Category Archives: Anthony Albanese

Australia politics live: Don Farrell warns delaying housing bill could lead to double dissolution election

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Chalmers to herald record job growth

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will no doubt take a dixer on this today – the Albanese government has “had the strongest job growth in the first year of any new government on record”.

The number of Australians with a job is now more than 14 million for the very first time.

Australia’s participation rate is 66.9% – the highest on record, primarily driven by record high participation for women (62.7%).

The share of women in work is at a record high – with the employment to population ration for women at 60.5%.

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Labor announces $2bn for ‘thousands’ of new social rental homes and passes motion to make housing a human right

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Prime minister Anthony Albanese also lambasts Greens over Senate stalemate, saying they are ‘happy to promise the world, while organising a petition against every new apartment building’

The federal government has announced it will give $2bn to state and territory governments within weeks for a social housing accelerator fund as part of a last-ditch effort to convince the Greens to not sink Labor’s signature housing policy in the Senate.

“This is new money – right now – for new social housing,” the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said as he announced the funding at Victorian Labor’s state conference on Saturday.

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Victorian Liberals to meet on senator’s future; Stoker says she’s ‘fine’ – as it happened

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Urgent meeting called for this weekend after allegations raised against the senator in parliament. This blog is now closed

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe says “at this stage” she will be voting no on the government’s bill for a referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament.

She’s told ABC Radio her position on the voice is:

At this stage, I’ll be voting no to the bill that is before us to change the constitution, given the government have not come forward with proof on what their interpretation of sovereignty is.

I know that for months now that they continue to say that this does not affect the sovereignty of First Nations people in this country, however, they’ve never provided any evidence.

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Senator removed from party room – as it happened

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Liberal senator David Van is speaking to Sydney radio 2GB about independent senator Lidia Thorpe’s allegations in the Senate yesterday.

Thorpe withdrew the remarks to comply with the Senate’s standing orders but said she would be making a statement on the issue today.

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National gun register the ‘next step’ for reform that John Howard started, Anthony Albanese says

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Albanese praises ‘courage’ of former prime minister and those affected by Port Arthur massacre

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has praised John Howard’s “courage and determination” to legislate gun control in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre and says a national firearms register would be the “next step” for the reforms that began in 1996.

Albanese will make the remarks at the National Museum on Thursday at a ceremony with Howard and Walter Mikac, who lost his wife and two daughters at Port Arthur. The ceremony will mark correspondence between Mikac and Howard entering the museum’s collection.

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Liberal MPs break ranks to call for inquiry into Brittany Higgins’ leaked text messages

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Andrew Bragg and Bridget Archer make call after Network Ten asks AFP to investigate alleged leaking of evidence in Bruce Lehrmann trial

Liberals Andrew Bragg and Bridget Archer have broken ranks to call for an inquiry into how Brittany Higgins’ text messages were leaked, with Bragg labelling debate in the Senate where the Coalition is pursuing Katy Gallagher “very ugly”.

The pair made the call after the finance minister denied misleading the Senate about her knowledge of Higgins’ allegation before it aired and Network Ten asked the Australian federal police to investigate how Higgins’ texts became public.

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Australia politics live: Morrison addresses Higgins discrepancy; PM says bus crash a ‘tragedy beyond comprehension’

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Katy Gallagher hits back at Coalition attacks, saying she conducted herself with ‘highest levels of integrity’ over Higgins allegations. Follow live

First Nations people call on government to sign nuclear weapons prohibition

A group of people are on their way to Canberra to call on the prime minister to sign the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and speak to MPs about their experience surviving the British nuclear testing program in Western Australia and South Australia in the 1950s.

Our mob were not informed of those tests that were about to take place on our traditional lands.

Consent was never given by Anangu for the Emu Field tests. The government did not come and ask Anangu if it was okay to test on our traditional lands.

Everyone knows the commonwealth doesn’t have the power to cap rents. There’s eight different states and territories across the country all doing different things. Some of them have ruled it out.

We have data and evidence it doesn’t work and it puts downward pressure on supply. What we need to do is add to supply. That’s what we’re doing, not just with our housing Australia future fund and our other investments. We have homes under construction today because we made that money available.

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Australians’ support for Indigenous voice steady with 60% in favour, Essential poll finds

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Guardian Essential poll finds high level of backing for voice to parliament, despite other polls showing support flagging

Public support for the Indigenous voice to parliament is holding steady and remains high, the latest Guardian Essential poll shows, in contrast with other recent polls suggesting that support is sliding.

The poll of 1,123 voters, published on Tuesday, found 60% of respondents were in favour of the voice, up one point on the previous survey, while 40% were opposed to it.

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Coalition’s wounded feelings over Brittany Higgins will sink debate to new lows

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The opposition is out for vengeance over what it sees as ‘collusion’ and ‘weaponisation’ but Labor will no doubt push back

What an edifying spectacle parliament is going to be this week.

The Coalition’s two-year old wound caused by accusations it mishandled Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation has been reopened, and they’re out for vengeance.

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Home affairs asked Labor to extend support for asylum seekers as housing market worsens

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Exclusive: Refugee advocates say nothing yet done to improve supports and they fear for people who end up with none

The home affairs department asked the Albanese government to consider extending supports for asylum seekers and people on bridging visas to respond to a worsening housing market and the complex needs of more people exiting immigration detention.

That revelation is contained in freedom of information documents, which also include a direction from the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, to the department to streamline reviews to increase releases from immigration detention.

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PM denies Katy Gallagher misled parliament over Brittany Higgins case after text messages released

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Coalition presses finance minister over her comment to Senate estimates that ‘no one had any knowledge’ before rape allegation was made public

Anthony Albanese has denied that the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, misled the Senate by insisting “no one had any knowledge” before Brittany Higgins made her rape allegation in February 2021.

The opposition is continuing to press Gallagher for an explanation of her evidence to Senate estimates, which has come under question due to the release of text messages between Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, suggesting contact with Gallagher four days before the story broke.

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Paul Keating sent explosive email to Labor cabinet two hours before attack on Aukus, FOI documents reveal

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Exclusive: Former PM directly warned cabinet ministers over China, the Pacific and US hegemony prior to his pointed speech at the National Press Club

At 10.45am on Wednesday 15 March, an explosive email landed in the inboxes of all of Anthony Albanese’s cabinet ministers.

“Dear cabinet colleagues,” wrote Paul Keating, Labor luminary turned chief Aukus critic.

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Australia news live: budget and minimum wage hike not to blame for rising interest rates, Chalmers says

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Treasurer points finger at inflation, adding ‘people are under pressure and the global economic conditions are not helping either’. Follow live

Parts of Victoria and South Australia are being warned to expect heavy rainfall today.

The heavy rain that’s already hit Western Australia is sweeping across the country, with South Australia’s Riverland and Murraylands warned to brace for heavy rainfall to last until Friday.

We want to see productivity get going. We have had the worst decade, I think, in productivity growth in the last 60 years in the previous decade so there’s a lot of work to do. We can’t turn that around in one year.

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Central bank going ‘rogue’, senator claims – as it happened

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Burke says the loophole only applies to where the business has agreed on a minimum rate of pay:

The loopholes are really simple … which is, if an employer agrees with their workforce and registers, this should be the rate of pay.

You shouldn’t then be able to go to a labour hire company and completely undercut what you’ve just agreed to.

Yesterday was one of the one of the strangest debates I’ve ever found myself in – because business was running a passionate campaign against a policy that the government is not proposing, that the government’s not going to do. And to me, it would sound like a bad idea anyway.

Effectively the way business were arguing yesterday – there was someone on PM yesterday afternoon, claiming that somehow this would prevent hairdressers from being able to pay different rates of pay for the people in their employment. Just not true.

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Australia news live: China in focus for PM’s Vietnam meeting; plastics treaty draft under way

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Anthony Albanese will meet with Vietnamese prime minister Pham Minh Chinh, as well as the Communist Party general secretary, the president and the chairman of the national assembly. Follow the day’s news, live

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will meet Vietnam’s top leaders in Hanoi today as part of an official state visit.

He’ll begin his day visiting the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s communist revolutionary leader and first president, before meeting with Vietnamese prime minister Pham Minh Chinh, as well as the Communist Party general secretary, the president and the chairman of the national assembly.

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US-China war not inevitable, Albanese says, urging countries to ‘prevent a worst-case scenario’

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Prime minister also seeks to reassure regional nations wary about Australia’s reasons for acquiring nuclear submarines under Aukus pact

Anthony Albanese has warned against “harmful” assumptions that the US and China are heading towards an inevitable war, and called for “practical structures to prevent a worst-case scenario”.

The Australian prime minister said a war in the Indo-Pacific would be “devastating for the world” and used a keynote speech to a regional security summit in Singapore to urge all countries to uphold peace and stability.

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Queensland LNP criticised for ‘failure of leadership’ on voice – as it happened

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Why didn’t the Coalition government know about these issues?

Shouldn’t it have?

And that’s exactly I would imagine the issues that will be fleshed out by this inquiry it, because this has been a loophole if you like, but that said privacy provisions, particularly when you’re dealing with government agencies, are really important to engender trust.

Now, as I said, there are a number of processes under way. We’ve seen what happens in recent times, when there is ongoing media commentary or into matters that relate to criminal proceedings. So we should be very careful about being part of that commentary that might impact other proper processes.

Secrecy provisions are there and privacy provisions are there for very good reasons. Now, whether those privacy provisions manifested in the best outcome here is for others to say, but I don’t think we should throw the baby out of the bathwater. We want to make sure that people have trust in the ATO trust when they give information to agencies that it will be kept private.

But look, this will all be flushed out it will all be flushed out in two inquiries. One by the AFP – there’s been a reference made to them already. And the other by a Senate references inquiry and I don’t want to pre-empt exactly what that particular that references inquiry will find. My colleagues right across the chamber will be investigating this issue, I would imagine, very thoroughly along with others to do with the PwC scandal.

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Australia politics live: Lambie threatens to disrupt Senate over Afghanistan medals; question time under way

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Adam Bandt rails against Woodside’s exclusion from petroleum resource rent tax

Greens leader Adam Bandt is speaking to ABC radio RN Breakfast about the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) changes and in particular the fact that Woodside’s Western Australian North-West Shelf project isn’t included in it.

The tax is still broken, and they’re meant to be subjected to it. They should pay their fair share of tax. As I say, even after these changes, Australia only brings in a few $100 million extra from these big gas corporations that are making billions of dollars of profits. It’s about a 10th of what comparable countries bring in. If we made these guess corporations pay their fair share of tax. They’d be an extra $94 billion over the decade to go to things like delivering cost-of-living relief, funding a rent freeze, getting dental into Medicare.

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Guardian Essential poll: majority of Australians support rent freezes, migration cap amid housing crisis

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Poll finds respondents support policies of the Greens and Coalition, posing a potential risk to the Albanese government

A majority of voters support severe measures to tackle the housing crisis including freezing rents, capping migration and using superannuation for housing, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.

The poll of 1,138 people, released on Tuesday, finds support for a range of signature policies of the Greens and Coalition, demonstrating the risk posed to the Albanese government if it is not seen to be doing enough to fight rising rents and property prices.

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57% supporting preventing wealthy families using family trusts to minimise tax, and just 15% opposed

49% supporting only allowing negative gearing on one investment property, and just 17% opposed

47% wanting to tax deceased estates worth more than $5m to fund affordable rentals, and 23% opposed; and

36% supporting removing all negative gearing tax concessions on investment properties and 25% opposed.

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Albanese urges all citizens to discuss Indigenous voice to ensure successful referendum

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Success ‘will depend on millions of conversations between Australians of all backgrounds and faiths and beliefs’, PM says in speech

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has urged citizens to discuss the Indigenous voice to parliament with friends and family to ensure the referendum’s success. He also claims the no campaign has radically underestimated Australians, who would not succumb to fear campaigns about the constitutional change.

Albanese will use a major speech in Adelaide on Monday to counter claims the government has rushed into the referendum, saying the voice and calls for Indigenous constitutional recognition have developed over decades.

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