Category Archives: Australian politics

Ex-Liberal MP says the party must introduce gender quotas to start winning elections

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Jenny Ware says party is ‘at crisis point’ and cannot be competitive at election time unless it selects candidates who better reflect the makeup of Australia

The former Liberal MP Jenny Ware says her party must implement gender quotas for candidates for office, warning the opposition “cannot get back into government” without putting forward candidates who are more reflective of the broader community.

Ware, who lost her seat of Hughes at the 2025 election, said it was “deeply embarrassing” that the Liberal party executive had not released its own review of the electoral wipeout, and which was then tabled in parliament by Anthony Albanese this week.

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Jillian Segal’s office hand-picked candidate to assess controversial university antisemitism report card

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Greg Craven, a former vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University, chosen after no other bids made for the tender

Australia’s antisemitism envoy hand-picked Greg Craven to lead her controversial university report card process after receiving no response from five firms approached during an open tender process.

Documents released under freedom of information laws showed Jillian Segal’s office initially approached three independent consulting firms and two law firms to potentially conduct the assessment of Australian universities and how well they were dealing with antisemitism on campus, but all of them declined to bid on the tender.

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Australia news live: luxury car tax change could seal EU trade deal; far north Queensland braces for severe weather

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Jim Chalmers hints concession on threshold for imports could finally lead to an agreement. Follow the latest updates live

Two flights from Dubai land in Sydney and Melbourne

A second commercial flight landed in Sydney last night from Dubai and the first made its way to Melbourne from the Middle Eastern hub.

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Plibersek accuses Mafs of platforming ‘coercive control’ after contestant wanted a woman ‘obedient’ like a dog

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Social services minister Tanya Plibersek criticises hit reality TV show Married at First Sight for ‘messaging which encourages control and dehumanises women’

The social services minister, Tanya Plibersek, has accused Australia’s biggest media company, Nine Entertainment, of “normalising” coercive control by airing an exchange in which a Married at First Sight contestant says he wants a woman to be obedient like a dog.

Plibersek urged parents not to let their children watch the “dangerous” reality TV juggernaut, which regularly attracts more than 2 million viewers on broadcast television alone.

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Pauline Hanson censured over Muslim comments but only two Coalition senators back motion

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It is Hanson’s second censure within four months, this time over comments questioning whether there were ‘good’ Muslims

Pauline Hanson has been censured again by the federal Senate, with two Liberal senators crossing the floor to support a motion calling out the One Nation leader’s “inflammatory and divisive” recent comments about Australian Muslims.

Hanson dismissed the motion – her second censure within four months, after her stunt of wearing a hijab in the parliament last year – as a “joke”, theatrically slapping herself on the wrist before storming out of the chamber prior to the final vote. The Greens and much of the crossbench backed Labor’s censure motion, while the Coalition resolved to oppose it, saying censures should be reserved for the most serious conduct.

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Angus Taylor snaps at journalist as Liberals ramp up rhetoric against Australian children in Syrian camp

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Opposition leader suggests 23 children and 11 women attempting to leave al-Roj are Islamic State ‘sympathisers’

Angus Taylor has suggested the Australian children remaining in a Syrian detention camp are “Isis sympathisers” as the Liberal party ramps up its rhetoric against the families of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters.

The opposition leader also chided a member of the press for attempting to force his response on why the group of 23 children and 11 women should be another country’s responsibility.

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Flights from Australia to Middle East cancelled – as it happened

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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says Australia was not told in advance about the bombing of Iran but won’t say whether intelligence facilities here were used.

“We weren’t told advance. You wouldn’t expect us to be but you would see there’s obviously been a lot of discussion,” she said.

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‘People have lost all sense of shame’: three threats against federal politicians reported to police every day

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At least 21 charges have been laid against individuals since October, Australian federal police say, following 951 reports to June

Nearly three violent or menacing threats against federal politicians are being reported to police daily, according to Australian federal police data, with rates almost doubling in two years.

The soaring danger for elected officials and their staff reached new heights this week when Anthony Albanese was evacuated from The Lodge in Canberra over a bomb threat.

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Polls, preferences, potential defections: can Victoria’s Liberal party ward off the rising threat of One Nation?

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Opposition leader Jess Wilson is under pressure to reveal her position on a deal with Pauline Hanson’s party as the state election approaches

While internal divisions have long been the Victorian Liberal party’s main obstacle to winning government, a new threat is emerging on its right flank: One Nation.

Just four years ago, One Nation received just 8,077 lower house first-preference votes out of more than 3.6m cast in Victoria – equivalent to 0.22% of the total – and won a single seat in the upper house.

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Pauline Hanson’s daughter employed in taxpayer-funded job with NSW One Nation senator

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Exclusive: Tasmanian Lee Hanson employed as senior adviser to Sean Bell in role worth as much as $180,000

One Nation has employed Pauline Hanson’s Tasmanian-based daughter as a senior adviser to a New South Wales senator, in a taxpayer-funded role worth as much as $180,000 a year.

Guardian Australia can reveal that Lee Hanson, who lives just outside Hobart, was appointed as the senior adviser to Senator Sean Bell in October last year.

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Albanese should demand reparations from Israel, say families of Australian soldiers whose graves were bulldozed

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A third family says the Australian government must do more to hold Israel and the Israeli Defence Force to account, including demanding an apology

The families of dead Australian soldiers whose graves were bulldozed by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza have called for reparations and urged the Albanese government to hold Israel accountable.

Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed that the IDF had bulldozed parts of the Gaza War Cemetery – the resting place of Australian, British and Canadian soldiers who served in the first and second world wars.

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Grace Tame says ‘spare me the condescension, old man’ after Albanese defends ‘difficult’ comment

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PM clarifies remark but says he disagrees with some language the 2021 Australian of the Year has used

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has said “we all know what you meant” after the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, claimed he meant to describe her “difficult life” when he labelled her “difficult”.

Speaking in Melbourne on Thursday morning, the prime minister said he had not meant to describe Tame as “difficult” at a News Corp event on Wednesday, when he was asked to describe public figures in one word. Instead he meant that her life had been “difficult”, he said.

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High-speed rail link between Sydney and Newcastle could be ‘shovel-ready’ in two years, Albanese government says

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Transport minister Catherine King will pledge $230m for planning work for the first phase of a bullet train on Australia’s east coast

Long-mooted plans for high-speed rail could be “shovel-ready” within two years, according to the federal government, which will on Tuesday announce another $230m for further planning work for fast trains between Sydney and Newcastle, as part of the first phase of an eventual east coast bullet train.

Rail journeys on the new fast train could take as little as one hour between Sydney and Newcastle, and 30 minutes between Sydney and the Central Coast, the transport and infrastructure minister, Catherine King, said. It currently takes more than 2.5 hours to travel by train from Sydney to Newcastle, and almost 1.5 hours from Sydney to the Central Coast.

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Australia will ‘examine all options’ to avoid new 15% tariffs announced by Donald Trump

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The trade minister, Don Farrell, says Australia has ‘consistently advocated’ against the ‘unjustified tariffs’, after the US president announced new levies

Australia will “examine all options” after the US president Donald Trump announced a temporary 15% tariff would apply to US imports from all countries.

The US president’s move came less than 24 hours after the US supreme court overturned his original 10% import tariff. Shortly after the ruling, Trump announced he was reinstating the 10% duties using a different law before raising it again to 15%.

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Australia news live: SA Labor pledges $100k stamp duty waiver for ‘empty nesters’; Burke says Hanson’s Lakemba comments a national security risk

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The home affairs minister says the One Nation leader was frustrated with the Muslim community because it ‘didn’t give her what she wanted’. Follow live updates

Police investigating the mistaken kidnapping of grandfather Chris Baghsarian are appealing for information about suspicious car fires that could be related to the case, AAP reports.

Hopes are fading of finding the 85-year-old alive, who was taken captive more than a week ago when three men stormed his Sydney home and bundled him into an SUV.

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Tony Burke says Australia has few options to block return of 34 women and children from Syrian camp

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One woman is subject to temporary exclusion order over security concerns, but home affairs minister says group is ‘not consistent’ in their beliefs

Tony Burke says authorities “know the state of mind” of each of the 34 Australian women and children stuck in a Syrian detention camp, but says his options to prevent them returning to Australia are limited.

The home affairs minister, who represents a south-western Sydney electorate with a high Muslim population, also warned Pauline Hanson’s recent derogatory comments against Muslims in Australia could incite violence.

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Federal MPs accept free sport tickets from gambling companies amid calls to restrict wagering ads

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Tabcorp and Sportsbet provided tickets to at least six Liberal and Labor politicians, register of interests shows

At least six federal Labor and Liberal politicians, including an assistant minister and shadow ministers, have disclosed they accepted free tickets to lucrative sporting events from major gambling companies in the past six months, as the government faces calls to restrict wagering ads and better regulate the sector.

Anthony Chisholm, the assistant minister for regional development and agriculture, has declared twice in recent months taking tickets and hospitality from Tabcorp for major horse race meets in Victoria and Queensland. Sportsbet, Australia’s biggest online bookmaker, also provided tickets to rugby union, the Australian Open or race meets to the Labor MPs Raff Ciccone and Dan Repacholi, Coalition shadow ministers Dan Tehan and Tim Wilson, and Liberal MP Mary Aldred.

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NDIS plans will be computer-generated, with human involvement dramatically cut under sweeping overhaul

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Exclusive: Staff were told of major changes to the way NDIS funding and support plans will be made during a recent internal briefing

Funding and support plans for national disability insurance scheme participants will be generated by a computer program and staff will have no discretion to amend them, under a major overhaul of the NDIS to be rolled out next year, Guardian Australia can reveal.

Under the changes, human involvement in deciding support for NDIS participants will be dramatically reduced.

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Labor rejects standalone AI legislation with plan that offers to help ‘unlock’ public and private data

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Roadmap focuses on technology’s ‘economic benefits’ and says existing laws will cover the fast-growing new technology

The Albanese government has decided against legislation to manage artificial intelligence, with a new national roadmap emphasising Labor’s focus on the technology’s economic benefits and plans to “unlock” vast datasets held by private companies and the public service to help train AI models.

Supporting and reskilling workers affected by AI in their jobs, boosting investment in datacentres, and sharing the productivity benefits across the economy are key components of the Labor government’s National AI Plan, launched on Tuesday.

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New behaviour standards are in place for parliament but crossbenchers say question time still rife with bullying

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Independent MP Zali Steggall says it’s not always clear who is behind disorderly behaviour – and sometimes it can be a whole section of a political party

Sweeping behavioural standards have now been in place in Australia’s parliament for years, but crossbench MPs have warned question time is still rife with bullying and a “mob mentality” that needs to be stamped out.

Data obtained through the speaker’s office shows 21 MPs across the Coalition and Labor have been booted out of question time 31 times, under standing order 94a during the first six months of the 48th parliament.

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