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Exclusive: Taxpayers subsidise rising specialist fees as spending on Abbott-era Medicare safety net ‘explodes’
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Welcome to Guardian Australia’s Sunday live blog.
The Jetstar Airbus A320 planes that were recalled yesterday (leading to more than 90 domestic flights being cancelled) have all received the necessary software update and services have resumed as normal this morning.
Continue reading...Liberal minister Jane Hume earlier described calls for the former prime minister to be removed as ambassador as a ‘little bit churlish’
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Sussan Ley has walked back her calls for Kevin Rudd to be sacked as Australia’s ambassador to the US, after earlier saying his position was “untenable” after comments from the US president.
The former Australian prime minister sat across from Donald Trump on Tuesday as he inked a deal on critical minerals with Anthony Albanese in a bid to break China’s stronghold on the market.
Continue reading...The Liberal leader says the prime minister must extract ‘concrete’ results on Aukus and trade. Follow today’s news live
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Hume: Ley describing Melbourne as Australia’s ‘crime capital’ just ‘explaining what every Victorian already knows’
The federal Liberal senator for Victoria, Jane Hume, was on ABC Radio National a short time ago speaking about crime in the state.
Sussan and the shadow ministry team are putting together our policy agenda as we speak. It is only five months since the last election, but I don’t agree that there is nothing that a federal government cannot do. In fact, there are plenty of things that a federal government can get involved in to help states tackle crime, whether it be working for consistent bail laws across the country.
Continue reading...Richard Marles says investigation under way into how the prime minister and other senior government staff’s phone numbers appeared in databases
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Federal police are scrambling to assist politicians after the private phone numbers of Anthony Albanese, Sussan Ley, Scott Morrison and senior government staff were discovered to be freely available in large contact databases published by American marketing companies.
The Australian federal police is seeking to have prime minister Albanese’s number removed from such databases, where it is available to users free of charge, and to assist other federal parliamentarians who have been similarly exposed. Police have warned that harassment by phone or carriage service is illegal, and promised “swift action” against those breaching such laws.
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Parents need boost to lift flagging vaccination rate
Parents need practical strategies such as easier access to appointments and bulk-billing to help reverse a concerning decline in childhood vaccination rates, research has found.
The top barriers were mostly around ability to get appointments easily, being able to prioritise their child’s vaccination over all of the other things that they have to get done, the cost of getting their child vaccinated.
We now know that that will be on the 20th of October. The point here is that they had spoken a number of times by phone. The relationship is conducted at many, many levels. It is going well.
We’ve got the lowest tariff rate. Aukus is happening at a pace. And so we’re really confident … about the progress of our relationship with the US.
Continue reading...Strip away the pinball machines and photo booth props at Cpac, and the scale of Ley’s challenge in simply keeping the Coalition alive, let alone making it competitive again, becomes clear
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Aside from one crude caricature distributed in the crowd, Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s name was almost entirely absent from the rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane.
But stripping away the sideshow attractions – Pauline Hanson’s pinball machine, George Christensen’s photo booth props – the thread running through the two-day event was the challenge Ley has to simply hold her party together amid a volatile fracturing of the conservative landscape, let alone for the Coalition to be competitive again.
Continue reading...Queensland Nationals senator tells Cpac conference ‘last rites being administered’ and praises Andrew Hastie for threat to quit frontbench over policy
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Nationals senator Matt Canavan has claimed the Coalition is “on the cusp of walking away from net zero”, urging Sussan Ley to campaign against the emissions reduction target by taking inspiration from Peter Dutton’s opposition to the Indigenous voice referendum.
The conservative political conference Cpac has heaped more pressure on Ley to dump the climate target, with a host of rightwing Liberal and National politicians calling for the 2050 aspiration – agreed by the former Coalition prime minister Scott Morrison – to be scrapped immediately.
Continue reading...Former PM, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and conference chair Warren Mundine among right faction heavyweights urging conservative voters to unite
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Tony Abbott has urged conservatives to give the Liberals “one last chance” and apologised for the party’s 2025 election drubbing, joining a host of high-profile Coalition figures at a major political conference in imploring voters not to abandon the opposition for right-wing minor parties.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, recently dumped from the shadow frontbench, exhorted the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Brisbane to stick with the Liberal party, and encouraged her parliamentary colleagues to dump a net zero climate target, to cheers from attendees.
Continue reading...Liberal leader later clarifies she doesn’t support setting targets while in opposition
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The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has indicated the Coalition won’t set a 2030 or 2035 climate target unless they return to government, saying her colleagues didn’t back locking in an emissions goal while they remained in opposition.
It came as Ley had to clean up her own error, claiming she “misspoke” after initially saying her party “don’t believe in setting targets at all from opposition or from government”. She later clarified she only meant in opposition, prompting ridicule from Anthony Albanese who claimed the opposition “changes its policies from hour to hour”.
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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, is expected to join a meeting of her Quad counterparts in Washington DC next week.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Friday he would host foreign ministers from Australia, India and Japan on 1 July, with the meeting set to discuss geopolitical issues and China’s treatment of Indo-Pacific nations.
Continue reading...Opposition leader dismisses numerology comment as a ‘flippant remark’ and ‘actually not the reason’ for extra ‘s’
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The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has walked back claims that an interest in numerology was the reason she added extra “s” in her name, claiming her comment she made to a journalist in 2015 was a “flippant remark” and not correct.
Ley told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday that the name change came during her “punk phase” as a teenager, shooting down a long-running story that she had added the extra letter because of a belief it would make her life more exciting.
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Continue reading...MPs pushing behind the scenes for parties to mend the rift acknowledge ‘really messy’ week as regional areas battle floods and drought
Full federal election results: live Australian Senate seat count
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The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the Nationals of “holding a gun to the Liberal party’s head” over the threat to split the Coalition this week, claiming the rural party been “stupid” in its actions.
The Nationals MP Darren Chester, who was among a band of MPs pushing behind the scenes for the Coalition to mend its rift, acknowledged it was “frustrating” for the opposition to be bickering among themselves as regional and rural areas battled floods and droughts, and urged colleagues to get on with the job.
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Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...It’s the latest example of the Coalition appearing to echo or praise US president Donald Trump’s new administration
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley has compared the arrival of the First Fleet to Elon Musk’s SpaceX seeking to reach Mars, in an Australia Day address.
Her comments come a day after opposition leader Peter Dutton announced a newly created role of shadow minister for government efficiency – replicating Musk’s idea of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Continue reading...Shadow Indigenous Australians spokesperson says she ‘cannot agree’ with later term abortions, sparking rebuke from Sussan Ley, Jane Hume and Bridget McKenzie
Senior Coalition women have rebuked Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s comments about abortion, saying the Liberal party had “no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights” and saying it was an issue advanced by “fringe” politicians.
Even staunchly “pro-life” colleagues of the senator would not back her comments on Wednesday, with Queensland’s Matt Canavan saying it would not be helpful to discuss abortion in the lead-up to the federal election, and calling to “turn the temperature down” on the debate.
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Continue reading...Deputy opposition leader expresses concern for Jo Tarnawsky’s welfare after chief of staff claims she was effectively sacked
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, says Richard Marles should resign if he has failed to provide a safe and respectful workplace as required under the ministerial code of conduct.
Ley said on Friday that allegations from the deputy prime minister’s chief of staff, Jo Tarnawksy, were “extremely serious” and expressed concern for her welfare.
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Continue reading...Albanese government unveils proposal which could see MP’s salary docked by more than $11,000 for misconduct
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, says the Coalition makes “no apology” for its “passion”-filled performances in question time as parliamentary workplace behaviour is once again in the spotlight.
A new parliamentary workplace sanctions body is on the horizon after the Albanese government unveiled its proposed Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission (IPSC) on Wednesday.
Continue reading...The opposition leader says Australia ‘can’t be the internet police of the world’ amid dispute between the eSafety commissioner and X over Wakeley stabbing content removal
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has labelled the eSafety commissioner’s demands for the global removal of footage of the alleged Wakeley stabbing as “silly”, a comment that appears to put him at odds with his deputy, Sussan Ley.
In an interview on Thursday, Dutton appeared to side with Elon Musk on a key part of the government’s dispute with X over online video of the incident, saying Australia “can’t be the internet police of the world” and that federal law should not influence what content can be seen overseas.
Continue reading...Deputy opposition leader denies promising to roll back Albanese government’s changes and says Labor ‘lied’ about the tax cuts
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has walked back earlier comments suggesting the Coalition would repeal Labor’s revamped tax cuts that more than double tax relief for Australians on the average income.
On Thursday, Ley clarified that the opposition’s position is to “support the existing stage-three arrangements” but denied promising to roll them back in a bid to head off a Labor campaign that the Coalition will claw back low and middle-income tax relief.
Continue reading...Prime minister to use National Press Club address to defend new plan as the ‘right thing to do’
Anthony Albanese has pledged to more than double tax relief for Australians on the average income in a suite of low and middle income tax cuts paid for by trimming benefits to high income earners.
At the National Press Club on Thursday the prime minister will defend Labor’s plan by arguing it will still deliver “a tax cut for every taxpayer” and that modification of the stage-three tax cuts was “the right thing to do” in changed economic circumstances.
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