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.
Continue reading...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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Continue reading...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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Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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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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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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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Sydney man arrested for alleged major heroin smuggling operation after deportation
A Sydney man has been charged for allegedly orchestrating one of the biggest heroin imports in recent history after being deported from Türkiye, the Australian Federal Police has said.
Police will allege the man has been based in a number of countries since March 2020 and is responsible for organising the importation of 347.9kg of heroin into Sydney in December 2020, while he was based in Thailand. It will also be alleged this man has extensive links to transnational organised crime groups, which helped facilitate this importation.
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Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, is speaking from the Northern Territory on the Indigenous voice to parliament as today marks 56 years since the 1967 referendum.
Today marks 56 years since the 1967 referendum. One of the most successful federal referendums in Australia’s history. A day when Australians came together to vote to change the constitution so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be counted as part of the population.
As a nation, we look back at the 1967 referendum, at Charlie Perkins and his freedom rights, at more than a 90% vote “yes” which was done with great pride.
Continue reading...Senior White House official says president hears region’s concerns and ‘does not want conflict’ with China
Joe Biden’s senior advisers have acknowledged countries in the Indo-Pacific don’t want to be “trampled by a headlong clash” between the US and China.
In a webinar with an Australian audience on Friday, senior White House national security council (NSC) officials said the US president wanted to give allies and other close partners “breathing space” to engage with China constructively.
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Watts: Indigenous ‘voices were not heard’ in a parliament which allowed ‘large-scale extrajudicial killings’
Watts went on to say he was grappling with his ancestor’s legacy.
He was a member of the Queensland parliament’s inquiry into the actions of the Queensland native police in 1861.
There were no Aboriginal or Strait Islander peoples invited to give evidence to this inquiry, neither native police troopers nor members of the broader community.
In the decades following the arrival of my ancestor, disease, violence and forced resettlement literally decimated the local Indigenous population.
This alone is a disturbing legacy to grapple with. Regrettably though, it was John Watts’ legacy and his actions as a parliamentarian that caused even greater harm to Indigenous peoples of south-east Queensland.
Historian Jonathan Richards described the operations of the Queensland native police in the following terms: ‘When an attack of any form was made on settlers, the native police responded by tracking Aboriginal people to their camps. Once they had been located, the troopers surrounded the camp, firing their rifles into the sleeping people at dawn. The bodies were usually burnt to cover up the killings.’
Historians’ estimates of the number of Indigenous Australians killed by the Queensland native police range widely, from 10,000 up to 60,000 people, but it was clear that there were many thousands of murders and rapes committed by this state-sanctioned organisation.
Continue reading...Former attorney general received confidential information while in office and has said he will not act for Clive Palmer, senators hear. Follow the day’s news live
Cricket builds friendship between Australia and India, says Albanese
Narendra Modi described the Australia-India relationship last night as the three Cs – commonwealth, cricket and curry, the three Ds – diaspora, democracy and dosti (Bollywood film series and friendship) and the 3Es – economy, energy and education.
There is always a discussion about cricket when Australians and Indians gather and I did get the experience of being day one of the fourth test for a brief time with Prime Minister Modi. It was quite an experience in the world’s biggest stadium there in March and Australians and Indians are very passionate about their cricket but it is part of the way that we build our friendship between our two nations.
Continue reading...Australian PM announces cricketer Adam Gilchrist as board member of new centre for Australia-India relations in Parramatta
Thousands of members of Australia’s Indian community have given a rapturous stadium welcome to Anthony Albanese and Narendra Modi as a new centre for Australia-India relations was announced for Sydney’s west.
The two prime ministers were constantly cheered at the Olympic Park rally on Tuesday evening ahead of more formal talks between the pair planned for Wednesday.
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The conversation moves on to Stan Grant and whether Richard Marles agrees with some of the comments ABC news boss Justin Stevens has made about the criticism Grant experienced by organisations like News Corp and its “relentless campaign”.
Marles is asked whether he has read some of the comments under articles about ABC staff which appear in newspapers like the Australian.
Should those newspapers be dealing with the consequences and the commentary? I’ve read some of them I’ve read some of them about myself, too. They’re revolting.
Look, I mean, they are revolting. It’s it’s an area in an age of social media where – where there are comments that are posted, well – anyone who engages in social media, I think we all need to do much better.
And the answer the question about why I haven’t read all them is precisely because of the impact which one has when you do read them all.
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Greens announce comedian Mandy Nolan as Richmond candidate for 2025 election
We are only a year into the Albanese government, but it’s never too early to be prepared, I suppose. The Greens have announced their candidate for Richmond at the next election – Mandy Nolan.
At the last election people were desperate to kick out the Liberals, but now they’re realising Labor also wants new coal and gas, which makes the climate crisis worse, as well as billions in handouts for property moguls, which pushes up rents and house prices. Labor has no plan whatsoever to help renters and Labor’s housing bill sees the crisis get worse.
Mandy’s already got a team of volunteers ready to hit the streets and talk to Richmond residents about how the Greens are the only party fighting for renters and climate action.
The Finance and Public Administration Committee (which includes department of parliamentary services and prime minister and cabinet).
The Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, where it will be the Department of Home Affairs show.
The Environment and Communications committee will hear from the climate change and energy department as well as environment and water. (So power prices will dominate this one).
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