Category Archives: Australian politics

‘I felt less human, not human at all’: Australia faces moral crossroads over Nauru

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Who is accountable for what happens in an offshore processing centre? It’s remarkable this is still a question in Australia

Aarash lost his youth to offshore processing. Sixteen when he was sent to Nauru, he says he cannot remember a single birthday in more than a decade.

“When I see younger ones that age, having fun, playing, going to school, it reminds me of everything I lost,” he says. “I felt less human, not human at all.”

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Australia news live: Dreyfus to spend a week in Israel, PM says; SA police shoot man dead during mental health incident

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The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, says “the firing gun has started” for this year’s federal election, which he predicts will be in March or April.

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast just earlier, he said he doesn’t think the government will deliver a budget this year:

I think we’re all ready for it. I think it will be in March, April, I don’t think they’ll do a budget, they don’t want to remind the Australian people with the sea of red ink in the budget. That’s my punt.

This road is of national significance but it’s also one of the most dangerous in our country. And I think it just needs a commitment, and we’re glad to see the government has finally adopted that, one we had, and one the state government can now get on with the job of delivering.

Labor can make up all the nonsense they like. They’re desperate. I mean, this is a government that’s been on the back foot, that got things wrong, that is sending Australians on a pathway to poverty, not a pathway to prosperity. And so they’re in a state of desperation, saying these sorts of things.

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Anthony Albanese announces $7.2bn in funding for Queensland’s Bruce Highway in first major election promise

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Federal government to fund 80% of upgrades with state paying for 20%, despite previously vowing to split infrastructure projects 50-50

In the first major promise of the election year, Anthony Albanese has announced $7.2bn in funding for Queensland’s Bruce Highway.

The federal government will fund 80% of the upgrades, with the state funding 20%.

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Peter Dutton would need to cap partner visas to make his migration cuts, expert warns

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Former immigration official Abul Rizvi believes the current planning level for partner visas is acting as an ‘illegal’ de facto cap

The Coalition’s proposed cuts to Australia’s permanent migration would require Peter Dutton to legislate to allow a cap on partner visas, a migration expert has warned.

Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of immigration, believes the current planning level for partner visas, introduced by the Coalition and continued by Labor, is acting as an “illegal” de facto cap and would need to be removed.

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Scott Morrison rings in the New Year with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago resort

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Former Australian prime minister posted a photograph with himself, his wife Jenny and Donald and Melania Trump on X

Former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has spent New Year’s Eve with US president-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Morrison posted a photo on X featuring himself and his wife, Jenny, alongside Trump and his wife, Melania, at the Palm Beach, Florida club.

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Australia kept quiet about early deployment of forces ahead of Iraq war, cabinet papers show

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The Howard government sent military personnel to the Middle East well before officially authorising Australia’s involvement

The Howard government avoided disclosing that it had sent military forces to the Middle East months before authorising Australia’s official involvement in the Iraq war in 2003, cabinet records show.

Cabinet documents from 2003 and 2004 released by the National Archives contain the first confirmation of what has been widely discussed in the decades since: the government deployed forces well before officially authorising Australia’s involvement in the war on 18 March 2003.

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Curbs on transgender rights were proposed for Australia’s 2004 Marriage Act, cabinet papers show

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John Howard’s government legislated that marriage must be ‘the union of a man and a woman’, but excluded any reference to birth gender

John Howard was given the option of adding extra words to his 2004 Marriage Act amendment that would have limited transgender people’s ability to marry by making eligibility based on gender at birth, but chose not to pursue it.

Cabinet papers from 2004, released by the National Archives, show the Howard government was advised it could go beyond the formal definition of marriage it ultimately enshrined in law, and stipulate that a couple must have been born male and female respectively to be allowed to marry.

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Nearly 2,300 applicants died waiting for a parent visa to Australia with processing times of up to 31 years

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‘Providing an opportunity for people to apply for a visa that will probably never come seems both cruel and unnecessary’, review says

Wait times for visas to bring parents to Australia are so long that nearly 2,300 applicants died before receiving a visa in the last three years, according to the home affairs department.

The department released the data to Senate estimates, revealing that 2,297 parent visa applicants and 87 other family members, such as aged dependent relatives or carers, had died while waiting for a visa.

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Gallagher warns of robodebt repeat if public service is cut, but denies ‘scare-mongering’

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Finance, women’s and public services minister says Coalition’s promised cuts means ‘failures of systems’

Katy Gallagher has denied running a scare campaign against the Liberals on the possibility the public service would be gutted if the opposition was elected next year, while warning she has “no doubts” the slash-and-burn would lead to another robodebt-style saga.

Several Coalition frontbenchers have ramped up their attacks on federal bureaucracy in recent months, accusing the Albanese government of mismanaging the budget by hiring more than 30,000 people to undertake key service delivery jobs, including in Centrelink and the NDIS.

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Australia news live: Gallagher says she expects Pocock to trump her in ACT Senate race; more ball-shaped ‘debris’ on Sydney beach

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Detectives investigating four separate incidents of children being approached by drivers in white vans in Melbourne

Victoria police detectives are investigating four separate incidents in Melbourne in the last month of children being approached by drivers in white vans.

People like Mr Rogan prey on people’s vulnerabilities: they prey on fear, they prey on anxiety, they prey on all of the elements that contribute to uncertainty in society.

They entrepreneur fantasy outcomes and conspiracy outcomes as being a normal part of social narrative – I personally find it deeply repulsive.

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Agency in charge of Australia’s $368bn submarine program faces staff morale crisis

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Exclusive: the 17-month-old department has lost a senior leader and ranked second worst for staff wellbeing in the annual public service census

The agency overseeing Australia’s almost $400bn acquisition of nuclear submarines is facing a staff morale crisis and the threat of an external review of its operations, with a key deputy director leaving after just a year.

The Australian Submarine Agency, or ASA, was established 17 months ago to oversee submarine purchases under the Aukus pact but Guardian Australia understands it has become the subject of growing government concern about its priorities, governance and leadership.

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Labor declines to review three coal proposals for potential climate impact – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

More on the new Malaysia-based maritime institute:

The government is contributing $1.78m over four years to support the institute, which will train regional government officials on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, broader maritime law and ocean governance, awareness of maritime domains and environmental protection.

We don’t want to see any unilateral changes to the status quo across the Taiwan straits, and our focus is on doing everything we can in terms of exercising our international voice around promoting stability and peace in and around the Taiwan straits, in and around Taiwan.

Rules and norms are vital for our shared maritime region and the countries of our region make an ongoing contribution to maintaining and promoting them.

The institute will deliver training to officials from across the region on complex maritime legal and policy topics. It will nurture leaders and help further our collective contribution to a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.

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Australia splits with US to back UN resolution demanding end to Israel occupation of Palestinian territories

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Vote marks a change to the nation’s official stance held for more than two decades

Australia has split with the US and voted with 156 other countries at the UN to demand the end of Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”.

The vote marks Australia’s return to the position for the first time in more than two decades.

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Nuclear energy debate draws stark gender split in Australia ahead of next year’s election

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Survey finds 25 percentage point gender gap across all age brackets on whether nuclear power would be positive for the country, with majority of men saying it would

New data points to a stark gender split in attitudes towards nuclear energy, with women much more likely to say they don’t support it or think the risks are too great.

Research company DemosAu surveyed 6,000 people on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation and found 26% of women thought nuclear energy would be good for Australia, compared with 51% of men.

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Confidence in federal Labor at Morrison 2022 election loss levels, poll shows

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ANU study finds Albanese ‘significantly’ more favourable as PM than Dutton and more women undecided on voting intention than men

Just 38% of Australian voters have confidence in the federal government, a level approaching the lows before Scott Morrison was voted out of office in May 2022.

That is one of the key results of an Australian National University study, which nevertheless found the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had “significantly higher” favourability than Peter Dutton leading into the 2025 election.

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Australia news live: Allan defends Victoria after it’s named worst state for business; Burke to meet Indonesian minister over Bali Nine

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The Victorian premier has defended the state’s business credentials saying there’s key data missing from the Business Council of Australia’s report. Follow today’s news headlines live

Weather check shows mixed conditions forecast across Australian cities

It’s a mixed, if warm, bag in capital cities today, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting storms in Melbourne, sunny skies in Brisbane and Adelaide and showers across all other major cities.

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Australian father calls out Spotify for allegedly playing Sportsbet ads during Frozen and Bluey songs

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Man says gambling ads ‘potentially damaging’ for his children who regularly listen to Disney and the Wiggles on his account on music streaming app

The Australian gambling agency Sportsbet has paused advertising with the music streaming company Spotify, after its content was allegedly played between children’s songs.

The pause comes after Guardian Australia reported on a complaint by a father who alleged the “potentially damaging” ads were inserted between Disney songs.

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Guardian Essential poll: election warning signs for Labor as voters flunk government on housing costs and wages

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But survey finds strong support for under-16s social media ban, despite concerns about how to enforce it

Voters have given the Albanese government an F on containing housing costs and surprisingly little credit for increasing wages in two troubling signs for Labor heading into a cost-of-living election.

Those are the results of the latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,123 voters, which found strong support for social media regulation, including two-thirds in favour of the under-16 age ban.

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Ad campaign comparing Peter Dutton to Donald Trump sees Climate 200’s donations surge by $380,000

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Organisation asked supporters if they ‘want to feel different on our election night’ in an ad with half of Trump’s face and half of Dutton’s

Climate 200 has reported a surge in first-time donors in November off the back of a donation-matching campaign comparing the Coalition and Peter Dutton to the politics of Donald Trump.

The funding aggregator claims to have raised $377,000 from 3,900 donations including 1,373 people who donated to it for the first time, the biggest wave of first-time supporters since it was launched in 2021.

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Lidia Thorpe apologises to Pauline Hanson after mistakenly describing her as ‘convicted’ racist

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Independent senator clarifies she was mistaken about civil finding of racial discrimination against One Nation leader

Senator Lidia Thorpe has apologised to Pauline Hanson for describing her as a “convicted” racist, clarifying she was mistaken about a civil finding of racial discrimination.

Last week Hanson threatened to sue Thorpe for defamation after Thorpe described the One Nation leader as a “convicted racist” in an interview with Channel Nine’s Today.

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