This week marks the four year anniversary of the Greens voting for a motion to disallow the Murray Darling Basin Plan, in a political marriage of convenience with Bob Katter. In 2012 Senator Hanson-Young described the Plan as a ‘dud’ but voted in support of it this week. 

Today's release by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency of Australia's Gender Equality Scorecard has highlighted the persistent and enduring gap between men and women’s wages and confirms that Australia’s workforce is as gender segregated as it was twenty years ago.

Predictions about the future tend to run to the extremes. Some people think that artificial intelligence will liberate us from work, leaving us to a life of leisure, self-driving cars, and Wi-Fi-enabled kettles. Others think robots will steal our jobs, ushering in dystopian levels of unemployment. Like all things, the reality is likely to be something in between.

Well good morning everyone. Day four of the estimates week. Yesterday we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Finance Minister preventing the Treasury Secretary from answering basic questions about the Government’s economic policy. 

Day four of the estimates week. Yesterday we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Finance Minister preventing the Treasury Secretary from answering basic questions about the Government’s economic policy.

We saw some extraordinary moments yesterday and I wanted to canvass a couple of those. The first of course was the Government claiming that it was unable to release the names of the Victorian MPs and Senators caught up in the Damian Mantach affair that of course saw an official of the Victorian Liberal Party defraud significant amounts of money from the Department of Finance and from state government departments.

Some commentators have been quick to champion the high vote for minor parties in this year’s election as inherently good for our politics. For them, minor parties offer a more wholesome, farmers market democracy than the supermarket democracy of the major parties.

Labor has confirmed that it will be putting One Nation last in every seat and every state this election. Labor has not made any preference deals with One Nation, and will put them last on every how to vote. Labor Senator Jenny McAllister said she was proud to put racism last.

Senator for NSW Jenny McAllister and Labor candidate Damian Wood have met with staff at Port Macquarie TAFE today to hear about the impact of the Abbott-Turnbull Government’s cuts to skills and training. The Liberals have cut $2.5 billion from skills and training over the past two years, including a $1 billion cut to apprentice programs and apprenticeship support.

Regional TAFEs like Port Macquarie have fewer students and less money, figures show.