The Point Live: Jim Chalmers warns against smugness in fight against far right, gas reservation legislation to be introduced. As it happened.

And on that note, we will put the blog to bed for a little nap. We’ll bring you the interesting parts of Jono Duniam’s final speech early tomorrow morning – but the sun seems to be shining on much of the east coast and people should be free to not think about the happenings of the Australian parliament. For a short while. We will be back tomorrow.

Which is when we will get the whole draft of the digital duty of care and whatever comes from that. It’s also the last day of this sitting, which, despite only being four days long, appears to have been a year. My wrinkles now have wrinkles.

Thank you to everyone who joined – we will hopefully see you back tomorrow. So until then, take care of you. Ax

AAP

Efforts to get Australia’s largest bank to stop financing forest-clearing activities have failed but activists have managed to put deforestation on the corporate agenda.

Commonwealth Bank shareholders on Wednesday soundly rejected the first of two resolutions put forward by the Australian Conservation Foundation, SIX, Australian Ethical and other groups, with more than 93 per cent of shares cast against it.

The attempt to amend CBA’s constitution meant a second resolution calling on the bank to set out the steps it would take to end the financing of deforestation was never officially put to the meeting.

CBA’s board recommended shareholders reject both resolutions.

“Forest loss can have impacts on nature. But not every instance of land clearing is the same,” chairman Paul O’Malley said in his address.

Staff Writers

Let’s head back to the Revenue Summit, where the final panel of the day is underway. 

Independent Economist Saul Eslake has highlighted how the GST is not fit for purpose, taking aim the WA sweetherat deal signed under Scott Morrison.

Australia Institute research shows that states and territories have lost out on $279 billion since the GST was introduced. This is because revenue has failed to keep up with national income.

“(It’s) the worst public policy decision of the 21st century so far,” Mr Eslake said.

“The WA GST deal was done entirely for political reasons.” 

He was speaking on a panel on the role of revenue im building a stronger economy. 

Director of the Centre for Policy Studies at Victoria University, Professor Janine Dixon, talking about the need to tax artificial intellgience comapnies and put systems in place early to ensure that Australians do see benefit from the AI boom.

“This is going to require coruage and strong policy from our politicians and people who set up our tax system,” Professor Dixon said. 

CEO of the Centre for Future Work Ben Spies-Butcher said Australia needs to, and can, tax wealth better. 

Here is how Mike Bowers has seen the last hour:

We all feel the same, Dugald.

Staff Writers

We’re at the second-last session of the day for the Revenue Summit.

National Secretary of the Maritime Union, Thomas Mayo, says revenue raised from a 25% tax on gas exports would not only improve services, but could also be used to increase investment in renewable energy.

Mr Mayo, who is a Torres Strait Islander, says Indigenous communities are acutely aware of the effects of climate change.

“It’s something that I think about every day,” he said. 

Australia Institute research shows a flat 25% tax on gas exports could raise $17 billion a year. The idea was raised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. 

Catelyn Richards, Federal Assistant Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, says the money could be used to improve conditions for healthcare workers. 

Dr Terri Macdonald, Policy and Research Director at the National Territory Education Union, says the money could be used to make university fee-free.

Australia collects more revenue from HECS/HELP than it does from the Petroleum University Rent Tax. 

Staff writers

Let’s go back to the Revenue Summit, where a panel discussion on tax and housing is underway. 

Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute, said the captial gains tax discount, introduced by the John Howard government in 1999, has greatly contributed to housing inequality, and that Labor’s recent changes have worked to bring house prices down.

He said they were also designed to ensure investment in new homes. 

“It is having the exact effect the government wanted it to… new construction is at an all-time high but it did discourage investors from outbidding first home buyers and owner occupiers.” 

Maiy Azize from Everybody’s Home and Anglicare, said she was surprised that the changes worked so quickly and welcomed the changes, but said there is more to do. 

“This is something that is not going to solve every problem, but we can’t fix the housing crisis without doing it,” Ms Azize said. 

Tenant’s Union of NSW CEO Leo Patterson Ross said renters still need support, and people are having to make difficult choices and are moving away from their local networks because they can’t afford to live in their communities. 

The Australia Institute has also released analysis recently that shows Labor’s tax changes, including a shake-up of the Coalition’s stage 3 tax cuts, have helped nine out of ten Australians.

“The original stage 3 tax cuts would have made older, richer Australians even richer and delivered very little for struggling families. The biggest beneficiaries of the revised and subsequent changes are those under the age of 25 and those aged between 25 and 34,” said Mr Grudnoff.

In terms of what the government will be doing question time told us that:

The digital duty of care bill will be introduced tomorrow

The technology (which will be AI) that is being used by the immigration department to scan visa applicants’ public statements is being looked at to explore scanning grant applicants social media as well (what could go wrong with either!) and the One Path Network will have its grant terminated.

The government is reviewing the federal court judgement on the McPhllamy gold mine decision (which found the decision to reject it was not fully defendable)

The government is very pleased with its useless gas reservation policy

The government wants the Coalition to sign off on the EU free trade agreement.

In terms of what the Coalition is doing, question time told us:

Anne Aly is the current favourite of opposition questions

But not enough to actually come with more than just fishing expeditions

The Coalition wants to use its women MPs as cover to come at Anne Aly, but not Angie Bell who said the minister should be shamed and stoned in the square in a PREPARED speech yesterday. The Coalition don’t think there needs to be any further action, but obviously aren’t willing to push it.

Dan Tehan has asked what might be the stupidest and most patronising question of recent memory. It was bottom of the barrel stuff and the sort of stuff you’d expect to see on the Facebook page of someone with a jetski profile photo you haven’t spoken to since high school, not the parliament.

Thank goodness.

Darren Chester wants to know if the prime minister takes any responsibility for the RBA raising interest rates. Which is a nice dixer set up for the PM and one I imagine he is going to finish question time on.

Chester:

Does the Prime Minister take any responsibility for the average mortgage holder now paying $30,000 more per year because of the 16 interest rate rises under his government?

Albanese:

What we take Responsibility for is making sure that we produced two budget surpluses under this treasurer.

We take responsibility for the 230 billion dollar improvement in the budget. The fact that we’ve had almost 180 billion dollars of savings, the fact that we’ve produced eight separate, either budgets, budgets, or budget updates, every one of which has had a savings measure in it, we take responsibility for the fact that over 260,000 Australians….

There is a point of order, but Albanese has decided he has concluded his answer. So now we are going to go to another dixer.

But there is a bunch of mess of heckles from the Coalition side and Milton Dick is not in the mood. He tells the house that ‘words matter’ which is pretty much a rebuke of what was heard in the house about Anne Aly yesterday.

Daniel Mulino gets a dixer – which is probably where Albanese will now end QT.

Skye Predavec

The Liberals’ James McGrath has brought the Senate back to Labor’s trust tax reforms, asking:

Why is the Prime Minister hitting family-owned building businesses with yet another tax when Australia is already in a housing crisis and desperately needs more homes built?

The logic here is that some small businesses, including in construction, put their businesses inside discretionary trusts, something that ,coincidentally, can also help them minimise their tax bills.

Minister Wong once again told the Senate “95% of Australians do not receive income from a discretionary trust” and that “As a result of those that tax package, those changes, we have been able to provide another tax offset, a tax cut for every working Australian”

Senators Wong then took the opportunity for a shot at the Liberals for “going to the last election arguing for higher deficits and higher taxes” and for “[not] wanting young Australians to be able to own their own home”.

And with that, Question Time is over in the Senate.

It’s a double One Nation day – David Farley asks Anika Wells:

Can you confirm sections 205 H and 205 J of the draft Digital Duty Care Bill provide an absolute exemption from all laws and civil proceedings, including the Privacy Act, for the government to to use AI powered, false and fictitious sock puppet accounts to post information and engage with and survey our conversations with Australians online?

Farley has obviously been indoctrinated by One Nation party operatives, and is now using the One Nation habit of quoting particular parts of legislation with their full government names, in questions.

Wells;

To the first part of the question, you’ll have to wait 20 more hours until I introduce the legislation to the House tomorrow. But the exposure draft has been out for three weeks now, in order to give everybody a chance to come prepared for the parliamentary debate.

Sock puppets I discussed at this dispatch box in question time yesterday. Sock puppets I think we’re all aware are used malevolently online by malevolent actors, and therefore have a reputation in some parts that people are mistrustful of, and that’s an understandable position to have.

But this isn’t about that. This is the fact that sock puppets exist and are used by malevolent actors already, and the eSafety Commission and accredited researchers from Australian institutions, need to use another word that might be less ominous is mystery shopper.

They need to mystery shop what is happening on platforms in order to test whether platforms are actually doing what they say that they are doing.

So, if they say they are asking a 14-year-old for their age, we need to test if they are actually doing that. So what the eSafety Commission or accredited researchers do is create an account as a 14-year-old girl and test those hypotheses. They do it for good purpose.

And yesterday, the Butterfly Foundation came out and said we would not be where we are without the use of sock puppet accounts by Australian accredited researchers because it enabled us to test and demonstrate that on Pinterest and on Reddit and on Meta and on Instagram, 14-year-old girls are being fed eating disorder content over and over again. And when these platforms are asked to take that material down, the percentages were like 4% on X, 9% on Instagram, 25% on on Pinterest. Absolutely not good enough.

They are not doing what they said that they would do. So we have put that in the exposure draft, and we intend to put that through the legislation because we think that we should be able to mark tech platforms’ homework.

They should not get to mark their own homework. So that is the purpose of sock puppets. That is why accredited researchers who currently live in Poland or Germany, because if they lived in their own country, they would be sued by the platforms. There are no legal protections for them at the moment.

That is why we seek to put that in a digital duty of care, because the the owners should be on the platforms to present to prevent harm online, not on individuals to have harm occur to them, and then for us to do an ambulance at the bottom of cliff approach, which is what’s currently happening.

It’s really important work. I look forward to any amendments from you that you have to improve the bill when we introduce it tomorrow. But some of the miscommunication flying around online is not at all reflective of the earnest and sincere desire to keep Australian kids online through the very best methods available to us by some of the best Australian researchers who are heralded the world over, who currently. currently face legal threats if they try and do that work on Australian shores

Anna Chang

We’re really scraping the bottom of the question barrel, it seems.

Senator Varun Ghosh, (a Labor Senator from WA, because of course he’s from WA) asks a dixer so transparent that it’d make Dorothy herself blush.

My question is to the Minister for Industry and Innovation, Senator Aryes. 

The Albanese Government today introduced legislation into the other place to establish a domestic tax gas reservation, a landmark Labor reform. 

Minister, how will Labor’s gas reservation reform deliver more affordable gas for Australian businesses?

It draws the most raucous heckling that we’ve heard for some time during QT, and even Senator Cash is giving him and her side a look like ‘mate.. wtf’

The chair tries to bring some order to the Senate.

Order, order, Senator Ayres. I have not called you. I’m waiting for order, order. I remind senators, particularly on my left. Excuse me, Senator McKenzie, Senator Cash. I remind senators that Senator Ghosh has the right to put his question in silence.

Independent MP Monique Ryan asks Mark Butler:

Minister, the Victorian government is delivering thriving kids through its Department of Education, with allied health and support workers employed by the state and embedded in childcare centers and schools. South Australia tried embedding allied health workers inside schools some years ago, and that model failed. Providers are concerned it’s going to fail again. Your government has allotted $2 billion to the states for thriving kids. What assurances can you offer that critical early intervention services will be available when Victorians need them?

At least someone is staying on this.

Butler:

Thank you, Speaker, and thank you to the member for her question and for her role in being the deputy chair of the parliamentary inquiry into thriving kids, that really helped to inform the thriving kids advisory group’s recommendations, not just to the Commonwealth but to all governments about the design of this important program.

As the member knows, when we had discussions with jurisdictions about the rollout of this program that will provide support to children under the age of nine with more mild to moderate support needs associated with developmental delay and/or autism, all state governments indicated that they wanted to take the lead in service delivery.

That’s not an exclusive operation. We will be doing things at a Commonwealth level that are appropriate, for example through primary care settings and such like. But the bulk of service delivery will be undertaken at state and territory level, and what that will mean is that there will be a degree of variation between jurisdictions about the type of service and the location of that service, which will largely turn on the history of service delivery that predated the NDIS, and the member is as familiar with that history as anyone in this chamber.

I think, given her professional background, we have welcomed that that indication of deep interest by state and territory governments to take a lead on that. It means that they can tap into some very long-standing, mature services ranging from infant and maternal health services into school operations.

On the other hand, at the same time, we have been very clear that there are outcomes that we expect to see, performance indicators that we expect to have met by all state and territory jurisdictions.

They are incorporated into the Thriving Kids bilateral agreements that all state governments have signed, and implementation plans that all state governments, I say, with the exception, unfortunately, of the Queensland state government, have also completed and submitted to the Commonwealth, and that is the basis on which they will be receiving additional Commonwealth money. I don’t have a particular; the Commonwealth does not have a particular view about ways in which state government should not do this. The outcomes are important from a Commonwealth perspective, and obviously we’ll be monitoring those outcomes very closely.

Julian Leeser asks Anne Aly:

In April, the Albanese government handed a $300,000 grant to the One Path Network, an Islamic media company which compared Israel to Nazi Germany and claimed the firebombing of a Jewish childcare center in Sydney was staged. Last night, the Minister for Home Affairs told the Daily Telegraph that the Minister for Multicultural Affairs was responsible for the grant. Why on earth did the minister give taxpayer funding to a group spilling hate-filled lies about Jews?

Anne Aly:

The decision that the member refers to was a decision that was made by the department. The department has now sent one path a notice of intention to terminate, and that begins the process of revoking the grant. The government provided funding in this year’s budget for a new technology to scan the public statements of visa applicants. Today, I directed the department to explore how this technology could also be used in the grants application process. The grants process has supported a wide range of community media outlets, and the department is now, as I mentioned, has now delivered a notice of intention to terminate.

The stupidity continues. Richard Marles in a dixer about the Coalition’s resistance to the EU free trade agreement (which has taken the government by surprise) said:

What now stands in the way is what we see swirling on the opposition benches as we watch all of them go through a torturous existential identity crisis: a contest between whether they seek to remain a party of government or whether they all slowly but surely crab walk over to that part of the chamber to kiss the ring of the member for New England.

Barnaby Joyce has a problem with this:

Yeah, no, the member for Groom. No, I’m not going to show anybody anything, mate. But I do think I do think you should withdraw that. I think we know it’s a double entendre. You’ve been clever. Stop it.

Milton Dick is made momentarily speechless, and then just says there is no point of order and to move on.

Skye Predavec

The Greens’ first question in the Senate has come from Barbara Pocock on housing:

Renting has never been less affordable in Australia, with rental stress at record highs. New data today tells us that 78 per cent of Australians back limits on rent increases. People are in real pain. But Labor has done nothing for one-third of Australians who rent. Too many households are just one rent increase away from eviction into homelessness. Median rents are now an incredible $717 a week. Renters are crying out for help.

Minister, how bad does it have to get before Labor takes the initiative to work with the states to cap rents?

Pocock is referencing Australia Institute polling released this morning that showed that one in five Australians think rents should be frozen temporarily, and another three in five think rents should be capped at the rate of inflation.

Labor’s Tim Ayres acknowledged the housing crisis, saying the Albanese government has taken “national leadership on renters’ rights”, but would not commit to working to limit rent rises or to build more public housing. Instead, he accused the Greens of “putting up roadblocks [to housing development”.

That’s despite the Senate Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, chaired by Pocock, recently finding that “It is clear that many elements of the current crisis arise from the decline in investment in public housing. This must be addressed by more investment in public housing.”

I think yes, maybe we have. This is so stupid that my eyeballs have rolled so far back in my head they are now hanging around Hobart somewhere. This is so stupid, Aristotle has risen from the dead, just to slap who ever has written this. Physics is being re-written about the boundless nature of this level of stupid. The country could be powered on the audacity of this full chested stupidity.

Dan Tehan:

Can the Minister confirm that the pre-COP meeting held at Tuvalu Convention Center was powered by diesel generators, and can the minister rule out whether Australian taxpayer dollars were used to deliver this diesel-powered event?

What the actual ever loving Dolly are we doing here? What is the point of this? We know that the Pacific wants to transition? That is part of what Australia is doing.

And Tehan asks this question in front of the delegation of Palau. Where the president just gave an address where he asked for the world to stop defining Pacific nations by the framing that best suits the global north.

From the same party that joked about climate change and rising ocean tides, we have this. It’s not only childish, it’s insulting. For absolute shame.

Angus Taylor has decided that the woman of his party have provided enough cover and now he can ask the prime minister:

Today, we learnt the prime minister was forced to step in and clean up the treasurer’s botched ban on small businesses using credit cards to pay their tax bills, just like he was forced to step in and clean up the treasurer’s botched attempts to tax unrealised capital gains and small businesses, how much more humiliation does the treasurer have to endure before the prime minister puts him out of his misery and sacks him?

Oh for goodness sake. Who the f*ck is the audience for this?

Albanese:

I really do thank the leader of the opposition for that question, mr. Speaker, the whole premise of it is completely wrong.

The treasurer and I had a discussion last week. We convened the expenditure review committee, and we unanimously, right across the leadership of the government, agreed that the decision by the ATO to have a limited period of of pause on the ban that had been imposed needed to be extended, so that there would be proper consultation with small business, completely, completely agreed by the treasurer and myself, completely agreed in a way that was consistent with how we do good government.

Good government, good government, having a discussion between ministers and then convening appropriate forums, in this case the Expenditure Review Committee last Friday, and then making public the announcement, which the Treasury did last last Friday. I find it absolutely extraordinary that at a time where there is someone, a former treasurer, stalking, stalking this former shadow treasurer, this former shadow treasurer, as we speak, that he asks a question.

Now the bloke who is in danger of being sacked is sitting right there.

He’s sitting right there because you have the member for Canning, the member for Canning working away.

You have Josh Frydenberg is out there on on the book tour. He’s putting aside his shyness, Mr. Speaker, Josh Frydenberg

There is a point of order that is not a point of order, but Albanese has not concluded his answer because he is having fun.

In the Labor Party, our version of aspiration is health, housing, jobs, and opportunity.

The Liberal Party version of aspiration is Josh Frydenberg.

There he is, a failed treasurer who couldn’t even hold his seat. Who couldn’t even hold his seat, he’s out there, overcoming his innate shyness.

To be out there, you can’t turn on a TV without seeing Josh Frydenberg, he’s out there every single day, out there going away like, like out there performing, performing like Josh around the clock. Really, is what it is as we go forward. I look forward to seeing more interviews.

Skye Predavec

Question Time has kicked off in the Senate, starting with a question from the Liberals’ Maria Kovacic on the government’s trust tax reforms:

Why is the Albanese government forcing Australian families to choose between paying the Prime Minister’s latest tax grab and protecting vulnerable family members, including victims of domestic violence?

Where does this logic come from?

There are two main kinds of trust in Australia: discretionary and fixed. Discretionary trusts allow trustees to control where the money from a trust goes year-to-year, while fixed trusts have to be paid in set portions to set groups of people.

Labor’s tax reforms are targeted at discretionary trusts, the number of which have more than doubled since 2000, and the benefits of which go overwhelmingly to the top 10% of income earners.

Since fixed trusts won’t be taxed under the reforms, discretionary trusts could get out of the tax by fixing their beneficiaries – and this is where the Liberals’ complaint comes in: that this could force trusts to pay out funds to “estranged individuals”, or those “facing addiction or relationship breakdown”.

But of course, discretionary trusts won’t be banned under the reforms, they’ll just be taxed properly. The ATO estimates that discretionary trusts currently “contribute to the sheltering of” between $672 million and $1.2 billion every year.

As Penny Wong, representing the PM, told the Senate,

“the reforms do not limit the flexibility of discretionary trusts to add beneficiaries … We will not be committing to simply not proceeding with tax arrangements because you don’t agree with them.”

Barnaby Joyce has remembered he is also a local member and has asked about fire ants.

But only in ways he can blame this government for it. Not the government he was part of for almost ten years

The LNP’s Alison Penfold is next with:

Yesterday, a Labor MP leaked to the media that they were “quote not happy about these compounding attacks on small business. When will this minister start listening to Australians who have a go and her own Labor colleagues and stop waging war on small business?

Angie Bell, the shadow minister for small business, has obviously been benched in the short term.

Anne Aly:

As I mentioned in the last in the last response, Mr. Speaker, we are seeing record numbers of small businesses opening in Australia, largely due to the settings that this government has had, including 3.8 billion dollars of assistance to small business. I meet with small businesses regularly, and regularly they tell me that the two measures that this government has introduced-the 20,000 instant asset write-off being made permanent, the two-year loss carryback being being made permanent-have made a huge difference to them.

Both measures introduced by a Labor government, both measures wound back by coalition governments.

The opposition has decided that Small Business Minister Anne Aly is the flavour of its latest attempts to find relevance.

And as it does in cases like this, the Coalition likes to send its women out. And while there are not too many to choose from, we have plenty of water carriers for the patriarchy in these ranks, so we have Mary Aldred asking:

Today, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted one Labor MP saying tradespeople were told for years to use trusts and are now being made to feel like the government is coming after them. When will this minister start listening to Australians who have a go, ax Labor’s toxic taxes impacting 1000s of tradies, and stop waging war on small business.

One would think this is a question for Jim Chalmers – that it’s not shows you what the aim actually is.

Aly:

I’m asked about small business, Mr. Speaker. And last year, a record 385,000, more than 385,000 new businesses were added to the economy, mostly from small businesses.

And in fact, Mr. Speaker, 1.4 million companies have registered since we came into office. That’s 35% higher than under the previous government, and two and a half times higher than under the Howard government, Mr. Speaker. Insolvency’s as a proportion is around half of what it averaged under the Howard government, Mr. Speaker.

We’ve made the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent, giving some certainty to small businesses, and we’ve made the two-year loss carryback permanent. Both measures introduced by a Labor government, both measures wound back by coalition governments.

Resources minister Madeleine King has just wrapped up her latest National Press Club address. We’ll bring you some of the main parts while we are in the downhill slide into QT.

Importantly, King isn’t talking anywhere near any end of the industry. Even after 2050. There will be a gas industry in Australia for as long as the gas industry thinks it can make money from it. You know who isn’t getting any of that? You. Or the environment. With one corner of our mouth, Australia tells the Pacific we are serious about climate action. With the other side, we reassure the gas industry we still have their backs. More people should be outraged by that.

And the questions? Mostly about how the GAS INDUSTRY would be impacted by the very modest gas reservation, which has basically been written by the gas industry, with the government already removing the issues the gas industry had with the policy. This won’t make gas cheaper for Australians. In fact, it’s pretty much only the anger at the gas industry from Australians that we haven’t seen the usual increases in gas prices. The gas industry is banking on that disappearing, because its playing the long game, and Labor, the Coalition and One Nation are all on board with it.

Whipps then finished his address with a challenge to present and future leaders:

So to the students here today, I leave you with this challenge.

You will inherit systems that my generation helped build. You are under no obligation to accept their limitations. In fact, I urge you to question them.

If our financial systems make it easier to destroy nature than protect it, redesign them.

If our institutions cannot respond at the speed these crises demand, reform them.

If our measures of prosperity ignore the natural systems and peoples that make prosperity possible, change what we measure.

When you are told your idea is impossible, unrealistic or too ambitious, remember the Pacific leaders who defied the odds and fought to put 1.5 degrees at the heart of the Paris Agreement.

Remember the Pacific students who took an idea born in a classroom all the way to the world’s highest court, and prevailed.

And remember that they were once standing where you stand today, with an idea, a conviction and the courage to act.

Your greatest challenge may not be discovering what needs to be done. It will be finding the moral courage to change the systems that prevent us from doing it.

For generations, the world has come to our islands with ideas about development, progress and prosperity.

Perhaps it is time the world learned something from the Pacific too.

So to the young people of the Pacific I say this: know your worth.

Know the value of your culture, your knowledge and your birthright.

Never let the world convince you that our islands are too small to matter.

The Pacific has spent generations protecting a world that has not always noticed. We will keep doing it.

Not only for our own children, but for every child who will inherit this planet, including the children of those who doubt us.

That is Pacific leadership. And it is yours to carry forward.

Kom kmal mesulang

Whipps continued:

Australia helped bring those Big Solution States together at Pre-Cop to prepare for this defining moment. That was leadership.

Because for the people of Tuvalu, whose homeland is threatened by rising seas, this is no political spectacle. It is their future being negotiated.

The Pacific may feel these impacts first, but we share one region. What reaches our shores today, will reach yours in Australia soon after.

Our regional security and prosperity are connected. So our response must be too.

Together, we now have an opportunity to create a defining Blue COP31, putting the ocean-climate nexus where it belongs: at the heart of the global climate response.

Some have asked whether Pre-COP was worth what it cost. That is a fair question.

Here is how I would ask you to answer it: not by who was in the room, but by the result we collectively achieve at COP next month.

Projects prepared. Finance committed. Systems commissioned. Diesel displaced. Benefits reaching communities.

Hold us to that measure. We intend to meet it.

We know that recognition of the challenges is not enough though.

It must lead to urgent action.

Our shared regional priorities going into COP are clear:

– keeping 1.5 degrees within reach;

– accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels towards genuinely clean, renewable energy;

– securing climate finance that reaches the communities who need it without pushing them further into debt;

– and recognizing the protection and stewardship of our ocean as fundamental to the world’s future.

And to be clear, we are not asking countries, including Australia, to switch off fossil fuels overnight, but to start planning a fair transition that looks after workers and cuts costs for consumers. But a genuine transition also requires us to ask whether the decisions and investments we make today are taking us towards that future, or locking us more deeply into the past.

It has also been said that if every leader at Pre-COP ended fossil fuels tomorrow, the difference to global emissions would be little more than a rounding error.

But that claim oversimplifies our argument.

While the Pacific has never had the emissions to change the world, what we do have is the courage to change the rules.

Think of a compass – the smallest instrument on any ship, but certainly not insignificant.

It does not move the vessel. But it guides its course.

Whipps went on with this very important point about how the Australian media framed the recent Pre-Cop conference in Fiji and Tuvalu:

I have just returned from Pre-COP in Fiji and Tuvalu, which Australia helped to organize and co-fund, and I have followed the media commentary here about who attended and what the gathering cost.

Media scrutiny is important. But so is perspective. And while cost matters, so does value.

For the first time in the history of Pre-COP, Heads of State and Government were invited to participate.

Global leaders, ministers and international institutions all came to our region to help shape negotiations that will determine our collective future.

Yet some have dismissed the gathering by counting the leaders who were absent, rather than recognizing the significance of those who came.

For instance, I read recently that “all the big names were missing”.

So let us talk about size for a moment.

As large oceanic countries and territories, Pacific states are custodians of nearly 20 per cent of our Earth’s surface.

That’s an area larger than Russia, China, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia and India combined.

There is nothing small about that.

Our fisheries help feed hundreds of millions of people internationally each year and supply more than half of the world’s tuna.

Our currents shape rainfall, harvests and weather systems across the world, and are integral to the planetary processes that regulate our climate.

Across this vast ocean that is our backyard, run the shipping routes and submarine cables connecting some of the largest economies – carrying their goods, communications and commerce.

The truth is, humanity actually depends upon our Blue Pacific for its food, climate stability and connectivity.

The true measure of a nation’s significance is not how much land it occupies, but the role it plays in sustaining our shared planet.

And by that measure, the Pacific is anything but small.

It is true that leaders of many of the world’s largest industrialized nations, and its largest emitters and polluters, were not present at this Pre-COP.

But the Big Ocean States were.

The nations stewarding planetary systems fundamental to our collective future were there. And most importantly, we came organized. We came prepared. And we came with solutions.

Because confronting the climate crisis cannot only mean assembling the countries that have contributed most to the problem. It must also mean listening and learning from the countries that have spent generations protecting the solutions.

As we face this existential crisis as a global collective, we will certainly need the big industrial states to take action.

But we will also need the Big Solution States.

And many of those, are right here in the Pacific.

The president of Palau – H.E. Surangel S. Whipps, Jr. has delivered an address to ANU. In it, he makes the point that the Pacific is treated as small – because it suits nations such as Australia.

Today I want to speak candidly to you all about something that is too often overlooked: the power of Pacific leadership in the context of the challenges we face as a global community.

And I want to begin with a simple proposition: The Pacific has never been small. We have only been measured as if we were.

By the size of our populations. The size of our economies. The amount of land we occupy. Our distance from the world’s centers of “power”.

We are often described by those outside our region as remote, vulnerable and dependent.

And increasingly, as global powers compete for influence, our region is viewed through another lens: geopolitics.

But the Pacific is not a chessboard. It is our home.

Our islands are not squares to be won or lost in somebody else’s strategic competition. Our partnerships are not prizes. Our sovereignty is not negotiable.

And if those are the only lenses through which the world sees us, it will miss something far more important.

But what if we measured something different?

What if we measured the area of ocean we safeguard?

The critical biodiversity we protect?

The amount of food we provide to the world?

The knowledge carried through our cultures?

The solutions our people have pioneered?

Or the influence Pacific nations have had on consequential global decisions?

Then a very different Pacific comes into view.

Not a collection of small island states at the edge of the world, but a vast Blue Pacific Continent at the heart of systems upon which the rest of the world depends.

And that distinction matters. Because how the world sees the Pacific, shapes how it listens to us, how it partners with us and, ultimately, whether it recognizes our true worth.

Staff Writers

In an address to the Revenue Summit, ACT Treasurer Chris Steel said GST revenue is declining and a growing share of service costs is being shifted to the states and territories. 

“The Australia Institute has highlighted the scale of the first problem,” Minister Steel said.

“GST revenue was around four per cent of GDP in the 2000s and is projected to move towards the per cent by the end of the 2020s. For the ACT, the Institute estimates a gap of $493 million in 2025-26 alone.

“For a jurisdiction of our size, that is not a marginal variation. It is a material constraint on the services and reforms we can sustain.” 

He says there should be stronger partnership between governments, more reliable revenue for jurisdictions, less restrictive funding conditions and more support for tax reform.

Staff Writers

Let’s go back to the Revenue Summit, where a powerful talk about the consequences of the cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Sophie Cusworth, CEO of Women with Disabilities Australia, said Australians needs to think about what kind of country we want to be.

“These are human rights issues… can we afford the consequences of these cuts?” 

Muriel Cummins, President of Occupational Therapt Society and member of Every Australian Counts Steering Committe, has given the Revenue Summit a sense of the scale of the cuts and how much it hurts people with disability. 

“Over 300,000 people will lose access to the NDIS by the end of the decade… thousands of jobs are at risk,” Ms Cummins said. 

“We must look honestly at our properly revenue… reform should stregthen the NDIS and ensure supports reaches the people who need them,” she said. 

“The question is what we choose to count as an expense… and who we consider worth investing in.”

Megan Spindler-Smith, Acting CEO of People With Disability Australia, said budgets are about choices, and a 25 per cent tax on gas exports could help vulnerable Australians.

Disability advocates have joined growing calls for a tax on gas exports, arguing the revenue could help protect Australians on the NDIS from cuts to essential supports. 

“Why are we choosing to make people with disability pay for revenue we have not chosen to collect?” they said. 

Luke Slawomirski

A new report from the National Rural Health Alliance confirms what we already know: Aussies living in rural areas are being short-changed when it comes to Medicare access.

Every rural Australian is receiving, $1,218 less in healthcare funding each year than city residents, on average, according to the report. Those living in towns of 5,000 people or less receive, on average $6,368 less healthcare funding each year.

These dismal statistics were discussed at a recent Australia Institute webinar Access to health care for all Australians.

The numbers also reflect our Second class citizens report earlier this year. The report found Medicare benefits drop the further one lives from a metropolitan area.

1. Total per person Medicare benefits across all services, 2025

It also found that premature death is also far more prevalent in the regions.

Premature death (aged <75y) per 100,000 people, 2023

And that – surprise surprise – the per-person cost of hospitalisations (for problems like diabetes and asthma that should be managed in the primary care setting) rises the further someone lives from a city.

Cost of potentially preventable hospitalisations per person, 2023-24

This tells us many things – chief among them that investing more in rural health would pay major health and financial dividends.

Well smash me down and call me avocado – Labor has already let the gas industry dictate the terms of the gas reservation which was supposed to be the answer to the gas industry calling the shots for Australian domestic prices. Can’t even let Australians have an inch of control over these resources huh? And yet another example of why a gas tax is actually just one of the simplest answers – because the gas industry is never going to give up ANYTHING to Australians.

As AAP reports:

Labor has yielded to gas industry demands and reined in the resource minister’s powers as part of a controversial domestic gas reservation scheme, which the minister says will instil a consistent reservation framework. 

Resources Minister Madeleine King announced a change to the legislation, which was introduced to parliament on Wednesday, ahead of her speech to the National Press Club.

As well as limiting ministerial discretion over how much gas an exporter can be forced to reserve  for the Australian market, Ms King said she has also made it harder to game the scheme and ensured states and territories will be consulted on decisions that affect them.

“Australians expect our resources to serve the national interest. Australians expect a reliable supply of affordable gas at home, and that’s what a domestic gas reservation scheme delivers,” she told the lower house.

“A decade of chaotic policy making from the coalition combined with weather events, coal power station maintenance backlogs from COVID-19 and the consequences to global gas supply due to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine saw energy prices spike severely.”

A gas industry lobby group called for ministerial discretion to be narrowed in a submission to the draft legislation in September.

The reservation policy risked crowding out domestic-focused producers, reducing competition and diversity of supply, and discouraging investment in gas supply, Australian Energy Producers, chief executive Samantha McCulloch said.

Labor has already watered down the proposal after an uproar from gas companies, changing a requirement for exporters to set aside 20 per cent of their production for the domestic market to a more ambiguous obligation of “up to 20 per cent”.

Existing contracts are also exempt.

A broad range of critics, from unions and conservationists to business groups, say the draft legislation provides exporters such as Santos loopholes to continue selling gas to the more lucrative foreign market at the expense of domestic users.

“The gas reservation debate looks complex but it really isn’t,” Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said.

“Will we do now what we should have done before, and put strong clear and fair expectations on gas exporters ahead of their next wave of contracts? 

“Or will we fudge it until it’s too late, and condemn Australia to decades more of costly insecurity?”

It comes as a report from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility said Western Australia’s domestic gas shortfall was driven by exporters selling to higher priced export markets, rather than a lack of gas.

The report found committed and uncontracted gas made through existing infrastructure could make the state’s needs under every scenario from the energy market operator.

Ms King will say that Australia’s gas exports have played an important role in maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific.

“A successful, peaceful energy transition relies on continued Australian exports of energy,” according to an excerpt of her speech.

“We must continue exporting traditional commodities – like gas and coal – while our export markets still need them, and while our regional trading partners follow their important paths to net zero.”

Deputy Greens leader Steph Hodgins-May vowed to keep up the pressure for a 25 per cent tax on gas exports instead of the reservation scheme.

Staff Writers

Back at the Revenue Summit, where there’s a discussion underway about getting a fair share for our massive gas exports. 

Australia Institute Chief Economist Greg Jericho has done a great job showing just how much Australians are losing and how much the gas industry is benefiting.

“If we had  a (25% tax on gas exports) as of this morning we would have been up to $78 billion,” Dr Jericho said. 

There’s a live tracker that actually shows in real time how much we are losing out: https://gas.australiainstitute.org.au/

Independent MP Nicolette Boele slammed the decision not to create a regime similar to what Norway created early on, calling it “irresponsbile”. In Norway, gas profits directly fund public infrastructure rather than private corporate balance sheets.

“That’s just frankly stupid,” Ms Boele said.

Ms Boele said she has seen a public shift on the issue, with more Australians aware they are being taken for a ride. 

Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director at the Australia Institute, said a a 25% gas export tax, as proposed by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, could raise $17 billion a year, pointing out the policy is hugely popular and has support from voters across the political spectrum, particularly among Greens and One Nation supporters. 

“We didn’t have a gas shortage at all, we had a gas export problem… around 80 per cent is used for export,” Ms Bennett said.

“There’s almost no opposition to it… people really support this as a policy issue.” 

She pointed out it that the gas industry’s free ride is not only unfair, but it also led to higher energy costs for Australian consumers.

Australia Institute co-CEO Leanne Minshull said there “there is so much momentum for 25 per cent tax on gas” across the country. 

Skye Predavec

Currently, government ministers are being made to explain “grants made under Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program” to the Senate.

While the name sounds very ordinary, constitutional Lawyer Anne Twomey has labelled one of these grants “grey corruption”, and the program itself a “farce”.

The program is the government’s way of “delivering 2025 election commitments” through a “one-off closed non-competitive grant programme”.

What does that mean? As Liberal senator Paul Scarr explained:

What they’re talking about is that a grant is open but there’s only one possible applicant. There’s only one person who can actually receive the grant money. A predetermined outcome, exactly. So it’s closed and it’s non-competitive. So it’s already predetermined who’s going to get the money.

The Centre for Public Integrity analysed grants under the scheme, finding that Labor-held electorates received “almost three-quarters of the funding” and that marginal seats where Labor was competitive received disproportionate amounts.

In response, Labor senators have homed in on the Nationals’ Bridget Mckenzie, who moved the motion that compelled the ministers to explain themselves. Mckenzie resigned as sports minister in 2020 over the sports rorts affair, where sports grants were disproportionately sent to Liberal and National-held electorates.

Labor’s Murray Watt claimed the grants were being “delivered with proper processes” and, after Opposition senators interjected, attacked Mckenzie:

Are you defensive about something? Is it sports rorts you’re defensive about? Is that why you can’t shut up when other people are speaking?

It was true in 2020 that government grants were going disproportionately towards government-held seats, as Australia Institute research found during the Morrison government.

It is unclear, however, why that would prevent another government’s grants from being problematic half a decade later.

This is a long one, but it always worth having these things on the record – here is the official agreement agreed to between Australia and Jordan:

Strengthening Bilateral Cooperation

1.    Leaders reaffirmed the strong and enduring Defence partnership between Australia and Jordan, built on decades of cooperation and underpinned by the Australia-Jordan Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding. They welcomed continued strengthening of Defence ties and expressed their commitment to maintaining regular engagement through strategic dialogue, education and training, professional military exchanges, and cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

2.    The two sides reinforced the value of practical Defence cooperation in strengthening mutual understanding, enhancing operational effectiveness, and supporting the professional development of their armed forces. They welcomed continued engagement in areas of shared interest, including science and technology, accelerated capability development, Defence industry cooperation, joint operations, peacekeeping and trans-national counter-terrorism. They also acknowledged the importance of Defence cooperation in supporting regional stability, including through operational collaboration where appropriate.

3.    Leaders unequivocally condemned terrorism and violent extremism in all their forms and manifestations. Australia and Jordan have a strong history of border management cooperation, driven by the Australian Department of Home Affairs and the Jordanian relevant authorities. Building on longstanding counter-terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement ties, they agreed to strengthen information sharing and operational coordination between relevant agencies to prevent and disrupt terrorist activity, financing and recruitment. 4.    They acknowledged the contribution that stronger trade and investment links can make to supporting jobs, prosperity and economic resilience in both countries. They committed to working collaboratively with private sectors to encourage closer business-to-business ties and identify mutual opportunities, including in the resources sector. Leaders welcomed the opportunities available through deeper education, research and institutional partnerships that build future-ready skills and support innovation and inclusive economic growth. 

5.    Leaders reaffirmed the importance of international cooperation to address climate change and strengthen resilience to its impacts. They agreed to explore deeper cooperation on water security, drought preparedness, data-informed resource management, and coral reef management. They encouraged collaboration on sustainable agriculture and food security, including technologies and practices suited to arid and water-constrained environments.

6.    The two sides acknowledged the importance of mental health and psychological wellbeing in supporting resilient communities. They welcomed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Mental Health Cooperation, which will strengthen information sharing and collaboration on trauma-informed mental health and psychosocial support.

7.    Leaders welcomed opportunities to expand cultural, professional and youth exchanges and to deepen connections between communities and institutions. They recognised the valuable contribution of the Jordanian-Australian community to Australia’s multicultural society and to the friendship between the two countries.

At the Regional and International Levels

8.    His Majesty King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein and the Prime Minister of Australia discussed the situation in the Middle East. They expressed concern over the continued tensions in the region and stressed the need for all relevant actors to work collectively towards de-escalation, emphasising diplomacy and dialogue as the means to achieve this objective.

9.    Australia condemned in the strongest terms Iranian attacks targeting Jordan and expressed its solidarity with the Kingdom. The two countries reaffirmed their support for all efforts aimed at reaching a diplomatic solution that would end the crisis, address its root causes, and achieve sustainable security and stability.

10.    Leaders underscored the importance of freedom of navigation and overflight, and their strong support for unimpeded trade in the region and other lawful uses of the sea consistent with international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

11.    Australia recognized Jordan’s important contribution to regional peace, security and stability. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the two-state solution in accordance with international law and relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, as the only path to achieving just and lasting peace. Leaders emphasized their rejection of any attempts to annex the West Bank or displace the Palestinian people, and reiterated their condemnation of the illegal ‘E1’ settlement project, emphasizing it constitutes a violation of international law. 

12.    The two sides reaffirmed the need to preserve the existing historical and legal status quo of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Australia stressed the importance of the historical Hashemite Custodianship over these holy sites.

13.    Leaders emphasized the importance of implementing the Gaza Peace Plan in full, in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025), protecting civilians consistent with international law, and the full, safe, rapid and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.

14.    Leaders also underscored the importance of supporting UNRWA and enabling it to carry out its UN mandate.

15.    Australia reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to supporting Jordan’s humanitarian and refugee response, including to the situations in Syria and Gaza. This has included partnerships with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization, UNHCR, Jordan’s Ministry of Education and other relevant Jordanian institutions. 

16.    Leaders recognised Jordan’s sustained contribution as a host of refugees and as a regional hub for humanitarian assistance and acknowledged the significant pressures this places on public services, infrastructure and host communities. They called for continued and predictable international support for refugees and the countries and communities that host them, and reaffirmed the importance of durable solutions, consistent with international law.

17.    Leaders affirmed their countries’ support for Syria’s unity, security, stability and sovereignty, and for the Syrian Government’s efforts to rebuild the country on foundations that meet the aspirations of the Syrian people and uphold the rights of all its constituent groups. 

18.    Leaders reaffirmed Australia’s and Jordan’s support for Lebanon’s efforts to ensure its security, strengthen its sovereignty over all its territory, and ensure that arms remain exclusively in the hands of the state, as well as the need for all parties to comply with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.

19.    The two sides condemned the Houthi militia’s attacks on Saudi Arabia, particularly on civilians and civilian infrastructure. They emphasised their full solidarity with Saudi Arabia. They reaffirmed their support for Yemen’s legitimate government and efforts to achieve a comprehensive and sustainable political settlement that preserves Yemen’s unity, sovereignty, and stability.

20.    They reaffirmed their support for a rules-based international order, underpinned by international law including the United Nations Charter. They underscored the importance of dialogue, diplomacy and international cooperation in addressing shared security challenges and advancing a just and enduring peace, security and stability in the Middle East, where sovereignty and territorial integrity are respected.

21.    Australia welcomed His Majesty’s leadership in promoting international cooperation against terrorism, including through the Aqaba Process. His Majesty welcomed Australia’s interest in organising an Aqaba Process meeting in 2027 focused on countering online extremism and the misuse of emerging technologies. 

22.    Leaders reaffirmed their steadfast commitment to upholding international humanitarian law and humanitarian principles. They welcomed the leading roles played by Jordan and Australia in strengthening respect for international humanitarian law, including through the Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel and the Global Initiative to Galvanize Political Commitment to International Humanitarian Law. Australia welcomed Jordan’s leadership in advancing the Global Initiative and its convening of the High-Level Conference on Humanity in War on 7 December 2026.

Jim Chalmers has introduced his treasury amendments, which include the discretionary trust changes. But I wouldn’t count on them being passed this year – the Greens want an inquiry and the Coalition are in a mood to accommodate them on that in the senate and there are not too many senate sitting weeks left in the year, so unless there is some fancy footwork from the Treasurer on the negotiations, these bills will be a 2027 agenda item (although the changes aren’t until 2028 so that’s been planned for.

Luke Slawomirski

We’re always told that the private sector brings the discipline of the market to Australia’s healthcare system.

So why does it seem to need so much help from government?

Taxpayers already spend about $8 billion a year directly subsidising private health insurance. Then there were calls for the government to set private hospital fees (yep, you read that right).

Now independent MPs Andrew Wilkie and Dr Monique Ryan backed by the AMA and others, want a new government authority to oversee the sector, monitor its finances, scrutinise contracts and help steer it towards sustainability.

Isn’t that supposed to be what markets do themselves?

Private healthcare is often defended on the basis that competition, choice and commercial pressure make it more efficient than the staid public alternative.

But if the private system needs billions in subsidies, public pricing, and a taxpayer-funded authority to keep it functioning, at some point we should ask the question:

What, exactly, is the point of having a private system?

It’s a big day in terms of diplomacy we have the president of Palau here – Anthony Albanese has met with H.E. Surangel S Whipps Jnr this morning in the Lodge. Whipps will officially open Palau’s embassy in Australia during this trip, which will also include a re-affirmation of Australia and Palau’s existing agreements.

And right around now, Albanese is meeting with the King of Jordan, His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein.

Staff Writers

Delivering her keynote address at the Revenue Summit, Senator Pocock said “the 20 richest Australains hold more wealth than the bottom three million households.” 

She also called out big corporations, such as Santos, for paying zero company tax. 

Senator Pocock said “nowhere is the perveted nature of our tax system more clear” than when it comes to gas. 

“Every day we fail to tax our gas exports we lose $50 million and every year we lose $17 billion,” she said. 

AAP has an update on the latest ‘warning’ from the AI industry and it is getting so stupid:

A new warning about artificial intelligence from Anthropic ‌has caused a stir in cybersecurity circles, after the company warned AI models could be months away from self-replicating across the internet.

In a post late on Monday, ‌Anthropic raised the possibility that rogue AI could spin up a botnet, spread quickly, fight takedown attempts and even break into data centres to turbocharge its growth. 

Some experts said Tuesday ‌they shared the company’s concern, although at least one said the company appeared to be engaging in “vendor exaggeration”.

Monday’s post fleshed out a warning in September from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who floated the idea that within the next year or even sooner, AI might be able to hijack “the entire internet” with “a persistent botnet”.

Cybersecurity experts who pushed back on the doomsday scenario argued that models would be too big to move around efficiently and could not draw on enough computer power to operate independently.

The post made an early attempt ‌to articulate how those challenges ‌could be overcome. The ⁠company said its experiments showed medium-sized AI models with 30 billion parameters or less could already perform many of the ​individual tasks required for self-replication, even if they struggled to complete the entire process reliably.

Anthropic said the models could then stitch together the required compute by hijacking inexpensive internet-connected devices. It added that the models were able to replicate across a simplified test network.

“A replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there’s no centralised point to shut off,” the company said.

The report adds to broader concerns about the security risks tied to increasingly capable AI systems, including their potential to automate cyber attacks, operate with limited human oversight and circumvent safeguards.

The advances ⁠in models have prompted a series of often dire warnings from industry heads and AI ‌company employees about ​the possibility of severe, even existential, risks of runaway AI development.

Some cybersecurity experts were sceptical.

“‘We managed to run a small model on cheap TVs,’ does not a security crisis make,” ​said Ciaran Martin, ‌a former head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre. He said the post came across as an “interesting technical paper with a more than hint of vendor exaggeration”.

Others expressed ​more concern.

Zhengxiong Li, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Colorado Denver, said that while the testing had been done in controlled conditions, he still found it worrying that an AI could effectively become a “worm,” a self-replicating program that could improvise ways to hijack devices on the fly.

“If ​it ​runs across many devices without depending on a central service, there may ​be no single place to shut it down,” he said.

Anthropic said if smaller ‌models continue improving at their historical rate, they could reach the capability required for autonomous replication by the end of 2026. 

It also floated the idea that the models might find ways to target more powerful computing resources, including data-centre processors, that could potentially enable them to draw on much bigger pools of computer power.

One researcher said it made sense to think of the Anthropic post as more of a hypothetical than a prediction.

It made sense to consider the possibility of AI models proliferating autonomously given the past three months ​of revelations over rogue AI activity, said Jessica Ji, a senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 

But she said, “We don’t know yet what ​the likelihood of that actually happening is — it’s ⁠not zero, but nor is it guaranteed.”

Staff Writers

In his opening remarks, Australia Institute co-CEO Dr Richard Denniss has talked about how Australia is a low-tax country, and how budgets are about choices, despite what Australians have been told for years. 

Dr Denniss used the example of cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, a decision which analysis shows will likely result in a lower quality of care for people with disabilities, a reduction in labour force participation of family carers, and increase the risk of abuse through neglect

“We could have collected more revenue from gas, we could have collected more tax from high income earners (instead),” Dr Denniss said. 

He also called the persistent idea of privitisating our services as a way of improving the lives of Australians as a “farce”. 

“It didn’t work, we know it didn’t work, we cut the taxes and privitised the services and it didn’t work,” he said.

“This neo-liberal experiment is the status quo, if we are going to change the country we are going to change the status quo.

“If we are not going to change the status quo then we are not going to change much at all.” 

Skye Predavec

Resources minister Madeleine King has introduced the Albanese government’s Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026 to the House of Representatives.

The proposed reservation policy has been criticised by a coalition of industry groups, unions, environmentalists and welfare groups for its “Santos-sized loopholes”, that would allow big gas companies to get out of their obligations to keep gas in the domestic market.

Importantly, while the Albanese government had previously promised a gas reservation scheme that would require an amount of gas equivalent to 20% of exports to be kept in the domestic market, that’s now been downgraded to “up to 20%”.

Why?

The bill tells us that “the minimum total quantity [of gas] may be lower due to recognising existing contracts, existing infrastructure constraints or existing reservation arrangements.”

So gas companies might have to reserve a fifth of their gas… unless they’ve already agreed to send it away, or unless it’s too hard to keep it here.

A far simpler policy, with far fewer loopholes, would be a 25% tax on gas exports.

A 25% tax would have already raised over $78 billion if it had been implemented in July 2022 – enough to pay for universal free childcare, or free university and TAFE for all. A gas reservation policy would raise almost nothing. A gas export tax would also incentivise gas exporters to avoid the tax by redirecting gas to the domestic market, lowering prices for Australian households and businesses.

Staff Writers

This year’s revenue summit has begun.

It brings together policymakers, academics and independent experts to examine what isn’t working in our current system – and what can be done to fix it. 

This year’s event will focuses on the urgent need for Australia to raise more revenue to reduce inequality, reshape the economy and ensure Australians receive a fair share from our natural resources. 

The Stop the Bill Shock campaign will protest outside Origin Energy’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney today, calling for Origin to stop increasing consumer energy bills given the cost of living crisis and the billion dollar profits companies like Origin are making.

From the release:

Origin Energy – which accounts for around a quarter of retail electricity and gas customers, recorded a full-year statutory profit of $1.574 billion in FY2025/2026. This mammoth profit once again came at the expense of their customers, who are being squeezed by even increasing energy bills, as the company fails to pass on the savings from lower wholesale prices generated by renewable energy. 

Figures from the Australian Energy Regulator, which reports on retailer performance in NSW, SA, QLD, ACT & TAS. show that more than 121,000 Origin Energy customers had outstanding electricity bills at the end of March 2026. While the number of electricity customers on a formal hardship debt repayment plan also increased more than 40% compared to the previous year – from 31,960 to 45,576. 

Stop The Bill Shock (STBS), an alliance of energy and economic justice advocates, has condemned retailers for continuing to increase electricity bills and their profit margins while hundreds of thousands of Australians are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table amidst the worsening cost of living crisis.

STBS has also previously demanded that retailers forgo a fraction of their super-profits to relieve the burden on debt-trapped households.

The Vatican has confirmed that Pope Leo XIV has lung cancer. He had surgery to remove part of his lung, and is in recovery. Our man at the Vatican, Keith Pitt is on the case, keeping Australia abreast of the news as part of his diplomatic duties, but Anthony Albanese, who has grown stronger in his Catholic faith since a serious car crash while opposition leader, has released a statement:

Pope Leo XIV is a source of inspiration to Catholics right around the world – and here in Australia.

He is a voice for peace, humanity and reason in our modern world.

My thoughts and prayers are with him as he recovers from his recent surgery.

We hope and pray for a quick recovery.”

Well this is cheery isn’t it. Seems Australian companies are following suit with their American counterparts – and we are doing it without the culture war on inclusion and diversity.

The latest Chief Executive Women senior executive census, which tracks women in c-suite roles in business and industry, finds that after three years of not moving, the number of women in executive leadership team roles is now falling.

It’s the first fall in a decade. The survey reports the share of women in ASX 200 companies sitting in senior executive positions has falling from 32 per cent to 31 per cent. And the number of companies with NO women in their executive team increased from 17 per cent to 25 per cent. Woman as CEOs has also fallen – from one in seven appointments, to one in four. And as always, the numbers are worse when you consider women from diverse backgrounds.

CEW President Helen Conway AO said corporate Australia probably needed to take a look at itself:

The 2026 CEW Census puts every board and executive team on notice that hard-won gains can no longer be taken for granted.

While CEW Chief Executive Officer Lisa Annese AM said that the global pushback against gender equity was also being seen in Australia.

The wider findings of the 2026 Census show:

• Women hold 30 per cent of ASX 300 executive leadership team roles and 11 per cent of ASX 300 CEOs are women, with 31 companies now led by a woman, four more than in 2025
• Women received 13 per cent of ASX 300 CEO appointments this year, barely above the share of CEO roles they already hold
• Over ten years, women’s share of ASX 200 executive leadership team roles has risen from 21 to 31 per cent, and their share of CEO roles from 5 to 11 per cent
• If the current ten-year trend continues, women may not reach 50 per cent of ASX 200 executive leadership team roles until around 2043
• At the current longer-term rate of change, women may not reach parity in ASX 200 CEO roles until around 2085, beyond the working lifetimes of most people now in the workforce

CEW is calling on Australian corporate leaders to act on five priorities:

1. Set and publish 40:40:20 gender targets (at least 40 per cent women, at least 40 per cent men, and 20 per cent of any gender) for executive teams, CEO pipelines and succession pools, and link them to executive remuneration.
2. Build gender-balanced CEO pipelines, with gender balance at every stage of succession planning and women moved deliberately into profit and loss roles.
3. Address pushback and backlash against gender equity, both publicly and inside the organisation.
4. Create flexible, safe and inclusive workplaces.
5. Broaden the leadership blueprint by challenging definitions of CEO readiness that privilege a single career pathway.

Glenn Connley

Good policy is about choices – and you can tell a lot about a government’s priorities by who they choose to tax and where they spend the money. We are at a crucial point in our history. A stronger and fairer tax system is essential to strengthen public institutions and guard against rising political instability and disillusionment.

This year’s summit brings together Australian policymakers, academics and independent experts to examine what isn’t working in our current system – and what can be done to fix it.  It will focus on the urgent need for Australia to raise more revenue to reduce inequality, reshape the economy and ensure Australians receive a fair share for our natural resources. 

We are the world’s 12th largest economy and one of its largest fossil fuel exporters, yet our students pay more in HECS/HELP than the gas industry pays in the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. Meanwhile, we know a 25% tax on gas exports could raise $17 billion a year. The 2026 Revenue Summit is an opportunity to reassess our priorities and help make Australia a fairer place. 

This year’s speakers include:

• Chris Steel MLA | ACT Treasurer 
• Senator Barbara Pocock AM | Senator for South Australia
• Dr Kristen Sobeck | Lecturer in Economics, University of Canberra & Research Affiliate, The Tax and Transfer Policy Institute
• Professor Janine Dixon | Director of the Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University
• Saul Eslake | Independent Economist 
• Dr Ben Spies-Butcher | Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Future Work
• Maiy Azize | National Spokesperson, Everybody’s Home & Deputy Director, Anglicare Australia
• Leo Patterson Ross | Chief Executive Officer, Tenants Union of NSW
• Thomas Mayo | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man & Assistant National Secretary, Maritime Union of Australia
• Catelyn Richards | Federal Assistant Secretary, Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation
• Dr Terri Macdonald | Director, Policy and Research, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)
• Muriel Cummins | President, Occupational Therapy Society & Member of Every Australian Counts Steering Committee
• Sophie Cusworth | Chief Executive Officer, Women With Disabilities Australia
• Megan Spindler-Smith | Acting Chief Executive Officer, People with Disability Australia (PWDA)
• Professor Janine Dixon | Director, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University
• Leanne Minshull | co-Chief Executive Officer, The Australia Institute
• Dr Richard Denniss | co-Chief Executive Officer, The Australia Institute
• Ebony Bennett | Deputy Director, The Australia Institute
• Greg Jericho | Chief Economist, The Australia Institute
• Matt Grudnoff | Senior Economist, The Australia Institute
• Alice Grundy | Research Manager, The Australia Institute

It’ll be the final speech for Tasmanian Liberal Jono Duniam, who had been billed as a rising star of the Liberal party when he entered, but seems to have seen the writing on the wall.

It’s also been pointed out by the very smart senate watchers that a lot of the Coalition senators (and House MPs) are being quite well behaved (for them at least) which is because now there is a shadow front bench spot up for grabs.

Duniam will give his final speech at 5pm.

Tegan George

The overwhelming majority of Australians support government intervention to tackle the rent crisis, with new polling showing almost eight in 10 back restrictions on rent increases.

A YouGov survey of 1,100 people, commissioned by the Australia Institute, found 55 per cent of respondents believed rent increases should be capped at the rate of inflation or less, while another 23 per cent supported a temporary freeze.

Support for tougher controls goes well beyond traditionally progressive voters, with a majority of Coalition and One Nation supporters also backing restrictions.

“For decades, Australia has been told that housing is best provided by the private market and governments should get out of the way,” said Jack Thrower, deputy research director at the Australia Institute.

“Governments have given away tens of billions in tax incentives for private developers, let public housing wither away and allowed the housing crisis to get worse and worse.”

The polling also found three in four voters (75 per cent) agree that governments should spend more money directly building public housing, including more than one in three (35 per cent) who strongly agree.

Support for increased public housing spending also crosses political lines, with 88 per cent of Greens voters, 83 per cent of Labor voters, 82 per cent of independent voters, and 69 per cent of both Coalition and One Nation voters backing the measure.

Mr Thrower said that while governments have taken steps to address the housing crisis, their efforts were focused primarily on homebuyers.

“This year the Albanese Government made bold changes to overhaul broken tax settings to help people trying to enter the housing market. But after years of surging rents, renters continue to suffer,” he said.

“This polling shows that voters overwhelmingly back bold government interventions, directly regulating rents and spending more to actually build more public housing.”

Anglicare Australia’s Rental Affordability Snapshot laid bare the deepening strain on households nationwide, finding the rental market was “less affordable than ever”.

The Snapshot surveyed nearly 49,000 rental listings and found only one property nationwide that was affordable for a person on JobSeeker – and none at all for those on Youth Allowance.

For people on the Disability Support Pension or Age Pension, the figures were scarcely better, with just 0.03 per cent and 0.2 per cent of listings affordable, respectively.

“The housing crisis is not a short-term shock. It is a design feature of the system,” said Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers when the report was released in August.

“The private market is clearly not delivering. Even full-time workers are being locked out, and people on Centrelink payments are seeing their options shrink year after year.

“This is what happens when we build a system around investors and hope that housing will trickle down.”

Despite warnings that changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax would drive up rents, the latest data from Cotality showed rental price growth is slowing.

The LNP’s Kevin Hogan has been asked about his colleague’s Angie Bell’s comments in the house yesterday, when she said that the small business minister Anne Aly should be “shamed and stoned in the square” over the ATO decision to ban credit card payments (which has already been delayed).

In a motion to rearrange business, Bell seconded and spoke a pre-prepared speech which ended with:

This minister and this Prime Minister should be absolutely shamed and stoned in the square

Bell is under immense preselection pressure in her Gold Coast electorate, and so is responding in the time honoured tradition of becoming as hard as possible to prove your bona fides to people who are never going to be satisfied.

Tony Burke called for the comments to be withdrawn. And they were. But this wasn’t a heckle. It was at the end of a speech which had been planned and thought about. It was deliberate. And it’s wasn’t part of a joke or satire sketch which the Coalition lost its mind over very recently, when obviously satirical comments were made about Gina Rinehart. Somehow that was ‘violence against women’ and there was a whole thing about it, but this?

Hogan doesn’t think that these comments are an issue.

Oh, look, Sally, we all make comments, and I’ve been guilty too in the heat of the moment to use terms or phrases that shouldn’t be used. And Angie quite rightly got up and withdrew it straight away and apologised.

Q: Anne Aly has called Angie Bell’s comments racist and misogynistic. Were they, in your view?

Hogan:

No, I don’t think they were racist or misogynistic. But Angie Bell, as she did, withdrew them immediately, as she should.

Why is Anthony Albanese telling his caucus to ‘hold their nerve’ when it comes to what the government is doing? And is the government under pressure from its left flank that it’s not moving quickly enough, Chalmers is asked? He answers by pointing to his Bernie Fraser Oration:

The speech I gave last night was about not dismissing or disregarding people who are under genuine pressure. It’s about not underestimating our political opponents, recognising the pressures that people are under, responding in tangible ways with tax cuts and wage rises and more bulk billing, and also reforming the economy and the interests of working people, and that’s what today’s legislation is all about.

…There are always a range of views. When you do a senior job in a government which is governing in difficult times, there will always be a range of views, and I’ve tried to always take the approach that none of us is beyond criticism.

Some people would like us to do more. Some people would like us to do less. That’s just the reality of a senior job in a government in difficult times, and so I accept that. I try and take all of the feedback that I get, good, bad, or indifferent on board.

Chalmers is then asked on ABC radio RN Breakfast about the IMF Economic outlook forecasts that places Australia at fifth in its highest inflation chart. Why is Australia ‘fairing so poorly compared to other nations?’

Chalmers:

Well, the World Economic outlook makes it really clear that inflation is going up around the world, and the market’s expecting interest rate rises in every major advanced economy. And so, that report that you’re asking me about is overwhelmingly about a very fragile global environment made worse by a war in the Middle East, which is pushing up inflation and weighing on growth here in Australia, but around the world.

Q: But other countries are handling it better when it comes to inflation.

Chalmers:

Well, you need to make the full comparison. If you want to make the Australian comparison with other countries, we’ve got stronger economic growth than all but one of the major advanced economies. We’ve had stronger employment growth, I think, than all of them.

We’ve had the lowest average unemployment of any Australian government the last 50 years. We’ve got public debt a sliver of the major advanced economies as a share of their economies, and so we do have a lot coming at us from around the world. But we’ve got a lot going for us as well.

We know that there’s an inflation challenge in our economy, made worse by the war in the Middle East, and we know that a lot of the price pressures that people are under are because we are hostage to developments on the other side of the world. But there’s also a helpful role that we will continue to play managing the budget in the most responsible way we can.

The employment factor shouldn’t be dismissed – despite strong pushes from the RBA that employment ‘remains too tight’, Chalmers has held the line that the economy can maintain the historically high levels of employment. That is important, because it’s people. Having more people unemployed, given that the nation’s income support sits below the poverty line, just to allegedly manage inflation (which, given this inflation is outside of consumers control, it wouldn’t) is actually diabolical as a policy setting.

And if hawkish economists are so set on having more people unemployed, taking one for Team Australia, then we should pay people a liveable income as a thank you.

The Greens want an exemption for money paid from trusts and charities and other tax exempt entities (which yes, would include research think tanks, but also private schools) from the discretionary trust changes removed from the legislation. Would Chalmers be open to that?

Chalmers:

Oh, look, that isn’t something that’s been raised for me directly. I actually just saw that report walking up to to have a yak with you in the studio, and so I’ve only seen the report of that. I haven’t had the opportunity to engage directly with the Greens on it, well, what we’ve tried to do in the legislation, and I want to get to the why the legislation is important in a moment, but on this very specific question, we’ve tried to make sure that there are reasonable arrangements for charities, for not-for-profits, which reflect some of the current arrangements that are in place.

There are good reasons for those sorts of exemptions.

This is a very specific sliver of what’s being proposed here. Obviously, the Greens will have the opportunity in the House of Representatives and in the Senate to raise these sorts of issues, but it’s only something that has sort of come on my my radar directly, reading that report on the ABC in the last few minutes.

Now, more broadly, we can’t lose sight of why this reform is really important. Our tax reforms are about cutting taxes for workers, making the housing market fairer for first home buyers, but also better aligning the tax treatment of income from work and income from assets, and that’s what this tranche of legislation is all about.

There are legitimate reasons for trusts, but they also allow a small proportion of people to manage their tax in ways it’s not available to most working Australians, and that’s why there’s been 50 years of reviews now recommending that they be reformed. That the use of these trusts, discretionary trusts, has doubled in the last 20 years, but still more than 95% of people don’t get trust income, and still less than 10% of small businesses would be affected by the changes that we’re proposing today. It doesn’t come in until the middle of 2028.

We’re providing a whole range of options for trust to restructure, or to elect to lock in distributions to avoid stamp duty.

We’ve done a heap of work and consultation, and the legislation we present today is a really important part of the really ambitious tax reforms that were in the budget.

Anthony Albanese has always prided himself on having an open door policy. And he’s been in politics long enough that most industry and lobby group heads have his number. He’s always been a very active player behind the scenes and often steps in at the behest of groups (or MPs, if its an electorate issue). This is a very old school way of doing politics, but that doesn’t mean it’s always positive. Last night, Albanese attended a Chamber of Commerce and Industry event, where he was praised by it’s head, Andrew McKellar, for responding so quickly to the industry’s concerns over the ATO banning credit cards as a payment option.

McKellar said: “But Prime Minister, to your credit, your door was open. You engaged, you listened, and you acted quickly to provide vital breathing space for small business.”

Now that is a very diplomatic way of saying ‘we complained directly to you and you acted’ without actually saying it. But McKellar didn’t need to because the prime minister then jumps in to confirm it.

Albanese: “My door is always open. Andrew did text me last Thursday morning, and by Friday morning we had an announcement.”

Which, given how long some people spent waiting to talk to Albanese at his electorate office over the government’s response to Palestine (which included some people being arrested or moved on by police for protesting outside the office) seems like a bit of, let’s say, selective responding.

Jim Chalmers is asked about the timeline of the delay on ABC radio RN Breakfast:

Well, it is true that we stepped in to ensure there was a much longer period for the ATO to consult with the business community and get it right. It is true that we stepped in on Friday. It is true that there were discussions between the government and the business community last Thursday. We were part of those discussions as well. My office was engaging with the Chamber of Commerce. I have an open door.

I’ve met with the with ACCI in recent weeks, in fact, and we were engaging on these issues as well. So there were discussions on the Thursday, we did step in on the Friday. There was also work happening on the Wednesday.

Who is we?

We stepped in. The government stepped in. The last week on the Wednesday, I had discussions with the Prime Minister. We agreed that it would be appropriate to find a better way through for small business.

We engaged with the business community on the Thursday as we do frequently on these sorts of issues.

Then Daniel Molino and I took a proposal to ministers on the Friday morning after I discussed with the tax commissioner very early on Friday morning, and by late Friday morning, we had stepped in to provide a much longer transition period. So the ATO has the time to consult with business and to to get this important change right.

Q: Was the ATO instructed by the government to have this credit card ban, or did the ATO make this decision and inform you or not inform you that this is what it was doing.

Chalmers:

Well, a couple of things about that. I mean, the the Reserve Bank announced the ban in in March.

Government agencies started working through the implications of that from in between March and the ban coming into place in October. The assistant treasurer and others engaged with government agencies on that, as I said last week.

Q: Was the ATO instructed by the government to ban credit card payments for tax?

Chalmers:

The ban on credit card payments surcharges was announced by the Reserve Bank in March. The ATO and other agencies worked through the implications for that in between, but the ATO said it wasn’t going to take tax payments via credit card.

Q: Was that an instruction from the government, or is this the ATO making decision?

Chalmers:

That was a decision of the ATO.

Skye Predavec

A climate protestor climbed over the barrier of the public gallery in NSW’s Legislative Assembly yesterday, in protest of the state’s Independent Planning Commission’s approval of the Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) coalmine extension.

The protestor, Andrew Sneddon, told the chamber:

“Premier Minns has failed NSW on climate change. Read your own net zero commission report. Stop exporting coal. Stop approving coal and gas projects. This government needs to fund new industries in the Hunter. You are failing NSW.”

“Premier, you are a coward and a climate criminal.”

Organised by climate advocacy group Rising Tide, the protest came in the middle of the Legislative Assembly’s question time. Sneddon came onto the floor brandishing a NSW Net Zero Commission report, before being pinned to the barrier by two MPs.

The speaker quickly cut the feed, but not before Sneddon’s protest came in the view of the camera.

It is Anti-poverty week and the Antipoverty Centre has been holding events on what actually could be done to address poverty, with tools, tangible outcomes and also simple policy changes which would actually help, rather than punish.

Overnight, it held an event on the issues which are compounded by poverty but don’t receive anywhere near the attention they deserve. The Central Land Council and Single Mothers Families Australia also took part in the webinar, which looked at issues the media never discusses – like the remote area allowance. That’s an allowance paid to people who live in eligible remote areas, to compensate for the higher cost of living in those regions.

The Central Land Council is recommending it be increased to at least $121.30 per week or $17.30 a day for a single adult, which would be about a 30% increase in Jobseeker. But that still puts people living in a remote area, because costs are estimated to be about 40% higher in remote areas. The CLC also recommends that it be indexed to inflation. If it had been indexed when it was first created in 1984, the rate for be $27.20 a week, instead of $9.10 per week.

That’s a very easy fix for the government, which would have an immediate impact on lives.

Today’s action will be joining the Stop the Bill Shock campaign in protesting against skyrocketing energy debt, in Sydney just in time for the Origin Energy annual general meeting.

As the Antipoverty Centre points out, the number of people on a hardship plan (which is a payment plan for people who can’t afford to pay their energy bill) has doubled over five years, while Australia’s major energy companies saw billion dollar profits.

The Prosper Australia Research Institute have released a new report on what it is calling ‘Australia’s Resource Wealth Giveaway’ where it has found that Australians could receive an additional $16-17bn a year from petroleum and $28bn a year from mining if the government stopped making the wrong choices.

It’s recommendations are:

Recommendation 1a: Market-linked state royalties: Market-linked royalties rise when commodity prices exceed long-run norms, so the public return rises automatically in boom conditions. 

Recommendation 1b: Consider hybrid systems: As an alternative to a purely market-linked royalty, states could combine a minimum royalty floor with a second boom-sensitive component linked to prices, profits or profit margins.

Recommendation 2: Address petroleum under-capture: Petroleum is Australia’s clearest revenue collection gap. State royalty reform can only go so far: major offshore petroleum projects are primarily subject to  Commonwealth tax settings.

Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May said it’s just another example of goverments being captured by the fossil fuel industry, while Australians suffered through a cost of living crisis:

Australia is a resource-rich country, but Australians are being ripped off.

We’re giving away billions in resource wealth while families struggle to pay the rent, put food on the table and afford basic healthcare.

Labor can find billions to prop up the fossil fuel industry, but when it comes to making corporations like Santos, Woodside and Adani pay a fair return, suddenly it’s all too hard.

Australians get just 14 cents in public revenue for every dollar of petroleum value created. Norway gets around 40 cents. I think we’re right to ask why we’re getting such a raw deal.

Imagine what an extra $45 billion a year could mean. More affordable childcare, better healthcare, cheaper public transport and investment in clean energy. Instead, that wealth is flowing into corporate profits.

Everyday Australians pay their taxes. Nurses, teachers and small business owners don’t get to decide they’d rather not contribute. So why do massive coal and gas corporations get special treatment?

The fossil fuel industry will roll out its usual scare campaign about investment, but Queensland has already shown that governments can demand a fairer return for publicly owned resources.

This is a political choice. Labor is choosing to protect the profits of fossil fuel corporations instead of making them pay their fair share.

Australians own these resources. It’s time Australians got the benefits.”

Lucinda Garbutt-Young for AAP

Labor and the coalition are defending government input on recommendations from an independent inquiry into artificial intelligence before they were released, as Australia continues to grapple with the approach to big tech. 

A bipartisan inquiry into AI presented early advice to the prime minister via an open letter on Tuesday, ahead of its official report in November. 

The letter urges the government to examine and change copyright settings to ensure Australian creators are paid and can maintain control over their work. 

More investment in critical AI infrastructure to bolster the nation’s digital sovereignty is recommended, along with increased oversight of government systems to quell data-breach concerns. 

A lengthy set of suggestions contained in the letter, taking up more than six pages, will be considered by the government. 

The committee’s deputy chair, Liberal senator Jonno Duniam, defended input from both the government and coalition before the letter was sent. 

A copy marked with notes from a senior government adviser, seen by AAP, was circulated to the committee. 

“I wrote the letter,” Mr Duniam told News24. 

“It was replete with typographical and grammatical errors, so I’m pleased others picked it up,” he said, noting he would be “concerned” if government ministers were not interested in it. 

While not all of the committee agreed with the overall approach, it had reached consensus about the letter, the committee chair and Labor MP Jo Briskey told reporters on Tuesday. 

But independent senator David Pocock said he was worried government officials had too much input into the letter.

“I am concerned that markups on the documents show the recommendations were pre-vetted by an adviser in the prime minister’s office and there was no time for changes to be considered by the (committee) chair,” Senator Pocock told AAP. 

“I am increasingly concerned that the work of this committee is being used to serve a political purpose rather than provide genuine parliamentary scrutiny and policy input.”

Ms Briskey insisted the committee was continuing to work independently. 

“I’ve been really enjoying the collaborative approach across government and opposition, as well as the cross bench,” she said. 

“This is about getting above politics and making sure that we’re providing something really meaningful for the parliament to consider as we chart our course forward in AI.”

There are broader issues at stake for the committee, too.

The Australian Recording Industry Association rejected suggestions from the inquiry that copyright laws were insufficient for stopping AI companies from using creatives’ work without credit. 

”Australian copyright law gives creators control,” ARIA chair Annabelle Herd said.

”It is the only thing standing between major American AI companies and unchecked access to the world’s content right here from Australia.”

Senator Duniam warned the government had limited time to act on recommendations if Australia wanted to pursue AI sovereignty on its own terms, instead of being dictated to by big tech or foreign powers.

The committee is due to file a full report by November 30. 

If you want to see the roadmap for where Labor will be taking its campaign against One Nation over the next few months, just read below (and add in health – because that is another major element of the coming Labor pushback)

Nobody expects polls to change much any time soon – it would be more surprising if they did. Same goes for consumer confidence.

We don’t dismiss the very real pressures that people are under or the way that plays out in our politics. Those pressures are real and not for one second do we downplay them. We understand that a desire for the past is rooted in a dissatisfaction with the status quo.

If anything, taking these pressures seriously, not dismissing them, not disregarding them, is the first of three essential elements of our response.

Part of that means pointing out where parties like One Nation, indeed any coalition or combination of them and the Liberals and Nationals, would make people worse off not better off. Which means they’re benefitting politically from economic uncertainty and cost of living pressures at the same time as they’d make things worse.

What they offer is just culture war camouflage for cutting wages and attacking workers.

Their superannuation policy would make people much poorer in retirement; their wages policy would eat away at take home pay and living standards; their unfunded commitments would blow a hole in the budget; their migration policy would smash the economy.

They would make a tangible difference to the lives of Australians but not a positive one. They would make people worse off, at the worst time.

They would be a disaster in government – inexperienced, incompetent and incapable of managing the economy or our international reputation. They couldn’t govern without Liberal numbers and that would make them a genuine Coalition of Chaos.

Hello and welcome back to The Point Live. It is business as usual today, although a very big thank you to the team who jumped in yesterday while I attended another work thing.

We have coffee! What a dream.

Last night, Jim Chalmers delivered the Bernie Fraser Oration at the invitation of the Australia Institute, where he warned against getting smug in the fight against the far right. He made mention of the “very positive treatment” One Nation receives in traditional media, but also the trap that progressives can fall into at times of feeling superior when pushing back against One Nation.

Their core message is often clear and sometimes very appealing: let’s just go back to a more nostalgic version of the world we remember.

We have all the facts to push back on this, but facts don’t beat feelings. Feelings are as real as facts.

The past will always feel safe and familiar and desirable because by definition we understand it better than we understand the future. That’s normal. That’s human.

When a significant swathe of our fellow Australians find that message of returning to an idealised version of the good old days appealing – we shouldn’t turn on them.

Our role as progressives is not to scold those who see appeal in that message. It’s not to mock them or ‘cancel’ them or talk down to them.

In fact, the true mission of serious progressives is as old as liberal democracy itself, and it comes in two halves.

One half is to persuade people that despite the visceral appeal of returning to the past – that this is not actually possible. And that trying via the actual policies of the far right will harm them. That the far right in government will weaken not strengthen the nation we love.

The mission is to show that there is no going back to an imagined past, yes partly because it never really happened the way you remember, but also because we need to respond to the world as it is and not as it was.

The other half of our mission is this: to persuade working people that the path we advocate, the path we haven’t walked before is actually the safer, more secure and more prosperous path for them and their loved ones.

And you do that by starting not from a place of smug moral superiority – but from a place of genuine respect and understanding that I’ve carried with me around my local community in Queensland and not just for the 13 years I’ve represented it, but over a lifetime living there.

But he also mentioned something I (and others) have been banging on about for years – that centre left parties became defenders of the status quo while jumping in to save the institutions the right had abandoned. Now, I doubt Chalmers has read anything I’ve written, but this is coming up a lot in the US and the UK and it is one of the first times we have seen a senior member of this Labor government acknowledge it (although he immediately jumps to – not us tho, when obviously – yes, it is)

Perhaps a key mistake made by parties of the left is that in their defence of democracy and institutions they’ve also inadvertently become the party of the status quo. We are not making that mistake, we are reforming the status quo in tax and housing and in other ways, in the interests of working people.

Hoping the far right goes away or implodes again is not actually a strategy. But acknowledging and acting on the pressures people are under, delivering better and more tangible outcomes for them, and reforming the status quo in their interests is, and that’s our approach.

I encourage you to read the entire speech. Meanwhile, Labor will be introducing its useless gas reservation policy, which is so useless the gas industry isn’t too fussed over it, other than to say – we need more gas. Which is not true, despite how many reports you hear from ‘industry’ that they need to find more gas or the sky will fall in. Japan and China have exports markets built on Australian gas. The nation’s gas companies sell Australian gas to are transitioning faster than originally planned because you know – energy security is national security – which means we are heading to a has glut in about a decade. We already have too much gas, we just export most of it and we get basically nothing from those exports, even though two of the gas industries major customers – Japan and China – get so much, they have built their OWN industries from Australian gas. Cool beans.

We’ll cover all of that and more as the day rolls on, which will be made much easier now I have access to coffee. So, ready? Let’s jump in.