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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says Australia was not told in advance about the bombing of Iran but won’t say whether intelligence facilities here were used.
“We weren’t told advance. You wouldn’t expect us to be but you would see there’s obviously been a lot of discussion,” she said.
Continue reading...At least 21 charges have been laid against individuals since October, Australian federal police say, following 951 reports to June
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Nearly three violent or menacing threats against federal politicians are being reported to police daily, according to Australian federal police data, with rates almost doubling in two years.
The soaring danger for elected officials and their staff reached new heights this week when Anthony Albanese was evacuated from The Lodge in Canberra over a bomb threat.
Continue reading...Graeme Kearns, chief executive of Foundation Theatres, says: ‘Our job in theatre is to absolutely defend the right to tell stories about culture’
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The head of the theatre hosting the Shen Yun dance troupe in Sydney says the company would not be intimidated to pull the shows by any “outrageous” anonymous threats and that the publicity had increased interest in the show.
On Monday, the Gold Coast venue for the Shen Yun performances was forced to evacuate after a bomb threat, with a similar threat forcing the evacuation of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s official residence, The Lodge, in Canberra the next day.
Continue reading...PM clarifies remark but says he disagrees with some language the 2021 Australian of the Year has used
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Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has said “we all know what you meant” after the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, claimed he meant to describe her “difficult life” when he labelled her “difficult”.
Speaking in Melbourne on Thursday morning, the prime minister said he had not meant to describe Tame as “difficult” at a News Corp event on Wednesday, when he was asked to describe public figures in one word. Instead he meant that her life had been “difficult”, he said.
Continue reading...Temporary Exclusion Orders allow the home affairs minister to stop a person entering for up to two years, but there is a high bar for the powers
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Home affairs minister Tony Burke is “taking advice” from security agencies on whether Australian women and children in a Syrian detention camp should be temporarily banned from returning, but it is unclear how many in the cohort such an order would apply to.
On Monday night, 34 Australian women and children – the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters – left from the al-Roj camp, in north-eastern Syria, after being released by Kurdish authorities for their expected repatriation to Australia.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Report finds ban on credit card use for online wagering results in most gamblers switching to transaction account payments
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One of the Albanese government’s flagship gambling reforms, a ban on using credit cards for online wagering, had the least impact on Australia’s heaviest betters, new research shows.
The ban saw most gamblers swap their form of payment to transaction accounts and left open a range of loopholes dedicated wagerers could exploit, according to a report by the e61 Institute.
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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...Despite Australia signing the Belém declaration, Albanese rejected suggestion Labor shouldn’t develop new gas fields
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The Albanese government is being urged to explain how it will drive a fossil fuel phase-out, after it joined dozens of countries at a UN climate summit to back a declaration that the world should quickly wean off coal, gas and oil.
Australia signed up to the declaration on a just transition away from fossil fuels at a side event at the Cop30 conference in the Brazilian city of Belém, which finished on Saturday night local time, more than 24 hours after the scheduled close.
Continue reading...Meanwhile PM says he’d like ‘more cooperation’ between China and US on artificial intelligence. Follow updates live
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Watt says Labor doesn’t have a policy to end native forest logging
Asked if he wanted native forest logging to continue (it’s not banned in the legislation, despite the significant negative environmental impact that it has), Watt dodges the question by saying the party doesn’t have a specific policy of ending native forest logging.
What we have said, though, is that we will follow the recommendation from Graeme Samuel to apply national environmental standards to the regional forestry agreements that are used for native forestry, so what that means in practice is that native forestry would need to meet higher environmental standards than are currently required under the legislation. That’s a big step forward in terms of the environmental management of native forestry. But it doesn’t go as far as what the Greens party is seeking in being an all-out ban.
Not in its own right. We haven’t taken the approach of saying that particular projects are altogether banned. Every project will be assessed on its merits whether it be a coal and gas project, whether it be a housing and renewable project, they have all got to demonstrate they’re not having a significant impact on one of the nine matters of national environmental significance under the act.
If a coal or gas development was seeking approval, then it would need to meet the national environmental standards. It would need to avoid and minimise its environmental impacts and offset them to achieve a net gain. So they would be improvements compared to the criteria that apply to a project at the moment. If it was considered to have an unacceptable impact on the environment then it would get knocked back as would a housing development or a renewable project.
We’re not trying to sort of put in particular criteria for particular sectors. What we’re trying to do is put in a balanced package for all sorts of projects, for all industries, that deliver environmental and business gains.
Continue reading...US president tells reporters he and Australian PM ‘working on a lot of things together’
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After waiting a long time to meet Donald Trump, Anthony Albanese has now done so twice in 10 days, as his US counterpart talks up cooperation on rare earths and other issues.
Albanese followed last week’s trip to Washington by sitting next to the US president on Wednesday evening at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit dinner in Gyeongju, South Korea.
Continue reading...Extracts of planned changes to the EPBC Act prompt ‘anger’ from conservation organisations that fear nature protection will be weakened
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State governments could be given expanded powers to make decisions on fossil fuel developments under Labor’s proposed overhaul of environment law, prompting “shock and anger” from community-based conservation organisations that fear nature protection would be weakened.
The Albanese government plans to introduce its planned changes to the national law – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – to parliament later this week, and has been briefing interest groups on its plans.
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 warmness shown by the US president was held up as vindication of the PM’s foreign policy acumen, and the nerve he had shown in not begging for an earlier meeting
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Outside the White House cabinet room hangs a painting of Donald Trump flanked by Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, in front of a billowing American flag.
The fan-fiction rendition of three Republican leaders, proudly displayed on a main thoroughfare amid a gallery of other photographs and portraits of Trump, is far from the oddest thing in the home and office of the 47th president. The White House is a homage to gilding and gold, crown moulding daubed in glittering paint, with knick-knacks gaudy and glistening stuffed on to his shelves, a Diet Coke button on his desk, and a new ballroom requiring the partial tear-down of the historic East Wing.
Continue reading...The prime minister says it is ‘wonderful to be here’ ahead of long-awaited meeting with the president in the Oval Office at the White House
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Anthony Albanese has arrived in the US for a long-awaited meeting with President Donald Trump, where they are expected to discuss the Aukus pact – an agreement a respected Republican has called a “crucial deterrent” in the Indo-Pacific that “keeps [the Chinese president, Xi Jinping] up at night”.
Albanese arrived in Washington DC late on Sunday night local time (Monday afternoon AEDT) ahead of his meeting with Trump at the White House on Monday morning local time (Tuesday morning AEDT). The two men will meet in the Oval Office, followed by a scheduled lunch afterward, according to the White House.
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Crocodile discovered in luxury Queensland resort pool sparks new warnings
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Asked about the hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza approved for visas in Australia and whether the ceasefire changes anything, Tony Burke said he’s not sure all of those approved for visas are still alive.
He says some will choose to stay in Australia, and others may end up with other options they might take up.
And there will be some people who we don’t hear from again. And there’s some on that case list that we haven’t heard from for a very long time. A significant number of them are part of split family groups, where some of the family is, in fact, here in Australia and they’re wanting to join.
You need to remember, our humanitarian program that we run around the world isn’t limited to places where there’s an active war. There is decency that Australia shows to people from around the world … there are Israelis who have been approved for humanitarian visas as well. I’ve got no intention of cancelling those either. We’re a decent country. We are talking about people where all the checks have been made. And some of them won’t choose to come here, some of them won’t be alive any more …
Probably the most significant change in response these days is the majority of people now get sent straight back to their country of origin. So, you used to really only see people going back to Indonesia or off to Nauru for processing. But the majority of cases now are going straight back to country of origin.
We had one very recently where, within 72 hours, we had everybody back to their country of origin. There was one in May, for example, where it was a mixed boatload of people from different countries and we had to, you know, from three different sorts of citizenships that people had come from. It was more complex but we still made sure we returned people directly straight back to the countries of origin.
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.
Continue reading...Peter Briggs says relying on overseas construction is ‘folly’; industrial relations commission to rule this morning on government’s stoush with doctors. Follow the latest news live
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The former head of Australia’s submarine squadron has urged Australia against outsourcing boat construction overseas, as bureaucrats express confidence the US won’t scuttle Aukus, Australian Associated Press reports.
A parliamentary inquiry yesterday ran the rule over the Geelong treaty, a 50-year Aukus cooperation agreement between Australia and the UK signed in July.
There is no minimum protection in the treaty for a guaranteed work share for genuine Australian industry.
The Collins project has established a viable submarine supply chain within Australia.
Continue reading...Murray Watt says ‘it’s not the government’s intention to stop old growth logging’ as Greens and academics press for total halt
The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging “at a minimum” in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority.
One of Australia’s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all native forest logging.
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Continue reading...Follow the latest updates live
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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.
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