Category Archives: Australian military

Australia news live: RBA interest rates decision a ‘wake-up call’ for Labor, Angus Taylor says

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Chalmers promises ‘substantial cost-of-living relief’ for most vulnerable

Asked if the age of 55 is the distinction Jim Chalmers thinks should be made on jobseeker, the treasurer says:

The reason I’m using 55 is because the reports that we received women’s economic equality taskforce and the economic inclusion advisory committee, which has been, in welcome ways, discussed quite a lot on your program, say that women over 55 are the most vulnerable group amongst unemployed Australians.

We’ve indicated before that we want to do something to help them in particular, but again, without pre-empting what’s in the budget in a week’s time, there will be a number of elements to our cost-of-living relief. Not all of them will be determined by age. For example, our energy bill relief plan, which will be in the budget in a week’s time, is for people on pensions and payments right across the board, not limited by age.

Will you increase jobseeker for people aged over 55?

There will be responsible cost-of-living relief in the budget, and it will focus on the most vulnerable people. There will be a number of elements to it. It won’t all be limited to one cohort or another. But it will all be made clear in the budget.

First of all, the jobseeker payment already makes a distinction between workers closer to the age pension, older workers, it already pays a different rate at the moment for people over 60. And that’s in recognition that it is harder to find a new job at that end of your working life. That’s the first point.

The second point is related. All of the expert advice a lot of the analysis I’ve heard it on your show, and it’s been right, says that the group that’s most likely to be long-term unemployed – people over 55 – that that group is dominated by women that the most vulnerable part of the unemployed population in Australia is at the moment women over 55. And so that’s another issue that people need to factor in.

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Small businesses offered tax breaks for going green in federal budget – as it happened

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Marles on Australians caught in Sudan conflict

Asked about Australians caught in Sudan and the conflict there, Richard Marles says “there are still options out of Port Sudan which is on the Red Sea, which is, I think it’s about 800km out of Khartoum” to leave “what is obviously a deteriorating situation”:

There are ferries there and there may be other options coming out of that. I mean, the important thing is this – Australians in Sudan, and there do remain a number of Australians in Sudan, really need to make sure that they register.

We will continue to work with friends and allies and do everything that we can within our power to provide options for Australians who want to leave. Because we understand how difficult this situation is now.

Ultimately, our ambition is to establish a production line with companies in this country which would provide for the manufacture of those long-range strike missiles and doing as much of that as possible in the next couple of years. We hope that we can begin with the assembly of the strike missiles that go in the Himars system. But we want to build on that so that we’re actually manufacturing the full suite of these weapons in Australia.

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Reliance on Australia’s military during natural disasters comes at a cost, senator says

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Climate change and humanitarian crisis are calling on too many ADF resources which should be reserved for conflict, Tony Sheldon says

Australia needs to rethink how it uses its defence force for natural disasters, reserving its troops for conflict and limiting their deployment except for in the most extreme events, according to the government’s special envoy for disaster recovery, senator Tony Sheldon.

After the release of the defence strategic review on Monday, the senator also said the government should help locals respond to emergencies before considering creating a new civilian agency.

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Beijing says don’t ‘hype up the so-called China threat narrative’ after Australian criticism

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Call comes after Australia’s defence review says activities in South China Sea ‘threaten rules-based order’

The Chinese government has urged countries not to “hype up the so-called China threat narrative” after a major Australian defence review criticised its activities in the South China Sea.

The Australian government’s defence strategic review, released on Monday, labelled the intense competition between China and the United States as “the defining feature of our region and our time”.

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The defence review says Australia is at little risk of a land invasion – but that’s not where the threats end

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Cyber-warfare and the ‘missile age’ have radically reduced Australia’s geographical defensive benefits, report argues

Australia’s defence strategic review paints an alarming picture of the “radically different” security outlook in the Indo-Pacific, including the risk of “major conflict in the region that directly threatens our national interest”.

But it is important to be very clear about what Monday’s document does and doesn’t say about the threats Australia faces.

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Australia news live: defence strategic review ‘a cannibalisation of army mobility’, Hastie says; Victorian jockey dies after race fall

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Review calls for ADF to develop ability to precisely strike targets at longer range and to develop stronger network. Follow the day’s news live

Plibersek v Joyce on Newspoll

In their regular spot on Sunrise, environment minister Tanya Plibersek and Coalition frontbencher Barnaby Joyce weighed in on those Newspoll results.

They’re very strong support numbers, and I tell you the reason is not based on polling but what people tell me when I’m out around the country.

People tell me that they’re pleased to see a government that is just getting on with the job, doing what we promised and they’re impressed that the prime minister is just sticking with what he said he’d do.

We don’t have an election tomorrow and that’s a good thing.

A lot of people are starting to focus now on issues such as the voice and saying, “I don’t feel comfortable with this.”

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‘We’d like the two periscopes’: the mission to save a piece of Australia’s first submarine

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The AE1 was found 103 years after it sank in the first world war. Now a team hopes to salvage part of the disintegrating wreck to be preserved in a museum

The wreck of Australia’s first submarine is disintegrating, sparking a new mission to salvage a relic from it for the Australian War Memorial.

HMAS AE1 disappeared with 35 crew on board while on a mission near the Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea in September 1914, less than two months after the outbreak of the first world war.

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War of words: Australia can expect a hostile response from China to strategic defence review

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Experts say Australia should look beyond criticism that is largely for domestic Chinese consumption and engage on a broader level

Australia’s strategic defence review, to be made public on Monday, is likely to spark a hostile response from China and set off a new round of claim and counterclaim about the precarious relationship between the two countries.

Sir Angus Houston, the former head of the Australian military who led the review with the former defence minister Stephen Smith, said when it was launched last year the strategic circumstances were “the worst I have ever seen in my career and lifetime”.

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Australia to dramatically scale back spending on infantry fighting vehicles in major defence overhaul

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The move aims to free up funding for the government to accelerate and expand other projects

Australia is set to dramatically scale back the number of infantry fighting vehicles it buys for the army as part of a defence overhaul to be announced on Monday.

The army had planned to acquire up to 450 infantry fighting vehicles, at a cost of up to $27bn, to replace Australia’s Vietnam war-era armoured personnel carriers.

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Penny Wong dismisses Paul Keating’s claim that the military has taken over Australian foreign policy

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Minister says foreign and defence policies are both essential for making the country stronger and more influential

Penny Wong will dismiss Paul Keating’s claim that the military has taken over foreign policy in Australia, as she insists the defence department and diplomats are working together to “keep the peace”.

In a speech on Monday, the foreign affairs minister will say countries across the Indo-Pacific region want to “choose their own destiny” and not have the rules “dictated by a single major power to suit its own interests”.

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Defence whistleblower David McBride to stand trial four years and eight months after being charged

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Trial set down for 6 November for former military lawyer accused of leaking classified Australian defence information to journalists

Former military lawyer David McBride will have waited four years and eight months before facing trial for allegedly leaking classified defence information to the media.

McBride’s case was mentioned briefly in the ACT supreme court on Thursday morning, the latest step in protracted legal proceedings that have been in train since March 2019.

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Liberal senator insists Australia must be ‘ruthless’ in pursuit of US military technology

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James Paterson says regulatory barriers in US could imperil access to AI, hypersonic weapons and other advanced systems

Australia needs to be “ruthless” about prioritising which technologies it pursues under the second pillar of the Aukus pact to overcome “regulatory barriers” in the US, the shadow minister for cybersecurity and countering foreign interference, James Paterson, has said.

The Liberal senator made the comments on the Guardian’s Australian politics podcast, warning that an “absence of consensus” in the US and a “clear plan” in Australia could see it miss out.

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Vast Aukus spending sparks calls to boost Australia’s aid budget

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Country gives just $1 in assistance for every $10 that goes to defence, humanitarian groups say

The huge Aukus price tag has sparked calls to boost aid funding, with the sector lobbying the Australian government not to dismiss such measures as an optional “luxury”.

The nuclear-powered submarine program is forecast to cost between $268bn and $368bn by the mid 2050s, most of it beyond the first four-year budget period.

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Australian military looks to build crucial space capabilities that will support Aukus nuclear subs

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Defence department puts out call for satellites that can talk to each other and to the ground, are ‘scalable, rapidly deployable and re-constitutable’

Defence is looking for a mesh of military space satellites that can talk to each other as well as to the ground, and is “scalable, rapidly deployable and re-constitutable”.

The system, in other words, would need to be able to be made bigger, to be quickly put into action, and to be repaired in case of attack or accident.

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Australia politics live: government and opposition strike agreement over voice referendum machinery changes

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Bipartisan approach likely as Senate addresses changes to the rules governing referendums. Follow the day’s news live

Voice negotiations

The referendum machinery legislation will set up how the voice referendum will run – the machinery surruounding the vote, if you will.

We’re negotiating in good faith in the Senate that’s being led by Jane Hume who is doing an outstanding job. What we said to the government in the beginning is what we’re saying to them now and that is that we are not prepared to trash decades of referendum precedent, and not do this in a way that Australians expect us to, in their interests, for their information.

We’re asking for a pamphlet to outline the yes and no case, and we’ve talked about that. We’re asking for equal funding of the yes or no case, not the millions of dollars that may go into a public campaign on either side of this debate, but just the administration funding.

Fifty-seven per cent of the population does not want to open new coal and gas mines and I think there’s a very clear message coming through there. Secondly, no, I have got a lot of time for Jacqui Lambie, but we had an emissions trading scheme in this country and she was part of a party that voted to repeal it so let’s let’s not get too carried away with the spin here.

We’re in a climate crisis, as the UN secretary general has made clear. The decisions that we make now will reverberate for generations to come and the big decisions that we’ve got to make, do we open new coal and gas mines or not?

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Labor’s opposition to Iraq war ‘vindicated’, Richard Marles says

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Defence minister says any decision to engage in armed conflict should be better debated and scrutinised

Richard Marles says opponents of the Iraq war have been vindicated, prompting fresh calls from campaigners to reform the Australian government’s war powers to prevent a repeat.

The defence minister, who is awaiting a report from a parliamentary inquiry into how the nation decides to engage in armed conflict, said such deployments were among the most significant any government could make.

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Coalition’s super changes will affect three times as many people as Labor’s plan, modelling shows

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Jim Chalmers says figures based on Treasury projections reveals opposition’s ‘deception’

The Coalition’s superannuation changes will affect three times as many people as Labor’s new package over the long term, according to figures compiled by the Albanese government.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the figures showed “the Coalition’s dishonesty, deception and double standards” ahead of the resumption of parliament on Monday.

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Aukus nuclear submarine deal will be ‘too big to fail’, Richard Marles says

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Australia’s defence minister plays down concerns multi-decade plan could be vulnerable to political changes in the US and UK

Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and the UK will rapidly become “too big to fail”, the deputy prime minister has said.

Richard Marles made the comment in an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast, pushing back at the idea the multidecade Aukus plan could be vulnerable to political changes in both the US and the UK.

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‘Path of error and danger’: China angry and confused over Aukus deal

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Deal is designed to counter perceived threat from Beijing but analysts in China say it could push region closer to conflict

When the UK, the US and Australia announced the details of their multibillion-dollar deal to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines on Monday, the reaction in China was both outrage and confusion.

The allies were “walking further and further down the path of error and danger”, said Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, on Tuesday. The Chinese mission to the UN accused the three countries of fuelling an arms race.

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Myer to close flagship Brisbane store – as it happened

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Turnbull concerned about UK economic situation

Malcolm Turnbull rounded out his concerns there with one shared with Paul Keating – although the language he used was a little more moderated than the former Labor PM is famous for.

The bottom line is their economy is sick. It’s got fundamental, sort of existential problems. And you’ve got to ask yourself, whether Britain is going to be able to sustain investment in its navy and its military in the years ahead, given this huge demand that they’ve got elsewhere, not least the National Health Service.

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