Australia conveniently aligns with Donald Trump on beef exports

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4 days ago

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.
Trade Minister Don Farrell did well to keep a straight face.
"We don't link biosecurity issues with trade issues," he told Sky News Australia on Thursday morning.
His comments came as it emerged Australia would lift the final biosecurity restrictions on beef from the United States, once President Donald Trump's biggest trade grievances with Australia.
According to the government, it's merely a departmental decision taken after a decade of review. The US, meanwhile, insists it is "yet another example" of Trump's negotiating prowess.
If it's all a coincidence, it's the kind that would even make Deidre Chambers blush.
Trump has long had a bee in his bonnet over beef, having claimed that Australia banned US imports, all while his country imports billions worth from Down Under, even if the facts suggest otherwise.
The US has been able to export its beef since 2019 but certain products were banned amid concerns over mad cow disease in beef originally sourced from Canada and Mexico.
After repeatedly arguing it wouldn't trade away biosecurity standards to assuage Trump, the government now argues it is satisfied with improvements in US cattle traceability.
Few expect the decision will see a flood of US beef to Australia, thanks in part to record low American herd numbers. If anything, some in the domestic cattle industry hope it might see the US offer a more sympathetic ear for Australian exports.
But Nationals leader David Littleproud is demanding an independent inquiry. He went as far as to suggest that the decision was "traded away to appease Donald Trump".
Beef is Australia's top export to the United States, something that has only increased since Trump imposed a 10 per cent tariff on imports earlier this year, making more expensive the cheeseburgers he famously loves.
Andrew Leigh is experiencing an unusual sight for a Labor frontbencher — the prime minister's face.
Such was the scale of Labor's landslide victory in May that its 94 Lower House MPs are unable to fit on just the government benches.
It leaves Leigh, an assistant minister, sitting in the seat once occupied by Adam Bandt, the former Greens leader who lost his seat to Labor at the election.
Gone are the days of Leigh having to look at the back of the PM's head, he now has a crystal clear view across to Labor's frontbench, aided by the lack of any Coalition frontbenchers in front of him.
A Labor MP faces expulsion for crossing the floor on a vote, a lesson senator Fatima Payman learned last year. In Leigh's case, he's got no option but to cross the floor to vote.
The return of the parliament brought with it all the usual pomp and circumstance.
Re-elected Speaker Milton Dick was ceremonially dragged to the chair with so little resistance that the prime minister noted: "I've never seen you run as fast as you did towards that high office."
Not even father of the house Bob Katter's attempts to assert his own allegiance — to the Australian people, not the King — could derail the proceedings inside the parliament.
Outside though, it was a different matter, with protesters calling for the government to impose sanctions on Israel for attacks on Gaza, preventing a 19-gun salute marking the official opening.
The return of Question Time brought with it nervous ministers getting their first outings at answering (or rather not answering) questions. Behind them, nervous backbenchers closely studied the scripted questions they were slated to ask.
Sussan Ley too got her chance to ask her first questions as the newly installed opposition leader.
The first woman to hold that role, she rolled into the chamber flanked with three women from her shadow cabinet.
Together, they represented two-thirds of Liberal women in the House, levels that leave them comfortably able to fit into a Tarago should they ever want to travel together.
Speculation had been building about how Albanese would navigate Ley sitting opposite him.
In the end, there was little interaction between the two, with their respective treasurers instead left to spar over taxation. By Thursday they shared what looked like terser words as Defence Minister Richard Marles defended Labor's national security credentials, but it was a far cry from the heated interactions some of her predecessors had with Albanese.
The government, meanwhile, was eager to yell from the rooftops about the first bills it was introducing into the parliament — from cutting student debt, to bolstering childcare safety and protecting penalty rates — as symbols of its agenda.
Claims that these are the first bills are a bit of a farce, when you consider the actual first bill introduced was an amendment to the Therapeutic Goods Act (TGA), introduced by Albanese on Tuesday.
The government defends it rhetoric about the student debt bill being its first, arguing the TGA amendment is ceremonial to assert its control of the chamber. Don't expect to hear Labor championing its actual first bill anytime soon.
Across in the red room, Green Mehreen Faruqi found herself grounded from taking part in any overseas Senate delegations for the duration of the parliament.
Faruqi's sin was holding a sign that called for sanctions on Israel while all parliamentarians were in the Senate for Governor-General Sam Mostyn's address on Tuesday.
She later asked Albanese as he was leaving the chamber: "Prime minister, Gaza is starving, will you sanction Israel?"
On Wednesday, Labor's Senate leader Penny Wong moved a motion that sanctioned Faruqi for using a prop, accused her of being an attention seeker who had drawn the governor general and High Court chief justice into a political debate and banned her from any overseas travel representing the Senate.
"I can tell you this: the Greens will not be silent as this genocide unfolds," Faruqi told the chamber.
"You will not be able to intimidate me or any of my colleagues.
"We will never stop fighting for freedom for Palestine and all those oppressed people. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
For new MPs and senators, getting your head around the arcane rules of the parliament can be a confusing task.
But as this week showed, tenure doesn't necessarily come with a grasp of how the place works.
On Tuesday, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson nominated relative newcomer David Pocock to be Senate president.
The surprised ACT independent declined the nomination and the Senate re-elected Labor's Sue Lines for the top job.
Called to please explain her decision, Hanson (who is no fan of Lines) said it wasn't intended as a reward for her fellow crossbencher.
"In the last term of parliament, 220 bills were actually guillotined from debate," she told ABC Radio Canberra.
"David Pocock assisted the government in allowing that to happen with the majority of those bills ... it's wrong.
After almost a decade in the Senate, it seems Hanson hasn't realised that the president gets a vote in every division.
So not only was she offering Pocock a pay rise and promotion, but he still would have been able to vote however he wanted.