How did Sussan Ley perform in her first Question Time?

ABC Listen.

Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Four little disagreements.

You're being very biased, mate.

Each with massive fallouts.

You're under arrest for intimidation.

The one thing you cannot do is try to get somebody's video taken down.

Don't do that.

We know they blow them up.

We know they bulldoze them.

Vigilantes, firebrands, and guardians are like kicking bullies in the sheds.

Four stories, one question.

How does a small feud take on a life of its own?

Beef, a series by background briefing available now on the ABC Listen app.

Susan Lee has stepped up to the question time dispatch box for the first time as opposition leader.

She attacked what she called Labor's broken promise on housing targets and their unfair superannuation tax, as she describes it, setting the tone on some of the big fights that are yet to come.

But while the first question time of the lower house was unfolding, drama in the upper house was happening, which really stole the show in some ways.

The leader of the Senate, Penny Wong, moved a censure motion against Green Senator Maureen Faruqi.

So is the 48th Parliament just as willing and robust as the last?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm David Spears.

And David, we've just dashed straight from the first question time of the 48th Parliament.

There were Tinder mentions.

Yeah, Tinder got a mention.

I thought that was my highlight of the whole House.

This is question time.

We will.

What else was there?

There were all eyes, I think, on Susan Lee.

There was

every, not quite every, but...

all of the MPs that took seats from Greens or Liberals asking their first questions, the Dorothy Dixes.

What did you think?

So we were both sitting there in the chamber.

I note you darted out to get to the Senate chamber.

Well, I heard there was

that says a lot about us.

I was like, oh, there's a fire somewhere else.

And I started running and you were like, I'm going to see this one to the end.

So I was keeping my eyes on Susan Lee.

Look, I think the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the rest of the government front bench, or at least those who've stayed in the same roles, were pretty much what you would expect, what we've come to expect from them for the last three years.

As if time hadn't passed.

Exactly.

They looked very relaxed, very comfortable and so on.

So I was very focused on Susan Lee and the depleted coalition team in the parliament for this first question time.

She strode in without a piece of paper in her hand very quickly, I thought, quick pace, took a seat, was given a

raft of papers.

Can I just add a little thing?

Yeah.

She strode in, flanked by women and has put that image out.

She was going so fast, they were kind of trailing behind her.

Yeah, but it was like they've put this power shot out.

They don't have many of them, but they wanted at least two of them to be right behind Susan Lee as she strode into the chamber.

Look, I think watching her across the hour and a half or so, the thing that struck me, the questions were reasonable and fairly predictable.

I think beginning on housing, fair enough.

That's a big concern for so many Australians, probably a good place to start.

But her demeanour in the house is what really struck me.

Now, maybe it was nerves, maybe it was deliberate, but she looked almost isolated in the way that she sat there, head down when she wasn't asking the couple of questions she did, head down on the paperwork in front of her with a highlighter going through doing highlighting, didn't look up at the Prime Minister barely at all, didn't engage with her own front benches sitting behind her barely at all.

There was a quick chat with Alex Hawkers, the manager of opposition business, but you know, PK, Peter Dutton, other opposition leaders, they're always chit-chat, chit-chat with their front benches, you know, working out where we're going to go next, what's the,

and just gossiping and, you know, chatting away through question time.

Looking relaxed and comfortable.

There was none of that.

It was head down, either tapping away on her iPhone or with the highlighter in hand.

How Gen Z, maybe she was trying to be relatable for Gen Z.

Well, you know what it reminded me of, this isn't exactly Gen Z, far from it, Kevin Rudd, when he was Prime Minister.

I'm not saying the two of them are at all alike in politics, but do you remember that period where, and people who observe question time closely might remember this, he was PM, I forget who was opposition leader at the time, but he went through this phase.

Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull.

Yeah, there's a few of them.

Being completely disengaged or disinterested in what they were doing.

And he had his head down.

He had binders and binders of stuff, and he had the highlighter, and he'd spend question time highlighting bits of paper, and then he'd get up and answer a question if he had to, and then get back to his paperwork.

So he wasn't engaging at all.

And that's what Susan Lee reminded me of today.

Yeah, I think that's a great observation.

I noticed the lack of interaction with the front bench, too, particularly in terms of not giving the Prime Minister eye contact.

Well, some of her colleagues are briefing that he won't give her eye contact.

So whose eye contact is not coming up first?

It's a bit like when you think someone doesn't like you, but they think you don't like them.

And it's like, who should say hello first?

And my partner, who's lovely and listens to this, you know, always says to me, you say hi first then.

That's the way people should operate.

So one of them has to look at the other at some point, David.

That's right.

Don't you reckon that I don't think they did they ever look at each other?

I certainly didn't see it.

If they did, they may have.

Angus Taylor also had his head down on his mobile phone and Labor three or four times were ribbing him and the opposition for the tax policies they took to the election and Angus Taylor was keeping his head down through all of that.

Very busy on his mobile phone.

Angus Taylor was the most, he wins the disengaged MP of the day award.

We need an award like that.

Yeah, well, we've just made one.

That's what he wins.

Okay, I mentioned Tinder at the start and it's not just because I'm trying to make this a kind of cool, cool hip girl podcast, although if it can be that too.

Yeah, okay, it is.

The Tinder reference is because there's another story that's unfolded today, which seriously is the stuff of like fiction.

It's probably more exciting than what we saw in Quick Time.

Question Time was dull and pretty workmanlike.

What's happened outside?

It was dull.

I don't think they've worked each other out yet.

Like, you know, more to be seen tomorrow, next week.

Okay.

What I did think was really interesting was today there's Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack, former leaders of the Nationals, who hated each other, have this new union, which appears to be obsessed with getting rid of net zero.

Mick Mack, Michael McCormack, he's come on board on this plan.

Just getting rid of net zero, getting rid of someone else as well?

Well,

this is yes.

And so what is this?

What is this?

Quite the odd couple because you're right.

These two used to be at each other over the leadership of the Nats and who would get to sit in the chair as deputy PM.

Now they've come together with the combined interest of getting rid of the net zero target, which,

as you were pointing out yesterday, PK, who signed up to the net zero target?

It was Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce.

He explains today that at the time it was different.

You know, the world's changed since then.

He said he never actually actively voted for it either.

He did the deal.

He did the deal, and he reckons he got $32 billion worth of goodies of dams and bridges and all this sort of stuff out of Morrison at the time.

A lot of that never delivered.

But anyway, his point now is

we're some years down the track.

The impact this is having on the regions is terrible.

Michael McCormack agrees.

He wants it gone.

Barnaby Joyce is going to move a private member's bill to scrap net zero.

So this shortcuts the whole review process that Susan Lee has set up so that they can carefully try and find a pathway towards a landing point on net zero that keeps everybody together.

Forget that.

Barnaby Joyce is saying, I'm moving a private member's bill.

Look,

mostly private members' bills from someone in the opposition never see the line of day.

I wonder if Labor will be cheeky enough here to let this one go through and be

prominence,

give it as much time as possible.

Which gets us to the Chris Bowen line today, because while the opposition weren't asking any questions about net zero, Labor found a way to ask a Dorothy Dixer to Chris Bowen on this very issue so that he could deliver the line of the day.

Bowen is known for the

rehearsed one liner that comes out in question time.

He's clearly studied Paul Keating today it worked yeah so McCormack and Barnaby Joyce they feel very upset at their personal treatment from David Littleproud and particularly one thing that David Littleproud said that they needed to have generational change

that's why they weren't promoted that's why they're now on the backbench right two former deputy prime ministers on the backbench who are not wanting to be there they want to be you know shadow ministers so that's the argument he's used at the time Barnaby Joyce was like well hang on a minute, you've promoted people older than me, and that's, you know, that's right.

So it kind of did question the generational change thing.

So then Michael McCormack, I think it was on Sky or somewhere, said that both he and Barnaby are very virile.

Bowen picked up on the virile comment from Michael McCormack and then, yes, made a reference to Michael McCormack's Tinder profile.

The member for Riverina said on the Kieran Gilbert show, we're virile and we're out there.

He said.

The member for New England and the member for for Riverina.

Now, this is not his Tinder profile, this is his dream ticket,

this is his dream ticket, he's not looking to swipe right, he's looking to swipe out the member for Maranoa, Mr.

Speaker, is what he's trying to do.

Boom, boom.

He nailed the line, and in fact, he made the whole chamber wake up.

So, thank you to him, because I was getting a bit sleepy time.

And I love to be excited, but there was a few dull moments in question time.

Look, I think Labor's come out of this question time pretty relaxed.

Pretty relaxed.

I spoke to a senior Labor person who said, Can you believe,

can you believe that they have gifted us this net zero shitstorm on the first day of question time?

I said, no, I cannot believe, but I can believe, I suppose.

Like, what?

Susan Lee had booked herself in for a round of breakfast TV interviews this morning.

I assumed before, knowing that this was going to be splashed on the front of the Australian newspaper this morning, that Barnaby and Mick Mac have joined forces to

overturn net zero and maybe overturn David Littleproud as well as Nat's leader.

Anyway, she tried to battle her way through those interviews with a non-answer about where they were going on net zero.

But

this is a shocker.

On the first,

well, yesterday, the ceremonial opening of parliament today, the first question time, the first day of business for the parliament.

And bam, there you go.

These two agitators,

the war horses on the nationals' backbench, the former leaders,

really bringing the focus squarely back to their biggest point of division in the coalition.

The thing that could still

undo them as a coalition.

Remember, they split briefly, they still haven't resolved the biggie, and that's net zero.

It's incredible to watch this unfold, and really, just it's a total leave pass for the government that has lots of things you could scrutinize them on.

Now, Susan Lee tried to with questions on housing and the target and taxation, but none of it lands.

None of it lands.

David Littleproud and Tim Wilson were chipping away on the superannuation tax.

Farm assets and exactly.

There were more questions on that than any other one issue for the coalition.

I wonder if this is going to be something they continue to go into bat for those big

superannuation account holders as a theme here and whether that's the right course.

Susan Lee, for her part, yeah, the question she asked, I thought, went more broadly to people struggling to buy a house.

She used a very

sort of, it's that I'm the mature one in the room.

she uses this sort of tone it's her natural tone i think but she didn't there was no sort of amping up of her tone did you notice that the problem she faces though is is clearly not just the nats but the right faction in her own liberal party when it comes to net zero and other issues you know one of one senior coalition figure i spoke to this morning made the point peter dutton could deal with the right in his party susanly cannot uh and that's that's the concern for her can she in a position where she's won the leadership only just and the numbers have changed since then stare down the right, tell them to fall into line on something like net zero.

It's much, much harder than it was for Peter Dutton.

Now, the other thing that I ran off on because my attention span isn't as good as yours and I get excited by drama.

I heard there was drama in the Senate and I thought, well, I'm going to take myself to the drama.

You were off like a bunch of people.

And I could see,

I could see that all of the sort of front benches on both sides looked up like, oh, Carvellis arrived because not many people go.

I feel sorry for the Senate.

And they knew they'd hit the jackpot, right?

They were having a debate that someone wanted to hear.

So what happened was this.

Penny Wong moved a censure motion against the Green Senator Maureen Faruqi.

For those who don't recall, we didn't make it in the podcast yesterday, but she held a poster about Gaza in the Senate during the Governor-General's speech officially opening the parliament.

The poster read, Gaza is starving, words won't feed them, sanction Israel.

It was a silent protest, but it was certainly against the rules.

The Greens, of course, have been pushing back against this.

Michaelia Cash, as we go to air, I don't know what the final amendment will be, but she has acknowledged the government went first with something that criticised this action, but wants to go further in her amendment to make it that if she doesn't apologise, Maureen Faruqi, she gets basically kicked out of the Senate, like for a while or something.

That's kind of the impost of it.

But David.

But David.

There was one point Larissa Waters made, which I thought was a good point in defence.

She defended Maureen Faruqi.

I doubt if Maureen Faruqi is going to want to apologise on this one.

Let's see how that transpires.

But what she did say is there's been no rebuke or no action on One Nation for turning their entire bodies, putting their backs during the welcome to country.

And I thought that was an interesting point because that too was an act which you would think was not very respectful.

Yep, they all turned their backs.

There's lots of photos of it.

Didn't get a lot of press.

It sort of broke later.

It's an interesting point Larissa makes that that hasn't been rebuked.

I think it actually holds up as an argument.

Having said that, this is now tricky and the big speech that Penny Wong gave in the chamber that I watched half of as I ran in was that the Greens have learnt nothing from the election result on these issues.

And this is the confidence that Labor now feels, the greater confidence post-election, big win when it comes to Israel and Gaza, where there was always some awkwardness and the pressure felt from both the left and the right, the Peter Dutton and the Adam Bant sides of this debate.

Now, Albanese, Penny Wong, Labor feels, I think, more confident confident and comfortable holding that centre ground on this issue.

Yesterday we saw them join that group letter with more than 25 countries calling for an end to the war, pushing back on Marine Faruqi.

Today is another example of that.

Look, yeah, as we record this, we don't know exactly where this will land, but you would think if the government is going to stick to that confidence, they'll hold the line.

The coalition would presumably want more.

Let's support what the government's doing.

And there was another moment of drama too.

A protester did actually make it into the question time and was shouting for a really long period of time about Gaza saying his own relatives had been killed in Lebanon by the Israelites, the IDF.

Like it went on.

It was quite a long rant.

He was not threatening anyone, but shouting in the question time.

And it took ages actually for the parliamentary guards to come and move him again because less attention.

I think sometimes the Senate isn't noticed.

So this protester made it in.

So this is all while the censure motion was being debated.

It was quite a heated Senate question time.

And just finally, quickly on the Greens, as much as Larissa Waters as the new leader might want to shift the focus onto issues other than Gaza, you know, we're talking about the coalition and the difficulties Susan Lee is going to have in shifting her own colleagues for Larissa Waters.

Clearly, many in the Greens and no doubt the membership base particularly still want a big focus on Gaza.

Yeah, it's a really tricky one.

David, I'm glad we both got to run around and watch all of that and bring people the newest, latest.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Pico.

And tomorrow it's the party room.

We'll take your questions.

The partyroom at abc.net.au is where you send them.

That's it for politics now.

See ya.