Category Archives: Labor party

Treasurer says Taylor’s fingerprints ‘all over’ energy policy chaos – as it happened

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Over on Sky News, the questions were all about the next budget:

Host: Joining us live now in Canberra is the prime minister, Anthony Albanese. Prime minister, good morning to you. So, a safe budget to pay for your election commitments. Are tax increases and spending cuts next?

Hang on, Pete. We’ve just had the budget last night. You’re now talking about future budgets. Let’s talk about what we did last night. What we did last night was to fulfil our election commitments, provide cost-of-living relief with cheaper childcare, cheaper medicines, more paid parental leave, more support for affordable housing. And we want to get wages moving again. We did all that without putting pressure on inflation by targeting our investments in things like infrastructure, improving the National Broadband Network, making sure that there’s that growth in the economy without putting pressure on inflation. That was our focus last night. And we managed to achieve it.

Look, we inherited a trillion dollars of debt, Peter, as you know. We inherited a trillion dollars of debt with not much to show for it. What we did last night was to make $22bn of savings. We took the revenue gains that have come through, 99% of those revenue increases from the higher costs of fuel and energy, we put them straight to the budget bottom line, 99% of them. So it was a responsible budget that saw a significant drop in the deficit to $37bn from what was anticipated. That is a responsible thing to do. Because we want to make sure that we fight inflation because that is necessary if we’re going to get real wages moving in the way that we want them to.

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Government to crack down on NDIS provider fraud amid warning scheme will soon cost $50bn annually

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Bill Shorten says $126m earmarked in Labor’s October budget will help protect national disability insurance scheme ‘from crooks’

The federal government is creating a “fraud fusion taskforce” to try to claw back nearly $300m from national disability insurance scheme providers, amid warnings the NDIS could cost more than $50bn annually within four years.

The new body, which will replace the existing NDIS fraud taskforce, will target “fraud and serious non-compliance” with the help of law enforcement, regulatory and intelligence agencies.

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Jim Chalmers’ first budget comes amid a darkening economic outlook. Here’s what could go wrong

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The federal budget forecasts growth of 3.25% this year but hints at a slowing global economy with high inflation and interest rates

The resilience of Australian households to soaring expenses and the nascent recovery of China’s economy will likely determine whether Jim Chalmers’ first budget is a charm or chimera.

This year’s forecast for Australia’s economy to grow 3.25% may be the best this side of the next federal election as the Reserve Bank tries to douse inflation with another 75 basis points of interest rate hikes. The outlook, though, is darkening at home and abroad, adding to looming fiscal strains.

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Australian budget forecasts heavy hit to economy due to floods and disasters

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Estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of flooding

The increasing frequency of weather disasters will take its toll on the economy in the near term and force the government to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to build resilience for more to come.

As Australia endures its third La Niña event in as many years, the budget estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of the flooding across the country’s south-east.

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Labor pledges extra $200m in Australian aid for Ukraine and $500m for veterans in budget

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Albanese government unveils big boost to Pacific aid partly offset by axing Coalition’s agriculture visa while sparing defence from major cuts

The Albanese government has earmarked more than $200m for additional help for Ukraine and $500m to support Australian veterans and their families, while largely sparing defence from major funding cuts.

But a massive boost in aid to the Pacific and the expansion of Pacific worker schemes announced in Tuesday’s budget will be partly offset by a $213m cut to the previous Morrison government’s programs in the foreign affairs portfolio.

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Labor hints at more controls on energy sector – as it happened

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We will be breaking into the political coverage today to keep you updated on the floods as well:

Overnight, residents of the north west NSW town of Narrabri have been ordered to evacuate due to flooding, with the SES issuing the warnings for the town’s industrial and residential areas.

The rivers are very, very full and, of course, our dams are mostly at full capacity at present. So, even the smallest rainfall can cause an elevated risk of flash flooding and riverine flooding. We will see rivers decline, but the risk is real.

We are bracing for another wet weather system into the state on the weekend.

He is a friend of Australia as the UK is a friend of Australia. We congratulate him on his elevation to the Prime Ministership. The UK, like Australia, has no shortage of challenges and no shortage of economic challenges.

So, we wish Rishi Sunak well. Some of us had the opportunity to work with him briefly when we first came to government. I was able to exchange messages with him when he was unsuccessful in the last leadership ballot. I think it says something about his commitment and his persistence, the way that he conducted himself in the interim. I don’t think it’s insignificant that a country like the United Kingdom has its first Prime Minister of colour.

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Mark Dreyfus refuses to say when Labor added high bar for public hearings to anti-corruption bill

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Attorney general accused of using public interest immunity ‘improperly’ and adding exceptional circumstances test as ‘political decision’

Mark Dreyfus has refused to reveal when federal Labor added the high bar for public hearings to its anti-corruption bill, saying to do so “would be detrimental to the public interest”.

The move has prompted former independent senator Rex Patrick to accuse the attorney general of “using public interest immunity improperly”.

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Budget deficit to halve this financial year but spending pressures mean boost will be short-lived

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Jim Chalmers’ first budget to reveal $42bn improvement to bottom line across forward estimates but conditions will deteriorate after two years

Soaring commodity prices and a strong labour market will deliver a $42bn boost to the budget bottom line over the next four years, with the deficit more than halving this financial year.

However, the improvement – to be revealed in Jim Chalmers’ first budget on Tuesday night – will be short-lived, with worse-than-expected deficits by the end of the forward estimates as a result of growing spending pressures.

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Politics live: Nationals accuse Labor of regional ‘vendetta’; Chinese state media denounces closer security ties between Australia and Japan

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Albanese government will scrap two Coalition grants programs to set up two new regional programs worth $1bn over next three years. Follow the day’s news live

Gallagher: spending audit is an ‘ongoing piece of work’

And it will continue, Katy Gallagher says:

My view is finance minister is that this is a process that should keep going. We’ve identified obviously, some of that the short term work and that will be reported in the budget.

But this spending audit should should keep going. We should do it in every budget, just to make sure that we’re constantly looking at ways we’re spending money and I think the Australian public would expect us to do that, that it’s not always adding in new spending when there’s … need that arises, and there will be, but we’re looking at existing expenditure as well and how we can reuse that or … realign it with … new investments.

It’s not exclusively infrastructure. We are finding savings across government. We have gone to every single department and ask them to look at their programs to identify programs that don’t need to be done any longer or don’t align with government priorities and where we’ve been able to return some money to the budget we’re doing that.

The other part of it is actually not adding new funding to things but using existing funding to fund some of our our priorities. So it’s been a very useful exercise and I think $22bn is a pretty reasonable figure to have achieved over just, you know, a couple of months in government.

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Housing, Indigenous and domestic violence services to receive extra $560m in federal budget

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Exclusive: The partial indexation of funding aims to help community organisations cope with rising costs

Community organisations such as housing, Indigenous and domestic violence services will receive an extra $560m over four years in Labor’s first budget since its re-election.

The partial indexation of funding revealed by the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, aims to help community services keep up with rising costs.

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Australia and Japan sign new security deal; flood waters peaking in northern Victoria – as it happened

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Volunteers place 195,000 sandbags in and around Echuca, which could reach devastating 1993 flood levels. This blog is now closed

Australian ultrarunner on pace to break daily marathon world record

Did you know that you have the genes to be a long distance runner?

If you go back to our early genetics, basically, everyone has the genes to be a distance runner. Back 50,000 years ago, our survival depended on us being able to walk and jog long distances to be able to get food, and catch animals.

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Severe weather warning for NSW and Victoria – as it happened

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Victoria is expecting the worst flooding from Sunday as NSW braces for more extreme weather. This blog is now closed

Plibersek is asked to explain a little bit more about the funding. Labor pledged a similar amount before the election, so is this new money?

This is additional because it’s in our first budget, so it’s delivering on the promise we made.

We agreed with that billion dollars of spending and we’re saying that’s not quite enough.

We need to spend $1.2bn over coming years and it’ll mean things like a new research centre in Gladstone, employing scientists to do really critical work on coastal ecosystems.

Well, it means that we can do important projects like stabilising riverbanks, replanting mangroves, reed beds and seagrass meadows to improve the water quality that’s coming from the land into the reef.

It means that we can work with traditional owners who are controlling crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

Together we hope to these measures can start to turn around the health of the reef, it is a still a beautiful natural wonder of the world. We’ve got a little bit of a breathing space in the last couple of years. We’ve seen some of those corals come back because we’ve had cooler weather and we need to build on that to protect and restore.

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Labor candidate overlooked for Kristina Keneally touted for NSW state seat

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Tu Le says she supports ‘rank-and-file’ vote but doesn’t control decisions made by party bosses

The candidate controversially overlooked by Labor for Kristina Keneally in Fowler at the last federal election has denied being involved in a “stitch up” for a state seat in western Sydney, saying she “doesn’t control” what head office decides.

The Guardian understands senior Labor figures have been testing local support for Tu Le, the Vietnamese-Australian lawyer who was controversially pushed aside to allow Keneally to run in Fowler in May, to run in either Cabramatta or Fairfield at the New South Wales election in March.

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Australia news live: PM calls for explanation on Lidia Thorpe’s undisclosed relationship; WA closing Covid PCR testing sites

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Greens leader Adam Bandt asked senator to step down from leadership team due to error of judgment. Follow the day’s news live

SES Victoria’s Tim Wiebusch is speaking with ABC News about the Victorian floods.

In Echuca, where the Murray River is sitting at 94.4 metres above sea level, Wiebusch says:

It’s a very slow, creeping rise that’s occurring there on the Murray downstream of Barnham, through Echuca. And at this stage, the Bureau is still wait indicating that we could see a peak of around 95 metres, which means a that it will be above the October 1993 flood level. So it will really come down to a matter of centimetres as we’ve seen in a number of other locations. Significant volumes of water coming into the Murray, both from the Victorian northern rivers but also the southern rivers in New South Wales.

Nearly 200,000 sandbag have now been used in and around Echuca to try to protect properties or get it ready for protection. And then to the downstream communities from there, over the coming days and weeks.

What people can expect to see on Tuesday night is an improved budget position over the next couple of years. But after that, when the budget assumes commodity prices go back to more normal levels, and when some of these structural pressures, these spending pressures, make a big impact over the latter years of the forward estimates and into the medium term, and that is not covered by this temporary near-term increase in commodity prices.

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Penny Wong says timing of Australia’s reversal on West Jerusalem ‘regrettable’

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Foreign affairs minister admits poor timing of announcement on Jewish holiday and promises never to play politics on the issue

Penny Wong says she deeply regrets the timing of the government’s announcement that it was reversing recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that coincided with a Jewish holiday.

In the wake of criticism from several prominent Jewish community leaders and a rebuke from the Israeli prime minister, the foreign affairs minister has written an article for Australian Jewish News promising never to play politics on the issue.

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Australia news live: Victoria on flood alert; Labor announces biggest energy investment since Snowy Hydro

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Communities in Victoria are on high alert with evacuation warnings in place for towns along the river. Follow the latest news

Dave Sharma, the former Liberal MP for Wentworth and former Australian ambassador to Israel, has followed Bowen on ABC Radio.

Sharma has issued the following statement criticising the government on its reversal of the recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:

Penny Wong has failed to articulate any national interest reason for this change in policy.

In withdrawing recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, she is not only damaging a relationship with a close and trusted partner, but she is at odds with many of Israel’s Arab neighbours, such as the UAE, who are pursuing closer relations with Israel in order to promote regional peace and stability.

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Jewish groups blindsided by Labor’s reversal of recognition of West Jerusalem as Israeli capital

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Prominent Jewish community leaders in Australia say Albanese government’s withdrawal of recognition ‘a gratuitous insult’ – but criticism is not universal

Several Jewish community leaders say they were blindsided by the Albanese government’s decision to reverse recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, describing the handling of the issue as “shoddy” and “a gratuitous insult”.

A Labor parliamentarian has also privately said the government “mishandled” the sensitive issue and should not be “making foreign policy on the fly” after Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Australian ambassador to demand an explanation.

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Australia’s ambassador to be summoned after Jerusalem reversal – as it happened

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Labor will reverse Coalition decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This blog is now closed

Health minister says ‘there has always been’ fraud in Medicare system

Karvelas asks Butler if he can speak to whether there is fraud in the Medicare system, and how widespread it is. He replies:

Well there is fraud in the Medicare system unfortunately … There are 24 cases in front of the courts right now where prosecutions are being pursued for fraud.

There is and there has always been a small number of cases of fraud and they’re pursued appropriately.

I want to come down on the side of truth obviously.

It does seem extraordinarily high. I understand the reaction from the AMA to the concept that 30% of consults are inappropriately billed – because a figure like that has never been used, in spite of the pretty longstanding compliance and audit systems governments of both political persuasions have had.

It’s way out of whack with any other figure that’s ever been provided to government, including as I said by the national audit office, that only did a review of the program a few years ago.

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Australia news live: thousands of homes at risk in Victoria floods; Nationals accuse budget of targeting regions

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The Goulburn River at Shepparton reaches almost 12 metres and is still rising as residents fill sandbags to protect properties. Follow the day’s news live

Government needs to be securing future of regional communities in net zero transition, McKenzie says

RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas:

Isn’t part of the problem, though, this this deal that Barnaby Joyce and your party, extracted in exchange for supporting net zero was never really outlined in detail. It was shrouded in secrecy and confusion. Haven’t you left yourself kind of vulnerable in the lack of detail?

I think one of the things that’s becoming more and more clear and obvious around the debate about decarbonising Australia’s economy is that there are actually going to be specific communities and places that are more heavily impacted than others. It’s been one of the National party’s great arguments in the last decade because it’s true.

And so what we secured, were able to secure, was funding to ensure that those communities would be able to secure the opportunities that are purported to come with a move to net zero but also be supported to diversify their local economies and to overcome some of the challenges that are unequivocally heading their way.

The Labor party has ripped the guts out of programs at fund regional Australia and has simultaneously awarded over $2bn to Daniel Andrews’ re-election campaign here in Victoria. And voters are going to be heading to the polls within three weeks of the budget being handed down. So it’s hard not to be cynical, I guess, at what seems a blatant politicisation of infrastructure funding.

And now his own minister yesterday on your Insiders program confirmed that Infrastructure Australia hasn’t even looked at this suburban rail loop the and the only person that has is the Victorian auditor general and the report was scathing, so I think there’s huge concerns that this government has a vendetta against the regions and is using any excuse they can to rip regional funding out of the budget, and to re-profile and re-allocate it to re-elect labour premiers.

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Australia news live: 120 schools to be closed on Monday amid Victorian flood crisis

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Residents in Victoria’s north told to move to higher ground; Anthony Albanese and 100 ADF personnel on the ground as situation worsens. Follow live

Federal government ‘in conversation’ with NSW about Warragamba dam wall

King is asked about how the infrastructure spend is being divvied up with New South Wales clearly getting less than Labor-lead states. King says the decisions were based on the projects that had been submitted to the federal government ahead of the budget.

We will work with the New South Wales government as we lead into the May budget.

Of course we will look at it. At this stage we don’t have enough information from the New South Wales government on which to make a decision.

There is back and forth between Infrastructure Australia and the New South Wales department and I haven’t seen any of that yet.

This is for the early works of this project. We haven’t made any further commitments. We will talk to the Victorians around that as we go forward. They have an election they are facing and this will be a contested project, I’m sure, but something we have confidence in.

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