The Point Live: Coalition still to land a blow on Albanese-less Labor, surprise surge in inflation. As it happened.

Given the mess of the day, we are going to pull up stumps, but we will be back tomorrow for the last day of this sitting week (there is one more, how lucky are we).

Walking around the parliament you can see people are already over it, which usually doesn’t happen until the Tuesday of the second week. Seems like this time, your parliamentarians are over-achieving when it comes to guff.

Thank you to everyone who sat through today – we are no doubt about to get a wave of messiness tomorrow, so make sure you get your rest. I have a feeling you are going to need it.

We’ll see you back early tomorrow. Until then, take care of you.

Over in the senate and Alex Antic is trying to get his Childhood Gender Transition Prohibition Bill back on the notice paper.

Greens senator Nick McKim just gave a lesson in fire and fury as he lashed out at Antic’s politics and that of the Coalition more generally when it comes to trans-people, including the Queensland government’s cynical use of a ministerial direction to restore a puberty blocker ban, after the supreme court upheld a parent’s challenge.

This division will be lost, but that it is happening at all is just ugh.

Question time may have ended but – on the other side of the same building – the Revenue Summit rolls on.

We are now hearing from a panel about how inequality and wealth is entrenched and growing, but not inevitable

“We need to reduce inequality to have a vibrant society,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

As Dr Denniss has said before, taxing things we don’t like to subsidise things we do like and need is economics 101.  

Dr Cassandra Goldie, CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service, presented some statistics that show how wide the gap is. 

“Both on income and on wealth, there has been siginficant acceleration on inequality,” Dr Goldie said. 

“We are going in the wrong direction if you care about greater equality”. 

She also pointed out how Australia is a low taxing nation by OECD standards, and a low spending nation by those same standards. 

It is a big reason why so many people in what is a rich country are living in poverty.

Kasy Chambers, Executive Director of Anglicare is arguing the case for investing increased revenue in people, particularly those who need it most, with initiatives like better employment programs. 

Dr Mark Zirnsak, Secretariat at the Tax Justice Network Australia, says a fairer tax system is a no-brainer.

He says it would ensure governments have revenue to provide services like health care clinics, schools, aged care, mental health services and law enforcement.

Thank you to Glenn for looking after The Point Live while I ranted about housing and heard from people much smarter than me (one of my favourite things to-be-honest) you have Amy Remeikis back with you for the next little bit.

Having looked at question time, you could almost see the relief from the Opposition benches that the inflation figures gave them something to talk about. And something meaty at that. While it is normal for an opposition to have to pivot when figures like that drop, there wasn’t much meat behind what they were pushing, which suggests they still don’t have a handle on where to take *gestures* any of this.

Australia’s natural environment is in crisis and its wealth is disappearing into the hands of a few powerful fossil fuel companies – but it doesn’t have to be this way.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Rod Campbell and Ebony Bennett discuss the lack of political will to properly protect the natural environment, a proposal for a 25% gas export tax to replace the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, and new research showing that Adani cost Queenslanders hundreds of millions of dollars by selling coal at mates’ rates.

While people are talking about revenue-raising at The Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit, the Australian Taxation Office has sidelined the person who uncovered PwC’s leaking of confidential government information.

Michael O’Neill, a long-time public servant in the ATO, led the investigation into consultancy giant PwC’s conduct, which found that a former partner there had leaked confidential government briefings with clients. 

So, an expert at the PwC was being contracted by the Commonwealth government to help design laws which would ensure multinational companies paid a fairer share of their taxes. The same expert then turned around to share the confidential knowledge from that work with his clients, so that they could design ways to get around paying the new tax.

This was uncovered by the investigation of the Tax Practitioners Board (a regulatory body) headed by Michael O’Neill.

Only yesterday the Tax Practitioners Board announced another investigation into the PwC. And now they are supposed to proceed without the highly experienced investigator who broke open the case.

Is Australia serious about getting companies to pay their fair share of taxes? Are we serious about corporate accountability?

At the very least, Australians deserve to know why Mr O’Neill has been moved on.

Residents of the external Australian territory of Norfolk Island will have to wait at least another year before democracy can be restored.

The local council was sacked and administrators appointed in 2021 after a series of serious financial problems.

Prior to 2015, the island had its own Legislative Assembly.

Now, it’s being governed by two bureaucrats.

It is not represented in a state parliament and, in one of the great quirks of our federal parliament, islanders vote in the federal electorate of Bean in the ACT.

A short time ago, the Minister for Local Government and Territories, Kristy McBain, released a statement saying administrators Scott Mason and Gary Mottau would continue to be the quasi-Kings of the island until the end of next year.

The Australian government is committed to restoring local democracy on Norfolk Island. 

This extension supports a stable transition as we work together to deliver a governance model that reflects local needs and aspirations. 

I look forward to continue working with Scott and Gary to support a sustainable transition for Norfolk Island and its bright future.

Darren Chester, Member for Gippsland:

The New South Wales RSL has given evidence to the Senate inquiry into Labor’s defence honours Bill, saying it is disgraceful. “This bill will be completely detrimental to not only their physical health and mental health dash it will also devalue their service.” Minister, you know this bill strips away rights from veterans and ADF personnel who have delivered the freedoms we enjoy in our nation today. Will the government finally admit it has made a mistake and just bin this disgraceful bill?

Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans Affairs:

I thank the member for his question because it provides me with a great opportunity to provide him and the House with some clarifications on the matters that he has raised. I’m grateful for that opportunity ’cause I’ve seen, over the course of the last few days, his blood pressure really rise, his anxiety level really rise, which might be of concern for members of our House about the member for Gippsland. But what I’m more concerned with is the way in which he has conducted his opposition

Speaker:

It doesn’t work that way. The member for Gippsland has asked a question. The minister’s answering. We’ve got to respect each other here. No more interjections from the member for Gippsland. I can hear you, trust me. I’ll give the call to the minister now to answer and return to the question.

Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans Affairs:

What’s concerned me is the way in which the member for Gippsland has engaged in debate on this bill, creating anxiety and uncertainty and unclarity across the veteran community in respect to what this legislation is about. What I’ve encountered as a Minister for Veterans’ Affairs is concerns that have been raised by the defence honours and awards tribunal about the difficulty that it has confronted over many years over different chairpersons of that tribunal of dealing with long historical cases in front of it, and making sure that it is able to remain relevant in the work that it does to ensure that our veterans and our serving personnel can have decisions made by defence properly reviewed. And I think people understand. I know in my engagement with the veteran community around this bill and around many issues surrounding medals that they want to ensure that those decisions can be properly based in evidence, which is why we have many reviews of these matters, that they can be properly based in evidence, and that we see the integrity in the way in which that system operates. That’s what these amendments are designed to achieve. What is particularly troubling, though, is the way in which the member opposite, the Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, given he is a former Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel should know better – is the way in which he has tried to suggest that these amendments would remove the capacity to be able to award honours to serving personnel.

Last night, ABC 7:30 reported that 9,000 firearms have been stolen in Australia over the last five years, with only one in four recovered. That’s one gun stolen every four hours.

The report was built on new research by Rod Campbell and Skye Predavec – and you can read it now on the Australia Institute website.

But the research only exists because of freedom of information laws. While some states made the information available on request, others required the Australia Institute to file a formal application for the information.

The report, Firearm theft in Australia: Two decades of stolen guns, is a practical example of why freedom of information laws matter. What Skye and Rod unearthed is of real public interest, with implications for public safety and government policy – but it wasn’t published by default.

That’s why it’s so concerning that the federal FOI system is broken – with fewer requests being granted in full and decisions taking longer than ever to process. Instead of addressing the culture of secrecy within departments and ministerial offices, the Albanese government is trying to put more barriers in place.

Over 7,000 people have already signed our petition calling for an end to government secrecy.

Looking through the responses from state and territory governments to Rod and Skye’s FOI requests, I was impressed. They certainly weren’t perfect, with some information missing or ambiguous. But compared to my experience in the federal system, state and territory public servants seemed quick, responsive and cooperative.

Democracy is a feedback loop, with the public passing judgement on the government at each election and the government acting in the name of the public. Without access to government information, that feedback loop breaks.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke sends the house into a chilled silence, answering a question about the need for a new AFP taskforce, which was launched a couple of hours ago.

Taskforce Pompilid has been set up to investigate a harrowing new trend, where vulnerable young women and girls are being “hunted, stalked and drawn-in”, coerced into carrying out serious acts of self-harm and violence.

Tony Burke:

The purpose of this taskforce is to deal with a form of exploitation and sadism that we all wish we didn’t have to be aware of. This is effectively because of an online network where the perpetrators are principally young boys and young men from Western, English-speaking backgrounds, and the victims are overwhelmingly young girls had a history of low self-esteem, mental health disorders, histories of self-harm, eating disorders, and other attributes that might lead them to seek connection online. The method has been that victims are pressured initially into providing compromising or sensitive information or images. Once the images have been provided, they are then blackmailed. Blackmailed into escalating acts of violence targeted at themselves, at their siblings, sometimes at strangers, sometimes at pets. In establishing the taskforce, the Federal Police are bringing together officers from their cyber, their counter-terrorism, their intelligence division, and also from the Australian Centre for Countering Child Exploitation.

Federal Police has received just over 100 reports of sadistic online exploitation. These reports have been received, some from our international law enforcement partners, some from the United States Center, and some from members of the public. It’s resulted in nine international and three domestic arrests. While the Australian Federal Police are doing their work with the taskforce, parents and children will often ask what they can do. The four pieces of advice from the Australian Federal Police are these: Stop the chat. Take screen shots, especially of the offender’s username. Report and block the account. Screen shot your own account information as well. And of course, all this information and the capacity to report is at the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation’s website, accce.gov.au. The best thing that anyone can, do no matter whether they’re involved or whether they know a friend is, is to tell someone about it. Tell someone it is not their fault. While the commissioner mentioned today that it has always taken a village to raise a child, sometimes it takes a country to protect them. Those people who are feeling threatened or exploited by these networks need to know that the Federal Police are there with them, protecting them. The government is there. The entire parliament is there. And the Australian people stand together with the work of the Australian Federal Police.