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‘It is laziness’ to use excuse of not knowing detail on voice to parliament: Ken Wyatt
Ken Wyatt also said the “detail” is already in the publicly available report and he is scathing of people who are saying “we don’t know the detail”.
I would tell everybody: go to the National Indigenous Australian agency, download the report on the voice and look at the pages I’ve just recommended – pages 16 to 17. That is the detail.
Now the legislative detail, if it reflects the model that our people have raised and the various reports is put into place then there is no excuse to say you do not know the detail.
It is laziness.
…I think it’s being used as an excuse. And to my mind, it offers up a level of immaturity around a very complex issue, because even in listening to my former colleague, David [Littleproud] saying they want pragmatic approaches. When I went out to communities, Indigenous people had not had ministers come out to their communities and sit their butts down in the red dirt and listen to them.
They went to organisations which suited them. Now I would challenge them, as I did when I was in the house.
I challenge every federal member to get out of their offices, go to the Aboriginal organisations within their electorates, sit and listen to the issues, see first-hand what Aboriginal people are talking about.
Because they’re talking about those 17 targets within the Closing the Gap strategy and I want media people to read those pages as well so that they’re much more informed than what I’ve been hearing in some quarters.
I even offered a journalist an opportunity of sitting with them and walking them through those pages so that they understood it, because they were saying the same thing – ‘we don’t know the detail’.
Just learn to read.
Key events
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For those looking for the report Ken Wyatt referred to in his interview with Patricia Karvelas this morning, you can find it here.
The pages 16-17 set out a lot of detail on how a voice would work.
It is pretty rare for a speaker to make a submission, specifically in their capacity as speaker, so it would seem Milton Dick wants to leave a little bit of a legacy – making the parliamentary chamber a more orderly place.
Before he was speaker, Dick led an inquiry into how to make question time better, which was ignored by the previous government.
It would be a brave parliament indeed which ignored suggestions from the speaker though.
Milton Dick also makes these recommendations for things he believes may improve the parliament:
Offensive words or reflections on Members Standing Orders 88 to 90, for example, provide that Members should not use offensive words or cast adverse reflections on Members, but they do not refer specifically to language or behaviour that is sexist or otherwise exclusionary or discriminatory. Revisions to these Standing Orders, so that they explicitly include that this type of conduct is highly disorderly, would be advantageous to the Chair in ruling on such matters.
Education and procedural support
The principal mechanism for raising a grievance against another Member is via a point of order (Standing Order 86).
At times, Members may be unaware of options available to them or feel that they are ineffective in addressing their concerns, at the time that an instance of offensive conduct occurs.
The use of ‘offensive words’ or ‘reflections’ can also be highly subjective and only adversely felt by the person to whom it is directed, which can sometimes be difficult for the Chair to pick up on.
Training and support:
particularly for new Members Educational opportunities that focus on options for addressing grievances could benefit Members to better understand their expectations and opportunities when such matters arise.
This would lead to a more consistent application of procedural best practice.
Statement of principles
The Committee may wish to include statements of guiding principles in the Standing Orders that outline behavioural standards, the expectations of Members, and ways in which they can assist the Chair. This could also benefit the Speaker in maintaining a respectful work environment.
Speaker Milton Dick recommends more options for sanctioning disorderly MPs
The speaker of the house, Milton Dick, has made a rare submission (for a speaker) into a parliamentary committee inquiry into recommendations made in the Setting the Standard report.
Dick makes the point that he doesn’t have a lot of options at hand if a MP gets disorderly. And that it would help the speaker to have a few more cards to play:
Sanctions against disorder Under Standing Order 94{a), the Speaker may direct a Member to leave the Chamber for one hour if the Member’s conduct is considered disorderly. At times, this direction to leave can be advantageous to a Member or be worn as a ‘badge of honour’.
If a Member’s conduct is grossly disorderly, the Speaker can choose to name the Member in accordance with Standing Order 94{b), but in practice this option is not often used and not used for ordinary offences. It would assist the Speaker to have additional options to sanction a Member for disorderly conduct. For example, choices for increased penalties of time, and/or the introduction of cascading penalties of time for continued disorder, would be a disincentive to Members to be ejected.
‘It is laziness’ to use excuse of not knowing detail on voice to parliament: Ken Wyatt
Ken Wyatt also said the “detail” is already in the publicly available report and he is scathing of people who are saying “we don’t know the detail”.
I would tell everybody: go to the National Indigenous Australian agency, download the report on the voice and look at the pages I’ve just recommended – pages 16 to 17. That is the detail.
Now the legislative detail, if it reflects the model that our people have raised and the various reports is put into place then there is no excuse to say you do not know the detail.
It is laziness.
…I think it’s being used as an excuse. And to my mind, it offers up a level of immaturity around a very complex issue, because even in listening to my former colleague, David [Littleproud] saying they want pragmatic approaches. When I went out to communities, Indigenous people had not had ministers come out to their communities and sit their butts down in the red dirt and listen to them.
They went to organisations which suited them. Now I would challenge them, as I did when I was in the house.
I challenge every federal member to get out of their offices, go to the Aboriginal organisations within their electorates, sit and listen to the issues, see first-hand what Aboriginal people are talking about.
Because they’re talking about those 17 targets within the Closing the Gap strategy and I want media people to read those pages as well so that they’re much more informed than what I’ve been hearing in some quarters.
I even offered a journalist an opportunity of sitting with them and walking them through those pages so that they understood it, because they were saying the same thing – ‘we don’t know the detail’.
Just learn to read.
‘We have failed on multiple fronts’ in efforts to close the gap: Ken Wyatt
Ken Wyatt says the detail is there and has been for some time and he thinks the argument of not knowing the detail is “just an excuse”.
Wyatt is also critical of comments made by CLP senator Jacinta Price about Linda Burney (although he does not name her).
What people are doing is just hooking on to just elements of the Uluru dialogue, but the Uluru dialogue was an important step in raising national consideration around a status that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience and live every day, and I hear the derogatory term ‘elites’.
The ‘elites’ … are champions for Aboriginal people to have a better outcome in life, and the Closing the Gap targets that I took through our cabinet, and through national cabinet, and through every state and territory parliament cabinet are the same 17 target areas that the royal commission argued for and recommended should be addressed if we were going to change the lives of Aboriginal Australians.
So we have failed on multiple fronts.
And I am not hearing from the Nationals solutions to the complexities that are problems [that are still] there with Aboriginal people on the ground.
Ken Wyatt says he took detail of Aboriginal voice to parliament to Morrison government twice
The former Coalition minister for Indigenous Affairs, Ken Wyatt, has told ABC radio RN he took detail of what a voice to parliament would look like to the Morrison government cabinet. Twice.
So people who were ministers at the time would be fully aware of this report. And what is obvious with the National party is they have not read the report and have not given an Aboriginal voice to parliament, an opportunity to be aired and to be listened to and be implemented.
Good morning
We have made it to Wednesday. Which is also Scott Morrison censure debate day AKA the Coalition see nothing to censure day.
Tony Burke will move the motion in the house, and then there will be a short debate about why the former prime minister should be censured/shouldn’t be censured. There will be a vote and it will carry, because the government have the numbers in the house.
Bridget Archer is the only Coalition MP who has so far said they are “inclined” to support the censure, given she has previously criticised his actions in secretly taking on additional ministries.
Morrison stood up in the party room yesterday and thanked the people he led into an electoral defeat for their support.
He also made a pretty big show yesterday of pretending their were no issues with his backbench seat mate, Alex Hawke, who had told Niki Savva for her book Bulldozed that Morrison was “addicted to power”. Hawke released a statement distancing himself from his own words yesterday, but didn’t actually deny he said it.
So you know, everything is going great in the Coalition six months on from losing the election. Everyone has their shiz together and knows exactly where the party is going.
Meanwhile, the latest Closing the Gap report has been released and it is not great news, with positive movement in only two of the 18 targets and four going backwards.
Targets improving or “on track”:
· Babies born with a healthy birthweight (89.5%)
· Children enrolled in preschool (96.7%)
Targets worsening or “not on track”:
· Children being school ready (34.3%)
· Adults in prison (2222 per 100,000)
· Children in out-of-home care (57.6 per 1000)
· Deaths by suicide (27.9 per 100,000)
Given the Nationals have already come out and said they won’t be supporting an Indigenous voice to parliament because it will do nothing to close the gap, when the gap is not being closed with what we are already doing, there will be more questions today for the junior Coalition party.
Linda Burney is hopeful there will be movement. She told ABC 7.30 last night:
The Nationals have made a decision, but I do note that it’s not unanimous. We’ve got a member of the National party in the federal parliament, Andrew Gee, the member for Calare, being very vocal today through a Facebook post saying that he will support the voice. We’ve had the leader of the National party in Western Australia saying that they will support the voice. So, I think there is some way to run in terms of this discussion.
Burney also said there would be no public funds for either campaign.
The Labor party has made what I think is a very prudent and responsible decision. We will be using public funds to fund a civics campaign, so people know about what referendums are, people understand what the constitution is about and that people are well informed about referendums and how you vote in a referendum.
We will not be using public funds to fund a Yes or a No campaign. We believe those campaigns can raise their own money, through private means. I believe that this is a responsible, prudent approach to what is a very serious question that we’re asking the Australian people in the next financial year.
Most of the chatter is about the vote being held towards the back end of 2023, but it is just chatter at the moment and will depend on a lot of things – like the public mood.
We’ll cover the day and you have Katharine Murphy, Josh Butler, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst to help you through. You also have Mike Bowers to take you into the chamber. I, Amy Remeikis, will be on the blog for most of the day. Along with an IV of coffee. I had cake for breakfast again. So, yeah, it is that sort of day.
Ready?
Let’s get into it.
Covid cruise ship outbreak alert for Melbourne
A cruise ship with a Covid-19 outbreak aboard is set to sail into Victoria tomorrow, AAP reports.
It is unclear exactly how many cases are on the Grand Princess, which can carry nearly 4,000 passengers and crew and is due to arrive in Melbourne on Thursday.
“Like many other tourism operators, we too have been impacted by the current fourth wave being experienced across Australia,” a Princess Cruises spokesperson said in a statement.
The Victorian health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, said she expected any cases onboard to stay away from the rest of the community.
“That’s the most important thing,” she told reporters.
“We know now that there are many cases of Covid that are not being counted or reported.”
About 95% of guests on Princess Cruises vessels must be vaccinated, with the remaining 5% of places allocated to those with medical exemptions.
Passengers with the virus are required to isolate for five days and their close contacts must have a test each day before leaving their cabin.
Closing the Gap reports on ‘mixed progress’
Josh Butler
My colleague Josh Butler has filed this take on the latest Closing the Gap report delivered this morning by Indigenous affairs minister, Linda Burney.
Indigenous social outcomes are “a story of mixed progress”, Burney said in the report, with just four of the 18 socio-economic targets being on track, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, calling some of the gaps “a chasm”.
“We can and we must do better on the four Priority Reforms and all 18 socio-economic targets,” Burney said in the report.
“I understand that many First Nations communities are frustrated by a lack of progress.”
The latest data, released on Wednesday, found that the target of closing the gap in Indigenous life expectancy by 2031 is not on track; while targets around children commencing school, adults in prison, children in out-of-home care and people taking their own lives were worsening.
Targets around babies born with a healthy birthweight, children enrolled in preschool and young people in detention are on track, as well as the amount of land subject to Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests. However, all others were not.
The report noted that some assessments “should be used with caution as it is based on a limited number of data points”.
“For the majority of socio-economic targets there is still little new data available to reliably track trends, although important work has been undertaken to improve the data,” it said.
In a statement in the report, Burney said there had been progress in recent years in life outcomes and school attendance, “but also persistent and disappointing results in a number of other areas such as out-of-home care rates and adult imprisonment”.
In his own statement, Albanese said “for some of the targets, what we so gently call a gap has remained a chasm”.
Burney noted the government had invested $1.2bn over six years in its recent federal budget, for Indigenous health and social projects. She said closing the gap was a “top priority” and her government had “unequivocal” support for the project.
“The numbers in the annual report tell an important story – a story of mixed progress,” she said in a statement.
“The Closing the Gap architecture can only work when all parties are invested and there is a coordinated effort from all jurisdictions in partnership with First Nations peoples.
“We have to work more closely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to make real and much needed progress.”
Government to cap gas prices, ABC claims
The ABC claims a scoop that Anthony Albanese will cap wholesale gas prices at about $12 a gigajoule as pressure mounts on the government to intervene in the market.
ABC also reports that the government will demand a guaranteed domestic gas supply from producers, and enforce a mandatory code of conduct as part of a market intervention first flagged five weeks ago.
Subsidies are also under consideration but are likely to be sector-specific to avoid worsening inflation, ABC says.
“We do have to consider everything … because it is so complex,” the resources minister, Madeleine King, told the ABC.
“And to be fair, some things that at one stage we might have thought not possible, maybe we need to rethink these.”
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to the politics blog. Amy Remeikis will be here shortly to take you through another big day in Canberra, but before that here are some of the stories making news overnight.
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A Guardian Australia investigation reveals that the government is planning a crackdown on vaping amid alarm about the number of young people becoming addicted to nicotine through the habit. Experts have warned that many children did not know they were consuming nicotine through vaping until it was too late amid rising evidence of an explosion in addiction among children and adolescents. The federal health minister, Mark Butler, says vaping doubled between 2016 and 2019 and will today announce a raft of measures to counter the growing habit.
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New South Wales residents wrongly penalised for Covid breaches say it is “crazy” that it took a lengthy and costly court case to force the state government to withdraw 33,000 invalid fines for offences it now concedes were too vague. The case initially involved three wrongly fined residents, including Rohan Pank, who was fined in August 2021 for sitting in a park 1km from his home while taking a short break from exercising. He challenged the fine and has now succeeded in making the government change tack.
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With Scott Morrison facing that censure today, Labor released the wording of the motion last night. It notes that Morrison was appointed to five ministries without informing “the cabinet, the relevant departments, the House of Representatives or the Australian public”. “Therefore [the house] censures the member for Cook for failing to disclose the appointments to the House of Representatives, the Australian people and the cabinet, which undermined responsible government and eroded public trust in Australia’s democracy,” the motion states. Read our full story here.
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And the latest Closing the Gap report has been delivered by the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, who said “we can and we must do better”, with just four of the 18 targets on track while four had worsened. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in a statement said that for some targets, “what we so gently call a gap has remained a chasm”.
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