September 20, 2024

Australia politics live: parliament censures Morrison over secret ministries as Bridget Archer, Greens and crossbenchers back Labor

Bridget Archer #BridgetArcher

We have made it to Wednesday. Which is also Scott Morrison censure debate day AKA the Coalition see nothing to censure day.

Related: ‘Eroded public trust’: text of Scott Morrison censure motion revealed as colleagues back former PM

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.

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