Category Archives: Australia news

Moira Deeming serves Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto with defamation concerns notice

Posted on by

MPs expected to proceed with a vote to determine if Deeming is expelled from the party on Friday

A vote on whether Moira Deeming will be expelled from the Victorian Liberal party room will go ahead on Friday, despite the suspended MP’s decision to serve the opposition leader, John Pesutto, with a legal letter warning he could face possible defamation action for doing so.

The Australian on Thursday reported Deeming’s lawyer sent Pesutto a defamation concerns notice, warning of possible federal court proceedings if he does not immediately seek the withdrawal of Friday’s expulsion motion, publish an apology to her on his website, and pay her compensation and legal costs.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Lisa Wilkinson disputes Bruce Lehrmann prosecutor’s claim she was warned over Logies speech

Posted on by

Wilkinson says Shane Drumgold did not tell her publicity over the case posed risk to the trial, contradicting ACT director of public prosecutions

Television personality Lisa Wilkinson says she was not warned not to give a Logies speech referencing Brittany Higgins during a meeting with the ACT director of public prosecutions, contradicting other evidence given to an inquiry.

In a statement provided to an independent inquiry into the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, Wilkinson denies she was told that any publicity of the case could be problematic.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Opposition will ‘use every tactic’ to block bill – as it happened

Posted on by

This blog is now closed.

Treasurer pushes ‘middle Australia’ benefits in budget

Jim Chalmers says the big program changes – cheaper medicines, tripling the Medicare bulk billing incentive and childcare subsidy changes (which come in July after forming part of the last budget) will help middle Australia.

And kids under 16 … there are kids right throughout middle Australia and they will benefit substantially, but also we’re making medicines cheaper.

Also … we’ve put these caps on gas and coal and that’s the big reason for the moderation in the … electricity price increases, the household energy upgrades funds, the home guarantee scheme, the Tafe and training places, the fact that we’ve got wages moving after a decade of deliberate wage suppression and stagnation.

I think the divisive commentary is coming from the opposition. I mean … Peter Dutton is a divisive figure, but he’s not a credible figure.

He takes his cues from Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. The rest of Australia has moved on from Abbott and Morrison but he hasn’t. And we’ll see that tonight in his budget reply. He is trying to divide people against each other in this budget.

Continue reading...

Juror responsible for Bruce Lehrmann mistrial also held out on conviction, inquiry told

Posted on by

Prosecutor Shane Drumgold claims the juror who brought in outside research papers on sexual assault was not in favour of guilty verdict

The juror who brought outside material into Bruce Lehrmann’s rape trial was also the juror holding out on a conviction, an inquiry has heard.

The ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, said he believed the juror who brought in outside research papers on sexual assault, which resulted in the trial being abandoned, had also been holding out on convicting Lehrmann.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

ABC announces job losses amid biggest restructure since 2017

Posted on by

Managing director, David Anderson, told staff ‘this in no ways diminishes the importance of what we do’

A major ABC restructure will see the abolition of the separate regional and radio division and lead to redundancies of management and staff.

The managing director of the ABC, David Anderson, has moved to assure staff the biggest restructure since 2017 would not mean the importance of the regional bureaux or radio was being downgraded.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Labor’s $15bn NDIS savings push sparks concerns of service cuts

Posted on by

Bill Shorten says savings possible through tackling rorts, spiralling costs and rip-offs, but disability advocates remain sceptical

Ambitious plans to claw back $15bn from national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) spending, without changing eligibility criteria, has disability advocates worried that services will be cut in other ways.

The government says it can reduce costs from $17.2bn to $1.9bn over four years – that’s enough to pay for the government’s budget centrepiece, the $14.6bn cost-of-living package.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Australia’s trade minister says ‘de-escalation of rhetoric’ bearing fruit in trade spat ahead of China trip

Posted on by

‘We want everything back to the way it was’, says Don Farrell but cautions that problems won’t be fixed overnight

Australian exporters are starting to see benefits from the “de-escalation” of tensions with China, the trade minister, Don Farrell, said on the eve of crucial talks in Beijing.

Farrell will arrive on Thursday to press for an end to restrictions on a range of Australian exports – including lobster, red meat and wine – in the latest step to “stabilise” the relationship with Australia’s biggest trading partner.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Black summer bushfires may have caused rare ‘triple dip’ La Niña, study suggests

Posted on by

Smoke aerosols from the fires interacted with clouds to cool the south-eastern Pacific, helping the wet weather pattern to form

Smoke from Australia’s 2019-20 black summer fires may have resulted in the rare “triple dip” La Niña that lasted from 2020 to 2022, research suggests.

Modelling from scientists at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research has found that smoke aerosols from the bushfires interacted with clouds to cool surface waters over the south-eastern subtropical Pacific Ocean.

Continue reading...

Almost half of tobacco lobbyists in Australia have held positions in government, study finds

Posted on by

Research investigates the ‘revolving door’ between the tobacco industry and politics and how it influences policy

Understanding the links between tobacco companies, their lobbyists and Australian politics “was like doing a complex, 5,000-piece jigsaw with many missing or blank pieces”, Cancer Council NSW researcher Melissa Jones says.

In research that took several months, Jones and her colleagues found almost half (48%) of internal tobacco company lobbyists held positions in state, territory or federal government before or after working in the tobacco industry.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Clive Palmer’s company plans to sue Australia in fresh claim, budget papers reveal

Posted on by

Exclusive: Palmer’s Zeph Investments could receive compensation if successful in second and potential third dispute beyond existing $296bn case

Clive Palmer’s company Zeph Investments has given notice it intends to sue Australia in a fresh case in addition to the existing $296bn investor-state claim, with a potential third claim in the works.

The two new prospective investor-state claims are revealed in budget papers, released on Tuesday, as contingent liabilities that could cost the budget bottom line.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

NSW government moves to ban political donations from clubs with poker machines

Posted on by

Exclusive: Proposed changes to the state’s electoral funding act will treat some venues similar to developers

The political influence of clubs in New South Wales will be curtailed under proposed laws banning donations from venues with poker machines that are being introduced to the state parliament on Thursday.

If passed, the electoral funding act would be changed to outlaw political donations from registered clubs that have poker machines or are involved in any other wagering, betting or other gambling activities.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Australia’s first national space mission up in the air after federal budget cuts

Posted on by

Industry says the Albanese government is ‘defunding space programs without explanation’

Australia’s first national space mission – building satellites to detect and respond to bushfires and floods, and to undertake maritime surveillance – is up in the air.

The former Coalition government announced $1.2bn for a National Space Mission for Earth Observation (NSMEO), designing, building and operating four new satellites, in March last year.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Budget 2023 live updates: government ‘got the balance right’, PM says when pushed on inflation and $40 jobseeker rise – latest news

Posted on by

Treasurer to resume spruiking his budget today at the press club in Canberra. Follow the day’s news and budget analysis, live

What about the jobseeker rate?

Anthony Albanese:

Reform is never done.

What we do as a Labor government is focus on what we can do for people, but we focus as well on doing it in a really practical way. I think one of the things that we need to examine, for example, with people who are on jobseeker, is how we improve employment services to get those long-term unemployed into work quite clearly. When you have an unemployment rate of 3.5% but you have a whole lot of people who are just stuck in, in unemployment, then what you need to do is to focus on how is it that the system can be reformed so that we provide those people with employment opportunities, because that’s the key.

You can’t do everything in every budget. And if I did that, you would be asking me questions about inflation. You’d be asking me questions about whether the deficit was too large. As it is what we’ve done is produce a projected surplus. We’ve got the balance, right, providing support, doing, I think, very significant changes.

Continue reading...

Labor senator accuses PwC of ‘deception and betrayal’ in misuse of Treasury information

Posted on by

Deborah O’Neill has also raised concerns that other consultancy firms may have engaged in similar practices without being detected

An Australian senator has delivered a scathing rebuke of the consultancy firm PwC, arguing its misuse of Treasury information was a betrayal of professional ethics and standards while suggesting more resignations may be necessary.

On Monday night, the chief executive of PwC Australia, Tom Seymour, resigned after sustained criticism of the firm allegedly profiting from sharing confidential government tax policy with colleagues.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Facebook blocks Rockhampton mob leader as Queensland MP prepares to meet with him

Posted on by

Indigenous community says the plan to meet with Torin O’Brien only legitimises his offensive views

First Nations people in central Queensland say the state government is inflaming local tensions by pushing ahead with plans to meet with the former leader of a far-right “patriots” group, who was booted off Facebook after leading a mob to surround the Rockhampton home of an Indigenous teenager.

Guardian Australia on Tuesday revealed that the ringleader of the group, Torin O’Brien, is the former president of a group that regularly posted offensive anti-Islam content online.

Continue reading...

Budget allocates millions to support Indigenous mental health through voice campaign

Posted on by

Treasurer also finds $492m for Closing The Gap plan and $250m for programs to tackle antisocial behaviour in Alice Springs

The government will devote $492m to the Indigenous Closing The Gap plan and $250m for a new strategy for central Australia and Alice Springs, but nearly $95m of that remains in a contingency fund pending further co-design processes with local communities.

The federal budget also allocates $336m to the Australian electoral commission to manage the referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament, including $10m to print and deliver the official yes and no pamphlet to every household, plus millions to support mental health for Aboriginal people throughout the campaign. The government will also press on with developing regional voice groups before the national voice referendum is held.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Australia’s post-pandemic surge in net overseas migration temporary, federal budget predicts

Posted on by

Most of the increase is attributed to the return of overseas students, skilled temporary visa holders and working holidaymakers

Australia’s surge in net overseas migration, forecast to be 400,000 in 2022–23, is a catchup from the pandemic and is expected to be temporary, the budget papers reveal.

The forecast for 2024–25 is 260,000, broadly in line with the long-term historical average of 235,000.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

ADF to expand Pacific links in $1.9bn budget package to boost Australia’s influence

Posted on by

After big-spending Aukus and defence announcements, Labor switches focus to diplomacy

The military and police will expand links with Pacific Island countries as part of a nearly $2bn budget package aimed at boosting Australia’s influence across the region.

After two months of rolling out big-spending defence announcements – including the Aukus nuclear-powered submarines – the Albanese government used Tuesday night’s budget to signal renewed interest in diplomacy and regional engagement.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

China accuses Australia of trying to sabotage its relationships in Pacific region

Posted on by

Beijing says US, Australia and New Zealand have ‘a cold war mentality’ and are driving up geopolitical tensions

China has accused Australia of attempting to sabotage its relationships in the Pacific, saying Australia has a “cold war mentality” and is blinded by “ideological prejudice”.

Senior Chinese diplomats said Australia has undermined Beijing’s security and law enforcement cooperation with Fiji, alleging its relations with Fiji are being “targeted” by Australia, the US and New Zealand.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Treasurer delivers budget speech – as it happened

Posted on by

This blog is now closed. Follow the budget reaction blog here

Greens accuse Labor of designing budget surplus ‘for political reasons’

Greens treasury spokesperson Nick McKim is next on ABC radio RN Breakfast and he is still not happy with the changes to the petroleum resource rent tax.

This surplus has been designed for political reasons, by Jim Chalmers. And again, what we are seeing in this budget is an acknowledgment rhetorically that the government needs to do more to help people who are doing it really tough, but they are not taking the action they need to actually deliver help at the extent that it is desperately needed.

Continue reading...