Pomp, ceremony and political division

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Speaker 1 The bells are ringing in parliament for the first time in 100 days.

Speaker 1 The Prime Minister has used his opening remarks to urge MPs to write the next chapter with the grace and courage of First Nations leaders.

Speaker 1 Now, amid the pomp and the ceremony, the government has signed a joint statement calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza with a whole lot of other countries.

Speaker 1 The opposition has labelled the statement alarming and disappointing. So is this a sign of some friction to come in this 48th parliament? Welcome to Politics Now.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis. And I'm Claudia Long.
And Claudia, lovely to have you back and to be face to face with you because I've missed you.

Speaker 3 I love it. It's lovely lovely to be back.
It's lovely to have Parliament back. It's great to have you here in Parliament.

Speaker 1 Although you did spend some time in your city

Speaker 3 of birth and love. Yes, Coburg forever.
That's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 3 Shout out to any Coburgians listening. Lots of Coburgians listen.
And we love them. I know.
We love them. I know.
I know.

Speaker 1 We do love them. I feel like we have to give context.
I agree. It's a northern suburb of Melbourne.

Speaker 3 And it's also interesting politically. We were talking about this in the lead up and just past the election too, PK.

Speaker 3 The seat of of Wills is Coburg. It takes in a lot of Coburg.
It's a really interesting area. Back to politics.
I'm obsessed, low-key.

Speaker 1 Clearly. Low-key.
Low-key, I've learned that from my kids. Everything starts with the low-key.

Speaker 1 Low-key, Claudia, great to be face to face with you. Today is very ceremonial, right? That's the thing.
Just build a picture for us.

Speaker 1 Like, Jacob was on the pod with me yesterday, and people would have heard his love and passion. for cannons.
Now, I went past the cannons this morning before the cannons went off.

Speaker 1 And I will be be honest, I love it when it happens, but they do alarm me. So I walk faster when I see cannons just in case of a mistake.
Anyway, I'm fine, I'm here, but what's today all about?

Speaker 3 I also have the passion for the cannon, I feel, because as someone who gets the bus here, it often means that the bus service stops because they obviously can't fire a cannon when this bus is going through.

Speaker 1 I just always think, how many if something goes wrong?

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. And I'm startled easily too.
So every time they go off, I'm like, oh. So yes, you're right.
That's one part.

Speaker 3 And this is really one of the most ceremonial aspects of parliament generally for the entire term we have some really senior figures here today not just the prime minister and the opposition leader susan lee but also um a welcome to country ceremony that happens um out the front and then moves into the building with the governor general is going to be here later today the speakers are elected to parliament it's this big day of kind of pomp and ceremony and things that probably seem kind of old hat when you watch them right like this because there's a lot of tradition today and there's a lot of you know ceremonially ceremonially walking through the halls of this place like today when i was down at um the cafe getting my coffee the all of the mps from the house of reps were in their procession across to the senate and you almost never see it's like ants walking all in a row and you never see them doing that sort of thing otherwise and it's really unusual and while they're doing the the walk uh you know the prime minister's sort of talking to the opposition leader you see that the way that the parliament really functions um so it's it's sort of in a in a way without sounding like the world's biggest dag, which I suppose I am.

Speaker 3 We can lean into it. We're both dags.

Speaker 1 You know, this is the label on the packet.

Speaker 1 It's lovely. And in fact, the Prime Minister gave a speech, which I thought spoke volumes about that loveliness, where

Speaker 1 he credited Peter Dutton and talked about the peaceful transfer of power. So Peter Dutton was the opposition leader.
He's not even in the house now, right? So this is it.

Speaker 1 Like the new house has been officially sworn in. He ain't in it.
Ali France has taken his position.

Speaker 1 She won the seat of Dixon, but he acknowledged, and, you know, without saying it, because, you know, he wouldn't, it's our closest ally, but, you know, we're not having an insurrection, are we?

Speaker 1 We're not having that sort of business. We do things in a particularly Australian way.
It's, of course, the Westminster tradition. So we borrow a lot for Britain, borrow or inherit.

Speaker 1 But equally, like the smoking ceremony in the Welcome to Country, this is something that's become part of our tradition, which is is an ancient ritual, which opens our parliament now, which is absolutely not a Westminster tradition.

Speaker 1 It is an Australian First Nations tradition that is essential as part of our parliament.

Speaker 1 And you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't believe it, but we had a debate in the last week of the campaign about welcome to country ceremonies.

Speaker 3 Like, wow. Yeah, I know, it feels miles away from all of that.
It feels miles away.

Speaker 3 It feels like a completely different

Speaker 3 almost a debate and discussion around this.

Speaker 3 And I mean, mean the images from the welcome to country ceremonies that have happened at the start of previous parliament's opening and from today's the images that really stand out because a lot of them are really powerful and really moving there's a completely different tone to what we were seeing during the campaign pique which you'll remember was really you know i think it's fair to say got really ugly and really

Speaker 3 stripped any discussion of what a Welcome to Country ceremony is for, who can do it, what it means, what its purpose is.

Speaker 3 And And now it seems like we're a long way away from that particular debate and discussion.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we are. Now, to be fair, and because

Speaker 1 we are deeply accurate here, Peter Dutton actually never opposed the Welcome to Country for the opening of Parliament specifically, right? So it's very much fixed.

Speaker 1 Even he, who had issues with Welcome to Country, didn't oppose that. But it is a really powerful moment to watch them at the front of the Parliament House as that smoking ceremony happens.

Speaker 1 Just in terms of the way the Parliament looks, the optics, before we move on to like the meaty politics of the day, like we're recording this in the middle of the day very soon.

Speaker 1 So they go from chamber to chamber, which is kind of fun, I think, given the chambers don't, other than getting each other's bills, they don't kind of go into each other's houses very much for the next rest of the term.

Speaker 1 They do their own business, the Senate and the lower house.

Speaker 1 But they've done some going up and down and they, in fact, will all jam the Senate soon, including lower house MPs, the Prime Minister, all of them, and hear the Governor-General give her speech about, you know, what the next three years is all about according to the government's agenda.

Speaker 1 So that's about to happen. But in terms of just the way the lower house looked, my own observations.

Speaker 1 You just, I mean, we knew this would happen when we saw the seating plan, but I sat there in the front row.

Speaker 1 David Spears and I kind of were running between houses just because, you know, we're still 15 and we think it's so fun.

Speaker 1 It is so fun.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's good. And also, D, the steps are, it's important.

Speaker 1 Well, the steps were definitely, and one thing that just struck me, which we knew would be the case, but the actual visual of it was even more intense than I imagined was, you know, usually it feels like it's very split in half and, you know, the Labour side, the government side now, and then the other side, but the Labour numbers are so big, they're spilling into the other side.

Speaker 1 And the Coalition did feel so small.

Speaker 3 It's like a tidal wave.

Speaker 3 You hear about that. You hear about like wipeout.

Speaker 3 But it does look like that. I mean, it really is.
I've never seen a parliament. like this.
I can't really remember seeing one that looked this dominated by one party.

Speaker 3 And particularly when, you know, the coalition is two parties, of course, forming one big kind of block. But this is one party dominating so much of the lower house.
It's quite remarkable.

Speaker 3 And visually, like you say, is extremely unusual. And really, I think, sets a pretty interesting tone for the next few years.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, the thing we talked about, but it just can't not be remarked on, just that so few women on the coalition.

Speaker 1 So we talked about it yesterday, but so many on the Labour side, in the House of Reps.

Speaker 3 Do you know where there are two coalition women, though, that I've noticed? Tell me. Right behind Susan Lee.

Speaker 3 And the reason that I find that interesting is because when during question time, if you tune in to watch it on the telly, the crop of the shot around the leader is one of the ones that you see the most.

Speaker 3 And so you'll often see that the parties really choose particular people really to create a certain impression, a certain look.

Speaker 3 And it's really interesting that flanking Susan Lee, there are two women behind her, as well as one of the fellas on the front bench.

Speaker 3 But it's a really interesting image and clearly, I think, really speaks to some of the work they're going to be trying to do to turn that image around.

Speaker 1 That's a great point. That's what she wants it to be.
Yes.

Speaker 1 so she's sending a signal by that choice and so is anthony albadesi so what's his image his image is ali france who who is the member for dixon now she is in that frame couple of reasons yes the vanquished leader peter dutton gone she takes the seat after all these attempts she has an amazing personal story of course too first disabled woman in the lower house which is you know just yeah it's huge it's a really big

Speaker 1 so many people live with disability in this country so that is quite a barrier that she's broken as well. So she's a bit of a barrier breaker, isn't she?

Speaker 3 She really is.

Speaker 1 But also, they want to keep that seat at the next election. Now, I know the next election is three years away, but they're already planning to do that.

Speaker 3 Oh, you can always start. You can never start too early.

Speaker 1 So they want her to have high ID, like any time anyone in an electorate sees the image.

Speaker 3 Like it's all about that.

Speaker 1 So yeah, there's a lot of thinking to all of this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. Nothing's by chance.

Speaker 1 So that's all going on. We don't get question time tomorrow.
Later this afternoon, we'll have the first speeches which start. All of that will happen.

Speaker 1 David Spears and I will be on the news channel later keeping you up to date on all of that. So that's happening.
But just to shift gears.

Speaker 1 Amid all the pomp and the ceremony, the Albanese government has signed a joint statement, joint by big joint. Like there's so many countries that have signed this.

Speaker 1 28. That's right.
We are not at all in some sort of minority.

Speaker 1 It's a big group of very influential countries, France, New Zealand, UK, calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians of human dignity.

Speaker 1 It's the strongest language, hands down, we've seen the government use and engage with on this matter.

Speaker 1 Does it represent a shift, though? Or are we on, I reckon it's kind of, we're on the trajectory and they've notched it up a bit.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's right. Because I think it's a slight shift in language from the Prime Minister.
I think also Tony Burke's comments are worth looking at.

Speaker 3 So, saying this morning that this is the latest in a series of strong statements from Australia.

Speaker 3 Now, there'd be quite a lot of debate in various communities about whether that's the case, but it's interesting that that's how they're trying to frame this.

Speaker 3 He also says, We've seen, and this is just reading what he said: we've seen too many images of children being killed, of horrific slaughter of churches being bombed, of images that we've seen that have been pretty clear that so much of this is indefensible.

Speaker 3 And the words like indefensible slaughter, slaughter, you know, referencing the horrible videos of children, of innocent people being slaughtered, is pretty impactful language.

Speaker 3 It is a change in how we've seen some members of the government talk about this. And like you say,

Speaker 3 this isn't something that Australia is alone in doing. This is something that a number of our close

Speaker 3 allies are involved in as well. And it's almost eight months to the day as well.
I wanted to check this a bit earlier, PK, and I went and had a look.

Speaker 3 And it's almost eight months to the day since the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, another figure in the Israeli government and a former Hamas commander accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Speaker 3 And of course, it's important to note that Benjamin Netanyahu and others, they disagree heavily with these arrest warrants. They say that

Speaker 3 as does the US government, exactly. Now, this statement...

Speaker 3 A part of it is highlighting that the treatment that we really have seen of a lot of people in Gaza who are just trying to get aid, who are just trying trying to get food, is

Speaker 3 in their words, in the words of Tony Burke, for instance, indefensible and it's wrong. And I think that it's interesting to kind of look at this statement in that context.

Speaker 3 I actually went back and I looked at, because I wanted to make sure I got it right, but I think one of the things that's worth noting is when those arrest warrants were issued last November, one of the charges against Netanyahu was that the International Criminal Court feels that he may bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.

Speaker 3 And with this statement, too, and I think this has gotten to the point where governments around the world are saying, we are seeing this with our own eyes.

Speaker 3 We see the footage from these places every day.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that they're putting, you know, I guess maybe more of a line in the sand, but at the same time, PK, there are others in the parliament who say this doesn't go far enough and should go further, like the Greens.

Speaker 1 Well, it just shows. I mean, this war has been so divisive.

Speaker 1 And we're hearing, for instance, a really, you you know interesting response from the the coalition which says it's going to reset on so many policies but here I can't see it not on this question.

Speaker 1 Susan Leah said the most important thing is rescuing the hostages that remain in Gaza. To be clear the statement does talk about the hostages as well.
It doesn't

Speaker 1 ignore the hostages because of course that matters and we do know what happened on October the 7th is part of this horrific chapter in the world's history, I think.

Speaker 1 Now, John O'Dunheem is a senior frontbencher, a conservative from Tasmania, education spokesperson now under the reshuffle. But he went on Sky, he criticised the statement, saying it was alarming.

Speaker 1 Michaelia Kash, who is the foreign affairs spokesperson, also a conservative from WA, said in a statement that it was disappointing and moral outrage should be directed at Hamas, not Israel. Now,

Speaker 1 last time I checked, you can actually be outraged at two things at once.

Speaker 1 Anyone who isn't outraged at Hamas, I think, has some serious questions to ask themselves because it is. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that doesn't give a country the leave pass when it comes to innocent civilians who are trying to eat to stay alive, which is what this latest condemnation responds to as well.

Speaker 1 And the length of this war, we've been waiting for this ceasefire. There is no ceasefire that, you know, we've been poised for the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 But, you know, we started this podcast talking about this. You know, there's a sort of beauty and sort of poetry to the beginning of a parliament, but this just shows where the fault lines are.

Speaker 1 As you mentioned, the Greens, like, they think

Speaker 1 this is too weak, this stage.

Speaker 3 It's already like things are kind of already splintering. And I think

Speaker 3 this is obviously going to keep being an issue. And I think the interesting thing about some of the response to this is just like you say, PK, I think that's really where most people

Speaker 3 in the mainstream community are at. No one wants to see this.
It's horrible. I think that is how most people feel.

Speaker 1 I think some of us are very tired of being forced, and I reckon people listening will feel this strongly, to kind of, you know, choose your lane.

Speaker 1 If you want to choose the lane of humanity, of people having a dignified life,

Speaker 1 free of being attacked by terrorists and free of being starved.

Speaker 1 And I think it's important to say, I think the Albanese government has made a clear decision to go down this road of, I think, ratcheting up the criticism on Israel. Israel.

Speaker 1 And if you compare it to the beginning of when this war was launched, there has been a really big shift. But at the same time, you know,

Speaker 1 let's not make it out like they've gone out rogue stuff, like these wild cowboys. They have done this, as we started off with.
Like, how many countries have you said?

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, 28. And look, I mean, there's also other countries that have gone further than Australia as well.
It's not like they're leading the way on this either. Not at all.

Speaker 3 It would almost be more damaging for Australia to not say anything as well and to be seen as being weak

Speaker 3 on

Speaker 1 this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean I think it's a good point you make. Just a little more on the politics which I thought was interesting.

Speaker 1 A few people have pointed out today to me and I've noticed it myself and now I want to know what you think

Speaker 1 that there did seem to me a little bit of a difference between the hardline point being made by John O'Duniam, Michaelia Cash, and then Susan Lee. Now Susan Lee of course, was known as a

Speaker 1 Palestine supporter. She's since talked about how she's kind of changed or nuanced that view, okay?

Speaker 1 But she wasn't all guns on this one, was she? She wasn't all good.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I got the sense that she was holding back on that.

Speaker 3 And the impression you get is that she's holding back to kind of keep the peace in her own party and coalition.

Speaker 3 You know, she has only been leader for a really short time. There's already whisperings around the parliament that this is some kind of placeholder, some short-term thing.

Speaker 3 I went back and I found this really interesting article by Mark Kenney that was from the conversation. He's at the ANU Former City Morning Herald, and it's about Susan Lee in Gaza.

Speaker 3 And, you know, she was a former member of this cross-party group, the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.

Speaker 3 And at the time in 2008, she implored Parliament to think, and this is a quote: think not of the Palestinian leadership, think of the people.

Speaker 3 And she described Gaza as this besieged, contained, on the brink of starvation.

Speaker 3 And at the time, she said, Israel has many friends in this country and in this parliament.

Speaker 3 The Palestinians, by comparison, have few. Theirs is not a popular cause, but it is one I support.

Speaker 3 And I think it's really interesting looking at her previous language on this and also at the Prime Minister's previous language on this as well.

Speaker 3 Anthony Albanese said really similar things in his early parliamentary career.

Speaker 3 Now, she says that since October 7, when we saw those awful killings on that that day, that has changed her thinking on this matter.

Speaker 3 She says that she changed her thinking in light of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Australia. And of course, you know, we know that that's something that's happening.

Speaker 3 We know that there are rising rates of anti-Semitism in Australia and that is a real and Islamophobia too and general social issues.

Speaker 1 But what the government has decided here, which I think is right, is to say

Speaker 1 you can and should condemn anti-Semitism, but that doesn't mean that you can't condemn the Netanyahu government and its behaviour in Gaza.

Speaker 3 And I think, yeah, this comes back to what we were talking about before, which is that these two things are not mutually exclusive. All right, final thoughts.

Speaker 1 I'm going to start with mine and you can think about your final thought. But Dai Lee turned up.

Speaker 1 She got sworn into parliament in an Australian flag printed dress, which is a traditional Vietnamese dress.

Speaker 3 So that's the style.

Speaker 1 Of course, she's a Vietnamese refugee, but she's got like the Australian flag. She's worn it before.
She decided to wear it. Lots of discussion about about this.

Speaker 3 If anyone can pull it off, it is her. I think so.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 An iconic image from the last parliament, I think, was her wearing that dress. And look, there's not a whole lot of places you could wear at PK.

Speaker 3 I mean, I mean, maybe she wants to rock it when she's going down to the shops or something or just around the house. But, you know,

Speaker 3 you got to get your buddies on it.

Speaker 1 We could do it anyway. We definitely would do Amber.
We'd be thinking anything goes.

Speaker 3 My fun little tidbit for today is...

Speaker 3 Shout out to Dan Repicoli and our condolences on officially no longer being the tallest man in parliament. Explain, there's a taller dude.
There is a taller man

Speaker 3 who I once attempted to high five and could not reach.

Speaker 3 I do love that.

Speaker 3 And his name is Matt Smith, and he has won the seat around the area of Cairns in Queensland. And he won that following the retirement of Warren Inch.
A bit of a temperature change for Matt Smith

Speaker 3 from the seat of Leichhardt. So condolences to Dan Rafficoli, no longer the tallest guy in Parliament.

Speaker 1 I observed because I was like watching them all so closely, they made them sit together.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a tall man's caucus. They need to get Jerome Lacksale up there too, actually, because he's also a tall fella.

Speaker 1 But were they like, is it sort of... Just so the symmetry is right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, because it's so, because otherwise no one would be able to see over them because they're very tall fellas.

Speaker 1 Well, I've got to say, hats off to Labour. It's quite a multicultural bench.

Speaker 3 It's quite a, you know, tall women.

Speaker 3 They've even got tall people.

Speaker 1 So that doesn't happen accidentally. And we know that they actually did put work into that.

Speaker 1 Some really meaningful representation for the tall man community well let's hope that the liberals do focus on the other communities not just the tall not just the tall tall man community yes because that would that would be an oversight look that's it for politics now tomorrow i'll be joined by david spears in fact i'm about to join him anyway just to talk about what's happening in the parliament we're spending too much time together um we're going to discuss the first question time two and the and the tone that's being set for the 48th parliament fran and i will take your questions on thursday i'll remind you of the place to send them the party room at abc.net.au.

Speaker 1 Send us voice ones. I like the voice ones.
We're going to preference those. See you, Claudia.

Speaker 3 See you, Lena.