Category Archives: Australian security and counter-terrorism

Tool to assess jailed terrorists before release criticised as unreliable and prejudicial to Muslims

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Offenders may be kept in prison after serving sentence, but wrongly made order ‘almost always amounts to arbitrary detention', rights group argues

A tool used by authorities to assess the risk posed by convicted terrorists before their release from prison is unreliable and should be investigated, the Australian Human Rights Commission and a peak body for Muslims have argued.

The Violent Extremism Risk Assessment 2 Revised, known as VERA-2R, is used to measure the threat posed by extremists, often when considering whether they will be subject to strict court orders once their prison sentence is completed.

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Public service shake-up continues with four new secretaries for government departments – as it happened

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Dominic Perrottet called on to halt Barilaro appointment pending inquiry; at least 63 Covid deaths recorded nationwide. This blog is now closed

NSW teacher strike ‘about politics, not pay’, Kean says

Matt Kean has hit out at plans by public and Catholic school teachers to strike next Friday after receiving a 3% pay rise offer, well below the rate of inflation.

Our 3% pay increase is far more than the Labor government’s 1.5% pay increase for public servants down in Victoria.

So the same unions complaining about our generous pay rise up here in NSW and protesting aren’t marching in the streets down in Victoria.

A senior woman, a senior public servant with knowledge of financial markets and trade particularly with the United States was offered the job, it was rescinded by the New South Wales government.

We don’t know by whom. And then John Barilaro mysteriously was given it just last week.

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Five Eyes must ramp up fight against rising organised crime, AFP commissioner warns

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Pandemic has contributed to ‘destabilisation of world order’ leading to weaponisation of technology, Reece Kershaw says

The Australian federal police commissioner has urged his Five Eyes counterparts to ramp up the fight against organised crime, declaring the pandemic has fuelled “the destabilisation of the world order”.

Reece Kershaw issued a rallying call for closer coordination on law enforcement as he addressed colleagues from the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand, who have been visiting Australia for talks since Monday.

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Australia ‘louder than we should have been’ in criticising China says former Asio chief

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Sharp critique from Duncan Lewis comes as Chinese foreign minister embarks on ‘extraordinary’ Pacific island nation tour

Australia’s former intelligence chief Duncan Lewis says Australia has been “rather louder than we should have been” in public criticism of China when a better approach, given escalating regional tensions, should have been “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Lewis has told the Australian National University’s national security podcast Australia had been at the forefront of China criticism in recent years “when we might well have been better to have been one back and one wide”.

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Australian eSafety office tells websites to remove Buffalo attack video but does not block access

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Commissioner issues notices to eight sites, four of which have removed material associated with the attack

The Australian office of the eSafety Commissioner has issued eight notices to websites hosting the Buffalo terrorist attack video or manifesto, but has not blocked any from being accessed in Australia.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old white man allegedly opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at the Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly Black neighbourhood of Buffalo, New York. According to US authorities, as he struck 13 people with gunfire, killing 10, he used a camera to livestream the rampage, and posted a 180-page manifesto online.

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Peter Dutton says Australia should be prepared for war – but are we?

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The defence minister’s rhetoric isn’t matched by reality with five key projects behind schedule, not fit for purpose, axed or facing other problems

Australia’s defence minister, Peter Dutton, said on Anzac Day: “The only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war and be strong as a country, not to cower, not to be on bended knee and be weak.”

But how does this rhetoric about preparing for war match reality? We take a look at five significant defence projects that are either well behind schedule or have had major problems.

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Australia’s foreign minister denounces China’s ‘secret’ security deal with Solomon Islands

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Marise Payne says other members of the ‘Pacific family’ share concerns but she rejects claims her government ‘dropped the ball’ in the region

Marise Payne has denounced the “secret” terms of China’s security deal with Solomon Islands, while insisting “no document signed and kept away from public view” would change Australia’s commitment to answering Pacific countries’ needs.

The foreign affairs minister said the agreement was “not transparent” – unlike Australia’s existing security treaty with Solomon Islands – and was also being hidden from other Pacific countries.

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Australian politics live: NSW and Victoria to ease Covid isolation rules; Morrison says Solomon Islands-China pact exposes ‘very real risk’

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Penny Wong says Morrison government’s handling of Solomon Islands the ‘worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of world war two’; NSW and Victoria to ease Covid restrictions from Friday night; undecided voters will put questions to the rivals at a Brisbane forum tonight in first leaders’ debate of 2022 election campaign; NSW reports 15 new Covid deaths and Victoria 14. Follow all the day’s news

For followers of South Australian politics, the good burghers of Bragg in Adelaide’s east are headed back to the polls, with Vickie Chapman announcing she will quit politics at the end of the month, triggering a by-election.

Chapman is a moderate Liberal and the new SA Liberal leader, David Speirs is ... not in the same faction.

Labor appears to have lost ground in the opening week of the federal election campaign according to the latest Guardian Essential poll, but a majority of respondents still think Anthony Albanese will be Australia’s next prime minister.

The latest survey of 1,020 respondents shows Labor’s standing in the two-party preferred “plus” measure is down three points in a fortnight, and there has been a two point increase in the number of undecided voters. But 55% of respondents believe Labor will win on 21 May.

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Caroline Kennedy praises Australia’s bipartisan foreign policy despite PM’s claims on Labor and China

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Nominee as US ambassador says there’s a lot more to the Aukus deal than just submarines as she faces US Senate foreign relations committee hearing

Caroline Kennedy, the nominee for US ambassador to Australia, has said the Aukus security deal will provide “a lot of deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific even before the nuclear-powered submarines are ready.

With Australia set to enter a federal election campaign within days, Kennedy praised the country for standing firm with “a bipartisan foreign policy” in the face of “Chinese economic coercion”.

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Australia news live updates: MPs respond to Morrison criticism; 20 Covid deaths; major Optus mobile network outage

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Foreign and defence ministers label Putin a ‘war criminal’; major Optus mobile network outage; ministers respond to criticism of Scott Morrison; NSW records 12 Covid deaths and 19,183 new infections; Victoria records eight deaths and 12,007 new infections. Follow all the latest updates live

Another senior Liberal has taken aim at Scott Morrison, accusing him of “self-serving ruthless bullying” and claiming he has “ruined” the Liberal party.

Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the Legislative Council over her anger about flood relief, adds her voice to a growing chorus of critics of Morrison from within his own party in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia.

The concerns over the prime minister’s character are now well established, and they’re well established not by the Labor party, but the people who know him best.

I mean his own deputy prime minister called him a liar and a hypocrite*. These people know him best, they’ve served in cabinet with him, in the Liberal party with him over a period of many years ...

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Ukraine president addresses parliament; Putin a ‘war criminal’, PM says – as it happened

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Australian contribution to become more critical as Scott Morrison pledges extra $25m in military assistance to Ukraine; Sydney rainfall tops record set in 1956; flood and hazardous surf warnings across NSW; nation records 32 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Parliament has passed legislation that can stop deadly mitochondrial disease in babies, using a partial DNA donation. It passed in the Senate scramble last night. Here’s the background:

Communities in the northern rivers region of NSW are going to get some reprieve from the rain today as the east coast low drifts away from the coast.

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It may be too late to stop China-Solomon Islands treaty, former Australian intelligence chief says

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Coalition urged to refrain from megaphone diplomacy as it tries to persuade Honiara to change course

China’s proposed treaty with Solomon Islands is an “adverse development for Australia’s security” but it may be too late to stop the deal, a former senior Australian intelligence official has warned.

Richard Maude, head of the Office of National Assessments from 2013 to 2016 and an experienced former diplomat, urged the Morrison government not to engage in megaphone diplomacy as it tried to persuade Solomon Islands to change course.

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Redspice: budget ushers in Australia’s ‘biggest ever’ cybersecurity spend

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Pledge of $10bn will see electronic spy agency ASD double and ramp up ability to launch offensive cyber operations

Australia’s electronic spy agency will double in size and ramp up its ability to launch its own offensive cyber operations as part of a $10bn national security budget pledge curiously dubbed Redspice.

But the funding is spread over 10 years and only $4.2bn will be spent in the first four-year budget cycle. Given the government is partly offsetting the package with savings from other parts of the defence portfolio, the cyber pledge is worth only $588.7m in new money in the first four years.

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Chinese draft security deal with Solomon Islands didn’t blindside Australia, Morrison says

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Analysts say unratified document which would allow China to base ships in the Pacific is a ‘wish list’ which reveals nation’s intent in ‘black and white’

Scott Morrison says Australia was not blindsided by a draft security deal between China and Solomon Islands, which experts warn has demonstrated a “black and white” intent at expanding influence in the Pacific.

The draft would allow China to base navy warships in the Pacific less than 2,000km off the Australian coast, but some experts, including the Lowy Institute’s Jonathan Pryke, caution it reads more like a “wishlist” from China than a finalised agreement.

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SA hospitals under ‘extraordinary strain’; Perrottet asks MP to resign after charges – as it happened

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NSW MP Gareth Ward denies historic sexual abuse allegations; South Australian hospital system ‘under extraordinary strain’ new premier says, as at least 23 Covid deaths recorded nationally; Anthony Albanese proposes award in late Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching’s honour. This blog is now closed

Peter Malinauskas has promised to keep his shirt on from now on, after a photo of his muscled torso made quite a stir in the world of Australian politics.

ABC radio host Patricia Karvelas:

During the campaign, you were photographed shirtless in swimming shorts, and it caused a bit of a stir. I have to ask you ... the Australian’s Greg Sheridan said jokingly on [ABC] Insiders that you’re “far too good looking”. Which I thought was quite a statement. What have you made of the reaction to that picture?

Do you have any idea how much grief I’ve copped around the place as a result of that?

Have they told you just to buff to be premier?

They’ve piled it on, let me tell you. I haven’t stopped copping it, and I deserve every bit of it.

We were announcing a big investment at our major aquatics centre here in South Australia and a whole bunch of us jumped in for a swim in our boardies with our kids there. And, yeah, it got a bit more attention than I anticipated, fair to say.

So you’re going to keep your shirt on from now on?

Damn straight!

I think we’re about to see a federal election where a cost of living is a front and centre issue. And I think Australians get the price of petrol, but they can’t control the price of groceries.

The way we address cost of living as a nation is to start having an incomes policy focus on how we improve working in small businesses to improve the productivity of their labour, so they can earn a higher income. And that’s why education, training and skills is so important.

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Rising US isolationism means Australia must become more resilient and autonomous, thinktank warns

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United States Studies Centre finds Americans are not convinced the Indo-Pacific should be a priority region for the Biden administration

Voters in the US are not convinced the Indo-Pacific should be a priority region for the Biden administration, and isolationist sentiment in the country continues to rise, according to a new analysis by the United States Studies Centre.

The new USSC State of the United States report, to be launched in Canberra at an event on Wednesday with the defence minister, Peter Dutton, Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong and Brendan O’Connor, and US congressman Joe Courtney, finds support for the US alliance with Canberra remains strong.

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Australia news live updates: Palaszczuk says too late for emergency declaration in Qld; Rio Tinto ditching Russia; 21 Covid deaths

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Palaszczuk rejects Morrison’s move to declare national emergency in Queensland, where flood costs are ‘well into the billions’; Rio Tinto will terminate all contracts with Russian businesses; nation records at least 21 Covid deaths amid concerns over Omicron subvariant. Follow all the updates live

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being questioned about his promises to keep the cost of living down as he chats to ABC News Breakfast:

Well, we have been making policies that have been driving down the cost of living, for example, around electricity prices which are down by 8% in the last two years.

They doubled under our political opponents, but what I was referring to last night is the international events in the Ukraine have seen a spike in oil prices, and that is flowing through with some people paying more than $2 a litre.

This high and increasing burden of skin cancer emphasises the need for continued investment in skin cancer education and prevention.

We know what needs to be done. Now is the time to do it so that one day Australia is no longer considered the skin cancer capital of the world.

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Who said it? Australia’s political war of words over China – quiz

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Match each diplomatic, inflammatory or amusing quote to the politician from which it emerged

In an increasingly heated political debate in the lead-up to Australia’s election, claims of appeasing China and even labels of “Manchurian candidates” have flown thick and fast.

The truth is both major parties have been recalibrating their China policy over the past decade in response to what they see as a more assertive nation under Xi Jinping.

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Scott Morrison’s China gambit is a Hail Mary from a flailing leader trying to galvanise fear | Peter Lewis

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The majority of Australians support a position which is the polar opposite to the government’s current tub-thumping on national security

Scott Morrison’s efforts to politicise Australia’s complex relationship with China seems to be further soiling his own flagging reputation.

Like a bull in the proverbial, he has spent the past fortnight bombarding the airwaves with hastily googled dossiers and cold war-era panics to suggest an Albanese government would become an antipodean branch office of the Beijing Politburo.

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Morrison and Dutton are imperilling Australia’s national security to hang on to power | Katharine Murphy

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The prime minister and the defence minister are imperilling Australia’s national security as they try to hang on to power

Too often, political journalism is the art of asking the wrong question.

We can preoccupy ourselves wondering whether or not a particular tactic will work. These are valid enough deductions, but the whole exercise can read like theatre criticism.

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