Do you often feel unsafe in the job? And has this incident changed that for you?

Look, it's a great tragedy that this incident has caused everyone to reconsider how they work.

And of course, it's made the people who work with us and our families take consideration of that as well.

The reality is that in the last few years, things have gotten much worse for people who live and work in the public space, for politicians, for example.

I've been involved in two federal elections.

The 2020-25 election was completely different from 2022.

Things have become much more angry.

at this time, you wouldn't want any extra protection around you?

It's a terrible day when this sort of violence occurs.

She is an extraordinary human being and this is just deeply shocking to all of us who love her.

Monique Ryan, what's your reflection on what has occurred in the past 24 hours?

It's just shocking, Sally.

I mean, Helen is the best of us.

She's the most wonderful parliamentarian.

She's a person of the utmost personal integrity.

She's incredibly respectful of colleagues.

I wouldn't give that as a given yet.

Well, we'll see.

But I think what I was going to say is that the metropolitan area is also very cranky.

And in the part of the world that I represent, Kew and Hawthorne, we have two excellent independent candidates, Sophie Tawney and Shimura Buki, who are giving it a red hot go.

John Passetto's seat of Hawthorne, we've formally seen it very unexpectedly go to Labor at the state election before last.

It could well turn independent.

And Sophie Tawney, my understanding is, I haven't said it myself, that the polling suggests that Jess Wilson is under threat there.

I think we're not doing too badly.

Will this legislation give the government the power to block something like that?

No, it won't.

So where's the duty of care? Well, it is a bit of a concern.

And I have to say with the LNP, there's a certain degree of incoherence with their positioning on this because many members of the LNP express significant concern about the prospect of a live execution being streamed to Australians, children and adults.

But at the same time, people were pretty adamant that they weren't going to support legislation or something which might act to protect them.

I think the government does need to step up into this space and draw some lines and face down the platforms on what it will allow Australians to be exposed to.

It's an opportunity for them to take a leadership position internationally on this issue.

They could

in

their older years, and they want to have the certainty of that sort of cover when they get older.

This would potentially rip it out from under their feet because it would cost them up to $800 a year additional to keep their private health insurance cover.

The government has said that probably 44,000 Australians will drop their cover, either altogether or to a lower tier, as a result of these changes.

But the impact of those people moving to the public health system hasn't been modelled, or at least those figures haven't been released by the government.

I've asked for them repeatedly.

They won't provide them.

Would you agree?

Just what you described just then, is that whole system in relation to voluntary assisted dying too complicated?

I don't think so.

I think it's really important that we have strict limits around it.

And people understand the need for us to take these sorts of decision making very seriously.

We want to make sure that people are doing it for the right reasons.

I do think we need to improve palliative care services around this country so that people can access these sorts of supports more quickly when they need to.

A lot of people unfortunately die before they can access voluntary assisted dying supports because we don't have enough of them.

So do you think that through the process, we might talk him around and get the sort of voluntary assisted dying legislation we actually need?

What are your thoughts?

Well, unfortunately, we haven't seen that the government's in a place now where it's ready to move as strongly and effectively as it needs to do on gambling reform.

Australians are losing.

We're the biggest per capita gambling losers in the world.

In the world, yeah.

We've got increasing evidence of the harm done to our young people with the normalisation of gambling in virtually every aspect of their online engagement.

I think it's become a public health crisis when we look at the impact on youth mental health in particular.

What are the consequences that they're afraid of?

Do you have a comment on that, Mon?

Oh, yeah, good morning, Zoe.

I'd love to hear your sensible and articulate voice.

Yeah, I think Zoe is mapping out some of the particular unfairnesses of the electoral donation reform.

One of the things I always say to people is... every dollar that I earn each year from donations gets added up at the end of the year and I pay tax on those donations.

The political parties don't pay tax on donations that they receive.

There's a whole lot of different ways which cumulatively add up to a wave of disadvantage for small parties and independents who don't have these associated third-party entities.

And the thing is, at the end of the day, well, for the moment, AI scrapes what we already

Talk me through the challenges it poses for students with debts.

Well, HECS indexation is the annual adjustment to graduates' HECS debt, and it's applied...

The problem is that it's currently applied before re- repayments from the preceding financial year are applied to graduates' accounts.

That means that they've been making payments to their HECS accounts over the course of the year, they've been garnished from their pay, but they haven't actually been applied to the balance.

What that means is that you end up paying indexation, which is effectively interest, on debt that you've already repaid.

You wouldn't accept that on your credit card, and you wouldn't accept it on your mortgage, but we're expecting graduates to, to basically end up paying back more than they, they should.

And in a cost of living crisis, I- My feeling is that the government has created a, a cost of learning crisis with the cost of tertiary education in this country.

As a Victorian MP, how worried are you about these revelations?

Talk me through the challenges it poses for students with debts.

Well, HECS indexation is the annual adjustment to graduates' HECS debt, and it's applied ...

The problem is that it's currently applied before re- repayments from the preceding financial year, uh, applied to graduates' accounts.

That means that they've been making payments to their HECS accounts over the course of the year, they're being garnished from their pay, but they haven't actually been applied to the balance.

Uh, what that means is that you end up paying indexation, which is effectively interest, on debt that you've already repaid.

You wouldn't accept that on your credit card, and you wouldn't accept it on your mortgage, but we're expecting graduates to, to basically end up paying back more than they, they should on their HECS debts.

We already know that the HECS debts that Australian graduates have are holding them back.

Will you be supporting it when it comes to a vote?

Do you agree with that? Do you think that, you know, housing supply is the core issue here?

I think in terms of getting people into homes that they own, uh, uh, uh, homeless ...

Uh, I think in terms of getting people into homes that, that they own, yes, we need more supply.

That, that is the single most important issue.

And the Treasury's modeled that we, as a result of these changes announced, yes, they should probably get another 75,000 homes.

Although some of the, uh, secondary considerations that they had suggested that it might not be quite that high.

And so that, that, that is really, really important.

So if you can be nimble on that, but sweep this under the rug and say that you didn't have time and you didn't have enough resources for that, I feel like that's just a bit of a get out of jail free card.

So what do you worry about the most when it comes to their influence over our leaders?

I came from the medical industry, and when I was a doctor, you know, when I first started practicing medicine, people used to come and talk to us all the time, drug reps, and yeah, they gave us gifts and they sponsored conferences and lunches and dinners and that, all that sort of thing, um, and we kind of felt that it was benign because we all felt that we were strong-minded enough that we wouldn't be influenced by those relatively minor inducements.

Then the evidence came out that that is actually not the case, that even minor inducements changed the way that doctors prescribed.

And so in, in medicine, we were very careful to get rid of all of that.

Now we're seeing that those sorts of inducements are largely unregulated at a federal government level, and the fact is these people are smart people.

They wouldn't be spending a whole lot of money in the House to sponsor events or to sponsor individuals who are within the House talking to politicians if they didn't know that they were getting a, a reasonable return on that investment.

And so I think we can be sure that the 10,000 plus lobbyists who are in Parliament House are influencing parliamentary decision-making to a significant extent.

Uh, provides an opportunity to consider increased transparency and rigor in relation to sponsored passes for Parliament House on the basis of business requirements, particularly in relation to professional lobbyists