John,

Okay so the subject line isn’t really true. We only sat for one day so a typical #5and5 doesn’t really work. But I want you to know the full story - including some of the behind the scenes information that wasn’t reported - of an extraordinary day in the parliament yesterday. Here’s the timeline:

SATURDAY
At 12:15pm Speaker Tony Smith and I spent about an hour in the chamber trying to work out how we could make parliament work under the new social distancing rules. Each side had organised for 30 members to stay home so we never had more than 100 people in the room. We decided to spread everyone out and only have one person to each bench. We organised for extra seats at the back. The public galleries were closed and the media had to observe from the glassed-in galleries normally reserved for school groups. Even something as simple as where the tellers stand to count a vote had to be changed to avoid having a heap of people next to each other during a division. Doors were kept permanently open to stop lots of people using the same door handle. We had to make sure that parliament set an example of how the new rules need to be observed to try to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

SUNDAY
At 11am the Government announced new economic measures and Jim Chalmers is sent updated copies of the legislation that needs to go through the parliament the next day. While the public confusion was continuing over schools and what people should and shouldn’t do, Labor Shadow Ministers and their staff were working through the legislation.

MONDAY
7am - Meeting with Leader of the House Christian Porter to agree on procedures for the day.

8am - Labor tactics meeting to work out question time approach

8:30am - Shadow ministry meets to discuss the Government’s package

9am - Caucus meets and resolves to support the legislation and move a number of amendments.

10am - Parliament begins with all of us sitting 1.5 metres apart. In the House the Speaker opens with a statement explaining the procedures for the day. Next Christian Porter moves the motion to suspend standing orders for the day and I indicate Labor’s support for the motion.

Social distancing in the House. PHOTO: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

10:12am - Statements from the PM and Anthony Albanese. There was a fair bit of coverage of these statements and I’ve linked to Anthony’s speech here. He made clear our approach for the day would be to support the measures that needed to go through the parliament but to still propose amendments where we believed they could be improved. He said we’d be supporting the measures not because they were perfect but because they were urgent.

10.46am - Josh Frydenberg introduces the eight bills and speaks to them together.

11.07am - Jim Chalmers responds and calls today a “defining test for our country and its leaders, and a test for our people and their parliament”.  He then points out some of the key problems with the bills, including that the Coronavirus supplement will not begin until 27 April 2020; expanded access to the Jobseeker Payment and Youth Allowance won't begin until 27 April 2020; most people won't receive the first payment to households until April 2020 or the second payment until July 2020; pensioners won't see a boost in their income due to the change in deeming rates until 1 May 2020; and employers won't receive a cash flow boost until 28 April 2020.

11.30am - Chris Bowen outlines the health challenge and tells a heartfelt story about how his grandmother lost her mother in the Spanish flu pandemic:

“102,000 Australians gave their lives in the flu pandemic. One of them was my great-grandmother, Magdalene McNally, who died at age 29 a few years after giving birth to my grandmother. Obviously, I never knew her; she died 50 years before I was born. I don't know what her personality was, what she felt about life, what she felt in her dying days—I have no idea. I have one photo of her, her wedding photo. That's all I know about my great-grandmother. But I know this. The impact was long lasting. Eighty years after her death, as my grandmother was dying, and it was obvious to all—to her and to us, her children and grandchildren—that she was dying, we asked her: 'Where would you like to be buried, Nan?' Eighty years after the death of her mother, she said, 'Put me next to mum, please', which is exactly what we did. Eighty years of grief that she went through, not having really known her mother—her mother died when she was an infant. Eighty years later we remedied that the best we could, by burying her next to her mother, burying them together, reuniting them.”

11:42am - Richard Marles talks about how he had once believed that September 11, 2001 would be the defining, historical moment of his life. 

“From that day until now I have absolutely believed that that would be the most significant historical event that I would live through. But as we look at what's playing out in the world today and we think about what the next few months hold for our country, perhaps, amazingly, a different story is actually going to be written.”

11:56am - Anthony Albanese speaks again to outline Labor’s response to the stimulus bills. Confirms we will vote for the package but also has concerns about gaps and inconsistencies. Also expresses concern that bushfire-affected communities are being forgotten because of this crisis.

Keeping our hands clean. PHOTO: Alex Ellinghausen/NINE

12:10pm - I outline why the package doesn’t do enough for workers who are now losing their jobs en masse. I also point out it doesn’t do enough for the arts sector, which is being decimated.

12:22pm - Catherine King talks about the effect on airlines and transport companies as travel restrictions and social distancing bite.

12.38pm - More Labor speeches. Brendan O’Connor also talks about the effect on workers, and particularly on small business; Jason Clare calls for new laws to stop people being evicted from their homes during the crisis; Stephen Jones talks about the long-term risks of letting people access their superannuation accounts now; Bill Shorten speaks of the effect of the crisis on people with a disability and their carers; Joel Fitzgibbon talks about the effect the crisis might have on rural and regional Australia: and Andrew Giles speaks against the racism that has been emerging against the Chinese community since the pandemic began.

2pm - So for question time I’ll give you all our questions so you know what we pursued. There’s a link here if you want to read the full Hansard with the answers. But if you wanted to know what an unusual question time it was think about this: no one interjected, no one was warned, no one was ejected, no points of order were raised, and at no stage did a Government minister blame Labor for anything! Truly historic.

We asked:

• Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:01): My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the number of COVID-19 cases in Australia is doubling every three days and if this continues the pressure on our health system will become enormous? Does the Prime Minister agree that our national objective must be to bring this outbreak under control, as South Korea has done?
  
• Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:07): My question is again to the Prime Minister. What steps is the Prime Minister taking to improve the communication of measures related to the COVID-19 outbreak, including the rules on testing, advice to parents on school closures and the difference between essential and non-essential activities?
  
• Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (14:13) My question is for the Prime Minister. I refer to the government's expansion of Medicare telehealth rebates to some patients and services. Will the government expand telehealth rebates to all patients and services so that Australians don't have to visit a health provider during this crisis when it's not absolutely necessary? In particular, will the Prime Minister agree to expand telehealth rebates to mental health services and also provide mental health screening to people affected by COVID-19 and ensure dedicated services for children, parents and health workers?
  
• Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (14:24): My question is to the Prime Minister. Frontline health, aged-care and home-care workers have said that Australia's response to COVID-19 has been undermined by shortages of personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns. What is the government doing to address this urgent shortage?
  
• Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (14:32): My question is to the Prime Minister. Who is responsible for allowing passengers to disembark the Ruby Princess cruise ship, many of whom are now presenting with coronavirus symptoms? Why isn't Australia taking the temperature of all international passengers on arrival at our airports and ship terminals still today?
  
• Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (14:37): My question is for the Prime Minister. What are Treasury's forecasts for the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, including on growth, jobs and businesses?
  
• Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:42): My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. According to the government's proposed legislation before the House, the coronavirus supplement will not begin until 27 April, most people won't receive the first payment to households until April and the second payment until July, pensioners won't see a boost in their income due to the changing deeming rates until 1 May, and employers won't receive a cash flow boost until 28 April. When we all agree that the economy needs immediate support, why will these payments take so long to start?
  
• Mr BURKE (Watson—Manager of Opposition Business) (14:49): My questions to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that, under the business cash flow measure, businesses will be paid based on their staffing levels in the first quarter of this year, not on how many staff they have kept on through the crisis? Doesn't that mean that employers who stand down staff will receive the same assistance as employers who keep people in work?
  
• Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (14:54): My question is also to the Minister for Government Services. I refer to the fact that the myGov website crashed shortly before 9 am this morning. Was this because the site only permits a limited number of people to access the site at once and was simply overwhelmed, or was there another reason? When will the delays be over?  
• Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (Gorton) (14:59): My question is for the Prime Minister. In response to COVID-19, other countries are providing wage subsidies of up to 80 per cent. The Australian government hasn't guaranteed any worker will benefit from a wage subsidy and, for a worker on a medium wage, that subsidy could be just 20 per cent. How will the government guarantee employers are able to keep workers on during this crisis with only a 20 per cent wage subsidy?
  
• Mr MARLES (Corio—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:06): My question is to the Prime Minister, and it concerns the critical importance of education. Will the government guarantee resources to ensure that all students who can't attend school during the COVID-19 crisis won't miss out on learning opportunities?
  

3:20pm - After that it was back to the Bills, with further speakers including Pat Conroy, Mike Freelander, Helen Haines, Rebekah Sharkie, Zali Steggall and Adam Bandt.

4:00pm - Some of the people who read this email love parliamentary procedure. If you don’t then (1) you are a normal human being, and (2) feel free to skip this section. One of the things we had to work out was how to avoid having too many members of parliament touching the same surfaces before we returned to every part of the country. We were about to have divisions on amendments moved by Jim Chalmers (dealing with the gaps in the payments system), me (dealing with the fact that the package gave the same payment to businesses even if they sacked all their staff) and Stephen Jones (about the need to not wreck our system of compulsory superannuation). So normally you can only have one amendment at a time. The only way around this was for me to move an amendment to the amendment and for Stephen to then move an amendment to the amendment to the amendment.  

But for these votes to take place it would mean we would all move to the government benches and they’d move to ours. So to avoid this instead of asking “that the amendment be agreed to” the Speaker put the question “that the amendment be disagreed to”. We were asked whether we disagreed with the amendment to the amendment to the amendment moved by Stephen Jones and voted “No”. And for the first time in a very long time all three amendments were defeated because the majority had voted “yes”.

5pm – Bills pass the House and are sent to the Senate. We then went straight on to debate the supply bills so the Government has the money to deal with this crisis. Jo Ryan, Tony Zappia, Patrick Gorman, Susan Templeman, Matt Thistlethwaite, Peter Khalil, and Milton Dick, spoke and then these bills also passed with our support.

6.44pm – The Government introduces a new sitting calendar for the year. In the middle of a crisis they cancel every sitting day between now and 11 August. This was extraordinary. It’s true that given the nature of the crisis we may get to the sittings that had been planned for May and June and find that it’s logistically very difficult to bring us together. But to cancel them now and pretend that we don’t need a parliament for five months is absurd. It means there will be no parliamentary scrutiny of $84 billion of taxpayers’ money that is about to go out the door. It also presumes that even though the Government was adding and changing provisions right up until the day the bills were before the parliament that somehow we now have everything right and there’s no need for the parliament anymore. Watch this space. If the Government fails to bring parliament back before August it will simply mean they’ve refused to respond to what happens in our economy in the coming weeks.

PHOTO: Alex Ellinghausen/NINE

6.44pm – At the same time in the Senate they introduce the stimulus bills. Our speakers include Kristina Keneally, Katy Gallagher and Tim Ayres. In the Senate we helped achieve a number of amendments:

• The $550 per fortnight coronavirus payment will now be extended to students.
• We've secured a commitment to fix the income test to make it easier for people to get support by loosening the test on their partner's income.
• We've also secured a new power for payments to people who fall through the cracks.
  

10.10pm – Bills pass the Senate with these amendments.

10.57pm – Bills return to the house amended and are passed into law.

11:07pm – Changes were made to standing orders and a new sessional order was passed. Here’s the problem. We don’t know exactly what restrictions will be placed on movement in the coming weeks but it's not unreasonable to imagine a situation where for parliament to sit many members had to arrive 14 days early and go into isolation. Then after the sitting they would have to isolate for a further 14 days when they return. In case we end up in a situation where meeting in the normal way is near impossible there’s a rule for this term only that the Government and Labor can agree to meet in a different “manner and form” if we need to. Hopefully we don’t have to, and the Government could only make changes on this if it was with our agreement.

And that was Monday.

Take care during all of this. It’s going to be the toughest time most of us have known and the Government’s new measures aren’t enough to avoid mass unemployment. Follow the health advice, especially the rules about keeping away from each other and regularly and thoroughly washing your hands.

Can’t tell you when I’ll write next but I hope it’s well before August. To protect jobs we need the parliament to do its job.

‘til then,

Tony 

P.S. The moment the restrictions on gathering were put in place, hundreds of thousands of people in the arts and entertainment industry saw the next six months of their income disappear. The Government still hasn’t delivered an industry package for the sector and it needs one. Urgently. In the meantime, at least do everything you can to support our artists. If you are streaming music, stream a local band or muso. Right on the boundary of my electorate and Anthony Albanese’s electorate is the local Polish Club. It was the first place this week’s band played at and so they named themselves “Polish Club”. In honour of the daily mixed messages from Scott Morrison, this week’s song of the week is one of their hits: “Clarity”.