Category Archives: Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull warns NSW and Queensland of ‘company they’re keeping’ by blocking UN prison inspectors

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Former prime minister disappointed by states’ decisions to not allow full access to UN subcommittee on prevention of torture

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned the New South Wales and Queensland governments to “think carefully about the international company they are keeping” by blocking or limiting United Nations inspectors’ access to detention facilities.

Turnbull said he was disappointed by the government decisions to not allow full access to the team, who are in the country this week as part of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, ratified when he was in office in 2017.

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Australia reacts to monarch’s passing – as it happened

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The prime minister Anthony Albanese is addressing the nation about the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

He said it is a loss that is “felt deeply in Australia”. The Queen was a rare and reassuring constant in a period of massive change, he said, and was the only monarch to visit Australia, which she did 16 separate times.

There is comfort to be found in Her Majesty’s own words. “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

This is a loss we feel deeply in Australia. Queen Elizabeth II is the only reigning monarch most of us have known, and the only one to ever visit Australia. Over the course of a remarkable seven decades, Her Majesty was a rare and reassuring constant amidst rapid change. Through the noise and turbulence of the years, she embodies and exhibited a timeless decency and enduring calm. Her

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Dutton says he was not aware of Morrison’s secret ministries – as it happened

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Ed Husic pushes for ‘brain regain’

Industry minister Ed Husic will this week host a series of five roundtable meetings with science and technology leaders in the lead-up to the federal government’s jobs summit, in a bid to kickstart what he called “brain regain” – attracting Australia’s bright minds working overseas to return home, to combat the so-called “brain drain”.

These discussions will also include ways to increase the representation of women and people of diverse backgrounds in skilled occupations. One of my priorities is on “brain regain” – encouraging Australian researchers and innovators to return home. I am interested to hear ideas on how this can be best achieved.

I can’t emphasise strongly enough that this is the start of engagement with these industry sectors. After the jobs and skills summit I will continue the work with industry leaders to ensure we apply practical solutions to accelerate Australia’s pathway to high-skilled, high-value economy.

He’s applied for a job and that’s coming with a significant degree of scrutiny, as it should do. That’s part of the territory if you’re going to put yourself forward for those roles.

If he felt the need to protect the environment from offshore drilling for gas off Sydney’s northern beaches and he felt he needed to swear himself in as minister, that’s something I support.

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Ryan says supporters have received ‘threatening’ letters – as it happened

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Independent MP for Kooyong says some supporters have received anonymous handwritten letters; nation records at least 11 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Standing proud in the Nadesalingams’ Biloela back yard is a rusty old Hills Hoist.

Birds squawk in the paperbark trees lining the road as mum Priya strolls in and out of the kitchen, determined to make sure we are looked after, offering us tea and water.

It was such an extraordinary time, and things were moving so quickly early ... the advice to the various governments at the time were really monumental.

It was quite terrifying ... we would do what the data was [saying], the experts together provided advice. In the end, Australians have done very well and turned up and got their vaccinations and we managed to live through some significant lockdowns and have come out of this better than many other countries.

We live in a great country with a great health system and I was confident we would be able to get our way through this, we still are not out of it, Covid is still here ... if you haven’t had that third dose vaccination, have it.

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Malcolm Turnbull calls for gas export limits as energy regulator caps prices in Queensland

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Former PM says state and federal governments should ‘make sure all the gas we need is available here’

Malcolm Turnbull has said governments should limit gas exports to ease the energy crisis in the eastern states, hours after regulators intervened to cap electricity prices in Queensland.

On Sunday night, the Australian Energy Market Operator limited Queensland wholesale prices at $300 per megawatt hour, the first time such a move has been made in Queensland, according to the Wattclarity website. Aemo said the caps were last imposed in the National Electricity Market in Victoria and South Australia in 2019.

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Malcolm Turnbull says Australians are ‘voting with their feet’ to support teal independents

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Former PM to tell Washington Harvard Club the rise of the independents could mean the ‘capture’ of the Liberal party is thwarted by ‘direct democratic action’

Disgruntled Liberal voters are “voting with their feet” to support the so-called teal independents, because the influence of the party’s moderate wing at the federal level was “diminished and diminishing”, the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is set to say.

Describing the 2022 Australian election campaign in a speech he is to give to the Washington Harvard Club on Friday, Turnbull says the rise of the independents is “the most interesting part of the election” because “if more of these ‘teal’ 10 independents win, it will mean the capture of the Liberal Party will be thwarted by direct, democratic action from voters. People power, you might say.”

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Payne says China military base in Solomons would be a ‘red line’ – as it happened

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Queensland senator Matt Canavan adds to uncertainty about Coalition climate commitments; foreign minister accuses Labor of ‘playing politics’ on national security after Penny Wong criticises Scott Morrison for ‘refusing to take responsibility in Pacific’; at least 50 Covid deaths as WA to ease mask mandate in some settings. This blog is now closed

Scott Morrison is in Townsville (north Queensland) today where he will be making announcements on energy.

Given what we just heard from Scott Morrison there, it’s worth your time having a listen to climate and environment editor Adam Morton on today’s Full Story podcast examining if the policy differences between the Coalition and Labor and ultimately asking: is either party preparing enough for the transformational change ahead?

Economic modelling should be used as a guide. Both sides of politics lean on it more as a forecast that will be fact ... I don’t think anybody can tell us exactly what our power bills will be in 2025, 2030, 2050 but no one disagrees that more solar and wind is good in terms of lowering prices because it is much, much cheaper to generate what’s in place.

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UK officials still blocking Peter Wright’s ‘embarrassing’ Spycatcher files

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A documentary-maker has accused the Cabinet Office of defying the 30-year rule in withholding details of the MI5 exposé

The Cabinet Office has been accused of “delay and deception” over its blocking of the release of files dating back more than three decades that reveal the inside story of the intelligence agent Peter Wright and the Spycatcher affair.

Wright revealed an inside account of how MI5 “bugged and burgled” its way across London in his 1987 autobiography Spycatcher. He died aged 78 in 1995.

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Malcolm Turnbull on Murdoch, lies and the climate crisis: ‘The same forces that enabled Trump are at work in Australia’

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Systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social, has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, the former PM writes

The United States has suffered the largest number of Covid-19 deaths: about 600,000 at the time of writing. The same political and media players who deny the reality of global warming also denied and politicised the Covid-19 virus.

To his credit, Donald Trump poured billions into Operation Warp Speed, which assisted the development of vaccines in a timeframe that matched the program’s ambitious title. But he also downplayed the gravity of Covid-19, then peddled quack therapies and mocked cities that mandated social distancing and mask wearing.

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The Nationals’ victory in Upper Hunter byelection may owe more to Berejiklian and Hanson than John Barilaro | Anne Davies

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More Labor voters prefer the premier than Jodi McKay, while One Nation’s spirited campaign in the NSW seat doomed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers to electoral failure

New South Wales Nationals leader John Barilaro has proclaimed “the Nationals are back” and all but declared victory for Dave Layzell in the coalmining and rural seat of Upper Hunter – but he should probably be thanking One Nation.

For Labor too there will be some soul-searching and pressure on opposition leader, Jodi McKay, to consider her future. Speaking on Sunday afternoon, McKay said she was “devastated” that people did not vote for Labor and that the party was shocked that it had “failed to connect” with the voters of the Upper Hunter.

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Malcolm Turnbull reserves right to back more independent candidates in elections

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Former Liberal leader and PM defends decision to support independent rather than National in NSW upper Hunter byelection

Malcolm Turnbull is not ruling in or out supporting more independent candidates in forthcoming election contests, noting he has resigned from politics “but I haven’t resigned as an Australian citizen”.

With a New South Wales state byelection looming in the upper Hunter, Turnbull has urged voters to support independent candidate Kirsty O’Connell – who has been upfront about the inexorable decline of the coal industry as a consequence of climate change – rather than a National party candidate.

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John Barilaro attacks Turnbull over ‘war on Coalition’ and says NSW ‘firmly committed’ to coal

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NSW deputy premier says ‘there will be no moratorium on coal in the Upper Hunter or anywhere else in the state’

The New South Wales deputy premier, John Barilaro, has rejected Malcolm Turnbull’s call for a moratorium on new coalmines in the state and demanded the former prime minister “set aside his war on the Coalition”.

Turnbull said on Wednesday he believed coalmine proposals and approvals in the state’s upper Hunter Valley were “out of control”.

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Ex-PMs unite in Australia in bid to curb power of Murdoch empire

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Former rivals to star in Leveson-style inquiry into mogul’s near-monopoly of the country’s media

In high public office, both men lived and died at the word of the world’s most influential media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. But now two former Australian prime ministers are at the vanguard of a campaign to redress the balance of power. It is a movement that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, the respective former Labor and Liberal leaders of Australia, hope will go on to undermine all of Murdoch’s international enterprises.

The two former PMs were once rivals but are to appear as joint star witnesses at an upcoming Australian parliamentary inquiry into Murdoch’s dominance of the Australian political debate. Both are to argue that News Corp Australia has become the propaganda arm of the rightwing Liberal government.

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Q+A: Malcolm Turnbull clashes with News Corp’s Paul Kelly over climate coverage

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Former PM says Murdoch media has become ‘pure propaganda’ and is doing enormous damage to the world’s ability to respond to climate change

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp has become an organisation for “pure propaganda” that has done enormous damage through its promotion of climate change denial.

In a heated exchange on Monday night’s Q&A, the former prime minister and the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, clashed over the media organisation’s treatment of climate science.

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Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison won’t be able to brush off uncomfortable questions much longer | Malcolm Farr

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As Australia moves back to normal activities, the Coalition will be held to account on standards of integrity

It has taken a cruel and untamed global disaster to draw attention from the government’s record of questionable integrity standards.

That record is bulging with episodes of controversial conduct, and they are not going to disappear into post-coronavirus history.

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Tony Abbott’s anti-Muslim rhetoric while PM ‘profoundly dangerous’, Malcolm Turnbull says

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Turnbull says it was a threat to national security and Abbott’s style of government was ‘erratic and flaky’

Malcolm Turnbull has accused Tony Abbott of the “profoundly dangerous” decision to inflame animosity against Muslims while terrorism was the greatest security threat to Australia during his prime ministership.

In a wide-ranging interview on ABC TV’s 7.30, the former Liberal prime minister took aim at his predecessor for running an “erratic” and “flaky” government and his conservative ally turned challenger, Peter Dutton, for destroying his leadership in pursuit of the “absurd proposition” he could lead the Coalition to victory.

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Malcolm Turnbull warns of ‘catastrophic’ future without net zero emissions goal – politics live

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The former prime minister has stepped into the climate debate, with a stark warning to moderate Liberals to act. All the day’s events, live

Greg Hunt will be giving the next coronavirus update at 1.10pm

Meanwhile, the lights keep flickering in Parliament House, which can only mean that my moods have begun to physically manifest.

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Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull says Trump is the world’s ‘leading climate denier’

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Turnbull says US president is ‘actively working against global action to reduce emissions’

Donald Trump is the world’s “leading climate denier”, the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

Turnbull, who lost the prime ministership in August 2018 in part because of his own party’s opposition to his plans to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, made the comments to BBC Newsnight on Tuesday (Wednesday morning, Australian time).

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NSW fires: authorities warn of ‘very dangerous day’ for bushfires as Sydney shrouded in smoke

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Almost 3,000 firefighters across New South Wales will be deployed as more than 80 bushfires continue to burn and temperatures are expected to hit 40C. Follow all the latest updates

• ‘National security issue’: Turnbull tells Q&A Morrison must step up response to bushfires
• Greg Jericho: the Coalition isn’t being honest about the climate crisis. But neither is Labor

Thick “hazardous” smoke back in Sydney this morning pic.twitter.com/HyBxweEFYZ

#Sydney barely visible through the bushfire smoke. Temperatures forecast to reach 36C in the city, 42C in the west. #NSWfires pic.twitter.com/kqAnlDmSLB

I think this is the worst I've seen. #sydneysmoke pic.twitter.com/u3fpI7ZosY

The Bureau of Meteorology says a southerly wind later this afternoon will help ease the smoke choking Sydney this morning, though it may not help firefighters battling blazes across the rest of the state.

A smoky start for #Sydney, with #smoke from nearby fires trapped overnight in a low-layer of the atmosphere, causing it to become concentrated. A southerly buster this afternoon will help reduce the smoke, especially nearer the coast. Health info re smoke: https://t.co/I3gS1GMBVA pic.twitter.com/WJCrmDHsrv

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Peter Dutton says he renounced financial interest that could have disqualified him

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Statement comes as Turnbull defends his threat to use eligibility question to thwart Dutton’s prime ministerial ambitions

Peter Dutton has revealed that he renounced a financial interest that could have seen him disqualified from parliament before the May election, as he fends off calls for his eligibility to be tested in the high court.

The decision by the home affairs minister to rid himself of the financial interest comes amid fresh revelations about how Malcolm Turnbull threatened to use the constitutional cloud hanging over Dutton to thwart his bid to become prime minister.

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