Category Archives: Labor party

‘Gross over-reach’: Labor group urges Albanese to reject key parts of antisemitism envoy plan

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Exclusive: Labor Friends of Palestine concerned by Jillian Segal’s recommendation government adopt IHRA’s contested definition of antisemitism

A “groundswell” of Labor rank-and-file members are urging the government to reject key recommendations from the federal antisemitism envoy, according to an internal lobby group, urging a focus on anti-racism education rather than more contentious ideas such as stripping funding from universities and arts bodies.

Labor Friends of Palestine, an internal campaign group of members and politicians, said it was concerned about anti-Jewish hatred, but would be troubled about wider adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s contested definition of antisemitism, as recommended by Jillian Segal in a wide-ranging plan last week.

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Eight countries back Australia’s push to add WA rock art to World Heritage list hours before crunch meeting

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Committee due to make decision on inscription of the Murujuga Cultural Landscape overnight

The Australian government has secured the backing of at least eight members of the 21-country World Heritage committee as it lobbies to quell concerns about the impacts of industrial emissions on Indigenous rock art at Murujuga and have the Western Australia site inscribed on the World Heritage list.

The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has been in Paris for the meeting since Wednesday, alongside a delegation from the WA state government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, which has led the nomination.

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News live: Wong says Trump ‘keen’ for meeting with Albanese; Creative Australia apologises to Venice Biennale artists

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Power continues to be restored in NSW

About 5,800 customers remained without power at 7am Thursday, according to network operators Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy.

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Man in critical condition with lyssavirus after bat bite – as it happened

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NSW wild weather: ‘Conditions can become dangerous quickly’

Wild weather has brought down trees, damaged properties and flooded roads on the NSW coast, NSW SES says.

These incidents are a timely reminder that roads are slippery, and conditions can become dangerous quickly.

Please, never drive, walk or play in flood waters. If you do come across a flooded road, turn around and find an alternative route.

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Australia news live: east coast braces for wild weather; former Greens candidate charged after she was injured during arrest

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Australia’s eastern states are in for another lashing of rain as a powerful low pressure system develops off the coast. Follow the latest news updates live

Australia’s eastern states are in for another lashing of rain as a powerful low pressure system develops off the coast with flood-weary regions a possible target.

“Tuesday and Wednesday are the two biggest days in regards to rainfall and weather impacts,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s Angus Hines said.

I do. I think this review that’s going on in the United States at present is fairly unremarkable. I mean … the other governments, the British and Australian governments … when they changed, had a review – so it’s not unreasonable the Americans do that.

I think, at the end of the day, a decision to have a nuclear powered submarine is a good one.

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‘It’s not Chinese assistance’: Australia accuses China of taking undue credit for aid projects in the Pacific

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Minister Pat Conroy says Chinese ‘branding’ of multilateral development projects to bolster its influence in the region is a consistent frustration

China is bolstering its geopolitical influence in the Pacific by “branding” Asian Development Bank projects – funded in significant part by Australian taxpayer dollars – as Chinese projects, the Australian government says.

On the island of Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea to Australia’s north, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation has begun work to strengthen the runway at Kieta-Aropa, on the outskirts of the largest city.

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Albanese will need to resolve the standoff with Turkey if Australia is to host Cop31

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Hosting the climate summit is a major political and logistical exercise. The prime minister is being urged to turbocharge the diplomatic effort

The Australian government’s bid to host a major global climate conference in Adelaide next year wasn’t supposed to go like this.

A two-week meeting of diplomats at the UN climate headquarters in Bonn, Germany, failed to resolve what has become a long-running issue: whether the summit known as Cop31 would be held in Australia or Turkey, the only other nation vying for the rights.

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Federal Labor ministers at odds over contentious NT gas pipeline decision, internal document shows

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Exclusive: Agriculture minister Julie Collins and Indigenous affairs minister Malarndirri McCarthy expressed concern over Sturt Plateau pipeline’s construction

Senior Albanese government ministers disagreed over whether a controversial Northern Territory gas pipeline should be allowed to go ahead without being fully assessed under national environment laws, an internal document shows.

An environment department brief from February shows representatives for the agriculture minister, Julie Collins, and the Indigenous affairs minister, Malarndirri McCarthy, were concerned about the impact of the Sturt Plateau pipeline’s construction on threatened species and First Nations communities.

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Confusion and chaos reign in Tasmanian parliament with no endgame in sight

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A vote of no-confidence in Jeremy Rockliff’s government has pushed the state to the brink of an election that all the major players agree is a bad idea

Craig Garland, the fisherman turned maverick independent MP from Tasmania’s north-western corner, summed it up best when he told state parliament on Thursday morning he was “a bit confused”.

Garland wasn’t confused about what he was doing – he calmly backed a no-confidence motion in the Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff. But he expressed doubts about how the Tasmanian parliament got here, and what lay ahead.

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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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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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