In the midst of a freezing Canberra winter, federal parliament returned last week for the first time since the May election. The 48th Australian Parliament is the Albo show, with 24 new Labor members spreading across to what have traditionally been the Coalition benches, in an encroaching red wave.
Sussan Ley cut a lonely figure as opposition leader, already marginalised by members of her own fragile Coalition and trying to position herself as the representative of ‘struggling Australians’, as those opposite pushed ahead with plans to cut student debt, improve childcare safety and enshrine penalty rates.
On her first day back, Ley left early to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser sponsored by global beer giant Lion.
With the mainstream media mostly unwilling or unable to realise Australian politics is no longer a two horse race, parliamentary bit players did their best last week to capture the limelight for their respective constituents (or at least their social media followers).
Pauline Hanson and her team demonstrated their perpetual ignorance and racism by turning their back on Welcome to Country, Mehreen Faruqi risked eviction for holding up a sign that said ‘Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel’, and the walking irrelevance known as Barnaby Joyce told the world he was on a personal crusade against net zero, regardless of whatever the remnants of the Coalition decide to think about the matter.
Clouds on the horizon
Although he faces no real opposition within the parliament, not everything went Anthony Albanese’s way in his first week back.
After months of pressure, he and Penny Wong released their strongest statement yet on Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, but this contained no practical measures and pleased no one.
Across the Pacific, the neighbourhood bully announced he would be foisting American beef on Australian consumers, biosecurity and local oversupply be damned.
More positively for the world, if not for Labor, two major legal developments showed the turning of the tide at a state and international level towards fossil energy, following the previous week’s legal abandonment of the people of the Torres Strait to the climate crisis.
in NSW, a major legal win by a Hunter Valley community group has stopped one of the largest planned coal mine expansions in the state, at Mount Pleasant, due to the associated climate impacts. The NSW Court of Appeal has ruled that the mine cannot double its output or increase its life to 2048. Meanwhile in The Hague, the International Court of Justice has ruled that nations have an obligation to prevent climate catastrophe and may face legal consequences for making the situation worse.
At both a state and federal level, Labor governments are fast running out of excuses for their hypocrisy on fossil fuels.
Giant-killer speaks
The best speech in parliament last week was the first for Labor’s new member for Dickson, Ali France, who defeated Peter Dutton on her third attempt.
Having survived the loss of her leg in a horrific accident, her ex-husband to cancer and then her 19-year-old son Henry to leukaemia, there was an impression that beating the former opposition leader was not the most difficult thing the Queenslander has done recently.
With many of the key people in her life present in the public gallery, including the former premier of Queensland, Steven Miles, Ali France moved many listeners to tears as she explained her journey into politics, which she described as the result of ‘hundreds of little steps – a lifetime of small acts of kindness and support from so many good people…
‘Some of you, like my Henry, are in another place, hopefully looking on with a big, wide smile.’
She described herself as the product of ‘generational activism’, beginning with her grandmother, who was never a member of the Labor Party but loved Gough Whitlam, and went all the way to the High Court to challenge gerrymandering under Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Fighting for fair
‘Fighting for fair is in my blood,’ said Ali France. She talked about the importance to her family of Medibank, ending conscription and free university.
‘Medibank meant my uncle, Gerard, who had cystic fibrosis, could see a specialist in Brisbane and receive lifelong treatment at our local Prince Charles hospital.
‘Medicare is Labor’s heart, but it is also mine. Medicare saved my life and gave my Henry the very best chance of surviving leukaemia.’
She said her father, a unionist who eventually became the state member for Southport, taught her that if you want change, you have to work for it. She initially decided to right wrongs by studying journalism, rather than following in her father’s footsteps, but her life changed dramatically after the birth of her two children, and then the loss of her leg in 2011, when she was hit by an out of control car and pinned against a wall.
Ali France thanked the people who had saved her life, and Munjed Al Muderis, the refugee orthopaedic surgeon from Iraq who made it possible for her to walk again. She said this saved her from a severe mental health spiral, and opened the door to eventually representing Australia as a paralympic canoeist, while also giving her a lived understanding of disability.
She thanked her surviving son Zach for his unconditional love. ‘I hope I have shown you what is possible even when the universe gives you grief,’ she said. ‘Kindness, a helping hand, opportunity and open doors have got me here, and that’s what I will be giving to the people of Dickson.’
Hopefully Ali France will receive more support and respect from her Labor colleagues than Maxine McKew did after she defeated John Howard in equally dramatic circumstances.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
You can find more of his writing at Patreon and Gumroad.
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