Parliament checks the overwhelming advantage of incumbency. “This was a disgraceful, unprecedented act that should never have happened, and those opposite stand condemned doing it.”Īlbanese would have considered Wednesday a solid start.īut this prime minister has been around long enough to know that what goes around eventually comes around. “We should not become immune to these things in our democracy,” she thundered at Andrews, Dutton, and the artists formerly known as the Morrison government. But she did what she’d been cast to do: close the first question time of the new parliament with a forceful j’accuse. O’Neil, who lacks the chamber experience of some of her peers, could have lost concentration in the melee. Smith would have required O’Neil to withdraw. Fletcher doubled down on his performative high dudgeon. The standing orders deem such reflections disorderly. O’Neil accused Karen Andrews of an “act of cowardice” on election day when Australian Border Force was pressured to draft and issue a statement about an asylum seeker boat interception before the operation had even finished.Ĭowardice was a clear reflection on Andrews.
The key moment of the first question time came when the home affairs minister, Claire O’Neil, should have been shut down by the Speaker, but wasn’t. Perhaps Smith’s audacity as an independent chamber arbiter grew in increments over time. The new Speaker, Milton Dick, made it clear he was no Tony Smith – although perhaps even Tony Smith wasn’t Tony Smith on day one. The new elevations clutched their question time brief folders like flotation devices. New ministers experimented with their scripts, finding their métier. Early forays signalled he was across the detail even armed with pre-packaged zingers. Perhaps the government held its collective breath until Albanese demonstrated he’d done his homework, and therefore wasn’t going to wing it. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morningĪs the various mini-reckonings and micro-dramas played out, the chamber was quieter than usual. “I wish him well,” the prime minister said, pausing for a beat, “and I hope he stays there for a very long time”. Albanese rewarded this predictability by smiling benignly across the dispatch box and schooling the Liberal leader about the trying vocation of opposition. Perhaps a gentle hat tip to the remaining members of the HR Nicholls Society.Īustralia’s alternative prime minister dived under the inconvenient tsunami of the Coalition’s record by sharing dark prophesies of a construction union that would now run rampant across the land because the new Labor regime had gutted the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Safer for Dutton was some base-pleasing obscurantism.
FIRST HEARTS OF IRON GAME UPDATE
He vaulted cleanly over Taylor’s proposition by unfurling the Greatest Hits of Angus, including the extraordinary decision of the former energy minister to delay an important electricity pricing update until after the election, which left Australian voters in the dark about looming increases in their power bills. The prime minister felt zero pressure to answer. Would Albanese stand by the claims in his pre-election modelling that power prices would come down as a consequence of the government’s climate and energy policies? The new shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, however, is a confident soul and he did chance his arm with energy prices. Peter Dutton, it seemed, did not want to chance his arm on Albanese’s responsibility for the soaring price of lettuce, given the tables would not only be turned, they’d be loaded into a slingshot and propelled across the chamber. Given the Coalition was in power for the nine years leading up to 21 May, Wednesday’s inflation was, more than plausibly, the Coalition’s inflation.
On the day Australia recorded the fastest annual rate of growth in consumer prices for more than 20 years, one might have expected the opposition to test the prime minister’s mettle on inflation, that being the water cooler issue. The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, hovered above the chamber in the visitors gallery like visiting minor royalty. It was standing room only for the hour of glower in the House of Representatives at 2pm.Īnthony Albanese’s partner, Jodie, and son, Nathan, sat ringside. Fletcher’s performative effrontery about the standing orders was the warmup to the first question time of the 47th parliament.