The government has released its long delayed defence white paper, confirming a significant boost in defence spending, as the tax debate continues. All the developments from Canberra, live
3.34am GMT
Back to strong on the seas, under the seas, in the skies, and because our speaker is Christopher Pyne, strong on industry policy in South Australia. Today is a good day, Pyne notes.
3.30am GMT
Chris Bowen to Malcolm Turnbull.
Q: I refer to the prime minister’s claim that all investors would leave the property market under Labor’s negative gearing reforms. What is the prime minister’s response to treasury evidence before a parliamentary committee in relation to negative gearing, and I quote: “I do not see investor behaviour as being solely driven by tax treatment. It is just one factor inside all of the decision-making processes”.
What the Labor party’s policy means is that even an investor, even an investor who had no gearing at all, who is debt-free, if they suffered a net rental loss, that is to say their outgoings on the property, rates and repairs and utilities, were greater than the rent, they would not be able to offset that loss against their personal income.
So that would mean that any investor in a property runs the risk of that they would not be able to offset any loss on that property at all ever against their personal income.
3.25am GMT
Clive Palmer, to Malcolm Turnbull.
Q: As Australia’s third oldest prime minister, if you are still prime minister after the election, will you serve a full term in parliament or retire to your unit in New York and do a switch with a Member for Warringah, sustaining yourself with innovation and growth opportunities, your investments have provided for the people of the Cayman Islands? It’s never been amore exciting time to be a Cayman Islander. Are you a seat warmer?
I thank the Honourable Member for his question. If he hadn’t found it so amusing as to be laughing right through it, we might have been able to hear most of it.
Nonetheless, I gather the Honourable Member is inquiring about my health and I thank him for his interest and I can assure you, I’m in the very best of form.
3.22am GMT
The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen to Turnbull.
Q: Yesterday when speaking about Labor’s negative gearing reforms, the prime minister claimed and I quote: “They are proposing to remove from the market for established dwellings one-third of demand. All investors would be gone.” Is the prime minister aware that in the US, where negative gearing is not allowed, more than 30% of the housing stock is owned by investors?
Under the shadow minister’s policy, somebody on a wage of a quarter of a million dollars, who had net rental losses of $50,000, but also had $50,000 worth of, for example, dividends, unfranked share dividends, could offset that net rental loss against his or her share income against their investment income. They’d be able to do that.
But a middle income family, Mr Speaker, with a net rental loss of only $10,000 would not be able to deduct those losses against an income of $90,000 in salary and wages.
3.16am GMT
Back to being powerful in the skies on the seas under the seas, with a girt by sea reference thrown in for good measure.
3.14am GMT
Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, to Turnbull.
Q: My question is to the prime minister. Three months ago this very day, the prime minister said, and I quote: “My government is undertaking a significant reform agenda”. Given we now know the prime minister has abandoned reform and resorted to Abbott government style scare campaigns, isn’t it the case that the prime minister has now taken on every characteristic he criticised the former prime minister for?
I think we can say without any doubt that the Member for Sydney has abandoned every characteristic of a shadow foreign minister.
3.11am GMT
Just something to note in passing, over the past couple of days, the prime minister has slowed down his vocal delivery in the House. After punching up at the opening of the week, now he’s right down in the jowls. He’s trying to project gravitas rather than aggression. Just a small vocal affect. Not Watergate, but interesting.
3.07am GMT
Predictably, the first Dorothy Dixer is about being more powerful in the skies, on the seas, and under the seas.
3.06am GMT
Rightio here is the final hour of glower for the week. Bill Shorten is opening on Malcolm Turnbull’s lack of economic leadership. The prime minister says hang on, no questions on the defence white paper?
Malcolm Turnbull:
They (Labor) rendered Australia less safe, and yet, on this day, when such an important announcement is made, such an important announcement is made, the opposition has no questions on the defence white paper. They have no concern about Australia’s national security.
3.01am GMT
Just as we roll into question time, a clip from earlier this morning of the Green MP Adam Bandt talking about the safe schools program. Bandt sees the debate over the past couple of days between conservatives and progressives as a harbinger of the sorts of views that will be expressed during the marriage equality plebiscite. Pop on your crash helmets people, is his message. This will get ugly.
2.49am GMT
Meanwhile, with an election in the offing, never let the grass grow under your feet. South Australian minister, Christopher Pyne.
pic.twitter.com/1wrYVI136j
2.46am GMT
Conroy – who is a champion of Australia’s alliance with the US – is very pleased to see the white paper’s emphasis on America as our most important strategic partner. Very pleased. Then there is China. Not pleased. Not pleased at all.
Labor strongly supports the peaceful rise of China. Labor does not believe that China’s rise will lead to an inevitable choice between Australia’s alliance with the US and the growing relationship with China.
It’s important to acknowledge that our relationships with both differ.
2.36am GMT
Shadow defence minister Stephen Conroy is welcoming the white paper (even if he can’t resist a dig on the way through, noting the release of the document today by the government is tactical, to snuff out the controversy over its tax policy.)
Stephen Conroy:
Based on our initial review and in the spirit of bipartisanship, we are broadly supportive of the defence white paper. We welcome its strong support for our alliance with the US as the foundation of our national security and defence arrangements.
We also welcome its focus on increased engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, building on the pioneering work of Labor’s defence white papers in 2009 and 2013. We also support in-principle the government’s decision to deliver on its promise of raising defence funding to 2% of GDP, although we do intend to examine that in detail, and we also note that one of the reasons they have been able to do this is they’ve actually shrunk the economy.
(The government) has refused to re-open the supply ship tender for Australian companies to compete , despite not making a decision about that very tender for over 20 months, and it has walked away from Tony Abbott’s promise to build the first few offshore patrol vessels in SA, putting at risk another 1300 jobs.
2.21am GMT
Picking up Whish-Wilson’s point about an “obscene” amount of money, Laura Tingle from the Australian Financial Review points out this white paper breaks the link between future defence spending and economic growth.
Significantly, the white paper seeks to break the link between defence spending and GDP, saying that while the spend has been estimated on the 2 per cent base, the actual spending figures will now be a firm commitment, no matter what happens to economic growth.
2.12am GMT
Back into the swim, the Greens defence spokesman Peter Whish-Wilson on the white paper:
We are spending an obscene amount of money, hundreds and billions of dollars on a grandiose vision for a future arms race without any detail at all in this document about a change to the threat level.
Why are we escalating our military expenditure when there is no evidence at all that the threat in our region warrants this?
2.09am GMT
While we can, let’s take stock of the morning.
1.56am GMT
One more question about cybersecurity, and then it’s over and out at defence.
1.51am GMT
The prime minister is asked whether the big spend will delay the return to surplus. He suggests if it does delay the return to surplus it will be worth it because this is about Australia’s security.
Tory Shepherd from the Adelaide Advertiser invokes the phrase brain fart to inquire how the government came up with the number twelve for submarines. The defence minister professes surprise that this question is coming from Shepherd, given her editor “would be keen to have twelve if my recollection’s correct.”
1.47am GMT
Seven network reporter Tim Lester is persisting on the sustainment costs of the submarines. Is he correct in believing defence doesn’t yet know what the sustainment costs are on a $50bn tender?
The chief of the defence force says the government doesn’t need to know those yet because this is outside the current forward estimates.
I won’t give you the ball park figure, but you’re talking about a fleet of 12 submarines, so it’s not going to be a tiny figure, just in commonsense.
We’ll let the CEP (competitive evaluation process) sort out the sustainment costs. It will be a factor in the decision of what boat we go with.
I don’t know boats, I know aeroplanes.
1.41am GMT
Marise Payne gets asked whether the government is now trending towards building submarines in Australia.
We are not going to pre-empt in any way, we are not pre-empting in any way the outcome of the competitive evaluation process at this stage. What we have clearly indicated and what the continuous build of the offshore patrol vessels and future frigates indicates is a massive investment in Australian industry, in Australian people.
1.38am GMT
Q: The document talks about the delicate balance between China and the US relationship and it also talks about Australia’s interest in upholding freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In that context, would Australia’s interest be served by Australia looking at a freedom of navigation operation within the 12 nautical miles?
Malcolm Turnbull:
We support and practice freedom of navigation in accordance with international law, but we are not going to canvass forecast future ADF operations.
It may be on your table, but we are not going to canvass or forecast future ADF operations.
1.36am GMT
Here’s the press conference. First question – great, but where’s the cash coming from?
Q: By 2025-26 you’re looking at an annual increase in funding of $7.2bn ... and this is a slightly glamorous way of saying where’s the money coming from? Isn’t that positively Gonski-esque increases in the longer term?
You certainly can hold us to that commitment and this is a fully costed plan. This is a fully costed plan, but there is not, that’s not the end of the work. Now it has to be implemented and it has to be implemented with the most rigorous financial discipline.
1.29am GMT
A few more pictures.
1.25am GMT
I’m still digesting all this content. There’s a press conference coming up shortly with the prime minister and the defence minister.
1.12am GMT
Boiling down, through the locutions of the prime minister.
These are momentous times. The stakes are high and as the opportunities expand, so does the cost of losing them. A stronger Australia supports a safer Australia, a safer region and a safer world.
1.08am GMT
That’s quite a lot of content to process. Let’s boil it down slightly.
Basically the argument from the white paper is we need to spend more on defence because of the complex nature of the threat. We need to muscle up in the region at least in part because of the ongoing and periodically fractious competition between the great 20th century power, the United States, and the 21st century power, China. We need to be in a position to assert influence during this historic regional alignment – as well as deal with a complex range of specific threats ranging from terrorism to cyber attacks to conventional conflicts. That’s basically the story the document tells, with digressions into submarines, planes, bombs and the like.
12.56am GMT
Marise Payne has stepped through several elements of the white paper, including a big chunk addressing the links between the military and industry. She then walks around to culture. The strength of defence’s leadership and is based on its ability to adapt and embrace a more inclusive culture, Payne notes.
Marise Payne:
We have to take advantage of the full range of skills available to us across the breadth of the Australian community if we are to fully embrace the opportunities available to us in the future. Defence has done some significant work to remove barriers to progression and to facilitiate greater development opportunities for women, for indigenous Australians, for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in both the ADF and the civilian work force. But there is still much more that we can and must do. Defence must represent the community it protects and from which it recruits.
12.50am GMT
A few pictures from over at defence HQ.
12.45am GMT
A bit more drilling down into the document. The white paper sets out six key drivers of Australia’s security environment, including the relationship between the US and China, challenges to the stability of the rules-based global order, the growing threat from terrorism, the fragility of some states in the immediate neighbourhood, and increasing cyberspace threats. The Australian Signals Directorate detected more than 1,200 cyber security incidents in 2015, including attacks on government agencies and non-government sectors, according to the white paper.
The document also specifically refers to climate change as “a major challenge” for Australia’s Pacific neighbours, which would contribute to food shortages and extreme weather events to which Australia would be called on to respond.
12.38am GMT
The defence minister Marise Payne is making her contribution now. Here’s her language on the regional outlook.
As the prime minister outlined over the next two decades Australia will likely face a more complex strategic environment, with the ongoing threat of terrorism from groups like Daesh and foreign terrorist fighters, and the growing shift in economic and strategic power to the Indo Pacific.
As an open trade-based economy, Australia relies on a stable and secure region. Our security and prosperity depends on a stable Indo Pacific region and a rules-based global order in which power is not misused and tensions can be managed through negotiations based on international law.
12.35am GMT
Turnbull goes through the acquisitions of equipment and upgrades in technology. He notes the importance of the military having agility.
He rounds out in this way.
These are momentous times. The stakes are high. And as the opportunities expand, so does the cost of losing them.
A stronger Australia supports a safer Australia, a safer region and a safer world.
12.32am GMT
A bit more on that rationale. And climate change, look it’s there! The phenomenon that dare not speak its name.
Malcolm Turnbull:
My government is committed to this significant increase in spending for two reasons – first, we recognise that Australia’s strategic environment is the most dynamic and challenging one that we have faced in peace time.
We are also susceptible to the potential threats of conflict, climate change, malicious cyber activists, pandemic disease and transnational terrorism.
12.29am GMT
The rationale for increased defence spending.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We will continue to be a constructive and influential player in the regional strategic environment and beyond. We need to have the capacity to deter and defeat threats to Australia. And we have to be able to make more effective contributions to international coalitions that secure our interests and strengthen the rules-based global order upon which our prosperity depends.
To achieve all of these goals we must be prepared to adequately fund our defence effort.
12.28am GMT
On terrorism.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Ongoing turbulence and state fragility in the Middle East and west Asia will continue to be a threat to Australia’s and the region’s security. The proliferation of terrorist threat sources, some of them home grown, many of them enlisted via the Internet, will require sustained effort both within Australia and elsewhere to limit the freedom of terrorist groups to operate and as we seek to undermine their narrative of hate.
12.26am GMT
Turnbull sets the scene for the region – noting the rapid economic transformations underway in China and India and in South East Asia. Various forces will require careful balancing, he notes. I think we know what he’s talking about.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We would be concerned if the competition for influence and the growth in military capability were to lead to instability and threaten Australia’s interests, whether in the South China Sea, the Korean peninsula or further afield.
We have a strong, vital, vested interest in the maintenance of peace, stability and respect for the rule of law the divisions we take now will impact on our defence capability and outlook for decades to come.
The United States will remain the pre-eminent global military power. It will continue to play a vital role in the peace and prosperity of the Asia Pacific, just as it has done for almost three-quarters of a century since the Second World War.
The relationship between the United States and China will be critically important. We welcome China’s rise.
12.18am GMT
On submarines – how much Australian involvement in the project.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We will ensure the Australian submarine involvement is sustainable over the longer term by building a new force of 12 regionally superior submarines, doubling the size of our current fleet. And just as innovation is going to help create the modern, dynamic 21st century economy Australia needs, it will help develop the technologies that will provide our ADF with a leading edge.
It is a program that ensures that much more of the development of our defence technologies is done here in Australia.
12.15am GMT
The prime minister is addressing reporters now over at defence HQ. Malcolm Turnbull opens by giving a shout out to the defence ministers who have contributed to the paper (there’s been a few), and to Tony Abbott. I don’t know if Abbott can hear him or whether he is already in Japan, preparing to make his globally significant intervention® on naval exercises in the South China Sea.
Malcolm Turnbull:
This white paper is a plan to deliver amore potent and agile and engaged defence force that is ready to respond whenever our interests are threatened or our help is needed.
12.08am GMT
Australia will increase its annual defence spending by $26bn over the next decade amid concerns about the increasing pace of military modernisation to its north, regional tensions and the continuing threat of terrorism.
The Turnbull government’s defence white paper raises concerns about “a number of points of friction” including differences between China and the United States over the South China Sea, and calls on China to be “more transparent” about its defence policies.
12.07am GMT
The embargo has been lifted now on the defence white paper. My colleague Daniel Hurst is at the briefing and will file shortly. Here’s some quick main points.
12.02am GMT
Endorsement from the Australian Christian Lobby for Luke “I’ve never met a homophobe” Simpkins.
Just caught the end of an excellent speech by WA MP Luke Simpkins. He said Safe Schools was actual bullying kids with heterosexual views.
11.58pm GMT
Nikki Sava, columnist for The Australian, has this morning compared Bill Shorten to John Hewson – which I confess was an idea I had rolling around in my mind yesterday. I didn’t pursue it in the end because my view was Labor’s negative gearing policy is not Fightback, which was a much more wide-ranging policy manifesto, but I do know what she means, and I think the proposition is worth thinking about.
Sava notes in the excitement over an opposition leader producing a bold policy, “too few people have bothered to ask if it’s the right one.”
They will, though, and once they do it could prove a very unhappy time for the opposition leader, particularly if the penny drops during the election campaign. Labor was clever to release its policy to pare back negative gearing when it did, taking advantage of the vacuum left by the government, but the gushing that has accompanied it brought back memories of the last time an opposition produced a comprehensive tax policy. That soared like a rocket, too, before it ended up like the Challenger disaster for John Hewson.
11.33pm GMT
On our mystery Cory Bernardi URL.
@murpharoo Here's how to find who is behind the Cory Barnardi site https://t.co/yGbZe6CpM0
11.17pm GMT
The Labor leader Bill Shorten is out this morning at a primary school and is talking to reporters now. Currently the questions are about safe schools.
Q: Is it rich to talk about a bully-free environment and you have displayed that by bullying Cory Bernardi in a sense?
I don’t know if you were at the press conference yesterday, were you?
No.
I just wanted to check because then I could understand why you asked the question. Speak to your colleagues who were there. When you have a Senator walking past acting like he is at the football yelling out free advice at a press conference and he has a sook about someone standing up to him. I did in five seconds what Malcolm Turnbull hasn’t done in five months.
I regret that the government is cutting programs to make the lives of teenage kids so much harder and that the Liberal party is spending so much time on this issue.
11.10pm GMT
One more for the parallel universe. Liberal MP Luke Simpkins has told parliament this morning he’s never met a homophobe.
I have never met anyone that displays an extreme or irrational fear of homosexuality. I have an army background and a sporting background and never have I met anyone who has such fears.
11.05pm GMT
Speaking of parallel universes, a friend of the blog has brought this to my attention.
A website has turned up http://www.corybernardi.com.au/ which as you’ll see when you click through, is decorated with a rainbow flag, a love heart, and the tagline: Compassion Lives Here.
10.45pm GMT
Readers who have been with us all week know that in the magical parallel universe that is #BrickParliament, the treasurer Scott Morrison (AKA Captain Cronulla) has been on the hunt for unicorns and pixie horses. Captain Cronulla’s quest for mythical creatures (and a tax policy) remains ongoing.
While he journeys towards aquarius, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the assistant treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, have been attempting to explain whether house prices will go up or down as a consequence of Labor’s negative gearing policies.
10.31pm GMT
There’s also a fight brewing today about the appointment of the Liberal MP Andrew Nikolic as chair of the parliament’s joint intelligence committee. Liberal Dan Tehan has left the chairmanship of the committee courtesy of the fact he’s been promoted to a junior ministry in the recent reshuffle.
Nikolic is a pugnacious sort, and some of his colleagues find him ... how can I say this politely ... abrasive?
Bipartisanship is put at risk by Mr Nikolic who has made his political career out of being a highly partisan, highly aggressive battler for extreme rightwing views.
10.16pm GMT
Still on Safe Schools, my colleague Shalailah Medhora reports this morning that only one school has pulled out of the program as a result of pressure from concerned parents, according to the program’s organisers, despite the campaign from conservatives, who invoke negative parental attitudes as justification for their objections.
10.08pm GMT
The debate about the Safe Schools program is continuing to rumble at the margins of national politics. If you haven’t been particularly tuned in this week, let me summarise: various socially conservative figures in the government object to the program (which aims to prevent LGBTI kids being bullied or harassed) on the basis that it imposes rainbow ideology on the innocents of Australia. Their collective foot-stamping has resulted in the government agreeing to review the program.
It’s not only conservatives in the government. Labor senator Joe Bullock has told the Australian the program should be immediately “stopped”.
I think it’s a terrible program … while bullying is an important issue particularly among young people … this program is so narrowly focused on homosexual issues that it doesn’t provide the sort of balance one would hope.
I don’t agree with Joe and the Labor party doesn’t agree with Joe on this. This is a Labor program, we funded it in government, it’s a program that is designed to address the terrifying statistics of self-harm, of abuse, of discrimination and of bullying of same-sex-attracted and transgender young kids.
Whatever your particular views about issues such as marriage equality and so forth, surely no one in this country thinks that it is appropriate for children to continue to be bullied and this is a program about lessening that.
9.53pm GMT
To a couple of other issues now. Peter Martin from Fairfax Media has written this morning about the government’s thinking on its tax options.
Peter says on negative gearing, the government is mulling imposing caps on the dollar amount of losses claimable. (The treasurer, Scott Morrison has flagged this publicly in a column he wrote for one of the Sunday tabloids a couple of weekend ago, a column that said Labor was deeply wicked for going after negative gearing concessions but noting the government wasn’t ruling out acting itself in this space.)
I guess I’d want to know what the policy rationale for such a cap would be.
9.28pm GMT
We did not just brief the Chinese. Repeat. We did not just brief the Chinese.
The role of our department in producing a new white paper is to most definitely talk it through with our nearest neighbours and our close partners and allies so not just China but Indonesia, Japan, with our colleagues elsewhere in the region, with the United States, with the United Kingdom, with New Zealand.
All of those discussions have been had and by no means confined to China.
9.26pm GMT
Q: What’s this white paper going to tell us about our relationship with China?
Well, I think you will find that it’s very consistent with the views that senior members of the government have been expressing in recent times. We obviously have a very, very valuable relationship with China. At the same time, though, and I did hear the secretary of my department briefly before we began this interview, at the moment, though, we are very clear in making our views known and openly known to China and to other claimants of locations in the South China Sea that we don’t support that sort of activity and behaviour. We don’t support their unilateral declarations about which particular (outcrop) belongs to them or someone else. So we would much rather see a code of conduct adopted in that area. We would much rather see a much more cooperative approach, and we will also be continuing to say that Australia has consistently and strongly supported freedom of overflight and freedom of navigation in accordance with international law, and we will continue to say that.
Those are definitely matters for government, and I’ve made – also made it very clear that I don’t intend to make public comment on the potential future activities of the ADF in that regard.
It’s a very complex environment. Absolutely no doubt about that. And one in which we remain consistent in our views and also consistent in acknowledging the strength of our relationship with China.
I don’t think that’s anywhere close to being accurate, to be frank.
9.18pm GMT
The defence minister Marise Payne is speaking to to Michael Brissenden on the ABC’s AM program about the white paper. She’s contested one report that suggested the government would recruit an additional 5,000 military personnel. She says the new troops number is 2,500.
Brissenden says how about these submarines? Will they be built in Australia? Payne says the submissions from the international bidders are in and three approaches are covered: an international build, a hybrid build and a domestic build.
The competitive evaluation process is being considered now by officials, by experts within defence, and we’ll get their advice in due course and the government will announce its decision then.
9.04pm GMT
Good morning good people and welcome to Thursday, the final sitting day in this parliamentary week. I hope you’ve all polished your tin hats because today is defence white paper day.
If all the previews are correct, today we’ll see the Turnbull government commit to building 12 new submarines, fund both the Joint Strike Fighter and new armoured vehicles, boost defence funding, and recruit a big whack of new military personnel.
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