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'Least they can do': Labor's second-term reveal

8 74
sunday

The first week of the 48th Parliament was very revealing.

Regular readers would know the question we have been asking is “what will Labor do with power?”. Now we have the answer.

The least possible.

Yes, to be fair it has only been a week in this Parliament and we are yet to see what the Albanese government’s version of “ambitious” ultimately ends up looking like, but we have been given the direction.

The very first bill the government introduced was legislation that will reduce HECS/HELP debt by 20 per cent. That is, as Ross Gittens of The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, the very least they could do. 

The bill helps those with university debt now, but does nothing to address the cost of going to university. It does nothing to correct the failure of the Morrison government Job-Ready Graduates program, which has seen minimal students choose to swap fields, but in some cases led the cost of university degrees to increase by 117 per cent.

Labor has been in power for more than three years. This is not a new problem and it has delivered what it said it would at the election – the least it could do.

This same week, Penny Wong signed a statement with 23 other countries and the UN calling for an immediate end to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

The language used in the statement was much less active, but it is the strongest to date. It is also, the very least Australia could do. 

There is no action accompanying the statement, just the threat of unnamed actions if Israel does not allow........

© The New Daily