Australia Institute Live: Future Made in Australia to move through the senate. As it happened

The Coalition have released an actual election promise (I know, I know) promising to increase the number of subsidised mental health appointments from ten to 20 (which was a covid measure that proved very popular).

Mark Butler says the Coalition always intended for the number of appointments to return to 10 and while the government has looked at it, he said the sector would need an expansion:

The problem with, with doubling the number of sessions, without doubling the number of psychologists, is you? They created a bottleneck, and a whole lot of people ended up not getting access to any services at all. So bringing that back down to 10 has meant a whole lot more people have got access to important psychological therapy. So I’m not inclined to lift the number back up to 20 without expanding the psychology workforce, which is what we’ve been focused on over the last couple of budgets, as well as providing a number of other services that people can access, Medicare, mental health centers that we’re rolling out around the country, we’ve got a few dozen open. We’ve got more ready to open their walk in clinics. They’re free of charge. And we are also building a national early intervention service that will take pressure off our psychology therapy

Health minister Mark Butler is speaking to ABC radio RN Breakfast ahead of tabling responses to parliamentary inquiries on women’s health – one that was handed down about 18months ago and one a little more recently.

Yesterday, the government put forward a $500m package to make contraceptive and hormone therapy a little cheaper, in a bid to close some of the medical gender gap. The Coalition matched the commitment almost immediately, just in case you needed any reminder that we are in an election campaign.

Butler says:

“You can’t strengthen Medicare without strengthening women’s health. That’s really the message of those two very important Senate inquiries. Women consume about 60 per cent of the nation’s health services, and as I made clear yesterday, and as all of your female listeners know very well, women face a whole range of very significant costs simply because they’re women around contraception and menopause and Peri-menopause. And yesterday’s landmark package really reverses the decades of neglect that those two Senate reports really highlighted and delivers Australia’s women finally, more choice, better care and lower costs.“

On the Coalition’s criticism of government spending in Indigenous areas, Malarndirri McCarthy said former Liberal leader Scott Morrison was the one who refreshed the Closing the Gap targets, with former minister Ken Wyatt and the Coalition should support the changes:

It is always disappointing to hear the criticism from the coalition when we actually haven’t heard of a plan for this other than cutting, you know, cutting public services, cutting Aboriginal organisations. And I would urge the Coalition in particular, on this day, that this agreement is one that they signed up to. In fact, this refresh was done by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the former Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt, so I would encourage them to recognize that this is a bipartisan support across not only the federal parliament, but also every state and territory jurisdiction.”

The minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy, has spoken to the ABC’s Sabra Lane ahead of Anthony Albanese delivering the Closing the Gap target update later today in parliament.

McCarthy said the government will be announcing price caps on 30 essential products in 76 remote stores to try and bring some cost parity for groceries in remote communities.

We’re talking about a list of core essential items that were actually put together by the food security working group that gives me advice, and we looked at items like flour, like milk, tin, tuna, rice, bread, cereal, canned meals, you know, to fresh fruit, apples, oranges, bananas, to toiletries with toilet rolls, nappies, baby formula. So there is a list of 30 items there that we are focused on, and certainly the Prime Minister is very supportive of, as we look at trying to reduce the cost of living issues in regional and remote Australia.”

What to expect this week

• Closing the Gap Productivity Commission update
• Fallout from Victorian state byelections
• Attention on health funding, including womens’ health
• Production tax credits for renewable hydrogen and critical minerals in the senate
• The Housing affordability crisis to be back in the spotlight

Hello and welcome back to the second week of parliament for 2025 and the second week of Australia Institute Live.  All going to plan for an election in May (which continues to look like happening, when it’s due – in May) there is just this week of parliament before estimates and then the late March budget, so strap in for a busy one.

We are still in our soft launch stage and still working out some bugs, but we truly appreciate you coming along for the ride with us.

We start this week with Labor still taking stock of the Victorian state byelection results, which saw the Liberals win the seat of Prahran from the Greens and the traditionally held Labor seat of Werribee still on a knife’s edge.

It looks like preferences will get the Labor candidate John Lister across the line, and Labor didn’t run a candidate in Prahran, where the Greens’ Angelica Di Camillo lost to the Liberals’ Rachel Westaway.

Low voter turnout was a major factor, but Labor strategists are still looking at the result with worry, as it shows the Liberals are gaining back ground in Victoria, which until recently Labor had been able to count as a stronghold against Liberal gains.  Peter Dutton is not the boogieman Labor had hoped in the state and so far the state opposition have been able to hold it together as the Allan government continues to lose popularity.

Stay turned there.

The parliament will be focussed on Closing the Gap, with Anthony Albanese to deliver the annual address at midday.

On Friday, the government announced a further $842.6m in funding for Northern Territory Indigenous communities, which will be spent over six years.  But Indigenous communities in Queensland and Western Australia are also crying out for funding and the Closing the Gap targets are not getting any better – and in many cases are worsening.

Dutton will also be asked to address the failure to address the targets – but keep in mind that Dutton has done nothing to advance any of his ‘ideas’ after comprehensively destroying the Voice referendum (‘regional voices, anyone?) and his shadow minister for government efficiency, (not to be confused with his shadow minister for government waste reduction) has so far focussed her spending cut rhetoric on Indigenous programs (most notably the $450,000 over three years budgeted for Welcome to Country ceremonies – the savings for which will be SURE to turn the entire nation around).

Health funding will also be in the news – there is more focus on women’s health as the government seeks to address the gender gap in medicine, and more push of the $1.7bn over one year agreement to cut public hospital wait times.

You can also expect housing to pop back up on the agenda – the ABC has a special looking at it with Alan Kohler, while the Grattan Institute has revisited the housing costs in retirement issue.  That’s not new – it  came up  in the Retirement Review ordered by the former government when Josh Frydenberg was treasurer, but it always makes for sobering reminders – if you have housing costs (rent, board or mortgage) than retirement will not be comfortable for you – in fact, you’ll be living in poverty.  That’s hitting women, more than men, due to the superannuation gap (particularly with women in older generations) and the impact separation and chronic health conditions can have on savings and earnings.

We’ll cover all the day’s events in the parliament as they happen – you have Amy Remeikis with you today and I’m on coffee number two with half a bag of mixed mini easter eggs to get me through the morning.

Ready?

Let’s get into it.