Both the House and the Senate were back for the second week of this sitting fortnight. A lot was happening this week, including a visit from Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto.

Here’s the 5&5.

BEST

Legislation wins
Linda Burney
Brendan O’Connor
Kristy and Amanda’s take down
Daniel Mulino’s re-telling of Dr No & Odd Job

WORST

Angry as a Dutton
Running on empty
Bob Katter’s mystifying question
In the doghouse
Peter Dutton

1. While Peter Dutton has been whipping up division and dog whistling about visas, we’ve been focusing on legislation that’s good for Australians. This week we advanced some really great legislation:

to reform the design of the NDIS - this will greenlight an “in-and-out” list about what qualifies as NDIS supports while introducing an assessment process for participants
to ban the sharing of non-consensual deepfake sexually explicit material and ensuring that for those who do are now subject to serious criminal penalties
to pay superannuation on Government-funded paid parental leave - reducing the impact of parental leave on retirement incomes

2. After 21 years in politics – eight years in the federal parliament and 13 years in the New South Wales Parliament – Linda Burney has decided to pass the baton to the next generation. This week, Linda gave her farewell speech and something really special happened. Eight years ago, Linda Burney came to Parliament and before her maiden speech she asked her close friend Lynette Riley to sing her into the parliament. On Wednesday, Lynette’s daughter Garra sang Linda out. She concluded with these words in Wiradjuri: “I am proud to be Wiradjuri. This has been a great journey. Thank you; it's been an honour. We will make progress when we all work together. We have a strong and bright future. See youse all later!"

3. Brendan O’Connor also delivered a farewell speech after 23 years in this place. Brendan arrived in Parliament before me and up until recently he and I shared the same department - he has done some incredible work. His full speech was one that I won’t soon forget, and I absolutely recommend watching it in full but here’s a highlight: “When I look across this chamber, the composition today more closely resembles Australian society compared with the composition when I first arrived. Firstly, and most noticeably, there are appreciably more women, which I think is mostly owing to the transformation of the Labor caucus, which now has a majority of women in it. This has been supplemented recently, I should also note, by the rise of crossbench Independent women, mainly replacing Liberal men. This significant change makes this a better place, and, equally, more First Nations MPs and the growing diversity of ethnicity and faith present more accurately the face of modern Australia, and that is also better and healthier."

4. Kristy McBain delivered a brutal take-down of the NSW Liberals, over the council nominations debacle. After abandoning unprecedented legal action against electoral officers, some sitting Liberal councillors are now considering suing the party. And it’s this lot who want to be trusted with nuclear energy?

"Utopia could not have scripted this—the irony of the New South Wales Liberals demanding that the Electoral Commission adhere to a deadline imposed by them when they couldn't adhere to a deadline that's been posted on a publicly available website for close to a year. 'But hey! Let us have a crack at building and running nuclear energy power plants!' Yeah, nah."

Amanda Rishworth had another suggestion for the former Prime Minister.

“I'm sure that the New South Wales Liberal Party is a little disappointed that Scott Morrison is no longer prime minister, because he could have secretly appointed himself as the New South Wales Electoral Commissioner and overturned the decision. They don't always have trouble with their paperwork; I'm sure if the local government association forms looked more like visas for French au pairs, they would have got it in on time.”

5. Daniel Mulino had a great 90 second statement on Monday, it was perfect for James Bond fans - no prize for guessing who he said was Dr. No...

1. On Wednesday Peter Dutton became so angry with Jim Chalmers in Question Time, he moved that Jim no longer be heard. The next day - to control his temper - his own team made sure Dutton didn’t ask a single question effectively making sure that he would no longer be heard. If you wanna know what made Peter Dutton so angry, have a read of what Jim said:

"The point that I was making before I was so rudely interrupted is that we are providing cost-of-living relief that they don't support, we are delivering surpluses that they couldn't deliver in nine attempts, and we're providing responsible economic management that they can't even be bothered asking about in the question time of the people's house of the national parliament. They stir chaos and conflict because they have no costed policies, they have no economic credibility and they won't tell the Australian people why they don't support cost-of-living relief, but they do have $315 billion in secret cuts, and they need to tell us what that means for Medicare, what it means for pensions and what it means for the economy."

2. Peter Dutton’s understanding of the renewable energy sector – as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy highlighted on Tuesday.

"He doesn't know that batteries exist! He said in an interview in March this year, 'Hopefully, the battery technology is about to be discovered.' It was actually discovered in 1800, but I'm sure the Leader of the Opposition will catch up... "

Jim Chalmers interjected “he probably heard it on the wireless”.

3. Bob Katter had a mystifying question to the Treasurer on Tuesday – something about the Brisbane Olympics, pagan rituals and crocodile gods.

Jim Chalmers did his best to respond, with Speaker Milton Dick rightly pointing out pagan rituals don’t strictly fall within the treasurer’s portfolios.

“I thank my fellow Queenslander for the characteristically colourful question. I think that the House will forgive me for steering well clear of the pagan rituals and the tree gods and I will spare the House, I will spare the House through a gallop of a couple of thousand years of history."

4. The Shadow Treasurer is silent on the most important issue facing Australians right now, the cost of living. It’s our number one priority. Jim Chalmers put it perfectly:

“I was thinking a moment ago, when Minister Rishworth was talking about Prime Minister Morrison swearing himself into multiple portfolios: the former government had two Treasury spokespeople; this opposition has none. So it averages out—one each, either side of the election. One of them is on the dog whistle; the other one is in the doghouse. Whenever the shadow Treasurer plays his little dog whistle, he rolls over. Every time he plays his dog whistle, he sits there voiceless and clueless on the most important issue that people face right now."

5. Peter Dutton got so upset that he wasn’t in charge that on Wednesday morning he moved a motion in the House demanding that we release a whole lot of national security information. Really. In writing he demanded we publicly disclose all the criteria used by ASIO. I explained to him later in the day that they are not conversations that we can really have in the privacy of the floor of the House of Representatives.

That’s all for now, Parliament will be back in two weeks.

‘til then,

Tony

PS. In honour of Peter Dutton’s behaviour this week I’m recommending any song by Sydney band, The Sooks.

5&5: Irresponsible and a sook