11
votes
Coronavirus stimulus package worth $84 billion passed without objection by Australian Parliament
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- Title
- Parliament passes most significant stimulus 'since the war', then closes for five months
- Published
- Mar 23 2020
- Word count
- 720 words
This is nothing short of amazing: the Opposition pushed the Government to give a minister more unilateral powers. In any other circumstance, oppositions try to restrict the powers of ministers, and apply more checks & balances. Here, an opposition is telling the government to take more powers. The motives are understandable: it's a left-wing party which wants to make sure people on welfare can get more access to more payments if necessary, knowing that the Parliament won't sit for another 5 months (!) to legislate changes. But it's still a big deal.
And, they haven't lost all their common sense: "Labor demanded an end date to the extra powers for the social services minister be included in the legislation." Very sensible!