Question time LIVE updates: Canadian PM Mark Carney addresses parliament, Labor’s FOI bill ditched in Senate

Welcome to our live coverage of question time in the House of Representatives. My name is Nick Newling, and I’ll be taking you through the afternoon’s proceedings.

Today is the final sitting of question time for the week, and comes after a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate heard an address from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

You can watch a livestream of question time below, and follow along with our blog for updates.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has asked the first question of the afternoon, on yesterday’s national accounts data. Here’s what he asked:

Can the prime minister confirm that according to yesterday’s data, since 2022 the only growth in the economy has been due to immigration and Australians working harder for less?

Albanese responded by saying: “Yesterday, the national accounts showed that the Australian economy was growing at its fastest rate in almost three years, faster than every member of the G7 and on a day when the national accounts showed household incomes and living standards are going up, the opposition was talking Australia down, as they do.

“They only have two settings, tearing each other down or talking Australia down. They’re their two settings now. When the gender pay gap reached a record low, none of the none of the blokes over there gave it a mention. When the bulk billing rate saw its biggest jump in 20 years, crickets, nothing whatsoever,” Albanese said.

The government has repeatedly used the argument that the opposition is “talking Australia down” when certain questions are asked about the economy.

The byelection triggered by the resignation of former opposition leader Sussan Ley in the electorate of Farrer will be held on May 9.

The date of the poll was announced by Speaker of the House Milton Dick just before question time this afternoon.

It is anticipated that the byelection will be a tight race between independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe, the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation.

The byelection will come three days before the budget is handed down.

One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce has accused Nationals leader David Littleproud of throwing in the towel in a key byelection, after Littleproud played down expectations and claimed Joyce had deserted the Nationals because he knew he could never lead the party again.

Littleproud told this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast that “it would be very hard for us to poll ahead of any of” One Nation, the Liberal Party or the Climate 200-backed independent candidate in the regional NSW seat of Farrer vacated by Sussan Ley.

Littleproud and Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s staff have started to hold talks about how to cling on to the seat or minimise a loss, as the Coalition faces its first electoral test this term with its polling at record lows.

Littleproud’s internal enemies, who include a growing number of his own frontbenchers, are watching to see if he campaigns in Farrer and performs well, with a leadership change later this year being contemplated by MPs.

You can read the full story from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal here.

Labor has abandoned its push to restrict access to government documents in a rare defeat to an increasingly emboldened Coalition and crossbench, who have repeatedly teamed up in the Senate to block the government in the name of transparency.

The changes would have increased costs for freedom of information requests, banned anonymous submissions and limited access even further. After extensive campaigns against what was described as greater government secrecy, the bill was abandoned in a motion put forward by Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher. She flagged that it would be reworked and returned to parliament.

“The government is taking this step because we understand that it does not have the support of the Senate, and it will not pass the Senate in its current form, but this is an important reform, and the government does remain committed to it,” Gallagher said at the start of a 30-minute debate on the bill being discharged.

Introduced into the House of Representatives in September 2025, the bill faced staunch criticism from non-government MPs and transparency experts who argued the changes – including the creation of a fee to access government documents – were part of a broader move towards secrecy from the Albanese government.

You can read the full story from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s federal politics reporter Nick Newling here.

Earlier today, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a rare address to the Australian parliament, saying that middle powers such as Canada and Australia would be overrun by increasingly assertive global superpowers unless they worked together on defence, trade and technology.

Carney revealed in an address to a joint sitting of parliament that Australia would join a critical minerals alliance run by the G7, a collection of the democratic world’s most advanced economies, in a bid to ensure China cannot dominate this crucial sector.

Carney used his parliamentary address to expand on the themes of his breakout speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he declared an end to the “fantasy” of the post-World War II rules-based order.

“In a post-rupture world, the nations that are trusted and can work together will be quicker to the punch, more effective in their responses, more proactive in shaping outcomes, and ultimately more secure and prosperous,” Carney said on Thursday.

You can read the full story from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Knott here.

Welcome to our live coverage of question time in the House of Representatives. My name is Nick Newling, and I’ll be taking you through the afternoon’s proceedings.

Today is the final sitting of question time for the week, and comes after a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate heard an address from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

You can watch a livestream of question time below, and follow along with our blog for updates.