The last time parliament sat for a fortnight the Libs spent the weekend lying to journalists claiming Labor was going to block a wage subsidy. So I thought I’d get in early before they start the next set of lies about the sitting fortnight that starts on Monday.
#auspol

The wage subsidy lie was particularly odd given we had originally called for wage subsidies at the start of the pandemic and the Liberal Government described them as very dangerous.

So they may well claim that we would breach social distancing rules by insisting everyone entitled to a vote is allowed to vote. If they claim this, it would be, you guessed it: another lie. Here’s why

The way we’ve been observing social distancing in the chamber is by expanding the definition of what constitutes the “floor” of the parliament.

What ended up happening was the government didn’t even list the wage subsidy for debate and Labor had to move to bring the debate on, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.

As we go into the next fortnight the PM will have to participate by video link because he is isolating and we’ve agreed to that. So that’s locked in.

I’ve separately been arguing that every member of parliament should be allowed to vote. Because of social distancing this would mean expanding the defined area of the floor. Strangely we don’t have agreement from the government on that yet.