Question Time erupted in insults on Monday after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to a question about Labor\u2019s tax changes with a jab at independent MP Dai Le.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister dismissed a question from Ms Le, declaring: \u201cThis isn\u2019t a council, this is a serious Parliament\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comment led to a sharp response from the member for Fowler, who also serves as a Fairfield City councillor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the Prime Minister should have some respect in the House,\u201d Ms Le said, to roars of agreement from the opposition benches.<\/p>\n
The exchange came after Ms Le had asked about the Albanese government’s negative gearing changes.<\/p>\n
Under Labor’s changes, existing properties can no longer be negatively geared unless they were owned prior to Budget night, in which case they will continue to be subject to the prior tax treatment. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Rising to her feet on Monday, Ms Le asked the Prime Minister to provide an assurance that no one had gained financial benefit from prior knowledge of the \u201cmarket-sensitive measures\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan the Prime Minister give the House a strong assurance that no government MP or their close relations used prior knowledge of those changes for private financial benefit before they are made public?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
The question caused uproar on the government benches, with Manager of Government Business Tony Burke rising to argue the question was out of order.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rules are the question can\u2019t contain argument, inference, imputation, insults. It\u2019s all there,\u201d the Labor MP said.<\/p>\n
The member for the Western Sydney seat of Fowler then attempted to rephrase the question.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan the Prime Minister give the House assurance that this information was properly safeguarded before the budget and were held so that no one connected to or in government was able to act on it for private financial benefit?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
After being instructed by House Speaker Milton Dick to ignore the question\u2019s second half, Mr Albanese challenged Ms Le to be upfront about the accusations she was making.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Member for Fowler, if she’s got a suggestion or an allegation about anyone in the chamber, she should actually say what it is – and preferably say it outside (where defamation laws apply),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Following his dismissive comment about the parliament not being a local council, Mr Albanese attempted to backpedal by declaring \u201cno one\u2019s done more for local government in this house than me\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister then went on to state the government had been \u201cvery careful\u201d in putting the policy through the same Expenditure Review Committee processes that are standard for both sides of politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is something that we have in this country that we should cherish, and we should honour; not denigrate to try to score a cheap point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ms Le defended her question later on Monday, describing it as a \u201csimple question about transparency and trust\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted the PM to assure the Australian public that these significant changes to our CGT and negative gearing, which cause disruption to the markets, were done with safeguards and that no one in government acted on it, to benefit themselves or those connected to them, prior to the budget,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The member for Fowler said the fact the Prime Minister could not provide that assurance was a \u201cmatter of concern\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was disappointing that, rather than directly addressing the issue, he chose to take a swipe at local councils and councillors, to divert the importance of his role to answer a simple question,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Question Time erupted in insults on Monday after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to a question about Labor\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1869,22,21,10409,156,3977,20109],"class_list":["post-36315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-albanese","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-dai-le","tag-labor","tag-negative-gearing","tag-question-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}