Wednesday’s Question Time began with a very simple and direct question from the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister.
Can someone who supports Hamas pass Australia’s character test?
Anthony Albanese refused to answer the question. He gushed that it was a divisive question and rebuked the opposition leader for asking it.
Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, but he didn’t want to give a direct answer to a fairly simple question.
How can an Australian Prime Minister not answer whether or not a Hamas supporter should pass the test to become a citizen?
The answer is probably no! Maybe not.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke was then asked an equally direct question: Has anyone in your constituency put pressure on you to get a visa from the Gaza war zone?
Before the Minister had a chance to decline to answer the question – which is exactly what he eventually did – the Prime Minister attempted to intervene with a point of order intended to declare it out of order.
Peter Dutton (pictured) wanted direct answers to direct questions in parliament today, but didn’t get them.
The Labour Spokesman did not allow that to happen and found a way around the attempted blockade. It was an act of genuine independence from the Speaker worthy of applause. After which Burke refused to answer the question anyway.
The new immigration minister also refused to say whether anyone granted a visa from the Middle East war zone had not undergone an ASIO security check.
While Labor may not like these questions, and some may consider them deliberately divisive, they are quite reasonable questions to which Australians might like to know the answers.
Even if they are uncomfortable questions for a Labour Party seeking to maintain a delicate balance between retaining general electoral support and retaining support in inner-city electorates and among Muslim communities who might have some sympathy for the plight of Palestine and even Hamas.
But answering tough questions is a leader’s job, and that’s what Question Time is supposed to do. At least in theory.
In practice, it is more of a theatre of the absurd: a platform for ministers to answer questions from their own party, written by themselves and distributed to rank-and-file MPs to ask.
Today was no exception.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers made a pre-emptive decision, telling the retiring MP that her question was a clear example of why she will be missed after politics.
Anthony Albanese (pictured) has refused to confirm that supporting a terrorist organisation would result in potential Australian citizens failing the citizenship test.
Really? Does Chalmers think his ability to parrot back the question you asked him just before he entered the chamber sums up his contribution to public life?
It would be a brilliant insult if he had put it that way. Perhaps he would. Not that he will need her vote in the future, when Chalmers inevitably decides to attack the Labour leadership in the next parliament or the one after that.
The theatre of the absurd continued when Labour’s Peter Khalil stood up to ask his own question, which was handed to Dorothy Dixer.
Khalil, the government’s recently appointed special envoy for social cohesion, was speaking shortly after one of the exchanges over immigration that Labor says the Coalition is using to stoke divisions.
But the special envoy for social cohesion did not delve into the subject, as his new role might have done, but obediently raised the issue he had been tasked with: child care.
Just when you thought the day’s question time might get even shorter, former immigration minister Andrew Giles was brought in to answer Dixer on his new skills portfolio.
The question and answer were unremarkable, but at least Giles did not trip over his own incompetence, a welcome change from his bumbling ways before he was ousted from the immigration ministry in the reshuffle a fortnight ago.