Welcome to our live coverage of question time in the House of Representatives. My name is Nick Newling, I’ll be taking you through the afternoon’s proceedings.
You can watch a livestream of question time below from 2pm (AEDT), and follow along with our blog for updates.
Thanks for following our live coverage of question time in the House of Representatives. Here’s what we covered throughout the afternoon:
Directors of Singtel, the parent company of telecommunications provider Optus, have apologised for the Triple Zero outage and offered their full support to Optus’ CEO Stephen Rue. Kelly said Rue was “driving change” in the business, and that Singtel was “doubling down” on its support of Optus.
Parliament will rise this evening until March 23. You can follow our live coverage of the war in Iran here.
Independent MP Zali Steggall has rejected claims from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during question time this afternoon that the crossbench had made more “representations” about their staffing levels than matters of public policy.
During question time, Albanese said: “The most number of representations that I have had from crossbenchers in the House and in the Senate isn’t about health policy, it isn’t about education policy, it isn’t about housing policy. It’s about their staff.”
Speaking after question time, Steggall said the claim was incorrect and that “the largest number of representations that I have made to the prime minister and the government is to accelerate climate action and truth in political advertising”.
The claims from the prime minister came out under questioning from independent MP Sophie Scamps on the provision of staff to non-government members, something Albanese has control over. Members of the crossbench have sought an independent process to determine MPs’ staffing.
Directors of Singtel, the parent company of telecommunications provider Optus, are appearing before a Senate inquiry into the Triple Zero outage last September in which two people died and hundreds of calls failed to reach emergency services.
Addressing a panel of senators, independent non-executive directors Gail Kelly and John Arthur both apologised for the outage and offered their full support to Optus’ CEO Stephen Rue. Kelly said Rue was “driving change” in the business, and that Singtel was “doubling down” on its support of Optus.
Questioned about whether it was appropriate for a service like Optus to be owned by a foreign company, Arthur said Singtel had an “ongoing, long-term, strategic commitment to Australia”, that it employed 1200 people across the country and had made $600 million in investments domestically.
Asked why Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon had not personally fronted the inquiry, Arthur said: “He devotes enormous amounts of time to Optus. He sits on the Optus board. He is a very active director at Optus, and wherever possible he personally comes to Australia to attend Optus board meetings. He is very committed to this country.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been asked a question about the allocation of staff to non-government offices, following reporting in this masthead last week.
Independent MP Sophie Scamps asked: “People in my electorate of Mackellar are concerned about recent media reports that allege the government offered the coalition more personal staff in exchange for their support of the controversial freedom of information amendment bill to avoid perceived conflict of interest.”
“Will the prime minister commit to ensuring personal staff allocations for non-government parliamentarians are decided by an independent body, rather than awarded at the discretion of the prime minister of the day?”
Albanese responded, saying that under the Morrison government Labor MPs received fewer staff than the crossbench and that allocations under his government had been “fair and reasonable”.
“People who are on the crossbench have more staff than people who are here on [the government] side or on [the opposition] side of the chamber,” Albanese said.
“I make this point that the most number of representations that I have had from crossbenchers in the House and in the Senate isn’t about health policy, it isn’t about education policy, it isn’t about housing policy. It’s about their staff.”
Industry Minister Catherine King has attacked the Coalition’s treatment of women, saying that the Liberals and Nationals demonstrated a “disdain” for supporting women, specifically calling out new Nationals leader Matt Canavan.
“A little reminder that when our government introduced reporting on the gender pay gap, Senator Canavan called the report a hill of nonsense and completely useless,” King said.
“It’s good to see that the disdain for advancing women’s economic participation is at least something the Libs and the Nationals can bond over.”
King referred back to the Coalition’s abandoned policy on working from home during the last election campaign, saying “the women of Australia haven’t forgotten this.”
“[The Liberals] tried so hard to bury this policy that they went so far as to try and bury the whole Liberal Party election review. And you can see why. On Page 34 it said that the Liberals messaging was unsympathetic to the needs of women to better balance their work and family life,” she said.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the opposition’s repeated questioning on whether there is a fuel crisis shows they may not be aware of conflict in the Middle East, after the government received yet another question about the cost and supply of fuel in Australia.
“It may have escaped members opposite, but there’s a war going on. Do I regard a war as a crisis? Yes, I do. Yes, I do, Mr Speaker. Do I regard the implications of that war, Mr Speaker, when it comes to fuel internationally as a crisis? Yes, I do,” Bowen said.
Throughout Bowen’s response there was loud heckling from both sides of the chamber, leading Speaker of the House Milton Dick to give a general warning to the chamber over conduct, saying: “everyone’s up for grabs”.
Shortly afterwards, Liberal MP Ben Small was ejected for calling out during a question.
It does not take a seasoned political analyst to grasp the tactic the opposition is taking today to attack the government. The Coalition is trying to force the government to admit there is a fuel supply crisis, and that it is Labor’s fault.
Labor’s response has remained consistent: each minister comes to the despatch box, insists there’s no supply crisis, then claims the Coalition is making things worse by scaring people into panic buying fuel.
This has been the back and forth we have been seeing all week, but today the mood in the chamber is becoming increasingly tense.
In the government’s most recent response, Resources Minister Madeleine King has said Australians are better off under the government during the Middle East war, and its market shocks, than they would be under the Coalition.
“The Australian people … will be far better placed to withstand the international shocks caused by the conflict in the Middle East, with this government looking out for their interests and always acting in the national interest,” she said.
“These Labor MPs … will fight always in the national interest, and I guarantee that they will work to make sure that the Australian people are well supplied with fuel.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has slammed the opposition for their continued questioning on fuel supplies, saying Labor has secured greater supply levels than the Coalition did when Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was energy minister.
Albanese said that the former government had set targets of 24 days of supply for petrol, 24 days for jet fuel and 28 days for diesel. Energy Minister Chris Bowen earlier said the current levels were 36 days for petrol, 29 for jet fuel, and 32 for diesel.
Of the consistent questions on fuel supply, Albanese said the opposition was “simply unfit” for opposition or government, and said they were “being led by the bloke up in the corner”, in reference to One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce.
Fuel quality standards will be temporarily lowered to inject around 100 million litres a month of extra petrol supply into the domestic market, the Albanese government has announced.
The change to standards applies to the Ampol refinery, which currently produces higher sulfur content petroleum for export.
Under the lower standards, the higher sulphur content fuel will now be blended into Australia’s existing domestic fuel supply over the next 60 days.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said this boost to supply would help address local shortages in regional areas, which are being driven by panic buying, and put downward pressure on petrol prices.
Ampol Australia has committed to prioritising the additional supply for regions, including to the wholesale market that supplies independent distributors, which have found it difficult to meet rising demand.
The second question from the opposition has come from Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie, who simply asks: “Can the prime minister guarantee that Australia will not run out of fuel?”
Albanese says the question is a “rhetorical upgrade” from the previous one asked by Taylor, saying: “I gave a comprehensive answer, which is we are prioritising ... fuel security and supply.”
Energy Minister Chris Bowen then rose to give an update on fuel supplies in the country, saying Australia had 36 days of petrol, 29 days of jet fuel, and 32 days of diesel “on hand”.
Bowen has given a very similar answer multiple times over the past fortnight in question time.