Category Archives: Labor party

Lidia Thorpe urges Albanese to ‘do his homework’ as PM insists Dorinda Cox allegations have been ‘dealt with’

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Independent senator – who made complaint about Cox – says Labor needs to take bullying allegations in the workplace seriously

Lidia Thorpe has urged Anthony Albanese to “do his homework” on bullying allegations against Greens turned Labor senator Dorinda Cox, claiming the prime minister was “wrong” to publicly declare the matters had been dealt with.

The independent Victorian senator – previously a member of the Greens – revealed on Wednesday she had formally filed a bullying complaint against Cox in March 2023, months after she first notified the then Greens leader, Adam Bandt.

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Brittany Higgins warns of #MeToo backlash and urges Labor to ‘transform’ how Australia handles sexual assault

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Higgins decries pushback against ‘the very idea that sexual violence deserves to be taken seriously’ in first speech since returning to public life

Brittany Higgins has warned of an orchestrated “backlash” to the #MeToo movement in her first speech since returning to public life.

During her keynote address to the fourth Conversations That Matter event in Geelong on Thursday, Higgins also urged the Albanese government to use its election mandate to “transform how sexual assault is handled in Australia”.

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Australia’s emissions up slightly in 2024 as Labor faces heat over ‘climate-wrecking’ gas project

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Greens leader accuses Albanese government of failing two climate tests: pollution on the rise and approving extension for North West Shelf

Australia’s climate-heating emissions increased fractionally last year as pollution from fossil fuel power plants rose for the first time in a decade, and domestic air travel and use of diesel-powered cars and trucks hit record highs.

The jump in emissions was small – just 0.05% – due to falls in pollution from other sectors. But the direction was at odds with the Albanese government’s pledge to cut pollution to reach targets for 2030 and 2050.

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One Nation picks up four Senate spots, with surprise NSW seat for former British soldier Warwick Stacey

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Final Senate result confirms pathway for Labor to pass legislation with either Coalition or Greens support alone, or majority of diverse crossbench

One Nation has gained an unexpected Senate seat in New South Wales, taking Pauline Hanson’s party to four members in the upper house – equalling its best-ever result in a federal election.

Warwick Stacey, a former member of the British army, has snagged the sixth Senate seat in NSW and will join fellow new senator Tyron Whitten who was yesterday elected in Western Australia.

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‘Genocide’: Patrick Dodson condemns Australia’s Aboriginal youth incarceration rates

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Former Labor senator also says child removals are a way to ‘eradicate a people from the landscape’

Former Labor senator Patrick Dodson has condemned the country’s Aboriginal youth incarceration rates and child removals as an ongoing genocide against First Peoples and an “embarrassing sore” on the nation.

“It’s an assault on the Aboriginal people. I don’t say that lightly [but] if you want to eradicate a people from the landscape, you start taking them away, you start destroying the landscape of their cultural heritage, you attack their children or remove their children,” Dodson said.

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Australia news live: Ley to unveil shadow ministry after deal done to reunite Coalition; Labor seizes third Senate spot in Victoria

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Liberal leader begins contacting MPs to inform them of their roles in her new frontbench. Follow today’s news live

Nationals frontbencher Bridget McKenzie has insisted her party never made free votes for cabinet members a condition of returning to Coalition with the Liberals, as the two parties draw closer to a deal.

McKenzie also took a shot at Liberal MPs who were giving her and her colleagues free advice. She told Channel Seven’s Sunrise:

There are many Liberal MPs who want to give us gratuitous advice about how to run our party room. I’m happy to give them membership forms if they’d like to join it. But a coalition works best when everybody respects the independence of both parties.

That wasn’t put to the room.

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Passengers freed from stranded train – as it happened

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Liberals question role of advocacy group Advance

We have an exclusive story this morning about the bitter aftermath within the Liberal party after its election defeat with some senior Liberal sources questioning the impact of Advance Australia, the rightwing advocacy that campaigned for the party.

We are absolutely deeply and gravely concerned about the situation in Gaza. For anyone who is watching the images or reading about what is happening there, we have been calling to ensure that aid is getting through and this is something that the Australian government keeps a watching brief on.

I will leave it to the foreign minister to make any further updates, but we … certainly … are seeking support for the people of Gaza and for Israel to allow that support to be provided.

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Guardian Essential poll: PM’s approval rating surges amid calls to hurry upd housing and health reform

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More than 40% of voters say Labor’s large majority should encourage Anthony Albanese to get more ambitious with policies in key areas

Anthony Albanese’s personal approval rating has spiked off the back of his election win, as an overwhelming majority of Australians call on Labor to rapidly initiate health, housing and energy reform.

More than 40% of voters say Labor’s large parliamentary majority should encourage Albanese to set out an even more ambitious schedule of reform, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll. The prime minister’s popularity has risen to its highest level for a year, the poll showed.

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Australia news live: Anthony Albanese says Tanya Plibersek ‘very positive’ about new role after being shifted from environment portfolio

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Follow today’s news live

Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has avoided comment about her ministerial desires or expectations, offering little other than general remarks when pressed this morning on the issue of the forthcoming cabinet announcement from Anthony Albanese.

Plibersek, who previously held the environment portfolio, told Sunrise this morning that cabinet decisions were “completely a matter for the prime minister” and that she was just “very grateful” to be on the front bench, and to have won the election, and to get to do “a good job for the government and for the people of Australia” again … and, well, you get the idea.

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Australia news live: Erin Patterson’s daughter says her mother was a ‘very good cook’; PM’s department boss quits

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Erin Patterson’s daughter’s pre-recorded video evidence is being played to the jury in Patterson’s triple murder trial. Follow today’s news live

‘I want to harness all the talent in my team’

“We do need to reflect a modern Liberal party,” Sussan Ley says. She is speaking on Sunrise before the Liberals’ party room meeting on Tuesday, when they will select a new leader:

It’s about making sure that I am listening to my colleagues and … demonstrate to them we want a strong approach that includes everyone. I want to harness all of the talent in my team, take it forward under my leadership and meet the Australian people where they are because, clearly we didn’t do that at the last election. But we do need to reflect a modern Liberal party, meeting modern Australians in every single walk of life across the country.

On the weekend, we suffered a significant election defeat and since then, I have been having many conversations with my colleagues, members of the community, with members of the party, indeed the Coalition, with everyday Australians. I have listened. We got it wrong. We need to do things differently, going forward, and we do need a fresh approach. So, on Tuesday morning when the Liberal party room meets in Canberra, I will be putting myself forward for the position of leader of the federal party.

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Sarah Witty v Adam Bandt: how an unlikely Labor champion took down a Greens giant

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Melbourne was barely on the ALP’s radar as a seat it could win – but a sparsely funded campaign proved powerful

Labor could hardly be considered a metaphorical David in most federal election contests. But in the progressive seat of Melbourne, where the now-beaten Greens leader Adam Bandt had reigned for 15 years, there are similarities to the oft-told biblical story.

On 28 March, when Anthony Albanese called an election date for May, Melbourne appeared on no one’s list as a battle to watch.

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Adam Bandt concedes defeat in seat of Melbourne as Greens leadership talks loom

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Greens leader uses concession speech to urge media to treat climate crisis ‘as if our country is being invaded’

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has conceded defeat in his electorate of Melbourne, saying he “fell just short” of holding the seat.

“A short time ago I called the Labor candidate for Melbourne, Sarah Witty, to concede, to congratulate her and to wish her all the best as the next member for Melbourne,” Bandt said in a statement.

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Too close to call: follow the federal election results in the undecided seats here

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Things are looking rocky in Bullwinkel for Labor but it’s likely the party will hold Richmond against the Greens

Election night ended with at least 16 seats too close to call. Here you can see a list of those which were, as of Wednesday morning, still undecided and our reasons for holding off from making predictions about who will win them.

We’re going to leave the electorates on this list even after predictions have been made so if something happens you won’t miss it.

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Huge swings to Labor from Chinese Australian voters in key seats show Liberals failed to rebuild trust, experts say

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Community convincingly chooses Labor in Melbourne and Sydney seats, despite opposition efforts to engage after 2022 review

Suburbs with significant Chinese Australian populations in key marginal seats recorded huge swings to Labor of up to 30%, and strategists and analysts warn the Liberal party has failed to rebuild trust with the community.

The Liberal party’s review of the 2022 federal election found hawkish rhetoric on China cost it votes in several seats with high numbers of Chinese Australians. It called for greater community outreach and to rebuild trust before the 2025 poll.

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Victorian Labor was bracing for a federal backlash – now Jacinta Allan sees vindication

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Despite relentless commentary about the premier’s unpopularity, the state swung even harder to Labor than in 2022, while the Liberal party blame game has begun

If anyone is as happy as Anthony Albanese right now, it’s Jacinta Allan.

As the federal election results rolled in on Saturday night, one of the biggest surprises came in Victoria – where Labor defied months of grim predictions to strengthen its grip on the state.

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Simon Birmingham calls out ‘broken’ Liberal party model as Sussan Ley says Coalition reflecting on results ‘with humility’ – as it happened

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Littleproud on Labor: ‘They’re a slick machine’

Finally, David Littleproud is asked about what impact Donald Trump had on the outcome after Labor sought to tie Peter Dutton to the US president throughout the campaign.

What Anthony Albanese and the Labor team were able to was to really tap into these sorts of issues and then paint a bigger picture and destroy his character.

I think there’s a lesson in how they (Labor) did politics. They did it a lot better than us, and you’ve got to acknowledge that they’re a slick machine.

I think it’s part of the contagion of the way in which American politics has infused its way in to Australian politics, but very few people would have seen this coming and would have seen it coming certainly to the extent that it has happened.

My own view is that it’s an awful influence on Australian politics and something that we would do well to repudiate. Notwithstanding, you know the strength and the warmth and the importance of the relationship with the United States, in my opinion, Donald Trump does not have a role in relation to Australian domestic politics and we would do well to make that clear.

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Australian election: Anthony Albanese claims a piece of history as scale of Labor victory stuns raucous crowd | Josh Butler

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The Australian prime minister is the first to be re-elected since John Howard – and becomes one of Labor’s biggest heroes

It might have been the surprise packet of the night, but Labor picked up as early as January that it had a sniff in Dickson.

Early in the evening – hours before Anthony Albanese raised workers’ rights, housing, gender equality, childcare, the NDIS and Indigenous reconciliation as the priorities of his second-term Labor government – the hundreds-strong crowd at his election night party grew round-eyed as results from Dickson started pouring in on the television screens.

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The polls point to a Labor win, but its primary vote is barely moving – can both things be true?

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Labor’s confidence going into Saturday’s election is tempered by gnawing anxiety about the underlying polling data

Australia’s major parties are headed for a historically low primary vote, continuing a downward trend of several decades, according to the latest from Guardian Australia’s poll tracker. Labor leads the Coalition 51.5-48.5 on the two-party-preferred measure according to our latest average, although there is still uncertainty in the polling.

The two-party-preferred vote has been trending towards a repeat of the last election, but this masks a more than two-point primary vote drop for both major parties. The votes lost by the major parties have gone “everywhere”, according to pollsters who spoke to Guardian Australia. Our model estimates the support for independents and minor parties is four points higher than at the last election.

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Labor far outspends Coalition and Clive Palmer on Google and Meta ads amid calls for change to blackout laws

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Analysis of online ad data shows parties and affiliated groups spent more than $39m for political ads across Facebook, YouTube and Google search since 28 March

Labor splurged more than $11m across Google and Meta platforms to win votes, far surpassing its opponents – including billionaire Clive Palmer – and outstripping political foes in key seats in the lead-up to polling day.

New data showed the major parties have poured cash into boosting targeted messages to social media users in tightly contested electorates, including marginal seats in Bennelong, Brisbane, Boothby, Blair and Bullwinkel.

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As Australia heads to the polls, big parties brace for rise of independents

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The soft, undecided and swinging voters are at an all-time high in Australia, while support for the centre-left Labor and conservative-leaning Coalition is low

More than 18 million Australians will head to the polls this Saturday to choose between the incumbent centre-left Labor party and its conservative-leaning Liberal/National Coalition challenger.

But about one in three voters will brush off the major contenders – led by the current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton – in favour of someone else altogether, in an election marked by a cost of living crisis and the spectre of Donald Trump.

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