Mixed political debate dominates Senate estimates and budget coverage

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a Sky News summit in Sydney that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused the biggest spike in petrol and diesel prices in history. He said the effects are having an overlapping impact on wages, inflation, investment, productivity and people.

Albanese said the pattern of the 2020s is that just as workers and employers recover from one international shock, another arrives. He said headline events such as pandemic, conflict and crisis are not passing storms but extremes of a more volatile global economic climate.

The federal government has also faced criticism over its handling of National Disability Insurance Scheme cuts. Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John and NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister clashed in Senate estimates, days before public hearings into legislation that would allow the biggest cuts to the scheme.

Treasury modelling tabled in the Senate last week showed that of the $38.1 billion expected to be saved over four years, just $0.9 billion would come from making the minister the decision maker on pricing and related fraud measures. Almost 60 per cent of the savings would come from cutting participant community participation and therapy budgets and tightening access through a new functional capacity test.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson clarified her party’s position on foreign ownership of homes after Barnaby Joyce initially appeared to suggest the policy would apply to permanent residents. Joyce later said it would not, and Hanson backed that clarification.

Hanson said foreign owners — temporary visa holders and foreign citizens residing overseas — would be given two years to sell Australian residential properties under One Nation’s policy. She said permanent residents have been accepted to settle in Australia permanently and that the policy does not require them to sell their homes.

Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston said a Coalition bill would allow human override of automated aged care assessments and force the government to explain the technology behind the Integrated Assessment Tool. She said there are harrowing stories from older Australians who have been left without care, denied care or forced to wait months for care.

Australian trade officials said they were aware the country could be hit with new US tariffs soon after the Trump administration’s previous import taxes were struck down in court. George Mina said the department had received clear indications from US authorities that new tariffs could be incoming and that the administration was looking at alternate legal authorities.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the Coalition was open to working with the Greens to block Labor’s budget bill in the Senate. Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume also left the door open to working with the Greens to extend scrutiny of Labor’s budget measures in exchange for more time on the NDIS inquiry.

Defence Minister Richard Marles defended Labor’s budget housing changes and said the policy is about making housing more competitive over the longer term. He also defended the government’s communication of the AUKUS shake-up, saying Australia would receive three used Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines rather than the previous plan of two used and one new vessel.

Hume said allegations of sexual assault against activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla should be taken extremely seriously. Eleven Australians were detained when the Israeli Defense Forces intercepted the flotilla in international waters, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the allegations were horrific.

Marles, Hume and Taylor all used their morning interviews to attack or defend the government’s budget position. The exchange highlighted rising political pressure on Labor over cost of living, housing, NDIS reform, defence and trade policy.