August 21, 2026
Wraps the final sitting day and the fortnight by theme, from the Frankcom investigation fallout to the counter-terrorism and universities bills, and a two-member party that split its vote.
Both Houses rose last night for three weeks, not the usual one, and the government spent its last hours in the building answering for something that happened nowhere near it: Israel's own military investigation cleared its soldiers over the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in April 2024. Penny Wong called the finding "outrageous and insulting" and summoned Israel's ambassador; the Prime Minister said it "falls far short of the accountability we expected." That dominated Thursday's coverage more than anything that happened in either chamber, which is its own small lesson going into three weeks of recess: the biggest political moment of the day doesn't always start on the floor.
Today's edition does two jobs. First, the final sitting day, properly wrapped rather than just previewed, since there's no tomorrow's edition to catch up in. Second, the fortnight since Parliament came back on 11 August, by theme rather than by day, because that's the more useful shape for three weeks of recess reading. Hold onto one small, specific story while you read both: Community Strong Australia, the party Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall now sit under in Hansard rather than "Independent," tested its numbers twice on Thursday, and its two members voted opposite ways both times. A party of two doesn't yet vote like one.
Ms Sharkie's (Mayo, Centre Alliance) amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, requiring a recorded conviction for any guilty finding on a terrorist act, was negatived 39 to 90. Read the names: the ayes were the full Coalition plus Ms Boele (Bradfield, Independent), Dr Scamps (Mackellar, Independent), Ms Sharkie herself and Ms Spender (Wentworth, Community Strong Australia); the noes were Labor plus Ms Haines (Indi, Independent), Ms Chaney (Curtin, Independent), Dr M Ryan (Kooyong, Independent), Ms Steggall (Warringah, Community Strong Australia), Mr Wilkie (Clark, Independent) and Ms Watson-Brown (Ryan, Greens). Not Coalition versus Labor so much as the crossbench splitting down the middle, with Community Strong Australia's two members on opposite sides of that split. The bill passed the House unamended; the Senate introduced it the same day and then adjourned its own second-reading debate to 12 October, further out than the 7 September return most of Thursday's other business is waiting for.
The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 finished after three months in these editions. Education Minister Clare opened consideration in detail by apologising to the shadow minister because "this debate concluded this week sooner than I expected and anticipated." Mr Leeser (Berowra, Liberal) called the government's late amendments "Hanson-proofing the bill" and noted they were timestamped 10 August at 3.13pm, a fairly blunt tell about how late the rewrite came together. Amendments from Dr Ryan and Ms Steggall were both knocked back on the voices; the bill passed as the government had rewritten it.
The fight flagged for the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026, a Coalition push to send it to the Senate economics committee over a new capital gains rule, never happened; Mr Hogan didn't move it. What happened instead: under sustained pressure from Dr Ryan, Ms Boele and Dr Scamps, Assistant Treasurer Mulino extended the sunset on the bill's capital gains tax discount for renewable energy investment from 2030 to 2040, thanking "the members for Warringah, Curtin and Kooyong… and also the Greens" for the push. Dr Scamps withdrew her own identical amendment in favour of the government's. Bill passed.
Dr Ryan's second push of the day, to carve protection visa applicants out of the oral-reasons and identity-verification discretion in the Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, was rejected on the voices in the Federation Chamber, Attorney-General Rowland declining to support it. The bill passed unamended.
The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, an idea the Coalition says it proposed and the government agreed to co-sponsor, was established cleanly, with Mr Hastie (Canning, Liberal), Mr Violi (Casey, Liberal) and Ms Chaney all speaking in support. Twelve members, reporting 30 November; no inquiry page exists yet. Two new bills got first readings only: a Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill from Attorney-General Rowland, criminalising match-fixing ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics (neither bill has a register page yet, so nothing to link to), and a Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill from Assistant Minister J Wilson, requiring native title consent before carbon credit projects proceed and replacing the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee with a new integrity body.
Commonwealth debt passed $1 trillion for the first time at 10.30am Thursday. Mr T Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal) tried to suspend standing orders to debate it and lost 41 to 85; Labor alone made up the noes, with the Coalition and most of the crossbench wanting the debate. Ms Steggall's separate push for a new royal commission into gendered violence also failed on the voices, Ms Plibersek's response being that eight royal commissions and a thousand recommendations are enough without another one.
By evening the House had agreed to all four sets of Senate amendments still outstanding from Thursday's Senate business (below), so none of the twelve bills the Senate cleared spill into September. Only one needed an actual division: the Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026, over a Greens-authored, Senate-inserted employee protection clause, agreed 84 to 34. The Coalition made up the noes, plus Ms Spender; Labor and the rest of the crossbench, including Ms Steggall, made up the ayes. Spender and Steggall, again, on opposite sides.
The Senate's own final-day arithmetic: 12 bills passed, 32 divisions, and a guillotine agreed earlier in the week that forced seven bills through back to back between roughly 1pm and 2.46pm. Eight passed clean: the Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026, stuck since June; the Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposals) Bill (No. 1) 2026; the Cash Distribution Framework's consequential twin; and the News Journalism Payments Bill 2026 with its four companions, setting up the 2.5 per cent news bargaining charge. Four passed amended, and two are worth reading by name rather than by tally: the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025 passed its final vote 26 to 15 with the ayes entirely Labor and the rest of the Coalition simply not voting, and the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Amendment Bill 2026's new rule requiring universities to police foreign-linked research risk passed 30 to 9 with no Coalition senator recorded anywhere, not in the ayes, the noes or the pairs. Neither is a party-line result; both are the Coalition sitting a vote out.
Six referral motions were flagged for a vote in this space yesterday. All six were resolved, and only one is a clean "lost":
Separately, the government also blocked both of Senator Bragg's own bills, the Fair Work Amendment (Disqualified Officers) Bill 2026 and a Housing Australia Amendment (Transparency and Reporting) Bill 2026 (no register page found for this second one), from going to any committee at all, 34 to 26.
Senator Dean Smith also introduced, unflagged, a private senator's bill requiring returning travellers to disclose any overseas organ transplant on their incoming passenger card, drawing on a 2018 committee report on organ trafficking; it has no register page yet. Senator B Pocock had a third attempt at removing the exemption that lets employers skip compulsory super for under-18 workers doing fewer than 30 hours a week (the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Fair Super for Young Workers) Bill 2026, no register link verified with confidence, so left unlinked here), citing Coles (roughly 12,000 under-18 staff, no super, $1.08 billion profit) and Woolworths (11,500 more, plus 1,150 at Big W, $1.38 billion profit) against Bunnings, Aldi, JB Hi-Fi and Priceline, which all pay it anyway. Labor was sympathetic but wants consultation; the debate simply ran out of its allotted Thursday-morning slot rather than losing on the numbers, and the bill was later referred to the Economics Legislation Committee, reporting 17 November. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Removing the Widows and Spouses Tax) Bill 2026 remains exactly where it was a fortnight ago, deferred again by the Selection of Bills Committee to its next meeting. And Senator Shoebridge's motion urging "urgent reconsideration of Australia's military relationship with the United States," built on a list of recent Trump statements and the $8 billion Fremantle submarine base, ran out of time before a vote and is adjourned to 7 September.
One correction to yesterday's preview: four documents were flagged here as committee reports landing in the Senate. Only one genuinely was — the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee's final report on sanctions against Russia, which found Russian timber is being laundered into Australia via a single stop in a third country (roughly 100,000 cubic metres a year) and recommended adding timber to the sanctions list; three Labor senators, Ciccone, Cox and Whiteaker, added comments preferring an anti-dumping response over new sanctions. The other three were government responses to reports tabled long before this fortnight, not new reports: the Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee's report on sexual consent laws, the Finance and Public Administration committee's report on lobbyist access to Parliament House, and both the first (2023) and final (March 2025) reports on the cyclone reinsurance pool. None of the three response texts were public before this went to print; I'll get you the substance once they land.
On today's committee rooms: aph.gov.au's hearing pages wouldn't resolve for me this session, the same blocking flagged a fortnight ago, so I can't verify what, if anything, is sitting in Canberra today, and I'd rather say that plainly than guess. The one proceeding I can confirm is the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, whose ninth and, Commissioner Bell says, final hearing block is continuing in Sydney, against a report due 14 December, the first anniversary of the Bondi Beach attack.
Parliament sat seven days this fortnight, 11 to 13 and 17 to 20 August, and cleared a backlog that had been building since before the winter recess:
Underneath the bill count, three things are worth carrying into September. The Newspoll that opened the fortnight had Labor and One Nation level on 29 per cent and the Coalition at 18, its lowest primary vote since June 2013; nothing in the fortnight's business changed that story, and Senator Ghosh used her Thursday adjournment speech to warn against mainstream parties normalising the rhetoric behind One Nation's rise. Community Strong Australia went from a name in these editions to a party code in Hansard, and its first real votes suggest Spender and Steggall are going to be read individually, not as a bloc. And the Select Committee on Productivity in Australia's reporting date, already pushed once, now sits at 31 March 2027, six months later than originally set, which tells you more about the government's appetite for that inquiry's findings than anything said on the floor this fortnight.
That wraps an action-packed fortnight; both Houses are back Monday, 7 September. Until then!
— Mia
From reading to tracking
Krafted. tells you what happened. Statekraft tells you the moment it changes. Try NEST free for 30 days.