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South Australian Liberal MPs and voters have reacted angrily to National MPs trying to rewrite the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) in Federal Parliament.

The MDBP was legislated in 2012, with bipartisan support across the Commonwealth and basin states, to provide more water for the environment.

Nationals senators on Wednesday failed in their attempt to effectively rewrite the plan by introducing amendments to federal water legislationaimed atdelivering less environmental waterand preventing any further Commonwealth buybacks ofwater rights from irrigators.

Caren Martin is a third-generation farmer and runs a 200-hectare irrigated almond orchard in South Australia's Riverland region, which relies on flows from the River Murray.

Ms Martin, who is also the chair of the South Australian Murray Irrigators, said the move in Parliament hadcaused anxiety among irrigators.

"It just leads us into a world of uncertainty and we have to constantly adjust to deal with that political uncertainty," Ms Martin said.

"I don't appreciate it.It just puts further angst into people's lives."

The move has also caused upset amongLiberal voters.

ABC News

Gio, who did not provide his last name, grew up in the New South Wales Riverina region but now lives in Glen Osmond.

He said he would no longer vote for the Liberal Party.

"I'm a lifetime Liberal voter," he said.

"I've always accepted that you've got to take the Natswith the Libs, but I'm sorry,I'm not voting for the Liberals anymore.

"I don't know who I'm voting forbecause I don't know if I can vote for Labor, but it's just so disheartening and frustrating that this Coalition now is very one sided.

"There's so much selfish ambition in what's going on and I'm despondent."

South Australia's Water Minister, Liberal MP David Speirs, reiterated the concerns of votersand said his party absolutely rejected the proposed changes.

"I think federally, if the Coalition doesn't have a tight hold of the Murray-Darling Basin issueand doesn't show that much-needed leadership South Australians in seats like Boothby and Mayo will be turned off the federal Coalition when it comes to federal election time," Mr Speirs said.

"As a government, we've got to show leadership, we've got to continue to ensure that critical environmental water flows into South Australia for our environment, but also for our irrigators and economic viability as well."

With a federal reshuffle expected imminently, South Australian MPs and farmers are warning of the risks ofchanging the water portfolio.

Sources have told the ABC that Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has put her hand up for it, but Mr Speirs said that would not be inappropriate.

"Unfortunately Bridget McKenzie has particularly unusual views about the management of the South Australian reaches of the river," Mr Speirs said.

"Particularly her voodoo science around the Lower Lakes,I just find that out of step with the evidence that has been developed around the management of the Lower Lakes.

"She would flood them with seawater and that's a great concern."

Ms Martin said she wouldlike to see the portfolio stay with Senator McKenzie's colleague, Queensland Nationals MPKeith Pitt.

"He's outside the basin, he resides in Queensland so he doesn't come in with the 'protect-my-patch' sort of attitude that other ministers have had in the past," Ms Martin said.

"If they just keep their eye on the ball that we all want water security, we want this river to run and give good quality and reliable water supply to everybody, then we'll get there in the end."

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SA Liberals, locals frustrated by National Party bid to change Murray-Darling Basin Plan - ABC News

Speaker Anthony Rota in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 21, 2021. Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The Liberal government is taking the House of Commons Speaker to court, in an unprecedented move to prevent the release of uncensored documents to members of Parliament that offer insight into the firing of two scientists from Canadas top infectious-disease laboratory.

The government said in a court filing that the disclosure of this information could not only jeopardize national security but also, possibly, Canadas international relations.

The Attorney-Generals office filed an application in Federal Court on Monday requesting that information demanded by Speaker Anthony Rota on behalf of the House of Commons stay secret.

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The legal challenge against a ruling of the House stunned opposition MPs, who were notified about the court application late Wednesday afternoon. An order of the House backed by a majority of MPs last Thursday called on the Public Health Agency to produce records it has been withholding from a Commons committee for months.

Mr. Rota called the court action an urgent matter and vowed to vigorously fight the government, saying House of Commons law clerk Philippe Dufresne will prepare a legal defence.

The Speakers Office will defend the rights of the House. That is something I take very seriously, Mr. Rota said. The legal system does not have any jurisdiction over the operations of the House. We are our own jurisdiction. That is something we will fight tooth and nail to protect and we will continue to do that.

Conservative House Leader Grard Deltell said he was taken aback that the Trudeau government would go to the federal court to challenge parliamentary privilege.

If the government does not respect the orders of the House of Commons, why should Canadians respect laws voted upon by the House of Commons? he said.

In the court filing, the government said the disclosure of the unredacted information would be injurious to international relations or national defence or national security.

Mr. Dufresne told MPs before a Commons committee Wednesday that to his knowledge the Canadian government has never before gone to court to try to elude an order of the House to produce documents.

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He said the House has exclusive authority when it comes to matters that fall under parliamentary privilege.

Justice Minister and Attorney-General David Lametti distanced himself from the court proceeding, saying officials in his department evoked a section of the Canada Evidence Act that is often used in national-security matters to keep sensitive information tightly under wraps.

As Attorney-General that decision has been delegated to department officials as is the normal course, so it is not going to be a decision that is partisan in any way, he said. I will never play politics with national security.

For months, opposition MPs have been seeking unredacted records from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), that explain why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The two scientists lost their security clearances, and the RCMP was called into investigate, in July, 2019. They were dismissed in January.

More than 250 pages of records have been withheld in their entirety and hundreds of others have been partly censored before being provided to MPs. They also relate to the March, 2019 transfer of deadly virus samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was overseen by Dr. Qiu.

On Monday, PHAC President Iain Stewart was called before the Commons and admonished by the Speaker for his repeated refusal to provide the requested records to MPs on the special committee on Canada-China relations, including information on the transfer of Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan facility.

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MPs had put in safeguards that would require the Commons law clerk to review the documents and redact information that could harm national security or a criminal investigation before making them public.

However, Mr. Stewart notified the Attorney-Generals office on Sunday night that sensitive or potentially injurious information could be disclosed if he obeyed the order of the House of Commons.

Former House of Commons law clerk Rob Walsh said the Federal Court should deny the Trudeau governments request.

If the court is cognizant of parliamentary privilege, which is not always the case then the governments application wont succeed, he said. This is House business; its not the courts place to interfere.

He said the government may try to argue that there is a committee created by statute the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) which has clearance to read confidential documents. NSICOP, however, is not a committee of Parliament and is under the control of the Prime Ministers Office.

The answer back to that of course is that statutory committees do not take priority over the rights of the House.

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Mr. Rota was expected to rule on a motion on Wednesday to instruct the Commons sergeant-at-arms to search PHAC offices and seize unredacted documents.

However, the Speaker told MPs that he needed more time to provide a thoughtful ruling as the House adjourned for the summer break. If an election is called before Parliament resumes sitting on Sept. 20, Mr. Rota said it would be up to the next Speaker to decide whether to proceed with the ruling.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Question Period Wednesday that he was willing to work with opposition parties to find a compromise. On Monday, Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez said the government was prepared to allow the Commons law clerk to examine hundreds of censored documents under oversight from national-security officials.

Mr. Rodriguez also suggested MPs could also use a process followed in 2010, when the Harper government allowed a group of MPs and a panel of arbiters to determine what information could be made available to the Commons about the Canadian militarys transfer of Taliban prisoners.

The government previously said it would only turn over unredacted documents to NSICOP, which does not report to the House. Mr. Trudeau has the power to prevent the committee from releasing information to the public.

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Liberals take House Speaker to court to block release of unredacted records about fired scientists - The Globe and Mail

The Canada Recovery Benefit starts to wind down next month, with a reduction in benefits a first step toward the COVID-19 pandemic income-support program vanishing completely by the fall.

The federal Liberals have yet to spell out what will happen in the long term, beyond promising a two-year consultation period on what permanent changes are needed to employment insurance. But economists say the income-support programs constructed on the fly over the past 15 months could be used to design fixes to many long-standing deficiencies in Canadas EI system.

The CRB, introduced last fall to support self-employed workers and others who did not qualify for regular EI payments, is better attuned to the needs of the modern economy, and does a better job in creating a path back to sustained full-time employment, those economists say.

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The way the CRB is designed, its very good, says Stphanie Lluis, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo.

In a recent study published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Prof. Lluis and her two co-authors, IRPP research director Colin Busby and University of Michigan Ann Arbor professor Brian P. McCall, concluded that the current structure of EI which claws back 50 per cent of earnings from a job starting with the very first dollar of wages provides little incentive for claimants to take part-time or casual work while still receiving benefits.

A better structure, they say, is one that allows claimants to earn some wages below a threshold without any reduction in benefits, and only then introduces a clawback at higher levels, but still allows individuals to add to their income through working.

In real life, the federal government has done just that with the CRB, which takes a much different approach than the EI system. Under EI, claimants lose 50 cents for every dollar they earn; once their earnings equal 90 per cent of their benefit, the clawback increases to 100 per cent. Every extra dollar of earnings is simply transferred to the government, eliminating any economic incentive for further work.

Pilot projects from 2005 to 2012 exempted some earnings, but then reduced benefits dollar for dollar beyond that point. That approach encouraged claimants to work, but only up to the point the clawback kicked in.

The CRB, designed on the fly during the pandemic, works much differently and looks a lot like the system that Prof. Lluis and her colleagues recommend. Under the CRBs rules, claimants can earn up to $38,000 in a tax year before benefits are reduced at all. At that point, theres a 50-per-cent clawback, the same rate as the one for EI claimants. But CRB recipients, that rate does not rise to 100 per cent, meaning there is still an economic incentive to continue working while receiving benefits.

The IRPP study suggests a clawback rate of 40 per cent, but Prof. Lluis said there is nothing magic about that number. An optimal rate could be higher or lower, and would depend on further research, she said, adding that better data are also needed on how EI claimants respond to incentives to work while receiving benefits.

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The timing of the clawback is another way the CRB is better than EI, Prof. Lluis says. Under EI, the clawback is calculated on a weekly basis, discouraging recipients from accepting full-time work lasting a short time. Not so under the CRB: Clawback calculations are done on an annual basis. So, a worker offered a short-term contract has a much stronger economic incentive to accept a job offer under the CRBs rules.

The broader reach of the CRB is another advantage compared with EI, says David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Part-time and self-employed workers are more easily able to qualify for benefits.

Another pandemic-spurred innovation worth keeping, he says, is the minimum payment levels established. Prepandemic rules for EI set benefits at 55 per cent of a recipients average insurable weekly earnings. The CRB pays a fixed weekly amount of $500, or $450 after a withholding tax is deducted. EI now has a $500 minimum, too, and recipients can be paid more if their insurable earnings are high enough.

A minimum weekly payment helps out lower-paid workers, particularly part-timers, Mr. Macdonald said. But Prof. Lluis and other economists have said those minimum payments could become a disincentive for claimants to return to low-paid work.

However, the government is moving to reduce CRB payments after July 17, with weekly amounts for new claims falling to $300. The CRB is scheduled to end in late September, although Ottawa has allowed for the extension of the program until as late at Nov. 20, if public-health considerations require it. And the government has extended income supports and other programs shortly before their expiry dates several times during the pandemic.

Maria Lily Shaw, an economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, said Ottawas decision during the pandemic to reduce the regional disparities in qualifying standards for EI benefits was a positive move, and should be made permanent. Ms. Shaw said a nationwide standard would make EI harder to access in the Atlantic provinces, and discourage seasonal workers from using it as a permanent source of income. You have to break the dependence thats been created, she said.

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But Ottawa did not make it harder for workers in areas of high unemployment to qualify; it made it easier for claimants elsewhere.

So far, the government has proposed just limited changes, most notably the extension to September, 2022, of the uniform national standard for qualifying for EI payments. That will make it easier for part-time workers, for instance, to access benefits.

Broader reforms will take much longer, with the Liberals saying they plan to conduct targeted consultations over two years to examine systemic gaps such as income support for self-employed and gig workers.

Any permanent change to the structure of EI will have to wait on the outcome of those consultations.

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As the Canada Recovery Benefit winds down, questions remain over Liberals' long term plan - The Globe and Mail

Libya is moving closer to getting foreign mercenaries out of the country. During this weeks Berlin Conference the second to take place in the German capital in an effort to end Libyas long-running conflict Libyan representatives and international powers said progress was made on the ejection of foreign fighters ahead of a planned national election on December 24. But, its not going to happen overnight.For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

We cant wave a magic wand and make this happen, but working together with the Libyan people, I think theres a strong chance that we can set the conditions to provide the incentives and maybe other parameters for these forces to leave. But frankly, theres no organization or body that is more capable of bringing about that departure than a strong, unified Libyan government chosen by its own people. And so thats why elections are so important, Joey Hood, acting US assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said in a briefing following the conference.

The United Nations estimates that 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries remain in Libya a presence seen as a threat to the UN-recognized transition leading to the elections. Much of the foreign interference in Libya is the result of a regional rivalry between two US allies: the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Theres been very little public news regarding American dialogue on the Libyan file with Ankara and Abu Dhabi, and Hood says thats been by design.

We have had those discussions in both of those capitals and elsewhere. But I think a difference between this administration and maybe previous ones is that this: the Biden administration has decided to undertake diplomacy in a very quiet way. And, so youre not likely to see well-publicized meetings and readouts of every single discussion that are very detailed because we think that we can get more progress by having quiet conversations with our partners, and then coming in with as many allies as we can with a unified position. So thats why I think youve seen so much work done on trying to get unified positions on very clear sets of points, said Hood, who attended the Second Berlin Conference on June 23 together with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The Trump administration did not send a high-ranking representative to the first Berlin Conference in January 2020, which was attended by the presidents of Turkey, Russia and France.

Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar, UAE minister of state and head of the UAE's delegation to the talks, called on Libyan and international parties to "commit themselves to the political process and provide all factors to its success in order to realize security, stability and unity of Libyan institutions to fulfill the aspirations of the Libyan people for a more prosperous future."

Meanwhile, a senior official at the State Department said Turkey and Russia, which back opposing sides in Libya, had reached an initial understanding to work toward a target of pulling out 300 Syrian mercenaries from each side of the conflict, something that Hood would not confirm.

We think that foreign actors of all stripes should respect the Libyans desire to reassert their own sovereignty by respecting the terms of the cease-fire agreement from last October. With regard to any understanding between the Russians and the Turks, or separately from those two parties, I would have to refer you to them to know exactly what they intend to do, said Hood.

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But, we call on both of them and all sides to immediately pull out all foreign forces, whether they are regular forces, mercenaries or something else. The best way for Libya is to decide on what countries its going to have security cooperation relationships with, once it has a government that comes out of these elections and that clearly represents the will of the Libyan people, Hood said.

Libya has been in chaos for a decade since longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi was toppled in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.

The country was subsequently split in two. The UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) operated out of the capital, Tripoli, and a rival administration, led by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, based itself in the countrys east. Both sides were backed by armed groups and foreign governments.

In April 2019, Haftar and his forces, supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, launched an offensive to try and capture Tripoli. Haftars campaign sank after 14 months, with Turkey stepping up its support of the Tripoli government, providing advanced military hardware, troops and thousands of mercenaries.

Finally, this past October, the two camps agreed to a cease-fire in Geneva.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that although progress has been made, the withdrawals likely would proceed gradually.

"I believe that between the Turkish and the Russian sides, there was also an understanding that if you stop, this will not mean that everybody will take their mercenaries back overnight," he said.

Germany, the host country of Wednesdays conference, is acting as an intermediary in the conflict. Other states involved in the process include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with the UAE, Italy and Turkey.

The recommendations coming out of the conference are quite similar to those from the initial Berlin Conference, leading some experts to wonder what gives the US hope that things will turn out differently this time around.

Hood identified one difference being the presence this time of Libyan Government of National Unity Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba. The unity government took office in March with the backing of the UN and Western powers.

With regard to the question about hope, its interesting I noticed that almost every speaker at the conference looked at the prime minister and said, Your presence here is what represents hope for us. Because what the prime minister represents is a successful effort by the Libyan people and the major political actors to come together and to form a Government of National Unity on an interim basis to bring them toward elections, Hood said.

I think if youd asked people a year and a half ago if that was even possible, they would have said no. And, so, weve seen remarkable progress among the political actors being willing to stop fighting, said Hood.

Still, the removal of foreign fighters, while essential, is far from the only challenge on the way to a functioning, stable Libyan government. There are still several obstacles to overcome and milestones to be met.

The first one is setting the constitutional and legal basis for the elections, which must be done by July 1. So, doing that will then unlock a number of things that the high national electoral commission needs to do to move to the next steps. But security is obviously going to be a problem in many places throughout the country where armed groups that are not part of any government organization are moving around freely and attacking. I mean, weve seen attacks by terrorist groups in the past couple of months that have been just shocking, especially in the south, said Hood.

Administratively, obviously they havent had a nationwide election in a long time. Im sure that they need to train people and they need to even bring electricity and other things like that to certain parts of the country to make sure that just administratively the election can take place. But, as I said, Libya is not a poor country. It doesnt have a huge population. And, so these things are possible. They can overcome these challenges and they have a lot of partners, like the United States, who want to help them do that. So, I have every confidence that they can do it, and they seem determined, Hood said.

Still, Dabaiba himself raised a number of concerns over Libya's progress, scolding the legislature for failing to make serious efforts to create electoral laws and a functioning constitution. It is still unknown exactly what Libyans will be voting for, particularly if the president should be directly elected.

Libya's High National Election Commission has said a decision on the constitution should be made by July 1 to prevent a delay to the December 24 election.

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Libya on bumpy road to elections - The Jerusalem Post

Tunis, 27 June 2021 - The Advisory Committee of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) concluded on Saturday, 26 June 2021, a three-day meeting, convened by UNSMIL at the request of LPDF members, in Tunis.

UNSMIL and members of the Advisory Committee commended the work of the Legal Committee in developing a draft constitutional basis for the holding of national parliamentary and presidential elections on 24 December 2021. During the meeting, the Committee reviewed various proposals submitted by the LPDF members on the constitutional basis necessary for holding these elections, as stipulated by the LPDF Roadmap and called for by the Conclusions of the Second Berlin Conference, as well as by Security Council resolution 2570 (2021).

The discussions took place in a positive atmosphere filled with a spirit of compromise. The Committee reached consensus formulas on many of the outstanding issues and will submit its recommendations to the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum for its consideration and appropriate decisions at its upcoming meeting on 28 June in Switzerland, after completing its ongoing consultations.

Advisory Committee members will meet again in Switzerland, before presenting their proposal to the LPDF plenary.

UNSMIL commends the members of the Advisory Committee for their spirit of national responsibility and tireless efforts to pursue a realistic and consensual formula that secures the holding of elections, in a safe environment, to respond to the aspirations of the Libyan people and their longing for lasting stability, sovereignty and democratic legitimacy of Libyas institutions and their elected representatives.

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LPDF Advisory Committee concludes its three-day consultative meeting in Tunisia - Libya - ReliefWeb