Australia politics live: Liberals accuse Labor of trying to dodge scrutiny with move to reduce opposition questions in parliament

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Douglas Smith

Here’s the full motion:

Condemns the attempted bombing on 26 January in Boorloo (Perth) that targeted First Peoples and their supporters;

“Notes that the Western Australia Joint Counter Terrorism Team, consisting of the Western Australia Police Force, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, is investigating the incident as a potential terrorist act;

Acknowledges the serious harm this has caused and expresses its solidarity with all those impacted by this event;

Notes that for many First Nations people, 26 January is a day of mourning and that an attack on this day, at an Invasion Day rally, represents a serious escalation of racial violence against First Peoples;

Notes that an attack against First Nations people is an attack against all Australians;

Condemns all acts of violence and racism against First Peoples, and stands in solidarity with First Peoples against racism and hate directed at them;

Affirms that this Parliament’s recent condemnation of racially motivated hatred unambiguously includes racism directed at First Peoples;

Acknowledges that First Peoples in Australia continue to face entrenched racism, racially-motivated hate and threats of violence, and that any instance of this is unacceptable and must be addressed;

Calls for governments to continue to take urgent action to address racism, discrimination, hate speech and violence against First Peoples;

Parts of the motion were opposed by the Liberal Party and s, around calls for the parliament to officially recognise January 26 as Invasion Day and Day of Mourning, and for the federal government to take urgent action “address racism, discrimination, hate speech and violence against First Peoples”.

‘Get it together’: Barnaby Joyce enters the Coalition chat

Of all the MPs telling the Coalition to get back together, would you expect former s leader turned One Nation member Barnaby Joyce to?

Well, he did so while debating on the government’s motion to change the allocation of question time questions in the House.

To much laughter and some disbelief, he says:

It is probably not the best thing for the Australian people, it’s a little bit of an indictment, and I ask the Coalition, just get it together … and get us back to a normal day.

Liberals accuse Labor of trying to dodge scrutiny with move to reduce opposition questions in parliament

Liberal chief whip, Aaron Violi, stands up next, and says “there is a lot of hubris in the House”.

He also accuses the government of trying to dodge scrutiny and transparency, and says question time needs to be a time for the opposition to be able to hold the government to account.

Violi accuses the Labor caucus of not being able to stand up to its leaders, and points to the lack of action on gambling reform.

It is crucial that the opposition be able to hold this bad government to account, because there is no one within that caucus that will hold the government to account … gambling reform, let’s talk about the Murphy report, the member for Bennelong is prepared to put a few statements out there publicly about the importance of gambling reform …

The member for Macarthur has said that if it went to a conscience vote, the Murphy report and gambling reform would pass this House, that’s the words of the member for Macarthur, do you need better evidence and proof of why you need an opposition with the ability to hold the government to account?

Government will not yet change makeup of committees based on Coalition split, Burke says

Back in the house, Tony Burke says the government won’t yet move to change the makeup of committees based on the Coalition’s split.

Committees have a set number of government, opposition and crossbench members in them. The powerful security and intelligence committee has no crossbenchers in it, so if the Coalition remains split, s senator Susan McDonald would face being booted out of it.

In response, manager of opposition business, Alex Hawke, moves amendments to Burke’s motion, and calls Burke’s words “unedifying” – which gets some boos from Labor.

Hawke says that the s are not part of the crossbench, and pushes for the opposition to have at least eight questions in question time.

It’s purely a government trick to define them [the s] as crossbenchers it’s purely a government decision to say that the s aren’t sitting as their own party room.

Hawke says that the government is trying to reduce transparency, and points to the “friendless” FoI bill that Labor was trying to get through parliament late last year.

Littleproud says s will ‘consider’ Ley’s offer

David Littleproud has confirmed he’s received a written offer from the Liberal party. You can read about that offer here:

The s leader has just released a statement saying that his party will take its time to consider the details of the offer.

The s are united in our endeavours to reset the Coalition, but we won’t be providing updates on any negotiations through the media.

The negotiations are ongoing and we will always be constructive and act in good faith.

Littleproud says it’s important that the party takes the time to “get the settings right”.

‘We now have the cross, the very cross and the apoplectic’: Burke

The bells are ringing!

Parliament is SO back, and over in the Senate this afternoon, Lidia Thorpe will be pushing forward her motion on the alleged attempted bombing in Perth on 26 January at the Invasion Day rally.

Over in the house, Tony Burke is moving a motion to give the crossbench more questions, and take some away from the Liberal party opposition while the Coalition is still split.

He’s having plenty of fun while he does it.

When the member for New England moved to the crossbench, it had not occurred to us that the entire party was going to move to the crossbench with him, and while he’s not their leader they appear to be his followers.

We now have the cross, the very cross and the apoplectic.

He then needles the opposition a bit harder, speaking about possible defections from the opposition to One Nation:

I see members of the crossbench nodding, but you might not want the ones you get. I’d be careful what you wish for. When we talked about the growth of the crossbench last time, you never expected this one was going to happen.

The Liberals aren’t particularly impressed with the commentary. Their benches are looking fairly bare, but we’ll get a proper sense of the changes when the chamber is full for question time.

Victorian opposition supports ADHD diagnosis changes

The Victorian opposition’s health spokesperson, Georgie Crozier, has welcomed the government’s decision to allow GPs to diagnose and prescribe medication for ADHD. She says she’s been calling for the change for some time:

It is an issue that needed addressing, so I’m pleased it is, but the government is falling short of other jurisdictions in relation to what they are doing.

She said the government needed to ensure the first 150 GPs to be trained were located across the state, particularly in the regions “where there is a very significant shortfall of an ability to get in to see psychiatrists”. Crozier says:

We know those waitlists are months and years, and the government needs to do more in addressing those shortfalls right across the state.

Google rolls out age assurance for under-18s across services, including app store

Google has said Australian users identified as being under 18 will have their accounts restricted from this week, after an expansion of the age assurance rollout from the US last year to Australia, Singapore and Brazil this week.

In a blog post on Monday, Google said:

These measures are designed to recognise users who are either over or under 18, so that we can provide age-appropriate experiences for those under 18. This is just one part of our broader commitment to keeping Australians safe online.

Google is already estimating ages of Australian users on YouTube under the social media ban for under 16s based on age of the Google account and other signals, but this will expand the age checking, and for accounts under 18, users will have personalised advertising disabled, and Google Play will not allow minors access to adult apps.

Greens push for government to rescind Herzog invitation

The Greens will move a motion in the Senate calling on the government to rescind its invitation for the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, to visit. The party will move a suspension of standing orders, asking that Herzog’s invitation be revoked.

It is unlikely the motion will be supported by the Labor or Liberal parties. But the Greens say they’re moving the motion in response to concerns raised by members of the public and protest groups regarding social cohesion, and a United Nations commission of inquiry’s conclusion in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

That commission, which does not speak on behalf of the UN, stated Herzog, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then defence minister Yoav Gallant “incited the commission of genocide”.

Herzog and the Israeli government have strongly rejected the report. Israel’s foreign ministry has previously rejected the report, calling it “distorted and false” and claiming it “relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods”.

Herzog was invited to visit in the wake of the Bondi terror shooting which left 15 people dead at a Hanukah festival.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has previously defended his decision to invite Herzog, and said he looks forward to welcoming him to Australia.

Chris Minns urged to abandon further restrictions on protests

Nine organisations have written to the NSW premier Chris Minns urging against further restrictions on protests, saying confining protests to specific areas of the CBD is “untenable”.

Last week Guardian Australia revealed that Minns is understood to be considering changes to the form 1 system and land use policies to curtail protests in the Sydney CBD. Two ideas on the table are designating the Domain a protest site under land use rules, and giving the NSW police discretion to refuse form 1 applications for protests after a certain number of applications.

The letter, sent to Minns on Tuesday and organised by the Australia Democracy Network, rejected the potential plan, arguing it could conflict with Australia’s obligations under international law.

Among the organisations who signed on to the letter were Amnesty , the Human Rights Law Centre, Redfern Legal Centre and the Aboriginal Legal Centre.

The letter said the UN human rights committee has clearly stated that “as a general rule, there can be no blanket ban on all assemblies … in all public places except one specific location within a city”.

Restrictions on protest must … be sufficiently precise, necessary and proportionate to be in line with the freedom of political communication in the constitution. Limiting all protests in specific areas of the city is unlikely to meet this test.

The group also pointed out that part of the obligation of states under international law is “to ensure that protest notification procedures are necessary, proportionate and justifiable, and do not function as a system of authorising protests.” The letter also urged the Minns government to not criminalise the chant “globalise the intifada”.

We recognise the deep hurt and fear across the community in the wake of the horrific antisemitic terror attack at Bondi. While preventing further community harm is a necessary objective for the government, limiting protests is not the answer to meet the challenges of this moment.

Independent senator moves to dump Labor’s controversial FoI bill

The Labor government’s unpopular changes to freedom-of-information laws could be rejected by the Senate today, with the crossbench – and potentially the Liberals – to support discharging the bill from the upper-house agenda.

The FoI bill, which would add higher charges to applications for information and make it harder for those applications to succeed, passed the House of Reps last year and is expected to return to the Senate before too long.

But former Labor senator turned independent Fatima Payman is moving a motion today to have the bill discharged. Payman noted in a statement “the committee inquiry into the Bill received 70 submissions and the only two submissions of support came from Government organisations”.

“The bill in its current form will raise revenue but lower accountability,” Payman told Guardian Australia.

It’s already so hard to get information from the government, are we seriously saying this is good for our democracy if we’re making it harder for people to get access to information?

Payman’s motion is expected to be backed by other crossbenchers such as David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie, as well as the Greens. The Liberal party is also discussing whether to support Payman’s motion. Speaking to the Australian Politics podcast last week, the shadow attorney general, Andrew Wallace, called the FoI bill “friendless” and “a dog” of a bill but conceded “never say never” when asked if the Coalition could back it.

We’ll bring you more when the motion comes up for debate this afternoon.

Ley proposes the three senators who crossed the floor stay on backbench for six months

The three senators who defied the shadow cabinet to oppose Labor’s hate speech laws would be forced to sit on the backbench for six months under Sussan Ley’s offer to the s to reunite the Coalition.

Ley briefed Liberal MPs on the terms of a potential peace deal with the s after talks with David Littleproud on Monday night.

The opposition leader did not face a snap leadership spill at Tuesday’s meeting as conservative rival Angus Taylor bides his time before mounting a challenge.

Ley and Littleproud met on Monday night but could not reach an agreement on reforming the Coalition after last month’s split, meaning the two parties will sit separately when parliament resumes later on Tuesday.

Guardian Australia has confirmed that under Ley’s offer to Littleproud the three senators would not be able to rejoin the shadow cabinet for six months.

The suspension expires in July 2026.

The s would be able to choose which of their MPs replaced the suspended trio in the shadow cabinet.

Under the deal, both parties would adhere to shadow cabinet solidarity and neither party would have the ability to overturn a decision made by shadow cabinet.

The Liberals also want to regain the assistant Treasury portfolio, which was handed to the s after the 2025 federal election.

The skills portfolio could be offered in exchange.

The s party room is meeting on Tuesday morning to consider the offer.

‘You’re on notice’: says Hanson to Labor

Pauline Hanson is doing a press conference from Adelaide, fresh off her announcement that Cory Bernadi (the former Liberal senator) will be joining her ranks, running for the South Australian Senate in the upcoming March state election.

Half of Bernadi’s head is currently off the screen due to the height difference between him and Hanson.

Hanson says housing, mass migration (a claim which has been debunked by the ABS), and the cost of living are driving voters to One Nation.

I’m warning Labor now, you’re on notice. We are coming for your seats, and we are actually going to represent the people of this state to give them hope.

Bernadi takes the mic (and now has his whole head in shot), and calls Hanson one of the “most resilient and prescient political figures of our time”.

You can read more about Bernadi joining One Nation here:

Victorian treasurer says state government can support people if interest rates rise

The Victorian treasurer, Jaclyn Symes, says she’s closely watching the Reserve Bank board’s decision on interest rates expected later today.

As my colleague Patrick Commins reported yesterday, financial markets and most economists expect the RBA will lift its cash rate target from 3.6% to 3.85%, marking the shortest and shallowest rate rise cycle in memory after inflation roared back in the second half of last year.

Symes says she doesn’t want to provide commentary on the RBA but stood ready to support Victorians should rates increase:

We’ll wait and see what the decision is today. As I said, the state government, we have levers. We have the ability to support people through cost-of-living measures, and that’s something that we will be looking at, and I’m sure will be a feature of the budget.

She says the budget could also be affected by interest rate increases.

That’s something that we have to factor in and you’ll see that in the deliberations of the budget if that goes forward, not only will we respond to interest rate increases, but also looking for future impact.

Victoria’s mid-year budget update, released in December, showed the 2025-26 operating surplus was $710m, compared with the $600m forecast in May 2025. The state’s debt was also forecast to marginally improve across the forward estimates – to $192bn by 2028-29 (a $2bn improvement on May’s budget).

NSW premier says to expect protest restrictions for Israeli president visit

Leaving the federal parliament for a moment, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, says he expects protest restrictions to be in place for a visit by Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, next week, as NSW police meet today to decide whether to extend a declaration effectively banning marches through Sydney’s CBD, potentially impacting planned pro-Palestine rallies.

Last month police narrowed the area covered, allowing Invasion Day rallies to go ahead, although it could be re-extended to cover a wider area for Herzog’s visit between 8 and 12 February. The Palestine Action Group has planned a rally as part of a “national day of protest” on Monday at Sydney’s Town Hall, which is currently covered by the declaration, although it is not yet known if the group plans to march.

The group is part of a constitutional challenge to legislation rushed through parliament following the Bondi attack that gives the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, the power to prevent the authorisation of public assemblies for up to 90 days following a terrorist attack, meaning protesters are not legally protected for offences such as blocking traffic or pedestrians.

The decision must be given final approval by the police minister, but Lanyon and the premier have insisted the process is independent from government influence. Today Minns says he had “a lot of meetings” with Lanyon in relation to Herzog’s visit, but denies he has sought to influence the decision.

There’s a need to protect both the president as an invited guest to Australia and also regular Australians as they go about their jobs and their lives in Sydney next week. And we want to make sure that we’re balancing those protections in the next seven days. It’s not going to be straightforward, but you can expect restrictions to be a place, I would assume …

I’ll let [NSW police] make the determination, but I just think that a reasonable person could look at the circumstances and say, we just can’t have a riot in Sydney, you’re gonna have a lot of people that are mourning a horrible terrorist event on 14 December.

Mark Butler says WA murder-suicide was the “most awful tragedy”

The health minister has been asked about a suspected double murder-suicide in Mosman Park in Perth.

Brothers Otis, 14, and Leon, 16, who lived with disabilities, were found dead at their home on Friday morning. Reports say police confirmed both boys had “significant health challenges”. Their parents were also found dead.

Butler says the deaths were a “most awful tragedy”.

It’s an awful tragedy at so many different levels, but particularly the loss of two children’s lives who obviously did not choose to die, is an unspeakable tragedy. Now, I know there’s been a bit of commentary over in Western Australia about the NDIS packages that these children were on. I want to be really clear. First of all, I don’t want to say anything that would impact the police investigation. I want to give people confidence that the NDIA, the agency, is cooperating fully with the police to the extent that they have any useful inputs to the police investigation.

How many children will use the Thriving Kids program?

We don’t get an exact number, Butler says it will be roughly the number of children under age nine with low to moderate needs but there will be some parts of the community who currently don’t have access to supports that now will.

Until 1 January, 2028 when Thriving Kids is fully operational, NDIS is still open for those children … we also think that there’s probably unmet need in the community, particularly given how expensive it can be to receive a diagnosis, we have a sense we’re not able to quantify this precisely. We have a sense that there are parts of the community, particularly some of the poorer parts of our community, that don’t have the money it takes to go to a paediatrician to get a formal diagnosis.

Of its $2bn commitment, the federal government will be giving $1.4bn directly to the states and territories for delivery and will spend the rest on monitoring and evaluating the program.

Butler also says the program won’t increase the burden on parents in accessing support for their children.

NDIS ‘did not work for kids’: Frank Oberklaid

Alongside Butler is Frank Oberklaid, co-chair on the Advisory Group, who says the fact that a child will not need a formal diagnosis to receive support is critical.

He doesn’t mince his words on the ongoing issues on the Disability Insurance Scheme.

The professional community working with children and families, and particularly paediatricians, I’m a paediatrician, were really very pleased that finally issues in the NDIS [are] starting to be addressed. The minister said it was drifting – it wasn’t drifting, it was a broken system. It did not work for kids.

Rather than making a diagnosis, paediatric practice is about what does this child and this family need over the next six to 12 months. What sort of supports do they need to make a difference, not what is the diagnosis.

[Under the current system] it defaulted to children needing to have a diagnosis to get any sort of supports. And paediatricians were getting requests from teachers … with the words “please confirm a diagnosis of autism so this child can get services”. So it totally distorted clinical practice.