With the cost of living crisis still front of mind for everyday Australians, politicians spent the week in Canberra playing out a messy game of finger pointing over the Higgins rape allegation scandal.
And as the politicking escalated, Liberal leader Peter Dutton was forced to dump Victorian Senator David Van from his party room as multiple allegations of harassment and sexual assault surfaced.
It was the kind of combative Parliament Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed never to preside over, as the government’s signature housing policy remained stuck in the Senate.
Catch up on all the week’s big political news below.
Government backs in Finance Minister over integrity claims
Finance Minister, Senator Katy Gallagher, came under increasing pressure this week after claims from the Coalition that she had misled Parliament about her role in prosecuting the Brittany Higgins rape allegations in 2021.
As opposition MPs and Senators demanded details from the government over whether they engaged in a deliberate campaign to weaponise the allegations, the PM and his ministers went to ground, repeatedly backing in the embattled minister.
But by the end of the week it was the opposition in damage control mode, when Peter Dutton announced just before Question Time on Thursday he had dumped Senator Van from the party after numerous allegations against him surfaced – beginning with independent Senator Lidia Thorpe’s claims in the Senate on Wednesday.
The opposition leader has today called for the Senator to resign from Parliament.
It was a messy and undignified week of politics, at a time when our nation’s leaders should be focused on steering the economy through increasing headwinds, and many Australians are grappling with dual housing and cost of living crises.
Government’s offer to Greens over housing bill rejected
Meanwhile, the Greens ramped up their campaign against the government’s Housing Australia Future Fund – which remained stuck in the Senate this week over their refusal to support the bill.
The government had offered to guarantee a minimum $500m investment in social and affordable housing a year under the HAFF, but the minor party dug in over it’s demands to implement a national rent freeze and increase affordable housing spending to nearly $3 billion.
It leaves the government with only one week to cut a deal with the Greens next week, before Parliament rises for a long winter break.
Health minister slams former government’s hospital ‘slush fund’
The government used Parliament this week to highlight the damning findings of an Auditor-General’s report into the Morrison Government’s Community Health and Hospitals Program.
The fund, announced in the months before the 2019 election, was found to have been characterised by haphazard assessment and implementation guidelines, with claims the department was kept in the dark over project approvals and announcements by the government.
Minister Butler used the report to slam the former government over its maladministration of the program, claiming the $2 billion earmarked for the fund (only half of which was expended) could have instead been invested in a declining Medicare system.
Russian embassy vetoed
The Parliament rushed through legislation yesterday morning to prevent the Russian government establishing a new embassy on an existing site they held the lease for just metres from Parliament House.
It was an extraordinary move, taken with bipartisan support, to alleviate national security concerns held by Australia’s security agencies over Russia’s consular presence on the site.
Queensland’s cash splash funded by coal royalties
On Tuesday afternoon, Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick handed down the Palaszczuk Government’s budget, and with it, a record surplus of $12.3 billion.
The revenue windfall is thanks to the government’s decision to hike coal royalties amid surging coal prices, and gave the Treasurer cash to splash on electorate-friendly policies such as free kindergarten and electricity bill rebates.
Queensland’s big mining companies have begun rolling out an expensive campaign against the tax hike, and the government used his budget speech to wedge the LNP opposition over it’s position on coal royalties as the state heads toward an election next year.