The Point Live: Coalition scores a win with new laws to tackle illicit tobacco and talks on migration, govt still to unveil Israeli West Bank sanctions. As it happened.

Ed Husic has continued his advocacy for Australia to take a stand against genocide, in the face of his party’s reluctance, with his latest adjournment speech contribution:

Let me tell the House about 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan.

A 14 year old, shot in the head by a settler outside the school gates in April. His last moments, filmed on a phone.

What about the Palestinian amputee struck on the back with an iron rod as he bent down to pick up one of his crutches. A 16-year-old settler was responsible, captured on video.

I think of 72-year-old Um Muhammad Muammar and her family. Their home, attacked by settlers in March. Two of her sons killed, the other permanently injured from a bullet in the leg.

These types of attacks happen daily. Roughly 5,900 Palestinians have been completely or partially displaced by settler violence since January 2023.

Along with 32,000 Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes in West Bank refugee camps last year.

The scale of this prompted Major General Eyal Ben-Reuven – someone who spent his life fighting for Israel – and who recently visited the occupied West Bank, to remark:

“This, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to Israel. This is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.”

Former Israeli minister of health and retired brigadier general Ephraim Sneh said “This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.”

Retired Air Force general Asaf Agmon,declared: “Once a society behaves this way – that society is doomed.”

One of our most significant allies believes what’s happening in the West Bank is wrong.

The UK Labour government, led by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, decided enough was enough. They took action, targeting illegal settlements and settlement expansion through banning imports.

Oddly, even before the UK formally announced their moves, our own government declared we wouldn’t embrace the same measures.

I’d be misleading the House if I was to say I wasn’t disappointed.

To justify this decision, it was said that “We have concerns about the implementation of a blanket ban and unintended consequences for Australian businesses, for Palestinians and for Israelis.”

By way of contrast it’s worth noting, Australia has imposed 1,800 sanctions and strict tariffs on Russia over their illegal invasion of Ukraine – which has seen the total value of Australia’s imports from Russia drop by around 99 per cent.

And it would sound quite odd for us to say we wouldn’t impose sanctions on Russia because of the impact on Australian businesses or Ukrainians or Russians.

We took action knowing it would have an impact – precisely because we wanted it to lead to change.

Additionally we’ve pointed out regularly that we – as an individual nation – couldn’t possibly act on our own regarding what’s happening in the West Bank or Gaza.

Yet many Australians would then question why we wouldn’t act when we had a chance to do so in concert with many like minded nations.

But let me come back to the issue of impacts. Let’s look at this another way.

It was former Prime Minister Bob Hawke who dedicated so much of himself, in such a principled and unyielding way, to ending apartheid in South Africa.

As a Prime Minister he pushed on the world stage for comprehensive financial sanctions against South Africa, measures that were so tough, former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said were “profoundly practically important in their economic, and ultimately, endgame political impact.”

Now, imagine telling Bob Hawke not to impose bans or measures on

South Africa because it would affect Australian businesses or the very South Africans resisting apartheid?

Bob Hawke championed a cause that forms an important part of Labor history.

Likewise Prime Minister Albanese has led a government that can justifiably be proud to be part of history it has written: the first ever Australian government to recognise the state of Palestine.

But having stated the ambition, we must act to protect it.

Because settler terrorism is tearing to shreds our ambition to see a state of Palestine – and we cannot sticky tape that back together with yet another statement.

It’s why I have urged regularly – before and after our ALP National Conference – the need for concrete action.

Because the Netanyahu Government will simply ride out the flurry of statements that our country or other nations issue.

And we should recognise the expectations of so many Australians, who want to see action taken to see the end of suffering for innocent Palestinians.

Among those Australians are many members of our own party, who joined driven by a sense of purpose, a sense of social justice.

Who believe that that commitment to social justice simply does not end at our own borders. In fact I’m reminded of the words of Ben Chifley in 1949.

“We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand.

I’ll end on this point.

Nearly a dozen other nations agreed to join the UK in its stand this week.

The only government to enthusiastically support our government’s decision not to join the UK and other nations to take a stand on settler terrorism in West Bank?

The Netanyahu government.

You truly do not see this sort of scene in the senate very often.

Angus Blackman

Early super access proposals would ultimately make people worse off – but the government could do more to help Australians currently in need.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss One Nation’s superannuation proposal, ways the government could provide genuine cost-of-living support, the Reserve Bank’s twisted thinking over inflation and interest rates, and Barnaby Joyce’s run-from-Jesus moment.

Ayes 34

Noes 27.

So the disallowance motion does not pass (as expected)

But we saw three Greens senators vote for it, splitting from the party because they did not want to see forests monetise and a Liberal senator vote against his party’s motion, because he didn’t agree with their logging arguments.

So this remains a very complicated position for a lot of the parties.

AYES, 27

NOES, 34

* Tellers

PAIRS

Liberal South Australian senator Andrew McLachlan is also crossing the floor here, voting against his colleagues. He says while he understands the good faith at the heart of his colleagues, he can’t bring himself to support their disallowance motion:

I’ll be opposing the motion. Can I associate myself with the remarks of Senator [David] Pocock? Can I totally reject the arguments of One Nation? And can I express my appreciation to Senator [Nick] McKim?

I have deep philosophical questions myself. I have wrestled with this issue myself because I believe nature has intrinsic value. But I accept at this moment, in time, we live in a capitalist world, and we must find some way to finance these forests. It may be an imperfect solution. It’s a solution that does not give me great happiness, but I can’t bring myself to vote against the motion.

To the mover, I know he argued in good faith, but it comes from a place and a party that wants to has an enthusiasm to log native forests, and that cuts away those arguments and the motives in relation to those arguments.

And whilst I want to put nature first in front of all decision making, or at the heart of all decision making, I feel that I have to oppose the motion.

Nick McKim explains why he and two of his colleagues are splitting from the rest of the party on this:

After much deliberation, three Green senators: me, Senator Steele-John, and Senator Bleyer, have decided to exercise our right to take a position on this matter according to our conscience.

We do not support the improved native forest management methodology, and we will vote here today in the Senate to disallow it. 

Just as there are different views in the environment movement about Labor’s proposal, which let’s be clear, is to sell forest carbon to corporations so corporations can keep emitting and cooking the planet. 

Just as there are differing views in the environment movement about this proposal, so there are different views in the Australian Greens Party room, and I want to be very clear that people of good heart and clear mind, both in our party room and in the environment movement, can and have come to different positions on this issue, and we hope that people understand our position as we understand theirs. 

The three of us — Senator Steele-John, Senator Bleyer, and I — want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and we will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to continue to emit, which is what the INFM does. 

I’m very proud to be aligned with Senator Steele-John, my close friend, on this issue, and I know that Senator Steele-John feels very strongly that the Greens in Western Australia have a long and proud history of being in solidarity with forest campaigners, and that over decades they have fought for and won protections for native forests in Western Australia. 

That history and the strength of the forest and climate movement in Western Australia has strongly informed the position that Senator Steele-John is taking. 

I’m also proud to be aligned with Senator Bleyer on this. Someone I know has spent decades fighting to protect native forests purely for their intrinsic values, no strings attached. And Senator Bleyer is doing that again today. 

I’ve been trying to save forests since I was arrested at Farmhouse Creek more years ago than I care to count a place where I first met Bob Brown, who supports the position that Senator Blyth and Senator Steele-John, and I have taken today. 

Let’s be very clear about this. This is a Labor shakedown. 

After repeatedly, unconditionally promising the Great Koala National Park, Labor is holding koalas hostage and threatening their extinction unless they can profit from their habitat, it’s an ecocidal threat, and the three of us have decided that we’re going to resist it. There is no guarantee that a single extra hectare of forests will be protected through this methodology. 

This methodology is a neoliberal response to a crisis caused by neoliberalism. What could possibly go wrong? 

If it passes, we may never again see a national park or a marine protected area created unless the carbon or the biodiversity can be monetised in some way. 

Forests are profound, complex ecosystems that deserve to be and must be protected for their intrinsic value, not for profit. 

The tragic reality today, colleagues, is that climate change is a greater threat to native forests than logging, and we have decided we will not be party to making forest protection contingent on a mechanism that will drive their very destruction. 

Carbon offsets from forests rely on a fiction that no future government would protect forests without them, and history shows that thanks to courageous activists and Greens in parliaments around this country, including this one, vast tracts of forests have been protected without being monetised, and we have no doubt that that would have continued in the absence of the INFM. 

The three of us are profoundly grateful to everyone who’s raised their voices and supported us to take this position. 

That includes forest defenders, not just in my home state of Tasmania, but right round the country. 

Every single State Greens MP in Tasmania, every single state Greens MP in Western Australia, Amanda Cohn and Abigail Boyd, two MPs in the state of New South Wales, as well as our close friends and mentors Bob Brown and Christine Milne.

The Coalition got to vote on scrapping the $5,000 allied health cap for veterans in the senate in exchange for bringing up the disallowance motion for the offsets for the Great Koala National Park (this is part of some very boring procedural bargaining that goes on in the background) and Labor gave it the OK, because they’ll just (if they wish) defeat it in the house.

Michaelia Cash is enjoying this little moment though:

The Coalition today defeated the Albanese Government on the floor of the Senate in a crucial vote to scrap Labor’s cruel $5000 cap on allied health services for Australian military veterans.

The Coalition moved an amendment to scrap the $5000 cap during debate on the Statute Update Bill which was before the Senate. The amendment was supported by the crossbench and Greens and the Bill then passed the Senate.

Labor voted against the amendment to scrap the $5000 cap. The Bill will now go back to the House of Representatives.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Michaelia Cash said: “The Albanese Government’s disgraceful treatment of Australian veterans who fought for this country was on display in the Senate today.’’

“Labor will be further tested in the House of Representatives when this Bill returns there,’’ she said.

“I call on Mr Albanese and Minister Matt Keogh from Western Australia to finally do the right thing by our veterans and vote for the cap to be scrapped,’’ she said.

“It is an absolute disgrace that we have had to witness our veterans coming to Canberra cap in hand begging to be treated better by this Government,’’ Senator Cash said.

“I was sickened to see a group of veterans lay down their medals outside Parliament House this week in protest at this cruel cap,’’ she said.

“The treatment of our veterans has been disgraceful and Minister Keogh should hang his head in shame. He does not deserve to be the Minister representing our veterans,’’ Senator Cash said.

 “Labor should apologise to all veterans and scrap the cap,’’ she said.

Larissa Waters is speaking about how the Greens have secured the Great Koala National Park – but NSW Labor went to the election promising to create it, and have budgeted for it. So it was already meant to be created.

Now they just get to monetise the environment and pretend they will save the environment to do it.

Waters sort of gets to this in explaining why the Greens (minus those who are splitting) have supported the NSW Labor goverment in this:

The Greens were able to secure important additional protections for native forests that will significantly reduce logging and provide an assurance that native forests can’t be reclassified as plantations. These improvements will help deliver the Great Koala National Park, protecting 176,000. hectares of native forest and safeguarding habitat for around 12,000 koalas and more than 100 other threatened species, and for the very first time, the Greens were able to secure a binding legal precedent to stop coal and gas from using these offsets, this is the start of a fight that the Greens will wage to stop all coal and gas from ever being able to use offsets instead of producing their pollution.

But let’s be real: we are dealing with a Labor government that has approved 37 new coal and gas projects since they came to office. Time and time again, they’ve shown that they’re more willing to protect the profits of the big coal and gas corporations than to protect nature, the climate, or the environment. By holding a national park hostage, Labor created a divisive choice between protecting native forests and challenging a broken carbon credit system.

But I know this: we won’t allow that choice to divide a movement that is united by so much more.

Here is how Mike Bowers saw QT:

Alice Grundy

We’ve seen cross-party support for a proposed amendment to the Firearms Amendment (Strengthening Firearms Safety) bill from the Greens that will mean those with a family abuse conviction cannot be approved for a firearm licence for 10 years. 

There’s also support for an amendment that provides the legal basis for Tasmania’s engagement in the National Firearms Register. Minister Ellis says that Tasmania is doing a better job of meeting its milestones than other states. 

Good to hear about progress toward the National Firearms Register but it’s still not clear that the deadline of 2028 is really possible. If you’d like to see more urgency on this, sign the Institute’s petition. 

Rod Campbell

The most valuable mine in NSW mining history!!

That’s what coal companies (and climate vandals) Glencore and Yancoal are claiming about their proposed extension to the Hunter Valley Operations coal mine.

They say it has a value of $5.69 billion to NSW! Almost double the next best mine!

Awkwardly, they have had to also claim that any restriction on this most valuable mine, like say not extending it to 2045, would make the whole thing unviable.

Both super valuable and near-unviable, at the same time.

Confused? It’s all about dodgy economic modelling by dodgy consultants (Ernst and Young). Have a look at The Australia Institute’s new submissions to the Independent Planning Commission, which is currently considering the extension.

We are watching the senate to see three Greens senators cross against their party – which is a very, very rare sight indeed.

But first there is a debate over the changes to veterans’ entitlements.

Pauline Hanson just did a speech about veterans which absolutely set Jacqui Lambie off.

Lambie has supported Andrew Hastie in his battle against One Nation, and does so again now, telling the senate chamber Hanson was a hypocrite:

The last few days, just put a cartoon out there of one of the veterans saying he’s a traitor and a gutless maggot. A gutless maggot. That’s what she does with veterans. That’s what she does with veterans. She’s a hypocrite. She has no intention of helping you. She has absolutely none. She never has. Do not fall for her rubbish.

Greg Jericho

The government is very boastful about its gas reservation policy, talking about how it will secure gas for local production.

The issue though is we do not have a gas shortage – more gas is used each year by the LNG industry to covert gas into LNG than is used by the entire Australian manufacturing industry.

The other issue as prices are set by the rest of the world. Our local gas prices used to go up in line with the USA, but once we became an LNG exporter, our prices rose far beyond those of the USA.  But since the USA has become also an exporter of LNG in the late 2010s, local prices there have also gone up much like Australia’s have.

And what did we learn? Nothing much. Which is the main thing we learn these days.

The Coalition still haven’t found their path through this brave new political space and it shows.

Labor are barely raising a sweat in QT, even with all the pressure currently focused on the PM. It is not bothering them, at all.

Independent MP Andrew Gee asks:

This week I introduced my AI kill switch and data center control bill into Parliament. It would bring in mandatory kill switch and shutdown capabilities to advanced AI. Why are we rushing into a technology that we don’t even know we can control? Why are we putting the very future of humanity into the hands of tech billionaires without proper oversight. So, will you back my bill and help protect our communities, our critical infrastructure, and defense capabilities, and the future of humankind?

Anthony Albanese:

I thank the member for his question. I haven’t had the opportunity to see the member’s bill, but it is a good thing that Members of Parliament including the member are conscious about the impact that this will have. It is also having an impact on how we work, how we engage with each other, and as Pope Leo showed, he spoke about it being a threat essentially to humanity unless we get this right. I think that the Holy Father was certainly correct.

One of the things that my government has been concerned about is making sure that we elevate debate. That’s why I gave the speech at Sydney University. 

That’s why we had a discussion at National Cabinet as well. We need to make sure we shape the rollout of Artificial Intelligence. It is hard to just press the stop button on new technology. What we need to do is to be aware of the opportunity that it presents for economic growth, for job creation, but also aware very much of the risks, which are there for humanity being able to be controlled and people aren’t just economic entities and data points. People need to have that interaction is absolutely critical.

So, across a range of areas, we are looking at this. We’ve established a parliamentary joint select committee on Artificial Intelligence. I don’t know whether the member is on that committee or not. Certainly, given his interest in the issue, I’m sure that that could be looked at. People have a right to be seconded on to committees. It’s not going to be a committee where votes occur.

It will be a committee where discussion occurs in a really serious way and I know that the member for Maribyrnong is the chair and Senator Duniam, the deputy chair.

I welcome his interest and encourage all members to examine how significant a change in the way that the world works, this is going to be. 

Dan Tehan is back with the same question:

In 2019 how did The Daily Telegraph know you were an honour mayor of the Marrickville golf club or you didn’t or is is this another case of you falling off a stage?*

*This is a very Canberra reference.

Anthony Albanese:

In 2019, there was a campaign there was a campaign where Linda Burney, the local member, was one of the leaders of the campaign. I certainly supported it as did people throughout the area of the inner west, on either side of the Cooks River, because this is an absolutely vital and precious piece of the inner west, of Sydney.

Just like we have had projects like the Cooks River, and a water project down there and the range of projects that improved the amenity.

We went to election campaign and made commitments for around 500 projects. You went to an election campaign with more 1.6 billion of projects for more than 1,000, but you couldn’t find one of the one thousand in the inner west of Sydney.

Tehan tries to table the Daily Tele story, but Tony Burke says no as it is already online.

Independent MP Helen Haines asks Richard Marles (who represents Penny Wong in the House)

It’s been more than two years since the International Court of Justice confirmed that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law. The government has acknowledged Israel’s actions are extinguishing the possibility of a two-state solution. Prime Minister has just confirmed this. 12 countries have announced sanctions in the hopes of saving the two-state solution. Minister, what will it take for Australia to join our allies?

Marles doesn’t say anything new:

I thank the member for her question. The starting point would be to refer you to the answer that the Prime Minister gave earlier to the previous question during this question time. We have consistently made it clear that Israeli settler occupation – settlers in the occupied territories is a breach of international law and that has been a position which has been consistently held by this government and we have also consistently advocated that position to the Netanyahu government, as we have also advocated for the Netanyahu government to take a strong or position in respect to combating settler violence.

We have made it clear, as you said in your question, that we believe that the settlements in the Palestinian authority represents a roadblock to peace A under the two-state solution, it is the only pathway to an enduring peace between Israelis and Palestinian is why supporting a two-state solution has been a bipartisan position of successive governments in this country.

Because of the positions that we have taken, we have put in place sanctions and bans in respect of those that have been participating in the settler – settlements – in the territories, and that has included Israeli ministers themselves. We will continue to look at further targeted measures, working collaboratively with our allies and partners around the world in respect of this issue.

Greg Jericho

Treasurer Jim Chalmers spoke about the issues rumbling around the world economy.

He noted that the world oil price is back above US$100 a barrel

That means oil prices are now 15% higher since Trump declared “mission accomplished”

And alas that means the prices we pay for petrol are also going back up

All of this will feed into our inflation figures and be a reason for the RBA raising rates.

Little wonder thee was a record number of EV sales in the first 6 months of this year.

But also, remember the RBA will use that record sales as yet another reason to raise ratees as they will take it as a sign that our “discretionary” spending is rising.

Sigh.

Dan Tehan has a question – he has his serious voice on, so you can tell he feels good about this one.

An article in the Daily Telegraph in April 2019 said the following. “Attending the rally with his dog Toto, federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese pledged $350,000 in funding to help the Marrickville golf club upgrade its veranda and function facilities if Labor wins the election in May. If you go to nine holes you might be honest and say get rid it all together because it’s not viable, said Mr Albanese who is an honorary member of the Marickville golf club.” How did the Daily Telegraph know in 2019 you were a member and you didn’t?

Albanese:

Don’t attack Toto, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Come on in 2019 there was a proposal to carve up the Marrickville golf course by the Greens political party who wanted it turned into passive space, which we thought would lead to developers essentially taking that passive space. 

I represent what used to be – I home not sure if it still is, the second smallest electorate in geography size in Australia, of the 150 electorates. There is very little green space in my electorate, and I defends every inch of it. In 2019, the Marrickville golf course was not in my electorate. It was actually in the electorate of Barton. Between 2016 and 2025 it was in Barton. So it wasn’t even in my seat,

Tehan is up, but Albanese has completed his answer

Tony Pasin gets to ask another question:

During question time yesterday, the Prime Minister stressed the $67 million funding for his Marrickville golf club was to deal with the club’s sewerage system. Why then did the Prime Minister give the golf club only $1 million for stormwater works but $4.55 million for a clubhouse precinct used by the Labor Party for election campaign launches? Did the Prime Minister mislead this House?

Albanese:

The answer to that is no, Mr Speaker. We had election commitments which we gave. We gave up front, we gave less than one-third of the election commitments of those opposite. Less than one-third. That is just a fact.

There were three commitments in my electorate. One for a women’s health centre, the one for a St Vincent de Paul and Paul facility, a refuge, for women and children escaping domestic violence, and one for the upgrade of the inner west council-owned Marrickville golf club. Included in that was funding to fix the sewerage because it goes into the river and causes a problem when it floods.

Jim Chalmers takes a dixer so he can slam the Queensland LNP government:

Thanks to our responsible economic management, international raidings agencies like S&P global and moodies have reaffirmed Australia’s triple A credit rating a. S&P said fiscal reliance is sound and has not that much debt by international standards. Moody’s say debt levels are low and the government’s fiscal is supported by expenditure reforms and a record of conservative budgeting.

Compare that to the situation in our home state of Queensland. Very troubling to see that the Queensland government risks having its credit rating downgraded. As a Queenslander, I am concerned that despite substantial and increased Commonwealth support for Queensland, the Queensland government’s fiscal position has experienced a sharp deterioration. Despite warnings from S&P in October last year, and again in February this year. Mr Speaker, we are managing the budget more responsibly which is more important in the face of substantial global economic uncertainty. 

“No one believes you mate,” says a very quiet voice in the LNP. Which is usual these days – they are a pretty quiet bunch.

OK, sympathy has expired. Dan Tehan is now AGAIN claiming that the question hasn’t been answered. And it actually has. And this is now just wasting all of our time.

Tehan is the sort of person who makes a beige wall interesting, but even worse than beige has its limits.

Angie Bell asks:

Why has the Prime Minister declared that he has honorary membership of the exclusive Royal Sydney golf club but not Marrickville golf club?

Anthony Albanese:

I thank the member for her question, primarily it goes to I knew about one, I didn’t know about to other.

I have a card from Royal Sydney, which I understand I’m not – I don’t play golf but I understand is a decent course.

I think it’s probably not a par 62 course o unlike Marrickvilles said tongue-in-cheek. I’mload of course in the context of local community infrastructure…

Dan Tehan proves he has not be listening as he gets up with a point of order arguing that the prime minister has not answered the question. Which he actually has (for once).

But I can sympathise here. I too would not listen to this if I could help it.

Greg Jericho

As ever, the thing behind any talk of the economy is inflation. Every now and then you hear the oil and gas industry or the opposition and One Nation talk about how we need more oil or more gas to prevent us being hostage to a crisis like the Iran War – as though somehow having more gas and more oil will lead to lower prices.

Well the USA has stonks of oil. It is the third biggest exporter of oil in the world.

But guess what – petrol prices in the USA go up and down at the same time as they do in Australia.

But here’s the other thing – price rise more in the USA than they do here. Over the past 50 years a 15% rise in prices in the USA correlates with a 10% price rise in Australia.

Also importantly, in the past year prices in the USA have risen 31% compared to 6% here, showing just how important were the government’s move to limit price rises here through the excise cut.

More oil or gas will not deliver lower prices, it will just deliver more profits to companies who sell oil and gas on the world market.

Matt Grudnoff

Westpac chief Anothony Miller expects a shortage of housing to cause prices to start increasing again next year.

The problem with this is that over the last year housing increased by 1.5%, while the population only increased by 1.4%. Housing is increasing faster than population.

The pandemic certainly disrupted the growth in population. It first brought it to a standstill when the borders were shut and then saw it grow at a faster than average rate after the borders reopened.

But over the longer-term housing has increased faster than population as the graph below shows. When the orange line (housing stock) is higher than the blue line (population), homes are growing faster than population.

We can see that before the pandemic housing stock consistently grew faster than population. When the borders shut, growth in housing was much higher than growth in population. After the population bounced back it fell behind. Now that everything has again stabilised housing stock is back to growing faster than population.

Predictions that house prices will jump next year because of supply are likely to crash into this reality. This is good news. It means homes with continue to become more affordable.

Independent MP Sophie Scamps asks:

This week the United Kingdom, along with 11 other countries announced trade restrictions announced trade restrictions on the web, with the foreign minister stating that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank. He acknowledged there’s been “a deeply painful contrast between their professed commitment to the two-state solution and the reality on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank”. They have welcomed Australia joining the coalition, why haven’t we?

Anthony Albanese changes part of the statement Penny Wong gave on Tuesday here – he doesn’t mention the unintended consequences for Australian businesses which was explicitly mentioned in Wong’s statement:

Australia is steadfast in our commitment to the two-state solution, as the only pathway to enduring peace and security for both the Israels and Palestinians. We have worked closely with our international partners on this issue. We will continue to do so. The government’s position is crystal clear.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are ill legal under international law.

They threaten the viability of a two-state solution an a major obstacle to peace. So in coordination with partners, we imposed travel bans and targeted financial sanctions, on senior Israeli ministers, Smotrich and Ben Gubur because of their role in serious human rights’ violations and abuses against Palestinians, in relation to illegal settlements and settler violence.

Just as we have in combination with partners imposed sanctions on Israeli extremists for their abhorrent settler violence, targeting Palestinian communities, including as recently as the 2 June. 

These sanctions target extremist settlers and entities including settlements responsible for horrific violence and human rights’ abuses. As the foreign minister announced, we are pursuing further, targeted measures n coordination with our international partners, to deter illegal settlements and deter settler violence.

Our aim is clear. 

To take action to ensure the two-state solution remains viable as it is the only pathway for peace and security in the region. security in the region.

Australia is not pursuing a blanket-style import ban. We do have concerns about the implementation of a blanket ban and unintended consequences for Palestinians and groups that should not be targeted. *

We’ll continue to work with our partners to protect the prospect for a two-state solution. As we continue to call on Israel to immediately address illegal settlements and settler violence, which are undermining the two-state solution, just as we continue to condemn Hamas’s ongoing acts of terror that also undermine the two-state solution.

Wong had previously mentioned Australian businesses here

The Education Minister might have thought he was making a point here…but he sort of ends up arguing against himself.

Let me read out this from an eminent Australian. “We’d be happy to work with the Prime Minister and the government to send a very clear message that both sides of parliament stand united against the scourge of social media and its influences on young minds.” That was Peter Dutton. That’s leadership. I don’t know what this is. I do know this. If Peter Dutton was in that chair right now, he’d be backing this. I do know this. The Liberal Party is now more extreme than Peter Dutton. Let that sink in.

Greg Jericho

Tim Wilson got up to sound like he has a clue.

He asked

My question is to the Treasurer. In Labor’s budget it was assumed the cost of government debt would be $4.8%. Yet it’s already around 5.2% for a ten-year bond. With the interest bill on government debt becoming the fastest growing line in the budget. Meanwhile, major banks and economists are predicting up to two further interest rate rises this year alone. Will the Treasurer concede that his plan for higher debt and spending is forcing up interest rates?

Sigh. The problem with government bond yields (the interest rate of government borrowing) is that it is affected by a heck of a lot of things – mostly led by the USA. Trump’s spending on the Iran War is causing the US debt to increase sharply. And added to this is boom in datacentres.

What that means is there is a big demand for money from banks and lenders. And that means lenders can demand a higher interest rates. And because Australia is part of the international financial system, the Australian government bond yields are going up as well:

Berries and Cream is getting ready to get up to ask a question, so brace yourself.

Tim Wilson:

My question is to the Treasurer. In Labor’s budget it was assumed the cost of government debt would be $4.8%. Yet it’s already around 5.2% for a ten-year bond. 

With the interest bill on government debt becoming the fastest growing line in the budget. Meanwhile, major banks and economists are predicting up to two further interest rate rises this year alone. Will the Treasurer concede that his plan for higher debt and spending is forcing up interest rates?

Jim Chalmers seems excited to take this one.

There were a number of elements to that question. Firstly this government has delivered budgets which have meant that our debt trajectory is $200 billion lower than what we inherited from those opposite. That’s the first point. I hear the Leader of the Opposition right on cue in ways I hoped for, mention, there’s a trillion dollars in debt in the budget, more than $600 billion of that trillion dollars was racked up by those opposite.

More than 60% of the debt in the budget racked up over the last 19 years was racked up in their nine years, Mr Speaker. They doubled the debt even before COVID-19. They got a lot of nerve asking us about debt…

When most of the debt in the budget overwhelmingly was racked up by those opposite. When it comes to our responsible economic management, two surpluses, smaller deficits, banking up ward revisions to revenue, couple of hundred billion worth of savings. I will compare this any day with the shameful record of those opposite. 

To make it worse, Mr Speaker, this Leader of the Opposition, when he was the Shadow Treasurer, went to the last election with a policy for bigger deficits and for more debt.

There is a point of order, but first Milton Dick boots two Coalition MPs for interjections.

Chalmers continues:

I was explain where the debt came from – overwhelmingly from the former government. Now, I am asked, part of the Shadow Treasurer’s question, uncharacteristically for him, is in a really important one, which which goes to global bonds.

This is, as some, [SMH and Age economics corro] Shane Wright and others picked up in the press gallery, this is something that the world is watching very closely, it is true the Shadow Treasurer, to give him his due, is right to point to the fact that global bond yields have been coming up and similarly, for the Treasurer ten-year bond here in Australia, that has gone up.

He’s right to point that out and he’s right to say that that is an issue of concern, not just in Australia, but right around the world.

We have seen bond yields pick up since the beginning of the war in Iran, and they pick up again when the conflict escalates and unfortunately the conflict has escalated just this week.

The longer the war goes on, the more concern people will be about that, and it pushes up, the war in Iran pushes up expectations for interest rates which then pushes up yields.

In fact, in every major advanced economy right now, the market is pricing in interest rate increases, in every major advanced economy. 

Those opposite might want to blame me or the government for the war in Iran, they can explain the role that I’ve played in starting that. There is a concern about that and of course we are monitoring it very closely.

And as predicted by Grogs, the first question is about the big scary non-threat of ‘negative equity’.

The Coalition can not decide if it wants house prices to fall or not. (And a reminder that house prices are still up about 6% overall year on year)

Angus Taylor starts it with:

Data revealed today shows half of all homes bought in Melbourne and Sydney in the past 12 months are now worth less than what Australians paid for them. Minister, because of Labor’s toxic taxes, how many Australians owe more to the bank than their home is now worth?

Jim Chalmers takes this one (as Clare O’Neil is away)

 As the Reserve Bank governor made really clear in late July, negative equity remains very limited. It affects less than one per cent of all borrowers in the view of the RBA.

To quote the Reserve Bank governor, she said this: “The most recent data suggests that notwithstanding the price falls, negative equity remains very limited affecting less than one per cent of borrowers” and we saw again in the earnings data released by the Commonwealth Bank in August, which showed that just 0.5% of the Commonwealth Bank book was in negative equity, just this week the bank’s executive general manager of home buying said that they had fewer customers in negative equity now than at the at the same time last year.

He said, we look at the book overall and in the results we have, the number for the book overall, that number is still very low. He said the negative equity was smaller than it was the same line last year, at the AFR Property Summit.

Mr Speaker, I don’t remember a peep from those opposite when negative equity was more than twice as high as now on their watch.

I can’t find them In fact, mentioning the phrase once in parliament in 2019 when they was the case.

In April of 2019, the RBA reported just over two per cent of were in negative equity because median dwelling prices fell by 4.3 cent between May 18-19 and Sydney values dropped more than 10% and Melbourne values almost ten per cent over that year according to CoreLogic on their watch. If they were being up front, they would acknowledge as all the experts, there are a number of factors playing out in the housing market, the RBA assistant governor said –

There is a point of order that is not a point of order, but Chalmers gets warned for heckling and not sitting down when asked to by the Speaker.

Chalmers continues:

Mr Speaker, earlier than usual in Question Time, the daily reminder that the coalition was doing better under Sussan Ley than under this Opposition Leader.

…The point is, I’m asked about the drivers of the weakening of house prices in our economy. Sarah Hunter, the RBA assistant governor, made it clear that there’s multiple things running through the market right now. Anthony Millar from Westpac said, three interest rate increases, an element of uncertainty in the world would normally see applications for first home buyers come off. The point they’re making is there are a number of factors playing out in the housing market. Despite that, negative equity is lower under us than those opposite.

Greg Jericho

Prior to Question Time Liberal MP Cameron Caldwell went on about how 1 in 3 Australian homes bought in the last 12 months are worth less than they were when they were bought “negative equity”!!!! Angus Taylor opened up QT by raising the exact same figure.

Weirdly that means 2 in 3 homes had seen their value go up – not exactly a collapsing housing market!

Sure house prices in some cities have come down, but oh my god, they remains very much higher than they were. Also guess what – house prices do not always go up, nor is negative equity much of an issue – especially if you just bought your home in the past 12 months. How many people who just bought a home are about to sell it? Answer – bugger all. People buy a home to live in, not to sell it within 12 months for a profit.

Anyone who does that is buying not a home but an investment, and sorry, but investment involves risks.

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of September 11, the terrorist attacks, and it’s hard to fathom that an entire generation of young Australians have reached adulthood who weren’t born by 9/11 and yet they have grown up in a post 9/11 world. For those of us who lived that terrible day, it was a day that changed the world. We remember where we were and how we received that shocking news. The first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 10:46pm AEDT. Most Australians were Night some night owls saw the breaking news. Others were roused by sleep from loved ones to witness the second plane strike the South Tower 17 minutes later.

This was the pre the smart phone age. Many Australians wouldn’t see the news until the following morning. I was one of them. I was working in the private sector and walked into a Sydney cafe, I saw the newspaper front pages. They were disturbing headlines: War of terror, America attacked.

The unfathomable photos of the planes exploding upon hitting the Twin Towers. By that time, the tragedy was far worse than what the newspapers had been able to report by their printing deadline. Two more planes had crashed, the Twin Towers had collapsed.

Throughout the day, Australians were glued to televisions trying to comprehend those incomprehensible events, as the Prime Minister just said, with his fine words, a moment ago. Some 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, among them were ten Australians and we have just heard the names of them.

On behalf of the coalition, my thoughts are with those Australian families who lost loved ones on that horrific day, 25 years ago. I acknowledge the incredible work that was done by the first responders as the Prime Minister said. In America’s darkest hour, Australia stood by our ally and dear friend. Thanks to John Howard and John Anderson’s leadership, and moral clarity, it was right that John Howard invoked ANZUS. It was right that Australia took the fight to the terrorists in the Middle East, regardless of the shortfalls* of those campaigns.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge all our war fighters who served, who suffered and who sacrificed in that necessary and noble cause other many years.

Patriots like the members for Canning and Herbert. Speaker, 9/11 changed the world. Islamist extremism remains a threat to all of us. It’s evolved since 9/11 and taken many forms and been called many things – al-Qaeda, JI, ISIL, ISIS, Daeish and many more, but it’s the same extremism.

Speaker, I find it bewildering, there are friends in the Arab and Muslim world who will readily acknowledge this threat and they want it gone, yet here in Australia, there are those who refuse to acknowledge or name the threat, even after the Bondi Beach terrorist attack late last year. Speaker, as we mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, an atrocity committed by terrorists, and in memory of all murdered, it’s beyond time we had a reckoning with Islamist extremism, enough of being told – don’t look back in anger, enough of this being down-played.

My commitment to Australians is to keep out and to root out Islamist extremism. While mistakes have clearly been made on the fight to combat this threat, we must double down on our resolve in this fight. Because we must protect our way of life.

*The shortfall being here that the invasion was illegal and there was no weapons of mass destruction, which everyone knew at the time.

Albanese:

Tomorrow will mark 25 years since the September 11 attacks in the United States of America. 25 years since a morning of bright sunshine was plunged into the most terrible darkness. Quarter of a century on, it remains a harrowing anniversary. 

I think every one of us in this House and around Australia will remember that night in our time, when we watched the unthinkable occur before our very eyes.

This morning I had the honour of meeting with members of the visiting US congressional delegation. I was able to tell them, good friends of Australia, that their nation will be in the thoughts of Australians tomorrow.

We will pause to remember the 2,977 people whose futures were stolen from them, alongside the many Americans who lost their life lives were people from nations across the world, ten Australians among them. Those Australians are known to have been killed in the September 11 attacks include: Alberto Domingues, Craig Gibson, Alyssa Ferona, Steven Thomsett, Kevin Dennis. Andrew Nox, Lesley Thomas, Leanne Whiteside and Trevor and Yvonne Kennedy.

Our thoughts are with all of their family and loved ones at what will be a difficult reminder of them being taken from their own families. 

As we remember them, we will also think about those whose lives were changed forever. All who lived with loss, all who suffered with grief, trauma and sickness and all who still endure the burden of ememories that simply will not fade. What the terrorists perpetrated that day was so monstrous and so confronting that it remains seared into our collective memory. It was a day that changed the world.

Yet, amid its horror, we saw the greater side of humanity. From the passengers and office workers who found themselves trapped in a waking nightmare, to the first responders who raced into danger. So many reacted to terror with extraordinary courage w compassion, with defiance and with love. Together, from New York to Washington, to Pennsylvania, they defined the spirit of a great nation.

America was shaken to its core, but it did not yield. It did not break. That is what we hold on to. We hold on to the memory of everyone who never came home, from what should have been just another sunny day in September.

Bill Browne

As Amy has reported, three Greens will cross the floor and vote to disallow the so-called Improved Native Forest Management method. It will not be enough to stop the method, which will mean more carbon pollution and tie the protection of trees and coals to the expansion of gas and coal.

The Greens usually allow their MPs and senators to vote according to their conscience, even if it means defying their party colleagues – but floor crossing is extremely rare in practice.

The closest we could find at the federal level is from nine years ago, when NSW senator Lee Rhiannon decided to vote against the “Gonski 2.0” legislation – apparently without telling her colleagues of her intentions. But in the end, the rest of the party also voted against the new education laws.

There are a few examples from the state level.

In NSW, three Greens voted for and two against a 2011 motion accusing pro-Palestine protesters of Antisemitism.

Tasmanian MP Kim Booth voted against privatisation in 2011, even though it meant contradicting fellow Greens. Booth’s argument was that he was voting in line with his own party’s policies. By that logic, one would have expected NSW Greens to vote for disallowance too since their party’s policy commits them to: “ensuring that the carbon value in existing forests cannot be traded to offset fossil fuel or other greenhouse gas intensive industries.”

Booth also voted against the Tasmanian Forests Agreement in 2013, another secretive compromise that served to split the environment movement. After the agreement passed regardless, Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke confidently declared that the forest wars “end tonight”.

That would prove overly optimistic.

Before we get underway today, there will be some statements recognising tomorrow’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Here is the official statement from the Coalition on why it will be rejecting this particular digital duty of care bill (The Greens will most likely give it to them)

The Coalition will oppose Labor’s exposure draft of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 in its current form.

Australians want their children protected online and the world’s biggest technology companies held to account.

But protecting children cannot become an excuse to hand politicians sweeping powers over lawful speech, news, political debate and what Australians are allowed to see online.

Labor’s exposure draft goes too far, contains inadequate safeguards for free speech and journalism, and leaves too much power in the hands of the Communications Minister.

The Leader of the Opposition said the Coalition will continue to engage constructively on measures that genuinely make children safer online, but we will not support this bill in its current form.

“This exposure draft is unacceptable in its current form because the reality is it’s providing a blank cheque for political censorship to the minister and to the government,” Mr Taylor said.

“This Minister has admitted Australians don’t trust her, and this government has repeatedly broken its word on tax and power prices. Handing them a blank cheque for political censorship is unacceptable..” 

Leader of The Nationals Matt Canavan said Labor should be focused on fixing the problems Australians are already facing, not expanding Canberra’s power over the internet. 

“I don’t trust Big Tech, but the answer is not to trust the Labor Party instead. No politician should get to decide for themselves what lawful speech is harmful and then pressure platforms to make it disappear,” Senator Canavan said.

“Labor has given up trying to lower prices, cut taxes and bring migration under control. Now they want extraordinary powers over the internet where Australians go to complain about how badly they’re being governed. That should worry everyone.”

Our concerns include:

• Ministerial power to define new harms. Anika Wells has given herself unfettered powers to make regulations governing categories of harm, including material that may be completely lawful, representing a significant threat to free speech. The draft separately allows the Minister to determine additional material that may cause harm to children and additional platform features deemed to have “negative behavioural impacts”.
• The risk to free speech and journalism. The duty is not confined to social media. It applies across a wide range of online services, including potentially websites carrying news, commentary and political debate. The exposure draft does not contain the clear protections for journalism, democratic debate and freedom of expression found overseas.
• Vague and subjective tests. The draft includes concepts such as material that “encourages or promotes hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality” and “harmful practices”. Protecting children is essential, but poorly defined tests risk catching legitimate political, religious, cultural and social debate.
• A powerful incentive to censor first and ask questions later. If online services face legal duties to identify and mitigate broadly defined harms, the obvious commercial response will be to remove, suppress or restrict borderline lawful material rather than risk regulatory action.
• The algorithm promise is not actually guaranteed. Labor says Australians will be able to turn off personalised recommendations for their social media feeds. But the exposure draft instead gives the Minister power to specify “user empowerment tools” through future legislative instruments. The law Parliament is being asked to consider does not itself guarantee the precise choice Anthony Albanese and Anika Wells are promising Australians.
• The impact on small businesses has not been considered. Thousands of Australian small businesses rely on content recommendations and digital platforms to find customers. At a time when family businesses are already battling rising costs, Canberra should not rush major changes without understanding the consequences.
• Labor’s record should give Australians little confidence. Its under-16 social media ban has fallen well short of the government’s rhetoric, with eSafety finding the proportion of under-16s still using social media had fallen by just 4.4 percentage points three months after commencement. Now, before it has made its existing regime work properly, Labor wants Parliament to hand it a much broader set of powers over the online world.

The Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety Sarah Henderson said the Coalition has consistently supported stronger protections for children online and tougher accountability for Big Tech.

“Protecting children online is one of the most important jobs we have, but it does not give Anika Wells a blank cheque to determine what lawful material Australians should be protected from seeing. These powers are far too broad and the safeguards are simply not good enough,” Senator Henderson said.

“We need to protect children, empower parents, force greater transparency from Big Tech and protect free speech. Labor’s approach is to give unfettered powers to the Minister and ask Australians to simply trust that it won’t be abused.”

That is why Australians deserve absolute clarity about the powers Labor is seeking and how they will be used. 

Australians should be deeply concerned that the Minister asking Parliament for these powers could not clearly explain them herself.

In a trainwreck interview with Laura Jayes on News 24, Anika Wells confirmed that she would ultimately determine new categories of serious harm, before appearing to contradict herself over whether news websites could be captured by the regime.

Asked who would determine what constituted a new serious harm, Minister Wells conceded: “the test for what would constitute a new serious harm would ultimately be made by me”.

When questioned about whether the laws applied to news websites, she first said: “sorry, yes, it does go to all online services,” before later insisting: “It is not captured by the Digital Duty of Care. It’s just not.”

If the Minister responsible for the bill cannot clearly explain the reach of these powers, Australians should not be expected to simply trust her with them.

Labor’s failed misinformation legislation showed the danger of giving governments a role in deciding what Australians should be allowed to see and hear.

Changing the language from “misinformation” to “harm” does not remove that danger.

The Coalition will oppose the bill in its current form and will fight for genuine safety measures that protect children, hold Big Tech accountable and protect the basic freedoms Australians expect.

Bill Browne

By a quirk of parliamentary programming, on this day 30 years ago two very different politicians arose at the first time to give their first speeches to Parliament.

Bob Brown, an Australian Green, spoke in the Senate. Pauline Hanson, then an independent after being expelled from the Liberal Party mid-election, spoke in the House of Representatives. She founded One Nation the next year.

A week may be a long time in politics, but many topics Brown and Hanson covered three decades ago remain live – from climate change to immigration. And the times suit minor parties: the major party vote fell from 86% in 1996 to 66% last year, and between them the Liberals, Nationals and Labor now only scrape together 49% in the latest polling aggregates. 

Read my op-ed in The Point for more on how politics today is still in the shadow of Pauline Hanson and Bob Brown’s competing visions for Australia.

Glenn Connley

Today’s decision by the Greens to support a new method of carbon offsetting in publicly-owned forests is “fiddling while the forest burns”, according to Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

Green’s leader, Senator Larissa Waters, indicated her party would vote with the government this afternoon to allow a new ‘method’ to increase the supply of carbon credits. However, three Greens Senators say they’ll cross the floor to support the disallowance motion.

“The task of stopping Australia’s expansion of coal and gas is going to become a little harder today,” said Dr Denniss.

“In voting with Labor, the Greens have shown they now support putting publicly-owned forests into the ‘carbon marketplace’, and have tied the protection of trees and koalas to the expansion of gas and coal.

“Native forests are one of nature’s best carbon storage units – they truly are the lungs of the planet. The climate science makes clear that we need to protect these forests and stop expanding fossil fuels. Allowing fossil fuel pollution to increase because a forest wasn’t logged might take pressure off politicians but it wont take pressure off our climate.

“If Australia only saves forests so that polluters can increase their fossil fuel use, the science says there is no benefit to our planet.

“There is no way to sugar coat it, the parliament’s decision today is a setback. The unconditional protection of our native forests is one of the cheapest, easiest and most urgent things we can do to limit the effects of climate change.” 

Just last month, The Australia Institute released new research, Koalas for Coal: How the INFM method ties Koala Protection to Fossil Fuel Expansion, which concluded that the proposed new regulations would make a bad system even worse.

Australia Institute research has long proven that selling carbon credits to polluters – a core pillar of Australia’s climate policy – is plagued with integrity problems and facesquestions over its effectiveness.

Morgan Harrington

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has thrown down the gauntlet and pointed out that – get this – Australia actually benefits from migration.

“Want more affordable housing? How about some more sparkies, tilers, roofies and brickies? Want Mum and Dad to be able to get an aged care bed? How about more ready-to-go, fully trained care workers? Enjoy public education and Medicare, but you’re worried about the debt? Migration helps us pay for it! It’s simple and it’s true.”

His comments come as a study of 10,000 migrant workers from the Migrant Justice Institute found that 2 in 3 are underpaid. The problems are widespread: half the migrants that work in cafes and restaurants aren’t paid higher rates for working after hours or on weekends. 40% of migrants that work in commercial cleaning are on an ABN and treated as ‘independent contractors’. In horticulture, a quarter were paid below $20/hour.

Malinauskas said, “I have a responsibility to be honest: we need the workers.” But who will take responsibility for ensuring that these essential workers are paid what they are owed?

Now we get the (formally Sky News) question:

Q: You famously admitted to visiting a strip club in the early 2000s…(Rudd: Oh, God. I wonder where this one’s going) It’s not industry policy. At the time, some voters viewed it as a human mistake and didn’t believe it should disqualify you from politics. In the context of One Nation as Warren Pickering, do you think drug use earlier in someone’s life should be considered a disqualifying factor in politics?

Rudd:

I’m just not even going to go there. I don’t know the case. I don’t know the circumstances. So it’s quite wrong of me to comment on an individual set of circumstances. All I can say in response to your question is last time I looked, all politicians were human. Some more human than others. Because they’re human, they have and failures. I dare say if I asked everyone in this room to put up their hands, those who haven’t failed in life in any fundamental ethical or moral test, it would be fairly thin pickings. So it is with the political class. We simply don’t need to have a reasonable attitude to bring to bear, a common-sense attitude to bring to bear and ask ourselves this question – is the matter at stake fundamentally compromising of the person’s ability to discharge effectively their public responsibilities? That’s where the issue lies? I won’t comment on the individual case.

Q: Does it mean being upfront when you talk about that compromise?

Rudd:

That is someone is going for high office in particular, put it all out there?Well, the great thing about News Corporation is you put out my experience for me, so it was good, and well before the election. So I think the Australian voting public were able to make their choice. Yeah, look, I think we’ve got to get past this idea that everyone in public office is some inherent beacon of moral virtue. The reality of the Australian people is, unless things have changed in the 10 years I’ve lived in America, is that we are not, OK? And therefore, yeah, being upfront about your past – there’s nothing wrong with that and I think the voting public respond to that, because, you know, the Australian people at the end of the day, they’re not hypocrites. They look at people and they actually reflect on their own lives and realise that they are imperfect as

Q: I wanted to turn to your most recent role as ambassador. The common view of Washington from abroad is one of dysfunction, of a government and public service that rewards loyalty over competence and other measures. I wanted to get a perspective from you as a former ambassador. How is Washington working? And how did you change your approach as ambassador with Trump 2.0 to adjust to that new reality?

Kevin Rudd:

That’s tricky. I think the first wisdom for any government engaging the US Administration is to separate, always, noise from substance. 

There’s a great temptation around the world to see the most recent presidential Proclamation or statement, usually designed for US domestic political purposes, as requiring an immediate and automatic response from the rest of the world by way of declaratory responses.

I see that a lot, for example, in Europe. I see it much less in Asia. And the reason I think people are less predisposed to participate in the rolling commentary is because this part of the world, we understand how realist the national security challenges are for all of us, for some of the reasons I outlined before.

That’s fact number one. Parsing the difference between noise and substance, what is said as opposed to what is actually going on. Number two, successive Australian ambassadors, including Arthur Sinodinos before me, Joe Hockey during the first Trump term and now Greg Moriarty, our business and our bread and butter is engaging the Cabinet secretaries and those who directly advise them on the meat and potatoes of the alliance matters up for discussion, debate and resolution that day, and/or where we’re going on critical minerals and rare earths, where we’re going on critical technologies, where we have gone to with the United States in terms of them, for example, wanting to embrace our retirement incomes policy in terms of the future of their own superannuation industry. 

President Trump was kind of blown away by how we’d managed to accumulate $4 trillion worth of savings with a bunch of 27 million people. Each of those engagements has been, frankly, at the sub-White House level, been at the Cabinet Secretary level, or frankly the designated senior operative level. 

So the navigation task is who within each system and on what issue to engage.

The final point I’d say is remember the United States, when the founding fathers was established as divided government, the executive branch and legislative branch, the legislative branch remains enormously important.

Throughout the AUKUS process and in obtaining AUKUS legislation but also in working subsequently with the incoming Trump Administration and them owning AUKUS full speed ahead, the legislative and, in this case, the Republicans in the House and the Senate, and the chairs of the committees, Senate foreign relations, the Intelligence Committee, services committee and House equivalents, are all direct and relevant players in getting the business done. That’s the third principle and if you’re Gill about that and don’t get too preoccupied with the head and performative aspects of this and get on with the job, you can get a lot done.

The basic response here from all former ambassadors is to pretend Trump isn’t actually a threat to the world and it is all for domestic theatre.

Greg Jericho

Rudd on the risk of China doing something irrational on Taiwan:

Having been in politics myself, I can assure all of you that politics is always rational. (LAUGHTER) So, the importance of things like diplomacy and diplomatic channels and, frankly, think-tanks who roll between the political establishments of both countries, is to ensure that there is clarity of communication about the content of that risk. Nothing is perfect in this world? Look at the sorry history of international relations in recent decades, and how many wars, for example, the First World War, broke out because of monumental miscalculations in multiple directions all at once because some Archduke got shot by some madman from Serbia, who no-one can remember the name of.

As a bit of a history buff, I can tell you I just shouted out Gavrilo Princip!

Emma Shortis

In response to a question about banning imports from illegal settlements in the West Bank, Rudd (characteristically) didn’t really answer. He did make an important point about Australian self-direction in foreign policy (we shouldn’t just follow what others do). He spent most of his answer talking about Australian Labor’s historic support for a two-state solution. What he didn’t acknowledge is how much has changed in the interim. 

As we wrote in our report “Beyond the Two-State Solution” a year ago:

“Australia should avoid becoming trapped in the two-state paradigm. In particular, the Australian government should avoid being drawn into commitments to support, or contribute to, supposedly interim peacekeeping arrangements in pursuit of a two-state solution, when no clear path to Palestinian self-determination exists.”

Q: You spoke in a speech last night. You said that you believe there’s a 1-in-3 chance that Xi Jinping could try to seize Taiwan, possibly by as early as 2028. Acknowledging that’s a prospect no-one wants to happen here, if that did happen, would it be in Australia’s national interest to participate with the US in a war to defend Taiwan? And would we have a genuine choice this that matter, given how enmeshed our two militaries have become?

Kevin Rudd:

Firstly on the risk and second how to avoid it and thirdly on Australian responses, I’ll engage in classic duck and weave. Or the classic…

Q: You can engage in hypotheticals now that you’re out of government.

Rudd:

I’ve recently been an ambassador. As I track my permanent career trajectory towards infinitesimal demotion – Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador, running a think-tank… (LAUGHTER) As I said before, I’ll be applying to J Adams to go back to Beijing as First Secretary in the embassy where I started half a lifetime ago.

Now, so I don’t evade your question completely, let me go back to its essence.

On the risk calculus, let’s be very clear about this. I’ve put on the public record before in the United States, maybe not here, my view that we have an elevated possibility of military action by the PRC against Taiwan in ’28, not by ’28 but in ’28. And when I say “elevated possibility” I do not say “probability” and I’ve used the proportionality of 1 in 3.

Why have I said that? Well, if you look carefully at China’s level of military preparedness, it has gone like this, to if you look at China’s pattern of military and naval exercises, these some years ago ceased looking like exercises and began to resemble full-scale dress rehearsals.

Thirdly, what worries me most is the possibility of Chinese miscalculation about the degree of American resolve and a conclusion that they may have a unique opportunity before ’28 to act.

And fourthly, in terms-of-’28 itself, what concerns me most is the potentiality of the trigger, and that is that in January of ’28, we face the next Taiwanese presidential election.

The existing democratic progress party, if it’s re-elected, will mean four terms of pro-independence DPP government and my concern is the Chinese leadership, interpreting that as the tripwire for invoking the anti-secession law of 2005.

Putting all those factors together, which is why I point to elevated risk – and leave to one side Xi Jinping will secure his own re-elect at the 21st party congress next October for his record fourth term as leader – and by then he’ll be 73, pressing on 74. That’s why I’ve argued the risk factor.

Q: What do you do about it? 

Rudd:

Look, it’s pretty simple. It’s called deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. What is deterrence? Deterrence is a simple equation. It is causing the other party to conclude that risk of act something infinitely greater than the possible advantage to be delivered by that action and therefore, what is required is a combination of both declaratory and operational policies and strategies by the US and allies around the world to elevate that risk in the perception of the Chinese leadership. I’ve delivered this lecture to US military academies around the US.

I usually say it all hangs on that ultimate formula – SMTX. There’s usually a pause and Americans take out their pens thinking I’ve got a very clever equation to deliver, which you can then take out your slide rule and work out. SMTX equals the shaving mirror test of Xi. Which is I’m having a shave in the morning, I’m looking in the mirror and you want every day the response in the mirror  to be, “Comrade, it’s still too risky.”

That’s what deterrence is. That’s the ultimate equation. In terms of Australian response, our response should simply be to double down with the United States and friends, partners and allies on the deterrence equation and if deterrence fails, what then to do?

I return to my original comment.

It’s not responsible for anyone who has served as Prime Minister, Foreign Minister or ambassador to the United States to engage in hypotheticals.

Asked if he thinks that Australia should follow the UK and sanction Israeli settlers in the West Bank (which Australia is saying no to, in terms of a ‘blanket ban’ despite the ICJ releasing an advisory opinion two years ago that the settlements are illegal, and UN member states having a responsibility not to support or facilitate the settlements), Rudd says:

First principles are important, notwithstanding what Andy Burnham has just said.

This Government, the Australian Government, has proudly stood by a 2-state solution for an independent and secure Palestinian state together with the same for the Jewish people in the state of Israel, from the get-go.

From the days of Evett and Chifley. Remember Doc Evett chaired the committee for the United Nations back then.

Go back to the print that was voted on by the UN General Assembly at the time establishing the state of Israel, it was a recommendation from the United Nations for there to be a permanent Israeli state for the Jewish people and a permanent Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.

It’s anchored in the international law which underpins these arrangements going back to the late 40s.

So the principle is important because the principle itself has been under assault from various folks around the world and various governments around the world.

Second, the most important thing for the Australian Government to do is not to mimic anybody else, whether it’s the British or anybody else.

It is to work through patiently with friends, partners and allies the best way to give effect to that 2-state strategy for the medium to long term.

So I don’t choose to get involved into a microdebate of what Andy or Ed Miliband said overnight. I mean, I know Ed. I don’t know Andy. I was in London recently. By I know this government well enough, having sat down with Minister Wong yesterday, to know that they are fundamentally committed to a 2-state solution approach and they will develop their response to the current challenges in the period ahead.

But the idea that we should just follow somebody else I don’t think belongs in any responsible Foreign Minister’s handbook.

Q: A big-picture question for you, because you’ve just been talking about the United States and China. At the moment, which one do you think is behaving like the more responsible international citizen?

Kevin Rudd:

That is a question where fools rush in and angels fear to tread. (LAUGHTER) And I’ve been called many things in life, but never an angel.

But I’m rarely called a fool either. Let me answer it this way.

What the Americans are doing now is wrestling with this massive domestic political debate about the future of the rules-based order they established between ’45 and, let’s say, ’52. 

Anchored in the Breton woods institutions of the United Nations and the network of defence treaty arrangements in Asia and the Pacific. And the debate which is now unfolding in America is does this represent excessive overreach by us? Can we sustain it?

Can we afford it? And should others, therefore, pay for it?

We, I think, in our part of the world, need to have a degree of patience for the resolution of that debate within US politics recognising the fact it’s not the first time it’s happened.

Anyone familiar with the history of US isolationism will know that it was rampant during the ’20s and ’30s. It had an attempted comeback in the ’50s when Eisenhower made it to the presidency and put it to bed on the Republican side. But there have been resonances of it ever since.

That will take some time to conclude.

On the Chinese side, I would simply say this – China has seen that the United States has withdrawn from a range of UN multilateral institutions, the UNFCCC, the World Health Organisation and a range of others – has sought to make hey while the sun shines and as a consequence, both in terms of China’s funding contribution but also the nomination of its personnel, have sought to obtain a greater and greater level of influence in the existing international UN machinery.

At the same time, unfolding the conceptual and institutional architecture of an alternative order. If you read carefully the text of three documents – Xi Jinping’s global civilisation initiative, Xi Jinping’s global security initiative, Xi Jinping’s global development initiative and Xi Jinping’s most recently global governance initiative, while there is a lot of generality in those, what is the common thematic?

We are seeking to construct an alternative order, which has China at the centre of it. That is what China is doing while, at the same time, causing the existing order, on cored in the UN, to become more sensitive and sympathetic to China’s state-based interests.

So the answer to your question is I do not know how these two megadebates will play out. But they’re the dynamics we face.

Anna Chang

Returning to the disallowance motion for a moment:

Labor has 30 Senators

Greens have 10 Senators

A Senate majority is 39, but a blocking majority 38

If 3 Greens Senators are crossing the floor, that’s only 37.

So they need one more. Who will that be? Most likely David Pocock.

How do we know that?

Anyone in Canberra will have seen this video ad nauseam via targeted ads: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc9_HUapA-M/?stkn=MTVkeDlmNWtuY3Nwcw==

Kevin Rudd finishes up with:

To conclude if there is agreement on the mega challenges we now face and the need for a new sense of national urgency in the task of wrestling it to the ground, how is this to be done?

I go back to first principles. It is the responsibility of the elected government to set defence, industry and technology priorities for the nation.

Then once those priorities are set, the public service arm of government accepts responsibility for the measurable delivery of those objectives in the real world.

Our history shows how successful this model has been during times of crisis.

When the political arm of government set national rearment priorities in 1940s it appointed three engineers, one from BHP and two others to reorganise industrial production and they delivered. After the war when the political arm set national reconstruction priorities they appoint senior people led by Nugget Coombes and others. Menzies, Curtin, Chifley and their cabinet set the objectives.

The public service with an engineering culture then delivered. This is the only logical division of labour that works in system when governments come and go.

It’s also how other successful advanced economies do it. 

We need permanence, independence and a meritocracy that rewards those who deliver measurable real-world outcomes.

However, over the last 30 years, we – by which I mean we, the political class – have done things to undermine all three.

Howard shattered permanence by sacking one-third of public service heads in 1996. This, then, had obvious implications for independence and all of us have fostered a risk-avers public service culture that rewards compliance with process rather than the delivery of outcomes.

And process in the end produces inertia, before reaching its perfect end state, which is entropy. Stasis, in turn, returns in government by talking point instead of government through action. Public service departments become departments of words rather than agencies of action.

Our hard-working Mandarins deserve better than that, including a much greater tolerance for risk and being judged on their results. 

Cabinet ministers deserve better than this so that agreed national priorities can be turned into on-the-ground reality. The private sector deserves better than this, so that they can get on with the hard business of long-term investment decisions. 

And the Australian people, above all, demand better than this, to know that when their elected leaders announce a priority, the Machinery of Government will be laser focused on delivering results that are consistent with those priorities. That is why it’s encouraging to see assistant minister Gorman and secretary of PMC Kennedy now headed resolutely in this direction.

I remain were foundly optimistic about our country’s future. We are a good people. We have a great history. And we can have an even greater destiny, but only if we seize it now with both our hands. And without, once again, simply sinking into the mire of petty and partisan rancour. 

Greg Jericho

Our alliance with the United States remains a force multiplier for Australia’s defence needs. The it supports Australia in defence technology, at the forefront of next generation risk capabilities in cyber defences amid ever compounding cyber insecurity. In intelligence, to track the unpredictable changes in our regional circumstances and ultimately in deterrence through our mutual defence obligations under ANZUS. These are not trivial. These are not sentimental. They are, and remain, material.”

A reminder that ANZUS does not require the USA to defend up, only to think about defending us, but if they decide it’s not in their interest they can say, nope.

But while our alliance of 75 years remains necessary, it is not sufficient for our long-term national security. We must also reembrace national self-reliance to anticipate the full range of future uncertainties. That is why AUKUS is essential. First, it provides Australia with sovereign capability through a fleet of attack class submarines is unrivalled across the Indo-Pacific. We will first buy them and then build our own, with this critical capability in Australia. The facts are that we are an island nation. 100% dependent on freedom of navigation for our trade sector which accounts for nearly one-third of our national income.”

Oh dear. We will not get any subs. AUKUS is a ship building subsidy for the USA. No subs are coming our way that we will have any control over.

We also the world’s third largest exclusive zone, bigger than the entire Lance and land mass of Australia, with vast waters and things to coprotect. It is inconceivable that a nation such as ours in a geography such as ours would not seek a world class navy with these facility it’s. These realities cannot be wished away by well peopling — meaning seminars from the far left or the populists from the far right. Second, AUKUS fill 2 offers Australia’s defence industry virtually untrammelled opportunities to collaborate with American firms and access the massive scaling opportunities of the US defence market.

Yeah those scaling opportunities sound great, pity all the benefits under AUKUS remain within the purview of the US military

Minister Conroy’s defence strategy lays out Australia’s industrial base needs for the future. It’s a great strategy. Responsibility now lies with the defence delivery agency for its implementation. For example, Austal, the Australian shipbuilder and its American subsidiary, in Alabama, which is America’s fourth largest shipbuilder, must reman in Australian hands. Austal America is the most profitable part of the Australian company and integrates Australia with next generation American ship building. That company and others will be essential to the wider reindustrialisation of Australia. Third, all this requires a robust defence budget. This year’s national defence strategy lifts annual defence funding to 3% of GDP using NATO’s methodology by 2033. The Prime Minister is to be congratulated for this against the many competing priorities the government has faced.”

Targeting defence spending according to a percent of GDP is a very stupid way to do it. Giving every soldier a pay rise would lift of defence spending as a percent of GDP. Does that make us safer? Buying the most expensive equipment lifts our defence spending – is that how we should decide defence procurement?

Here is what Kevin Rudd has to say about China:

Australians have heard so many statistics about China’s rise that they have become numb to the gravity of it.

China is now easily the world’s second most powerful military, the world’s second most powerful economy and the world’s second biggest tech know industrial power.

China’s stated ambition is to surpass the United States militarily, economically and technologically in the next decade if not then certainly by the centenary of the people’s republic in 2049, which is less than 245 and 25 years away. 

Militarily the number speak for themselves.

The PLA consists of over 400 ships, almost 40% big than the US navy.

It is many more principle surface combat ships, roughly 150 to 110, and has reached parity in numbers of submarines although America retains a lead in nuclear-powered attack subs and ballistic missile submarines.

These disparities are widening because China’s shipbuilding capabilities massive exceed those of the United States. The economic numbers tell a similar story.

China’s measured by market exchange rates has almost doubled in the last decade to US $21 trillion to become two-thirds the size of the US.

Measured by purchasing power parity, China is already one-third bigger thatten the US, on track to being two-thirds larger in a decade’s time.

China became the world’s biggest trading nation in 2013, the world’s biggest exporter in 2009, the world’s biggest manufacturer in 2010.

It now commands almost a third of all global manufacturing.

On technology, China is now spending more on research and development than the US approaching rust $1 trillion and itis leading in 69 of 74 critical technologies tracked by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and it is publishing more articles in leading academic journals than anywhere else across the natural applied, chemical, physical, biological and earth sciences. These formidable achievements have not come about by mistake or by accident.

They are the product of a relentless tech know industrial policy. Silicon Valley is brilliant but it faces the sheer scale of China’s market, the disciplined concentration of resource I the Chinese party state and the depth and breadth of its industrial subsidies.

The tectonic plates across these three domains are shifting beneath our feet as we speak.

Greg Jericho

Kevin Rudd warns that we need to invest in AI because of the threat of AI. (Yep, it is going to kill us all)

The risk of AI driving weapons systems without humans in the decision making loop. Second, AI in the hands of state or non-state actors pose precedented challenges to our cyber defences, potentially compromising our civilian infrastructure, biosecurity, financial systems including individual bank accounts.

Then there’s the danger of AI agents acting autonomously once they jump their creators sand boxes the in the last four months there have been six such escapes involving US and Chinese modelled. Regrettably, more will follow and soon.

For Australia this means that alongside our critical debates about AI’s social and economic impacts, these national security threats compel Australia to become a national and substantial AI power knits own right. The alternative is to become totally dependent on the good will of others. This is the antithesis of national resilience. What then must be done?

These mega changes are unprecedented in our modern history. Incrementalism will no longer work for Australia. Urgency must be our national watch word if we are to navigate our future as an independent, prosperous and nation. “

Those who covered the Rudd government might have just had a stroke hearing Rudd now say that “Incrementalism will no longer work for Australia”

Emma Shortis

Kevin Rudd identifies the radical changes in the world reshaping our national security: “everything, everywhere, all at once”. 

Rudd raises first the rise of China, as the US continues to debate its role in the world (my, that framing is doing some heavy lifting), and second, AI. The third, climate, he’ll address in another speech (hmmm). 

Rudd:

To meet these dangers we need a radical change in our national mindset. From accepting the terms delivered to us by the rest of the world,to actively carving out our own terms of engagement.

From merely using the world’s leading technologies to claiming our place among the creators of those technologies. From being the world’s best miners to becoming the world’s best refiners, and manufacturers of the world-class product. From being a branch office for global institutions and financial institutions to become the financial capital of the Indo-Pacific. From being price takers to becoming price setters. 

The biggest thing obstructing us in all this is our national mindset. As a people we have become so risk averse that we fail to comprehend that the even greater risk is standing still and trying in vein to preserve the status quo. What are our national security challenges? 

There are three sets of radical changes now reshaping our national security that demand radical new approaches to our national resilience.

The rise and rise of China at a time when America continues to debate what sort of global power it wants to be in the future. Second, the AI revolution replete with great risks and equally great opportunities. And, third, the proliferation intensification of extreme weather events due to rapidly accelerating climate change. All three of these are unfolding simultaneously. Everything everywhere all at once.

To its great credit, the government is working across all three of these fronts. But government cannot do it alone. My appeal today to the national body politic is to reckon with these hard truths and find within itself a deeper sense of national urgency. 

This is serious. It’s not a game. It’s the future of the country that’s at stake.

Emma Shortis

Ok, he’s got me. For reasons, I was reluctant to tune into Kevin Rudd’s National Press Club address. But he’s off to a searing start – opening with a big claim about Australia’s “complacency” and how we have not “punched above our weight” for a long time. 

He says he motivated by what he’s seen in the world – basically that we’re not ready for what is “barreling towards us”. He says we need a “radical change in our national mindset” to meet these challenges.

Worth tuning in, I think.

Rudd:

…This speech is directed more widely to all Australians in leadership positions or those who aspire to aspire to leadership positions, great and small, across our country.

Beyond that, to every Australian citizen because you are the ultimate arbiters of our nation’s fortunes.

My message is this. First, the global strategic economic and technological forces now bearing down on this nation are of an order of magnitude, severity and complexity that is unprecedented in our postwar history.

Second, we can navigate these changes and challenges successfully. But it will require a radical change in our national psychology. A new sense of national urgency combined with a new vital sense of shared national purpose. The alternative is to slide into becoming a second-rate country because that requires no effort at all.

Third, we are more than capable of rising to this challenge. We have the talent, the resources, the only question is do we have the national imagination? Over the decades we have drifted to become what I call the complacent country. 60 years ago, Donald Horn said we were the lucky country. That was a myth. Unfortunately, the myth has now passed its use by date.

It’s my duty to report that the deep systemic forces now being unleashed across the world are now washing across our shores no longer afford us that luxury.

We are now on borrowed time. I still hear Australians consoling themselves with the view that we punch above our weight. The truth is it’s a long, long time since we did. , and in fact, I doubt that that was ever really the case.

For some decades, Australians have reflexively responded to hard truths by lamenting the government of the day, or the political class more generally for their failures.

The uncomfortable truth is that governments come and go – but it is our collective responsibility as a people to pass on to our children and grandchildren a country that remains in the first rank of nations. So what has motivated me to come here and say all this today?

Well, don’t worry, unlike Tony, I’m not on the comeback trail.

Greg Jericho

Oh what a timeline to live in. Overnight the talk of the interwebs was an AI researcher who resigned from Anthropic and took to twitter to say AI is a 10% chance to kill us all in 10 years

Worse still, others decided 10% might be low balling it.

How wonderful.

Apropos of nothing, here’s the Prime Minister last month speaking to the Business Council of Australia:

“Hosting large-scale AI training data centres and unlocking frontier AI model training will help Australia capture a larger share of the economic value, technical capability, and strategic influence of artificial intelligence, as well as boost the competitiveness of our startups and innovative businesses.”

Sure we are all dead, but feel that economic value!

I would like to be shocked that we have governments around the world bending over backwards to assist an industry that is a chance to kill us all. But errr have you met fossil fuels?

Remember that in 2025-26 fossil fuel subsidies across all Australians governments were worth $16.3 billion – an increase of 9.4% on the previous year.

We had a speech by the head of Santos yesterday and it took until we were well into the Q&A session before climate change was brought up, and the response was that gas is better than coal (*cough* very disputed *cough*) so we need more gas, and that provoked now major reporting.  

Anyway, I don’t know if AI will kill us. I’ll bet on yes. The question is whether climate change will leave much left to kill by the time AI gets around to it.

The three Greens senators have released a second statement: Statement on the Improved Native Forest Management Instrument from Senators McKim, Bleyer, and Steele-John:

After much deliberation we have decided to exercise our right to take a position according to our consciences. We do not support the INFM, and will vote in the Senate to disallow it. 

Just as there are different views in the environment movement about Labor’s proposal to sell forest carbon to corporations so they can keep emitting, so there are different views in the Australian Greens party room.

People of good heart and clear mind can, and have, come to a different position on this issue. We understand the position that others have taken, and we hope they can understand ours.

We want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to keep emitting as the INFM does.

Statement from Senator Nick McKim & Senator Vanessa Bleyer:

“This is a crossroads moment for the Greens, and we have not taken this decision lightly.

“We have both spent many years of our lives fighting alongside activists and community groups to defend forests, and simply don’t accept that forests need to be monetised in order to save them.

“This is a Labor shakedown. After repeatedly, unconditionally promising the Great Koala National Park, Labor is now holding koalas hostage and threatening to drive them towards extinction unless they can profit from their habitat. This is an ecocidal threat and we have chosen to resist it.

“The carbon in the GKNP is already safe as the park has been promised and the logging has stopped. The carbon credits from that project will help big emitters to keep polluting with no genuinely additional carbon benefit.

“There is no guarantee that a single extra hectare of forest will be protected if this methodology survives, and it risks driving the management of forests towards carbon capture rather than habitat preservation.

“The INFM is a neoliberal response to a crisis caused by neoliberalism, and it sets an alarming precedent. If it passes we may never again see a National Park or marine protected area created unless carbon or biodiversity can be monetised in some way.

“Forests are profound and complex ecosystems that should be protected for their intrinsic values, not for profit. 

“The tragic reality is that climate change is a greater threat to native forests than logging. We will not be party to making forest protection contingent on a mechanism that drives their destruction.

“Climate breakdown means that the forests used to generate credits are more likely to burn, with their carbon ending up in the atmosphere but the credits being used by big emitters to keep polluting. This is a perverse outcome made more likely by Labor’s entire offset framework and their love affair with coal and gas.

“Carbon offsets from forests rely on the fiction that no future government would protect forests without them. History has shown that vast tracts of forests around the country have been protected thanks to courageous activists and Greens in parliaments. We have no doubt this would have continued into the future without the INFM.

“As Senators for Tasmania we also hold deep concerns that this methodology could provide a financial lifeline for the ongoing destruction of Tasmania’s native forests.

“We are profoundly grateful to everyone who has raised their voices and supported us to take this position. This includes forest defenders in Tasmania and around Australia, every state Greens MP in Tasmania and Western Australia, some Greens MPs in NSW, as well as our friends and mentors Bob Brown and Christine Milne.”

Statement from Senator Jordon Steele-John: 

“I feel a responsibility to listen to the movement I represent in Western Australia, and to act according to my conscience. 

“The Greens (WA) have a long and proud history of being in solidarity with forest campaigners. Over decades, we have fought for, and won, protections for our native forests. That history, and the strength of our forest and climate movement in Western Australia, informs the position I am taking.

“As a Senator for WA, I am making this decision with the strong backing of WA’s climate and environment movement. It is clear to me that Labor’s proposal lacks the support of the people and organisations who have spent decades fighting to protect Western Australia’s forests and environment, and ensure real climate action.

“Labor’s proposal seeks to sell protected forests to major carbon polluters, enabling them to continue polluting while outsourcing their emissions reductions to forests. This risks perverse outcomes for our forests, which could be managed primarily for carbon storage rather than for the protection of biodiversity.

“The consequence of this decision would be more carbon credits in the market, which could make life easier for corporations like Alcoa to continue their destruction of our precious Northern Jarrah Forests and make it more possible for Woodside to enact its plans to destroy Scott Reef. 

“I acknowledge that some of my Australian Greens colleagues hold a different view. Each of us brings our own experiences, perspectives, and relationships to the challenge of confronting the climate and extinction crises.

“For me, at this moment, exercising a conscience vote means being alongside the Western Australian climate and environment movement that is fighting for our forests, our environment, and a safe climate future.

“That is why I will vote to disallow the INFM.”

Kevin Rudd, in his capacity as Global CEO of the Asia Society will be addressing the press club today.

His topic is: “Navigating Australia’s Future in an Uncertain World”.

Much like when Christopher Pyne did it, this is Rudd’s chance to tell the government, publicly, what he thinks it should be doing on the US and China.

But chances are he won’t be as critical of Trump as he has been in the past, given how that went on to bite him when Trump returned.

The senates has just voted to move the disallowance motion for the Great Koala National Park from the 15th, to this afternoon.

This is one which has split green groups and the Greens. Full disclosure – the Australia Institute does not support offsets (pollution permission slips as Richard Denniss calls them) and supports the disallowance motion (as the NSW Labor government had already promised to create the park, and have budgeted for it – but is now claiming it can only do it if it gets to monetise it, which the Institute sees as a slipperly slope for what is pretty much bupkis science)

But we’ll cover it here just as it happens.

Luke Slawomirski

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) is tasked with protecting the public.

But an investigation by The Age suggests patients are often left wondering whether AHPRA is up to the job. Patients describe what it’s been like to wait a long time for a response, and to have complaint about alleged closed with little explanation.

The recent Dawson review found that more than a quarter of active investigations had been running for more than two years, while 85–90% of notifications are ultimately closed with no further action.

Medicine is risky, bad outcomes happen, and complaints are not proof of wrongdoing. But accountability means not just reaching a decision, but explaining the reasons it was made.

The Simon Gordon case illustrates the problem.

Patients complained to AHPRA about the Melbourne gynaecologist years before the Four Corners investigation exposed allegations of unnecessary and extraordinarily aggressive surgery. Two women who complained to AHPRA in 2024 were told no further action would be taken. AHPRA later commissioned independent experts and reviewed thousands of pages of patient records. The Medical Board – a separate body to AHPRA – has now referred Gordon to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), alleging professional misconduct. Gordon has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Whatever VCAT ultimately decides, there is an obvious question for AHPRA: what changed? A regulator that demands accountability from health professionals needs to be accountable too.

Patients deserve more than a letter. They deserve answers.

Lucinda Garbutt-Young  for AAP

Australia’s leaders have been warned not to fall into hysteria about migration levels just to appease One Nation, as federal political parties struggle to confirm their policy positions. 

People worried about migration rates were more likely to be anxious about economic impacts, including housing supply, than they were to be racist, South Australia’s Premier Peter Malinauskas said in a speech at The Sydney Institute on Wednesday night. 

The staunchly pro-migration Labor state leader used the argument to warn against falling prey to the migration crackdown desires of Pauline Hanson’s right-wing party, which has surged in the polls since the May 2025 federal election. 

“I’m here to insist that Australians in positions of leadership must now be on stages like this one and explain how unreasonably slashing our immigration intake is not going to fix our problems,” Mr Malinauskas said. 

“It is only going to make them worse.”

On the national scene, debate is intensifying as One Nation links Australia’s migration rate with the housing crisis and inner-city crime. 

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke delayed a National Press Club speech in August in which he was widely expected to announce migration cuts. It is understood the cabinet is still finalising plans.

Australia’s net overseas migration fell to 301,000 in 2025, which was a 45 per cent decrease from the post-Covid peak in 2023 and down 9 per cent from 2024. 

One Nation has called for the rate to be slashed to 130,000 visas per year, though numbers presented by party members in recent months have varied. 

The coalition wants lower levels correlating to the number of homes built the year prior, while pursuing what its policy terms a “values-based” scheme to ensure migrants support the so-called Australian way of life.

In August, coalition housing spokesperson Andrew Bragg used a speech at the National Press Club to throw around migration policy ideas his party had not agreed to. 

In contrast, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said on Thursday his party was working on detailed plans. 

“We do need to cut immigration, but we need to do it sensibly,” Mr Hastie told ABC Radio.

“I can tell you now that we are doing very detailed, long discussions based on costing and modelling for our immigration policy.”

But Mr Malinauskas did not agree with the coalition’s arguments, calling for a more nuanced understanding from all parties on skills shortages. 

“Australia doesn’t really have a migration crisis so much as a housing crisis,” he told ABC Radio.

“If we have a housing crisis, we would do well to focus our skills policy on making sure that we’re bringing in the very workers that we require in the housing and construction industry.”

The premier said it was incumbent on leaders to make strong economic arguments for a well-calibrated migration program that did not arbitrarily block people from entering the country. 

These people like each other and their jobs very much. Can’t you tell?

The senate has passed the first round of changes to the under 16 ban on social media (not the new proposed social media feed changes) and the bill will now head back to the house where some little amendments will be signed off on (no problem there, the government is already in agreement) and then that is one thing of Anika Wells list.

Anara Watson

New research has found that if global emissions peak around 2040 and warming is limited to 2.7C, some 267,500 coastal properties and 2 million hectares of land across the country will face damage from sea level rise and storm surge.

That’s a pretty grim prospect – but one that could become a reality if governments continue to stall on phasing out fossil fuels.

The damage caused by sea level rise could cost Australians more than $850 billion, with $274 billion lost on property and $580 billion being spent on land-use damage.

According to the report,

“Average annual [sea level rise and storm surge] damages are estimated to reduce national GDP by 1.05–1.39% under RCP4.5 and 2.26–3.0% under RCP8.5. These estimates are conservative, as they exclude additional losses to environmental assets, cultural heritage, and other infrastructure not captured in the assessment.”

And while those figures are shocking, Australians know all too well that climate change won’t just affect coastal properties. Bushfires threaten properties across the country. Droughts and heatwaves impact people and their livelihoods. The same goes for heavy rainfall and flooding.

Fossil fuel companies are driving the climate change that turbocharges these extreme weather events, while ordinary Australians are left to pay the price.

Instead of receiving billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies every year, maybe it’s time for fossil fuel companies to start paying for the damage they cause.

James Watson

Cricket Australia (CA) has announced that it will take Australia’s T20 cricket league, the Big Bash League (BBL), to market. Beginning with the complete sale of the Melbourne Renegades, CA will allow the states’ respective cricketing associations to sell off stakes of their T20 teams to private investors in it calls a “self-determination model”.

On Tuesday, outside the Sydney Cricket Ground, CA CEO Todd Greenberg and Chairman Mike Baird claimed that privatisation of the BBL was “a billion dollar opportunity for our sport” and that privatisation “may be the biggest strategic decision Australian cricket makes in a generation”.

Greenberg and Baird were flanked by some of Australia’s top cricketers – Pat Cummins, Ellyse Perry, Travis Head, and Sophie Molineux – as they made this announcement, giving the impression that CA had players’ support.

But as CA made this announcement, they are currently contesting a claim from the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) that 27.5% of windfalls from the sale of any BBL teams would go straight to the players (at least according to the terms of the MoU between the ACA and CA). The ACA has requested this dispute now be taken to arbitration.

At the same time, not all state cricketing associations have supported the move. Cricket NSW believes selling the BBL will leave Australian cricket “strategically and financially worse off”; while members of Queensland Cricket believe they are being pressured into privatisation by CA.

NSW and Queensland argue that Greenberg and Baird haven’t made a convincing argument for injecting private capital into Australian cricket. The Australian Financial Reviewagreed earlier this year, arguing there is no rational economic argument for it.

The AFR suggested that for Baird, this move is entirely ideological: as NSW Premier, he oversaw the privatisation of Transgrid, the Sydney Desalination Plant, the Ports of Botany, Kembla, and Newcastle, and parts of Sydney Rail. The BBL might just be another of Baird’s project to put public works in private hands, before he moves on to this new job as NRMA CEO later this year.

David Richardson

A new book on productivity was quietly published recently. Roy Green and Phil Toner edited a volume called Understanding Productivity. Among economists generally there is agreement that productivity matters and as the editors say, “productivity growth has been the main driver of living standards for populations around the world since the Industrial Revolution.” But once we move on from the motherhood statements there is a lot of disagreement. This volume takes us through many of the controversies.

These disputes raise questions about how much credence we should give the quarterly productivity figures. Productivity in the non-market/government sector usually comes in about zero or even slightly negative. But that reflects the inability to accurately measure the output of a lot of the service sector which, as it happens, makes up just over 80% of the Australian economy (calculations based on ABS data). For example, we know that for many life-threatening ailments the outcomes with modern medicine are infinitely better than they used to be, but that is not reflected in the productivity figures.

Some commentators and stakeholders argue that giving tax concessions to the rich will boost investment which in turn will boost productivity. Yet in Australia measured productivity growth is lower now than it used to be yet taxes on the rich are also lower than they used to be. This seems to be a case of wishful thinking on the part of the rich trumping the evidence. But we do know that since the industrial revolution business has mechanised industry to economise on labour costs, high labour costs are often a spur to productivity growth.

In its management of the economy the Reserve Bank tells us that low productivity growth means there is a low speed limit for economic growth in Australia. Yet evidence is presented in the book shows that higher economic growth encourages higher productivity growth. Economies of scale and other beneficial reactions kick in with higher economic growth.

Overall, the more we understand productivity the more we understand why we should be sceptical about simple answers, especially simple answers that favour the rich.

Angus Taylor is then pressed on consistency – Sarah Henderson says freedom of speech must be protected at all costs (except, of course when it comes to anyone saying Free Palestine or From the River to the Sea or Globalise the Intifada – all phrases Sarah Henderson is very, very against. She is also against university protests, or any protests against genocide and used senate estimates to ask SBS executives why Israel didn’t receive Australian votes at Eurovision – but hey – freedom of speech is always about what Henderson and co want to say, not what anyone who disagrees with them can say)

Anyways, here is the question:

Just to understand your position here, because you’ve got Sarah Henderson saying freedom of speech should be protected at all costs, and yet you are demanding a video be removed, which is about political expression – however repugnant. Now, there was someone on your side who famously said, “You’ve got a right to be a bigot.” So, which one is it?

Angus Taylor:

I’m not suggesting that it should be illegal to put up a cartoon. What I’m saying is it should be taken down, because Andrew…

Q: Is that not censorship?

Taylor:

Andrew Hastie served this country with distinction as a member of the Special Forces, the SAS. He served this country with distinction. I think it’s wrong. And I have every right to say that I think it’s wrong for that video to be up. Now, in the end, this is not a question of legality, this is a question of morality.

Q: I happen to agree with you. However…

Taylor

Well, Andrew, I’ve made that position pretty clear.

On whether or not the Coalition will support the new enforcement powers for police when it comes to illicit tobacco (which the Coalition has forced, after One Nation jumped on it first) Angus Taylor says:

We’ve only just seen it. But let me tell you, if you want to take – if you want to destroy the business model of illicit tobacco in this country, the organised crime, the gangs that are behind it, you have to take the profit and the customers away from it. Law enforcement matters. But you have to start by taking the profit away from the business model and then smash what’s left with law enforcement. That’s our proposal and that’s what the Government should jump on board with.

Q: To clarify, are your concerns mainly or predominantly around the ministerial powers or take-down powers? Do you also have an issue with the idea of an opt-out to algorithms and people having more control over what they see? Mr Taylor, do you share the view of your colleague Andrew Hastie that Senator Hanson is weak, glass-jawed and a coward?

Taylor:

Yes, she should take that down. One Nation should take that down, absolutely. To your other question, what’s objectionable in this legislation is that it’s a blank cheque for political centorship. That’s — censorship. That’s not Australia. That’s not what we do in this country.

We should have free debate. You in the media understand that better than most. And it is incredibly important that we don’t have a minister controlling, with a blank cheque, what we see on the internet. That’s completely unacceptable to us.

Angus Taylor is asked whether he agrees with Andrew Hastie that Pauline Hanson should take down a cartoon labelling him a traitor.

Taylor:

Yes, she should take it down. One Nation should take it down. Andrew Hastie has served this country with distinction as an officer in the SAS. She should take it down. On the other question, let me just make a brief comment.

This bill is unacceptable in its current form. We haven’t seen anything that’s acceptable. I’m not going to get into hypotheticals, but it’s unacceptable in its current form.

Q: You mentioned that Labor had blamed social media for losing that by-election in Secret Harbour in WA, but the Liberal Party only polled 17%. What do you blame it on and what does that say about the Liberal Party federally when you can’t win a seat, or even come close to a seat, that is working-middle class, outer suburban?

Angus Taylor:

That comment wasn’t from me.

Matt Canavan:

I can answer that. I’m not the Liberal Party either, but…! (LAUGHS) Look, I accept results. That’s what I do. Like, we had an election just last year. What have we done? We’ve accepted it, trying to change tack, trying to get better.

Look, ultimately, it will be up to the Australian people to decide that. But I just work harder. I don’t blame the people for election results, and that’s effectively what the Labor Party has done here. And don’t give me this rubbish that somehow it’s only the Labor Party that can run scare campaigns.

I mean, these are the people that have said that we were gonna privatise Medicare, right? You know? Or that they were going to allow you to to pay for Medicare with nothing but your Medicare card. I still have to use my credit card. That hasn’t come true.

These guys are the masters of a scare campaign.

How dare they blame other people for election losses when maybe, maybe, the feedback they’re getting from the Australian people, the election results in Secret Harbour, it wasn’t a Labor seat, it was a safe Labor seat, maybe they should reflect on that, their performance, and do better, not try and control the people…

No one paying attention here should be surprised – but the Coalition will not be supporting the changes Labor is proposing when it comes to social media feeds.

Here is Angus Taylor – he says it is about Labor losing elections (which is the urgency to this – not that Labor is losing elections, but that facts themselves don’t matter) but really it is about the fact that the right will lose out the most here (they benefit from a lot of this misinformation and disinformation being put out)

Taylor:

So the people, the same people that are complaining they’re losing elections, losing political debates, based on what is said on social media, can’t be given the power to regulate what you can say and read online.

The Labor Party here are not an impartial judge and cannot be given that kind of power. As written, what is very clear, and the resolve of our party room is clear, as it’s written, this bill is not in place to protect the people of Australia, it is a bill to protect politicians.

It is not a bill that help people control what they read online.

It’s a bill that will allow the government to dictate what you can say and see online. And we can never have that in place in this country. I don’t want to see a government be given a virtual iron dome to protect themselves and insulate themselves from people’s feedback.

I have been getting a lot of that feedback since I was leader. A lot of it has been criticism. A lot of it has been negative. And I want to make very clear, in standing up, or standing against political censorship in this bill, that I’m almost even more passionate about making sure people have the right to criticise me and the right to criticise us, because I view that feedback I’ve received as leader as helping me be stronger and do better for the Australian people.

That’s how our system works, that’s how the feedback in our system should work, and never should we give our political leaders the power to insulate them from such criticism. Because that will stop people being able to legitimately criticise their government, to push their political leaders to do better, and we definitely need to do a lot better for the Australian people right now.

Josh Bornstein

It is disturbing to see KPMG continue to benefit from lucrative new government contracts notwithstanding its extraordinary catalogue of scandalous conduct.

Awarding further contracts like this undermines trust in government and the Australian public service. There has got to be a better way.

Alice Grundy 

Today the Tasmanian parliament will continue to debate firearm legislation. The bill the government introduced missed key elements of firearm reform, including measures initially agreed at National Cabinet following the Bondi massacre such as firearm ownership caps.

The Tasmania Police Commissioner has repeatedly called for a cap.

As Australia Institute research shows, theft of licenced firearms is the single largest source of new firearms on the black market. 

Labor has introduced an amendment to include caps which would bring Tasmanian legislation in line with NSW and ACT. 

We’ll update you on the debate later today. 

Here is how that press conference on the gas reservation looked – this is what the government is doing to try and starve off any sort of tax on gas exports.

A reminder – this is not a tax.

Here is how the government are selling it:

The Albanese Labor Government is taking another step forward to secure more affordable gas for households, business and industry with the release of the Domestic Gas Reservation legislative package for consultation.

The Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026 will establish Australia’s first national Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme.

This delivers on the Government’s commitment to secure gas supply for Australians and put downward pressure on domestic gas prices, by requiring gas exporters to supply a portion of the gas they produce to the domestic market.

The Australian Government is reserving up to 20 per cent of gas exports for Australians, ensuring gas is more affordable and the domestic market is always modestly oversupplied.

Exporters could provide up to 200 additional petajoules of gas a year, ensuring more than enough secure gas along with domestic production to meet new manufacturing demands.

This is more than enough to avoid AEMO forecast possible shortfalls of up to 140 petajoules. This is a landmark Labor reform that will place significant downwards pressure on price paid by Australian gas consumers.

The scheme ensures domestic customers can buy from a larger pool of gas, reducing the risk of tight market conditions driving price spikes, promoting long-term contracting and shielding them from global volatility. The licence application process will commence from 1 January 2027, with the Domestic Supply Obligation to commence from 1 January 2028, to align with industry contracting cycles.

The Exposure Draft, released today, establishes a framework for how the reservation scheme is proposed to operate within a broader set of gas market reforms, including how costs will be recovered and the compliance and enforcement mechanisms available to the Regulator. The Government received more than 140 submissions in response to the Reservation’s Draft Design Framework – from gas producers and exporters, retailers, large industrial users, trade partners and state and territory governments. The Exposure Draft package ensures more affordable gas is available for Australian gas users, and builds on design features proposed by the Government earlier this year.

Stakeholder feedback has been considered during the design of the legislation and market reforms to improve industry certainty and inform an Exposure Draft package that is predictable, transparent, and pro-investment while also delivering affordable, long term domestic gas supply.

The Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme exposure draft and consultation materials are available now on the Department of Industry, Science and Resources Consultation Hub. Submissions will close on 24 September 2026. The Government welcomes further
feedback to refine the draft legislation package before its proposed introduction to parliament later this year.

Luke Slawomirski

Imagine living in a capital city and being told that you need to drive 300 kilometres to get a time-sensitive pregnancy scan.

That’s what some women in Darwin are facing.

Currently only one private provider is offering nuchal scans in Darwin. One woman told the ABC she was advised she could try Katherine, around 300 kilometres away, or pay about $500 for a non-invasive prenatal test instead. She could afford neither the test nor the time away from work and her toddler.

A survey of more than 200 Darwin women found fewer than half could obtain a nuchal scan within the recommended timeframe. Only 31 per cent said they could access a morphology scan through the public system. Some travelled interstate. Twenty four (12%) said they missed out on a nuchal scan altogether (a nuchal scan is a non-invasive, first-trimester pregnancy test that measures the fluid-filled space at the back of a developing baby’s neck to screen for chromosomal abnormalities).

This landed on the same day as another story about women with conditions such as endometriosis. One described taking almost two decades to receive a diagnosis after repeatedly being told her severe pain was normal. The prolonged search for treatment itself damaged her mental health. Regional and remote women face the added problems of distance, cost and limited services.

One recommendation is for women to advocate strongly for themselves.

Thanks for that … but isn’t there something wrong when a health system requires patients to become expert advocates simply to obtain routine care?

Sure, persistence helps. But only if you have money, transport, flexible work, confidence navigating the system and enough health literacy to know what you should be asking for. Should those things determine whether a pregnant woman receives a scan at the right time?

Good healthcare should be available even if a person isn’t good at fighting for it.

Greg Jericho

The AFR is reporting that “The Albanese government is set to retreat from its demand that Australia’s gas exporters set aside a fixed 20 per cent of their supplies for domestic use and will instead require them to put “up to” one fifth of their production into the local market.”

Ahh “up to”. As anyone who has been at a clothes shop and seen a rack with and “up to 40% off” sign, the up to does a lot of heavy lifting

We wait to see the draft legislation out today, but the AFR reports the scheme will also be delayed 6months, so it will only come into force in 2028.

Yesterday at the National Press Club, the CEO of Santos Kevin Gallagher repeatedly talked about the reservation policy as  “a tax” and suggested

“a reservation must not force supply into an oversupplied market. It must allow the price signals the market needs to invest in new gas supply development to operate.

The practical decision is to replace the must-sell provision to must-offer on practical terms. If gas is not able to be sold in term contracts, it should be made available on domestic spot hubs. This would maintain the architecture of the domestic gas reservation the government has announced but, importantly, it would let the market rather than arbitrary forecasts balance supply and demand.”

The gas industry hates having to supply gas to Australians. It’s why they hate the idea of a reservation policy. But the latest moves also highlight that a reservation policy was never going to achieve its aims because the gas industry would be able to lobby over technicalities that would make it mostly worthless.

That’s part of why the announcement of the policy has not hurt the share prices of Santos or Woodside:

Also let’s remember what this is about, Sanots and other want to say we need more gas. Yesterday Gallagher said “Australia does not have a gas shortage – it just needs to get more gas out of the ground”

Why? Because it wants to sell more gas overseas, not to Australians:

A gas reservation policy does not deliver revenue and will not do anything except have the gas industry demand more gas.

Angus Blackman

Non-compete clauses suppress wages, reduce productivity and stifle innovation. Now, the federal government is looking to ban them for most workers.

The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, joins Ebony Bennett on Follow the Money to discuss the pernicious impact of non-compete clauses and the federal government’s new legislation seeking to ban them for 9-in-10 workers.

AAP

The creators of the long-running and enthusiastically insolent TV show South Park aren’t known to be huge fans of President Donald Trump.

However, they’ve decided to adopt one of his ideas — in a way.

They’re changing — at least for the moment — the name of the popular series, which just won the Emmy for outstanding animated program.

In a statement posted on the show’s Instagram page, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said they were “changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA.”.

The statement comes as Trump, escalating his trade war with Canada, declared he’s renaming Lake Ontario to be known as Lake America in the United States.

The move by the two satirists, a week before the 29th season premiere of South Park — er, “SOUTH AMERICA” — also takes aim at Apple and Google, which have adopted Trump’s changes, as well as the show’s own parent company.

Apple has relabelled Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for US users of its Maps app, following cartographic competitor Google. 

“Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount — a Skydance Capitulation.”

During his second term, Trump has also signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” even though parts of it lie in international waters. Apple and Google maps also followed suit in that case.

Also in line with Trump’s enthusiasm for renaming things — after America, or after himself — he suggested this week that New Mexico be renamed “New America,” though it was uncertain whether that was serious. 

Matt Saunders and Morgan Harrington

Gambling losses went up over $1b last year

Matt Saunders and Morgan Harrington

The latest data shows that gambling losses reached a new, all-time high of $36 billion in the 2025-26 financial year. Losses went up $1.2b more than in 2024-25, which is the biggest increase in three years.

In August, the government passed a bill to restrict the amount of online gambling advertising that Australians see, but it stops well short of the recommendations made by the 2023 Murphy Review, which called for a full ban on gambling advertisements, and for the establishment of a national regulator. Polling shows that about three in four Australians would support a total ban on gambling advertising.

Want to see a ban on ads for online gambling? Sign our petition here.

On migration, Hill says:

I saw the media reports this morning, and what they confirmed is that there have been discussions, rightly and properly, with the opposition as the alternative party of government to find a way forward on the next phase of migration reform. I won’t go into the details of that. Obviously, that’s a matter that Minister Burke is leading, the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader and his Shadow Minister are engaged in, as is appropriate.

The point I would make is that, and I heard Andrew Hastie’s comments before, when we were elected to government, we inherited a set of policy settings and a system that lacked integrity and saw net overseas migration spike way too high after the borders were opened, we’ve already taken significant action to bring that down. It’s reduced by over around 45% and it needs to come down further.

The measures that we want to take, the issues we’re trying to grapple with, are getting a level of control and precision over the system that Australia has never had, and dialing back on this problem that I’ve talked about for a decade or more of permanently temporary visa holders-people who come to our country for a good purpose and then just hop around and refuse to leave.

Julian Hill has been one of the rare Labor MPs (outside of Ed Husic) to raise the possibility of sanctions for Israel, so he is asked about it on the ABC.

Q: The UK, Canada, France, and other nations are placing a ban on imports from Israeli settlements, illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, earlier on breakfast this morning, British Labor MP Alex Ballinger, member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, had this to say: “Australia is a good friend of ours, an ally. I think has a similar interpretation of international law. So, of course, we would welcome them to join us in these actions”.

Is the government considering such a ban? Is it an implementation issue, or is there a principle here that Australia won’t do this?

Hill:

I’ll just make three brief points. As I think you and others know, I’ve been extremely outspoken against these illegal settlements and the increasing settler violence and murder of Palestinians for many years now.

This is against international law and the current Israeli government’s policies and actions are unconscionable. The government has already taken significant steps. We’ve sanctioned Israeli ministers. We’ve sanctioned individuals. We’ve sanctioned entities. The minister for foreign affairs has flagged publicly that there will be further measures, taking account of the circumstances, what’s happening, and of course, what our like-minded friends and partners around the world are doing.

I think you’d understand that the Australian government, we never speculate on specific measures before we take them. Sanctions are ultimately an expression, a serious, powerful legal tool, and an expression of our national interest.

Looking at the international circumstance and when the foreign minister signs off on new measures, she’ll announce them at that time.

Q: I guess I’m interested also in the principle here. We heard the foreign minister last year when there were pushes for Australia to take action on its own that we were often looking to work in in in step with our allied nations. This is exactly what’s happening at the moment. Why isn’t Australia there if that’s our approach usually?

Hill:

So it continues to be our approach. We’re in dialog with countries around the world who have a similar view to us around the outrageous behavior of the Israeli settler movement, and it’s happened in the shadow of Gaza. Right after the horrific Hamas attack on Israel, what we’ve seen though is the world’s focus has been on Gaza and other parts of the conflict, is an expansion and acceleration and a deepening of the settlement activity to remove the possibility of a two state solution.

This is not, you know, conspiracy theory. This is what the Israeli Prime Minister, the current Prime Minister, and many of his ministers say – to remove the possibility of a Palestinian state. That is not Australia’s policy. It’s never been our policy for 70 or 80 years, and we will continue to take action on the specific measure that you talk about.

I read that international statement, and it clearly acknowledged that each country has a different legal regime and a different way of approaching this, and that’s what we’ll do.

Julian Hill is up and explaining the illicit tobacco crackdown – this is come in response to the Coalition making it a national issue, after One Nation raised it. Do you see how our politics is being run these days?

Hill tells ABC radio RN Breakfast:

Oh, clearly this is a major global problem, and Australia’s not immune. It’s this massive surplus of cheap production of stuff for less than $1 a pack that’s been weaponised by serious and organized criminal syndicates flooding national borders. This is the next phase. I flagged this when I introduced the previous bill, which passed the Parliament last sitting week, I flagged that we’d have a next phase of customs reform.

I’d explain it to your listeners like this: the customs tobacco offenses was designed for another era when it was small-scale bit of revenue fraud, you know, under declaring, smugly a little bit of stuff in.

What we’re now facing as a country needs an overhaul of the customs laws, and that’s what we’ll be introducing today. The new laws. Think about it as a list of observable indicators.

Very simple, fact-based things like: is the tobacco appropriately packaged? Is it a menthol cigarette even hiding in plain packaging?

Is it being concealed? Does it have paperwork at the border, or my personal favorite, is the retail price of this packet of cigarettes less than the amount of excise and GST combined.

If any of these facts are proven, just one of them, that establishes the reasonable suspicion of the criminal offense of importing, possession, or conveying. It’ll give powerful new tools to border force, but every state and territory police force to go after the crooks.

On the social media changes proposed by the government Andrew Hastie says:

I think political polarisation and fragmentation, whether it’s on the right and left has been driven by social media. I think we’re now a far more emotional electorate because it’s a lot easier to watch a 30-second reel that gets you going rather than read a considered argument. And this is the challenge of modern politics. So it’s happening on the left and the right. And I think what Australians really want is sensible policy that speaks to middle Australia. There’s a whole bunch of people in the center, center right, center left, who just want responsible government.

And sure, we’re all on social media now, but in the end, social media is no way to govern a country, as we’re finding out with Senator Hanson.

Q: With this targeting by One Nation, and and also the debate back and forth between you and Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce and others, do you expect that this is going to worsen.

Hastie:

Well, I’ve already taken five months of abuse from these people, and this week is about drawing a line under it all. So I’m in the fight, whether I like it or not, and I’d much rather take my opponents head on.

Q: Are you taking the bait, perhaps?

Hastie:

No, I’m not taking the bait.

So far, I have not imposed cost, and I will impose cost on one nation.

Hastie is still a Liberal though, and a conservative one at that. He says that the Albanese government has “failed” on immigration, which is an easy soundbite but not one that is usually pushed for evidence. It is not migrants fault that government infrastructure policies have not kept up with growing population. Its not migrants fault that we do not train people for the future, or that we expect jobs to be done – but not by us. It is not migrants fault that politicians find them as easy scapegoats for their own decades long failures.

Hastie then says this:

We’ve committed to cutting immigration and pegging it to housing completions, and I think that’s the best way that we can ease the pressure in the housing market, ease the pressure on essential services and infrastructure, and put Australians first, frankly.

But the Coalition is also running a ‘THE SKY IS FALLING BECAUSE HOUSE PRICES ARE FALLING SLIGHTLY’ campaign so this does not make sense.

Q: Tony Abbott has raised questions about the handling of war crimes allegations against special forces soldiers. Has he ever indicated to you that he disagreed with what you did in in giving evidence?

Andrew Hastie:

I’ve had long chats with Tony. I’ll let him explain his position, but he knows exactly where I stand on this issue.

Q: Do you regard him as a supporter of yours?

Hastie:

I regard Tony as a friend. We don’t always agree on issues politically.

Q: As federal president of the Liberal Party, has he reached out to you, offered any support as you’ve been coming under attack?

Hastie:

I won’t go into personal discussions with Tony, but he’s our federal president. I support him in that, and my issue now is with Pauline Hanson and One Nation.

Q: When you’re talking about people stepping away from you for giving evidence, are you referring to former defence colleagues, or are you referring to people in the realm of politics?

Hastie:

It’s a bit of both, but that’s okay. I don’t need to go into that in detail. I was just making the point that what we have discovered, though, is there are 1000s, if not millions, of Australians out there who believe in the rule of law, and who want to make sure that our defense personnel, the men and women who serve in our uniforms, in the uniform, are held to a high standard. And frankly, the chief of defense force and the service chiefs need to enforce that standard. This isn’t about politics for them. This is about who our ADF is, what we stand for, and the values that underpin our defense force.

Q: The word traitor-it seems like it’s a red line for you.

Hastie:

It is a red line. It means that you’ve betrayed your country. They use that word eight times, specifically in the context of me being called to give evidence. I’ve asked her to either own those words. She’s shown that she won’t. She’s been cowardly, and I’ve asked her if she won’t own it, then to take it down, she’s done either. So I think that says everything about her leadership.

Q: What’s the bigger picture here? When we spoke last month, you said One Nation campaign director James Ashby’s got his orders from above to come after you. Who’s driving this push?

Hastie:

That’s a good question. Both James Ashby and Pauline Hanson have enjoyed a nice winter in Europe, paid for by Gina Rinehart. Who knows what’s going on here? I’m not making any claim there at all. What I am saying is that James Ashby called me back in April and warned me this was coming. I’ve taken this over the winter and I’m drawing a line under it today because there are veterans out there who are going through moral trauma based on their service in Afghanistan, and if they’re being called traitors as well by inference, well then I’m not going to stand for that. So I’m fighting for veterans as much as for my own reputation.

Q: You said this week over the Ben Robert Smith matter, quote: “People I trusted have walked away from me or failed to defend me. Who are you talking about?

Hastie:

Well, people. Well, I’m not going to mention any names, but when the mob came, people stepped away. There are people who’ve stood by me and back me to the hill, and they know who they are. But this is an issue that will define who we are as a country and how we respond to these allegations. Now they’re allegations, and they need to be tested in court. That’s what will happen.

But for her to politicize the whole process, to undermine the rule of law, to to use core floats with the with the defendant, I think is shameful from her.

The Coalition’s Andrew Hastie continues to lead the campaign against One Nation within his party.

Now part of this is obviously electoral survival. But the bigger part is that Hanson has insulted Hastie in a way which transcends politics. Hastie is an odd-cat, but he does have a pretty rigid moral core, and it was that grounding in his own morals which saw him testify against Ben Roberts-Smith in the federal court. Hanson supports Roberts-Smith and has criticised Hastie’s decision. Her cartoon series has labelled him a traitor – and that has Hastie on a one-man mission to politically expose Hanson.

ABC radio RN Breakfast has Hastie on this morning to respond to this from Hanson:

It is a satirical cartoon. For Christ’s sake, Barnaby Joyce was was classified as a beetroot. He’s now part of the party. Did he jump up and down about it? So stop making a mountain out of molehill. I’m not going to delete the cartoon.

Senator Hanson also said, “quote that she’s not calling him a traitor to his country. I never said that”.

Hmmmkay.

Hastie:

Well, I think it shows her to be weak and glass jawed. I gave the opportunity to either own her words publicly, or to take it down.

She chose neither, and in fact, rather than stepping up as a leader, she claims she could be prime minister. She actually retreated back into cartoons and memes.

So I think we’ve seen what Pauline Hanson ultimately is about.

She’s not fit to govern this country, and she’s also cast a massive slur on veterans around the country who think that Australian soldiers should hold high standards of conduct on the battlefield.

It’s actually attack on veterans, not just attack on me, because you’ve got to remember more than 20 plus SAS combat veterans were called to give evidence in the federal court. Are they traitors too?

This question she won’t answer, and I think it shows weakness from her.

Q: Will you take legal action?

Hastie:

I’m not after legal action, particularly when she’s financed by Australia’s richest person. Why would I walk into a fight that I can’t win financially? But yes, I’m going to impose costs politically, and that’s why I’m here this morning, telling Australians around this country that what you see is not what you get with Pauline Hanson.

You can always tell what change is coming by what the ministers are banging on about. And Jason Clare has been banging on about this for months in question time, so the change was coming – the latest test results just give him the hook to take it more public.

So what does he mean by digital detox?

Not the smart board. But if you look in the average classroom today, you’ll see tablets and laptops on every desk. When we were at school, there was a computer room. Now these things are everywhere at home and at school. They’re not always used to learn. They’re sometimes used just for entertainment as well or as a distraction in the classroom. And all of the evidence we’ve got, both from the results yesterday as well as other tests, is that the more kids are using computers, the lower their results are. So and the other thing worth, I think everyone will know this. If you use a pen to write something down, you’re more likely to remember it than if you type it down. So there’s plenty of evidence here for us to act.

Q: Teachers also say discipline problems, and they also tell us the curriculum is stacked with stuff that shouldn’t be there. What do you tell them, are they just ticking boxes? They’re doing all the management stuff. Get rid of some of the paperwork. Can you do that?

Clare:

So two things. First, on discipline. If kids are mucking up, then no one learns in the classroom. So that’s why behaviour is important. Getting rid of mobile phones helped, but states are doing some good work now on increasing suspension policies for principals as well as codes of conduct, not just for kids but for parents. About what’s expected of kids at school in terms of their behaviour.

Then in terms of the curriculum, we’ve got to fix the curriculum too – the Poms did this over a decade ago and their results went up yesterday, not down.

We’re starting with maths because maths is sequential and we’re starting with the first three years of maths. So kindy or reception through to years one and two.

In a couple of weeks we’ll get advice on the changes we need to make to the maths curriculum for those little kids, just to make sure that we teach it in the right order so they don’t fall behind and never catch up, and then we’ll make a decision in a couple of weeks about the next chunk of the curriculum that we need to fix.

Education minister Jason Clare is continuing his educational overhaul message – he has been speaking about this for a while, which is the government laying the ground work for some pretty big changes – chief among them, getting pencils back in students hands, and screens out.

This is in response to the latest education testing results which shows Australian students are still going backwards.

He told the Seven Network:

Well, if you have a look at this, this is a test of 15 year olds around the world. I think 91 countries. They’re all seeing the same trend here. What’s the common factor here? You know, I think it’s this sort of stuff. If you have a look at this report that came out yesterday, it says that the more kids are on screens at school, the more likely they are to fall behind that, the more time they spend in front of a laptop or a tablet, the lower their results are.

And so I think that tells us that we need a digital detox in our schools.

New York, New York has just announced that that they’re going to ban AI from primary schools. The Trump administration has just said to schools across the nation that they need to use tech in schools for a purpose. Not all the time. Victoria has just announced that they’re going to limit screen time in primary schools to 90 minutes a day in high schools, to two hours a day. 

So this is coming, and I’m going to put this on the agenda when education ministers meet in a couple of weeks time here, because I think the evidence is in. We need a digital detox in our schools.

Speaking of ‘forever chemicals’ Peter Hannam, writing for Renew Economy reports its the unspoken part of the data centre danger – not only are we getting more e-waste (in some cases, the hardware for these centres has to be replaced every 3-5 years as the chips surpass the established hardware), we are also at risk at putting more of these forever chemicals – chemicals which do not break down – into our environment. FUN!

Aaron Bunch for AAP

Toxic “forever chemicals” have been found in Australian rainwater for the first time, but not at levels dangerous to human health.

Eight PFAS compounds were detected in rainwater samples collected in Melbourne between 2024 and 2025, by researchers from RMIT University and EPA Victoria.

“All the concentrations we found were well below the (National Health and Medical Research Council) drinking water guidelines for PFAS,” Analytical chemist Oliver Jones told AAP.

“I don’t want to scare people thinking that our rain’s now full of PFAS … even if you were drinking the rain, you wouldn’t get anywhere near enough to cause any harm.

“It’s reassuring for people that might use rain as a source of drinking water.”

The research, based on three Melbourne rainfall samples, also offered clues about how PFAS chemicals reach waterways and catchments far from obvious sources of contamination.

“Sometimes there’s an obvious source where they’re coming from, but sometimes you find it in a remote area where you’ve got no industry,” Professor Jones said.

“Potentially atmospheric transport is one method of movement that hasn’t been accounted for.”

Prof Jones said PFAS could be swept into the atmosphere from urban and industrial areas attached to dust particles or tiny water droplets, travelling long distances before returning to the environment through rainfall.

It suggests rainfall could be an important pathway for PFAS entering waterways, along with better-known sources such as wastewater and landfill.

PFAS are a large group of human-made chemicals comprising thousands of individual compounds used in products ranging from firefighting foams and food packaging to textiles, cosmetics and non-stick cookware.

They have been found in the environment near industrial sources, such as airports, where aqueous film-forming foams have been used in aviation firefighting and training.

The researchers analysed rainwater collected on three occasions and tested for 30 PFAS compounds.

Prof Jones hopes policymakers consider the findings when making regulations for PFAS use in the future.

“PFAS are often called ‘forever chemicals’, but that term can be misleading because it suggests they never break down, which isn’t actually the case,” he said.

“A more accurate description is that they are highly persistent, or ‘lingering’, chemicals that can remain in the environment for a long time, which is why understanding their behaviour is so important.”

The study, called Concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in the rainwater of South-Eastern Australia, was published in the Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology journal.

Hello and welcome to the last sitting day of this week (we have another week to go so don’t get too excited)

The Coalition can claim a victory – their focus on the tobacco tax has hurt the government enough in the FM radio/Breakfast TV polls that police are about to get some new powers. They’ll be able to use cheap prices, fake branding or hidden products as reasons to suspect black market ciggies and vapes and use that as justification for enforcement of existing laws.

Is this the biggest issue in Australia right now? Of course not. But much like youth crime – which is all the media focuses on the moment someone in politics decides they need an issue to hang their hat on – people are seeing a lot of the results of the black market tobacco fight right now, so it seems like one of the biggest issues in the nation.

And there is nothing politicians like more than giving police more powers.

So here we are.

Meanwhile, I had heard whispers of this yesterday and woke up to see that Paul Sakkal from the SMH had reported on it – Anthony Albanese has started talks with Angus Taylor over migration numbers. The government and the Coalition are jumping at One Nation’s shadow on this issue – notice how house prices are coming down (very, very slightly) with the normal migration settings and no one is really talking about migration at the moment? Because they don’t have an easy scapegoat for the racism? But everyone knows that the market will normalise (it usually takes about three months after any sort of change, and also – house prices are still up about 6% year on year, so let’s not kid ourselves that we have seen any sort of affordability set in) and that will mean the migration ‘debate’ starts up again, because they’ll have their scapegoat again (and once again everyone will pretend that there wasn’t three months of THE SKY IS FALLING over a small dip in house price rises).

All of this is to say that Albanese wants to see Labor’s migration cuts introduced as a piece of legislation that has the Coalition’s support so there is no big fight to get it past the senate, and therefore, no big national ‘debate’. One Nation is the winner in all of this and the most vulnerable in our migration cohort – asylum seekers and refugees – will be the ones who suffer. Because there are not too many levers in migration any government can pull to cut the numbers. We are a migrant nation. And have been since the 1950s. Multiculturalism is built into government policy and has been since the 1980s. Our nation only succeeds because of migration – our birthrate is low, our population is aging, and our workforce doesn’t keep up with out it. But hey – racism has always worked in Australia, so why not just dig in a bit deeper? The Coalition most likely won’t give Albanese what he wants – there is no real upside for them – but there is also no upside for them in following One Nation. Much like our national political ‘debates’ the Coalition’s vote is yet to bottom out.

And after ruling out for two days that Australia won’t follow the UK, France and about 10 other countries in sanctioning trade from Israel in the West Bank, we still don’t know what the other sanctions Australia will put in place will be. Penny Wong doesn’t want a blanket ban – she says it will have unintended consequences for Australian businesses. Which? What? Are we supposed to care if Australian businesses are doing trade with Israeli companies in what the ICJ advised two years ago was illegally held Palestinian territory? I mean obviously it always has been illegal, but the advisory opinion handed down two years ago cemented that in international law, meaning UN members are supposed to do all they can to not support or facilitate illegal settlers from remaining there.

But Australia has…reasons. Apparently. We’re just yet to know what they are. Or if Australia has spoken to its allies which have sanctioned trade and told them why we weren’t doing the same thing. And if so, when.

So we’ll be following all that and whatever else pops up today. Time for coffee number three, and maybe a piece of cake. Join us?