The Point Live: Nationals push for Coalition to delay mining friendly environment laws, while the fallout from Hanson's Islamophobic burqa stunt continues. As it happened

The Greens will try to once again have the cost of arts degrees halved – they doubled under the failed Jobs Ready Graduate program, which lowered the cost of some degrees, but made arts and the humanities pay for it – but what do you know, there is more to how students choose a degree then just cost and it didn’t work to attract more students to where the government wanted – but it did saddle more students with larger debts.

The government says it will address the Jobs Ready mess, but is waiting for…something. Story of this government’s life really.

Rumours about America’s role in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam have circulated for decades – but is there any truth to them?

On this special episode of After America, we explore the state of the Australia-United States relationship under the Whitlam government, the machinations at the time around the renewal of Pine Gap, and the previously untold account of Dr Liz Cham, former executive assistant in the office of Prime Minister Whitlam, who recalls handing over a mystery letter to an American official just before the Dismissal.

Tanya Plibersek, the social services minister spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning where she was also asked about Pauline Hanson’s Islamophobic stunt.

Plibersek said:

I don’t remember the last time someone in a burqa robbed a bank. I think it’s completely standard, you know, rehashed Pauline Hanson, headline grabbing behaviour.

The only thing that you can be guaranteed of is that some girl in a headscarf on her way to school today is going to be bullied on the train. I think the other thing that’s disappointing about this is we’ve had warnings from the ASIO director that the biggest, you know, fastest growing threat in Australia
is from right-wing extremism.

We saw a bunch of Nazis lined up outside New South Wales Parliament a couple of weeks ago. I don’t see Pauline Hanson calling out that behaviour or that risk. She’s once again going for a group of people who will be, you know, threatened, abused and perhaps even physically assaulted on their way to
work or school today.

The Australian Financial Review today reported that Gina Rinehart called on people to “stand up to the noisy watermelons and the far-left”.

The Fin said “Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has called out global resources giants, including her own company’s joint venture partner Rio Tinto, for sacrificing shareholder value in the pursuit of net zero emissions policies.”

What does she mean by that? In remote areas like the Pilbara the mining companies have been diversifying out of fossil fuels and into renewables, which are cheaper anyway. But Gina thinks the miners are giving into a green agenda associated with net zero. So she said she wanted more Australians to mobilise and pressure the government via letters, talkback radio or social media, to abandon emissions reduction policies, to lower power bills and reduce grocery prices [as if].

If you don’t agree with Gina you are a noisy watermelon and on the far-left! We suppose that includes the management of BHP, Rio and Fortescue.

Anthony Albanese has met with the Zhao Leji in the Prime Minister’s courtyard. Mike Bowers popped by ahead of his special project to take you there – including the awkward waiting moment (these staged photo ops are never comfortable for anyone)

It is party room meeting day, which means parliament won’t sit until midday. It seems like both major parties want to try and have some downtime, so don’t be too surprised if it goes very q word (it is a jinx in journalism to use the q word, much like wishing someone luck in a theatre.

It is the last party room meeting of the year though, which will mean there is a lot of rah rah (and attempts at rah rah in the Coalition) but it is also the festive drinks season, so there will be media drinks at the Lodge, the opposition drinks at parliament, the Greens drinks (usually off-site) and a hodge podge of crossbench drinks.

I have a rule now of not attending (and haven’t for years) because I try not to cross the streams as much as possible and that includes standing around and making small talk with people I am meant to be holding to account. That doesn’t mean I never see these people, but it’s always clear it’s for work.

Fatima Payman has written an essay for A Time for Bravery: What Happens When Australia Chooses Courage? published by Australia Institute Press;

The first bravery I knew was my father’s.

In 1999, he spent 11 days and nights on a small, crowded boat traversing the Indian Ocean, fleeing war-torn Afghanistan. He left behind his pregnant wife and his two little daughters, hoping to find them a safe haven, or die trying.

Life in Australia brought safety but not ease. He worked as a kitchen hand enduring underpayment; as a cabbie weathering abuse; as a security guard working overtime just to give us the best shot in life. He never complained. But I now know he was afraid; afraid of the unknown, of a language he didn’t speak, of a culture he didn’t understand, of a way of life that was completely foreign.

And yet, he would always smile in gratitude. He would tell us to live with integrity, to give back to this nation that gave us refuge, and to never give up no matter the hardship.

I was raised to believe that silence in the face of injustice is itself an injustice. Every day of the last seven years since he passed away from leukaemia, I’ve heard my father’s voice in my head. To me, he is the definition of bravery. I am certain he was scared from the moment he set foot on the boat to the moment he was told he had only a few hours left to live. Afraid of leaving us behind, afraid of the uncertainty we would face without him, and yet he smiled in contentment, knowing he had fulfilled his purpose: to provide for us and raise us with strong values.

You can read the whole essay at The Point, here and you can pre-order here

The independent senator, who quit the Labor party after it refused to condemn the Gaza genocide, was asked how she thinks the last parliamentary year has gone:

I think this government has clearly shown they are afraid of transparency. We have asked questions during estimates. I have asked questions around the $1 billion building early education fund and it six weeks later we haven’t seen answers for it. We don’t know where the money that this government a allocating where the money is going, why it is not helping build the infrastructure that they’re committing. When it comes to the EPBC Act they have stalled. We know climate change is real. We know there is a climate crisis Tropical Cyclone Fina in the Kimberley is an example of how real it is and how it is impacting real lives.

And on the mining friendly environment laws, Payman says:

If it is that important they wouldn’t rush it, right? We would have the opportunity to scrutinise the bill. There is seven pieces of the bill in this package, the biggest environmental reform package we have seen and they are trying to rush it by making deals.

If this was such an urgent matter for the government they would have passed it before the election when they actually had a deal with the Greens and some cross bench Would you vote for it as members. the legislation currently?

I think there are many improvements that are required, including climate trigger and the national interest that the powers that the minister’s going to have and there are various elements of it that the government needs to improve before it can pass the Senate

Q: What effect does it have on Muslim women? You are the first woman to wear the hijab in parliament. So many women across the community are reporting a rise in Islamophobia. What effect does an incident like this have on them?

Fatima Payman:

There is bound to be people out on the streets, young school girls who are probably yelled at or abused or assaulted and it is just the division that we don’t want to see in society. Australians deserve better, Australians deserve their politicians to behave in a befitting manner that harmonises and brings people together, not alienates and demonises a community because Pauline Hanson’s actions are pitting one group against another and the government’s lack of action just indicated that they were fast asleep at the wheel and were not able to deal with this incident promptly

Hanson pulled this after her latest ‘ban the burqa’ motion failed. She had been talking about bringing it back for a while (it was expected last sitting but she was in Mar-a-Lago speaking at a conservative conference and so it landed this week.
Slade Brockman was in the president’s chair and didn’t seem to know what to do when Hanson entered the senate in the garment. He originally allowed it saying that religious dress was allowed under senate precedent and didn’t appear to grasp the seriousness of the stunt, attempting to shut down senators who complained about Hanson’s behaviour. It wasn’t until the more senior members of the Labor senate team, including president Sue Lines and Penny Wong returned that action was taken.

Payman explained what happened:

Pauline Hanson did not appreciate her – the introduction of the bill that she wanted to put up to ban the burqa, which was refused by the Senate and I think government did not handle it well because the President – President Sue Lines was nowhere to be seen. It was a stunt Pauline Hanson has previously pulled, so the fact that the government were found asleep at the wheel was just not OK and definitely not suitable of a government that claims to care about multiculturalism and a safe work environment. There wasn’t just me but so many other senators felt unsafe and disrespected by such behaviour. The government definitely needs to do a lot more when it comes to upholding the principles of the Senate but also to ensure that this sort of behaviour didn’t get the attention that Pauline Hanson was craving.

…She should have been removed from the chamber earlier. As soon as she entered the chamber with the burqa on, using it as a prop and an abhorrent stunt, the President should have entered the chamber and made the ruling because the precedent was set back in 2017 and I remember when this stunt was taking place. My dad was in hospital for leukaemia and I remember going in and getting weird stares and remarks thrown at me. I was wondering what was going on. This is an old trick that Pauline Hanson has pulled out of the bag. It is disrespectful and un-Australian and the government should have handled it better.