MARK DREYFUS MP

At today's packed public hearing inquiring into cuts to arts funding, witnesses expressed deep concern about the future of the Tasmanian arts sector given the Government's harsh cuts to the Australia Council in the 2015/16 budget

Tony Abbott's royal commission has descended into high farce, riddled with political bias.

Labor calls on the Abbott Government to publicly release the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on redress, due to be handed to the Governor-General today.

Labor is alarmed at today's report tobacco companies are hijacking Freedom of Information laws to obtain data from surveys by thousands of Victorian school children and teenagers that reveal their attitudes to smoking and alcohol.

Today's announcement of changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is nothing but a pathetic attempt by the Abbott Government to distract from its political woes and its defence of Tony Abbott's besieged royal commissioner Dyson Heydon.

At today's packed public hearing in Melbourne for the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs references Committee into the Impact of the 2014 and 2015 Commonwealth Budget decisions on the Arts, witnesses roundly condemned the Abbott Government's attack on the arts.

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus today challenged the Abbott Government's secrecy in a hearing of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Reports today reveal the Abbott Government has dropped the ball in regards to preventing radicalisation at home.

NSW Liberal Member for Hughes, Craig Kelly has today used a bipartisan motion celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act to continue the push to repeal Section 18C of the Act.

Two senior Coalition ministers misled parliament for at least four days so that they could avoid proper scrutiny about the Abbott Governments handling of a letter from the Lindt Cafe Siege gunman.