Australia politics live: Peter Dutton says Liberals will soon make decision on voice to parliament | Australian politics

Peter Dutton finishes with:

It means they will pay more for their gas bills. It will mean that they pay for more their electricity bills. And as the prime minister pointed out yesterday or at least acknowledged yesterday, 800,000 households are going to come off a fixed interest rate and go onto Labor’s higher variable interest rate over the course of this calendar year.

Now, in isolation that’s bad enough for [families] but the prime minister also promised that he would reduce their power bills, he mentioned it 97 times and never once since he was elected. Since he was elected, since people relied on him that they were going to take his word that he would reduce those prices, all that’s happened under Labor is your power prices have gone up and up and up and that’s the difficulty.

We’ll continue to put pressure on the Government because we are the party of families. We are the party of small business. And we are the parties of the Australian working class.

We are the parties – I wanted to say party – we are the parties, we are the Coalition that will inevitably have to clean up Labor’s mess when we come back into government and we will provide every support to family, to small businesses and most importantly to working families across the country.

We’ll have the policies to do so and Labor at the moment in every decision they make is putting extra pressure on families. So colleagues, thank you all very much and we’ll head to the next part of our agenda. Thank you very much.

Peter Dutton addresses Liberal party room

Anthony Albanese finishes with:

Can I thank everyone for the hard work that they did over the Christmas-New Year break? I, myself, am planning to have some time off in April. But we continued to work to create the better future that we promised. We are seven months in now, or a bit more than that, into … Eight months in to our term. There’s a lot more to do.

This is a government with a sense of purpose. And last week when I was in the west, in Tangney and Pearce and Cowan and Perth and other seats where I’ve been – Bendigo, in Braddon, right around the country – what I get back is that people do appreciate the fact that this government is governing based upon what we said we would do.

There are big challenges ahead this year. We have a big agenda, but I’m very confident that the ministry as well as the entire caucus, the people in this room. We will be able to deliver that better future that we committed to last May.

Anthony Albanese continues:

Last week I met for the third time with the referendum working group on the constitutional change that we will put to the Australian people in the second half of this year.

A constitutional change that is about two things. It’s about recognition, recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our constitution and it’s about consultation, that they should be consulted on matters that affect them. That’s what it’s about.

That’s what it’s about and all of the misinformation that we’re seeing out there won’t distract from that great task, and yesterday morning at the ecumenical service we received a reminder – with that magnificent sermon – of why this was something that was so important for Australia, as well as being important for showing respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. So we will continue to engage in a respectful way and encourage people to come on board with this journey to reconciliation that is so critical going forward.

We continue to engage as well with business, with unions, with civil society, because we want to be a consultative government that continues to engage, and we engage where people are as well.

Albanese delivers opening speech to Labor party room

AEC data shows additional 21,000 Indigenous Australians have enrolled to vote

The AEC has reported an increase in Indigenous people enrolling to vote. From its statement:

Updated AEC estimates show that an additional 21,000 Indigenous Australians have enrolled to vote between the end of June 2022 to the end December 2022, bringing the national estimated Indigenous enrolment rate up to 84.5% (up 2.8%).

The electoral commissioner, Tom Rogers, said that the rapid rise easily represents the largest increase since estimates were first calculated in this manner by the AEC in 2017.

It’s brilliant – more people are enrolled and ready to vote, which is an unvarnished good news story for electoral participation in Australia and closing the enrolment gap, but we know more needs to be done.

We continue to work really hard in getting as many people to enrol as possible, with a particular focus on young Australians and Indigenous Australians who aren’t enrolled at as high a rate as others.

I constantly hear from international counterparts who marvel at Australia’s 97% overall enrolment rate, but I want enrolment to be that high, and higher, for all Australians.

Shorten: ‘mortgage holders aren’t the people driving inflation’

Over on Sky News this morning, Bill Shorten was asked whether the RBA’s interest rate increases were “a sign your policies aren’t working”.

No, it’s a sign that the Reserve Bank is trying to do what it thinks should be [done to] dealt with inflation.

The reality is if the Reserve Bank, which is independent, makes this decision, that is going to be incredibly painful for millions of Australians who are paying their mortgages off.

I understand the Reserve Bank’s motivated to try and reduce inflation, but … I see a lot of commentators sort of [calling] for more and more increases to the cash rate. I think some of the people who are calling for more and more increases to the cash rate, some of the commentators really don’t understand the harm they’re causing. The mortgage holders aren’t the people driving inflation.

And anyway, I’m just I can see life’s getting tougher. In terms of our economic policies, we can’t affect, we can’t drive, we can’t make the decision on the mortgage rate, but we can attempt to relieve pressure on cost of living.

That’s why wages, the wages reform is what we’ve been in the business of, and that’s seeing modest increases in wages; childcare support, so easing the cost of childcare; some energy relief to try and dampen some of the inflationary pressures there. Labor is doing what it can.

Of course, some of the problems that we’re trying to tackle didn’t start yesterday. They’ve been ten years in the making.

In case you missed it in the lead up to Christmas, Australia is working toward making it easier for New Zealanders to become permanent residents of Australia.

Paul Karp had this story in late December:

Daniel Hurst has reminded me of this story – New Zealand is happier than it was:

One of the lovely things of seeing a more diverse parliament (still a lot of work to do in terms of representation, but it is more diverse than it was – at least on one side of the chamber) is seeing a little more human with the politician.

Kurdish refugee Behrouz Boochani visiting Canberra today

It is a busy day in the parliament – Behrouz Boochani is also visiting.

He is calling for “the urgent evacuation of refugees held offshore to Australia”.

Greens senator Nick McKim introduced a bill into the Senate yesterday which if passed, would facilitate the evacuation of refugees on Manus and Nauru to Australia, for settlement in third countries.

The government has not indicated if it will support it as yet.

Dutton says Liberals will soon make a decision on voice to parliament

Over on ABC radio AM with Sabra Lane, opposition leader Peter Dutton said the Liberal party would make its decision on an enshrined voice to parliament “in the not-too-distant future”. (The Nationals have already said no.)

He still wants more detail.

But Lane wants to know why Dutton was happy to support the voice while in the Morrison cabinet, but not now.

Dutton talks about bipartisan positions and spending on Indigenous communities.

Lane then asks again if it the Liberal party does end up supporting the voice, is Dutton worried the approach he has taken so far would undermine it.

Again, Dutton talks about detail.

Asked about whether the issue is there are groups in the Liberal party who will never agree on this, and that Dutton can’t unite those without putting his leadership into question, Dutton again talks about the detail.

Well, I don’t think people should speculate about what the party might or might not do until we make an announcement. We have the discussions. I’ve spoken with many of my colleagues over Christmas [about this] and other issues – cost of living is a huge issue across the community at the moment and growing as a particular problem for for small businesses and families, including in Indigenous communities, of course. So there are many issues to grapple with.

Would the cabinet Dutton was a part of have released the sort of detail that Dutton is demanding?

He won’t go into ERC discussions.

NZ prime minister visiting Canberra

Aotearoa New Zealand prime minister Chris Hipkins is in Canberra today – for a few short hours.

Hipkins is in and out in for this first visit since becoming prime minister. He will meet with Anthony Albanese, and there will be a joint press conference just after. Time will tell whether it will be as awkward as some of the Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern press conferences, where Ardern pushed back very hard against Australia’s policy of sending Aotearoa New Zealand-born people home if they had spent time in prison, even if they had spent their entire lives in Australia.

It’s still a policy which makes New Zealanders very, very angry.

Treasurer speaks ahead of RBA’s interest rate decision

Jim Chalmers is once again getting the “what is the government going to do about the rising cost of living” given today’s interest rate decision.

The answer is the same:

We know that Australians are doing it tough right now. Inflation will be higher than we’d like for longer than we’d like. We know that there are pressures coming at us from around the world and felt around the kitchen table. We got a lot coming at us but we got a lot going for us as well. We’re optimistic about the future of our country and the future of our economy but we’re realistic about the impact of global conditions and the impact of these rate rises on households, on people, but also on the broader Australian economy.

The earthquake in Turkey and Syria is beyond devastating.

If you want more information, you can follow the live blog here, which is being updated as soon as more information comes to hand.

South Australia to lead nation in voice to parliament, premier says

South Australian premier (and fellow member of the Lithuanian diaspora) Peter Malinauskas said his state had begun working on a voice to parliament model in 2019 and believe that the time is right:

We’re excited about this proposition. I really believe that it presents a moment in time for … and forgive me for my degree of bias here, but a moment in time where, again, South Australians can show the rest of the nation around what thoughtful, progressive, democratic reform can look like.

We were the first place anywhere in the world here in South Australia to give women both the right to vote and run for parliament. And we’re going to be the first place in the nation, all being well, to provide a voice to the parliament for Indigenous Australians and that’s a good thing to do.