Category Archives: Coalition

Weather warning for north Queensland – as it happened

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‘No plans to change’ Australia Day, minister says

Speaking on the Today show, Amanda Rishworth is asked about a decision by Cricket Australia to scrap the term Australia Day at the Brisbane Test match this Friday.

We have absolutely no plans to change that. The prime minister has said that on a number of occasions.

I think it is important that we do, though, acknowledge that Australia Day for some people is a difficult day. For others, it’s a day that is the day they became an Australian citizen and that’s really important to them.

This is something you’ve been aware of for several months, in fact, perhaps longer than that. So, why fly to Canberra now?

This year will be a year of delivery. And so at the beginning of the year, it’s not uncommon for political parties to get together. I would suggest that the opposition, from time to time, has flown people to all one place. So, it is a bit two-faced to be criticising the Labor party here. But it will be an important meeting, as will this year be of us continuing to deliver help for Australians.

We don’t have parliament by Zoom. We don’t have a number of political meetings, committee meetings by Zoom. They are done in person. It is important that MPs do get together and actually put their views forward.

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Victorian opposition drops support for treaty, citing ‘issues around cultural heritage’

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The Coalition backed a bill in 2022 to start the treaty process but spokesman Peter Walsh says ‘things have changed’

The Victorian opposition has dropped its support for a treaty with the state’s Indigenous people, citing concerns about cultural heritage laws.

The move was described by the state’s First People’s Assembly as “disappointing but not surprising”.

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Conservative politicians stoking Australia Day debate online with paid ads, analysis finds

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Several Liberal MPs share advertisements on Facebook lobbying against changing the date after Woolworths’ decision to pull national merchandise

Conservative politicians are dominating Facebook advertising about changing the date of Australia Day, analysis shows.

After Woolworths announced last week that it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise due to declining demand, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, condemned the move as an “outrage” born from the retailer’s “woke agenda”, and said most Australians likely thought the same.

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Howard government worked with Canada to oppose UN declaration on Indigenous rights

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Cabinet papers from 2003 show the government pursued talks without consulting peak Indigenous body – which it then abolished

The Howard government fought strongly against recognising the right of Indigenous peoples to “self-determination” and worked secretly with Canada to try to change a draft UN declaration, newly released cabinet papers show.

The cabinet papers from 2003, released by the National Archives on Monday, show that some Australian government departments held concerns about potential impacts of the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, but Australia’s talks with Canada on amendments were being pursued with “no Indigenous consultation about the process or its product” as such input would be “premature”.

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Australia news live: only 54.3% of Virgin flights and 66.3% of Qantas flights on time last month, transport minister says

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‘Very disappointing results, it is no wonder that so many Australians remain fed up with our major airlines,’ Catherine King says. Follow today’s news updates live

‘Very, very clear’ renewables are the cheapest form of energy, Bowen says

Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, including its storage and transmission costs, the energy minister told ABC RN.

Its conclusions this year are unimpeachable and very, very clear.

The cheapest form of energy is renewable energy, even including the costs that go with renewable energy around storage and transmission.

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Phone service slowly returns to flood-hit areas – as it happened

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Just circling back to QFES assistant commissioner Kevin Walsh, who mentioned the state of the roads and reminded people in the area to be very careful when driving around.

Walsh said:

Monday afternoon was the first opportunity that we had to send in rotary aircraft, so we got rotary-wing aircraft in large numbers up in Far North Queensland at the moment through private contractors and also Australian Defence Force. So they’re very busy in the air and relocating people.

And I think the other message also is to have a look at those roads and the damage that they have sustained. There are many roads still under water where you can not see that damage. So it’s really important for the local people to realise that it’s still very, very dangerous to be driving through flooded waters because you can’t see the damage of the roads underneath it. That’s one of our key messages we’d like the local communities to heed.

So far we’ve only been able to assess about 60 properties. I think throughout today though, we’ll get a better sense of how many properties are affected, and then we’ll be looking for further packages of disaster assistance that will put together or put together with the commonwealth.

But just judging from the other emergencies that I’ve been a part of, we’re talking billions not millions [of dollars].

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Qantas calls cash compensation for delayed flights a ‘backwards step’ – as it happened

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Jimmy Barnes recovering after open heart surgery

Jimmy Barnes has made it through his open heart surgery and is recovering in the ICU, supported by his wife Jane.

I’m happy to let you know that our Jimmy has made it through his surgery and is now recovering in the ICU. We’re so grateful for the incredible medical team looking after him. Thank you all.

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Tropical Cyclone Jasper live update tracker: category 2 storm hits North Qld, more than 14,000 homes lose power, BoM radar track map – latest

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BoM tracker map shows forecast path of category 2 cyclone will hit north of Cairns and Port Douglas on the Queensland coast at about 1pm with heavy rain, 140km/h winds and storm surge predicted. Follow the latest Australia news and weather updates today

Ceasefire ‘can’t be one-sided’

Emergency management minister Murray Watt is also speaking to ABC RN this morning, and was asked about the PM’s joint letter with his New Zealand and Canadian counterparts urging a ceasefire.

[It] shows that we want to work with like-minded countries towards what would be a just and enduring peace. I think the whole world has been pleased to see the release of hostages and the pause in hostilities that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, but what we need to do is move towards a sustainable ceasefire …

I think everyone who watches this conflict unfolds on their television screens, is really disturbed about the loss of life that we’re seeing go on at the moment.

I think that’s the value that a country like Australia can play here by really taking that even-handed approach that does call out the abhorrent behaviour by Hamas, but also as a friend of Israel, calls on them to respect international humanitarian law.

We are alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.

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Australia news live: ABC cancels The Drum; two feared dead in NSW plane crash

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Education review due

Education minister Jason Clare spoke to ABC News Breakfast just earlier about the much-anticipated review into Australia’s education system, released today.

You talk about entrenched disadvantage in our schools, this report tells us we’ve got one of the most segregated school systems in the OECD, not by the colour of your skin but the size of your parents’ pay packet. Children are more likely to fall behind at school if they’re from a poor family and from the bush, but if they’re at a school where a lot of people are experiencing disadvantage it’s even harder to catch up. There’s a number of things we need to do to turn that around.

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Australia news live: Daniel Andrews fires up over ‘Dictator Dan’ moniker; festival-goers warned about heatwave conditions

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Former Victorian premier gives first interview after resignation, saying ‘the haters hate and the rest vote Labor’. Follow the day’s news live

James Ashby to stand for One Nation in Queensland seat

James Ashby, the chief of staff to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, will stand for the party in the seat of Keppel at next year’s Queensland state election, AAP reports.

The Nationals are dead in Queensland’s parliament while the Liberals are lurching further left in their attempts to secure inner-Brisbane seats.

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Australia politics live: Albanese government strikes deals on NDIS, GST and health reform at national cabinet meeting

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Nature repair bill ‘proof’ good-faith negotiations can work, says Bandt

The interview moves to the nature repair bill, which Tanya Plibersek won support for, after making a deal with the Greens. Adam Bandt says it is further proof that good faith negotiations can work:

The Greens pressure has worked. And the Greens have secured some significant wins. There’s been a blow against new gas and oil projects. Previously you could frack areas, so drill down to extract gas, including in farmland, and the government didn’t even have to consider whether that was going to affect our precious water supplies.

We know in many places it would have, that’s why so many farmers have been against fracking.

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Jacinta Price declined 52 ABC interview requests to discuss Indigenous voice referendum

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A report by the national broadcaster found the prominent no campaigner ‘did not agree to a single interview on a major broadcast program’

High-profile no campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price turned down interview requests from the ABC to discuss the voice referendum more than 52 times, according to the national broadcaster’s referendum coverage review committee report.

The report found the yes campaign had about twice as much coverage overall as the no campaign. The reasons for that, according to the report, included a lack of people willing to come on to discuss the no side, time taken up by government press conferences which often argued for the yes vote, and a decision to focus on First Nations voices, who were predominantly arguing for yes.

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‘Unacceptable risk’ test to determine if freed migrants go back to detention under proposed law

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Labor hopes to push new laws through parliament this week to allow courts to order the re-detention of migrants or refugees freed after the landmark NZYQ high court ruling

People freed from immigration detention will be re-detained if a court agrees they pose an unacceptably high risk of committing a “serious violent or sexual offence” under proposed new Australian laws.

After a landmark high court ruling that indefinite immigration detention was unconstitutional, the Australian government will this week seek urgent passage of a proposal to allow some of the released migrants or refugees to be re-detained for up to three years at a time.

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Stage set for national cabinet clash over GST – as it happened

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The NSW Australian Paramedics Association will take part in a 12-hour strike today, from 7am to 7pm, despite the threat of legal action.

Members will still attend emergency “lights and sirens” jobs as part of an ongoing pay dispute.

We want to assure the public that emergencies will still be attended to, with our focus intensifying on life-threatening cases.

Our decision to limit responses to non-emergency jobs enhances our capacity to manage critical cases.

Facing potential legal repercussions and a substantial fine of up to $20,000 per day, our commitment remains firm.

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Australia politics live: Albanese says Israel-Hamas war protest at Melbourne hotel ‘beyond contempt’

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Chalmers: ‘We are making some welcome progress in the fight against inflation’

Is Jim Chalmers confident that interest rates could fall from next year?

My job is to focus on this fight against inflation. And we saw overnight from the OECD, we saw from Deloitte Access Economics, we saw in the Bureau of Statistics data which came out yesterday, that we are making some welcome progress in the fight against inflation and that will determine the future directory trajectory of interest rates

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Australia politics live: PM delivers national apology to thalidomide survivors; Pocock and Plibersek strike deal on Murray-Darling

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Plan will remove a cap on buybacks and extend deadlines for water recovery targets. Follow the day’s news live

For what kinds of crimes would preventive detention be used?

Preventive detention can be used for terrorists or terrorism suspects already (yes, we already do this) so what other crimes will be added to the list? (Not all of the cohort have committed crimes.)

What I can tell you is that we’ll work through the detail of the law over the coming days. We’ve had a high court decision for about 17 hours now.

But the high court decision actually specifically refers to child sexual abuse as one of the grounds on which preventive detention might also be lawful.

We will work through these issues and will do so in a way that is fast but also constitutional. What we have seen on the other side of politics is a pretty torrid history of rushing laws, doing it improperly and writing things that aren’t constitutional, that are later thrown out by the high court and the consequence is that the Australian community is less safe.

We don’t want to make that mistake. We will work through this carefully.

The most important thing to understand from the high court’s ruling is that the high court has said that politicians don’t get to make that decision (indefinite detention).

And so politicians have previously been allowed to hold people in immigration detention for very long periods of time. The high court has told us that that’s not constitutional under these circumstances.

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Stephanie Foster appointed new home affairs secretary – as it happened

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The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) has backed the campaign for a royal commission into immigration detention – including onshore and offshore detention on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the campaign will be launched in Canberra today.

Our mandatory, arbitrary immigration detention regime is unnecessarily cruel and degrading. Instead of offering refuge for those who seek the safety of our shores, we imprison people, strip them of their humanity and allow them to be demonised in our media and by our politicians. It is a system that conditions the Australian public to dehumanise others. This cruelty has persisted for decades.

Increased discussion and debate around gender equality, a tight labour market and impending legislative reform have helped drive action on workplace gender equality over the last year.

We see an increase in the proportion of women in management and at the upper pay quartiles, and we also see the proportion of women being promoted and appointed at manager level is higher than the proportion of women managers overall. As this trend continues, we can expect to see the gender pay gap continue to fall.

The management opportunities for part-time employees are negligible; the number of men taking paid primary carer parental leave has barely shifted; and the number of women in CEO roles and on boards has stagnated.

If we want real change, we need employers to take bold action. We need employers to look across the drivers of gender inequality and be imaginative in their solutions.

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Crossbench MPs question family violence response – as it happened

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‘We have been very clear from day one that we oppose antisemitism’: Bandt

Adam Bandt is asked about a photo the Greens senator and deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi put on her social media, and then took down. In the photo, Faruqi is posing with pro-Palestinian protesters, one of whom is holding a poster which showed an image of Israel being put in a rubbish bin. Faruqi took down the image and issued an apology over the poster appearing on her social media.

I just need to clarify – we have been very clear from day one that we oppose antisemitism.

We’ve been concerned about the rise of antisemitism in Australia for some time. It’s been ongoing for a number of years now. We’ve thrown our weight behind … pushes to tackle antisemitism as well as Islamophobia in this country.

From the beginning, since the attacks on October 7 … we condemned or spoke very, very clearly in parliament, condemning – not only condemning antisemitism, as well as Islamophobia.

But we’ve taken a principled position to this invasion, and we do not believe that the people of Gaza should be collectively punished and we’re seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unfold in front of our eyes. And the there has to be not only a temporary ceasefire, but there needs to [be] a permanent ceasefire and we have called for that.

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Climate protesters arrested at Port of Newcastle blockade – as it happened

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‘The biggest transformation in our country’s history’

Chris Bowen has been talking about Labor’s plans for reducing emissions, but he’s pressed on the fact that the government has been approving new coalmines and gas projects, which add to global emissions.

The way I see this, David, you can enter into a discussion with your international counterparts which we are doing which is us saying to them, “We will continue to be a reliable energy supplier but we want to work with you on your decarbonisation because we have advantages that you don’t have. We can provide renewable energy.” That is an important conversation to have.

Frankly the approach of others is more a slogan than a policy. We are making the biggest transformation in our country’s history and that involves both domestic policies and strong international engagements, as I will be doing over the next couple of weeks and we have been doing all the way through.

It will be treated in the budget statement of risks and liabilities in the normal fashion. But this is the right policy for the right times to ensure emissions come down and reliability goes up.

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Peter Dutton backs age verification for viewing online pornography

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Opposition leader says graphic videos are ‘playing into the minds’ of young Australians, particularly boys

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has backed calls to implement age verification for viewing pornographic material online.

Dutton says graphic pornographic videos are playing into the minds of young Australians.

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