Australia’s ambassador to the US has taken aim at the proposal to put tariffs on screen productions. Follow today’s news live
Ben Raue’s predictions for Menzies, Bullwinkel and Bradfield
Analyst Ben Raue also predicted that Labor’s Gabriel Ng lead by 1,145 votes in Menzies, Victoria, will “grow slightly”.
Continue reading...Liberal candidate says he is ‘proud’ to represent electorate after being ‘written off’ three years ago. Follow today’s live news and reaction to the 2025 Australian federal election results
Max Chandler-Mathers on housing: Labor refused to negotiate then told media the Greens were blocking their bills
Asked about criticism that the Greens slowed down progress on housing on Triple J Hack, Max Chandler-Mather said Anthony Albanese was “basically saying that, and it just wasn’t true, but then the media repeated as fact”.
It was odd for me, I have to say, because I would be sitting in a negotiating room with the prime minister or with the housing minister, and we’d be privately saying we’re willing to give up everything on our side of negotiations if you just build a bit more public housing. And then they say, ‘Nah, no way, we’re not giving you a thing’. And then they go out into the media and say, ‘The Greens are blocking housing’.
In the house, a lot of those things didn’t get across that you were hoping or that you were promising, the rent freezes, the rent caps, the negative gearing changes, the doubling of capital gains tax … That stuff didn’t get across the line, but Labor’s housing policies still did.
I’ll be honest, one of the things I’m quite happy about at the moment is I don’t have to spend more time in the House of Representatives, because, like, basically every time I stood up, I got screamed and yelled at. In terms of a workplace, it was bloody awful, and frankly, a lot of the times miserable.
The only reason I kept going back because it felt like we were one of the few voices fighting for millions of people who feel really let down by this political system …
Continue reading...Mik Bartels is among those fearful of Trump’s America, partly because their research includes 20 words on US government’s list of banned terms
Queer Australians are axing travel plans to Washington DC’s World Pride festival, as Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights lead to fears of discrimination at the US border and potential attacks.
People skipping the international event join other Australians and travellers from around the world who are avoiding the US after Trump’s inauguration and a string of controversial policies enacted in the early months of his second term as president.
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Continue reading...Coalition claims it will save $10bn more over four years compared with Labor. Follow today’s news live
Good morning and welcome to our live election blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then Krishani Dhanji will take over.
Our top story this morning is on the “handshake” deal by the Nationals to move One Nation up its preference list that could help win the New South Wales electorate of Hunter. The deal has been made despite Pauline Hanson’s candidate being known for calling public health officials “little Hitlers” and promoting a conspiracy theory that the climate crisis has been used to control every aspect of people’s lives.
Continue reading...Nationals senator says working holiday visa, which supplies labour to regional areas, will not be part of Coalition’s planned migration cuts. Follow updates live
Peter Dutton is due to arrive any moment at a campaign rally in the Labor-held seat of Hawke in Melbourne’s west.
The opposition leader is expected to deliver an energetic sermon to the party faithful ahead of the Coalition’s last-week “blitz”.
Over the last three years, when defence comes to us, the independent strategic review identifies capabilities and assets that need to be bought, then we have put that in the budget. The biggest expansion in peacetime since World War II, you see defence spending growing as a share of the economy or GDP over the forward estimates and over the next ten years.
If more needs to be done, of course the prime minister has indicated we’re open to doing that.
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Albanese says climate change is an “economic issue, not just an environmental one”.
He is asked about the rising pressure of home insurance for families. The prime minister responds:
We’ll continue to do what we can there. One of the things that obviously is having an impact is the increased number of extreme weather events. That’s why climate change needs to be considered to be an economic issue, not just an environmental one. Because there are economic costs to it.
Everyone who is here has been through screening … Let’s be clear about the suggestions that have been made on a range of occasions, aimed at promoting division in Australian society and in Australian debate. They’ve been made by the Coalition. They simply just don’t stack up.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Meeting with Dfat deputy secretary not specifically about reported Russian military request, diplomatic sources say, but may have been canvassed
Indonesia’s ambassador met with senior Australian diplomats on Tuesday as the nation was thrust into an election campaign debate about a potential Russian military presence in the region – and on the same day Anthony Albanese accused Peter Dutton of damaging the bilateral relationship.
Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia, Dr Siswo Pramono, met with the department of foreign affairs and trade’s deputy secretary, Michelle Chan, who leads its south-east Asian policy division. One diplomatic source said Indonesia requested the meeting.
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Continue reading...Incendiary letter by Moscow’s envoy says Australians should be more concerned about US bases on their soil than a Russian base in Indonesia
Russian warnings to Australia that “you have no cards” to stop Russian military activity in the Indo-Pacific have been mocked by Anthony Albanese, who has dismissed an incendiary letter from an ambassador as authoritarian “propaganda”.
The unsubstantiated spectre of a proposed Russian military airbase on Indonesian territory has loomed over the past week of Australia’s federal election campaign, with the opposition accusing the government of obfuscating and dodging questions, and the government responding that the opposition had misrepresented the Indonesian government and actively fanned Russian propaganda.
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Continue reading...Oscar Jenkins reportedly faces 15-year jail term on charges of fighting as ‘mercenary’
Australia will use “whatever avenues” it can to help Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins, who faces a 15-year jail term in Russia for fighting with Ukrainian troops.
The prime minister said on Saturday that the government would “continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin” to release Jenkins, 33, a former teacher who fought with Ukraine’s armed forces against Russia’s invasion.
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Continue reading...Foreign minister Penny Wong has demanded full review into wounding of Ranem Abu-Izneid in November but legal team claim there have been ‘no updates’
Lawyers for an Australian dentistry student who lost her eye after being struck by shrapnel in the occupied West Bank say they doubt Israel is investigating the matter despite the foreign minister, Penny Wong, demanding a comprehensive probe.
Palestinian-Australian student Ranem Abu-Izneid, 20, was sheltering with her friend on 15 November 2024 at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, when she says a bullet fired by Israeli forces penetrated the window. She later lost her right eye.
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Continue reading...‘When academics fear travelling or partnering with US institutions, the impacts ripple through the entire global knowledge ecosystem,’ one says
When Gemma Lucy Smart received an invitation to attend an academic conference in the US, she was excited. But that was before Donald Trump was returned to office.
Now Smart, who has a disability and is queer, has decided it’s too risky to travel to Seattle for the social sciences conference in September.
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Continue reading...US president says he will shortly announce the new tariff on pharmaceuticals but does not give any details
Donald Trump says the US will soon introduce “a major tariff on pharmaceuticals” designed to force more manufacturing giants to relocate to America, a move that could further strain relations with Australia.
His comments come hours after his trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said the US should be “running up the score” with Australia and using money generated by tariffs to address a broader $1.2tn trade deficit with the rest of the world. The US maintains a trade surplus with Australia.
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Poll points to risks in key seats for Labor
We’ve made it to a week into the election campaign. So who’s winning?
At the end of week one, it was clear that Albanese won more days than Dutton and therefore won the week. But there are still four more to go, and anything can happen in an election.
Continue reading...Golfer has been used before as a diplomatic bridge to US president. Follow today’s news live
Peter Dutton is in Western Australia for his first visit to the mining state of this campaign, and has come bearing a $600m announcement for roads which are critical to mining and agriculture.
He will spend the day in WA and Perth, before it’s expected he’ll return to the east coast late tonight or early tomorrow.
All candidates were made aware that if they were not coming tonight then they would be represented by an empty chair. This notice was given in advance.
The Liberals have failed to announce a 2030 or 2035 emissions target, committing only to net zero by 2050. The fate of the climate will be determined by cumulative emissions, so this lack of short or medium term targets is deeply problematic.
Continue reading...Ted Hui received letter offering reward for information about his family after China accused Australia of interfering with its internal affairs
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has described another threatening letter sent to an exiled Hong Kong dissident in Australia as “reprehensible”, a “threat to our national sovereignty” and “the safety and security of Australians”.
The anonymous letter, mailed from Hong Kong and sent to Ted Hui’s Adelaide office, offered his colleagues $203,000 for information on his whereabouts and his family. It arrived just days after China’s foreign ministry accused the Albanese government of interfering with its internal affairs.
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Jim Chalmers was also up on ABC News Breakfast this morning, where he was asked if there’s a reason the government can’t commit to more of the 20 recommendations.
He said it was committing to all of the recommendations “in principle” and, like earlier, that the government was working on some of them already.
The ACCC has handed down a 441-page report and not on any of those pages does it support the divestiture powers which have been proposed by our political opponents.
If you make one of the big chains sell in the community, there’s a risk that it’s just snapped up by the other big player in the supermarket sector and that would be counter-productive. Or if it chases supermarket options out of town in regional communities. It’s got hairs all over it, frankly.
We’re making the food and grocery code mandatory. We’re empowering the ACCC. We’re cracking down on mergers and acquisitions. We’re working to make it easier for new entrants to compete with the two big supermarkets in particular. These are all of the things that we’re cracking down on when it comes to the supermarkets.
We don’t want the supermarkets to be treating Australians like mugs.
Continue reading...Independent assessment, which was handed to government before US election, warns of ‘global geopolitical and economic fragmentation’
Australia faces a world more volatile and dangerous than it has known for more than four decades, and “major-power conflict is no longer unimaginable”, a review of the country’s intelligence agencies has found.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, commissioned the review of the work of the 10 agencies that make up Australia’s national intelligence community in September 2023.
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There have been shifts in relative global power balances, accompanied by a sharp contest between nation-states for power and influence. This contest is at once diplomatic, military, economic and technological, and is pursued within Australia’s borders as much as beyond them, including through cyber-attacks and foreign interference.
New technologies are being used to amplify some old threats while creating entirely new ones.
There are a range of transnational challenges, including climate change, pandemics, irregular migration, terrorism, and polarisation and fraying social cohesion in many democracies. In a globalised world, the ripples from even geographically distant conflicts inevitably reach Australia, with significant, often grave, consequences.
Continue reading...Opposition leader criticised for using historical slur against gay men, with a spokesperson for Dutton saying ‘no offence was intended’
Penny Wong says it’s “unsurprising” Peter Dutton would use an historical slur to attack the prime minister’s response to China, noting the opposition leader had opposed marriage equality.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Dutton said: “It was a phrase that shouldn’t have been used, and no offence was intended from Mr Dutton.”
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Penny Wong says diplomats are consulting US government and ‘engaging with countries in our region’ to determine need for additional support
The Australian government is consulting Pacific nations to assess the “devastating consequences” of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid and considering what additional support it can provide ahead of next week’s federal budget.
In a letter to a Liberal MP concerned the freeze could cause “irreversible” damage to Pacific communities, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said Australian diplomats were discussing its impact with US government officials.
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Continue reading...On the issue of Aukus, the opposition leader said the Coalition is committed to increased defence spending. Follow today’s news live
‘Israeli government does not have a lot of palatable options’ – Sharma
The Liberal senator and former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma was up on ABC News Breakfast earlier to discuss the latest strikes carried out by Israel on Gaza.
If any of us were in their position, we would be single-mindedly focused on the return of our loved ones. I can understand that. This is a politically contentious issue in Israel, there’s no walking away from that, but I don’t think the government has a lot of good choices.
Continuing the ceasefire was not going to lead to the release of further hostages, at least according to the mediators involved in the talks. Hamas had basically said they weren’t planning on returning any more. As I said, in that situation, the Israeli government does not have a lot of palatable options.
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