The Turnbull Government’s crack digital team has confirmed they didn’t lift a finger to fix the NAPLAN online failure.

All Australian states and territories pulled out of NAPLAN online in April, blaming technical glitches and failures – meanwhile the Turnbull Government’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) didn’t try to help get the project back on track.

Speaking in the Parliament today, Liberal MP John Alexander was caught out trying to hide the cuts Malcolm Turnbull has made to schools in Bennelong.

Official data from the NSW Government shows schools mentioned by Mr Alexander will lose funding because of Malcolm Turnbull’s cuts.

The Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee sat in Townsville yesterday to hear evidence about regional public service jobs as part of our inquiry into the move of the APVMA.

We spoke to 13 councils from across Australia, 12 more than Barnaby Joyce spoke to before deciding to move the APVMA and its 150 jobs to his own electorate during a tight election campaign. 

A Senate hearing in Townsville today will consider cuts to public sector jobs in regional centres. The Senate Inquiry into the Operations and Effectiveness of Government Decisions on the Location of Commonwealth Departments has previously heard that the Turnbull Government wasted millions of taxpayer dollars relocating a government agency from Canberra to Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s electorate last year.

Malcolm Turnbull, in this morning’s papers, has set his own test for the performance of the Government in this budget. He’s said that that test is opportunity, fairness and security. Well, from everything we know, in relation to education, this budget won’t meet that test. 

On ANZAC Day 2017 Senator Jenny McAllister attended a service to honour the indigenous men and women who served our country.

I rise to speak about the 1800RESPECT service because over the past few months there has been a real concern about this service. This is what happens when something is not quite right, because we have seen media coverage, we have online petitions, we have social media advocacy and the union has been speaking out and has been active.

Labor has called for a Senate inquiry into the fraught Community Development Program, with the support of the Greens. Communities across the Northern Territory and Western Australia have consistently told us that this system leaves people in more debt, without food to feed their families, in rental arrears and feeling hopeless, struggling with an infuriating bureaucratic reporting process. 

Last night, in the dead of night, at around midnight, the Senate passed a package of cuts that strips away almost two billion dollars from Australian families in the coming years. These are not families that can afford to have this money taken away from them. These are not well-off families. 

Eighteen months ago, Malcolm Turnbull took the Liberal leadership promising a more mature discussion on economic issues. We’re still waiting. After all this time, it is still not even clear who is responsible for housing affordability.