Category Archives: Australian politics

Greens leader denies knowledge of ‘secret dossier’ on how to handle Jordon Steele-John misconduct allegations

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David Shoebridge says 47-page document not ‘made by, used by, or seen by’ his office as matter referred to parliamentary standards commission

Greens leader David Shoebridge has denied knowledge of the existence of an alleged crisis management document on how to deal with allegations against Jordon Steele-John being made public.

The Nine newspapers reported on Friday afternoon the existence of a “secret dossier”, first drafted in 2016, which contained misconduct allegations against the Western Australian Greens senator and how to suppress their media coverage.

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One Nation proposes $2,000 baby subsidy in Victoria but says it won’t touch state abortion laws

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Announcement comes a day after Liberal and Labor parties say they will cover out-of-pocket costs for abortion care

One Nation has proposed a $2,000 baby bonus for new parents in Victoria – a day after the Labor and Liberal parties both agreed to cover out-of-pocket costs for abortion care.

The deputy leader of One Nation in Victoria, Colleen Harkin, announced the plan on Friday to remove out-of-pocket costs for pregnant women in the public healthcare system and a $2,000 subsidy for those accessing private maternity care.

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‘Manosphere’ podcasts and moon-landing conspiracy theories to remain online under new laws, Wells says

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Communications minister rebuts claims that Labor’s digital duty of care laws would lead to government control of speech

Australians could still “listen to manosphere podcasts” or “say the moon landing was fake” under proposed new online safety laws, Anika Wells has stressed as she rubbished claims they would lead to government censorship

The communications minister also said she was considering updates to the digital duty of care laws to allow individual Australians to directly sue big tech companies flouting the new rules. This has been a key demand from the Greens for their support for the laws, while the Coalition accuses Labor of plans to “secretly control Australian speech”.

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Greens senator Jordon Steele-John takes leave amid investigation into complaints

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Steele-John said he rejected the claims and had referred them to the Western Australian Greens for a ‘fair, independent process’

Greens senator Jordon Steele-John has taken leave from the party room after complaints were made, triggering an independent review.

The Nine newspapers reported on Thursday afternoon that seven party members demanded an investigation into allegations he made inappropriate comments to a number of women between 2017 and 2025.

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Australian industry reliant on gas for ‘foreseeable future’, resources minister tells press club

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Madeleine King says national gas reservation scheme, expected to come into effect from 2028, will reduce power prices

The resources minister, Madeleine King, says Australian industry will be reliant on gas for the “foreseeable future”, and that the national gas reservation scheme will push down power prices.

But the Western Australian MP did not put a price tag on the cost of gas under the proposal – as the former opposition leader Peter Dutton once did – nor predict when households and businesses would start to see that financial relief.

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Anne Aly reveals she has received 19 death threats in the last week alone

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After an opposition MP says she should be ‘shamed and stoned’, the federal minister hits back at ‘racist and misogynistic’ language

Anne Aly has condemned as “racist” and “misogynistic” comments in parliament calling for her to be “stoned in the square” – while revealing she has received 19 death threats in the last week alone.

The Gold Coast Liberal National MP Angie Bell, the member for Moncrieff, told the House of Representatives that Aly, the small business minister, and the prime minister should be “shamed and stoned in the square” over a decision made by the tax office.

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The return of the prodigal son? Why speculation is rising over Josh Frydenberg’s future

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The spectre of a leadership alternative is hardly helpful for Angus Taylor. But would Frydenberg do a better job?

A reasonable query for Liberals at this point is: if Josh Frydenberg is the answer, what is the question?

There was a whiff of weariness in some corners of parliament this week, as the former treasurer and deputy Liberal leader happily stoked another round of “Josh for Canberra” speculation. With more rumoured comebacks than Oasis, Frydenberg’s latest foray into the national political arena saw him bouncing around TV, radio and podcast interviews to promote his new book, and pointedly refuse to rule out trying to rejoin the parliament.

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Julie Inman Grant may be able to limit Australians seeing a livestreamed US execution – but it could start a diplomatic incident

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A history of tech giant legal challenges and US political criticism shows there’s no easy solution for the eSafety commissioner

Australia’s online safety regulator has a few levers to limit the public seeing the US’s planned livestream of an execution, but history suggests it will lead to a very public fight.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced last week the planned execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed when the military execution is carried out in early December.

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A Trump impersonator and opera singers: CPAC was a spectacle, but the right still can’t agree how to take down Labor

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Preferences proved the sticking point at the conference as conservatives face the prospect of a third successive election defeat

Many mainstream Australians would feel as if they’d been dropped in a foreign country at the Conservative Political Action Conference, lost amid oblique references to transgender swimmers, blue hair, women’s bathrooms, jokes about falling off stages and Matt Canavan in hi-vis and speed dealer sunnies.

It’s an interesting spectacle. At this year’s conference in Brisbane, rightwing campaigner Monica Smit was deep in conversation with a Donald Trump impersonator, opera singers belted out the national anthem (the first verse, twice, for unknown reasons), senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her folk singer husband sang the anthem again, and Karl Stefanovic jokingly thanking CPAC for “rudely interrupting my unemployment”.

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Hanson seems more and more like the de facto opposition leader. At CPAC, Angus Taylor warmed the seat for her

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Cooperation between One Nation and the Liberals ‘up to Angus Taylor’, Pauline Hanson says at conservative conference. How would that work?

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference billed itself as a chance for the leaders of the three main conservative parties – Liberals, Nationals and One Nation – to make their pitch and compete for rightwing voters.

The reception they received in Brisbane on Saturday suggests Pauline Hanson is effectively the preferred opposition leader, with Angus Taylor relegated to leading a minor party.

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One Nation’s AI video is vile and tired – but the ensloppification of Australian politics doesn’t stop there

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The inflammatory clip shows the wild west of online politicking created by unrestricted access to AI – and why watchdogs need more powers to do something about it

One Nation’s new AI-generated campaign video is a new low – even for them.

The video – reportedly played at the party’s Victorian campaign launch over the weekend – is an AI-generated collection of racist tropes, depicting a man who appears to be African brandishing a machete, an apparently Middle Eastern man with an explosive vest, a south Asian man in a turban talking about “mass migration” and an Indigenous elder talking about people receiving “money … on the basis of need, not identity”.

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OpenAI used AI to help write email warning Australian government AI had hacked its websites

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Exclusive: Revelation comes after executive told parliamentary inquiry he did not believe AI had been used to write message, but was ‘happy to go and confirm’

OpenAI used AI to help write the email to the Australian government advising that its AI agent had hacked into key departmental websites, Guardian Australia can reveal.

On Tuesday, one of the company’s executives told a parliamentary inquiry that he didn’t believe that its own technology had been used to create the email, but said the company needed to confirm this.

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OpenAI must explain action taken to stop AI hacking Australians’ private data, chair of federal inquiry says

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Unions, employer groups, banks and industry experts will appear at the four-day hearings along with OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google

OpenAI must explain how they will stop their models from inappropriately accessing Australian data, the Labor chair of the parliament’s committee on artificial intelligence has warned, ahead of federal inquiry hearings which will grill the tech company alongside Anthropic, Microsoft and Google.

Independent senator David Pocock is also demanding answers, saying OpenAI “still have a lot they need to answer” about their AI agent accessing Services Australia data on Medicare and the company’s “appalling” tardiness in notifying the federal government about the incident.

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One Nation to establish headquarters in multimillion dollar Brisbane office bought by Gina Rinehart

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Barnaby Joyce defends move, saying party will lease space off mining billionaire’s company at commercial rates

Barnaby Joyce says there’s no conflict of interest between One Nation and mining billionaire, Gina Rinehart, after it was revealed Australia’s richest woman had bought a new multimillion dollar Brisbane city office for the minor-party to lease.

The One Nation MP said the party’s national head office would pay the market rate to Rinehart’s company to rent the space, claiming there would be no mate’s rates.

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Chalmers says global economic turmoil will drive budget cuts, but Australia should avoid recession

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Treasurer says ‘very substantial and intensifying pressure’ on federal budget as he points finger at private sector for driving up inflation amid Middle East conflict

Jim Chalmers has warned of “very substantial and intensifying” economic pressures on the horizon but insists he’s not planning for a recession, as he prepares to find new ways to cut the budget ahead of its mid-year update.

The treasurer on Sunday called on critics of government spending to name the services that should be cut, as he points the finger at the private sector for driving up inflation in Australia amid the protracted conflict in the Middle East.

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Bruce Baird, former federal Liberal MP and NSW minister, dies aged 84

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Baird, father of former NSW premier Mike Baird and journalist Julia Baird, helped win the Olympics for Sydney

Bruce Baird, a former federal Liberal MP and deputy leader of the party’s New South Wales branch, has died aged 84.

Baird, who also served as the NSW transport minister from 1988 to 1995, is the father of former state premier Mike Baird, the ABC journalist Julia Baird, and the marketing executive Steve Baird.

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Million-dollar public servants: 11 staff at Australia’s Future Fund paid significantly more than the PM

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One executive received a $1.5m package last year, while 10 other staff received remuneration exceeding $1m each

Nearly a dozen federal public servants were paid more than $1m last year, with one receiving a $1.5m package worth more than double Anthony Albanese’s base salary.

The generous remuneration – which includes bonuses and allowances – has been criticised as insulting during a cost-of-living crisis and amid job cuts across the public service.

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Anthropic pushes for opt-out model for Australian content as ABC warns of ‘cannibalisation’ of news

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Maker of Claude claims AI could transform economy but ABC and SBS say the technology should be subject to media regulations

AI giant Anthropic has urged the Albanese government to consider giving “conditional approval” for big tech to train its models on Australian copyrighted works under an opt-out model, after conceding it won’t secure a blanket copyright exemption.

But Australia’s public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, have strongly criticised AI firms, calling on the government to enact strict new rules to compensate media organisations and protect public interest journalism.

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David Shoebridge wants the Greens to ‘seize this moment’. Is his more combative style the answer?

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New leader says his party must connect with millions of disaffected voters and ‘make them believe in politics again’

As One Nation’s polling surged this year, and Pauline Hanson ate away at the votes of first the Coalition and then Labor, one curious mainstay emerged; the Greens remained seemingly anchored to the 10-12% range, no matter which poll you look at.

That’s despite the fact that, arguably, there’s rarely been more fertile political ground for the Greens leader to reap rewards; a centrist Labor government with a big majority but increasingly on the nose, a resurgent anti-immigration populist party backed by Australia’s richest mining billionaire, a Coalition in disarray, a cost-of-living crisis set ablaze by rising interest rates and inflation, and a public increasingly alarmed about the nexus of big tech, big datacentres and shadowy AI oligarchs operating with impunity.

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Guardian Essential poll: Coalition’s primary vote sinks to lowest ever as majority support hardline immigration ideas

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More than half of Australians want to see the country’s migrant intake lowered while One Nation’s primary vote climbs to 25%

The Coalition has failed to capitalise on growing criticism of Labor, with the opposition stuck at its lowest-ever primary vote in the Guardian Essential poll.

The poll also shows more than half of all Australians want immigration cut and have voiced support for hardline enforcement, such as forced deportation.

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