As it happened: Turnbull government defends NBN, pushes company tax cuts

You may remember the government promised One Nation it would pursue this issue in return for the minor party's support for its media ownership changes.

Forcing the ABC to disclose how much it pays people would require legislation, something the government does not necessarily have enough support to pass.

Ms Guthrie is calling the government's bluff.

She has told the committee the ABC has advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet that publishing staff salaries would be a breach of their privacy.

Michelle Guthrie, the managing director of the ABC, is appearing before a Senate estimates committee.

Ms Guthrie is being asked about the government's desire that it should reveal the salaries of its highest paid staff.

Ms Guthrie doesn't understand why salaries should be revealed: "It's massively unfair to our journalists."

While we were in question time the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its weekly update on how the same-sex marriage survey is going.

As of October 20, 74.5 per cent of eligible people had returned their forms.

That's 11.9 million survey forms that have been sent back.

A reminder the ABS needs the forms back by 6 pm on November 7 in order for them to be counted. To make sure your form reaches the ABS is suggests you post it tomorrow.

And that's it for question time.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull takes up the case by accusing the opposition of "not supporting mandatory sentences for some of the most disgusting crimes in the criminal calendar".

He's talking about this legislation which I wrote about earlier this month.

In a nutshell, the Law Council has suggested the legislation as it has been drafted captures a range of what it describes as "ordinary teenage behaviour" such as sexting.

"Why won't Labor supports us in putting paedophiles and gun runners behind bars?" Mr Turnbull continues.

What's going on in question time?

It's ostensibly about whether the Australian Federal Police has been unable to concentrate on doing things like stopping drug importation rackets because it has had to do other things - such as devoting several officers to guarding Mr Turnbull's Point Piper home (remember the Prime Minister does not live at Kirribilli).

But it's really about the opposition making the case Mr Turnbull does not take responsibility for things (this was also the thrust of its argument about the NBN yesterday).

Mr Turnbull has left most of the defence of this matter to Mr Keenan, who is inflaming the situation by accusing the opposition of not wanting legislative changes to gun ownership or child sex offences.

The opposition gets to the point of the so-far slightly cryptic questions about the AFP - that the AFP detail assigned to the Mr Turnbull's Point Piper mansion was one of the operations that has put a strain on its abilities.

Mr Keenan does not mention Mr Turnbull's house but says the AFP has an excellent record of stopping drug importation (one of the areas the AFP said it was struggling to keep up with).

Mr Turnbull says the opposition should stop colluding with the ABC on tactics.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie asks Mr Turnbull if he will establish a parliamentary inquiry into the allegations about Crown Casino he raised last week.

Mr Turnbull has already ruled out an inquiry but he says Mr Wilkie should trust "due process" and hand his information to the regulators and the police, rather than use parliamentary privilege.

"The idea that those investigations would be assisted by a simultaneous parliamentary inquiry almost beggars belief," Mr Turnbull says.