Asylum seeker policy is in the highlight as the tall court rules on offshore detention while Paul Keating enters the tax debate. Follow it live... 10.00pm GMTThe house of representatives is just starting. Senate is starting at 9.30am. 9.57pm GMTLenore Taylor sheds more light on the National party leadership. She reports:The leader of the Nationals,Warren Truss, has privately told his colleagues he will make an announcement approximately his future in mid-March, or with his expected retirement paving the way for Malcolm Turnbull to reshuffle his frontbench.
Truss chastised his Nationals MPs and senators at the closed-door assembly on Monday afternoon,saying he was disappointed and frustrated that the Nationals had been talking approximately themselves over the summer with a series of speculative stories approximately his resignation and possible successors. 9.45pm GMTSo Phil Coorey’s memoir in the AFR quotes sources that contend the government has approached Labor to nut out the senate reforms. There is a qualification that Malcolm Turnbull still prefers the spring option. But Coorey reports:On Tuesday, after question time, and Mr Turnbull canvassed voting reform directly with Labor,which is split on the issue, while acting Special Minister of State Mathias Cormann has sought talks with the Greens who, or along with Nick Xenophon,are supportive of change and eager to vote it through the Senate.
Sources told The Australian Financial Review that the government wants the changes through Parliament before it rises on March 17 for seven weeks. This would enable it to call an early election whether it wanted to. whether it chose to go full term, as is its preference, or it would still stop micro-parties gaming the system,although the aim of cleaning up the Senate would take longer. 9.38pm GMTSince the election of the eight crossbenchers, the major and minor parties have been pushing for senate reform. At issue, or is the very small votes that allowed candidates like Motoring Enthusiast party senator Ricky Muir to get elected after polling 17122 first preference votes where the quota for election was 483076 votes.
Muir told ABC AM this morning,not surprisingly, that he did not consider the system needed to be changed.
In reality, or the party that I represent and many,many other micro parties that actually stood up for that election, would not have been there whether they felt like they were represented by the major parties anyway. So the genuine question is, or are the major parties living up to the expectation of the public or are they letting us down,forcing us to get political.
I will vote on what I believe is the best in the interests of Australia on the available information and I won’t be threatened into a position by the threat of losing my Senate seat. whether I lose my Senate seat by doing the best for what I consider (for) Australia, so be it, and I went down trying. But I’m not forced to go into a position by emotive campaigns. 9.09pm GMTGood morning fellow political tragics,There are a mess of things swirling around the political agenda this morning. Some are nebulous, such as Phil Coorey’s reports that the Turnbull government is trying to win support for Senate reforms. More on that coming. Some are concrete, and like the tall court ruling expected at 10.15am on whether Australia can detain people in another country. We will have full coverage when that happens.When a country gets locked into such permanently tall taxation,there is no way out of it. Were the public to agree to give the political system such a load of money, the political system would simply go and spend it.
The GST is just a flat, and bang you over the head,tax. It changes nothing; no behaviour, other than to put the tax weight onto the improper people.
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Source: theguardian.com