Health News at Your Fingertips

A few more bits and bobs from party room.

There was a discussion of the government’s Regional Telecommunications Review report which was tabled in parliament on Monday, with several MPs speaking in support. There was also some discussion about live exports and cost of living.

One MP said the government needed to exercise spending restraint, urging an end to the low and middle income tax offset which was always intended to be temporary.

Terry Young, the Liberal MP for the seat of Longman, addressed the split over religious discrimination last week, complaining that he had supported net zero because “they accepted that it was for the greater good”, but spoke “disappointingly” of the MPs who had not supported the bill. He also read out an email from a local pastor expressing anger at the government over the failure to legislate religious discrimination.

Another spoke on marginal seat campaigns, saying “they were not rocket science, but were hard work” and praised the prime minister and federal director Andrew Hirst for their campaign strategy at the last election.

Greg Hunt, who is retiring at the next election, also spoke about his experience in parliament, saying the Coalition had been written off in 2001, 2004 and 2019, but had prevailed because of the leadership of John Howard and Scott Morrison. “We were told we were going to lose, but we didn’t.”

He said that if Morrison “pulls this off” and wins the next election, he will be “just above” Howard in his estimation.

Some more on inflation issues. The RBA this morning released the minutes of its first board meeting in 2022. Nothing jumps out as startling.

However, CBA, Australia’s biggest lender, has seen enough. It shifted its prediction of when the central bank will lift the official cash rate to June, earlier the August timing it had forecast.

Financial markets are already pricing in a June move too, with the rate to lift to 0.25% from its record low 0.1% rate.

Gareth Aird, the CBA’s top economist, predicts three further rate rises in 2022 to take it to 1% by the end of 2022.

While the rate rise, if the CBA is right, won’t come before the federal elections, the expectation may be firmly in the minds of rate-wary voters. Aird said:

We expect the RBA to move to an explicit hiking bias at the May 2022 board meeting.

The Labor caucus met this morning – including a lengthy debrief about how the religious discrimination debate went and discussion of some of the wedge tactics the government is using on national security and immigration.

Leader Anthony Albanese said:

Last week was our party at its best – we made a collective decision and backed it in. There is often a debate about Labor having different constituencies and attitudes between them. We can represent people of faith and still represent that every child should be free from discrimination.

If we win, we will act on discrimination on the basis of faith, including an anti-vilification provision, which is stronger than what the government put forward, and we’ll also protect children.

Albanese said he’d never seen the government vote against its own legislation before (after it lost the vote on LGBTQ+ student amendments) and also chipped the Greens for pushing for bigger amendments that would not have guaranteed the result.

Albanese said “every government scare campaign has blown up in their face”, including Josh Frydenberg’s attacks on a speech he gave in 1991 on inheritance tax, which he compared to “Jason Falinski’s comments in the paper today”.

On national security, Albanese noted Asio boss Mike Burgess had backed his account of briefings related to alleged foreign interference.

Albanese said Labor was “competitive” in the election and “confident the government does not deserve a second decade in office”.

One MP noted that Labor’s anti-vilification amendment was being described in the Muslim community as the “Christchurch amendment” and there is an important national security dimension in ensuring people aren’t vilified on the basis of religion.

The NSW Nurse and Midwives Association are striking today, with a list of issues as outlined by my colleagues Michael McGowan and Tamsin Rose here.

Interesting to hear a sympathetic Ben Fordham on Sydney’s 2GB this morning (apparently his mother-in-law was a nurse).

Fordham did highlight that nurses got a 2.5% pay rise last year but, unless I missed it, made no mention that CPI is running at 3.5% (or 2.6% if you take the RBA’s preferred measure for underlying inflation).

Either way, nurses are – like many of us – unlikely to see much in the way of increased pay in real terms, given the jump in inflation.

Meanwhile, executives at one prominent Sydney hospital are apparently unhappy with the badges being worn by nurses.

A source tells us executives at the Royal Prince Alfred hospital have been overheard criticising nurses for these badges and stickers in front of patients.

“Remove it. It is offensive because the sticker has the phrase ‘life and death’ on it. It’s very misleading,” is what one nurse was told, apparently.

The nurse said the executives were “basically giving orders to shut [the protest] down instead of creating a solution”.

We can expect more tensions between executives and staff, it seems.

Victoria’s ombudsman, Deborah Glass, will consider an official referral from state parliament for a new investigation into Labor’s “red shirts” scheme.

Last week, Labor MP Kaushaliya Vaghela crossed the floor of the upper house to support a motion by her factional ally, former Victorian government minister Adem Somyurek, for a new probe.

She is expected to be expelled from Labor for breaking party rules.

In 2018, Glass found 21 Labor MPs had misused almost $400,000 worth of taxpayer funds to pay for campaign work, in what is now referred to as “red shirts”.

Labor repaid the money and all MPs involved were cleared of any criminal activity.

The latest referral to Glass asks her to examine the alleged role of the premier, Daniel Andrews, in the scheme, as well as matters related to another investigation being conducted in conjunction with the state’s anti-corruption watchdog into branch stacking by Somyurek and his allies.

“I will consider the extent to which the matters in the referral have already been investigated or are currently being investigated,” Glass said in a statement on Tuesday. She continued:

The public needs to have confidence that public resources are not being misused for political ends, and, as always, any investigation I lead will be independent and based on evidence.

I have discretion to investigate as I see fit, and I will refer matters and share information as appropriate and in accordance with the Ombudsman Act.

Glass said she would report back to parliament in due course.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg also spoke to the joint party room, saying it was important for MPs to let their constituencies know that Labor had supported a number of taxes.

“There isn’t a tax that [opposition leader Anthony] Albanese hasn’t supported,” Frydenberg said.

He also urged MPs to “keep going” with their campaign on Albanese’s support for a wealth tax, suggesting the leader of the opposition had been “frothing at the mouth” over their attack:

We have got to keep going. These are his words, not just to the Labor party conference, but he was shadow minister when he was talking about wealth taxes as being a priority for Australia.

The treasurer’s urging suggests we can expect to see some more of the dirty misinformation campaigning that we saw at the last election, when an unfounded campaign against death taxes gained traction, particularly on Facebook.

Prime minister Scott Morrison also spoke a bit about Jenny Morrison’s appearance on 60 Minutes, thanking colleagues for messages of support she had received.

The PM said that it was “a brave thing for Jenny to do”:

It’s not something that she does naturally or that she likes to do – it’s not in her nature. But she was magnificent, you would expect me to say that, but she was – she was truly amazing.

The prime minister has told a meeting of Coalition MPs that they need to focus ahead of the election to be successful.

Dismissing the division of last week that saw five Liberal MPs cross the floor, Scott Morrison said he knew the path to victory was in exposing the “starkness” of the choice between the Coalition and Labor. He said:

To win this election will require the most discipline, focus and professionalism from each of us in all of our roles.

Do that, we win, it’s that simple.

Morrison said there was “no risk-free change” and urged MPs to work hard in their electorates on the issues that mattered to them:

We have a job to do – I’m going to do mine, I need you to do yours. I need you to focus on your seats and what’s happening in your seats. I need you to prosecute every single inch of our agenda in those seats into the channels that that you know.

Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also spoke, using a swimming analogy to stress the need to push through the “pain barrier”. He said in a 1500m race, the last three-quarters of the final lap were all that mattered:

There’s only one part of the race that it’s really important that you’re in front, and that is the finish line.

Joyce warned MPs that some MPs might lose a seat by as few as 60 votes, and said they should go the extra mile by visiting the local bowls club or church and “micro” groups.