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 NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and the federal emergency management minister, David Littleproud, join forces to help fire victims
Weather has hampered firefighting efforts as the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, announced $48m has been set aside for bushfire recovery, after blazes devastated some communities.
The community recovery package – a joint federal and state government initiative – was announced on Sunday morning and includes grants of up to $15,000 to help small businesses and farmers.
The prime minister is relentlessly pursuing the politics of panic, but validating voter anxiety can only go so far
It’s possible I have Harold Bloom lodged in my head lately because he loomed large in my youth, and he died recently, but when I listen to Scott Morrison, increasingly I think of Bloom, and The Anxiety of Influence.
If you are too young or productively educated to have encountered Bloom, he is the literary critic who held that all writers have to confront the writers who came before them, in the process creating imaginative space for themselves. Bloom’s theory is more complex than my simple rendering, but that’s the primary idea.
Deputy leader says he does not regret linking the government’s climate change policy to the bushfires
The Greens MP Adam Bandt has defended his party colleague labelling politicians from the major parties “arsonists” while bushfires swept through swathes of New South Wales and Queensland last week.
Bandt noted that the Greens senator Jordon Steele-John was among the generation of young people “terrified” about the impact of climate change, and said the point of the remarks was to highlight Australia’s inaction on reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Exclusive: email from government directs attendees at conference on climate adaptation to stay quiet on bushfire-climate link
As bushfire conditions were declared “catastrophic” on Tuesday, New South Wales bureaucrats attending a conference on adaption to climate change were directed not discuss the link between climate change and bushfires.
Bureaucrats from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment were sent an email soon after the AdaptNSW 2019 Forum began, causing consternation among some attendees who saw it as tantamount to gagging them.
Health minister Greg Hunt promises ‘significant package’ for aged care but won’t commit to figure
Labor has launched a new campaign targeting the government over aged care funding, as the health minister, Greg Hunt, commits to delivering a “significant package” for the sector before Christmas.
Setting a deadline of 11 November when parliament returns, opposition leader Anthony Albanese said the “aged care, action now” campaign would gather signatures from across the country calling for immediate funding to address a crisis in the sector.
Exclusive: Labor senator Pat Dodson says PM’s failure to show up to climb closure celebrations demonstrates his ‘shallowness’
Labor senator Pat Dodson has blasted the prime minister for his absence at Sunday night’s celebrations of the closing of the climb at Uluru as “more than an insult” to First Nations people.
Sitting alongside Labor colleagues Linda Burney, Malarndirri McCarthy and Warren Snowdon, Dodson chastised Scott Morrison’s failure to progress the Uluru Statement from the Heart, saying it demonstrated he’s a man in need of “an epiphany”.
Authorities believed Mimi Mefo, an award-winning journalist who works for Deutsche Welle in Berlin, might try to stay
A Berlin-based journalist who was due to speak at a press freedom conference in Brisbane has said she was denied a visa by the Australian government because they believed she might try to stay.
Mimi Mefo, an award-winning Cameroonian journalist who currently works for Deutsche Welle, was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Integrity 20 conference on Friday.
ALP requests documents about Barr investigation into the Mueller report. Plus, new AFP commissioner faces Senate estimates, and media companies unite against secrecy laws. All the day’s events, live
Scott Morrison adds to the answer to Warren Snowdon’s question:
On 13 September of this year, I can confirm that the tender was awarded to Australian company Oricon an engineering company that, will lead the Kakadu road strategy and they’ll work in a consortium with PwC, and PwC Indigenous consulting, beginning the work immediately.
The roads of strategy will be developed in.conjunction with the tourism master plan, access to key sites and planned upgrades. I thought the member would be interested in that additional information.
The folders are stacked.
We are done as soon as Greg Hunt finishes this dixer.
The front page of every newspaper in Australia was blacked out on Monday as part of a campaign against moves by successive federal governments to penalise whistleblowing and, in some cases, criminalise journalism.
PM to attend Joko Widodo’s inauguration and hold talks on FTA, which opposition leader says will be good for jobs
Scott Morrison’s whirlwind trip to Indonesia is a “good thing”, his political opponent says, as Labor embraces bipartisan support for Australia’s latest free trade agreement.
Morrison travelled to Indonesia for Joko Widodo’s second inauguration as president, with talks between the two leaders planned at the presidential palace.
In Question Time, the prime minister says opposition are addicted to panic and crisis. All the day’s events, live
This is not a sight you will see too often – a LNP senator sitting with the crossbench, against the government.
Susan McDonald chaired the committee that recommended the additional maintenance requirements be removed from charity flight operators – which is what Rex Patrick is calling for.
And from this, I think you can infer from this answer on the voice to parliament, Ken Wyatt has set out that the government will be pushing to legislate, before heading to the referendum
Patricia Karvelas: You do know you’ll break a lot of hearts by not putting the voice to the people?
We also have to be pragmatic and that’s a reality.
Some people have told me it will break their hearts. We have to think about whether we want to be recognised in the Constitution.
Recognition was in section 127 in the Constitution but in the sense of not allowing us to be counted. 127 was struck out.
The 1967 referendum created a number of myths around what it really meant to people. The reality was, was the striking out of that and then the amendment, the 51-26.
I’m going to wait to see what comes out.
I’ve been meeting with people and there is a degree of willingness to have recognition. I think that once we work through whatever the voice is, and that may give us another option.
Anthony Albanese asks PM why he’s raising hopes on dam support. Plus Jacqui Lambie raises concerns over Turkish invasion. All the day’s events, live
Because it is only “radicals” who care about the climate, apparently.
#owningtheleft
Labor's declaration of a climate emergency is just a sop to the superglue protestors and radical greens. Labor remains desperate to receive the support of the radical activists despite what they've said since the election. Labor can't be trusted to fight for jobs.
Tony Burke jumps up to congratulate Tony Smith on the integrity award he received today (have a look a few posts down and check out Kenneth Hayne’s speech) and thanks him for some of the difficult decisions he took during the medevac debate (you may remember that Smith stuck to the parliament rules, and ensured the parliament had a vote, and also ordered the solicitor general advice Christian Porter was relying on to shut down the debate, be tabled – which revealed the advice was not iron-clad).
Scott Morrison then gets up to add his congratulations, and a few in Labor respond with “now you think about it” to which Morrison gets very upset and accuses Labor of politicising the moment.
Coalition MP accused of hypocrisy for disparaging Australian Extinction Rebellion protesters
Government backbencher Tim Wilson has defended his decision to join pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and said environmental protests in Australia have a right to operate “so long as they stick within the law”.
Joel Fitzgibbon’s climate change ‘settlement’ is rejected but Labor will allow the government’s ‘big stick’ energy policy to pass
Joel Fitzgibbon has copped a blast in the left and right caucus meetings for declaring Labor should adopt the Coalition’s Paris emissions reduction target rather than pursue ambitious cuts to carbon pollution.
Labor criticises government for hiring The Block star, claiming it’s cut $3bn from vocational education since coming to office
Labor has blasted Michaelia Cash for refusing to say how much taxpayers are paying The Block star Scott Cam to promote vocational education in his new role as “national careers ambassador”.
At a press conference on Thursday the skills and employment minister said Cam’s pay for the 15-month role was “commercial in confidence” but suggested spending was “about outcomes” and reflected the fact the government had secured “one of the highest profile people in Australia”.
ACL director Martyn Iles says businesses should have greater powers to hire and fire, but denies Christians have a ‘special vendetta’ against LGBT people
The Australian Christian Lobby has backed calls for religious businesses such as aged care providers to gain more powers of hiring and firing employees who do not conform to religious teachings.
In a debate at the National Press Club on Wednesday the ACL director Martyn Iles backed calls from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference for greater powers to fire employees who don’t conform to a “Christian sexual ethic” but claimed Christians don’t have a “special vendetta” against the LGBT community.
The US president appears to believe Australian spies are part of a deep-state conspiracy. Australia should be wary of the risks of getting drawn into his defence
It really is a poke in the eye – the “Five Eyes”, that is. Donald Trump’s telephone call to Scott Morrison, revealed on Tuesday in the New York Times, where he pressed for help in investigating the origins of the Mueller inquiry, will doubtless put a further strain on what is otherwise a very close intelligence-sharing partnership between the United States and Australia.
Why? Because aside from the unwanted political distraction of putting Australia at the centre of another Trump tirade (just as Morrison was seeking to apply the blowtorch to Labor at home for what he called “naive and immature” remarks about China), the twisted logic of Trump’s allegation is truly extraordinary.
Sources insist Alexander Downer’s talk with America’s top diplomat in London about conversation with George Papadopoulos was unauthorised
Alexander Downer relayed information to the American chargé d’affaires in London in July 2016 about his now infamous conversation with George Papadopoulos, then a foreign policy adviser to Trump – a move that took the then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and senior colleagues by surprise.
Guardian Australia understands Downer’s conversation with Papadopoulos was recorded in a diplomatic cable back to Canberra.
Andrew Bragg wants to honour the Uluru Statement of the Heart and uphold parliamentary sovereignty
The Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says an Indigenous voice to parliament should be formed by a network of Indigenous communities across the country, in a “bottom-up” approach that would ensure First Nation voices had a direct say to parliament.
Bragg, who has strongly endorsed constitutional recognition, will use a speech in Canberra today to build the case for an Indigenous voice to parliament, outlining a model that he says would honour the Uluru Statement of the Heart, while also upholding parliamentary sovereignty.