SIMON BIRMINGHAM: I want to touch on two matters today firstly, the matter of Wayne Hanson’s comments from the AWU and, secondly, the meeting today of the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change in Canberra. Firstly, in relation to the AWU… We have a union leader, another union leader, bell the cat on the…
It’s time for Treasurer Wayne Swan to confirm that, contrary to some media reports, estimates concerning the carbon tax will be included in this year’s budget, according to Acting Shadow Minister for Climate Change Simon Birmingham. Mr Swan will begin the Treasurer’s ritual of pre-budget Sunday morning interviews with an appearance on Sky…
LYNDAL CURTIS: Hello and welcome to Capital Hill. In the midst of a bitter political debate, we’re seeing some areas of commonality between the Opposition and the Government. One of those is the need for welfare reform, but just how to accomplish the task? The other area of agreement is on the need for the body set…
DAVID BEVAN: … we’re going to talk to Senator Don Farrell. Now, he’s a South Australian Labor Senator. He’s Parliamentary Secretary for Urban Water and he’s bought into the debate over recycled water. Remember we had this debate here in South Australia about… just over a year ago during the state election campaign. MATTHEW ABRAHAM: And it’s…
DAVID BEVAN: Now, something that we have just escaped from and that is the drought. We’ve had years of drought. The River Murray looked like it was in serious… well, it didn’t look like it, it was in serious, serious strife and yet when the Murray-Darling Basin Commission [Murray-Darling Basin Authority] said ‘you need to change…
LEON BYNER: … moving to water, because what is interesting is that, as you know, some months ago we had a nasty drought and then Mother Nature gave us a wonderful reprieve but a key parliamentary inquiry into the River Murray [House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia inquiry into the impact of…
The Gillard Government is keeping taxpayers in the dark on its carbon tax agenda to such an extent that it’s now being selectively secretive about the timing of decisions supposedly taken by its so-called ‘multi-party’ committee, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment Simon Birmingham said today. “As if it isn’t bad enough that…
Labor is refusing to comply with the requirement of a Senate Estimates Committee in its latest attempt to shield the National Broadband Network (NBN) from proper scrutiny, Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham said today. Senator Birmingham described a letter* from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy stating its refusal to meet…
LYNDAL CURTIS: Welcome to Capital Hill, where the attention’s been split today between Canberra, Perth and Indonesia as the regional processing centre gets discussed in Canberra but not necessarily in Indonesia and the Prime Minister has announced a review of the way the Goods and Services Tax is distributed between the states. To discuss these many…
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: The Labor Government’s carbon tax arrangements are unravelling before their very eyes already. What we see today are revelations that Ministers don’t think tax cuts are possible as part of compensation. Now, I stood here just a couple of days ago and predicted that there would be absolutely no reduction in income tax rates…