Things can get a little potty before Question Time.
As politicians stream into the House of Representatives for the government’s daily parliamentary probing, it can often foreshadow what’s to come.
West Australia Labor MP Zaneta Mascarenhas was on her feet, looking like she knew she was onto a winner.
A grin across her face, she was having fun as she read from notes to take aim at the Coalition’s tax-free lunch policy.
“It took the Liberals all summer to come up with this policy nugget, or potato gem,” she said with a giggle.
Get it? POTATO gem! Zing!
Having echoed the days talking points, Mascarenhas sat down, giving herself a fair pat on the back as the speaker brought to chamber to order.
Solemnity replaced frivolity for mere minutes, breaking only to acknowledge the death of a former MP and the flood emergency stretching across Queensland’s north.
But before too long, they were back at it.
The student embodies the subject
Having long studied Paul Keating (literally writing a PHD about him), Treasurer Jim Chalmers looked to be channelling his Labor predecessor, revelling in his chance to take a swipe at what he’s dubbed the Coalition’s “long lunch policy”.
Chalmers had got the ball rolling earlier in the day, having enlisted his department to run the numbers of the policy, or as he put it doing “their homework for them”.
The policy would provide a tax deduction of up to $20,000 for business with a turnover below $10,000 for work-related dining and entertainment (minus grog) for staff or clients.
Treasury estimated it would cost at $1.6 billion a tear, yes billion with a B, a far cry from the Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor’s insistence that it would be cheaper than $250 million.
Back in the chamber, Chalmers was really warming up.
“All we have got from them is lower wages for workers and longer lunches for bosses, with the taxpayers to foot the bill,” the treasurer bellowed.
“He wants workers to pay for bosses’ lunches and he will smash the budget in the process. Now, this is the only kind of policy that could have been agreed at the tail-end of a very long lunch.
“You can imagine them sitting around with the blue teeth and soy sauce on the tie, coming up with the big ideas.”
Angus Taylor called foul on the treasurer calling in his department to cost a Coalition policy. (ABC News: Mark Moore)
Even before Question Time, the Coalition was calling foul, furious the Treasury had been called in to cost its policy.
For Labor, it was offered the opposition a taste of its own medicine. In power, the Coalition had no qualms using a parliamentary committee to examine a contentious Labor policy.
Coalition policy playing into Labor’s campaign
Before the parliament met on Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese let the cameras into the partyroom as he sought to rally his troops for what could be the final sitting fortnight before the election.
Seizing on inflation data from last week, his message to his MPs and senators was clear.
Their focus needs to be on telling the story of the government and its efforts to ease the unrelenting pain of inflation.
By Tuesday, that message had sharpened.
Inflation is down, wages are up and unemployment is low, Albanese and Chalmers repeated on loop.
Faced with ridicule of the lunches policy, the Coalition initially sought to tackle it head on, demanding to know the pre-existing cost of Coles and Woolworths tax deductible boardroom catering.
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The Coalition hopes its policy will frame it as the party that backs small businesses while framing Labor as only interested in the top end of town.
But not having put out a cost on the policy, it left a void that Labor was all too happy to fill.
Chalmers sought to link the lunch policy to the Coalition’s commitment to slash the public service and spending.
At the weekend, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton suggested voters would have to wait until after the election to find out what would be cut.
Another void the treasurer was happy to fill.
Labor speculates on Coalition cuts
Inside and outside the parliament, presented with a camera, Chalmers has warned those cuts could be to wages, to Medicare, insisting those savings would fund nuclear reactors and bosses lunches.
Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley sought to press the prime minister on food prices under his tenure.
Initially not knowing, he would later seek to add to his answer, having clearly been supplied with an answer.
Albanese told the chamber food and beverage prices (excluding alcohol) had rising 3 per cent last year, quickly adding the figure was 5.9 per cent in the Coalition’s last year in power.
As Albanese walked off, content with the first Question Time of the year, Ley attempted to protest his comments.
But she found little love from the speaker, minutes earlier had made clear he’d already had it up to pussy’s bow with parliamentary behaviour.
Struggling to find his words merely an hour into Question Time, Milton Dick took a breath, his hands reached out in front of him.
“Stop it with the unparliamentary remarks and mean comments,” he directed at Ley.
“It’s just unbecoming.”
His comments were met with silence. Albeit temporarily.
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