To expand on that further, the reasons why we don’t import US beef are 1. we produce more than enough for ourselves and 2. most importantly we do not have mad cow disease in Australia, whereas the US does. US beef is a biosecurity risk, which we take very seriously.
our federal pharmaceutical procurement thing
It’s called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and it’s basically the government being the single buyer for pharmaceuticals and then subsidising the cost to Australians. Big pharma hates it because if the government thinks they’re ripping us off we just won’t buy it and they’ll basically be shut out of the Australian market. The government also will only buy drugs that are proven to be effective, so they can’t unload useless junk or derivatives that are more expensive but otherwise the same
In Westminster parliamentary systems the opposition is the largest party or coalition that is not the governing majority party/coalition. There can be other parties or individual members in the parliament that are not part of the government or opposition, in Australia they are known collectively as the crossbench (referring to how they are seated on the benches between the government and opposition benches in the parliament chamber).