Tony Burke via sendgrid.info
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Neville —
Let’s get straight into it. Here’s the #5and5.
BEST:
- It’s not every week you save the pension. Your campaign with Bill Shorten and Jenny Macklin secured an essential victory for Australian pensioners this week by forcing the Government to back down on its planned cuts to the age pension and increase in the retirement age to 70. This is only round one – they’ve already said they’ll try to cut it again. Your help is going to be needed right up to election day.
- There’s been some divisive language carelessly thrown around lately. On Thursday Bill made it clear that Labor stands for a united and cohesive Australia that embraces respect and rejects racism, hatred and bigotry. Check out Bill’s great speech here.
- Also on Thursday Labor MPs added their voices to Bill’s to show that Labor stands united on supporting cultural respect and community harmony. This is about common decency to our fellow Australians. You can watch some great moments from these speeches here.
- The Country Caucus, which is chaired by Joel Fitzgibbon, hammered the Government for neglecting rural and regional Australia. The representation these MPs provide for the bush is relentless and leaves the National Party as nothing more than Libs in hats.
- Talk about getting a message out! Last week I posted a video about Christopher Pyne’s higher education cuts after he said that Labor can’t be heard (you can watch it here if you haven’t seen it already). Well, thanks to you we have been heard. The video has been shared by more than 10,000 of you and has reached nearly one million people.
WORST:
- Around the same time Tony Abbott was preparing to fly to New York last week, 120 world leaders were meeting for the United Nations climate change summit to tackle climate change. It’s a shame Tony Abbott wasn’t one of them. How can we have meaningful action on climate change if our PM won’t even show up.
- More than 3,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa so far. The United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières and even President Barack Obama have called on nations to offer personnel and technical support to stop its deadly spread. At the UN the Australian Government co-sponsored a resolution calling on countries to send people to help, only to then refuse to support Australians who want to offer their expertise.
- For a period of about four hours on Thursday afternoon it looked like Australia was going to have segregation in the public galleries in Parliament House. The latest reports suggest this now won’t go ahead. Nonetheless, it was a disappointing moment for our Parliament.
- “Look there’s your dole, go home eat Cheezels, get on the Xbox.” That’s how Liberal MP Ewan Jones defended the Government’s decision to leave people under 30 with nothing to live on for six months. Later that day he tried to deny the Government even had this policy. Sounds like Ewan would be more useful on an X-Box than as an MP.
- On Monday Bronwyn Bishop suspended her 200th Labor member of Parliament. To put this into perspective, at this rate the Speaker is on track to hit 600 suspensions this term, which will account for around one third of all suspensions since Federation. I’ll let you make your own judgments on that.
Song of the week is The Beatles with When I’m Sixty Four, which is dedicated to Kevin Andrews’ attempt to change the chorus to When I’m Seventy.
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Tony Burke via sendgrid.info
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|
|
|
|
|
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Neville —
Let’s get straight into it. Here’s the #5and5.
BEST:
- It’s not every week you save the pension. Your campaign with Bill Shorten and Jenny Macklin secured an essential victory for Australian pensioners this week by forcing the Government to back down on its planned cuts to the age pension and increase in the retirement age to 70. This is only round one – they’ve already said they’ll try to cut it again. Your help is going to be needed right up to election day.
- There’s been some divisive language carelessly thrown around lately. On Thursday Bill made it clear that Labor stands for a united and cohesive Australia that embraces respect and rejects racism, hatred and bigotry. Check out Bill’s great speech here.
- Also on Thursday Labor MPs added their voices to Bill’s to show that Labor stands united on supporting cultural respect and community harmony. This is about common decency to our fellow Australians. You can watch some great moments from these speeches here.
- The Country Caucus, which is chaired by Joel Fitzgibbon, hammered the Government for neglecting rural and regional Australia. The representation these MPs provide for the bush is relentless and leaves the National Party as nothing more than Libs in hats.
- Talk about getting a message out! Last week I posted a video about Christopher Pyne’s higher education cuts after he said that Labor can’t be heard (you can watch it here if you haven’t seen it already). Well, thanks to you we have been heard. The video has been shared by more than 10,000 of you and has reached nearly one million people.
WORST:
- Around the same time Tony Abbott was preparing to fly to New York last week, 120 world leaders were meeting for the United Nations climate change summit to tackle climate change. It’s a shame Tony Abbott wasn’t one of them. How can we have meaningful action on climate change if our PM won’t even show up.
- More than 3,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa so far. The United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières and even President Barack Obama have called on nations to offer personnel and technical support to stop its deadly spread. At the UN the Australian Government co-sponsored a resolution calling on countries to send people to help, only to then refuse to support Australians who want to offer their expertise.
- For a period of about four hours on Thursday afternoon it looked like Australia was going to have segregation in the public galleries in Parliament House. The latest reports suggest this now won’t go ahead. Nonetheless, it was a disappointing moment for our Parliament.
- “Look there’s your dole, go home eat Cheezels, get on the Xbox.” That’s how Liberal MP Ewan Jones defended the Government’s decision to leave people under 30 with nothing to live on for six months. Later that day he tried to deny the Government even had this policy. Sounds like Ewan would be more useful on an X-Box than as an MP.
- On Monday Bronwyn Bishop suspended her 200th Labor member of Parliament. To put this into perspective, at this rate the Speaker is on track to hit 600 suspensions this term, which will account for around one third of all suspensions since Federation. I’ll let you make your own judgments on that.
Song of the week is The Beatles with When I’m Sixty Four, which is dedicated to Kevin Andrews’ attempt to change the chorus to When I’m Seventy.
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