The Point Live: Fallout from 'weak' gambling response continues, with more Liberal MPs to cross the floor; advocates heartbroken over NDIS deal. As it happened.

We are going to call it a day now, so we can be back at full force for the last sitting day of this sitting, tomorrow.

Thank you to all of you for dropping by – we still can’t believe how many of you come along for the ride. It means the world and we hope you are enjoying the blog. We still have plans for expansions, and different ways to cover things, so we hope you stick around.

Until tomorrow- take care of you. Ax

Here is some of how Bowers saw QT:

Hamdi Jama

Yesterday on the blog, Greg wrote about One Nation’s proposal to take the tobacco excise back to its 2013 level. In real terms, it would take it back to where it was in 2001. 

Since 2001, the tobacco excise has increased by more than 330%. Over that same time, smoking among adults dropped from around 23% in 2001 to less than 8% in 2025. While some of this can be attributed to other aspects of tobacco control policy – like plain packaging, for example – increasing cigarette prices has also played its part. 

The Australian Financial Review reports One Nation’s proposal could help curb the illegal tobacco market and undermine organised crime. The main argument is that falling excise revenue collected by the Commonwealth and the growth in illicit tobacco sales indicate that taxes aren’t doing their job. 

But a hasty massive cut to excise risks making smoking far more attractive.  

If smoking rates returned to anywhere near the levels seen in 2001, there would only be more addiction, more disease, and higher health costs. 

Tobacco policy is one of Australia’s greatest public health success stories.  

While Australia certainly needs to find a solution to surging illicit tobacco and organised crime profiting from these sales, blunt solutions like a 75% cut put this success at risk. 

It doesn’t happen as often as it should. But after Jacqui Lambie delivered her powerful personal story regarding her injuries, which I encourage you to watch and absorb, she was surrounded by cross-party support.

For a moment, they were all just humans

For those who couldn’t hear the original video (which was an issue on some browsers – we are working on a fix) the transcript of Lambie’s speech is below.

Lambie:

Last night, I told Kate’s story: a female veteran who waited for three years to get surgery for vaginal prolapse.
Why did she wait so long? Because she couldn’t find a gynecologist who was happy with the low prices DBA had to pay.

If I didn’t have a good job, that could have been me.

About six months ago, my vagina started to prolapse. This is an injury that is directly connected to my back injuries from my time in the army.

My vagina was collapsing, and three months later, it was taking my bladder with it because there is because there is such limited access to gynecologists in more and regional areas like Tasmania, I was looking and waiting for months for an appointment, and that’s and that’s the private system in Tasmania just to see a gynecologist. I put my claim into DVA over a month ago. Crickets, no duty of care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, absolute zero. So I came to Canberra to get the operation. I paid the $7,000.

If I was like the majority of female veterans, I would have had to wait for DVA to approve my claim, and then I would have to search and hope and hope like hell that there would be a gynecologist who would accept the low rate that was paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That’s how much they care about our vaginas. I’m not alone. This is a condition suffered by one in 12 Australian women, but we can’t be sure about those numbers because we don’t keep accurate data. That’s shocking in itself. One of the most common and awful conditions that can be caused by childbirth, and we don’t keep accurate data. And when it comes to our female veterans, it’s even worse.

A survey of nearly 500 female veterans who have completed a minimum of six months of active duty found that two thirds reported pelvic health concerns, including 12% who reported pelvic organ collapse. The awful thing about this condition is that it also affects your bladder.
A crucial treatment for post-prolapse surgery is physiotherapy.

But female veterans, but female veterans can only get a maximum of four physio treatments, and they have to fight their way through a matter of forms to get that. And for women not in the army, they’re only entitled to five physio appointments under Medicare, even though the experts say that the recommended amount is between five and 12 appointments at the very least.

How would that go under the cap for our for our veterans, let alone our females?

Prolapse can be brought on by carrying heavy packs, high-impact training, combat training. In other words, as a first generation of Aussie women veterans who did combat training, but men, men and women’s bodies are different.

But of course, that wasn’t has never been factored in.

And when I asked Angus Campbell years ago now if there was any scientific evidence that women’s bodies could stand up to the amount of weight that they are carrying in the in the defense force, he admitted they hadn’t even bothered to look into it, and they still have not.

They didn’t have any scientific evidence, and once again, like I said, they still don’t.

They want us to fight for this country. You want us to have babies for the country, but you’re not interested in supporting our reproductive system.

When the DVA takes off on a claim, they must factor in at least one statement of principle. SOPs, we call them.

These are legislative instruments that set out factors which can connect injuries, disease, or death from service. These are numbers from every. These these are numbers from everything, from tinnitus to erectile dysfunction. But guess what? There’s no SOP, there is no SOP for vaginal prolapse.

An SOP for penis problems, but no SOP for vagina problems. So either DVA doesn’t know that female veterans have vaginas, or they actually don’t care.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister, Minister Miles, and Minister Keough, what they would do if their penis was hanging by a thread.

What would they do if treatment for that injury directly connected to their military service was was denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Would they say, “Okay, no worries, I don’t really need my penis”.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think so.

I’m asking you once more. I’m begging you, Prime Minister. We are already suffering enough. Drop the bloody cap.
Drop it, mate. It is so unfair. It is what we do not need. It is enough. Veterans have had enough. Leave us alone.

But before the house leaves, Anthony Albanese gives a speech honouring Tony Wright, a long time member of the press gallery for the Age and Sydney Morning Herald, who is retiring from the gallery.

Wright was one of my writing mentors when I was at Fairfax. He is one of the most generous people in the media industry and while he will still be writing from time to time, the loss of his sketches, keen eye for humanity and the ridiculousness, will be missed.

Albanese:

I’d like to speak for a moment about a true treasure of the Press Gallery, Tony Wright, who’s with us in the gallery up there.

It is appropriate that we acknowledge his presence on a day in which the House of Representatives has indeed acknowledged the importance of journalism by adopting the media bargaining incentive, because after 50 years in journalism, Tony is calling it a day.

Respected, admired, and loved, he’s been a fixture for readers of the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and even for a while the Bulletin. Through his observations of Australian political life and the great sweep of life beyond politics, he has taught us so much.

He’s made us laugh. He’s made us rift. He’s found joy without ever shying away from sorrow. He’s been pointed, but never barbed.

Crucially, he’s never lost sight of humanity, not even in this place that sometimes does, and he’s reminded us of the importance of taking the time to stop and smell the flowers, or at least admiring them as you fly past on a motorbike.

Tony has always been a harvester of moments, finding the small things that so many of us may miss, and deftly weaving them into a much bigger picture.

Many writers can deliver a pearl, but few have Tony’s love for the humble grain at its heart.

Tony, I know this isn’t a full stop, and that when the mood takes you, you’ll still be sharing your words with your readers.

Until you do, though, we will follow your advice to to quote you, hold our memories close, and polish them every now and then.

On behalf of all of us here, and on behalf of your many readers who admire you, respect you, and read every word when they see your byline. Thank you, thank you for what you have done. You have done it with good cheer. You have done it your own way.

To quote a great Italian, and bravo on your career, and we wish you all the very best for your future,

Taylor:

I join with the Prime Minister in acknowledging and commending Tony Wright. More than 50 years in journalism is a thoroughly fine innings.

It’s a tough innings too, especially so many years in the Canberra Press Gallery. Tony has been profoundly surviving since 1970, and as he himself acknowledged, he started on a beaten-up typewriter in the age of ink.

Some of you may have seen a quite iconic black and white photograph of Tony from the 1970s. Everyone in seeing that photo would be drawn in not only by the young man’s inquisitive, journalistic gaze as he peers into and beyond the camera, but also by his striking, flowing flock of hair, benefiting from times and his profession, Tony. From that young man in his early career to the seasoned journalist we salute in the gallery today, you’ve seen so much, done so much, and written so much.

From a school holiday freelancer for your small country paper, the Albury Wodonga Border Mail, to associate editor and special writer for the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, from covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, iconic events in in my lifetime and lifetimes of so many here, to the fallout of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, to the genocide in Rwanda, to the ups and downs of Australian politics and elections.

As many have acknowledged, the pieces you’ve penned have been vivid, informative, and a hallmark of clarity. But more than that, you have a deep appreciation of history. And as you’ve said, if something has happened before, it most likely will happen again.

History is often so surprising that it will capture a reader captured is a reader looking for meaning.

You also had wise words for budding journalists in your observation that everyone has a story. You simply have to know the questions to ask, and usually they’ll tell you.

Tony, we commend you for more than 50 years of words and stories that have stayed in people’s heads and touched. touched people’s hearts, and acknowledging your retirement today. We know that no writer ever truly retires, so we wish you well for what’s happened.

Mayo independent Rebekha Sharkie has jumped on the ‘non-citizens’ are able to access the 5% home deposit guarantee scheme, asking Clare O’Neil:

It’s reported approximately 5,000 non-citizens, one-fifth of the overall applicants, have accessed the 5% first home-buyers deposit scheme, many of whom may own overseas properties. Rightly, the Government does not allow HECS debt to be accrued by permanent residents as they’re not Australian citizens. So why does the Government expose Australian citizens to the risk of loan default from non-Australians accessing the 5% deposit scheme?

Just as a reminder – it is open to permanent residents, who, given they are buying a house that has to be lived in, you would imagine WANT TO LIVE HERE AND CONTRIBUTE TO AUSTRALIA.

But you only need to say ‘non-citizens’ these days to get a flurry around your socials posts, so here we are.

O’Neil:

We’ve been through this before in the Parliament. There is tightly controlled eligibility for this scheme. Temporary residents are not eligible for the scheme, despite what’s being inferred and said by the Leader of the Opposition. The only people who are eligible for this scheme is citizens of our country and permanent residents. 

Now, Speaker, permanent residents are very likely to have lived in our country for a long time. The hint is in the word “permanent”. These are people who are working as doctors and nurses. They are aged care workers caring for our elderly, carers who are working in disability and other sectors. They are permanent residents across our country and they are helping our country grow. Now, I’m hearing a lot of interjection from the Leader of the Opposition and, Speaker, I want to remind him again that the words that he utters in this Parliament are not just heard by the people he thinks…

I’m responding to an interjection, Speaker. Well, I can… I can handle it, manager thank you.

Dan Tehan has a point of order though:

Out of respect to the member who asked this question, it didn’t have anything to do with the Opposition and I think the minister should be brought back to the question itself.

Milton Dick tells O’Neil to be relevant.

Tehan still isn’t happy, so Albanese gets up with his old manager of opposition business hat:

The minister was referring to the policy issue which related directly to the question that was asked. The question that was asked went it to eligibility for the 5% deposit. It is perfectly relevant for the minister and indeed in order to give an answer to that question, it is necessary for the minister to point out who is eligible for this scheme and the fact is…that is why the minister needs to go through the way the scheme operates and why the explanation of its eligibility is critical. 

Dick rules that everyone is right and O’Neil should just be relevant in her compare and contrast:

I was reporting to the Parliament that in the sitting break, the Leader of the Opposition was busted saying behind closed doors Labor has made the 5% deposit program available to anyone the day they arrive in the country. And I want to call that out, Speaker, because it speaks to the disgraceful reflex for division that they bring opposite to the problems in our Leader of the Opposition actually said publicly when he announced he wanted to withdraw support for permanent residents, he said, “When you commit to this country, we’ll commit to you.” And I want our loved Chinese Australian community and I want our loved Indian Australian community, to know that we see your commitment to our country. We respect it and we value it. Speaker, this is a program our government is incredibly proud of. 260,000 people have the keys to their own home today because of this fantastic support that we are offering. Not only have they focused on division, they do not have a single sensible thing to say about housing, the most important issue facing our country. We’re not going to be distracted by their on session with conflict. We’ve got housing issues facing the country and that’s why we’re making real changes to Australia’s housing system.

Greg Jericho

The Senate Question Time started with a big target on Matt Keogh. Senator Cash asked if the PM still has confidence in him given he has lost the trust of veterans.

Senator Cash referred to the issue last year where Keogh was rolled over a policy to limit the retrospective awarding of military medals after the LNP and Greens came out against the move.

Bridget McKenzie followed up essentially asking the same questions (heck why be original).

Penny Wong takes issue by pointing out the pretty massive cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs under the Morrison government.

Greens Senator Barbara Pocock then asked Senator Ayres about rents – she isn’t stupid enough to refer to property developers predictions, but instead talks about the lack of rental caps and other measures that have left those on low and middle incomes struggling to pay their rent. She points out rents are up 23% over the past 5 years.

Senator Ayres delivers the talking points with aplomb including mention of “Greens Political Party”, which is always a good indicator that it is time to stop listening.

God help us then Malcom Roberts gets a question and decided to start by saying “there will be no welcome to country” and then asks about a proposal to build a transcontinental train line from the Pilbara to the Bowen Basin and wants to know why the Northern Australia Investments Fund hasn’t agreed to it.

Don Farrell tells him, idk, the NAIF will no doubt get around to examining it.

Jane Hume then fronts up to ask about rents and wants to guarantee that no renter will pay more than $2 a week more. I mean FMD.

Dire times.

Angus Taylor decides to get into the Matt Keogh is bad at his job hour, and asks Anthony Albanese:

Prime Minister, yesterday, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs admitted he got it wrong in refusing to meet with veterans to discuss Labor’s cruel cap on allied health services. He also got it wrong on trying to put a use-by date on me recognition. He got it wrong in refusing to support the Invictus Games and got it wrong on cutting funding for the family of fallen Victoria Cross hero Cameron Baird VC, MG. Why won’t the Prime Minister sack this incompetent and disrespectful minister?

Albanese:

I have every confidence in the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. And, indeed, I consider it to be one of the great privileges of my time in this place that I, as Prime Minister, but previously as well, get to engage with those men and women who wear our uniform, who serve in our name, and who deserve our total respect at all times for what they do.

Our veterans stepped up for us and we must step up for And I spoke earlier today about my first experience overseas, back in 1986, with those extraordinary veterans, led by Weary Dunlop.

Since then, every single conflict has seen Australia’s men and women serving with honour, with dignity, and they deserve our respect.

Now, the minister inherited a system where…where the former Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the member for Calare, you will recall, the actions he had to take.

Allegra Spender:

Australian real wages have fallen 5% since March 2021. The only sustainable antidote is productivity growth and business and economists agree deregulation is central to that. I welcome Budget measures for constraint but we need more and the Budget didn’t curb what the PC calls Australia’s red tape impulse.

Will the Government act to reset incentives around regulation by something like a regulatory review committee with similar importance to the RC, or a minister for better regulation?

Jim Chalmers:

The last part of her question, Katy Gallagher is the minister for better regulation and I’m proud to support her work. In fact, the whole Cabinet is engaged in one way or another in this important task of economic reform, particularly when it comes to better regulation.

As part of that, I’ll shout out the Assistant Treasurer and assistant minister to the Treasury for the work they do. The Assistant Treasurer gave a wonderful speech today at the National Press Club about some important issues.

I thank the honourable member for her question for a number of reasons, but partly because I acknowledge the important contribution that she made to the Economic Reform Roundtable, which began a year ago today. Today is the one-year anniversary.

And that reform roundtable brought together a bunch of people to shape the economic future of this country. Now, this Government has delivered more economic reform in the year since that roundtable than any the quarter of a century which preceded it and that reform was really important because it helped shape an ambitious tax reform agenda, the broadest productivity agenda and the most net savings in a Budget in a generation and better regulation was important to all three of those objectives.

When it comes to targets, the Budget made it clear that our objective here, our expectation here is that the combination of our efforts on regulation will cut compliance costs in our economy by more than $10 billion a year, Mr Speaker. 

Of that, almost a tenth of that, is in the financial sector a lone, and so whether it’s the omnibus bill that we passed on regulatory reform, whether it’s the way that we’ve changed the statement of expectations for our regulators, whether it’s the better regulation road map through the Council of Financial Regulators, whether it’s the steps we’re taking with the states on competition policy and I acknowledge assistant minister Leigh in that regard, abolishing nuisance tariffs, speeding up approvals, fast-tracking housing approvals.

I acknowledge the Housing Minister and Environment Minister. Streamlining production. A bunch of steps the Government is taking to meet the kinds of objectives the honourable member has account asked me about. The honourable member asked me whether there’s more work to do.

Of course there is. Of course there is. When it comes to better regulation, there’s not a destination here. It requires ongoing work.

What we’ve shown in the year since the Economic Reform Roundtable is a willingness across the Cabinet and the government to cut compliance costs where we can and make sure that regulation is servings a useful pumps because we acknowledge, as the honourable member does, just how important this is to turning around a couple of decades of poor productivity performance in our economy.

The Coalition is leaving most of this to Michael McCormack and Phil Thompson (not Andrew Hastie, who is also a veteran, but because of his testimony against Ben Roberts Smith in the civil trial, is seen as being a bit too ‘hot’ on these issues, especially since One Nation has made an issue of it. Amazing how doing the right thing can be seen as detrimental to your job!)

Phil Thompson:

Former Air Force fighter jet pilot Dr Tim Nelson spoke about the minister’s behaviour in a meeting and I quote, “He walked into the room, refused to shake our hand, sat down with his arms crossed and rolled his eyes.” Yesterday, the minister told the House, and I quote, “I don’t agree with the characterisation that you’ve just outlined.” Is the minister calling this veteran a liar?

Matt Keogh:

I meet with many veterans, veteran family members, defence personnel on a regular basis and respect every position they put to me in what they say and describe, but I also am not in the habit of repeating the content and detail of all of those conversations and meetings enter the Parliament every day. And I provided the answer that I provided yesterday.

Q: My question is to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel. Veterans and their families have lost faith in the minister. Former Royal Australian Navy diver and Fair Care for Veterans spokesman John Armfield said this after the meeting with the minister. “I enlisted under the Navy values of courage, honour, honesty and loyalty, yet you fail to display any of these values, minister.” How can the minister continue as Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel if he cannot uphold defence values?

With the full caveat that the Coalition did not act as they should while in government, Labor should know better here – because they were the ones who were flaming the Coalition for not acting as they should while in government over these very issues.

Matt Keogh:

The circumstances that that man has gone through – and he gave evidence to the royal commission about that and I saw that and engaged with him about the circumstances he had to confront. They were tragic and terrible and I’ve said to him and receive said that to him before. Navy apologised for some of that conduct to him as well. And very much should have done so. So I can very much understand why he would feel that there has been a breach of faith with him in terms of the upholding of the Australian Defence Force values and his engagement. So I understand that. I am sorry that he holds that view about me. 

All I can do, as I try to do each and every day, is to make sure that we are continuing the work of improving the system that exists to support our serving personnel, veteran community and families so they get the service and support that we all agree they deserve.

Matt Keogh has under performed enough, he is making Phil Thompson look good, which is no mean feat.

Q: This morning, Renee Wilson, CEO of the families and veterans guild and partner of Gary Wilson told the media the first she heard of the minister’s Discussion Paper about his cruel cap was in Question Time yesterday. Why hasn’t the minister picked up the phone to the CEO of the organisation representing Australia’s war widows? ,

Keogh:

I thank the member for his question and I recognise his real dedication to these issues, from his own service and the work he does in his community of Townsville, a key garrison city for our country. I have had engagements with Renee, as you mentioned. She does great work through her guild and the work she does to support our veteran families and I’ve had many engagements with her. We’ve been clear when we announced the changes to allied health to improve access that we would also be consulting with the veteran community around how we make sure that we ensure that there’s no gap in service provision to our veteran community as a result of these changes and we’ve been clear about that and we’ll be starting that soon and as I mentioned in Question Time yesterday, that will involve a Discussion Paper.

I haven’t had a direct conversation with her about the Discussion Paper but we look forward to seeing all of that feedback come in it’s a part of that process, including from Renee and her organisation and the many other ex-service organisations around the country.

Helen Haines wants to know:

Your universal outdoor mobile obligation bill has strong support and could pass this week but it’s been sitting on the notice paper for over a year. I’ve put forward several amendments, including vital reforms to help facilitate temporary disaster roaming. mobile outages have shown a hands-off approach to telecommunications is not enough – Minister why is the Government going slow mow on UOMO?

Anika Wells:

The universal outdoor mobile obligation will enable for the first time baseline outdoor mobile connectivity across Australia. It will substantially expand scope for people to seek help if they are lost, injured, facing natural disasters in areas without traditional terrestrial mobile coverage.

I know this is a really important issue for the member and I thank her for her ongoing engagement in the UOMO Bill to date.

I think it’s fair to say the electorate of Indi is a real exemplar of the kinds of communities that UOMO will assist. I was pleased to meet with the member earlier to hear her concerns on behalf of her constituents.

Why hasn’t it passed the House yet? As the member is aware, the Albanese Labor Government has progressed several key pieces of legislation in the last two weeks and I look forward to UOMO coming back for consideration in detail soon. I thank the member for her constructive, proposed amendments. I’ll respond to them in full when we do consideration in detail and the default start date is 1 December 2027 so the number one factor in whether any obligation can commence on that date is the development of the direct-to-device market. That’s the number one factor. That’s why we’ll continue to assess industry readiness.

The Coalition are not wrong in identifying Matt Keogh as a weak link in the ministry line up. He might have pipped Sam Rae for being overwhelmed with portfolio duties.

Michael McCormack, who has many faults, does actually care about this issue though and has been for some time.

Q: The Australian defence veterans covenant oath says we undertake to preserve the memory of those who have served and treat all members of our community as respected and valued. This week, veterans and their advocates say the minister to represent them has, in their words, treated them with contempt. Is the minister confident veterans would agree he is upholding the covenant oath?

Keogh:

I thank the member for his question. And I thank him for referencing that legislation. Because that was legislation that was passed by this Parliament with the support of all sides, as you would absolutely expect. Not only are we honoured by the presence of those people that have served in our Defence Force in our Parliament – and we thank them for their service – but it is the responsibility of our nation, of our Parliament, of any government to make sure that we look after our veterans and I don’t think anybody would disagree with that proposition or what is in that legislation and set out as our obligation.

As I said at this Despatch Box early on in becoming minister, there had clearly been failings in providing the necessary support, services, spendsation payments, right treatment in service and for those people who had served.

Not just by one government, by many governments, but we all had to work together to make that system work better and it’s why there was a royal commission into defence and veterans’ suicide and it’s why we have worked so hard to make sure that we are working to implement the recommendations of the royal commission into defence and veterans’ suicide amongst other changes and improvements in the system of support for our veteran community but also making the lives of our serving men and women better as well. And, as we do that, it’s clear from the failures of the past that there’s always room for improvement.

And it’s why we’ve also made sure that we’ve been working together with the veteran community and have always said in implementing change that we work with the veteran community to get those changes to work right for them.

And I know, as I’m sure every former Minister for Veterans’ Affairs in this place like the member for McEwen knows, there has been, built up over time, a lack of trust in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and we know why and we want to remedy that and want to change that and that’s why we made the investments in the department that we’ve made and we continue to work to make it better for everybody.

And I think we have been making it better. Is there more work to do? 

There absolutely is and always will be and that’s what we will keep doing and I hope that every government in the future will always keep working to make those systems

But first there is a statement from both the prime minister and opposition leader about the importance of the Australia-Thailand relationship.

Then Melissa McIntosh gets the first question and she is VERY energised by it.

Q: On Monday, the minister said she was damn proud of Labor’s broken promises on capital gains tax and negative gearing. Today, Australia’s biggest rental property manager, Ray White, said rents could surge by 30% as a result of Labor’s toxic taxes. Is the minister damn proud of making millions of Australians pay higher rents.

OK, putting aside that the Coalition have apparently just discovered renters. If house prices are going DOWN (which was their big scare campaign from last week) how are rents going UP? Especially since if you own a rental property, you still get all the tax subsidies? What is the problem here? This is all so stupid.

Clare O’Neil:

I really appreciate this question from the member opposite. Speaker, I think I’ve said to the Parliament before that we should try to speak the truth in this chamber whenever And I’m really worried for the honourable member opposite who has asked me this question for the sheer number of mistruths she was able to pack into one question.

Let’s go through it one by one.

The first is that she has knowingly misquoted me in her question. The second is that she has reached for Ray White and I want to read to the Parliament what Ray White have said today. “Ray White is not forecasting a 30% rise in rents.”

Now, Speaker, how incredibly embarrassing for the Opposition because this is actually the second day in a row that they have come into this Parliament and misquoted a party saying this.

So I want to remind the Parliament that when they came into the Parliament yesterday, they accused the National Australia Bank of saying the same thing and then the National Australia Bank clarified this was not a forecast and it is important to note that they do not forecast rental yields. I mean, seriously.

You could not make this up.

I want to go back to basics, Speaker, and actually talk to the Parliament about what is really going on here, not the fictional world being created by those opposite. We’ve got really serious housing problems facing our country and unlike those opposite. We didn’t discover the existence of renters yesterday.

We have decades of advocacy for this third of our… warned.population, which is bearing the brunt for what has gone wrong in our country, Speaker. 25 years of Australian governments – let’s be honest, of every political colour – who have not done enough about this problem. And that is changing under our government. We have a massive and comprehensive policy we are putting in place that supports renters to build more homes to help with Commonwealth rent assistance, to improve rental standards and perhaps most importantly of all, to give what most Australian renters tell us they want most of all and that is a realistic pathway into home ownership.

Now, Speaker, let’s not pretend this is about renters. I’ve been in this Parliament for 12 years now. I have never, for a single day, heard those opposite come forward and actually advocate for renters. What they are doing is using renters as a cover for a political campaign to defend a broken system of which renters are the main victims, Speaker. On this side of the chamber, we’ve got real reforms to help renters around this country and we’ll keep advocating for them, as we have for decades.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has just shared a heartbreaking update on the toll her military service and training continues to take on her body.

Senator Lambie has previously spoken in detail how a back injury suffered during infantry training ended her 11-year military career, most notably at the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide in 2022.

But that was only part of the story.

Today’s update, bravely revealed in the Senate a short time ago, is incredibly powerful.

Please watch to the end.

(There may be some issues on Firefox browsers. Apologies we are working on it)

Transcript below.

Last night, I told Kate’s story: a female veteran who waited for three years to get surgery for vaginal prolapse.
Why did she wait so long? Because she couldn’t find a gynecologist who was happy with the low prices DBA had to pay.

If I didn’t have a good job, that could have been me.

About six months ago, my vagina started to prolapse. This is an injury that is directly connected to my back injuries from my time in the army.

My vagina was collapsing, and three months later, it was taking my bladder with it because there is because there is such limited access to gynecologists in more and regional areas like Tasmania, I was looking and waiting for months for an appointment, and that’s and that’s the private system in Tasmania just to see a gynecologist. I put my claim into DVA over a month ago. Crickets, no duty of care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, absolute zero. So I came to Canberra to get the operation. I paid the $7,000.

If I was like the majority of female veterans, I would have had to wait for DVA to approve my claim, and then I would have to search and hope and hope like hell that there would be a gynecologist who would accept the low rate that was paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That’s how much they care about our vaginas. I’m not alone. This is a condition suffered by one in 12 Australian women, but we can’t be sure about those numbers because we don’t keep accurate data. That’s shocking in itself. One of the most common and awful conditions that can be caused by childbirth, and we don’t keep accurate data. And when it comes to our female veterans, it’s even worse.

A survey of nearly 500 female veterans who have completed a minimum of six months of active duty found that two thirds reported pelvic health concerns, including 12% who reported pelvic organ collapse. The awful thing about this condition is that it also affects your bladder.
A crucial treatment for post-prolapse surgery is physiotherapy.

But female veterans, but female veterans can only get a maximum of four physio treatments, and they have to fight their way through a matter of forms to get that. And for women not in the army, they’re only entitled to five physio appointments under Medicare, even though the experts say that the recommended amount is between five and 12 appointments at the very least.

How would that go under the cap for our for our veterans, let alone our females?

Prolapse can be brought on by carrying heavy packs, high-impact training, combat training. In other words, as a first generation of Aussie women veterans who did combat training, but men, men and women’s bodies are different.

But of course, that wasn’t has never been factored in.

And when I asked Angus Campbell years ago now if there was any scientific evidence that women’s bodies could stand up to the amount of weight that they are carrying in the in the defense force, he admitted they hadn’t even bothered to look into it, and they still have not.

They didn’t have any scientific evidence, and once again, like I said, they still don’t.

They want us to fight for this country. You want us to have babies for the country, but you’re not interested in supporting our reproductive system.

When the DVA takes off on a claim, they must factor in at least one statement of principle. SOPs, we call them.

These are legislative instruments that set out factors which can connect injuries, disease, or death from service. These are numbers from every. These these are numbers from everything, from tinnitus to erectile dysfunction. But guess what? There’s no SOP, there is no SOP for vaginal prolapse.

An SOP for penis problems, but no SOP for vagina problems. So either DVA doesn’t know that female veterans have vaginas, or they actually don’t care.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister, Minister Miles, and Minister Keough, what they would do if their penis was hanging by a thread.

What would they do if treatment for that injury directly connected to their military service was was denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Would they say, “Okay, no worries, I don’t really need my penis”.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think so.

I’m asking you once more. I’m begging you, Prime Minister. We are already suffering enough. Drop the bloody cap.
Drop it, mate. It is so unfair. It is what we do not need. It is enough. Veterans have had enough. Leave us alone.

Apologies if the audio was not available on some browsers. Here’s a slightly trimmed version which should work.

Daniel Mulino is across his brief and across his boundaries so I wouldn’t expect him to slip up at this press club address.

Here is an example.

Q: A few days ago, PM talked to President Trump and he talked about the super system and characterised it as an investment system for Australia, including into the US. Do you see it as a tool of diplomacy and to be directed and encouraged to invest in Australian allies, more broadly, do you see government having a role in directing or encourager where superannuation funds are invested, including at home, into projects of nation building where the government is looking towards, like future made in Australia and that kind of thing? 

Mulino:

First and foremost, I want to put this out there, the superannuation system is there for the benefit of its members. It’s there for their dignity in retirement, it’s there to achieve the best long term risk adjusted rate of return. So the sole purpose test is absolutely critical. That remains the lode star for the system. Having said that, the superannuation system is now large. In achieving those risk adjusted rates of return for members, the superannuation system will end up investing in Australian companies through listed equities, or engage in – where it sees fit, it will engage in unlisted assets, and seek to diversity where appropriate by investing internationally.

We’ve seen and we’ll continue to see because of the size of the super system it will invest in assets that benefit our macroeconomy, but that’s in the context of where superannuation trustees are first and foremost being guided by the best interests of their members. On the international di mention, it’s also true to say that a number of observers, I believe, rightly, have pointed to the fact that Australia benefits from soft diplomacy in the investments that many super funds make in countries in our region. And beyond. Nicholas Moore has made points on this front. And that’s a benefit. But again, I would say similarly to my first point, that’s within the context of super trustees being guided by the best interests of members. As they diversify internationally.

There’s no doubt that Australia will benefit from the positive impacts of a lot of those investments.

AAP

Coalition MPs breaking ranks over contentious gambling reforms is a sign of a “healthy democracy at work”, the deputy opposition leader says.

Jane Hume defended internal dissent after backbenchers Pat Conaghan and Andrew Wallace crossed the floor to vote against gambling ad reforms, bucking the party line for the first time in their political careers.

Ms Hume said there had been robust debate within the coalition about the reforms and welcomed the decision of her colleagues.

“When you join the Liberal Party, you don’t sign up for a frontal lobotomy the way you do in the Labor Party. We are entitled to cross the floor,” Senator Hume told reporters on Wednesday.

“That’s a good thing. That’s a healthy democracy at work … I think we’ve landed well.

“I think the balance is right.”

Mr Conaghan slammed his party for being “weak” on the reforms after his time spent on the original inquiry into gambling chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, which advocated for a total ban.

Under the proposed changes, Australians would have access to a one-stop shop allowing them toopt out of online betting ads, put limitson commissions for betting agents and restrict incentivesfor problem gamblers.

The Nationals MP told AAP Ms Murphy would be “disgusted” by the Labor party avoiding an outright ad ban, and felt she would have thanked him for crossing the floor.

Ms Murphy’s widower Rod Glover said the bill was a big improvement on the status quo in a post on social media.

But he admitted it still falls well short of the Murphy Report recommendations.

“The limits of the reforms reflect, in large part, the considerable lobbying power of the gambling industry, major sporting codes and media organisations,” he said.

Debate has begun in the Senate after passing the lower house on Tuesday.

The bill before the Senate has been vastly improved, opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said.

“No longer will wagering companies in this country, be allowed to target those who are incurring very large losses, targeting those who are addicted to gambling and making their lives hell,” she said.

A partial ban on inducements has been included in the legislation, but it only applies to people during the first three months on the self-exclusion register BetStop.

The peak body for betting agencies has criticised the amendments for complicating the Australian market and playing into offshore illegal gambling sites.

Responsible Wagering Australia chief executive Kai Cantwell raised concern with the opt-out advertising register to be run by the media watchdog.

“These measures will significantly curtail our ability to advertise a legal product safely to adults,” Mr Cantwell said.

“If you push people away from the licensed, regulated market … you don’t stop them punting.

“You push them offshore, into products with no consumer protections, no support, no Betstop, and no contribution to Australian sport and racing.”

Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young slammed the bill, which she said was designed to fail Australian families.

“Labor has proven itself to be captured by the industry, and the Liberal Party has proven itself to be weak and toothless,” she told the Senate.

Senator Hanson-Young said she has received countless first-hand accounts including of a widow receiving gambling inducements after their husband died by suicide.

“The list goes on and on and on. And yet, it doesn’t seem to matter how many bodies pile up on these companies’ watch,” Senator Hanson-Young said.

“What a pack of bastards! How disgusting!”

Liberal senator Paul Scarr will cross the floor when the bill reaches a vote in the upper house.

“It’ll be only the second time in the seven years I’ve served in this place that I’ve chosen to do so,” he said.

“But I think this is such a serious issue for millions of Australians who’ve been impacted by gambling harm, and this is such a flawed piece of legislation that I have no choice but to do so.”

Greg Jericho

Amy has reported Tim Wilson blaming Jim Chalmers for today pretty putrid wage figures.

I’m always hesitant to give the man and his ego too much attention, but it is telling he doesn’t actually talk about wanting higher wage growth, it’s all just inflation caused by government spending, which is very much not a thing as the OECD pointed out recently (it be profits wot done it)

But there is certainly some blame to go around about private sector wages in the year to June growing slower than that have for 4 years. Who raised interest rates 3 times this year, including in the May which is in the June quarter?

Yes the RBA.

And why did they do it? Because they wanted to slow the economy, because they are worried about wage “expectations” – the fear that wages will take off if unemployment remains to low.

The kicker of course is if wages were to be growing faster than inflation, Wilson would be blaming the government for giving unions too much power and causing inflation.

Anyway, at least we (and the Treasurer’s office” know what will be Wilson’s question in Question Time today.

Mulino is addressing the national press club where he outlines the main announcement about new super regulations:

The first objective is prevention. For all investors, regardless of the type of superannuation fund they choose or the financial products they invest in, these reforms will reduce the likelihood of major consumer loss events occurring in the future. 

Today, I’m announcing a comprehensive crackdown on harmful lead generation practices. We will ban unlicensed real-time communication about superannuation. We will limit the anti-hawking exemption for financial advice to existing client relationships.

We will strengthen penalties for breaches of anti-hawking laws and the government will also take further steps to target the data collection and broking activities in the financial sector that often represent con sumers’ first point of contact. This is designed to disrupt some of the most damaging systems operating food. They intervene at the earliest point of consumer harm. It reduces the ability to contact potential victims for bad actors.

We are strengthening the oversight and governance of managed investment schemes. Audit and assurance requirements will be strengthened and managed investment schemes will be required to notify ASIC when they freeze, suspend or otherwise restrict investors’ ability to redeem their investments.

Alongside the additional funding already provided to ASIC in the 2026-27 Budget, these reforms will improve transparency, strengthen accountability and give regulators better visibility of emerging risks. 

Importantly, they will help regulators identify concerning flows of consumers and capital into high-risk products at a much earlier stage and intervene before problems become widespread consumer harm. Australians should expect strong protections when they choose to invest through pretensionly regulated parts of the superannuation system.

That is why I am also announcing a new framework to enable ASIC to direct superannuation trustees to commence a remediation process where there is reasonable suspicion trustees have failed to meet their obligations. Trustees would be required to compensate their members’ full capital losses where the trustee has breached its obligations.

We will also give APRA the power to set capital requirements to ensure superannuation trustees that offer higher-risk options have the financial capacity to meet these obligations. This is significant structural reform.

If a pretensionly regulated superannuation platform place as product before consumers and the trustee of that platform fails to discharge its responsibilities, consumers should not be left facing years of uncertainty while they pursue redress through multiple avenues. They should have a clear and practical pathway to meaningful compensation.

These reforms will encourage stronger investment governance and reinforce APRA’s ongoing work to address weaknesses in investment governance practices.

David Richardson

Today the Australian refers to new ABS data which shows just 61.9% of start ups 4 years ago still survive. Presumably the Australian wants to support its theme that the economy is in poor shape and that is the fault of the Labor Government.

With this data base you can cite a number of figures but the Australian cited the 4 year survival rate which is at a decade low. We do not know why the survival rates have fallen, but the ABS data also show the total business count went from 2,539,724 June 2022 to 2,814,778 in June 2026.

There are now (June 2026) 1,818,575 non-employing businesses. Those are sole traders who set up their own businesses. These people have very high business entry and exit numbers. The figures do not tell us a lot but exits may be due to people moving into employment or retirement, caring duties, education and so on. We just do not know.

One thing we do know is that in the past the Productivity Commission has been critical of small businesses because of their often poor management skills which hinders productivity growth. The PC’s Trade and Assistance Review shows small business receives government hand outs of around $5.5 billion. Yet small business often pays its employees less than other employers, has poor industrial relations, tends not to innovate and is associated with tax avoidance through trusts and other connivences. 

Tim Wilson has had a jibber jabber about Jim Chalmers, surrounded by his emotional support economics team:

Well, Australians continue to live the consequences of the Albanese government’s active inflation agenda. Today, we had data that showed that wages have gone backwards $1,600 a year over the life of this government. Every time the government makes a decision, they’re stoking inflation and they’re continuing to put more pressure on Australian households. We need a government that understands that we have to get inflation down.

But because the Albanese government is addicted to inflation and they continue to stoke inflation, tax inflation, and then spend inflation again as part of a vicious cycle. Wages are going backwards, and Australians are becoming poorer. It’s quite clear the treasurer is completely out of his depth in his portfolio.

We just need to look at the simple fact that he’s had to constantly walk back measures in his federal budget. We know today that the widow’s tax has now finally been repealed*. That was introduced by Jim Chalmers’ federal budget. This is not just a great victory, of course, for the Australian people, but for the pressure that’s been applied at every step on the government as a consequence of its budget, because Australians simply cannot trust the Albanese government to get its budget or inflation settings right, and we know that Australians are paying losing $1,600 a year now in wages over the life of this government.

*For changes that were not immediate and not coming in until March 2027 and were already being changed

Now that the Coalition has agreed to the gambling advertising reforms, which are barely the bare minimum, and not only not banned inducements, but basically helped legitimise them, the sell is on about why they settled for so little. The government obviously never wanted to do anything – Dolly knows why because the only people here who might get a little annoyed is gambling companies, but apparently that is enough.

So the Coalition and Labor are on the same sell – they have done this so you can still have a bet. Which was NEVER under threat. This wasn’t about banning gambling, it was about cutting advertising so that those with problems could avoid it and not make their recovery harder. But anyways, here is Angus Taylor but it could just as easily be Anthony Albanese on this:

This is an emotional issue, and it’s an important issue. I think we’re getting the balance right. And I’m very pleased that we have got bipartisan support for this legislation now. It will get through the parliament, of course, and post importantly, it will get the balance right between people having a bet – and they should be able to have a bet and, at the same time, making sure there’s protection for the most vulnerable – for kids, for those who have got gambling challenges and want to deal with those. That’s the balance we’ve sought to strike.

Emma Shortis

A hundred years ago, back in April, the Defence Minister Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles noted “Australia’s enduring commitment to rules and norms.” Marles was launching the 2026 National Defence Strategy, which specifies that it is in Australia’s national interests to work with the United States in “supporting the maintenance of global rules and norms”.

Hmmmmmm.

Fast forward to today, and the President of what Marles and the Australian government have repeatedly described as Australia’s most important security ally is posting again. Today, it’s one about how the Strait of Hormuz is “NEW U.S. territory”. Which would mean conquering the Strait by force, I guess? And unilaterally annexing territory? Which is not exactly in line with “global rules and norms”. Neither are the Trump administration’s attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC) – a system which Australia is legally obliged to uphold. 

Playing both sides here doesn’t seem like it’s in Australia’s long term interests. We’re sticking with the US alliance because it’s indispensable to our security while it is attacking that other thing that is indispensable to our security and our prosperity. 

For more on what Australia could be doing to support the institutions of international law, here’s a longer discussion I had on After America last week with Australian human rights lawyer and UN Commissioner Chris Sidoti. 

The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (the Alliance), the national peak body for mental health consumers including people with psychosocial disability, says the passing of the NDIS Reform Bill is a step backwards.

From the statement:

“That is not reform. It’s a fundamental retreat from the promise of the NDIS: that people with disability are entitled to the supports they need to live with dignity, autonomy and equal participation,” said Mx Brice – CEO of the Alliance.

“This legislation ignores the original rights-based framework the Scheme was built on and reduces it to a cost-containment mechanism, where human rights are subordinated to economic efficiency,” continued Mx Brice – CEO of the Alliance.

Savings that cause harm are not acceptable:

Sustainability cannot be achieved by weakening rights, reducing access, or shifting responsibility onto people with disability, their families and already overstretched service systems.

“These amendments will have a devastating, generational impact on all people living in Australia with psychosocial disability – both those diagnosed and those who will likely never be considered,” added Ms Darwin, Interim Chairperson of the Alliance.

Cuts to social and community participation supports do nothing to improve the sustainability of the NDIS and instead harm people who rely on these services to stay connected with their communities. The government’s push for these reductions is driven by short-term budget savings which will affect vulnerable people. As outlined in the independent report by the Grattan Institute, these cuts may help meet short-term fiscal targets, yet they fail to address the real challenges facing the NDIS in the long-term.

Greater risk of social isolation, worsening mental health, crisis episodes, hospitalisation and suicidality:

People with psychosocial disabilities represent one of the largest groups receiving Social, Community and Civic Participation (SCCP) supports, and these reductions will significantly impact them and their families.

Social and community participation supports are essential to recovery and daily functioning for people with psychosocial disability, enabling them to attend appointments, maintain relationships, engage with their communities, and participate in education, employment and volunteering.

“Reducing SCCP supports will shift costs to more expensive crisis and health systems in the absence of adequate alternative psychosocial supports and put more people at risk,” adds Mx Brice.

The Alliance was disappointed to hear over the past weekend that the NDIS Minister – Senator The Hon Jenny McAllister – would not commit to delaying the removal of participants from the scheme even if foundational supports are not ready, yet at the same time insisted that the government would not leave people without supports.

Individuals may be forced to undergo harmful treatments to get access to supports:

This Bill introduces stricter permanence requirements, requiring participants and prospective participants to have undertaken all “appropriate treatment” before a disability can be considered permanent.

While an amendment has been secured to ensure treatment cannot be a restrictive practice, such as forced medication, this does not resolve concerns for mental health consumers. “Under these reforms, a person could still be locked out of the NDIS simply for refusing to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. How is that ‘reasonable and necessary’ in 2026?” commented Mx Brice.

Impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

The Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre (IALEC) stated that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be disproportionately affected by the passing of this bill.

“The passing of this Bill will have long-reaching impacts on those individuals currently receiving NDIS supports, as well as their families and communities. It does not reflect a commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s right to the highest attainable standard of health. Our deep networks of care and connection will carry the burden of this decision,” said IALEC Policy & Reform Officer, Mx Hanrahan-Lawrence.

About the Mental Health Consumer Alliance:

The Mental Health Consumer Alliance is the national peak body for mental health consumers, led entirely by mental health consumers. It operates through a federation of state and territory consumer peaks and their 8000 members – ensuring its voice is shaped from the ground up rather than imposed from the top down.

The Alliance is led by an independent Chairperson and guided by two independent First Nations board members. Its position is grounded in lived experience and shaped through a layered, participatory structure designed to ensure diversity, inclusion, and accountability.

After cutting back in South Korean defence drills so as not to upset his friend Kim Jong Un, and then threatening to bomb the shit out of the US ally Oman, what is the United States up to, today?

Let’s check in AAP:

The US has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court’s president and a senior trial lawyer at the court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says.

The move ‌is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against The Hague-based court, which was established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. 

The US ‌is not a member of the court.

Rubio said in a statement he was imposing sanctions on Tomoko Akane, a Japanese judge who is president of the ICC, and Abdoulaye Seye, a senior trial lawyer and a Senegalese national, under a Trump executive order last year authorising sanctions against the court.

“These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” Rubio said.

The ICC condemned the move, saying in a statement the measures undermine the ‌rule of law.

“When judicial ‌actors are threatened for ⁠applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk,” the ICC said.

Seye is a ​senior trial lawyer on the prosecution team that sought an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has been nominated for election as an ICC judge. 

The US effort has put it at odds with allies in Europe. Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen said on X the Netherlands, which hosts the court, disapproved of the latest US sanctions and he had invited Akane to “discuss our continued support.”

“International courts and tribunals must be able to freely carry out their mandates,” Berendsen wrote. 

Top ICC judge Akane warned in December that the ⁠US sanctions would “rapidly undermine the court’s operations in all situations and cases, and jeopardise its very existence”.

The ‌US imposed targeted ​sanctions last year on several ICC officials, including prosecutors and judges, citing the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as a past ​probe into US ‌troops in Afghanistan.

The sanctions freeze any US assets the individuals may have and essentially cut them off from the US financial system, with which almost all internationally operating ​banks have close ties. 

The US Treasury Department also issued a general licence on Tuesday authorising the wind-down of transactions involving Akane and Seye through September 17.

Three ICC judges sued Trump and his administration in June over the sanctions, arguing the measures were unlawful.

Advocacy groups, in two separate lawsuits, have said the US campaign ​infringes ​on the constitutional rights of organisations working with the court to seek ​justice for atrocities around the world.

Rod Campbell

The NT Independent is reporting that independent member of the NT parliament and Yolngu man Yiŋiya Guyula has quit today claiming “the Finocchiaro Government has introduced too many laws that are dehumanising, oppressive and destroying Indigenous communities, and that he can no longer sit in Parliament opposite a government unwilling to listen or form partnerships.”

This is a big loss to the NT parliament. I met Yiŋiya a few years ago on a trip to the NT to talk about fracking there. He was a very considered and constructive representative. He’s been in parliament since 2016.

In my view, this says a lot about the current state of the NT, which is starting to seem like it stands for Northern Trumpitory.

Matt Grudnoff

The backlash against the government’s changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing is shifting. Initially they focused on the fact that house prices are falling. But the response from most people was, good, now housing is more affordable.

They are now switching to suddenly be concerned for renters. They claim that pushing out investors and making housing more affordable will push up rents.

I wrote a piece yesterday that explained why that was wrong. As investors sell up, this ultimately leads to more first home buyers. If more people own their own home, then they don’t need to rent. Therefore, there is less demand for rental properties.

But if we just step back, we can see how ridiculous this argument is. These changes are making housing cheaper and that is somehow going to make rents go up.

Imagine they came up with some amazing new technology that allowed hotels to be built at half the price. What do you think would happen to hotel room prices?

You’re unlikely to think it will increase the price, but apparently cheaper houses mean rents will go up.

A closer look at who is making these claims is revealing. In today’s papers we have a property developer claiming rents will have to increase 30%. Because a property developer has no vested interest in policy change that is going to lower house prices.

We also have real estate agency claiming rents are going to rise. The very industry that benefits the most form a red-hot property market thinks policies that have slowed the property market are bad because of reasons.

Skye Predavec

Liberal Senator Paul Scarr has announced he’ll cross the floor in the Senate to vote for David Pocock’s amendments to Labor’s “fatally flawed” gambling reforms despite his party making a deal to back the legislation, saying “it’s an absurdity and I won’t be part of it.”

Scarr:

I will be supporting a number of the amendments of Senator Pocock today, and I will be crossing the floor today. It’ll be only the second time in the seven years I’ve served in this place that I’ve chosen to do so, but I think this is such a serious issue for millions of Australians who have been impacted by gambling harm, and this is such a flawed piece of legislation that I have no choice but to do so.

… for the Prime Minister to get up and say that this is addressing advertising during live sport, when our most totemic sporting event, State of Origin, is only going to be regulated for 25 minutes out of the 80 minutes Is just absurd; it’s an absurdity, and I won’t be part of it.

Millions of Australians impacted by gambling harm. And all we’re doing, all we’re doing by introducing this bill is changing the contours of the marketing and advertising budgets of those who are preying on the vulnerable. That’s all we’re doing.

Matt Grudnoff

The latest release of the Wage Price Index (WPI) shows that wages remain flat at 3.2%.

Despite constant concern from the Reserve Bank and business groups that wages are about to shoot up uncontrollably, we are again faced with constant, slow growth in wages.

It continues to be very clear that wages are not driving inflation. Prices aren’t going up because workers are getting better pay. They’re going up because big businesses are increasing their profits.

This is more evidence for the RBA that punishing people with higher interest rates is not the solution.

You’ll be hearing about this in a dixer in QT, so I am just going to get ahead, and give you the statement now, given that I complain that dixers should just be press releases:

Today marks one year since the Economic Reform Roundtable brought together leaders from across the country to shape the long-term economic future of Australia.

We have delivered more economic reform in the year since the Roundtable than in the quarter of a century which proceeded it.

The Roundtable helped shape a Budget with the most ambitious tax reform, the broadest productivity agenda, and the most net savings in a generation.

We have been actioning over 60 reforms since the Roundtable, on top of another 60 delivered through our Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill – totalling around three changes a week on average.

The Roundtable covered issues from competition to capital attraction, AI to approvals, from the tax system and innovation to better regulation and the federation.

We have made significant and substantial progress in all of these areas, including:

•                    The most ambitious tax reform package in 25 years, which cuts taxes for workers again and again, makes it easier to buy a first home, and better aligns the tax treatment of income from work with income from assets.

•                    Cutting red tape and regulatory costs by $10.2 billion a year.

•                    Boosting GDP by $13 billion a year through the National Competition Policy, including a national approach to occupational licensing, improving scope of practice for healthcare workers, and improving heavy vehicle regulation.

•                    $3.8 billion in new measures that lower taxes for businesses and start-ups, including making the instant asset write-off permanent, two-year loss carry back, loss refundability and expanded incentives for venture capital.

•                    Better targeting the Research and Development Tax Incentive to unlock $400 million in more R&D by young firms each year.

•                    Releasing the National AI Plan, establishing the AI safety Institute, and releasing Australian Standards for AI to capture the economic potential of this technology in a way that meets community expectations. 

•                    Incentivising states and territories to adopt modern methods of construction.

•                    Abolishing almost 500 more nuisance tariffs, bringing the total number of tariffs removed to around 1,000, which is saving businesses $157 million a year.

•                    Passing reforms to the EPBC to speed up approvals and fast-tracking the approval of 35,000 more homes.

•                    Putting $2 billion on the table for the Local Infrastructure Fund to unlock 65,000 more homes.

•                    Pausing the construction code and working with industry to simplify it.

•                    Strengthening and streamlining the process for foreign investment approvals.

•                    Modernising approval processes for offshore resource projects and telecommunication infrastructure.

•                    Reforming the migration points test to attract the higher-skilled migrants we need.

Each of these reforms are key parts of our efforts to boost productivity and economic growth.

It has been a big 12 months for economic reform and it wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions and broad consensus at the Roundtable.

Here is the statement:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand, HE Mr Anutin Charnvirakul, met in Canberra today and agreed to stronger cooperation between the two countries across trade, law enforcement, defence and innovation.
 
Thailand is a trusted regional partner and friend. The strength of our longstanding relationship reflects the connections between our people – the businesses, tourists, students and families that link our countries every day.
 
Thailand is one of Australia’s closest economic partners. In recognition of the growing trade relationship, the Prime Ministers issued a Joint Statement on Deepening Economic Engagement. The two countries have committed to further expand trade and investment by seizing new opportunities in agriculture and food, clean energy, critical technologies and the digital economy.
 
Australia affirmed its support for Thailand to join the OECD and is committed to working closely with Thailand in vital multilateral forums such as COP31, the World Trade Organisation and ASEAN. This reflects both countries’ shared commitment to the agreed rules, norms and standards of the multilateral system.
 
The leaders issued a Joint Statement on Transnational Crime, which commits law enforcement agencies to closer operational cooperation to disrupt increasingly sophisticated global criminal networks.
 
This builds on decades of cooperation between Australian and Thai authorities to make our communities safer, and will target human and illicit drug trafficking, scam networks and cyber fraud.
 
Australia and Thailand also agreed to establish a biennial Defence Ministers’ Meeting, further strengthening defence cooperation.
 
During the visit, Australia and Thailand agreed to work more closely on science, research and innovation to drive economic growth. This will build on existing collaboration between CSIRO and Thai research partners in pharmaceutical manufacturing, and sustainable food and agricultural systems.

So far, the prime minister has not agreed to meet with Nerita Waight, Chair of NATSILS or Dr Astha Tomar, President of the RANZCP to discuss the youth justice crisis.

Wright:

We have a meeting this afternoon with Minister Malandiary McCarthy. We are yet, as you stated, to be able to secure secure one with the Prime Minister or the Attorney General.

We are hoping that, given the immense support for national minimum standards and to tackle these justice crises, they will see they have to act, and they just can’t stand by and delegate this crisis down to states and territories.

Dr Astha Tomar, the President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, joined the the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) to plead with the government to take youth justice seriously.

She told the media:

I’m a psychiatrist. I work in public and private mental health systems, and I also work in the judicial systems. I’m the president with Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and I really thank NATSILS to organise this event today, where they have brought various organisations and people who are committed to not seeing young people in prisons, but in their homes, in their communities, getting access to treatment and care and support.

When we talk about the youth justice crisis, I would start with an with a number: 6.7% of Australian population is young people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.

But in prisons, 67% of our young people of the age group of 10 to 17 belong to the Aboriginal background.

That has to be unacceptable to us as a community, and we’re also very aware of these young people who are in the prison system. They do struggle with neurodevelopmental disorders, with mental illnesses, which makes it our responsibility that we are able to provide the treatment care support before in the communities before they end up in the justice system, and also when they are in the prison system, they are able to access that care.

So thank you for NATSILS for allowing us to understand the intersection of health, community, and the government support, which can support these young people to be able to fulfill the expectations they have of themselves

Luke Slawomirski

Everyone knows at least one ‘gonna’. The friend who’s gonna do a start-up; the acquaintance who’s gonna get that law degree. They never end up actually doing it. Instead, they focus their energy on telling anyone who will listen how their grand plans will be achieved.

Having just about passed the proposed cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the government has turned into a gonna.

They’re gonna get the states to take over service provision. They’re gonna establish ‘Thriving Kids’ (and now also ‘Thriving Teens’ apparently). A technical advisory group is gonna produce a new eligibility test. Fraud is gonna be eradicated … etc.

The cuts, meanwhile, are real. Around 240,000 Australians are expected to lose access to the NDIS under the changes. From October, social and community participation budgets will also be cut by 50 per cent on average as plans are renewed.

And, as  Greg Jericho and I have argued, the cuts are a choice. The government has chosen to cut the NDIS – not diesel rebates, not AUKUS, not the private health insurance rebate. It has also chosen to forego billions in revenue by continuing to barely tax our gas exports.

You have to give Labor political credit for successfully framing the NDIS as a burden. Many voters appear to have swallowed the story that the scheme is riven with fraud, that its community participation services aren’t particularly valuable, and that we simply can’t afford it.

So instead of talking about what the scheme achieves – better lives for people with disability and their families, greater independence, more participation in society and the economy – we get headlines asking: ‘How did it spiral into a $50b problem?’

There may well be good reasons to reform the NDIS. But there is something backwards about legislating the savings first and promising that the alternative services will turn up later.

The cuts are locked in. But will the replacement supports gonna happen?

Meta has rejected accusations by US states that it intentionally sought to addict children to Facebook and Instagram in pursuit of profit, at the start ‌of a trial that could reshape some of the most popular apps on the planet.

A bipartisan group of 29 US states is suing Meta, seeking potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties and changes to how Meta does business.

Four lead ‌US states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – accused Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook young users, fuelling anxiety, depression and even suicide, and misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety.

All 29 states accused Meta of violating federal law by improperly collecting and using children’s personal ‌data.

Experts have called the trial in the Oakland, California, federal court, which began with opening statements on Tuesday, the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.

Meta and other social media companies including Snap, TikTok parent ByteDance and YouTube parent Alphabet face thousands of lawsuits by states, municipalities, school districts and individuals over whether their products harm young users.

Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for California, told the eight-person jury that Meta’s business model was to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public.”

“It worked especially well for kids,” O’Neill added. “Meta needed kids, and it needed to reassure the people who cared about those kids that the kids are safe.”

Meta’s lawyer Paul Schmidt said there was “no ‌dispute” some social media users ‌face struggles, but that research showed no ⁠clear link between adolescents’ social media use and a lack of wellbeing.

He also said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder and CEO, shared the company’s desire to improve its services, ​and not make them dangerous.

“They don’t believe they’re going to do well if people don’t like their service,” Schmidt said.

Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict, but US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will determine Meta’s liability.

If she finds Meta liable, Rogers could impose civil penalties and order changes to Facebook and Instagram. Meta has said penalties could be as high as $US1.4 trillion, close to the Menlo Park, California-based company’s market value.

Attorneys general said at a hearing last week the amount could be closer to $US200 billion, or about three years of after-tax profit for Meta.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey also want Meta to overhaul Facebook and Instagram, including by eliminating likes and the infinite scroll that encourages views of new posts, setting time limits for younger users, ⁠and enforcing restrictions to keep children under 13 offline.

After opening arguments concluded, former Meta safety engineer Arturo Bejar began testifying as the states’ first ‌witness.

Bejar has long said Meta ​knew its child safety tools did not work, and has testified against the company in four trials.

Meta sought to block his testimony, allegedly for deleting Signal messages with former employees, but Rogers rejected what she considered a long-shot bid to eliminate a ​key witness.

Bejar told ‌jurors that “move fast and break things” was a mantra at Meta, which took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to monitoring whether children under 13 were online.

“Many products were shipped into the world,” such as reels short-form videos, “and safety was not a ​consideration in how it was initially deployed,” Bejar said.

Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are also expected to testify. The trial is scheduled to last six weeks.

Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg has been asked about the coalition’s review of superannuation policy during a radio interview in Melbourne.

He concedes that giving people in their 20s access to their super for a home deposit won’t really help them much – because they’d only have a small balance – but reckons that’s ok, because it would help those approaching mid-life:

If you’re in your 30s or your 40s, you might have a decent balance. If you’re obviously just starting your career, you won’t have much money at all. So, a lot of people now are looking to buy houses in their 40s as a first home now sometimes, which is quite depressing, but that’s the system we now have. And so anything we can do to help people make their own choices—I mean, this is not about government choosing, this is about people choosing. I think we should be open to looking at these things because we live in a free society, and if people want to use their own money to do something that’s going to help them, then it’s something that we should be looking at closely.

Anthony Albanese and Anutin Charnvirakul are giving a joint press conference in the PM’s courtyard at Parliament House.

These are tightly run affairs, with two or three journalists from each country taking turns to ask questions.

In his opening remarks, Albanese says:

Prime Minister, I’m delighted to host you today here at Parliament House, and delighted to host you and your wife tonight at The Lodge. This may be your first visit to Australia as Prime Minister, but I trust it will not be your last. And as we draw closer to celebrating 75 years of diplomatic relations next year, I thank you for your personal invitation to visit to celebrate that milestone early next year. Our bond as friends, neighbors, and partners continues to grow, and I have no doubt that we will fully realize the potential of our cooperation as we deepen the relationship in the years ahead.

In response, Charnvirakul says:

It is, of course, a great honor for me to be here in Australia. These official visits comes 14 years after the last by a Thai Prime Minister, and at an important moment, as we look forward to celebrating the 75th anniversary of our diplomatic relations next year, a truly historic milestone. In the year 2020, our two countries elevated our bilateral relations to a strategic partnership. Since then, our ties have grown closer than ever. Today, Prime Minister Albanese and I had a very productive meeting, focusing on four key areas of mutual interest.

An ‌Israeli air strike has killed at least six Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a day after Donald Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner ended a trip to the region ‌that failed to push forward the US president’s plan to end the war in Gaza.

Israel’s military said it had carried out an air strike on Hamas commanders and several other militants. ‌It said one of those targeted had taken part in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Gaza medics said as well as the six dead, 14 others were wounded when the Israeli plane fired two missiles at a small cafe inside the fishing harbour in western Gaza City.

The seaport has turned into a large displacement camp for Palestinian families during the war that began in October 2023.

Blood stained the ground that was strewn with debris and people’s shoes after the air strike.

The ‌Israeli military had ‌initially said the strike targeted the ⁠Hamas commanders, who it said had planned to carry out attacks against Israeli troops in Gaza before later ​saying several other militants were also killed. It did not release evidence.

Hamas accused Israel of trying to sabotage Trump’s plan to end the war, which both Israel and Hamas agreed to last year, but said the Palestinian militant group was committed to the agreement. It said a child was among those killed in the strike.

Hamas did not say whether any of its commanders or any other militants had been killed in the strike. The militant group rarely acknowledges casualties among its own ranks.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, left Jerusalem on Monday without ⁠a breakthrough after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A day earlier, he met mediators and ‌Hamas leaders in Egypt ​over ways to enhance the implementation of Trump’s new roadmap for Gaza, with Hamas and Israel staying firm on their main demands.

After the meetings, an official from Trump’s ​so-called Board of Peace, ‌which put forward the roadmap, said Israel retained its “full right of self defence” and that there would be no “redeployment” by the Israeli military until Hamas ​was disarmed.

An Israeli official said Netanyahu made it clear the military would continue to operate in Gaza and that there would be no pullback of Israeli troops.

In what had appeared to be a possible breakthrough at the end of last month, Trump announced Hamas had accepted ​the ​roadmap, which said the Palestinian militant group would decommission its weapons in phases ​as Israel’s military withdrew from Gaza.

The military would also stop its operations in ‌the territory. Netanyahu, whose ruling coalition is trailing ahead of an October election, rejected the roadmap, insisting that the military would only withdraw once Hamas is completely disarmed.

Hamas has demanded that Israel adhere to the ceasefire and withdraw its forces from Gaza. Both sides have disputed the sequencing of how Trump’s plan should be implemented.

“If they (Hamas) don’t follow through now on their commitment, everyone will see that they’re not genuine about peace, and then Israel will have a lot more support from the US and others to go and ​finish the job in the appropriate way,” Kushner told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst in an interview.

More than 1200 Palestinians and four Israeli ​soldiers have been killed in Gaza since a ⁠ceasefire was reached in October, according to Gazan health officials and the Israeli military.

The Vice President of the NSW Farmers Association of NSW has criticised the new cap in the number of firearms an individual can own saying

“It’s just like a drill, or a spanner – if you haven’t got the right firearm, you aren’t going to be able to do the job. That’s what a gun is to us – a tool of the trade, not a hobby, and yet we’re being treated as bad people.”

The cap introduced in the wake of the Bondi massacre is 10 firearms if the applicant has the genuine reason of primary production, occupational requirements related to rural purposes and animal welfare. If someone has a reason for wanting more, they can apply to the Commissioner. There is no limit for dealers or collectors. 

What I’m wondering is, do you really that many guns? Perhaps you need separate firearms to deal with cats, foxes, pigs, cows, sheep, dogs, horses and rabbits, but that only adds up to nine. If more than one person lives on a property they can apply for their own firearm licence which would make a total of twenty firearms for two residents. Just how much of a limit does this legislation pose?

As Professor of Law and Criminal Justice Rick Sarre says, “There is much evidence in the criminological literature that any increase in the number of firearms in the hands of citizens increases the risk of violent harm.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that the sea ice surrounding Antarctica has contracted sharply this month.

It would usually be expanding at this time of the year.

Dr Ariaan Purich, a Monash University climate scientist, explained that “We’ve now got less sea ice than … we saw in ’24, and less sea ice than we saw in ’25, which were two really low winters, and so the only year that’s had less sea ice than we currently have for this time of year is 2023.”

Graph from SMH

Sea ice is incredibly important in regulating global climate and for maintaining global food webs.

But while Dr Purich said it was easy to feel helpless at the loss of sea ice, she also said that the extent of future global warming was within humanity’s collective control.

Of course, that would mean getting rid of fossil fuels and protecting and improving carbon sinks.

Instead of phasing out fossil fuels, Australian governments gave away $16.3 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel companies in 2025–26.

What’s more, Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism does little more than safeguard the fossil fuel industry.

Australia talks the talk on the international stage.

It’s time for it to walk the walk.

John Barnes is a former AFL player with Essendon and Geelong.

He was a bit of a joker in his playing days … and later went on to become local councilor in Melbourne’s inner north.

Barnes revealed he suffered severe neurological damage from multiple head knocks during his football playing days.

In 2018, his the Herald Sun revealed Barnes “was now prone to terrifying outbursts and rages which had seen her family at times fear for their lives”.

His wife Rowena explained:

He was looking right through all of us like we weren’t there. We were really scared because he wasn’t listening to us. It wasn’t John. I couldn’t reach out to him,” Rowena said from their Essendon home late last week. “It just got out of control and it was like he was going to kill someone. That’s how we felt. It wasn’t the dad or the husband that we knew. My mum was present. My sister was present. It was the most terrifying experience that we have all ever seen.

Barnes will contest the seat of Essendon in the November state election, held by Labor with a margin of more than 12%.

And then it was time for the ceremonial selfies

This morning the parliament forecourt was closed for the ‘welcome to our country please inspect our canons and soldiers’ ceremony, which is meant to show people how alert our military is (and all militaries who partake in an inspection of the guard).

King Charles II is thought to have started it because he wanted to make sure there was no disloyalty in his troops after the British civil war in the 1600s.

Now it’s something we make visitors go through, like the kid your parent made you have a playdate with, showing you all their new toys (but not letting you play with them)

Mike Bowers was there:

Mike Bowers was there:

Now that a lot of others seem to be catching up to what we have been talking about here for some time – that One Nation is setting the agenda, despite not having parliamentary power – and mostly because the major parties, including and especially Labor, are letting them, let’s take a look at what NSW Labor premier Chris Minns had to say about One Nation being a threat at the next state election:

They’re a big threat. They’ve said that they will reverse this gun reform policy if they’re elected. Barnaby Joyce was on the radio yesterday saying that, look, the Government doesn’t regulate the number of golf clubs you have and the Government doesn’t regulate the number of bathrooms in the house, why should it regulate the number of guns. The truth of the matter is because guns can kill people. 

They’re a dangerous weapon and there’s a role for Government in terms of gun restrictions to keep the public safe. So it’s on the ballot.

I’m talking about issues that affect the public and this is one they need to be aware of when they cast their vote next March.

Alice Grundy

The Vice President of the NSW Farmers Association of NSW has criticised the new cap in the number of firearms an individual can own saying

“It’s just like a drill, or a spanner – if you haven’t got the right firearm, you aren’t going to be able to do the job. That’s what a gun is to us – a tool of the trade, not a hobby, and yet we’re being treated as bad people.”

The cap introduced in the wake of the Bondi massacre is 10 firearms if the applicant has the genuine reason of primary production, occupational requirements related to rural purposes and animal welfare. If someone has a reason for wanting more, they can apply to the Commissioner. There is no limit for dealers or collectors. 

What I’m wondering is, do you really that many guns? Perhaps you need separate firearms to deal with cats, foxes, pigs, cows, sheep, dogs, horses and rabbits, but that only adds up to nine. If more than one person lives on a property they can apply for their own firearm licence which would make a total of twenty firearms for two residents. Just how much of a limit does this legislation pose?

As Professor of Law and Criminal Justice Rick Sarre says, “There is much evidence in the criminological literature that any increase in the number of firearms in the hands of citizens increases the risk of violent harm.”

Greg Jericho

As Amy has reported, last night the Senate voted for the changes to the NDIS.

Supposedly this will “save” $38bn (so long as you don’t take into consideration the increased health costs passed onto the states, the drop in income tax from job losses due to fewer carers and more family members having to go part-time to do unpaid caring).

As we have pointed out in our report “The NDIS cuts: A poor reflection of our national character” over the next 4 years the Government is expecting to spend $48bn handing out fuel tax credits (half of which go to mining companies).

If the government introduced a 25% tax on gas exports is would raise $68bn over the next for years.

$48bn and $68bn you might note is more than $38bn.

And yet the government claims it needs to cut the NDIS because it is not sustainable.

But hey, can’t hurt those gas companies who are struggling right now. The Iran War really has hurt them.

Let’s just check in on how they are doing…

Poor things. Someone should organise a charity for them… oh wait, the Australian government already has….

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) have organised a press conference for this morning, urging the Prime Minister to ‘call an emergency summit on youth justice’.

NATSILS will deliver an open letter to the prime minister’s office, with more than 200 organisations and 1,500 individuals calling on the government to act on what is a tragedy happening right before our eyes.

If you have not seen what the NT and Qld governments are doing in this space, I urge you to take a long look. I mean the Queensland Police stall at the Ekka was CELEBRATING how many children it had arrested under the ‘adult time for adult crime’ legislation.

And you should also think about the small gains which were made in terms of youth justice following the Don Dale scandal and the focus on racism in the justice system and how that has not only been wound back, but made worse in states like Victoria.

We can’t say we didn’t know.

Alice Grundy

As New South Wales is pushing forward with its gun buyback, ABC has highlighted the gaps in publicly available data on Australia’s firearms. There is little recent information on whether crimes are committed with licenced firearms and 3D printed firearms present a major risk. 

The Australia Institute’s Gun Control in Australia report in January 2025 was the only place that provided a number of the legally owned firearms around the country at the time. Since the horrific massacre at Bondi, Home Affairs put out their number but without a National Firearms Register, law enforcement and governments across Australia lack clear information on firearm ownership. 

In the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre all the states and territories signed up for a National Firearms Register but despite repeated pushes in 2017 and 2023, it still does not exist. Home Affairs says it will be operational in 2028. You can sign the Institute’s petition calling for urgency in launching the National Firearms Register here. 

Anthony Albanese is about to meet the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand, HE Mr Anutin Charnvirakul to Canberra.

There will be a greeting in the parliament forecourt and a ceremonial welcome, and then the Australian-Thailand leaders meeting before we get a statement to what has been agreed to.

Let’s take a look at the rest of the interview shall we? This is what you do when you have a leadership challenge in the back of your mind. In fact, its a bit of a master class in it.

Q: Have you had concerns for your safety during some of that?

Hastie:

I’ve had some pretty strong messages sent to me, to my staff, and so on, and that’s why I’ve been identified for for upgrades for security for my family home in my office. That’s not going to deter me. I believe that I am the best representative for Canning. I love my community. I live there, and I’ve got plenty of work to do in the Parliament.

Q: So you were talking a few minutes ago about the coalition being constructive. What kind of line do you walk here between being constructive but also pushing back against parties like One Nation.

Hastie:

Well, I think we’ve got to focus on who we are as liberals, and this is what we’re doing. We’ve got a plan.

We’re talking about it. It’s lower taxes, cheaper power.

It’s cutting migration, building more homes, and then putting Australians first. We’ve got a sovereign wealth fund that we’re going to set up using windfill profits from the resources sector, and put that towards nation building infrastructure. So we have a plan, and we’re going to keep talking about that plan. We’re not going to be distracted by One Nation or Labor.

We’re going to talk about who we are, what we believe, and what our plan is to make Australia more secure and prosperous.

Q: Does that place any pressure on the Coalition to release policies sooner than the cusp of the election, given that One Nation is talking about all sorts of issues from one day to the next at the moment.

Hastie:

Well, it’s not a thought bubble race on X with Pauline Hanson. We want to make sure that our policies are accosted and modeled, and are responsible. It’s very easy to get a sugar hit in the headlines, but we’re doing the hard work.

And on the question of tobacco, for example, Mary Aldred, the member for Monash, and Senator Richard Colbeck have done some excellent work on.

Q: But One Nation were ahead of them out public with that.

Hastie:

Sure, you know they put a post out on X, and they got the headlines. But in June, Pauline Hanson was saying that she was going to cut tobacco excise by 50% Yesterday, two months later, it was 75% Well, where’s the work? Where’s the modeling? When it comes to tobacco, we believe that it’s a it’s a two pronged approach. It’s a law and order issue.

We’re either going to have a tobacco industry governed by the rule of law, or we’re going to have a tobacco industry run by criminal gangs. We believe it should be governed by the rule of law. And then when you look at the economics of it, we believe the excise is too high.

Economics is about trade-off. We want to get it to a point where tobacco products are affordable for regular Australians and kill the incentive to go to the black market.

Q: So, understanding you clearly, you’re talking more about having modeled, thought through, considered policies rather than a. I think you’re saying a thought bubble race. Is that where you’re coming from?

Hastie:

Yeah, it’s not a thought bubble race on X. Anyone can post on X, but you actually have to do the work behind the policies. You’ve got to model the policy, you’ve got to cost the policy, and you’ve got to then sell the policy. So that’s what we’re in the winter now, and we’re we’re working hard on a whole range of policies, and that’ll be part of our plan that we put to the people at the next election.

Q: So, what did you make then of your shadow frontbench colleague Andrew Bragg last week making a wide ranging speech? Were they costed and modeled policies, or were they thought bubbles or thought bubble adjacent?

Hastie:

Look, Andrew Bragg said what he said last week. We dealt with it last week. I had a chat to Andrew on on Thursday night. There’s no issue there.

We’re we’re moving on.

… Andrew said some good stuff in that speech. But yes, we are focused on working together as a team and being deliberate now.

Q: What did you say to him? Did you ask him not to do that again?

Hastie:

Oh, we’re friends. We had a good old chat, and he look. He got plenty of feedback in the media.

You know, I’m not someone who who briefs against people. We had a frank and open. Was it a mistake to be so wide ranging for Andrew Bagg last week? That’s a question for Andrew

Q: : What do you think?

Hastie:

Well, it’s last week. I mean, we’re Wednesday of a second sitting week. I I went home for the weekend very briefly. I’m trying to remember what I did.

Let’s see how Hastie shapes up the rest of these issues shall we?

Q: On the NDIS, the coalition has also negotiated amendments in return for supporting the government’s sweeping changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and on the so-called widows tax. Do you think cooperation between the major parties is a good thing, or does the coalition need to carve out sharper differences with Labor at a time when One Nation is rising?

Hastie:

Look, NDIS is a is a system that needs fixing, and the government has identified savings of up to $38 billion over the forward estimates. We think it’s a really important thing to do because under Labor, the NDIS has blown out. There’s a lot of waste and fraud, and we believe that the NDIS should be sustainable, that it should be affordable, and it should be targeted so that people in in the greatest need are served by it. And that’s why we’ve supported the government with their amendments, particularly focusing on some of the fraudulent behavior. But this is the the thing with opposition: we’re not the party who says no to everything. We want to work constructively in the national interest. And on this reform, I think it was the right thing to do.

Q: On a couple of other issues, the Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh was pushed in Question Time yesterday over he over the way he handled meetings with a group of veterans. In your view, does he have any further questions to answer about that?

Hastie:

Look, I think the Allied health cap of $5,000 per person is in breach of the Veterans Covenant. It was not a recommendation of the Royal Commission. I think it’s really important that we do look after our veterans, and we had a group of veterans come to Parliament to advocate on this very issue. And I think it was an oversight of Minister Keogh not to meet with them. We used Question Time to elevate that, and he has met with them, but we certainly think the government needs to change their position on this.

Q: How important is it to get that right?

Hastie:

I think it’s really important. I mentioned the the covenant with our veterans. The covenant is that the Australian people look after our veterans after they’ve served our country, and I think this allied health cap is a signal to them that we’re not taking it as seriously as we should, and that’s a problem for Matt Keough, and he needs to explain the position more clearly.

Q: Let’s talk about One Nation, particularly in Western Australia. Are you feeling the pressure from that party at the moment?

Hastie:

Look, I love pressure. I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t.

I also love a fight, and I know people like James Ashby are coming for me. He’s got his orders from above, and I’m going to hold my seat because I believe I’m the best person to deliver for the people of Canning as I have over the last 11 years.

Q: Will it be a tough fight?

Hastie:

Absolutely.

Q: Is it is it dirty and nasty?

Hastie:

Yes, it is.

Q: Why is it dirty and nasty?

Hastie:

Ah, well, I think you know the way things have been done online over the last couple of months. I think it’s pretty obvious.

Whether he knows it or not, Andrew Hastie is echoing the prime minister here. And if that doesn’t tell you he is working away in the background on a leadership bid, then I don’t know what does.

Q: In June, you signed a letter alongside a number of coalition MPs and former Prime Minister John Howard, urging the Prime Minister to strengthen the government’s proposed gambling law reforms, including consideration of a national regulator, the coalition has agreed to pass the government’s bill with some amendments. Are you disappointed that a national regulator isn’t there?

Hastie:

Look, I think we’ve landed in the right spot. Politics is the art of the possible, and we wanted to improve the government’s bill, and we’ve done a lot of work. Angus Taylor, Sarah Henderson, and other members like Simon Kennedy have really advocated strongly for reforms and amendments to the bill, and I think we’ve struck the right balance. There’s always more you can do, but in the end, I think we’re trying to work in the interests of the Australian people, and we’ve made some good progress.

Q: Your coalition colleague Andrew Wallace has described parts of these new proposed laws as like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank, particularly with gambling companies identifying at-risk gamblers. What do you think of that comment?

Hastie:

Andrew is entitled to his point of view, he obviously holds strong views. I respect them, and I respect his decision to vote the way he did yesterday.

Sounds less like a party agitator and more like a ‘please give me your support’ to me

And on the News Media Bargaining Code, Danie Mulino says:

So, on the news bargaining incentive, the government is going to introduce an amendment this morning that will see the charge rate lifted from 2.5 to 2.75% which is a good outcome for Australia’s media.

What we have is a very balanced package, a package that is sensible when it comes to the way in which we charge big tech, but also that charges an appropriate at an appropriate rate for Australia’s media to make sure they get back into the position they are in in terms of the overall level of deals, it also includes protections for Australia’s smaller media providers, and so supports diversity in Australia’s media. This is a really strong package. I’m confident that we will have the support of both the opposition and the Greens in this package.

We’ve been dealing really constructively with both.

This is a very important measure for the health of public interest journalism in Australia, for our democracy, and to ensure that Australians hear Australian stories and Australian news through independent Australian media.

Q: The shadow communications minister Sarah Henderson says the coalition is not convinced the proposed laws are quote at the right place, but you still sound confident.

Mulino:

So I’m in good discussions with Sarah, and overall the government is in good discussions with with the opposition. I’m confident that we’ll be able to get to a point that the opposition supports this bill.

Assistant treasurer Daniel Mulino is speaking with the ABC ahead of his press club address and addresses the superannuation fight the government is quite happy to have at the moment:

So, not long after I took on this role, the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes came to light in a very prominent way.

The scale of that collapse was shocking. Almost 12,000 Australian individual members of super funds and their families lost large parts, or in some cases, all of their super savings.

But what was also increasingly clear was the predatory and inappropriate behavior which led to those collapses.

[advisors] reaching out to these people in unsolicited ways, undertaking highly manipulative interactions to convince them that their super products were not performing well or were inappropriate, and then manipulating them into inappropriate products for them.

And so, what we’ve looked at over the last year through a whole series of discussion papers is ways that we can strengthen consumer protections while retaining appropriate choice in our super system.

Q: There’s been heated debate about compulsory superannuation in the past week. We’ve heard contributions from Andrew Bragg, Liberal senator, and also from One Nation. Does the government have any plans to lift the super guarantee from 12 to 15%

Mulino:

There’s no plans to lift the super guarantee. Getting it to 12% was the work of Labor governments over a very long period of time, and I might say, in the face of opposition, it was fought tooth and nail every step of the way by the opposition. But that is now putting people in a very strong position, and the SG at 12% now across a person’s entire working life will mean that so many people will retire with very strong balances, and we’re already seeing that play out in the system.

It will mean, at a macro level, that our super system takes a lot of pressure off our pension system, and we’re seeing that through the numbers already and through the projections of our pension system into the future. But it also provides individuals with that additional security. So that is a very important and strong part of our system.

Jenny McAllister is chalking up the Coalition’s agreement to the NDIS funding cuts as a massive win – for the government and herself. She has dismissed concerns that the cuts will mean two classes of disability will be created – those who can access care, and those who can’t.

That is not a correct interpretation of the government’s policy. We’ve been clear from the outset that we won’t leave people without support.

It’s why we’ve worked with the states and territories to strike an agreement to invest $10 billion in supports outside the scheme, and still have a being fully developed. This was advice provided to us back in 2023 by the independent review into the NDIS, who told us really clearly that that work needed to occur and still needed to and still needs to occur because that’s the concern of participants is that those alternatives are not in place and there’s little confidence that they will be in place by the time the changes come into force in 2028,

I want to say this really clearly: the government will not let people fall between two stools.

It is our intention to have supports in place by 2028, and indeed, in October, we will see the first supports under the Thriving Kids programs start to roll out.

All states and territories, with the exception of Queensland, have signed the bilateral agreements, have submitted their implementation plans.

My discussions on Friday last week with state and territory ministers indicated that they are getting ready to start rolling these supports out this October, well in advance of that 2028 deadline.

Queensland has not signed up, so what happens to Queensland kids and their parents?

McAllister:

We’re talking with Queensland, of course, but ultimately it is for them to explain how they are approaching this issue. There’s money on the table for Queensland communities to receive supports co-funded by the Commonwealth Government. I think that Queensland communities will want to see their government implement Thriving Kids and work with the Commonwealth on a broader suite of foundational supports,

If you want an example of just how much of a change to people’s lives these NDIS cuts will be, take this amendment which allows ‘high support needs participants’ – people who need constant care – to get exemptions from the arbitrary determination cuts, which sounds better than what it was.

EXCEPT:

“For the purposes of subsection (8):

                 (a)  the following groups of supports are covered by this subsection:

                          (i)  assistance with daily living;

                         (ii)  home and living;

                        (iii)  any group of supports specified under paragraph (12)(c); and

                 (b)  the following groups of supports are not covered by this subsection:

                          (i)  assistance with social, economic and community participation;

                         (ii)  improved daily living skills.

So they will pay for someone to sit at home with people and take them to the bathroom and feed them while their main carers are at work, or off shift – but not to go to somewhere which takes care of basic needs AND ALSO teaches life skills, allows for socialisation and gives some variety.

This is just cruelty.

In the wake of the NDIS cuts, comes the news that Moody’s has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA credit rating – which basically means we can borrow money as a country, at cheaper interest rates.

Chalmers:

The international ratings agency Moody’s has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA credit rating.     

This is another welcome endorsement of the Government’s responsible economic management.

The Moody’s report says, “debt ratios at the Commonwealth level remain low”.

It found the Government’s fiscal policy has been “adaptive, reflected in the consolidation of pandemic-era deficits into nearly balanced budgets over a short span of time.”

Moody’s says the Government’s fiscal strategy is, “supported by expenditure reforms and a record of conservative budgeting.”

This is just the latest ratings agency to endorse our economic management with S&P Global also reaffirming our AAA credit rating this month.

Australia is not immune from uncertainty and volatility in the global economy, but we are well placed to confront these challenges.

Moody’s specifically calls out our ambitious tax reforms, saying, “the Government has continued advancing major tax and spending reforms despite a more challenging economic backdrop.”

We have faster growth than almost every major advanced economy, low unemployment, solid wage growth and stronger public finances than most advanced economies.

Moody’s says: “Despite facing successive shocks in recent years, Australia’s economy has maintained a relatively stable growth trajectory compared with other advanced economies.”

In an acknowledgement of the importance of the superannuation system built by Labor, Moody’s says: “fiscal strength is further supported by substantial private retirement savings under superannuation funds”.

Labor built the superannuation system and we will always defend it. The Liberals, Nationals and One Nation want to destroy it and would undermine Australia’s economic resilience as well as the secure retirement of Australian workers.

Australia remains one of only nine countries with a AAA sovereign credit rating from all three major ratings agencies.

When we came to government, we inherited bigger deficits and a trillion dollars of debt.

Gross debt at the end of last financial year was $10.6 billion lower than forecast in the recent Budget and almost $200 billion better than it would have been under the Coalition.

We’ve made substantial progress when it comes to the budget and we’re taking decisive action to address some of the biggest spending pressures, which this report acknowledges.

Political opportunists and vested interests like to talk down our economy and our budget, but this report reflects the progress Australians have made together and the importance of our ambitious agenda.

We’re delivering responsible economic management and permanent cost of living relief like new tax cuts for Australian workers, at the same time as we make our economy more productive and resilient.

Ahead of the housing summit, ACTU president Michelle O’Neill spoke to ABC News Breakfast about why the union is pushing for better renters rights, including, if they want it, a standard two-year lease (with renters able to ask for less time if they want):

Because being able to have secure housing is so important for workers. What we’ve seen is that the cost of rental and the cost of buying has outpaced wages. We’ve seen rental increases go up 23% over the last five years, and wages are 17% over that same time.

And being able to have security, knowing you can stay in the one place, not having that extra cost that comes with moving, the disruption, finding a new home, finding new schools, often having to move further and further away from where you live makes it even harder for workers in this cost-of-living crisis. Because it’s not just about needing to have wages going up.

We actually need to make sure that the bills are more affordable and rental prices and rental security are critical to that.

…We’re saying we want to see security of longer leases and fairer rights for renters but we also want to see a massive increase in public housing because we know there needs to be an increase in housing stock.

If you’ve got more public housing, you take some of the pressure off the private rental market. The other thing about the people making claims about rents at the moment is they’ve already seen that massive 23% increase in rents over the last five years, landlords, and what we know is that the changes in capital gains and negative gearing were grand fathered, so people with existing investment properties that are out there as rental properties are not affected by them.

So I think there’s a bit of opportunistic talk going on about rental prices, which is one of the other reasons why we want to see stronger rights for renters and having some protection against things like rent

The organisers of Mardi Gras have created mass tension within the LGBTIQ+ extended community by extending an invitation to Pauline Hanson (who, it must always be remembered was found to have racially vilified another senator by a court) to attend, after she said she was very uncomfortable with the event and believed sexuality should be kept behind closed doors.

Barnaby Joyce had said that One Nation was one of the “gayest” parties in Australia, despite all the anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric, and the anti-trans mania sweeping the far right.

The organisers have said they want Hanson to “look them in the eyes” but members of the community see the invitation as a betrayal (coming on top of the fight over police being invited to march in the parade), given Hanson’s views.

Pocock is asked if there will ever be a time when there is a One Nation float (?!!!!!!) and says:

There was a bit of chat in the Senate yesterday during divisions with people asking them if they were heading to Mardi Gras and whether they had a float. I don’t think we received a good answer yet. We’ll have to wait and see.

Asked if there was banter about it in the senate, Pocock says:

Yeah. A few senators sort of having a go at them and asking them about it. You know, clearly some of the bills that have brought forward over the last few years, I think are really damaging to the LGBT community and really pit Australians against each other and from gambling to a gas export tax, the thing I see time and time again is that so many of these culture wars are distractions. The big game here is actually how do the Australian people beat the vested interests that have a stronglehold on our democracy at the moment?

And I just find it tragic that the Senate spends so much time trying to wedge Australians, trying to pit Australians against each other rather than working on how we build a better democracy, thinking longer term, dealing with the big challenges that we face, and from gambling to a gas export tax to data centres to AI is saying what’s good for Australians? What’s good for Australians now? What’s good for Australians into the decades ahead? Not, well, what does this mean for the lobby visits and the donors and a job after politics.

David Pocock is then asked about the sexual assault allegations against some of the Sydney Swan players.

Q: I want to take you to our top story today about the Sydney Swans. Obviously you’re a well-known former professional sports person. Given what we know at the moment, should the players involved in all of this be stood down?

Pocock:

These are deeply concerning allegations and, you know, I guess the hope is that the police thoroughly investigate this and that, you know, the woman at the centre of this is looked after.

As to what should happen now, clearly there’s been, you know, a real breach of team protocol and all the rest and I think, you know, the team should come down on that hard but as to the actual allegations,

I think it’s really important that the process plays out and clearly, culturally, as a country, we’ve got a long way to go on this.

Q: What have you made about the way this has been reported in certain places with a lot of focus on what it means for the Swans’ Grand Final chances rather than the allegations itself?

Pocock:

It shows how far we have to go as a country, if that’s the first reaction rather than looking at the substance of the allegations and what it means for us as a society. Many years, ago, there was a book called by Anna Krien called Night Games. It delves into some of the challenges when it comes to culture in professional sport. And that’s an indication of the broader problems in the country. It’s going to take all of us to turn this around.

Q: On another issue – I think you were listening to the news earlier – but Ricky Henderson is suing Fox Sports and the AFL over an incident where his genitals were filmed at the Gabba. Does this sort of accidental exposure happen a bit? Do players need more protection?

Pocock:

It’s certainly not ideal. I obviously never played Aussie Rules and don’t know what the camera situation is like in the changeroom. In rugby union, you don’t have that extra warm-up area and there are cameras in the changeroom and you’re aware of them and you obviously try and avoid them. It does feel a bit intrusive at times as a player but it comes down to the commercial deals that are signed by, you know, the sporting codes, the AFL and others. So I don’t know the ins and outs of this case but I can see why you’d be annoyed and upset about it.

The independent senator is a guest on ABC News Breakfast and is asked about the gambling advertising reforms:

I think Australians will be hugely disappointed by the deal the Prime Minister has done with the We had the blueprint with the Murphy Report. We had the Senate inquiry which reinforced what we heard during the Murphy inquiry and 4 out of 5 Australians wanting a ban on all gambling ads and yet the Government is trying to sell us this getting-the-balance-right, which is three ads per hour on TV and fairly unworkable opt-out system online. 

It’s tragic to vested interests and their capture of the major parties meaning we don’t get evidence-based policy in this country and policy that puts Aussies and our ahead of the gambling companies.

What about people who lose money to gambling addiction, when it’s stolen by a gambling addict. Should gambling companies pay it back?

I’ve been working on amendments to ensure that proceeds of crime don’t stay with the gambling companies and get reimbursed. This has failed on so many levels. The late Peta Murphy said partial bans on advertising do not work and that’s why they went with a full ad ban. She said inducements should be banned immediately.

This legislation essentially legitimises inducements and says let’s just get rid of the worst types of inducements and the other big one is the need for a national regulator.

The big gambling companies are regulated out of the NT. The regulator up there has no full-time staff. After recent allegations that were aired in the Senate inquiry of gambling companies offering drugs, sex workers, all sorts of things, the regulator in the NT hasn’t even contacted these gambling companies about it.

The system is so broken and it’s no … part. wonder we’re the biggest losers in the world per capita and now the Government is trying to claim this huge victory for just doing the bare minimum that really doesn’t deal with the issues that we’re facing.

The ACTU is holding a housing summit today and as part of its big push to improve the sector, is calling on the government to install a standard rental lease of two years, and ensure one in every 10 homes is public housing.

It’s not a new call – groups like the Antipoverty Centre have been raising rental standards, including leases for years, and the Greens caused a headache for the Labor government when it tried to make renter rights part of housing policy in the last parliament.

But with the government feeling as though it has a handle on housing, it is interesting that the ACTU is choosing to go down this path (a necessary path, don’t get me wrong, but an interesting one).

ACTU President, Michele O’Neil:

For too many working people, housing has become a source of stress rather than security, with many workers not able to find secure, affordable housing near where they work. We want to see strong rights for renters and a substantial increase in public housing.

Nurses, teachers and other workers are living with the yearly uncertainty that comes with constant rent hikes and one-year leases being the standard option.

Our housing system should reflect the reality that millions of working people are renters. Workers deserve not only secure jobs, but also secure housing. Unions want to see renters with stronger rights, better protections against evictions and more secure leases.

Moving homes costs money, disrupts lives, and too often pushes workers further away from their jobs. Doubling the default rental standard from one to two years would still allow renters to choose shorter leases, but it would give workers more certainty and stability to plan their lives.

Australia once built public housing at a scale that matched working people’s needs. Under the Hawke Government, 1 in 10 new homes built were public housing, but today that’s closer to 1 in 50. If we’re serious about fixing the housing crisis, we must increase public housing stock to free up homes in the private rental market and make renting more affordable for everyone.

Using modern construction methods such as factory-built modular housing can deliver high-quality homes faster at lower cost and greater scale. 

Governments must all step up and tackle Australia’s housing crisis with the ambition it needs. We need more homes, stronger rights for renters, faster construction and renewed investment in public housing.”

Hello and welcome back to The Point Live. It’s the second last day of this sitting and the government is feeling pretty good. It has won on gambling advertising reforms and the NDIS cuts, with the Coalition coming in with the assist (as if there were any doubt) and it will get the media bargaining code through (not that anyone outside media cares about this) which gets media orgs and their leaders off the back of the government.

This is the fight they are having – and it’s on ground they are very happy to fight on.

There won’t be any outrage at the swear – the only time civility is used against swearing is when a progressive uses it. Anytime the right does, it is ‘common sense’.

Daniel Mulino will be at the national press club today – he, along with Andrew Charlton are being given more starring roles lately, partly because Albanese believes they are in his camp and are less likely to freelance and partly because the government is keen to show it has depth, and talented performers across its bench (as opposed to the Coalition and Barnaby Joyce who is yelling at conspiracies somewhere).

But it will be the NDIS bill which breaks hearts today. The bill passed the senate just after 9pm in a very rushed debate – it will head back to the house for a couple of amendments the government had signed off on, and then it is done. Cuts to growth funding means people who need it will never be able to access it, therapies will be cut and the security of being able to plan your life and care is done. No matter what the government says, it was a choice. They made the choice to build consent to pass this law, and they did it despite the money we spend on fossil fuel subsidies and defence spending, and made it seem sensible. The Coalition were always on board.

Labor, more often than not, seeks to do deals with the party who the Australian people have rejected, fundamentally, twice in elections. There is another senate pathway there – and despite how much they whinge and moan about each other, Labor and the Coalition agree on more than they disagree on these days.

That’s why we are here.

It’s going to be a fairly depressing day, so grab whatever it is you need to get through it (four coffee morning over here) and we will get into it.