Category Archives: Australian politics

Australia rejected millions of face masks provided by PPE Medpro suppliers

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Exclusive: Suppliers for firm linked to UK peer Michelle Mone helped source Covid masks for Australian government that were found unusable

Suppliers of PPE for a company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone were also involved during the Covid pandemic in supplying millions of face masks to the Australian government that were rejected over safety concerns.

Australia’s Department of Health and Aged Care told the Guardian that of 50m face masks supplied to fulfil a government contract awarded to a small online retailer, Australian Business Mobiles (ABM), the overwhelming majority – 45.7m – were deemed unusable for its health service. A department spokesperson said five of seven manufacturers that supplied the masks were “deemed non-compliant with quality regulations”.

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Big four consultancy firm partners could be banned from being on board of regulator after PwC scandal

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Greens say Labor has agreed to stop senior executives or partners at firms from becoming board members of Tax Practitioners Board

Partners at big four consultancy firms could soon be banned from being board members of a regulator that investigates the conduct of their colleagues due to conflict of interest concerns.

The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB), which proved instrumental in uncovering the scale of a scandal involving the misuse of confidential Treasury information by a partner at PwC Australia, has the power to deregister accountants after serious misconduct.

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China and Australia agree to new multi-entry visa as Albanese touts improved relationship after thaw

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The two countries also announce they will resume annual leaders meetings after Anthony Albanese’s trip – the first by an Australian prime minister since 2016

Anthony Albanese is en route to the Pacific Islands Forum after executing a comprehensive diplomatic reset with China which includes an agreement to create a new multi-entry visa to facilitate exchanges and closer links between people.

The new visa for visitors and business people was agreed at the conclusion of the Australian prime minister’s meetings with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the premier, Li Qiang, in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Monday and Tuesday.

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‘Handsome boy’ Albanese may have managed to turn China’s iron fist into a velvet glove

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Normal diplomatic conventions have been restored between Australia and China after years of spiralling contention. China clearly wants to re-engage and reset with the world

Just before the Reserve Bank of Australia hiked interest rates, and Without A Fight stormed home in the Melbourne Cup, China’s premier, Li Qiang, adopted a flirtatious tone in Beijing with his guest Anthony Albanese.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Li said to the Australian prime minister: “On our way into the hall, I shared with you that I see on social media of China … there are many sharing of short videos about your trip to China … including a video of you running along the river with a yellow jersey.”

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Australia news live: RBA tipped to hike interest rates today; last day of PM’s China visit; Melbourne Cup 2023

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A record level of stressed households are projected as economists tip Melbourne Cup Day interest rate rise. Follow the day’s news live

The government services minister, Bill Shorten, was also asked about the Reserve Bank’s upcoming decision on interest rates later today.

He acknowledged the Reserve Bank is independent of the government but said “I hope it stays static”:

[I] just know a lot of mortgage holders are doing it tough, but the bank will make its decision independently.

For the Albanese government, we know that inflation is a cost of living issue. We have put in a whole heap of measures from childcare to parental leave and energy support. People are doing it tough at the moment, I think it’s hard out there.

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Daylesford pub crash victims mourned by their friends and communities

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Among five people killed in accident in Victoria were Pratibha Sharma, her daughter Anvi and her partner Jatin Chugh

A well-known Melbourne volunteer and former political candidate, along with her partner and her nine-year-old daughter, are being mourned after they were among five people killed after a car crashed through the busy beer garden of the Royal Daylesford hotel on Sunday.

Tributes were being paid to Pratibha Sharma, 44, her daughter, Anvi, and her partner, Jatin Chugh, 30, after the Point Cook family were named among the dead on Monday night.

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Scrap stage-three tax cuts to fight inflation rather than cut infrastructure funding, Queensland says

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Deputy premier Steven Miles says it’s ‘too late’ to cancel projects and any effect on demand is likely to be years away

The Queensland deputy premier has demanded that federal Labor explain why it is cutting infrastructure spending to fight inflation rather than revisiting controversial tax cuts for high income earners.

Steven Miles has upped the pressure on the Albanese government over looming infrastructure cuts in an opinion piece in the Courier-Mail, arguing it is “too late” to cut projects to fight inflation and urging it to reconsider stage-three tax cuts instead.

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Morrison says world should not get ‘suckered into’ Gaza ceasefire – as it happened

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Paterson: ceasefire in Gaza would ‘just allow Hamas to regroup’

Turning to the Israel-Hamas war, Liberal senator James Paterson is asked for his view on calls for a ceasefire.

[It would] just allow Hamas to regroup, it would allow them to continue to hold more than 200 hostages, and it would allow them to again prepare for another attack on Israel.

And the truth is that neither the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people, nor the people of Israel, will be safe as long as Hamas is in power in Gaza. And so their removal is a legitimate military objective which Israel is proceeding with. Having said that, it is of course important for Israel and the IDF to do what they can to minimise civilian casualties.

I think it’s important that the prime minister raises the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship with Xi Jinping, including the foreign interference and espionage in our democracy but also the ongoing detention of an Australian citizen Dr Yang Hengjun, the ongoing unjustified sanctions against the Australian economy and many other challenges.

I think they (China) certainly do pose national security challenges to Australia in terms of foreign interference and espionage, in terms of cyber attacks in terms of intellectual property theft, but also in terms of malign conduct that they’re engaging in the South China Sea …

In my view, it would be absurd to admit as a member of one of the highest standard agreements in the world, a country which until recently had engaged in up to $20bn of economic sanctions against the bilateral free trade agreement. If the Chinese government is not able to abide by the standards it voluntarily agreed to enter into under the Australian free trade agreement, why should we expect that they will behave any differently in the future?

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‘The Uluru statement stands’: key yes campaigners to keep working towards Indigenous voice

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Referendum ‘shifted Australia in the right direction’ despite failure in vote, one advocate says, as Indigenous leaders privately debate next steps

Key campaigners for the Indigenous voice referendum say their support for the Uluru statement from the heart still stands and they will keep working towards a voice to parliament, with the official yes organisation to continue advocating for First Nations issues.

Despite the failure of the 14 October vote, yes campaigner Thomas Mayo said the referendum and campaign had “shifted Australia in the right direction”. The federal Labor government is still considering its next agenda in Indigenous affairs policy, but architects of the yes campaign say they will continue calling for truth, treaty and voice policies.

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Greens stage Senate walkout over Labor’s Israel-Hamas war response

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Mehreen Faruqi leads boycott of question time to protest against claimed Albanese government inaction over conflict in Gaza

The Greens have stormed out of Senate question time to protest what they say is Albanese government inaction over the conflict in Gaza.

The Greens deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, led the boycott declaring that Labor’s “weasel words are not going to stop war crimes” by Israel and shouting “free, free Palestine” with her fist raised.

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Albanese to echo Whitlam as he prays for a good harvest in Xi talks

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The prime minister will visit the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on Monday morning before a significant meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping

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Fifty years ago, Gough Whitlam visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing as part of an historic visit to China to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic.

Whitlam’s visit to the Beijing landmark produced an iconic image. In the photograph, the newly elected Australian prime minister is captured with his ear to the circular Echo Wall in the world heritage site. In the background, the Australian prime minister is watched by Stephen Fitzgerald, Australia’s first ambassador to China.

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Legal action attempts to force Australia to reveal if arms exports are supporting Israel assault on Gaza

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Palestinian human rights groups allege Israel may be using Australian technology in serious human rights abuses

Palestinian human rights groups have launched a landmark legal bid to determine whether Australian-made weapons and ammunition are being sent to Israeli forces amid its attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The three groups, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the latter two of which are based in Gaza, say transparency over who is supplying weaponry and ammunition is crucial as the besieged strip faces its fourth week of bombardments by the Israeli military.

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Centrelink to get 3,000 new staff in bid to deal with helpline and payment delays

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Funding boost of $228m aims to return workers to frontline roles after millions of calls went unanswered

Centrelink call centres will get an additional 3,000 staff as part of an immediate $228m funding boost to speed up claim payments after complaints of blown-out call wait times.

More than 800 workers have already been recruited, with the remaining 2,200 to be employed in centres across capital cities and regional New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, the government services minister, Bill Shorten, announced on Sunday night.

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Australia news live: treasurer denies he is interfering with RBA decisions ahead of tipped interest rate rise

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RBA has left cash rate on hold for four months while warning it might need to keep pushing up interest rates if still-high inflation does not fall. Follow the day’s news updates live

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the prime minister’s official visit to China is not without challenges but is critical to a “prosperous relationship” between the two countries.

It’s the first official visit by a prime minister into China since 2016 and I think it recognises that this - a stable relationship - is in the interests of both countries. Now, we are clear-eyed about the complexities and the challenges of managing this relationship. But we give ourselves the best chance of prospering together if we engage with one another.

And we’ve already seen some of the fruits of that effort - something like 95% of the trade restrictions by dollar value have been lifted. That’s good for our businesses, our exporters, and our workers. And that’s why it’s so important that this engagement has been happening for some time and why it’s so important that this official visit is taking place this week.

I think this is a sort of rapprochement based on realism. As [Katharine Murphy] was saying earlier, from China’s point of view, they haven’t changed their long-term strategic or economic goals. And neither have we changed our strategic allegiances. But it suits both sides for lots of reasons to get the trade relationship flowing again, to get the economic relationship flowing again, and to be talking again. And that’s what this visit is going to achieve.

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Tanya Plibersek accuses Peter Dutton of ‘killing people’s faith in government’

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Environment minister hammers opposition leader’s record, as Labor and Liberal road test lines of attack for next federal election

Senior government minister Tanya Plibersek has accused Peter Dutton of seeking to “kick the underdog when they’re down” and “killing people’s faith in government”, as Labor targets the opposition leader ahead of the next election.

Plibersek will use a speech at Labor’s state conference in Western Australia on Saturday to criticise Dutton, calling his politics “the poisonous politics of no”.

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Powerful US and UK committees lobbied to pressure PwC to release report sought in Australia

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Exclusive: Richard Colbeck urged counterparts to seek document used to clear firm’s partners of wrongdoing

Powerful parliamentary oversight committees in the US and the UK have been urged to pressure consultancy firm PwC to publish a report used to clear its international partners of wrongdoing.

In response to a scandal involving the misuse of confidential Australian Treasury information about proposed multinational tax avoidance laws, PwC global commissioned the law firm Linklaters to investigate the conduct of its international partners.

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WA town stops using Wiggles song to deter homeless people; Paul Keating lauds Bill Hayden at state funeral – as it happened

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Husic was on the show to discuss the results of the AI Safety Summit held in the UK this week, where Australia and 27 other countries signed a major artificial intelligence agreement.

The Bletchley Declaration affirms that AI should be developed, designed and deployed in a human-centric and safe manner.

It has been very clear from a number of countries, not the least of which the US, which brought in a big executive order this week to improve AI safety and security, that there will be more safety testing and also evaluating those AI models, and holding companies much more accountable for the way that they do that development work.

There will be safety institutes set up in the US and the UK to help with that testing and it will involve researchers in that work and a state of the science report that will look at the developments particularly around what they call frontier AI, generative AI and Australia will have a voice there with the CSIRO’s chief scientist, Dr Bronwyn Fox, who will represent our country in the development of that research work to give governments and regulators a heads up on how the technology is evolving too.

I have been concerned for weeks about where things would head. I was concerned that innocent Palestinian families would bear the brunt and the heaviest burden, in terms of the type of action that was being foreshadowed.

I think the world, the international community, is watching very closely. I have said previously there has to be a much more strategic, precise way to hold Hamas to account. Israel’s actions do matter, in terms of the way in which they conduct these military operations, and I think a lot of us are deeply concerned about the impact, not only on innocent Palestinians but particularly kids.

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Labor accused of ‘dragging feet’ on reinstating program that monitors airlines for potential price-gouging

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Opposition says there’s ‘no excuse’ for further delays on the government reviving the ACCC flight monitoring regime


More than two weeks after announcing it was reviving an airline industry monitoring program, the Albanese government is yet to formally direct the competition watchdog to conduct the investigation.

After months of scrutiny into Qantas’s influence in the government’s decision to block rival Qatar Airways’ push to boost its flights to Australia, the Greens and independent senator David Pocock in October knocked back a proposal to extend a Senate inquiry on the topic.

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Patients warned many doctors won’t change approach to bulk billing despite new incentives

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Boosted rebate for concession card holders and children under 16 is in effect but GPs’ peak body says other patients won’t benefit

Many Australian patients won’t see their doctors return to bulk billing despite incentives introduced by the Albanese government, GPs have warned, while experts say more measures are needed to help disadvantaged, chronically ill people.

Patients who are bulk billed do not pay anything for their consult, with GPs billing the government directly through Medicare instead.

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Albanese to raise human rights and trade with Xi in first China visit by Australian PM since 2016

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Ahead of trip signalling emergence from diplomatic deep freeze, Albanese also calls on Beijing to again allow Australian journalists to report from mainland

Anthony Albanese will raise human rights, trade and Australia’s concerns about the militarisation of the South China Sea when he meets Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday during the first visit to China by an Australian prime minister since 2016.

Albanese has signalled he intends to raise the plight of the Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who has been detained for more than four years in China. Ahead of his departure, the prime minister also called on the Chinese government to issue visas to Australian journalists, allowing them to report once again from the mainland.

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