Category Archives: Liberal party

‘Absolutely absurd’: lawyers criticise opposition proposal to re-detain immigration cases

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James Paterson refuses to back Peter Dutton’s plan to send people back to immigration detention but pushes alternative method of jailing them

The federal opposition’s home affairs spokesperson, James Paterson, has refused to back Peter Dutton’s suggestion the government could simply re-detain 93 people released from indefinite immigration detention after a landmark high court ruling.

But the Liberal frontbencher’s alternative proposal – to use terrorist-style preventative or continuing detention orders – has been lashed as “absurd” by leading lawyer Greg Barns SC who claimed there was no evidence any of the released detainees were at high risk of reoffending.

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Mulgrave byelection: Labor retains Daniel Andrews’ seat despite swing against Victorian government

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Dandenong mayor Eden Foster leading 54-46 on a two-party preferred basis after Saturday’s byelection

Victorian Labor has retained Daniel Andrews’ seat of Mulgrave despite a significant swing against the government in the former premier’s seat.

The Dandenong mayor, Eden Foster, was leading with more than 40% of the primary vote in Saturday’s byelection, which was down more than 10 percentage points from Andrews’ showing at last year’s state poll.

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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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Victoria’s yearly document ‘dump day’ reveals a mix of good, bad and ugly

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Among the 241 annual reports released all at once are 45 children’s deaths, triple-zero success and a fish ‘misadventure’ at the zoo

Every year, the Victorian parliament partakes in a tradition that has come to be known as “dump day”.

Usually towards the end of the sitting year, the government will release a bewildering number of annual reports at once, presumably so that journalists and other interested parties are rendered physically incapable of taking them all in.

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Icac says Berejiklian inquiry sent ‘clear message’ – as it happened

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Australia’s ‘agricultural demands’ did not meet recent negotiations, EU spokesperson says

According to Politico, a spokesperson for the EU executive had this to say about the breakdown of free trade deal negotiations:

The European Commission regrets the lack of progress made during talks in Osaka today.

Our negotiating teams made good progress in recent weeks, including in the days leading up to the Osaka meeting. There was optimism that a deal was within reach.

My job as Australia’s trade minister is to get the best deal that we can for our producers, our businesses, our workers and our consumers.

Unfortunately we’ve not been able to make progress.

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Paul Keating says voice referendum was ‘wrong fight’ and has ‘ruined the game’ for a treaty

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Exclusive: Former PM accuses John Howard and Tony Abbott of ‘outrageously and wilfully misinterpreting’ result in attempt to return to ‘great assimilation project’

Indigenous Australians were always “fighting the wrong fight” with a voice to parliament, the former prime minister Paul Keating has said, and the failure of the referendum has now “ruined the game” for a treaty that could have properly acknowledged prior Indigenous ownership and dispossession.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Keating accused the former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, and the historian Geoffrey Blainey, of “outrageously and wilfully misinterpreting” the referendum result in an attempt to return to “the great assimilation project”.

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Victorian Liberals’ moderate credentials looking shaky as commitment to treaty wavers

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After the voice referendum, John Pesutto appears non-committal on treaty – but it’s unclear whether an about-face will be well-received in the ‘Massachusetts of Australia’

It was not even 18 months ago that the Victorian Coalition was seeking to dispel the “myth” that only the Labor party supported a treaty with the state’s First Nations people.

“This side of the house, both the Liberal and the National parties, are committed to working with the Indigenous community on treaty,” the Nationals leader, Peter Walsh, told parliament last year when he spoke in support of a bill establishing a Treaty Authority.

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Liberal party apologises to voice voters for giving advice labelled ‘blatant disregard’ of rules

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People who took up party’s incorrect suggestion on applying for postal ballots could miss out on voting in referendum, MP warns

The Liberal party has apologised to voters for incorrectly suggesting they could apply for a postal vote before writs for the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum had been issued, with the party conceding they will now need to reapply.

The independent MP Kate Chaney has blasted the party for its “blatant disregard” of Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) guidelines and warned that voters may be disenfranchised because they were informed less than two weeks from the 14 October poll.

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Liberals say Warren Mundine’s stance on treaties and Australia Day could cost him Senate seat

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Senior party source says the leading no campaigner ‘made it very difficult for himself’ in race to succeed retiring NSW senator Marise Payne

Leading no campaigner Warren Mundine’s support for treaties with First Nations people and moving the date of Australia Day will likely sink his chances of taking a vacant Liberal Senate seat, party sources have said.

Mundine has been touted as a possible candidate for the New South Wales vacancy created by Marise Payne’s resignation. He has been supported by the former prime minister Scott Morrison and his centre-right factional ally Alex Hawke.

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Politics live: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says she does not believe legacy of colonisation continues to impact Indigenous Australians

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Shadow Indigenous affairs minister last spoke at forum alongside Marcia Langton and Josephine Cashman in 2016. Follow live news updates today

We’ll be hearing from Michael Long and the Long walkers very soon.

In other news ahead of us, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will give an address to the national press club and then she is down for an event with the Australian newspaper later this afternoon.

[It’s an issue that’s been identified across international media and domestically, but we need to make sure that there are absolutely no loopholes or ability for people to think that they can operate contrary to Australia’s national interest.

And so we’re making sure that our laws clearly identify and make it clear to any veteran to any firm former service personnel to public servants that have worked in defence that we take the integrity of our information, our national security information and training very seriously, and that we are going to properly regulate any work that they do for a foreign military or companies associated with them so that we’re protecting our national interest.

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Voice can close economic gap for Indigenous Australians, says Julian Leeser

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Former Liberal frontbencher supports referendum as a way of getting First Nations people ‘to the same starting line’ as other Australians

The Liberal MP Julian Leeser says a voice to parliament is not about “special treatment or privileges” but about getting Indigenous Australians “to the same starting line that other Australians are at”.

Amid rising partisan rancour in the referendum debate, with his own side leading the charge for the no campaign, Leeser told parliament he supported the voice because it was a manifestation of “deeply Liberal and conservative ideas”.

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‘Hi it’s Jacinta Price’: Liberal anti-voice mass text campaign branded ‘deceptive’ by teals

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Australian Electoral Commission says texts purporting to be from no campaign leader are legal, but MPs say they are ‘predatory’

A Liberal party mass text campaign against the Indigenous voice that encourages voters to sign up for a postal vote on the party’s website has been branded as “deceptive” by teal independent MPs.

Many thousands of Australians are believed to have received unsolicited texts from the Liberal party, some sent in the name of no campaign leader Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, branding the Indigenous voice as “risky”.

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Politics live: James Paterson calls for security vetting of Australian parliament staff in wake of UK espionage scandal

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Shadow home affairs minister calls for extra checks ‘at the very least for MPs who work on sensitive committees’. Follow today’s live news updates

Ley defends pharmacists’ opposition to 60-day dispensing rule for prescriptions

The interview then gets to the issue of pharmacists and the change the government made to allow for 60-day dispensing (two-for-one prescriptions) which will save chronically ill patients up to $180 a year (as well as money on less trips to the doctor, travel etc.) but will cost pharmacists up to $150,000 a year (from the fourth year of the change) in lost dispensing fees (plus people buying fewer ‘incidentals’ such as jelly beans).

I’ve been in contact with many pharmacists over recent weeks, including those who left their businesses and assembled here a couple of weeks ago and I really am concerned about the impact this policy change is going to have.

I’m hearing [about] pharmacies who are already laying off staff. They’re already letting people go and most importantly, they can’t continue to provide the previously free support services that they used to …

Because they’ve told me.

Because if the government has changed the contract it has with pharmacy and is paying them less, they have to change their business in response. It’s as simple as that.

I would like to absolutely recognise the contribution she has made. She has been a trailblazer for our party. She has changed national politics and I have seen the work that she’s done over many years, much of it very modest, very behind the scenes, very in community.

So people often think of her as a defence and foreign affairs minister. I’ve seen her as a local champion for Western Sydney, and disadvantaged people across this country, and I have yeah, I mean, I’ll be really sad to see her go.

Always standing up for Australia’s national interest and a safer, stronger region. It’s as simple as that.

I think we did extremely good work with the Solomon Islands and, indeed, with the Pacific and people are looking at this through the lens of Covid and suggesting that we could have done more when, in fact, travel was an impossibility. I think that issue is well and truly being put to bed.

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Peter Dutton rejects Nationals push to overturn commitment to net zero

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Liberal leader says Coalition ‘committed’ to policy after Barnaby Joyce labelled its cost ‘utterly untenable’

Peter Dutton has rejected a push within the Nationals to overturn the commitment to net zero by 2050, warning the Coalition “won’t be departing” from the policy after Barnaby Joyce labelled the cost “utterly untenable”.

The Liberal leader told Radio National on Friday he was not concerned by Joyce’s intervention because there is “strong support for net zero” within the Coalition for the policy he had “recommitted to”.

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Labor demands investigation into Liberal party’s ‘misleading’ postal vote strategy for the voice

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Liberals brush off calls for AEC to investigate website that offers non-existent postal vote registrations

Labor has called for an investigation into the Liberal party’s “misleading” postal vote strategy for the voice referendum.

The Liberals have been accused of “dirty tactics” for sending out anti-voice pamphlets that include a QR code for postal vote registrations. That link takes voters to a party website to gather their personal information, despite the fact postal vote registrations are not yet open.

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Liberals accused of ‘dirty tactics’ over Indigenous voice pamphlet leading voters to site that harvests information

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Party pointing voters to same website labelled ‘potentially misleading’ by AEC during 2022 election

The Liberal party has been accused of “dirty tactics” by offering nonexistent postal vote registration for the referendum, directing would-be voters to a party website to harvest their personal information.

A “vote no” pamphlet delivered to mail boxes includes a QR code that leads to the same website the party used in last year’s election as part of a move the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) labelled “potentially misleading”.

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Albanese government accused of ‘blatant hypocrisy’ as more than 2,000 Senate questions go unanswered

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Opposition and Greens say government promised greater transparency but is failing to live up to integrity mandate

The Albanese government has been accused of “blatant hypocrisy” by its political opponents as more than 2,000 requests for answers remain unanswered in the Senate.

Both the opposition and the Greens are calling on the government to lift its game on transparency and live up to the integrity mandate it promised voters at the last federal election.

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Where now for Victorian Liberals after ‘massive loss’ of Matt Bach?

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Dashing high hopes after a byelection win, the potential future leader announced he was quitting. Shocked MPs are pondering what’s next

In less than a week the Victorian Liberal leadership went from heralding the “new dawn” of a byelection win to facing an even newer dusk as it lost one of its most valued MPs.

Matt Bach, the upper house MP seen as a future leader by many of his colleagues, shocked the party room on Thursday night when he announced he was quitting politics to move to the UK with his young family at the end of the year.

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Bridget Archer says it is ‘irresponsible’ to cast doubt on integrity of voice referendum after questions over crosses

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Shadow minister Jane Hume calls it an ‘inconsistency’ that a cross on a ballot paper will not count as ‘no’

The Liberal MP Bridget Archer has warned it is “irresponsible to cast doubt on the integrity” of the Australian Electoral Commission, after senior members of the Coalition and some no campaign groups raised concerns over whether crosses count as valid votes in the voice referendum.

On Sunday, the shadow minister for finance and special minister of state, Jane Hume, called it an “inconsistency” that a tick would count as yes but a cross would not count as a no.

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Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley spared preselection challenge after opponent blocked from running

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Opposition leader Peter Dutton says he supports Ley along with other Liberals facing challenge, including Alex Hawke, Paul Fletcher and Melissa McIntosh

Deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has been spared an embarrassing preselection contest after her would-be opponent was blocked from running against her in Farrer.

Guardian Australia understands that former state executive member, Jean Haynes, has had her candidacy blocked by the NSW Liberals’ nomination review committee, effectively preventing her from contesting the preselection ballot.

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