What we learned today, Saturday 4 February
That’s our work here done for today. I hope you’re having a stellar Saturday, and please join us again tomorrow. Here are today’s highlights:
Changes are coming to Medicare – what can you expect?
Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrote a thoughtful and nuanced essay, and it was met by furious belching from the opinion pages, Katharine Murphy wrote.
Luke Henriques-Gomes has been doing a bang-up job following the revelations from the robodebt royal commission – here’s the latest.
As the defence minister, Richard Marles, visits his counterpart in Washington, the US president, Joe Biden, has been urged to fast-track research into using non-weapons grade uranium to power submarines.
Mostafa Rachwani has taken a look at the horrors of Sydney’s rental market.
And here’s how you can see the snazzy green comet streaking across our skies.
All that, and a second Chinese spy balloon has been spotted! This one’s over Latin America. Spy balloons. Imagine popping one of those and watching it whirl around before coming to rest, wrinkled, in a corner somewhere. What a time.
Until tomorrow!
Updated
Anthony Albanese calls Scott Morrison’s Pep-11 actions ‘dishonest’ and ‘incompetent’
AAP is reporting on the ongoing fallout from that time Scott Morrison got himself sworn into a swag of portfolios:
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has described his predecessor’s decision to halt a gas drilling project off the NSW coast, triggering a legal fight, as “dishonest” and “incompetent”.
The federal government and energy company Asset Energy have agreed to end their legal battle over Morrison’s decision, by proposing consent orders to the court.
Asset Energy launched a legal challenge to the Pep-11 decision last year, saying Morrison breached the requirements of procedural fairness and that he was not validly appointed as the responsible minister of the joint authority.
Albanese said:
What I won’t do is do what the former government did, and essentially create a situation whereby legally, it wasn’t tenable.
This situation has arisen because of the incompetence and the dishonesty of the Morrison government.
Morrison used additional powers he had gained by swearing himself in as resources minister to intervene in the Pep-11 decision and veto it in 2021.
“No one was told that Scott Morrison was sworn in as the resources minister, in order to override Keith Pitt as resources minister. That’s how we got into this debacle where the company has made legal action against the federal government,” Albanese said.
Petroleum Exploration Permit 11, known as Pep-11, is a petroleum well off the NSW coast between Wollongong and Newcastle, covering about 8,200 sq km.
If the court accepts the orders, Morrison’s decision would be overturned and put back to the Commonwealth-NSW Offshore Petroleum Joint Authority for consideration, the federal government said on Friday.
The federal and NSW state governments are both members of the decision-making authority.
-AAP
Updated
