CANBERRA, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Australia's governing Liberal National Party (LNP) Coalition is putting pressure on the opposition party to support its proposed drought relief package and new national security laws.
With the parliament returning for only its second sitting week since the general election in May on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded support for his 5-billion-Australian dollar (3.5 billion U.S. dollar) Future Drought Fund.
Morrison ruled out making any deals with Labor or members of the crossbench on the package despite needing their support to pass it through the senate.
"Labor needs to answer a simple question. Will you support our farmers or not?" he told News Corp Australia. "Labor are out of excuses on opposing our drought future fund. They need to tell our farmers whose side they are on."
"Drought funding is not something we should be having to make deals on. It should be a no-brainer, something that should just get done.
"So there'll be no deals. Just a simple request to vote for the bill that will provide for long-term drought resilience works. It's quite absurd that Labor have opposed it for this long already."
Labor leader Anthony Albanese has accused Morrison of playing politics with farmers' livelihoods and said Labor would support any amount of money the government put on the table if it came from appropriations.
The government also urged Labor to support new national security measures.
According to The Australian, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will this week attempt to push the Counter Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Bill 2019 through both houses of the parliament, banning individuals who pose an ongoing security risk from returning to Australia for two years.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security (JPCIS) recommended amending the bill to include judicial oversight on the orders.
Asked about the exclusion orders on Monday, Labor's deputy leader Richard Marles told reporters that the party would support the legislation "at the end of the day."
"Labor supports, in principle, a regime of temporary exclusion orders, and we always have," he said.
"There are a number of recommendations which Liberal members of the JPCIS supported. We want to get through the bottom of that and work with the government on that.
"But at the end of the day, we completely acknowledge the importance of having a temporary exclusion order regime and we'll work cooperatively with the government to achieve that."
