December 6, 2023
An impressive Matter of Public Importance debate took place in the House of Representatives this afternoon.
The MPI was devoted to the issue of how the House should treat Craig Thomson, the member for Dobell, in the light of allegations against him and his statement to the House yesterday.
Debate revolved around the nature of a censure and the arguments for and against suspending Thomson from the service of the House.
Video of Meet The Press and The Bolt Report.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and independent Tony Windsor appeared on Meet The Press. Liberal Dennis Jensen appeared on The Bolt Report, Grace Collier discussed industrial relations, whilst John Della Bosca and Alexander Downer discussed the political week.
This is the election funding and disclosure report for the 2010 federal election.
The report was published by the Australian Electoral Commission and contains detailed statistics on election donations during the 2010 election.
The report shows that the AEC made total payments of $53,163,385.36 ($53.1 million) to candidates and parties in the 2010 election. The payments were based on a rate of $2.31191 for each vote received by a candidate or party, provided they reached the threshold of 4% of the primary vote.
Amongst political parties, the ALP received $22.2 million, the Liberal Party $21 million, the National Party $2.4 million and the Australian Greens ($7.2 million).
Today is the anniversary of the agreement between the independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott that delivered minority government to Julia Gillard in the aftermath of an inconclusive August 21 election.
Here’s the audio of what the main players said on September 7, 2010.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Harry Jenkins, came close to resigning today.
The possibilities that could have flowed from his resignation are intriguing to consider.
In the course of a raucous and disputatious Question Time, Jenkins warned and then named Liberal member Bob Baldwin for “continuing to interject after having been warned by the Chair”. “Naming” by the Speaker is the precursor to a motion to suspend the member from the service of the House.
The government’s Leader of the House, Anthony Albanese, accordingly rose and moved the motion to suspend Baldwin for 24 hours.