Category Archives: Anthony Albanese

Under-55s and higher educated voters propelled Labor to victory, study finds

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Labor was more popular with women, ANU study finds, but difference ‘mostly due to a higher vote for the Greens’

Labor was propelled to victory over Scott Morrison by women, under-55s and those with higher levels of education, with people in the latter two groups most likely to have abandoned the Coalition since the 2019 election.

Those are the findings of a survey of 3,500 voters by the Australian National University and researchers at the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, released on Monday.

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Australia yet to sign up to treaty banning nuclear weapons but will attend UN meeting as observer

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Exclusive: Anthony Albanese committed Labor to signing the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons while in opposition

Australia will attend – as an observer – a UN meeting of countries that have outlawed nuclear weapons, parties to a treaty Anthony Albanese championed in opposition and committed Labor to ratifying in government.

Government backbencher Susan Templeman’s attendance at the meeting in Vienna on Tuesday comes as a group of 55 former Australian ambassadors and high commissioners have written an open letter to the prime minister urging the government to sign up to the treaty, which outright prohibits the development, testing, production and use of nuclear weapons.

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Albanese urged to intervene in Assange case; Perrottet defends Barilaro job; at least 55 Covid deaths – as it happened

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NSW premier says John Barilaro’s new role ‘no surprise’ to him; government ministers say Assange case ‘should be brought to a close’. This blog is now closed

Could an eighth world title be in the offing?

AAP reports:

Once I got past Caroline [Marks], I was super confident and I knew I could do it.

Lakey [Peterson] is an amazing surfer, so I knew it was going to be a tough Final but it doesn’t get any better. I love doing this. I love winning, I love doing this sport.

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Australia news live updates: Albanese extends Covid funding as nation records 51 deaths from virus; energy supply will meet weekend demand, Aemo says

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NSW premier says health funding ‘a great start’ after national cabinet meeting; electricity reserves improve across National Energy Market; ASX plunges to lowest level since November 2020; nation records 51 Covid deaths. Follow live

The PM is making the rounds this morning, appearing on Sunrise and repeating his line that almost a decade of “delay and denial” under the former Coalition government led to the current energy crisis (I feel like this will be a recurring theme today.)

People want an end to the nonsense that’s gone on for the last decade.

You can’t fix 10 years of inaction in just 10 days but we are taking immediate action through Aemo to make sure that the lights stay on. At the same time, we’re making sure that we create the investment environment to make sure we get it right.

The gas is actually the property of the people of the state, whichever state that is, and there should have always been enough for the state and the country in question. It just seems to me to be very strange that there’s no gas for local people yet.

Coal-fired power generation is very old technology and very difficult for coal plants to cope with renewables coming onto the grid, basically, new renewables every minute

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Anthony Albanese backflips on national cabinet secrecy and refuses to say why

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PM opts to continue to prevent release of documents related to meetings with state leaders despite his previous criticism of the practice

Anthony Albanese has backflipped on national cabinet secrecy, opting to continue to prevent the release of documents related to meetings of the prime minister and state and territory leaders, despite strident criticism of the practice in opposition.

At a press conference after his first national cabinet meeting as prime minister, Albanese confirmed the commonwealth had not proposed ending the practice, despite his accusation that Scott Morrison was “obsessed with secrecy”. Albanese refused to answer questions about why he had backflipped on the matter.

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Australian Medical Association calls for overhaul of national cabinet secrecy rules

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Omar Khorshid says Australians ‘have a right to know’ what is discussed, ahead of Anthony Albanese’s meeting with states and territories

Secrecy rules should not “automatically” apply to national cabinet documents and deliberations, the head of the Australian Medical Association has said.

Omar Khorshid made the comments ahead of Anthony Albanese’s first meetings with the state and territory leaders on Thursday evening. Friday’s meeting is expected to deliver major changes to the intergovernmental body, including a greater productivity reform focus.

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Shortfall warnings cancelled as units come back online – as it happened

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Foreign minister says Australia ‘has ground to make up’ in Pacific region; jobless rate steady at 3.9%; nation records at least 73 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

So the below comes as both the NSW and Victorian government move to introduce an extra, free year of preschool in the next decade.

Both the NSW and Victorian premiers, Dominic Perrottet and Daniel Andrews, want to introduce a new year for four- and five-year-olds.

It will mean that, in the next 10 years, every child in Victoria and NSW will experience the benefits of a full year of play-based learning before their first year of school. At the same time, it will benefit hundreds of thousands of working families.

We want to expand our existing preschools. It’s a game changer and it’s exciting and there is big money behind it, because we have to do well for our kids.

They do an amazing job, our early childhood workforce, so this is our chance to invest in them and grow and set children up for that best start of life.

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Unclear when electricity market suspension will end as Chris Bowen backs ‘extreme’ intervention

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Energy minister says the NSW grid will again come under ‘significant pressure’ on Thursday evening, asking residents to limit power use

The suspension of the national energy market could remain in place indefinitely, with the federal government unable to say when the “extreme” action will end.

Energy minister Chris Bowen ruled out extending the life of coal-fired power stations as a short-term solution to the energy crisis, saying the Labor government believed further investment in renewable generation and storage was a better option.

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NSW residents urged to conserve power – as it happened

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Paul Erickson speaks at National Press Club; Bowen says energy system ‘under pressure’; AEC says it will not conduct a recount in federal seat of Gilmore; foreign affairs minister’s first trip to Solomon Islands since security deal with China; Victoria records 18 Covid deaths, NSW records 14. This blog is now closed

Quick note:

NSW is reporting 7,260 new Covid cases and 14 deaths this morning.

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Australia news live updates: Queensland on brink of power outage as eastern states battle big chill; WA to shut state-owned coal plants

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Penny Wong to visit New Zealand foreign minister; at least 31 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Lack of reserve notice from energy regulator

It’s going to be a long day by the looks of it when it comes to “lack of reserve” notices and intervention by the Australian Energy Market Operator, such as this early one in NSW:

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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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Defence minister rubbishes Coalition claims on France compensation deal – as it happened

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Marles brushes off suggestions former Coalition government was close to signing compensation deal with France; nation records at least 24 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Interview with minister for NDIS and government services Bill Shorten now. First question is about energy policy.

Shorten says “the real issue about power, in my opinion is for 10 years we’ve had a decade of denial and delay.”

What we are suffering from this winter in the short term is floods of coal mines, outages of a plant which is more than 50 years old, but the real long-term problem is that we haven’t made a plan for transition to renewables, now the chickens have come home to roost.

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Aukus pact: Australia pays $830m penalty for ditching non-nuclear French submarines

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Anthony Albanese pledges to reset Australia’s strained relationship with France after settling cancelled contract with Naval Group

The Australian government has agreed to pay €550m (A$830m) in a settlement with Naval Group over the former Morrison government’s controversial decision to scrap the French attack class submarine project.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced on Saturday the confidential settlement would draw a line under the cancelled $90bn project. Labor gave bipartisan support to the Aukus partnership that replaced the project – under which the US and the UK have offered to help Australia to acquire at least eight nuclear-propelled submarines and cooperate on other advanced technologies.

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Anthony Albanese sees ‘no impediment’ to permanent residency for Biloela family

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Prime minister says ‘Australia can’t be proud of’ detention of Nadesalingam family for four years

Nothing is stopping the Nadesalingam family seeking permanent residency in Australia, Anthony Albanese says, following the Tamil asylum seekers’ return to Biloela.

A full weekend of celebrations is under way in the central Queensland town after Priya and Nades Nadesalingam and their daughters, Kopika and Tharnicaa, returned on Friday for the first time since being detained in March 2018.

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Biloela family welcomed home; Albanese announces $830m submarine penalty – as it happened

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French defence minister welcomes Australia’s payment to Naval Group over submarine cancellation; 70 Covid deaths across the country. This blog is now closed

Prime minister Anthony Albanese will hold a press conference in Sydney at 10.15am

There are reports in French media that Australia has settled with French company Naval Group over the cancellation of the submarines contract by the former government. We have not confirmed, but we shall see if that’s what the press conference is about.

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The change in tone at Ardern and Albanese’s meeting could not have been more stark

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A lot has changed since the fraught trans-Tasman exchanges of the Morrison government with the two countries now hitting reset

Jacinda Ardern and Scott Morrison, it seems, were never quite in sync.

Before New Zealand’s leader trumpeted a “reset” of the relationship with Australia on Friday, she exchanged gifts with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who was known at one stage or another as “DJ Albo”.

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Labor says Dutton ‘desperate’ to distract from defence failures – as it happened

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Nadesalingam family arrive back home to Biloela; New Zealand ‘heartened’ by Albanese government’s climate stance; Australia records at least 40 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Jacinda Ardern will be raising Australia’s controversial deportation policy in today’s meeting. Asked if she has knowledge of whether the government is prepared to “water it down a little bit”, she replies:

Just to be clear, the issue we have is not with deportation. We deport as well. If a New Zealander comes to Australia and commits a crime, send them home ... but when someone comes here and essentially, hasn’t even really had any connection with New Zealand at all ... have all their connections in Australia and are essentially Australian, sending them back to New Zealand, that’s where we’ve had the grievance.

I’ve heard the prime minister prior to winning the election speak to his acknowledgement that that is the part of the policy that we’ve taken issue with. Even that acknowledgement says to me he’s hearing us, he knows it’s a problem.

It’s been a bugbear for us for a long time so I would like to see movement on it.

We talked about music on occasion but I’m not sure I would’ve picked necessarily the right music if I think I was given that task.

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Ardern’s fiance takes swipe at Albanese’s outdated music taste after leaders exchange records

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‘What is this, 2004???’ Clarke Gayford posted in response to Australian PM’s gift of Midnight Oil, Spiderbait and Powderfinger albums

Jacinda Ardern’s fiancee has taken a cheeky swipe at Anthony Albanese’s music taste after the Australian prime minister and his New Zealand counterpart exchanged records during the pair’s first face-to-face meeting.

Ardern and Albanese, who have both moonlighted as DJs in the past, made the customary display of gift-giving at their first meeting since the federal election in Sydney on Thursday, with both opting for the high-risk, high-reward gift of music.

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Albanese vows to reconsider Australia’s deportations rules in olive branch to New Zealand

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Jacinda Ardern welcomes ‘reset’ in trans-Tasman relationship after years of tension over visa cancellations on character grounds

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has vowed to consider changing how the government handles visa cancellations in an olive branch to ease longstanding tensions with New Zealand.

The pledge to look at tweaking the scheme prompted the visiting New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to declare the talks in Sydney on Friday allowed for “a reset” in the trans-Tasman relationship.

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Nation records 59 Covid deaths as NT announces closure of quarantine facility – as it happened

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Two charged after remains found on Glass House Mountains; Victoria’s health workers to receive $3,000 one-off payment; nation records 59 Covid deaths as boosters recommended by Atagi for at-risk children between 12 and 15. This blog is now closed

Capacity mechanism is a priority to bring on renewables, energy ministers say

The first meeting of energy ministers yesterday evening indicated there will be a new intensity in federal-state-territory coordination.

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