budgets on pensioners.  

“With our public hospital systems already under the pump, the Government should be doing everything in its power to alleviate it. Instead, they were going to make it worse.

“Making private health insurance harder to afford, will only mean that more Australians will have to rely on our public system. So, if you’re going to do it, you better make sure that our public health systems can handle it. 

“Older Australians can today breathe a sigh of relief knowing this bill won’t be seeing the light of day any time soon.”

The Liberal Party were also quick to send an email to supporters from Angus Taylor:

I wanted to let you know some good news.

Our Liberal and National team just secured a victory in the Senate to stop Labor’s attack on private health insurance

The Labor Government wanted to strip back the private health insurance rebate for Australians aged 65 and over.

More than three million older Australians would have faced premium rises of up to $807 per year for singles or up to $1,614 per year for a couple.

Many of these are pensioners who have maintained private health cover their entire working lives.

We opposed these changes. We believe Australians who have taken responsibility for their own health care should not face higher costs as a result.

Minister Mark Butler has already vowed to reintroduce the same legislation to the Senate. 

But unless he can stump up something enticing enough to convince the Greens to come back and play ball with the loneliest kids in school, it’ll be interesting to see how the Government gets this one through the Senate in the dying light of this parliamentary year.

Lidia Thorpe has also been trying to ban the shackling of women during birth. It is supposed to be a last resort, but it happens more frequently in Australia than people realise. Again, the commonwealth says it is an issue for the state and territories, but Thorpe said the federal government could at least have minimum standards put in place and they are not doing it.

Thorpe:

We have medical professionals in these hospitals where these women are being handcuffed, legs and arms, trying to push out a baby, and those medical professionals are arguing with these security guards or prison guards to please remove the shackles so that they can do their job and allow this this woman to push out this baby. So again, we need those minimum standards, and again, the horrific stories: young woman only this year in Queensland was shackled, and that caused harm to her. That caused harm to the baby. She wasn’t allowed to hold her baby after that birth. So there’s arguments in the delivery suite between these prison guards and the medical professionals to to allow safe delivery. This is harm to a baby. What has this baby done?

So it can we we can rule that out. They’ve done that around the world, but unfortunately, in this country, we still use this barbaric practice, which causes immense harm and and a lot of deaths of babies and mums.

The interview continued:

Q: Do you have any support for this inquiry in in the parliament? How do you see the path ahead?

Lidia Thorpe:

Oh, look. Yesterday was just handballing from the Liberal Party coalition to Labor, and all the excuses why this is a state and territory responsibility. So there’s not the political will from the Labor government. If there was, we could stop these pedophiles accessing our children, and we could stop the many deaths in out-of-home care. You know, stories like a four-year-old carrying a three-month-old baby. They were removed from their parents that night. The four-year-old was allowed to walk around with this baby, and that baby’s no longer with us. And that four-year-old, well, he has to live with that for the rest of his life.

So there’s absolute horrific, horrific stories, and no one’s doing anything about it, they say it’s not a federal responsibility. Yet they have a federal commissioner for children, so you know you can’t have it both ways.

I’m not sure what the federal commissioner is doing about these situations. It’s okay to go to the Pilbara and deal with you know state by state issues, but it’s not addressing the root cause, which we can do at the federal level with minimum standards.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe wants an inquiry into child protection systems, including child removal. She says the system is in crisis and children are being exploited and harmed.

She told ABC radio RN Breakfast:

This this inquiry is for all children, not just Aboriginal children. We are in a crisis in this country, and the Commonwealth has the constitutional power to set minimum standards in this country to ensure that all children are safe in state care. Now we have to remember government have responsibility for these children. Yet we are seeing many children dying in these state systems. We’re also seeing pedophiles rocking up to residential care, sending Ubers, and using those young people in those residential cares for sexual exploitation.

So states and territories are doing nothing about it, and I believe that using constitutional power to have those minimum standards will look at ways that we can bring those states and territories into line and ensure that all children are safe in out-of-home care and in residential care.

Q: What do you think of the very basics of this? It’s called the child protection system, but we know that kids in care often are at at incredible risk of all the the risks that you were just outlining.

Thorpe:

Look, I just hear so many horrific stories from families and communities. I went to Mildura where I learnt that a pedophile was living opposite a residential care, and he interfered with six young boys, and those six young boys have had no supports, no follow up. This man went to jail.

He filmed these boys, and it was just easy access. So it’s it’s an absolute crisis, and the government does have the power to make change, bring the states and territories into line. They’ll say that it’s a state and territory problem, but we we do have the power at the federal level to pull them into line, and and it’s about political will, really. It’s about policy. It’s not about whether the government can do it or not.

Over on ABC radio RN Breakfast, independent senator Lidia Thorpe has been asked about her home state of Victoria and particularly Melbourne, particularly for Indigenous people.

Oh, it’s it’s not the place I grew up in.

I’ve never seen Melbourne and Victoria become so racist, and the stories again from my mob around the state are just horrific in terms of racism towards children, towards our people every single day. So I think we’re going down a very dangerous path, and I think Labor are in real trouble, and I think Treaty is in real trouble.

Treaty is about bringing people together to be able to move forward and agree on that way forward. So I think we’re in trouble, and we’ve got to stand up against racism as a country as a whole, because it harms, it kills, and you know everybody has a responsibility here.

What One Nation are promising people are false. It’s false promises, and if we end up with a Liberal Coalition with One Nation, then we’re going to see the battlers and people of colour struggle even more than they are now.

AAP

Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, also said the anti-immigration policies being touted by both major parties, as well as One Nation, would weaken Australia’s position on the global stage.

“Retreating from immigration will make us materially weaker,” he told a studio audience at the ABC in Sydney on Wednesday evening.

“We should recommit to multicultural immigration, not because diversity is strength … but because scale is strength.”

Mr Roggeveen’s talk was the first of four lectures from experts on Australia’s engagement with Asia in the 21st century, as part of ABC Radio National’s Boyer Lectures series.

He said the rise of China had made the US’s position in Asia “unsustainably weak,” meaning Australia could no longer rely on the United States to defend it in the region.

“America won’t risk its own troops in a fight against a nuclear-armed opponent because its vital interests won’t be at stake,” Mr Roggeveen said.

“To put it bluntly, America won’t have enough skin in the game.”

The AUKUS agreement with the US and UK, Mr Roggeveen said, was the US exploiting Australia’s “insatiable desire to win the approval of Americans”.

“Australia should be sceptical of both China and America, as one rises and the other declines,” he added.

“And from this dual skepticism flows an obvious conclusion: we must do more to look after ourselves.”

He added that the US’s decline and China’s rise was not because of current President Donald Trump, but that the shift in power would continue beyond his time in the White House.

“No previous US president could have prevented China’s ascent, and no future US president is going to risk their nation’s safety and prosperity by entering a competition with China that could lead to war,” Mr Roggeveen said.

He recommended Australia strengthen ties with Indonesia, warning that the dangers of getting the relationship wrong were immense.

“Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s leader, and soon its economy will surpass ours,” he said.

“If we get this relationship right, Indonesia offers a natural barrier against threats from third countries.”

Finally, Mr Roggeveen offered a scathing report of the current state of Australian democracy, describing the country’s major parties as “weak” and “fragile”.

“Right now, the boldness Australia needs has no political home,” he said.

His comments echoed those made recently by former prime minister Paul Keating, who has long been a critic of the AUKUS program and anti-immigration policies.

“In these arrangements with the Americans …and the British, we’ve lost sovereignty,” Mr Keating said at a Sydney Writers’ Festival event last month.

Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathan Duniam (he styles himself as Jonno) delivered his final speech in the senate yesterday. Amongst the usual thank yous and naming of friends (a list on which he included Katy Gallagher, Penny Wong and Sarah Hanson-Young) was his advice to his party.

Everyone likes free stuff, so I thought I’d throw in some free advice today. Our adversarial system of politics is a breeding ground for division, where points of difference and argument are increasingly the only way to cut through. That’s necessary and healthy in a contest of ideas, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of resolving issues in the national interest. It’s incumbent upon all of us to find ways to resolve issues that confront Australia.

We will and we should always have our counterarguments. But Australians are looking for mature debate, where Australia’s best
interests come first.

Former US prosecutor Roy Cohn from the McCarthy, reds-under-the-bed era, is credited with coming up with the ‘three nevers’ rule: never apologise, never admit, and never back down. With trust in politics at a low ebb, his advice could not be a bigger bum steer.

There is nothing wrong with admitting when we get something wrong. And, in fact, I think it should be applauded. I note, though, I say this from opposition, where of course it’s an art form to seize on admissions of failure and defeat. But I believe it is in the country’s interest to admit when things don’t work and change course if needed.

As part of this free advice, it wouldn’t be complete without at least one Bible reference from me. Jesus said in the Parable of the Faithful Servant in Luke 12, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ To all of us in this place, much has been given, without exception.

Therefore, from all of us much is expected by our community and by our country. And I hope every day those who go on to occupy this place remember this and live it out in whatever form they can.

As I conclude, I must acknowledge that the challenge for my party is real, and no-one can deny that. But this challenge is not insurmountable. I come from a proud party with strong foundations. The Liberal heritage, the legacy and the record are all things to be proud of. Having just handed down our methodically crafted and strong immigration policy, I’ve been reflecting on the legacy of our party when it comes to strong borders. I’ve been reflecting on how we’ve been the only party in the past to end the people-smuggling trade and fix a broken migration system. I’ve been reflecting on how my party remains the party of fiscal prudence and strong economic management.

One doesn’t have to cast their mind back too far to recall the debt the Howard government was left with, which they paid off and turned into the Future Fund money set aside for the advancement of our country.

We have a history, and we should be proud of it. My party can give Australians what they need, not by pretending to be someone else or seeking to appease certain actors but by returning to our roots—by backing in with conviction our values framework the We Believe statement offers and explaining why it is better than the alternative. We should never wave the white flag. We should always put forward our plan and make the case for people to vote for
us.

My party has been around for decades. It isn’t populist. It isn’t flash in the pan. It is here to stay. And, sure, we may have spent some time in the wilderness, but we have our bearings now, and I know we will be able to get back over there into government

Hello and welcome back to the last sitting day for this session and also the last joint sitting day for some time (we have a house only week and then a senate only week ahead of us, before the last joint sitting of the year)

Anika Wells will introduce the Digital Duty of Care legislation and jump straight back into negotiations with the Greens, with the Coalition a no. Not enough attention is put on how often the Coalition deals itself out of negotiations – a habit which started under Dutton, following the Tony Abbott playbook. They’ll still get media attention though, with their utterances on the bill they don’t want to negotiate on given a primacy. The Greens will be blamed for any hold up – just look at the response to the private health subsidy changes not going ahead – the Coalition voted no there too, but the government is blaming the Greens ‘new leadership’ and ‘a sudden rush of blood to the head’ which, I’m sorry – I didn’t know it was any non-government’s party’s job to just pass legislation the government wanted? And there were two parties there. The Coalition might get the question time heat, but the Greens get the government’s public and media blame. Just an observation.

Wells has taken out the minister’s role in deciding what is harmful or not from the legislation, in a bid to calm down critics who thought it was ‘political censorship’. Public interest journalists will get a carve out as well, which is going to be a fun exercise in determining who is and isn’t a journalist in the age of new journalism.

It’s unlikely any of this will be passed by the end of the year though. There is a lot of politics to be played and not enough sittings left to play it.

Meanwhile Mark Butler will be re-introducing the aft-forementioned private health subsidy changes bill after the senate said no. As we said, he is blaming the Greens, which is a pretty big dis-service to the Coalition who have worked very hard in making sure everyone knew they were a no on this. Butler says the change is necessary, but really, the bigger necessity would be to rework the entire private health subsidy, which was just established by John Howard because he really, really didn’t like Medicare, and re-invest those billions of dollars spent subsidising private health into public health. One can dream.

We will cover all of that off and more as the day unfolds. It will be a three coffee morning I am thinking. Please let me know how you are going.

Ready? Let’s do this.