Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The candidate’s comments came in response to a post by another commentator, Michael Taouk, who said he was not in the Liberal party, calling for the “Liberal grassroots” to “remove preselection from that notorious homosexual Tim Wilson”.
Mr Taouk wrote: “No true Christian can fight on the same side of that man.”
Scott Morrison also defends deal as Coalition attacks Labor’s childcare plan as ‘communist’. All the day’s events, live
Both campaigns are now in debate prep mode, so we are going to power down for the moment.
But it’s just a break, not goodbye. We’ll be back just before 7pm eastern time to bring you the blow-by-blow of the first leaders’ debate.
On what he would do in terms of climate policies (given his history on the subject with the Gillard government):
It was Tony Windsor and I who forced the changes. Both sides have the ability to get on with embedding climate change into the processes of government. At the time we did have world-leading legislation.
I concede we lost control of the politics and that Tony Abbott, as the alternate prime minister, came in on a wave of, you know, that carbon tax message, which even his chief of staff, you know, after the event, has admitted was more about the politics than anything to do with policy.
Speaking in Hobart on Saturday where he announced that a future Labor government would invest $120m into Tasmanian tourism projects, the opposition leader did not deny that Labor officials had held discussions with Palmer over the course of the campaign, but said they would not risk preference swaps with the potential kingmaker in Queensland.
Former WA premier Colin Barnett cites businessman’s ‘appalling’ record while Shorten rebuffs the Greens on climate policy. Follow the day’s news live
Mikey Slezak, of the ABC (oh how we miss him), has a story overnight regarding the last minute sign off by the Morrison government on a controversial uranium mine one day before calling the federal election.
Then there was a sneaky “public announcement” by the environment department when it uploaded the approval document the day before Anzac Day.
I want to find out what on earth has happened. The minister made no comment, no announcement beforehand. It looks like it might have been rushed. We don’t know....The reason I can’t tell you I’m on this side or the other side, we need to know what on earth she has done and what her reasons for it and the minister has gone missing.
Tony Burke was also asked about Labor’s very specific, siloed commission of inquiry that only looks a the one water buyback conducted under Barnaby Joyce as minister from Eastern Australia Agriculture.
What we have announced is there is a specific transaction from Barnaby Joyce that is different to anything that Simon Birmingham, David Littleproud, Bob Baldwin, different to anything that any other minister has engaged with. And anything else … can be dealt with properly by the Australian national National Audit Office. This one, there was no tender. There [are] arguments about conflict of interest. And it has links all the way back to the Cayman Islands, where there is complete secrecy about who is involved. Everything else you don’t need coercive powers.
In terms of making sure that we’ve got probity, we will establish a national integrity commission and there will be an ongoing watchdog on probity. In terms of the purchases by Penny that you referred to, they went fully through the National Audit Office, a report in 2011 [and were] given a complete bill of health. If I was arguing that things should apply to every other member of the government who has been involved, then the government’s characterisation would be fair. The point is no other purchase is like this.
Can Cathy McGowan’s anointed successor keep Indi independent or will the Coalition strike back?
With the retirement of Cathy McGowan, the rural Victorian seat of Indi is once more back in play and the group of campaigners who unseated Sophie Mirabella in 2013 are now fighting to keep the seat in independent hands.
Orange spray-painted chairs adorn the verandahs outside homes across the electorate – a symbol of the battle.
Former PM warns electricity prices will be higher because the Coalition dumped the national energy guarantee
The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has returned to the fray to warn dumping the national energy guarantee – a decision taken by Scott Morrison – will drive up power prices.
Turnbull took exception to a column at the weekend characterising the national energy guarantee as “Malcolm Turnbull’s Neg”, pointing out the policy had strong support within the cabinet, “including and especially the current PM and treasurer”.
Sarah Hanson-Young demands a royal commission as Bill Shorten urges prime minister to produce all documents
The Coalition is facing calls for an inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin plan water contracts signed off by the former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce.
As the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for a royal commission on Saturday, Bill Shorten also weighed in, saying there were now “question marks about the probity” of the “nation’s biggest water purchase”.
High-quality international offsets should be part of any credible policy, industry says
Business groups are defying the Morrison government’s political assault on the use of international permits, arguing a credible climate policy should include access to high-quality international offsets, because they are a key mechanism to help Australia meet its Paris target.
With climate change persisting as a significant campaign flashpoint, the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, told Guardian Australia international permits were part of the toolkit for mitigating climate change in a cost-effective way.
Guardian stands by report after the candidate for Chisholm, Gladys Liu, said the report was ‘fake’ and ‘wrong’ and she had been ‘misrepresented’
The audio of an 2016 interview with Gladys Liu, now the Liberal candidate for the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, has been released after she questioned the accuracy of comments she made to the writer of a Guardian article.
Liu ran an anti-Labor campaign on WeChat, the most popular Chinese-language social media network, ahead of the 2016 election and in the July 2016 report claimed credit for helping to get then Liberal MP Julia Banks elected to parliament.
Peter Dutton has apologised for accusing his Labor challenger, Ali France, of “using her disability as an excuse” not to move to the electorate during the campaign.
The apology came a little over an hour after a blistering attack by Labor senator Kristina Keneally, who called Dutton “mean and despicable”, a “thug”, and the “most toxic man in the Liberal party”.
The day started with Scott Morrison talking about a $387bn Labor tax slug and ended with Bill Shorten calling a Peter Dutton jibe ‘disgusting’
Scott Morrison’s ambition to make day two of the election campaign all about a $387bn Labor tax slug has been disrupted by Treasury disavowing the number and Peter Dutton accusing his Labor opponent in Dickson of using her disability “as an excuse’’ for not moving into the electorate.
Morrison hit the hustings on Friday armed with what the government said was new Treasury numbers revealing Labor’s “tax hit on the economy” would be $387bn but, later in the day, the Treasury head Phil Gaetjens confirmed officials had costed Labor measures at the government’s request but had not provided a total, making it clear the calculation was the government’s number.
Day two of the 2019 Australian election campaign is under way, with an opening salvo from the government. All the day’s events, live
The AEC has laid out its plan for counting the 16 million or so votes the federal election should bring in:
Following years of planning, fine tuning and improvements to AEC systems – plus the experience gained from running nine by-elections since 2017 – the AEC expects to:
Bill Shorten and the former AMA president, Brian Owler, the Labor candidate for Bennelong, is announcing Labor’s key policy for today: $125m for cancer research.
Liberal candidates under pressure from Greens and Independents have dropped Liberal logo for ‘modern Liberal’ tag
They’re billing themselves as the Modern Liberals. Which begs the question who are the old-school Liberals?
Dave Sharma, the Liberals’ candidate for Wentworth in Sydney’s east, and Tim Wilson, the member for Goldstein, covering Melbourne’s bayside suburbs, have both begun postering their electorates with corflutes that carry the tagline, “modern Liberal”.
Chris Douglas calls for federal integrity commission to be handed wide-ranging powers
A long-serving former senior federal police officer has warned that the Coalition’s proposed integrity commission is flawed, weak and would “not be capable of responding to current corruption threats”.
Chris Douglas, a 31-year veteran of the Australian federal police, has called for the integrity commission to be handed wide-ranging powers, including the ability to recruit informants, use undercover operatives, make arrests and deploy wire taps.
We cannot have another pointless, rudderless, parliament like the one that has just limped to an end
There was a moment or two on Wednesday, during Josh Frydenberg’s traditional post-budget address to the National Press Club, where the room felt so depressurised it seemed like oxygen masks could tumble from the ceiling.
This bit of whimsy gripped me so profoundly, at one point I caught myself looking up at the ceiling, before shaking myself and looking back at the podium.
Coalition’s about face on one-off payment prompts Labor to declare the budget is already ‘falling apart’
The Morrison government’s big post-budget sell has been disrupted by its own late-night decision to backflip on providing a one-off payment to recipients of Newstart.
The government used Tuesday night’s budget to provide supplements to welfare recipients, with $75 for singles and $125 for couples going to 2.4 million pensioners, 744,000 disability pensioners, 280,000 carers, 242,000 single parents and 225,000 veterans and their dependents – but not to people on unemployment benefits.
The federal budget is done and the (unofficial) election campaign begins. All the day’s events, live
Penny Wong’s speech on Fraser Anning censure motion
Labor senator and Yawuru man Pat Dodson spoke powerfully about the “Killing times”, Australia’s massacre history, as part of today’s censure motion against Fraser Anning.
Our First Nations people have carried the consequence of murderous prejudice throughout our entwined history.
First Nations peoples in Australia know what it is like to be powerless in the face of hateful prejudice, fanned by the illusion of superiority; and the false courage created by a weapon in their hand and their victims are defenceless.