Today’s Question Time was dominated by Tony Abbott’s announcement yesterday introducing a policy (of sorts) to introduce a maternity leave scheme to be funded by a 1.7% tax on businesses earning over $5 million a year.

It’s one of those policies which that part of me which used to be a callow unthinking young lefty who thought all big business was evil would have rather liked. Unfortunately the part of me that grew up, went to uni, did an economics degree, learned that the government doesn’t grow a big money tree out the back of Parliament House, and who likes well thought out public policy thinks the Abbott maternity leave scheme is complete bollocks. Read more »

Ask any teacher, and they’ll tell you that teaching a class after lunch on Friday’s is never a period of great productivity, so it is with Question Time on Thursdays before a week off. Read more »

In last night’s 7:30 Report Chris Uhlmann made mention of “a second MinterEllison” risk report provided to the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, that was apparently not released to the public last Friday. I thought ok, here we go, they’ve found a smoking gun. I waited to see this morning what damage would befall Peter Garrett.

In the morning AM, reported on this second MinterEllison report (actually a risk register):

It raises as potential risks poor quality insulation, possible house and fire damage, an insufficient number of auditors and the capabilities of installers.
It quantifies the cost of the risks in the hundreds of millions of dollars but also spells out the steps being taken to manage those risks. Read more »

Today was the day we were promised the Coalition would take it up to Peter Garrett. After the pathetic effort on Tuesday (one question), and the bizarre, abbreviated effort yesterday (three questions), today was the day they were going to pummel him with question after question. The only problem was that not only did we all know it, Garrett knew it as well, and so 20 minutes before Question Time he gave a ministerial statement in parliament where he outlined all the advice and correspondence on the issue of roof insulation.

It was a smart tactic. He was able to make it at the time he wanted to (not in the morning, which is when the opposition wanted him to). He finished speaking 5 minutes before Question Time, which didn’t really give the opposition much time to go through everything he had said, and also too little time to quickly re-write some of their questions – this meant it was likely that most of what they would ask would have been covered already in his statement. Read more »

Today in the House of Representatives two speeches were given by the current and former leaders of the opposition. One was forceful, well reasoned, cutting, intelligent and persuasive. The other was given by Tony Abbott. Read more »