Dutton condemns PM for including calls for ceasefire and de-escalation in motion
Peter Dutton then condemns the prime minister and Labor for putting forward a motion which also recognised Palestinians and blames him for the Coalition not coming to a bipartisan agreement on the motion.
This is actually quite extraordinary, even for the Australian parliament.
Dutton:
On this day, the eighth of October, the day after the first sitting, day after the seven October anniversary that this prime minister wasn’t able to lead a moment of bipartisanship in this parliament, which, in my memory, is without precedent, prime minister, there has always been a bipartisan position between your predecessors.
You’re citing Biden, France, Hawke, Keating, you don’t mention them, you don’t mention Rudd, you don’t mention Gillard. There has been a position of bipartisanship on these issues, and your predecessors would have had the decency to respect the Jewish community in a way that you have not done today.
And for that prime minister, you should stand condemned.
Key events
The government questions are all on the housing legislation which is stalled in the senate.
Anthony Albanese takes one on the help to buy legislation so he can say:
It’s a pretty simple scheme and it’s one that’s worked around the world. It’s worked in the UK, it’s worked in New Zealand, it’s worked in WA for decades. That’s why the clue is in the title, help to buy.
The Liberals, of course, never want to help and the Greens don’t want people to buy.
They’re against homeownership, so perhaps it’s understanding of why this has occurred.
But Australia’s housing crisis, of course, didn’t happen overnight.
The former government didn’t bother to have a housing minister the entire time that they were in office.
They just didn’t bother and their solution today is much the same. Stand in the way, block help, playing politics instead of progress.
Of course, the Greens political party have blocked more homes than they’ve ever built.
Independent MP Zoe Daniel stands and gestures to the question time public gallery while asking Anthony Albanese:
In the gallery today we have several people who have tried to meet with you and your ministers to tell you how gambling addiction has ruined their lives. They say gambling ads constantly triggered them to gamble and they’re asking you to stop all ads a to stop the normalisation. Why have you engaged with those who profit from gambling and not to these people and what and do you have to say to them as they hit here today?
Albanese:
I was with the member for Goldstein last night, so she’s fully aware of where I’ve been and fully aware of where I’ve been with today. So I reject the assertion that I won’t meet with people. The last person I met with on this issue was Tim Costello, 10 days ago.
Clare O’Neil uses the term ‘Noalition’ in a dixer answer and is made to withdraw it after objections.
It has become Labor’s term for the coalition, but it has also now been deployed to include the Greens and the coalition whenever they team up to frustrate government legislation.
Anthony Albanese continues:
In the lead-up to the local government elections in the inner west council in my local area, I was extraordinarily critical of the actions of Greens councillors and their supporters in being a part of a campaign including a counterproductive campaign outside my electorate office but also in council meetings, where a council meeting had to be abandoned because of the disruption that had occurred.
The inner west council has a lot of things to do. It looks after rubbish, it looks after roads, it looks after housing, it looks after the local community.
It is not a player in the conflict in the Middle East.
One of the things that I’ve been critical of is the attempt to argue that Australia can have not a major role compared with a country like the United States in what occurs in the Middle East, but we can make a decision that we won’t bring conflict here.
We do have a role in that. And I’d say that people, if they are holding office in Federal or State Parliament or in local government need to, whatever political party they represent, bear in mind the of Mike Burgess, the director of ASIO, about the responsibility we have to take the heat down, the temperature down, in this country rather than to lift it up.
Whichever political party is engaged in that, I would urge for everyone in this chamber and indeed everyone who holds a role in public life to bear that warning and caution of Director-General Burgess in mind.
Anthony Albanese takes a beat before answering and then says:
I reiterate this point. That there have been moments of anti-Semitism and racism in some of the responses that we have seen in the political debate taking place here in Australia. I have been critical of the stance that the Greens political party have made, but I make this point as well.
Many people, in the Greens political party like in other parties, the Liberal Party, Labor Party as well as Independents, are people of good will who join political parties because they think that is the vehicle for them to make the change that they want.
… I would always be a member of a political party that’s a party of government rather than a party of protest. But I wouldn’t want to suggest that every member in my electorate or in other places as well has engaged in that.
He’s speaking in the lower, flat octave he uses when he is carefully choosing his words.
Dutton asks PM whether he views Greens’ stance as racist and antisemitic
Peter Dutton then asks:
Does the prime minister agree the Australian Greens have been racist and antisemitic in the stance they’ve adopted since October 2023?
Milton Dick says that is asking for an opinion and asks for the question to be re-worded.
Dutton does so:
I refer to previous statements of the prime minister where he’s been critical of the Greens political party and their stance which has been racist and antisemitic that has been adopted since 7 October 2023. Does the prime minister still have that view?
That question is allowed under the standing orders, but as a broad question, Dick says it can have a broad answer.
PM says 1,215 Australians, permanent residents and family have departed Lebanon
The first dixer is on the evacuation flights out of Lebanon.
Anthony Albanese says:
I can report that as of 8 October, a total of 1,215 Australians, permanent residents and their immediate family members have been assisted by the government to depart Lebanon. This includes six Australian government flights, two on Saturday, 5 October, carrying 407 passengers, two on the 6th, carrying 448 passengers and two on the 7th carrying 311 passengers.
There are 3,892 Australians and their immediate family members registered to depart. Vulnerable and displaced people are being prioritised and we know that hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have been displaced. The scenes of families reuniting at Australian airports has been so moving and I’m pleased that the member for Watson, the minister for home affairs, was able to greet many of the Australian citizens when they arrived here in Sydney last night.
Albanese said there are two more flights which are scheduled to leave today. He reiterates that if people can leave Lebanon, they should.
Peter Dutton agrees with Albanese’s statement and says:
Please listen to family and loved ones back here, where they are urging you to return back to Australia. It is a precarious time in the Middle East, as we well know, and the Australian government has done a good job in providing clear advice to Australian citizens who are in the region, to take up the offer of the flights, and people should do that without hesitation and, again, I endorse and support the words of the prime minister in providing that encouragement to Australian citizens.
Question time begins
Milton Dick opens question time with a welcome to the former UK prime minister Liz Truss, who is a guest of Peter Dutton.
We are then into the questions.
Dan Tehan asks:
Was the minister the decision maker in issuing a visa to Khaled Beydoun or was the minister or his office made aware that he had applied for a visa?
Beydoun’s bio on Google reads:
Khaled A. Beydoun is Professor of Law at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. His work examines constitutional law, critical race theory, Islamophobia, and their intersections. He is the author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.
The professor is in the news after comments he made at a rally yesterday in western Sydney. (The Guardian didn’t have a reporter at the rally so cannot report with confidence what the comments were, or their context, which is always important.)
Tony Burke has said he is looking at the comments to see if they breach his visa conditions.
In response to Tehan’s questions, Burke says:
That would have to the to gone to the department. I was not aware of it.
We are now less than 10 minutes out from the first question time of the week, so take what moments you need.
It has been quite the morning.
Daniel Hurst
Jews Against the Occupation founder: ‘We say “not in our name”’
Vivienne Porzsolt, a founding member of Jews Against the Occupation ’48, told the same press conference:
I’ve been an activist for peace in Palestine for over 30 years. I am a Jew. My parents got out of Czechoslovakia the day the Nazis marched into Prague. And so the whole experience of that Holocaust is burnt into my bones as part of my experience. And I draw from that experience, from the Jewish traditions of humanism and justice …
I and growing numbers of Jews are saying, ‘not in our name’. The State of Israel is committing grave atrocities in our name. And I say to my fellow Jews who continue to see Israel as a guarantee of safety that we need to be aware and remember the words of Hillel, who said, ‘If I am not for myself, who shall be for me?’ And that’s the something we remember quite well, but we don’t remember the other bit: ‘If I’m for myself alone, who am I?’ So I say the state of Israel is committing atrocities in our name, and we say ‘not in our name’.
Daniel Hurst
Melbourne surgeon speaks of ‘cruel injustice’ and ‘horrific crimes’ she witnessed against Palestinians while in Gaza
Now that the lower house debate over the government’s 7 October-related motion has wrapped up, let’s bring you a few more testimonies from the earlier press conference in the Mural Hall. The speakers included Palestinian Australians.
Dr Bushra Othman, a surgeon from Melbourne, said she recently returned from a three-week volunteer medical initiative with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association. She told of her time based at al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza:
We travelled to Gaza to provide medical care, but it became clear that our main goal was to bear witness to the cruel injustice, to the oppression and the horrific crimes being committed against the Palestinians there.
Othman spoke of a 21-year-old patient who “who died because of severe malnutrition and devastating injuries she suffered from a bomb while walking home”.
Othman said she also thought of a 17-year-old patient “whose right arm has been auto-amputated by shrapnel, and his mangled right leg is on the brink of being amputated, and Israel won’t allow for him to be medically evacuated”. She said:
The people of Gaza are not just headlines. They are not just numbers. They are precious lives. I stand before you today to implore immediate action be taken.
The video team have put together some of the speeches from that motion:
7 October motion passes house
The house divided and the motion passed, 85 to 54.
Australia’s first Muslim ministers, Ed Husic and Anne Aly, sat together during the motion debate.
Josh Butler
Ley tells Coalition partyroom Labor is ‘flailing’ and says there is ‘very real chance’ of early election
The Coalition partyroom meeting this morning got a bit of an advance taste of Peter Dutton’s response to that 7 October motion, when the opposition leader told his troops of his claims that the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was trying to “walk both sides of the street”.
The opposition caucus met earlier today, with the usual criticisms of the government: Dutton claimed Albanese and Labor were “out of sync” with the public mood, the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, raised concerns about food, energy and housing costs in the cost-of-living crisis; and the deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, claimed Labor was “flailing”.
Ley spoke again of her belief there was a “very real chance of an early election” and urged colleagues to get out and keep campaigning. She claimed voters “can’t say what Albanese stands for”, according to a readout from a caucus spokesperson.
The Coalition will push for numerous bills on the government agenda to go to a committee process, or wait for ongoing committees to report, before they give their verdict on whether to support or oppose: that includes the new aged care bill, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing changes, and the wage increase for early childhood educators.
The party spokesperson reiterated the Coalition’s strong opposition to the misinformation bill, however, calling the amended version “unacceptable” and confirming they would vote against it.
Sarah Basford Canales
Pro-Palestine demonstrators gather on Parliament House lawns
Supporters of Palestine have been on the lawns of Parliament House this morning, calling for an end to Israel’s military response in Gaza and criticising the Albanese government for not condemning Israel’s actions strongly enough.
It comes a day after a Christian-organised rally commemorated the 1,200 Israelis attacked and killed in the country’s south by Palestinian militant group, Hamas, and the ensuing Israeli military response on 7 October 2023 in front of parliament.
Israel’s response to those attacks has so far killed more than 40,000 in Gaza, according to authorities.
The rally heard from a number of activists and advocates, including school teachers, lawyers and community leaders.
The Greens senator David Shoebridge and independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe also spoke to the crowd of a few hundred.
Thorpe, wearing a black keffiyeh, said First Nations people were survivors of genocide and “that’s why we stand with Palestinians and Lebanon, because we know what genocide looks like”.
“We are the survivors of genocide, and we will stand with you every minute of every day, and we will hold this government to account.”
Greens abstaining from motion as it ‘fails to condemn the war crimes’ of Netanyahu government
The house is dividing on the government’s motion – and while the Coalition is voting no, it looks like the Greens are abstaining.
Adam Bandt told the Guardian:
The Greens can’t support a motion about a year of ongoing slaughter that fails to condemn the war crimes of the extremist Netanyahu government, acknowledge the unfolding genocide in Gaza, or put any pressure on Netanyahu’s government to stop the invasions of Palestine and Lebanon.
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