GRACosway Weekly Policy Wrap Up
7 November 2014:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and Health Minister Peter Dutton, announced that Australia will contract a private Australian provider to manage and run a 100-bed Ebola treatment facility in Sierra Leone. The Government will spend up to $20 million over coming months in this effort. See the joint media release here.
Elsewhere this week, PM Abbott welcomed the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, to Parliament House to talk about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and international security, as efforts to recover the plane wreckage and transfer it to The Netherlands for reconstruction progressed.
Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb is currently in Beijing to progress Free Trade Agreement talks. The Government hopes to finalise a deal ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit next weekend in Brisbane. PM Abbott will head to Beijing this weekend to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting, followed by the East Asia Summit in Burma.
In the latest Newspoll, Labor leads the Coalition 54:46 in the two-party-preferred vote.
The campaign for the November 29 Victorian State Election formally began this week with writs for the election issued on Melbourne Cup Day. The latest polls show Labor leading the Coalition 54:46 in the two-party-preferred stakes. For a full run down, see GRACosway’s first election newsletter here.
NSW, SA, WA parliaments sit next week.