Category Archives: Australian politics

Bridget McKenzie’s office wanted ‘sports rorts’ funding tripled after consultation with MPs and senators, documents confirm

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Exclusive: FoI documents show senator’s office spoke to other members, duty-senators and some cross-benchers to prioritise marginal and target seats

Bridget McKenzie’s office proposed tripling funding for the “sports rorts” program to deliver “priorities for target and marginal” seats after consultation with MPs and senators, new documents confirm.

After a three-year freedom-of-information battle, the Greens have secured the release of colour-coded spreadsheets related to the community sport infrastructure grant program and the “talking points” document prepared for McKenzie to pitch to then prime minister, Scott Morrison, to expand the program from $30m to $100m.

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Guardian Essential poll: voters back Coalition’s super for homes and Greens housing policy

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Australians want wide-ranging reform of ‘failing’ housing system and back the Greens’ public sector property developer, poll finds

Australians think the housing system is failing and support a range of more radical solutions, including the Coalition’s push to use super for housing and the Greens’ public sector property developer.

Those are the results of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,165 voters which sends a warning shot to the Albanese government and state governments to do more to combat falling home ownership and higher rents.

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On the state government’s role to “provide social housing and regulate rentals”, 50% said it was doing a poor job while 19% said it was doing a good job.

On the federal government’s role to “set policies on how homes should be taxed”, 47% said it was doing a poor job and 19% said a good job.

On the local government’s role to “establish planning rules for local communities”, 41% said it was doing a poor job and 23% said a good job.

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PM says transparency around aid worker’s death ‘in Israel’s interest’ – as it happened

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PM ‘absolutely’ confident supermarket review will reduce prices for consumers

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is speaking to ABC News Radio, also weighing in on Craig Emerson’s supermarket review.

Including the Senate review … we’ve already announced our funding of Choice, the consumer organisation, to do quarterly price monitoring, ensuring that consumers know where the best deal is available and using that use of information to drive that competition through the system.

We’ve only got a few supermarkets in Australia and it does concentrate a lot of market power in the hands of the retailers, [so] heavy fines might be the way to go. I certainly wouldn’t stand in the way of that.

And I know many people, particularly in one of the richest cities in the world in Sydney, are doing it incredibly tough when you’ve got the dual hits of both interest rate rises and high inflation.

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Australia’s big supermarkets could face penalties of up to $10m under proposed mandatory code

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Government report stops short of recommending powers to break up big chains saying heavy fines and effective enforcement would be ‘a more credible deterrent’

Australia’s big supermarkets could face hefty fines as part of a federal government plan to make the grocery code of conduct mandatory and give it teeth.

A report ordered by the government – to be released on Monday – warns changes are needed to redress “a heavy imbalance in market power between suppliers and supermarkets in Australia’s heavily concentrated supermarket industry”.

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Israeli officials who want to deny aid to Gaza civilians merit Australian sanctions, humanitarian groups say

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Peak body for Australian aid groups joined by faith groups and health experts saying there is no excuse for starvation due to impact of war

The Australian government should impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials who have called for the denial of aid to civilians of Gaza, according to humanitarian organisations, faith groups and health experts.

The Australian Council for International Development (Acfid), the peak body for Australian aid groups, said a “man-made, preventable famine” in Gaza would leave “a permanent stain on all our collective humanity”.

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‘I’ve got the yarn’: Taylor Auerbach cautioned over spending as he courted Bruce Lehrmann, texts reveal

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Fellow Spotlight producer told Auerbach he found it ‘bizarre’ he was taking Lehrmann to dinner every night

Spotlight producers warned Taylor Auerbach about dropping too much money on Seven’s company card while he courted Bruce Lehrmann over several months for an exclusive interview, text messages have revealed.

The text messages between the former Seven producer and his senior colleagues were tendered in federal court after the Lehrmann defamation trial was reopened for Auerbach to give additional evidence as part of Channel Ten’s defence.

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Mohamed came to Australia as a teenager. Now, he faces being deported to a country he doesn’t know

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After almost a decade in immigration detention Mohamed Coker was told he would be put on a plane to Sierra Leone within hours

“My dad was murdered there. The people that murdered my dad are still around … I fear the same thing will happen to me.”

Mohamed Coker, 33, spoke to Guardian Australia on his way to the airport.

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‘Deadly failure’: Australia demands Israel take ‘appropriate action’ against those responsible for killing aid workers

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Foreign minister Penny Wong says IDF’s killing of the seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom, ‘cannot be swept aside’

The Australian government has demanded Israel take “appropriate action” over its military’s “deadly failure” that killed seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said she and the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, wrote to their counterparts in Israel overnight on Friday after a verbal briefing on the initial findings of Israel Defense Forces’ investigation, which Wong said had not yet satisfied the government’s expectations.

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Julie Bishop ‘deeply honoured’ to be appointed UN special envoy for Myanmar

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Former Australian foreign minister named as secretary general António Guterres’ special envoy to country gripped by civil war

The former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop has been appointed the United Nations secretary general António Guterres’ special envoy on Myanmar, the world body has said.

Bishop, the Australian National University’s chancellor, will take up the UN role that has been vacant since June last year, when Singaporean diplomat Noeleen Heyzer stepped down.

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Fears parliamentary behaviour watchdog could be curbed by confidentiality agreements

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Greens senator Larissa Waters vows to ensure the new process expected to open in October should be led by the complainant

The Greens senator Larissa Waters has vowed to push for a powerful complainant-led sanctions body in parliament following reports those coming forward about bad behaviour in Canberra could be forced to sign confidentiality agreements.

After years of Parliament House’s poor workplace culture being in the spotlight, the independent enforcement body, described as the “final” piece of the puzzle this week by finance minister Katy Gallagher, is finally expected to open its doors in October.

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Gaza killings: Australia plans to appoint independent adviser to scrutinise Israeli inquiry

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Penny Wong demands Israel preserve evidence because of unsatisfactory initial inquiry as Israel dismisses two officers over death of seven aid staff

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Australia has demanded that Israel preserve all evidence surrounding the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza and it also plans to appoint an independent adviser to scrutinise the official investigation.

The Australian government said on Friday that the information provided by Israel on its investigation into the killing of Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues “hasn’t yet satisfied our expectations”.

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Australia weather live updates: more heavy rain forecast for NSW and Qld as SES issues flood warnings; Sydney downpours cause train delays and airport flight cancellations

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Dozens of flights cancelled at Sydney airport and drivers told to avoid non-essential travel as inland low and coastal trough combine

Helen Reid from the Bureau of Meteorology has just provided us with an update on the Sydney rain and said the city could very well receive a month’s worth of rain in one day.

She pointed to the Observatory Hill gauge and said on average in April, there is around 126.5mm of rainfall during the month. Since 9am yesterday morning, there has been 106mm of rain.

We are expecting rainfall over Sydney to increase during today … I would suggest that if we got more than the April average, that wouldn’t be too beyond too far beyond this stretch of imagination.

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‘Time to be fearless’: NT attorney general urges Australian leaders to pursue treaty after voice defeat

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Chansey Paech says the Uluru statement is ‘not finished’ despite the result of the voice referendum

The Northern Territory’s attorney general is urging the nation’s leaders to put last year’s voice referendum result behind them and move to forge treaties with Indigenous people because “the time for sorry business is over”.

The attorney general and deputy chief minister, Chansey Paech, is urging the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and state and territory colleagues not to allow the referendum result to stall progress on the other elements of the Uluru statement from the heart.

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Australia’s east coast forecast to avoid gas shortfall despite claims of looming supply crisis

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ACCC report says region is expected to have surplus of six petajoules in third quarter ‘even if all uncontracted gas is exported’

Australia’s east coast is expected to have a small surplus of gas in the third quarter of 2024, with an improvement in forecast supply since the gas market code was introduced.

Those are the results of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s interim update on gas supply, to be released on Friday, which the Albanese government has said shows new enforceable supply commitments are making a difference.

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Australian neo-Nazis must be monitored better, Senate inquiry told

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White supremacists are training members in combat under cover of ‘active clubs’ promoting self-defence, counter-extremist experts say

Australian white supremacists and neo-Nazis who are creating crowdfunding campaigns and “active clubs” to train members in combat must be monitored more closely, a prominent global counter-extremist organisation has told a Senate inquiry.

Some Australian extremists “have become leading voices in the decentralised online neo-Nazi sphere”, according to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a global anti-terror group and non-profit. It has warned a parliamentary inquiry into rightwing extremism that some such groups in Australia may seek to promote combat sports and self-defence clubs as an “evasion tactic” to avoid police attention, as has been seen overseas.

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Robotax: why the ATO’s controversial tax debt clawback scheme deserves media scrutiny

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Tax ombudsman says ATO commissioner has powers designed to modify how a tax law operates – should the media accept the ‘no discretion’ defence, and move on?

Last November, thousands of Australians received letters advising them of unpaid tax debts. Some of these were decades old, dating back to a time of chequebooks and paper records.

There were mixed responses.

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Australia news live: PM says it ‘isn’t good enough’ to say Gaza strike on aid workers ‘just a product of war’

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Prime minister reiterates that has ‘demanded full accountability for what has occurred’ from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Follow the day’s news live

After a number of comments about the state of famine in Gaza, which Hyman appears to be disputing – it’s quite difficult to keep up with his comments, though they seem to include allegations that Hamas is stealing aid – he is asked by host Sally Sara if he’s rejecting UN concerns of hunger and starvation in Gaza. I will come back and check his comments shortly but the upshot seems to be that he is, more or less.

I’ll bring you more direct lines from this interview shortly, bear with me.

I mean, obviously, we know that this isn’t something that the IDF would do or the Israeli Air Force would do on purpose.

There’s a war going on. Wars are awful. Nobody wanted this war, we certainly didn’t want this war, but we’re forced to fight it because it’s a war for our very existence.

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Youth curfew ‘not the long-term solution’, MP says – as it happened

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Anthony Albanese has called a snap press conference in Canberra at 8.30am. We’ll have coverage of this for you soon.

A man has died in Melbourne’s south after being struck by a truck on a major highway near Frankston.

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Zomi Frankcom’s family say Australian aid worker killed in Israeli airstrike was ‘doing the work she loves’

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PM Anthony Albanese describes 43-year-old’s death as ‘completely unacceptable’ as tributes flow for World Central Kitchen worker online

Lalzawmi Frankcom, the Australian aid worker killed by an Israeli military airstrike in Gaza, died “doing the work she loves”, her grieving family has said.

“We are deeply mourning the news that our brave and beloved Zomi has been killed doing the work she loves, delivering food to the people of Gaza,” her family said in a statement. “She will leave behind a legacy of compassion, bravery and love for all those in her orbit.”

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New record set for number of international students in Australia

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The 700,000 visa holders helped push the total of temporary entrants to 2.8 million, another record

The number of international students in Australia has topped 700,000 for the first time, helping to drive the number of temporary entrants to 2.8 million, another new record.

There were 713,144 international students in Australia on 29 February, according to the home affairs department data published by data.gov.au on Monday.

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