Politics live as Prime Minister ducks and dives on penalty rates

Okay, end of the day, end of the week. What happened?

• Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to get on the front foot on penalty rates and do some media interviews;
• but it might not have been a brilliant idea given it didn't clarify what Mr Turnbull thinks about the matter;
• for the fourth day in a row the opposition spent all of question time on the matter;
• George Christensen stirred the pot on free speech; and
• the opposition has referred Human Services Minister Alan Tudge to the police over the leaking of someone's Centrelink information.

My thanks to Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen for their work and to you for reading and commenting.

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Alex, Andrew and I will be back - with Parliament - on March 200. Until then, go well.

You'll remember departmental officials told an estimates committee earlier today that they were within their rights to release someone's information in order to set the record straight.

It would certainly be an interesting test case, should things go that way.

You might also be interested in this stoush between Liberal Party stalwarts Michael Kroger and Peter Reith.

The gentlemen are duking it out over who gets to be the next president of the Victorian state party.

Be careful what you say about Centrelink on social media, people.

Big Brother is watching.

Eryk Bagshaw has been listening to evidence from the Department of Human Services about debts and dobbing people in to the media when they complain.

The motion will be unsuccessful (obviously).

This means every single question the opposition has asked this week has been on penalty rates.

I imagine Labor MPs will be heading out of the building later today with a spring in their step.

It's been coming all week but here it is, Mr Shorten is moving a suspension of standing orders.

It won't surprise you to know it's about penalty rates.

Labor MPs are asking Mr Turnbull about individual constituents who have estimated how much money they lose under a changed penalty rates system.

"It's not a decision of the government," Mr Turnbull says. "It's a decision of the FWC, an independent commission."

Mr Turnbull has also found a paragraph in the determination that says workers should be not left worse off as a result.

Opposition frontbencher Tony Burke reads out one of Mr Turnbull's longer and more discursive answers from this morning's round of interviews.

He reads quickly and then asks if workers do not deserve better. Even Mr Turnbull finds the impersonation of himself amusing.

"I thank the member for his comic interlude," he begins.

Question time.

Golly, is that the time?

Question time is just under a quarter of an hour away.

The department also submitted some interesting numbers, particularly for anyone who has ever been on the other end of a Centrelink hold line:

• 2.4 million debt notices have been issued;
• 28 million calls to Centrelink were met with the busy signal; 
• 4.1 million calls were abandoned calls; and
• callers waited an average of 14 minutes to speak to someone.

Over in estimates, the secretary of the Department of Human Services has been grilled on the Centrelink robo-call debt debacle. 

Kathryn Campbell acknowledged that the first time that more than 6,600 Centrelink welfare recipients were notified that they had incurred a debt was when debt collection agencies had begun chasing them. 

The committee also heard that the department regularly provided information to Human Services Minister Alan Tudge on people who are "criticising or unhappy with the system" as a "standard operation".