Politics Live: June 22, 2015

Okay, the end of the day. What happened?

• the government ruled out means testing public education;
• the proposal was contained in a green paper and lasted only several hours before it bit the dust;
• but it allowed the opposition to spend the day talking about education which is one of its favourite topics;
• the government's desired changes to citizenship will go to cabinet tonight;
• this clears the way for the legislation to be introduced into Parliament later this week.

Labor's Kelvin Thomson has become the latest MP to express his support for same sex marriage.

On his first day back at work after suffering a heart attack and some pretty major surgery Mr Thomson said although he previously favoured the traditional definition of marriage he was now convinced there was significant community support for change.

Cabinet will reportedly sign off on the final version of the government's changes to citizenship tonight.

That clears the way for the party room to give it a tick tomorrow morning and the legislation introduced into Parliament on Wednesday.

The opposition did not ask any questions about citizenship during question time today. I thought that was a bit weird. The opposition went hard at the end of last week and did pretty well. I'm not sure why it didn't continue to push on with the issue today.

The government's changes to the pension (the ones the Greens are supporting but Labor are opposing) have passed the House of Representatives.

Palmer United Party boss Clive Palmer has told Sky News that no MP should serve more than two terms.

Mr Palmer says he will recontest his Queensland seat of Fairfax (which he won in 2013) but that it would be his last term if he won it.

The Greens have succeeding in their quest into the video game development industry.

"Five years ago, Australia had a bourgeoning video game development sector employing thousands of talented people in this rapidly growing industry," co deputy leader Scott Ludlam said in a statement.

"Internationally, companies have experienced strong growth thanks to smart government support and favourable regulatory settings. In Australia, no such luck: the sector has been treated like the poor cousin of the creative industries, culminating in the Abbott government's decision to close the $20 million Australian Interactive Games Fund, just 12 months after it was established."

"This inquiry will help establish what the government should be doing to support Australia's games industry and the employment, economic and creative benefits it delivers to the nation."

I know how much you love seeing the work of Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen.

Each afternoon at about this time I'm going to try and bring you a gallery of their question time pictures. They take so many and there are often times I can't use them or replace fabulous shots with miracle shots quickly enough.

I'll put it up on Facebook each afternoon at about 4pm.

A bit of administrative house keeping.

Parliament sits until Thursday this week and then rises for six weeks.

It will return on August 10.

The Labor Party's national conference is 24-26 July.

Meanwhile, in Senate question time, Greens co deputy leader Larissa Waters asked George Brandis (who represents the prime minister in Senate question time) about the Pope's recent encyclical in which he calls for an urgent moral response to global warming.

"42 per cent of the Abbott cabinet is Catholic including the Prime Minister himself," Senator Waters said.

"The Prime Minister has failed to listen to scientists, will now he listen to the leader of his own Church and abandon his reckless attack on clean energy?"

Government senators were unimpressed.

Matt Canavan was forced to withdraw after calling Senator Waters a "bigot" while Barry O'Sullivan thought he would heckle Senator Waters about her marital status.

Senator Brandis's response was: "I believe coal is very good for humanity indeed."

And that's it for question time today.