The Senate rushed the passage of dozens of bills in a pre-election spree this week.

The bills included:

  • Regular money to keep the government and budget running
  • A loan scheme for north Queensland floods and income tax exemptions for disaster grants
  • The new $75 payment for singles and $125 for couples on welfare payments to help with power bills
  • A marginal increase in the income threshold for paying the Medicare levy
  • A lift in the threshold of the government's instant asset write-off from $25,000 to $30,000
  • An increase for the governor-general's salary, up from $425,000 to $495,000
  • A change requiring donation activity for the government's foreign influence transparency scheme to be reported earlier
  • A bill enabling Australia's export credit agency to fund more overseas infrastructure projects, especially in the Pacific
  • A change in the Corporations Act that defines a ‘mutual entity’ and reforms demutualisation rules
  • Closing tax avoidance loopholes for some foreign investors
  • Stronger penalties for insolvent companies that owe workers' entitlements, and greater powers to recover unpaid debts
  • A bill giving a veterans' gold card to Australian Civilian Surgical and Medical Teams that provided medical aid, training and treatment to Vietnamese people during the war
  • New laws including jail time for social media executives of companies that broadcast abhorrent violent material
  • An extension of the cashless welfare card trials in three existing sites - Ceduna, South Australia, East Kimberley, WA and Goldfields, WA, as well as measures to extend the card to Cape York
  • New rules for the design and distribution of financial products and powers for the corporate regulator to respond to detrimental products
  • Changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax that the Government claims will raise $6 billion over 10 years
  • A reduced tax for craft beer brewers
  • A bill to establish the $2 billion Australian Business Securitisation Fund to help smaller banks and non-bank lenders to lend to small businesses