Australia politics live: fiery exchange in Senate as Hanson calls for investigation of alleged Fatima Payman citizenship issue

Andrew Messenger

Giant rally by CFMEU and ETU to march on Queensland parliament

Thousands of CFMEU and Electrical Trades Union members are preparing to march on Queensland parliament, rallying against a decision by the state’s Liberal National Party government’s decision to cancel union safety rules.

It’s the second straight day of protest – and just the second sitting day in office for the new LNP government.

It comes after deputy premier Jarrod Bleijie canned Queensland’s best practice industry conditions regulations earlier this month.

They only apply to government jobs worth over $100m, and guarantee workers the right to down tools if air temperature reaches 35 degrees, and double time for work in the rain, among other requirements. The government also required union officials to give 24 hours’ notice before accessing a job site.

ETU state secretary Peter Ong said the government had “attacked construction workers who are building this state, using the mantra of ‘productivity’.”

The LNP’s war on workers has resumed. First it was BPICs, now it’s health and safety… what’s next?

Sacked former CFMEU national president and Queensland assistant secretary, Jade Ingham, spoke at the rally, vowing to continue his battle with the union’s administration.

Parliament sits this afternoon in a ceremonial hearing at the Legislative Council.

PM rules no deal on Nature Positive legislation

Karen Middleton

The prime minister has killed off any deal with the Greens over the government’s Nature Positive legislation to establish a national environmental protection authority, meaning the bill will not pass before Parliament rises at the end of the week.

Guardian Australia has confirmed that negotiations on the bill collapsed after Anthony Albanese intervened to rule there should be no acceptance of the Greens conditions.

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young criticised the move after protracted negotiations with environment minister Tanya Plibersek, citing the influence of the mining industry – particularly in Western Australia.

The Greens put a deal on the table and the Government has walked away. The prime minister has been bullied by the mining and logging lobby again … The Greens want to get laws that would actually provide some protection for nature but Labor couldn’t even entertain protecting forests and critical habitat in an extinction crisis.

A spokesperson for the prime minister declined to comment.

Guardian Australia understands the legislation will remain on the parliamentary notice paper and negotiations could recommence next year when – and if – Parliament resumes before the next election.

Peter Hannam

October CPI probably showed a pick-up in inflation

We’ll shortly get October inflation figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, so here’s what’s expected.

The headline consumer price index is tipped by economists to have risen last month to 2.3% in October from a year earlier. It was 2.1% in September, and had been on the retreat for five months.

The underlying inflation rate, dubbed the trimmed mean, was 3.2% in September, and that may have picked up too.

The monthly numbers aren’t as complete as the quarterly ones but they do offer some indication of price pressures in the economy. (The Reserve Bank is also keener on the underlying numbers than the headline ones given the role of rebates in artificially constraining prices.)

A weekly survey by ANZ and Roy Morgan noted inflation expectations ticked up lately by 0.3 percentage points to 5% (and the rolling four-week moving average rose 0.1ppt to 4.8%), a reminder that the public isn’t convinced inflation is definitely on the skids.

Anyway, there should be some interesting updates on price trends for rents, fuel and electricity. Stay tuned for the 11.30am AEDT release.

Christopher Knaus

Parliamentary inquiry report highlights delays with national redress scheme

Late last night, a parliamentary inquiry released a report damning of the delays with the national redress scheme, which was set up to offer compensation and apologies to survivors of institutional child abuse in the wake of the royal commission.

The report warned that the delays are now so significant that survivors may be blocked from accessing justice. It has called for the federal, state and territory governments to extend the life of the scheme beyond its current 2018 cessation date.

The average processing time for a claim is now 14.9 months, the slowest on record, and the scheme has been inundated by new applications for redress in its last year of operation. The inquiry warned:

Unless changes are made, some survivors could miss out on redress.

Benita Kolovos

Full list of exams impacted by Victorian ‘cheat sheet’ bungle

Victoria’s education minister, Ben Carroll, has just released a list of the 56 exams impacted by the “inadvertent publication of examination material on exam cover sheets”.

English and English as an additional language – which are mandatory for VCE students – are on the list.

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority interim chief executive, Marcia Devlin, said the material contained in the cover sheets would not have affected the student’s responses:

The material that was published early for the English exam was either already in the public domain through advice on how the English exam structure this year, so general as to be of no assistance to the student.

So I can assure all 46,000 students who sat the English exam this year, that the marking of the exam will continue as usual and that the normal quality assurance process is used every year by the visit as well.

Caitlin Cassidy

Greens say Labor’s public school funding ‘a reheated Coalition-era model’

Continuing from our last post, the Greens have vowed to campaign on public school funding at next year’s election, questioning why Labor have kept the legislated commonwealth share of public school funding at 20% as a floor under the bill instead of increasing it to 25% as teachers’ unions have called for.

The Greens’ spokesperson on primary and secondary education, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, called the bill “weak-kneed incrementalism”.

Before the election Labor promised to deliver full funding to public schools. Instead they’ve served up a reheated Coalition-era model that keeps the legislated share of commonwealth funding at 20% … meanwhile, the Labor federal government pours $51m a day into private schools, most of which are overfunded.

Government legislation passed allowing it to increase public school funding beyond 20%

Caitlin Cassidy

The federal government has passed legislation allowing it to increase funding for public schools beyond 20%, in a critical step for Labor to deliver on its promises reached with four states and territories.

The legislation, passed overnight, also ensures public schools which remain largely under-resourced according to the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) will not have their funding go backwards.

Under the former model, enforced by the Coalition, the commonwealth provides 80% of SRS funding for non-government schools, with the states providing the other 20%. The reverse is in place for public schools, with the commonwealth providing 20% and the states providing 75% – leaving a 5% gap.

The education minister, Jason Clare, said the Liberal party “ripped the guts out of public school funding”.

This legislation will stop that from ever happening again.

The legislation will allow Labor to make good on its offer to increase its funding share to 22.5% from next year – reached with the ACT, Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania. Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales are holding out – demanding it front a full 5% increase.

If they don’t sign on, current funding arrangements will continue for another 12 months.

New laws to ban dodgy taxi drivers from industry

Elias Visontay

Rogue taxi drivers in New South Wales who don’t use their meter, overcharge or refuse short trips will soon be banished from the industry if they’re convicted of fare misbehaviour twice.

The NSW government has announced its latest crackdown on taxi drivers found to repeatedly rip off customers, a phenomenon which the NSW Taxi Council says has grown in recent years after deregulation that made it difficult to weed dodgy drivers out of the sector.

Over the past two years, the Point to Point Transport Commission has fined 900 rogue drivers caught in the act by covert officers, while a complaint hotline for customers who have been overcharged has led to 2500 refunds.

The fine for overcharging was increased to $1,000 this year but some drivers continued to reoffend. More than 220 drivers ignored initial fines and reoffended within a year, data obtained by the Guardian under freedom of information laws revealed.

Under the new “two strikes and you’re out” laws, which come into effect on 6 December, any driver guilty of overcharging or refusing a fare two times will be banned from the industry, which will extend to rideshare apps such as Uber and Didi.

However, the new laws require a taxi driver to be found guilty on two separate occasions, which requires a court conviction, raising questions about whether the two strikes policy will weed out many repeat offenders.

At a press conference today, Point to Point Transport commissioner Anthony Wing was unable to say how many of the 900 drivers fined so far had ever been convicted in court, but said his commission would begin investigating and taking to court the most egregious of fines and complaints, as opposed to those found to be overcharging just a couple of dollars.

Mike Bowers was in the Senate chamber and captured some photos when an exchange over an alleged section 44 citizenship issue led to flying papers and yelling (see earlier post).

And Mike Tsikas from AAP captured the moment Thorpe gave the middle finger as she exited the chamber: