Thu 6 Nov
This blog is now closed.
Here is Flossie meeting with the prime minister and Anika Wells (who has her best vice captain face on) to talk about her pledge for students to avoid social media until they are 16.
(We are not using her surname because children deserve some web search anonymity in case they change their mind when they get older. This doesn’t mean Flossie and her parents didn’t consent, but still)
In case you were wondering why you haven’t heard Pauline Hanson crowing over the Liberals net zero position, it’s because she is in the US, staying at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida (and has been all week – don’t worry, she’s not sitting alone at the breakfast buffet – Gina has been seen there too) ahead of her speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where she is bragging about being just a stone’s throw away from beating the Coalition’s vote.
She won’t have to look too far for speaking notes – these are all the same things that she was saying in 1998. And the 2000s. And then when she got back in in 2019. And well, evidence would suggest that there’s a lot of talk, but not a lot of walk when it comes to those not-so-humble-brags.
Meanwhile, Barnaby Joyce still won’t say which way he is going to go in terms of his future – because of course he won’t. The man has built a career out of being a chaos monkey from the moment he was elected to the Queensland senate from fourth place (thanks to One Nation preferences) in the early 2000s and it has paid massive dividends for him – why would he change now? Why does anyone take him seriously is the bigger question.
Poor governance, poor policy and decades of neoliberalism have broken Australia’s university sector, with devastating consequences for students and the country.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Richard Denniss and Ebony Bennett discuss the lack of accountability in Australia’s universities, why some institutions’ claims of financial crises aren’t supported by their auditors, and what Australians think about the state of the sector.
Almost three million Australians will be offered refunds after a tech giant apologised for the way it charged customers to access its artificial intelligence tools.
Microsoft Australia emailed the offer to software subscribers on Thursday and admits the pricing structure and plans lacked clarity and fell short of its standards.
The apology comes 10 days after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched legal action against Microsoft Australia and its parent company in Federal Court, claiming it had misled consumers about the price of their subscriptions and the availability of cheaper plans without AI tools.
The US firm could face multimillion-dollar penalties if the court finds in the commission’s favour.
Microsoft Australia began sending messages to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers on Thursday morning, outlining available plans and apologising for a lack of clarity about them.
The plans include $16 and $18 per month packages that include access to the company’s AI assistant Copilot, and $11 and $14 “classic” subscriptions that do not include the tool.
Microsoft said subscribers who opt to switch back to the cheaper plans before the end of 2025 would receive refunds dating back to payments made after November 30, 2024.
“Our relationship is based on trust and transparency and we apologise for falling short of our standards,” the email said.
In its lawsuit, the commission alleges Microsoft misled about 2.7 million subscribers into paying higher prices to maintain their subscriptions with Copilot added and were not advised of a cheaper alternative.
Only when subscribers sought to cancel their service were they told about a non-AI option, commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
“We’re concerned that Microsoft’s communications denied its customers the opportunity to make informed decisions about their subscription options,” she said.
In a statement, Microsoft Australia said the company should have done better.
“In hindsight, we could have been clearer about the availability of a non-AI-enabled offering with subscribers, not just to those who opted to cancel their subscription,” the statement said.
“In our email to subscribers, we expressed our regret for not being clearer about our subscription options, shared details about lower priced alternatives that come without AI, and offered a refund to eligible subscribers who wish to switch.”
While customer refunds could cost the company millions of dollars, Microsoft could also face large fines if the watchdog pursues and is successful in its lawsuit.
Maximum penalties for corporations found guilty of anti-competitive practices include a $50 million fine, three times the value of the misleading act, or 30 per cent of the company’s adjusted turnover during the breach.
The prime minister is going to meet with a Year Six student from Hobart today, as part of the sell for the social media ban.
Flossie presented a project on the government’s laws, which looked at the negative and emotional impacts of social media on kids and interviewed Dr Lila Landowski and child psychologist Cassie Xintavalonis “to better understand the neuroscience behind what social media does to young people’s brains”
Flossie has asked her classmates to sign a pledge they won’t use social media until they are at least 16. The prime minister loves this idea and so Flossie is meeting with him – and a lot of cameras – today.
Penny Wong is meeting with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus today.
As Matthew Knott in the SMH reports:
The European Parliament has declared Tikhanovskaya Belarus’ president-elect in the eyes of the Belarusian people and it recognises her cabinet-in-exile as the nation’s legitimate representatives. Belarus is the 16th most authoritarian country in the world, making it less free than Russia, according to The Economist’s democracy index.
“It’s a strategy of Russia to keep people stressed, intimidated, to keep people in fear,” the 43-year-old says in an Uber en route to her next event. “I think that for everyone who is opposing the regime, this feeling of fear is present every day, but our power, our strength, is to overcome it.”
The Coalition’s problem with women voters is well-known. Female MPs are still outnumbered two-to-one in Liberal and National party rooms, and polling consistently shows women are less likely to vote for either party.
Photo: Official White House Photo/Joyce N. Boghosian
There are many factors that can contribute to this, but new research suggests that women in Australia do not see the Coalition as reflecting their values.
Respondents were asked:
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said Australia and the United States “share values” of “democracy and the rule of law”. Do you agree or disagree that Australia “shares values” with the United States under President Trump?
Australian women are very unlikely to agree that Australia shares values with Trump’s America – 52% disagree and just 22% agree.
This research carries a clear message to Australia’s politicians: if you want to appeal to women voters then you can’t do that by acting like US President Donald Trump.
Desperate callers trying to get emergency help may have been left stranded again as embattled telco Optus flags another failing in its network.
The company experienced an outage in the Hunter Valley region of NSW on Wednesday afternoon with mobile data and voice services out of action.
“Optus is responding to a fibre break which is impacting customers in the Port Stephens, Maitland, and surrounding areas,” the telco said on its website.
“The ability to connect to triple zero may be impacted for some.
“Optus technicians are onsite working to restore services as quickly as possible.”
The latest outage comes days after Optus executives faced a Senate grilling over their failure to act in a September outage linked to the deaths of three people.
Nearly 18 hours passed between learning of the major outage and informing the industry regulator and communications minister of the problem, the inquiry was told.
More than 600 triple-zero calls could not be connected, but the telco initially suggested to authorities the number involved was just a handful.
Optus pledged 300 people would be added to its Australian call centres with a focus on the emergency network, while safeguards surrounding triple-zero calls would be ramped up.
Rules that took effect on Saturday require telcos to report triple-zero outages to the communications watchdog and emergency services in real time.
In a timeless statement, because we aren’t actually making any major changes to save it, the Great Barrier Reef is in a lot of trouble
Here is what Murray Watt had to say about that:
Well, comes to the Great Barrier Reef, our Government is investing over a billion dollars over several years to restore the health of the Great Barrier Reef. It is clearly a icon, not just a national icon in Australia. We know that coral reefs all around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo in Western Australia, under pressure from climate change.
That’s why we got to keep making those investments to restore the health of the reefs it’s why we got to keep reducing our emissions and got to reach net zero.
The Coalition might want to have their internal games about net zero and distract them from important issues like environmental law, but in the meantime, we do see our environment go backwards. So but the number one thing we can do at the moment to help the reef and all of our natural environment is to pass these laws which will environmental standards, higher penalties for those who break the law, new federal EPA which we never had before to enforce those laws, so it’s a vital step forward for our environment.
Michael McCormack, or Tip Top as we call him in these parts (because he is like white bread, if it could walk and talk) knows a bit about MPs not giving a leader a chance – he spent most of his leadership of the Nationals fighting of Barnaby Joyce and his faction.
He spoke to Sky News yesterday asking the Liberals to give Ley a chance. AAP wrapped up yesterday here:
A former deputy prime minister is urging his coalition colleagues to give Sussan Ley a fair go with speculation her days as federal opposition leader may be numbered.
Ms Ley has batted away suggestions she should be worried for her job after two of her leadership rivals, who are pushing for net-zero policies to be dumped, were seen dining together.
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack said Ms Ley hadn’t been given clear air since taking on the top job after the coalition’s disastrous election defeat.
“She hasn’t had any clear air in the five or six months she’s been leader,” he told Sky News.
“She’s the first female leader of the Liberal party in 81 years and the first female opposition leader ever.
“She needs to be given clear air, given a chance.”
Internal division over the coalition’s energy policy has been supercharged after the Nationals announced they were abandoning any commitment to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The move, followed by a dire poll revealing support for the Liberals had hit historic lows, has prompted fevered speculation about Ms Ley’s leadership.
Rival conservative Liberals Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, who both have ambitions for Ms Ley’s job, were seen having dinner with a group of colleagues on Tuesday night in Canberra.
Mr Taylor joked he loved a green curry with a bit of spice, but played down the gathering and said Ms Ley’s position was safe.
“I think she’s going to continue on … and take us to the next election,” he told Sky News.
Ms Ley said she was “completely confident” her job was secure.
“Can I just say people are actually quite chummy across my party … and actually sometimes do catch up in Canberra sitting week for dinner,” she told Nine’s Today program during a morning media blitz on Wednesday.
Ms Ley said she had never supported “net-zero at any cost” when asked if she was prepared to ditch the emission-reduction goal for 2050 in a bid to save her leadership.
“There are a lot of different opinions in our party room,” she told ABC TV.
“I said I wouldn’t make captains’ calls. I’m doing exactly what I said I would do.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used question time to have a crack at the ongoing divisions within the Liberal and National parties over energy.
He suggested coalition MPs could answer a “multiple choice question” about their energy policy during their next party room meeting.
“Although the next party room meeting might be focused on something else,” he said, referencing the ongoing leadership speculation.