The Morrison Government is actively subverting democracy by twice in the past two sitting weeks using procedural games to avoid greater transparency on rorts.
 
The Government has today blocked Greens Senate Leader Larissa Waters from postponing a motion which would require them to disclose when ministers have departed from advice of independent bodies under Commonwealth Grants Guidelines, with risk of pork barrelling.
 

The Prime Minister must address the national crisis of women’s death by violence with a $5 billion investment in domestic violence response and full implementation of recommendations from previous inquiries, say the Greens.

Greens Senate Leader and spokesperson on Women, Senator Larissa Waters, said, “The Prime Minister stood in parliament this week and said “the system” has failed Hannah Clarke, he must take responsibility for ending this crisis in deaths from violence.

"The Prime Minister has the purse strings to the system and can fix it.

The Greens will move to get big money out of politics this week by introducing a bill to cap donations to political parties at  $1000 per year and to ban all party political donations from dirty industries buying influence: the mining, banking, gambling, alcohol and property industries.

Greens Senate Leader Senator Larissa Waters has today introduced a bill in the Senate to ban thermal coal mines in the Galilee Basin, effectively outlawing the Adani mine and Clive Palmer’s proposed coal mine.

She said opening up the Galilee Basin for thermal coal mining was a carbon bomb that would push global warming to unsafe levels and kill off the Great Barrier Reef.

“The Galilee Basin is a carbon bomb and in reality the science demands we don’t open up a single new coal mine,” Senator Waters said.

The Federal Government’s announcement today of a pitiful $2.4 million funding for men's behaviour change programs to address domestic violence is a drop in the ocean and will not stem the tide of violence against women, the Greens say.

”This pitiful and belated amount shows the Government continuing to ignore women and experts on the scale of action needed to address domestic violence - instead they give Pauline Hanson an inquiry platform to call women liars,” Greens Senate Leader and spokesperson on women, Senator Larissa Waters said today.

Coral bleaching in the far north of the Great Barrier Reef shows the Federal and Qld Governments are failing to deal with the impact of climate change on the natural icon and could see it listed on UNESCO’s ‘in danger’ list, according to the Greens.

Scientists have today reported significant coral bleaching at three locations in the Great Barrier Reef’s far north. There is a heightened alert for a potential mass bleaching event over the next two to four weeks.

The Greens are calling for an urgent crisis response to the number of women killed by violence and greater accuracy in media reporting following the murder of a Brisbane-based mother and three children by their father yesterday.

“There have now been eight women killed by violence in 2020, after 61 were murdered last year, yet there was more response from the Prime Minister to the needles-in-strawberry incident,” said Greens Senate Leader and spokesperson for women, Senator Larissa Waters.

The Australian Greens have responded to reports that India will stop importing thermal coal within 4 years, saying that it is the death knell for the Adani project and the beginning of the end of Australia’s thermal coal industry.

India’s Minister of Coal and Mines on Tuesday reportedly said as part of a planning meeting for the future of the coal industry that the country would stop importing coal by financial year 2023/24.

Quotes attributable to Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt MP:

The Government has today used its numbers in the lower house to narrowly avoid voting on a motion to pass the Greens’ bill for a national corruption watchdog with teeth.

“Today the Prime Minister has once again dodged scrutiny and integrity by gagging and delaying a vote on whether to have a strong federal corruption watchdog,” said Greens Senate Leader and democracy spokesperson, Senator Larissa Waters.

The Australian Senate has sent a message to the Morrison Government that it wants a federal corruption watchdog with teeth, voting for the Government to bring on the Greens’ National Integrity Commission Bill in the House of Representatives for a vote in the February 2020 sittings.

The Greens bill passed the Senate in September 2019.
 
Greens leader in the Senate Larissa Waters said,  “The Senate has today sent a clear message that it won’t stand for the weak Government model for a Federal ICAC which is already long delayed and ineffective.