What we learned: Thursday 4 September
It’s time to wind down our live news coverage for the day. Here’s what has been keeping us busy on the last sitting day of parliament:
A bill to strip basic legal protections from the noncitizens it plans to deport to Nauru and retrospectively validate visa decisions made before the high court’s NZYQ ruling has passed the Senate. But just who is within the NZYQ cohort? And are they all violent criminals, as some politicians have claimed? Read our fact-check here. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the bill was “Trump-style” and “sends a devastating message” to migrant and refugee communities across Australia.
The high court will not hear an appeal by Australia’s most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, ending a seven-year challenge of news reports that labelled him a war criminal.
Former Victorian premier Dan Andrews responded to widespread criticism over his high-profile attendance at yesterday’s massive military parade in Beijing.
The commonwealth has agreed to pay $475m in additional compensation to robodebt victims in the largest class action settlement in Australian history. The former Labor minister and University of Canberra vice-chancellor, Bill Shorten, said the robodebt class action settlement “closes a dark and shameful chapter in Australian public administration”.
The leader of the opposition, Sussan Ley, rejected claims from Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price that federal Labor was promoting migration by specific ethnic groups, including Indians, to grow its electoral support. Julian Hill, meanwhile, called Nampijinpa Price’s comments “bonkers”.
Thank you all, as ever, for joining us. We’ll be back bright and early with more breaking news.
Updated
Nampijinpa Price’s comments on immigration ‘bonkers’: Labor MP
Julian Hill says Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s ABC interview yesterday, in which she suggested Labor’s immigration policies garnered left-leaning Indian Australian voters – comments she later walked back – was “bonkers”.
The Labor MP told Afternoon Briefing a short time ago:
It was absolutely bonkers. It was incoherent. It was all over the shop.
There were literally racist tropes being spread, suggesting that all people of a particular race vote one way, as if they’re Daleks with one brain cell. That is racist. It’s offensive.
I’ll tell you the data: Australians of Indian heritage are more likely to be employed than your average Aussie. They work two jobs. They work hard, they contribute, just like generations of migrants before, and many of them were born here, as were their parents and their grandparents.
Updated
