The Point Live: Demands for justice for Zomi Frankcom's death, Barnaby Joyce melts down (again) trying to explain party superannuation policy, Labor pushes for more algorithm control. As it happened.

And on that note, we will shut the blog down for the night – and rejoin you early tomorrow morning.

We have almost made it half way! And I am very proud of all of you. Thank you so much to everyone who joined along with us today – it is so heartening to see more of you each day – and we will hopefully be able to keep you just as occupied and up to date tomorrow.

So, until then – please – take care of you. Ax

The ABC and Guardian have been barred entry from a One Nation press conference in Victoria. The journalists were asked by Crown Melbourne hotel staff which media outlets they were from, and when they answered, asked to leave the hotel premises (which is where One Nation was holding the press conference)

The press conference was in response to stories about the Victorian leader Warren Pickering, who admitted to drug use in his 20s, following allegations from his former partner.

Nine newspapers quote Pickering as saying:

Pickering said he had lost his licence for drink-driving as an 18-year-old, and again as a 20-year-old, and then “probably a decade later”.

“I believe they were all low-level drink-driving,” he said.

“The mistakes I made in my 20s hurt people. They hurt me. They hurt people I loved, and I will live with that forever.

“It’s not been an easy few decades if I’m entirely honest.”

Pickering said he had stopped using drugs “long before” he joined the Australian Defence Force.

The One Nation Victoria candidate said he had mentioned potential issues about his ex-partner to the party when he applied but said he did not mention his drug use.

He said he joined the ADF when he was 28, and that he last took drugs when he was “26, maybe 27”.

David Richardson

The Financial Review is today carrying a story about taxes on American cloud capitalists or technofeudalists as Yanis Varoufakis calls them. These include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Netflix among others.

Basically these cloud capitalists avoid paying tax in countries like Australia by disguising their profits as payments to head office, or payments to a related company in a tax haven. This can be done in many ways. A cloud capitalist may pay head office for the licensing of intellectual property, the Amazon logo or Google search algorithm, or pretending the sales from Netflix Australia relates to on selling of content from Netflix Netherlands. The payment is then treated as an expense by the tax office.

We have earlier suggested that the tax office should disallow claims such as payments for say a license to use the parent company’s logo. That sort of transaction does not involve additional expenses but merely transfers taxable profit from Australia. That profit then appears on the books of a related overseas company in a jurisdiction that taxes the company favourably.

By denying those deductions in Australia, the profits would then be deemed to have come from Australia, the same place the sales are made. By disallowing these artificial expense claims, Australian profit would be so much higher as would company tax on those profits.

What the Australia Tax Office is now saying is that these sorts of transactions will not be treated as profits but will be treated as a royalty payment that flows to an overseas parent company.

Those sorts of royalty payments are presently taxed at up to 30% for payments to countries where Australia does not have a tax agreement. But most payments go to countries which have a tax agreement and those agreements usually allow for a much lower tax rate. For example, the Fin article says that the royalty tax would be 5% on the gross amount paid to American parent companies where most of our cloud capitalists come from.

The tax office proposal is perhaps not the ideal but it does go some of the way towards addressing the artificial minimisation of tax in Australia and making the tax system fairer. 

In news that will surprise no one who has been paying attention…the Coalition is against the new digital duty of care.

Sarah Henderson has just held a press conference, but no one needs to go through that, so here is part of her earlier statement:

There is a legitimate debate about whether Australians should be able to switch algorithmic profiling on or off.

But Canberra should not dictate what Australians see online by replacing one compulsory system with another.

Any change of this scale needs proper scrutiny, including its impact on Australian businesses which rely on digital platforms to reach customers.”

The Coalition will oppose Labor’s extraordinary new compulsory interrogation powers for the eSafety Commissioner.

After demanding the Coalition rush this legislation through Parliament, Anika Wells has dropped sweeping new interrogation powers on the Senate at the eleventh hour, backed by heavy fines and the threat of up to 12 months in jail.

These are serious coercive powers and Labor is trying to ram them through without proper scrutiny. We will not support that.

We have also raised serious concerns about proposals allowing the eSafety Commissioner to compel documents from virtually anyone, including children and their parents.

Protecting children online matters enormously, but that does not give the government a blank cheque to radically expand the coercive power of the state.

When it comes to online safety, Labor keeps reaching for more power for government while failing to get the basics right.

It is no coincidence the minister is releasing draft digital duty of care laws that raise serious free speech concerns on the very day her defective online safety laws are being debated in the Senate.

Serious online harms require serious action, but Australians should not have to surrender basic freedoms in the process.

The Coalition’s approach is to protect kids, empower parents, shine a light on Big Tech and protect the freedoms Australians expect.

I mean the coercive power of the state in this instance is….giving people the choice to turn off the social media algorithm. Henderson is also the same person who has spent senate estimates hearings grilling SBS executives over why Israel didn’t receive Australian votes in Eurovision, as well as wanting to limit protests against Israel at universities (and the list goes on) so not sure she is the best judge of the ‘coercive power of the state’.

Anna Chang

It’s an old campaigning truism: ‘don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to’, but maybe in Minister Katy Gallagher’s case, it should be changed to ‘don’t throw down a challenge, you don’t want a David Pocock to rise to.’ He is, after all, a former captain of the Wallabies.

It’s not totally out of the question for leave (that is, ‘permission’) not to be granted to table a document, but it is maybe a little unusual to see David Pocock this animated.

Senator David Pocock:

I move to take note of response to my question from Minister Gallagher. 

And in response to my question, the Minister said, and I’ll quote her: “I would challenge you, if you think that if you think you can demonstrate that our commitments were targeted on marginal seats, you do that.” 

And I’m very happy to accept that challenge. 

And I would seek leave to table the report from the Center for Public Integrity titled Public Money, Political Advantage. 

Chair: Leave has not been granted, Senator Pocock. 

Senator Pocock:

Okay, so the Minister says this isn’t pork barrelling. We haven’t targeted marginal seats. 

And then the report that shows that nearly half the money that the government made in election commitments went to marginal seats that the Labor government wanted to win, when I try to table that, the government says no. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t table the evidence. You can’t table the evidence. 

For those interested, you an find the report here.

The settlements are illegal, which is why I just called them settlements, but in case it has to be said -illegal Israeli settlements.

The Greens are responding to this from Penny Wong in the senate today:

“Australia is not at this time pursuing a blanket style import ban” on illegal Israeli settlements. Instead saying there will be ‘further targeted measures’, which were undefined. 

David Shoebridge:

The world is moving and the Albanese Government is standing still. The UK Government has rightfully realised they need to reset the relationship with Israel, they cannot just keep ignoring international law. While the rest of the world is moving, the ALP has chosen to continue on, business as normal. 

How Foreign Minister Wong can stand there and say clearly that the Labor Government will ignore international law is beyond me. 

We have been told for years that the Albanese Government has been unwilling to take meaningful action against Israel without ‘like minded’ countries paving the way first. But as Spain, Ireland, South Africa and now the UK all take harder lines on the Israeli Government’s breaches of international law, it is clear they just won’t to act. 

The Israeli Government is knowingly occupying more and more of Palestine. In doing so they are dismantling any possibility of peace. This can only happen because hundreds of companies are playing a role.”

Mehreen Faruqi:

Israel has crossed red line after red line, and all the Labor government gives us is weak statements and no real action, so today’s non-announcement is no different. Despite their assurances that they will work with allies, they’ve now shown they won’t even do that.”

This government talking about international law is an utter farce, and each day of their complicity costs more Palestinians their lives. People in this country will not forget that our leaders stood by and watched this depravity and did nothing. 

Over the last three years, Israel has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza while escalating the ethnic cleansing and violence in the West Bank, and even as our allies wake up and begin to take action, the Albanese Labor government sits on its hands and refuses to lift a finger.”
 

Dan Tehan claimed to be misrepresented over something Chris Bowen said, but whatever he was on about was so dumb that Milton Dick had to get all Dugald on him for misrepresenting the standing orders (a timeless statement for Tehan).

Bowen though, was amused enough to stay and listen:

As for some other scenes from QT:

Barnaby Joyce continues to embrace cockalorum

Meanwhile these two continue to rehearse ‘how to be human in public’

Anna Chang

In a moment that 50% (earnest) will remind you that Senators are just people too, who have their own lives and their own families, and 50% (cynical) in a move only the Labor Godfather would try on, Senator Don Farrell seeks an indulgence to welcome his new granddaughter, born in the last hour.

Senator Farrell

“I wonder if the Senate could indulge me for one second, because in the last hour, Miss Ellen Ben was born at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide. 

“Ellen is the daughter of Emily Farrell and Lawrence Ben. She is our fourth grandchild, joining her cousins Edward, Flora, and Leo. And mother and baby are doing well. “

[interjections: ” That’s lovely.” “Congratulations!”]

Acting Deputy Chair: Happy to say congratulations Senator Farrell. But we probably should return to the matter at hand. 

Congratulations to the Farrells and the Bens.

(And for the record, Lawrence Ben is the Labor Member for Enfield in South Australia.)

Alice Grundy

In the aftermath of the Secret Harbour by-election, there’s plenty of commentary on how elections have changed in Australia. Keen election watchers might like Landslide, the sixteenth iteration of ANU Press’ election analysis which looks as the Labor landslide.

This is a victory some have called a mile wide and an inch deep because of the huge number of new seats won despite a modest showing for Labor in the primary vote. You’ve got contributions from psephologists (aka election number crunchers) Antony Green and Ben Raue, a breakdownof the role of the media and academics Blair Williams and Marian Sawer on the role of gender.

You’ll find analysis on the role of the community independent movement, the fact that it’s still legal for politicians in lie in their ads and analysisof the ad spends from third parties such as GetUp and Advance. 

It’s open access so you can read it for free. 

So what did we learn?

Well, the Coalition’s tactics team has about as much sense as a moth flying into a headlight.

It has a goal – it’s just a dumb one.

For some reason, it is stuck on the idea that it is going to win seats by targeting…the tobacco tax and claiming that house prices falling (although not enough to make an actual impact on affordability) is a bad thing. Now, there is an organised crime issue, but that is a failure of police (and you would think for all their budgets they would be on this) and customs. It’s also not all around the country at the same levels, so maybe the Minns government has something to gain by blaming it on tax, huh? But as a federal attack line? Not sure what the gain is here.

The Coalition also seem to think that telling people house prices falling is a tragedy – when they wanted to increase supply to make homes more affordable (is that bad now?) and cut migration to make housing more affordable (now house prices are slightly falling, note that we are no longer having the migration debate? Even though the two are linked? But now they don’t have an acceptable way to scapegoat migrants, they have had to pause the migration attacks – and yet no one seems to mention that it was consuming the politics of this nation for months)

I guess you could say the Coalition has a policy plan, in the same way a pile of bricks could be described as a house.

Mark Butler takes a dixer so he can say:

Thank you to the member for Bass for that terrific question. She’s one of 50 Labor women sitting in this chamber, 50 women, compared to five women in the entire Liberal Party on the other side.

There are more women on this side of the Parliament, including the member for Bass, who have their names starting with J, than the entire female representation in the Liberal Party, Mr Speaker, in the House of Representatives.

It’s not just impacting numbers, it’s changing the way we think about policy.

All 50 of the women on this side of the chamber, and some of the blokes as well, think you can’t be serious about strengthening Medicare without strengthening women’s health. Women consume 60% of health services, often not because they’re sick, but because they’re women.

They’re involved in planning their own and their family’s reproductive health and planning, they’re going through perimenopause, or menopause, Mr Speaker. The truth is that women for far that long haven’t got the support they need and deserve through this area and many others besides, Mr Speaker.

Well, this week is women’s health week, Mr Speaker. And during women’s health week, I’m so proud to say this government has done more for women’s health than any government before it. Last year, we listed the first new oral contraceptives, menopause treatments and endometriosis treatments on the PBS for literally decades.

The medicines have been around for years, but women were expected to pay full market price for all of those years. Well, last year, that all changed. And since then, more than 400,000 Australian women have filled cheaper scripts for the most modern oral contraceptives.

Well over half a million Australian women have accessed modern menopause hormone treatments at affordable Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme prices instead of paying almost $700 a year. And it’s not just the PBS. 

We’ve also introduced better Medicare entitlements, for example, for IUD and contraceptive implants at bulk billed rates for the first time. We introduced an extended menopause health assessment, so that women could sit down and have extended conversations with their GP, already accessed by 140,000 women.

And of course, all 33 of our endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics are up and operating right across the country, Mr Speaker. There’s more to do, as the Senate inquiry we recently announced into birth trauma and birth injury demonstrates, but this record investment has already delivered real change. They have delivered more choice, they have delivered lower cost, and they have delivered better care to Australian women writing the wrongs of decades.

Julie Collins takes a dixer so she can say:

Indeed, we’ve now have H5 detections in every single state, and in recent days, we’ve now seen more outbreaks, including in suburban Melbourne, suburban Sydney, suburban Adelaide and suburban Hobart. So it is infiltrating, I guess, the country, Mr Speaker. I do want to reassure all members, though, that our government does continue to work with industry and with states and territories to support the H5 bird flu response. I can advise the house there’s now been 498 bird flu events. Importantly, there remains no evidence of any H5 bird flu in our poultry or agricultural system. And the risk to human health remains low.

We are taking this incredibly seriously and investing over 270 million to help safeguard Australians against the half H5 bird flu.

I’m pleased to advise the house there’s also been significant progress on the H5 vaccine rollout in birds in Australia, vaccines secured by the Commonwealth after years of testing by leading scientists and our CSIRO experts are being delivered to priority bird species, as identified by our states and territories.

This is based on an agreed national framework, as I have indicated before, guided by the evidence and advice of the experts. I can advise the member for Deakin the vaccination of the little penguins in his home state of Victoria is progressing very well. We have vaccinated over 1500 little penguins in Victoria.

I can also advise the house is this understood to be the world’s largest vaccination program in wild birds across the planet. H5 vaccinations also started yesterday at the McClellan national park.

I visited the five mile captive management facility to see the first vaccines in the orange bellied parrots,mark Speaker. The vaccination trial in black cockatoos is commencing in Western Australia. The vaccinations in New South Wales are also continuing, including with little penguins there as well, the Khanby black cockatoos. Right around the country the vaccinations are taking place.

They’re an important step to protect some of our most treasured and endangered birds, but biosecurity remains our strongest defence. I want to thank all Australians for reporting any sick and dead birds, not touching them, and go to birdflu.gov.au.

Rod Campbell

If you’re appalled by Matt Canavan’s ‘manosphere’ comments, or if you’re just appalled by obnoxious men in general, there’s a great account you should follow.

The downfall of Andrew and Tristan Tate, arguably the biggest manosphere internet celebrities, is being documented by an Australian YouTuber who goes by the handle Gadget.

After years of profiting from misogyny, the Tates are currently in a Florida jail, awaiting possible extradition to the UK, where they are accused of a wide-range of offences.

Gadget’s dead-pan delivery and brutal takedowns of the Tates’ boneheaded antics are hilarious and deeply satisfying.

If you like your schadenfreude, check out Gadget’s videos.

Because the Coalition tactics team has the policy direction of a runaway shopping trolley, we are now comparing veteran health entitlements to COP spending.

One of the Queensland numpties asks:

Labor is ripping $748 million out of allied health service for our veterans. At the same time, they’re spending 150 million on an overseas climate talk fest where climate activists and bureaucrats will stay at five-star beach resorts. When will the Prime Minister get his priorities right and scrap the $5,000 cap on our veterans?

Anthony Albanese:

I have the greatest respect for our veterans, and I’m always pleased to meet veterans, as I did yesterday. We have a process of consultation on this. I do want to make three points. Which came out of the discussions we have put additional expenditure into veterans affairs when we came into government, by a substantial amount.(INTERJECTIONS)

….Making a substantial increase to the fees paid to allied health professionals, providing services to veterans. Why are we doing that? It was recommended by the royal commission recommendation 71. What problem was it solving? Because veterans couldn’t get access to allied health services because the fees weren’t enough.

Previously, there was a review, a review of veterans getting support, they had to go back to a GP every 12 allied health visits, for that review, in order to get a new referral.

Now there’s a review after $5,000. So it’s too different. They had one review, they had one review…

They are one review after 12 visits, now the review is after $5,000, that will be more than 12 visits.

And then, then if further care is required, if there’s a clinical need, then they’ll receive it.

Importantly, changes will not impact veterans on the special rate disability pension, on the totally and permanently incapacitated pension, or determined to be catastrophic injured. These changes come into effect on July 27, and the government continues to consult.

My government’s priority is ensuring that veterans receive high quality care that supports their health and their wellbeing.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie asks:

Although the Australian Law Reform Commission released its final report on sexual violence justice reforms more than 18 months ago, many of the recommendations are yet to be adopted. Attorney-General, why the delay? And will the government commit to implementing the report’s recommendations, particularly recommendation 10, which requires complainants to be notified when their personal information is sought, and gives them the right to legal representation in such applications?

Attorney-general Michelle Rowland:

For the benefit of the House, the ALRC recommendation referenced by the honourable member states the Commonwealth, states and territories should amend their respective legislation to provide that lawyers acting on behalf of a victim of sexual violence have standing to appear in court where the victim’s personal sensitive or confidential information has been sought under subpoena. Mr Speaker, this recommendation aims to address what is a per verse situation, because as the member knows, what happens now is that a victim’s records can be subpoenaed often without their knowledge, and used to discredit the victim in court.

I don’t think anyone in this place that sensitive information created as part of recovery and healing to be weaponised in the justice system.

We want to provide Commonwealth leadership on this issue. The matters raised by the honourable member are being considered in a coordinated way by the Commonwealth, states and territories, through the standing Council of Attorneys-General, as part of our work plan to strengthen criminal justice responses to sexual assault. One of the most effective ways to address the issues raised in the ALRC report is to provide specialised sexual violence legal services.

That is why, in response to the ALRC, the government provided $21.4 million for immediate targeted support for victim survivors, including the establishment of new specialised trauma informed legal services pilots, that are being rolled out across the country.

I visited some of these services and seen firsthand the positive impacts they’re having. But we’re not done. The Albanese government is currently developing the second action plan under the national plan to end violence against women and children, and the second action plan will guide our work over the next five years. It will strengthen national coordination and ensure the governments are focused on practical actions that improve safety and outcomes for victim survivors. The current consultation is one of the most extensive ever conducted on this issue. And I, along with the ministers for social services, and the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, have spent the last three months engaging extensively with a wide range of stakeholders, to hear directly about the causes and responses to sexual violence.

I have met with victim survivors, legal assistance providers, legal experts, community organisations and front-line services, to learn directly about what needs to change, including in respect to the issues raised in recommendation 10. And what we’ve heard is clear – there’s no single solution.

Ending sexual-based violence requires sustained action across prevention, early intervention, justice responses, and victim support. And it requires all governments working together alongside front-line services. So, I say to the honourable member, we are not finished, there’s more to do, and I assure the honourable member that we are committed as a government to getting it done.

Anna Chang

NSW Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic rises to ask about John Setka and CFMEU, and it all gets… ‘interjecty’.

So again, we’ve reached Greatest Hits Disc 2, and it’s time to turn Senate QT off.

We are back with tobacco tax being the issue that is top of mind for Australians. At least according to the Coalition. Honestly, the policy team here is about as useful as the p in reciept.

Q: My question is to the Minister for Health: This morning, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told the truth about Labor’s failed illicit tobacco policy. I quote “I think it’s per versely driving a situation where you’re seeing more people, not less people, smoking because they’ve got access to readily available cheap cigarettes. On top of the fire bombings, the gang violence, and the terror on our streets, will the minister admit Labor’s failed tobacco policies have led to more Australians smoking illicit cigarettes?

Mark Butler:

I thank the member for another question on this topic. The question asks whether I would admit that more Australians are smoking illicit than licit cigarettes. We do. The illicit share of tobacco smoking has grown. I don’t think anyone can deny that. The quote the member read from Premier Minns, I haven’t seen the report of the Premier’s comments, but says that the Premier says that more people are smoking per se, rather than smoking illicit cigarettes. I don’t agree with that. 

The Institute of Health and Welfare, which has been the statutory authority under governments of both political persuasions for many, many years, says otherwise as well.

Now, I’ve heard some I think, including the member, quarrel with the institute’s capability to deal with this, because it’s an illicit product being smoked that somehow the institute has no ability to measure illicit tobacco smoke.

The institute has for years and years been the authoritative source on cocaine, on heroin, on marijuana, I think it is capable of measuring illicit tobacco use. And I think we should all be glad the authoritative body set up under statute, supported at least until today, by both major political parties, have said that smoking rates over the last three years have declined by about half a million. in daily adult smoking rates.

Now… ..I’m asked about about 30 people at the same time at the moment, I’m asked whether we – we agree with the Premier’s statements about the impact of the excise.

I have answered the question about my view on the excise policy.

Clearly, excise increased by 215% under those opposite.

It’s increased by a little less than 40% under this government. Happily smoking rates are coming down, but clearly we have a huge law and order issue in front of us. Which we are taking on in a way that the former government did not. $350 million of additional resources on the border and partnering with state governments.

Now, I will also be clear, as I was yesterday, we needs some of the states to do more than they have been doing. We need some of the states. The Queensland LNP government, and the South Australian government, are rightly recognised as leaders in this area. Giving their authorities powers to close the shops, to go after landlords, and frankly, New South Wales and Victoria have been too late coming to the Party on this. Which is why their problem is worse than what you see in Queensland and South Australia.

Anna Chang

For reader’s asking for the transcript for Senator Payman’s speech, here it is. (And certainly worth the read.)

Senator Payman:

I rise today with my daughter Aaliyah in my arms because motherhood doesn’t pause for Parliament. 

This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have cherished every moment of it, but and there’s a big but. It’s bloody tough. 

Nobody prepares you for this. The exhaustion that sits in your bones, the nights that turn into days, the quiet moments you wonder whether you’re doing any of this right. 

I’m so grateful and fortunate to the support I’ve had from my husband, my mum, my sister, and my in-laws. 

It truly takes a village to raise a child. 

I’m in awe of Australia’s mums, particularly those before us, who have done this without medical support and other supports we enjoy today? 

It’s made me think about those without a village, the single parents doing this entirely on their own, who can’t give the baby over to anybody at 3 a.m. No one to share the load with, the essential workers and small business owners who can’t take the leave they need because someone has to show up. I’m in awe of their strength. 

In 2026, things are better than ever for new mums, but there’s still a long way to go. 

We don’t talk enough about the physical recovery. Who and colleagues, let me tell you, my birthing journey was tough. It really sucked. 

But I’m so thankful to the midwives and nurses who cared for Aaliyah and me. 

Then there’s the mental load, the silent suffering many parents carry alone, too afraid to speak up, worried of people’s judgment. 

Well, I’m not suffering in silence. I’m asking for help. I’m talking to professionals because it’s okay to get it wrong sometimes. 

It’s okay to not be perfect or the perfect parent that society tells you to be because that parent doesn’t exist. 

What exists is love done imperfectly and often held by the people around us, and that’s enough.

Anna Chang

When do ‘election commitments’ become ‘pork barrelling’, Senator David Pocock uses his question to Finance Minister Katy Gallagher to explore.

Senator David Pocock:

I asked questions on notice in relation to the major and local community infrastructure program. 

The answers confirmed 229 invitations were issued for a $560 million fund. What was not disclosed is how a project came to be the subject of an election commitment. 

An analysis from the Center for Public Integrity shows that 73% of the $560 million dollars went to notionally Labor-held seats, and predominantly to marginal Labor seats. 

Minister, is this pork barrelling?

Minister Katy Gallagher:
No, it’s delivering election commitments. 

The way you deliver election commitments, and you know — people over that side, I think you made election commitments yourself, but obviously you’re not in government, so you’re not able to deliver them. 

But if… when parties make commitments through an election process, you have to deliver them. 

So the election commitment is clear. It is made before the election. The value of that election commitment is made clear. It is contained in our costings and on winning the support of the electorate when we come into government. 

There is grant administration. There’s grant rules around how to administer those election commitments and deliver them, and those grant rules were followed. 

We just all spent 10 minutes over whether or not this question was in order:

My question is to the Assistant Treasurer: This morning, the Assistant Treasurer could not answer a question about a tobacco store been fire bombed in his own electorate. Today, at 315am, police responded to another fire bombing. Again, in his own electorate. Five people who are now the victims of organised crime were inside the building on the first floor at the time of the incident. Why is the minister refusing to protect his own constituents by joining with the coalition to slash the tax and crush organised crime?

Eventually it is rephrased to this question:

My question is to the Assistant Treasurer: This morning, the Assistant Treasurer would not answer a question about a tobacco store being fire bombed in his electorate. Today at 3:15am, police responded to another fire bombing in his own electorate. Five people who are now the victims of organised crime were inside the building on the first floor at the time of the incident. Why is the minister refusing to protect Australians, protect Australians, by joining… By joining with the coalition…(INTERJECTIONS)

Milton Dick looks like he would rather be anywhere else and gets Anne Webster to change it AGAIN:

The part – the problem we just agreed on, was not to have that part of the question. OK. So just – withdraw that out, and just get to the – order.(INTERJECTIONS)If you don’t do it quickly, I’m not satisfied, we’ll move on. So hope I’m crystal clear about what I would like in the question and what is within the standing orders.

Q: Why will the minister refuse to join with the coalition to slash the tax and crush the organised crime gangs?

Daniel Mulino:

And can I thank the honourable member for the question. But can I just say from the outset, that I did answer the question this morning, I answered it responsibly. I will explain why it’s not to have not just a responsible policy in relation to this complex issue, but it’s important to deal with incidents this morning responsibly. 

What would’ve been irresponsible is for me to speculate on live TV about what actually happened this morning and what might have driven it.

That would’ve been – that would’ve been highly irresponsible.

What I can say, what I can say, is the police have issued a statement, that they are still investigating the incident.

And that no arrests have been made. So, for me to go – for me to go beyond that would’ve been irresponsible.

What I did say in answering the question was, I do not want to see criminal incidents occurring in my electorate or anywhere. What I also made clear, our approach is the one that will reduce the likelihood of that. Now, can I just…can I … quote the illicit tobacco and e-cigarette commissioner.

‘Lowering tax on its own is not likely to resolve the criminal side of the market. It does not remove demand, eliminate supply, or the underlying profit opportunities, they, as the organised criminals, can undercut prices no matter where we see the excise’.

We have said repeatedly a responsible approach is to continue our policy on enforcement. We have investigated $365 million, as I said at the time Press Club, we’re working with other jurisdictions and we’ll continue to do so. We have seen Border Force officers seize 3.4 million illicit cigarettes, and the illicit tobacco national disruption group, recently targeted over 100 surveys across six jurisdictions. 

This is a complex issue and we are dealing with it in a responsible way, those opposite should have a responsible policy, and those opposite should deal with individual incidents responsibly, and not deal with them in the way that question did.

Angus Taylor asks Anthony Albanese this question, but Mark Butler takes it:

Prime Minister, this morning New South Wales Premier Chris Minns defied Labor’s failed policy on illicit tobacco. He said, “It’s in the black market, it’s being organised by criminals. It’s not working, it’s the opposite of intended policy.” When will the Prime Minister get his head out of the sand, start listening to the New South Wales Premier, and join with the coalition to crush the organised crime gangs?

Butler:

I’m asked if we’ll be joining with the coalition for their policy they announced on the weekend. We’re not interested in joining the Coalition in a price discounting war with organised crime.

We’re not interested in joining the coalition in follow the leader he pathetically appeared to be playing with the One Nation party.

I tell you that. We won’t be joining in a policy plucked out of thin air, with one apparent objective, to go a little bit further than One Nation.

To just go that little bit further than One Nation.

And the member for New England is pumping his fist.

He knows what’s going on here. They knows this follow the leader game that he’s playing. We’re not going to – we’re not going to join in a policy that the Leader of the Opposition admits assumes that organised crime isn’t going to change their price one cent. They’re not that smart, are they?

They’re just going to leave their price completely as is.

We’re not going to join a policy where the Leader of the Opposition expects retailers just to pass on the excise cut, with no regulation.

The Leader of the Opposition was there saying on Sunday, he has fate in the whims of competition, but ordinary Australians knows how well that serves them in the retail industry,

…Most importantly, we won’t be joining the coalition in a policy that didn’t even ask the question – what will the impact of this be on the public health of our country? What will the impact of this be on the public health of our country? The most grossly irresponsible act of wilful blindness I’ve seen in a long time. 

We all know why they didn’t ask the question. Because they know the answer. They saw it in Canada, where smoking rates, particularly among the young, went up by hundreds and hundreds of thousands. If I’m asked about joining, we’re very glad the coalition now seems to be willing to join us in some enforcement effort. Because it’s better later than ever. As I said yesterday, after increasing tobacco excise by 215% in their time in government, they did nothing extra in enforcement. They trousered every single dollar of that excise into revenue.

Not a single dollar into enforcement, not a single dollar in health.

We recognise Premier Minns’s advocacy around this, but we won’t pluck figures out of the air.

We’re not interested in a bidding war with organised crime, we’re interested in shutting down the stores and taking them to court. We’re certainly not interested in this pathetic game of follow the leader that the Leader of the Opposition seems committed to with One Nation.

Anna Chang

It’s no surprise that freshly minted Greens Senator for Tasmania, Vanessa Bleyer uses her first QT question to ask about fish farms and salmon in Macquarie Harbour.

(And is initially patronised by Senator Tim Ayres for her troubles… :-/ )

Senator Vanessa Bleyer:

Today, peak animal welfare organisation Animals Australia announced its findings that salmon are being unlawfully and inhumanely treated at fish farms in Tasmania. 

In August 2025, this government made a decision to endorse the expansion of fish farms at Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania, supporting big foreign corporations that profit from the inhumane treatment. 

This government’s decision enabled the ongoing overstocking of fish cages at Macquarie Harbor. 

In light of Animals Australia’s significant findings, Minister, will this government immediately require a decrease of stocking levels in fish cages at Macquarie Harbor?

Senator Tim Ayres:

Well, thank you very much, Senator Bleyer, and congratulations on your first question. It’s.. I do remember that kind of quaint thing where you have to say ‘it’s not my first speech’ before a question. 

We… we know it’s.. we know it’s not a question, and it’s and and you’re…

[interjections]

I’m.. I’m trying to I’m trying to be kind!

These these issues these issues in relation to investments in salmon farming in Tasmania have been traversed in this Parliament and and in the lead up to the last election, and this minister, this minister has continued with the approach that the previous that we had in the previous term. 

We support the aquaculture industry. We support that industry, including the Tasmanian salmon industry. 

It’s an important contributor to the Tasmanian economy, production value of over 1.3 billion dollars, and many 1000s of direct and indirect jobs. 

I do believe that we can have a sustainable industry and strong environmental protections. That is the approach of the government. We can have both. 

We agree that sectors operating in sensitive environments have to do so in a sustainable and environmentally responsible way. Now, under the under the constitution, state governments have responsibility for managing aquaculture in all waters up to three nautical miles offshore, meaning the Commonwealth Government cannot legally intervene. 

But we will support industry to operate responsibly. We will support the jobs that there are in industry.

Senator Fatima Payman has returned from maternity leave and has brought her baby into the senate chamber where she has given a speech on parenthood and those who are surviving without a village, as well as the physical recovery.

The Australia Institute’s petition for a gas export tax now has more than 100,000 signatories.

That’s enough to fill the MCG.

As you may have read here once or twice, a 25 percent tax on gas exported from Australia would raise more than $17 billion a year.

Imagine that!

Throw in more $10 billion a year more if we cut the diesel subsidies for big miners … cancel the $370 billion for imaginary submarines … and all of a sudden you wouldn’t have to slash the NDIS, massively short-change states who can’t fund schools, hospitals, roads and police … geez, we could have some of the nice things like countries in other parts of the world have.

A majority of Australians get it.

Tens of thousands care so much they’ve put their name on the petition.

You can, too, below:

https://gas-plebiscite.australiainstitute.org.au

Anna Chang

While the Coalition pursues housing in the House (sorry) QT, in Senate QT we’re getting more tobacco excise and veterans allied health from the Coalition.

We won’t re-paste out the questions, I think you can just replay yesterday in your head.

So this blog entry is essentially one of those ‘this page has been left intentionally blank’ notices.

Here is what will be happening in the education space, according to a dixer from Jason Clare:

We’ve been talking about fixing the funding of our schools since I was a kid. And now that is finally happening, because of this government, and because of this prime minister. It means an extra $20 billion invested in our public schools over the next decade, and it’s not a blank cheque.

This funding is tied to reform.

Things like phonics, the reading wars are over. We know what works. Phonics works.

The UK’s been doing this now for decades. Now it’s finally rolling out here, and to give you an example of how it works, have a look at brier Road public school in the member’s electorate. Three years ago, they did a phonics check, 22% of the kids were found to be on track with their reading. They did it again last year, that number was 84%. Now, that shows that phonics works.

We’re also working on the curriculum. Starting with maths. When education ministers meet next, we’ll consider the changes we need to make to the curriculum, starting with maths, starting with primary school maths. It’s the sort of stuff that should have happened a decade ago, but it’s happening now.

And it doesn’t end there. Mr Speaker, you will know this – most of us will know this, when we were at school, there was a computer lab in the school. A long time ago.

Nowadays they’re everywhere. 

There’s a laptop or device on every desk in every classroom.

The evidence tells us that kids who spend more time on a screen than others get lower results than other kids at school. And not just that, the evidence coming in suggests that you learn and you retain information better if you write it down with a pen, than if you’re typing it.

I’m not making an argument against the use of technology, but I’m arguing we need to dial it back a bit. I’m not the only one saying this, teachers are saying it too and so are parents. Parents are also worried about that their kids are seeing on their own phones after school.

The sort of putrid stuff that Tate brothers send their way, teaching boys to hate girls, demean girls, all of that force fed by algorithms.

That’s why the digital duty of care the Prime Minister announced today and the Minister for Communications released today is so important. This is not a debate about freedom of speech.

This is about protecting our kids from this sort of filth, and it’s about helping mums and dads who are grappling with as of this at the moment.

The independent MP for Fowler, Dai Le asks:

My question is to the Minister for Health: Minister, your government often boasts that Fowler has the nation’s highest bulk billing rate, but south-west Sydney has the fewest GPs per person in greater Sydney. High bulk billing is not proof of access, it’s proof my community cannot afford anything yet else. Yet Fowler is tagged inner metropolitan, so we’re locked out of distribution priority area status. We can’t apply for an exceptional circumstances review. Can you demand that review is open to high need communities like Fowler, so our practices can recruit the doctors we need?

Mark Butler:

I thank the member for Fowler for her question, and acknowledging the huge results that have gone to her community, through our record investment in bulk billing.

I know the Medicare urgent care clinic is doing terrific things. The bulk billing rates are truly extraordinary in Fowler and so many other parts of Western Sydney and south-western Sydney, where we see bulk billing rates well above 95%. That’s terrific for people’s hip pocket, it’s terrific for their health. I want to address the member’s question because it’s an important one. We have three pillars to our strengthening Medicare policy.

The urgent care clinics, the bulk billing turnaround, both of which are delivering real difference to Australian patients, but we need more doctors. We particularly need more GPs. And the challenge for us is that they don’t grow on trees, and they take a while to train. 

We’ve added 350 places to medical schools here in Australia, in our time in government, that has been difficult, former governments have had real difficulty adding CSPs, or Commonwealth supported places to medical schools. I remember back in 2014, the first year of the coalition government, a huge fight between the then government and the AMA about the additional of a new medical school in Perth through Curtin University. 350 additional CSPs means 1,800 additional medical students in Australia training to become doctors.

What we wanted is for Moore of — more of them to become GPs. It used to be the case that 50% of graduates chose general practice, we want…

Le has a point of order which is not a point of order.

Butler:

And about the shortage of doctors in parts of metropolitan Australia, that’s why we have leaned so heavily in making sure more medical graduates, trainers, and GPs, this year there’s more GPs in training than ever before. Last year was a record year, we have broken the record this year.

We expect more again next year. But still, we need more doctors than we’ve got. As the member says, generally distribution levers have distinguished pretty sharply between the big cities and rural and regional Australia. So, that doctors coming from overseas, which is the question the member asked, are required to practise for 10 years in rural and regional communities.

Now, there’s parts of particularly outer suburban Australia, who are really struggling. Who have lower doctor rates per head of population than many parts of regional Australia. And we are grappling with that question. We’ve engaged with, with doctors groups, patients group, to see if there’s a more forensic way we can deal with those doctor shortages. Every time we have an overseas doctor going to the cities, rural communities complain that’s taken from them. I am happy to engage with the member more about that. It’s not particularly simple, though.

Greg Jericho

Tim Wilson got the first question and he asked about everything to do with housing, but in the end was about the housing target. Oddly he did not ask about house prices.

It’s weird because notionally more housing stock will lead to lower prices, but the Opposition is very much attacking the government at the moment for house prices falling since the changes to the CGT and negative gearing.

He’s right the government probably won’t meet its target of homes to be built (doesn’t help when the government is so eager for lots of datcentres to be built as well..)

But as Matt Grudnoff noted earlier, the most recent ABS figures out today showed the past year was the biggest growth of housing stock for 4 years:

Communications minister Anika Wells gives the short version of the digital duty of care in a dixer:

But Australian parents are understandably still worried about how they can protect their kids on other platforms, like online games and A. I chatbots. Because online harms have real world consequences. Especially for young people. Girls getting advice from a chatbot about how to live on just 600 calories a day, boys getting cyber-bullied on online games, teenagers doing illegal and dangerous stunts because they’ve seen them online.

Tech companies must take responsibility for the harms their tools and their features are causing. And tech companies can still move fast, but he cannot be allowed to break things any longer. And the same way we have safety standards for cars, or food, or appliances, Australia is going to set basic safety standards for online tools and services through our digital duty of care. Emma Mason’s daughter Tilley died by suicide as a consequence of the harms she experienced on social media when she was 15.

She along with Mia Bannister, who lost Ollie, join us in the gallery today. She stood with the Prime Minister and said with a digital duty of care, we enter a new era. Today, we should all be proud to be Australians. And … Wayne holdsworth said, we want to keep our kids safe.

And despite the false and baseless claims being spread, the digital duty of care is not about controlling adults online. It is about giving adults a choice online.

You can choose if you want to opt into the algorithm as your default feed. Or if you want your default feed to be filled with your friends and creators and businesses that you choose to follow.

Like when you buy a new appliance, the government sets minimum safety standards, but ultimately you choose what you want to buy, as long as it’s legal, as long as it’s not causing serious harm to other Australians. This is not about control, this is about choice for adults and for protecting young Australians.

Melissa McIntosh asks:

Since Labor’s budget, 421 New South Wales building companies have gone broke. Including Bathla Group, risking 14,000 affordable homes and apartments. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has admitted the Albanese Labor government’s toxic taxes mean less housing construction and fewer homes for Australians. Does the Prime Minister agree or disagree with Premier Minns?

OK, but here is what Minns actually said about why the government would not be bailing out Bathla Group:

I can’t just hand money over to an administrator, particularly when the finances of this particular firm are so opaque and difficult to decipher,” Minns said.

There’s been a lot of commentary about the way this company … was managed and run, particularly the enormous amount of debt it ran up.

This is a very strange corporate structure involving a hell of a lot of debt, largely collected from private credit, not through the banks and traditional finances.”

Figures presented to creditors put Bathla’s total debt at $3.4 billion, including $3.08 billion to secured lenders, $130 million to unsecured lenders, $145 million to the tax office and $4 million to employees.

Anthony Albanese:

I’m asked about housing, including the impact of changes that we’ve made and I will give a few facts. One, the latest ABS data shows that under this Labor government the total value of housing in Australia has gone from 10.1 trillion to 12.7 trillion, an increase of some 26% in just four years. Fact 2 – the median national house price in August was higher than it was a year ago. Perth up 20.5%, Brisbane up 14. 8%, and Adelaide up 10.5%. Regional prices, 7.7% higher.Order.Fact 3, according to the latest RBA data, less than 1% of all mortgage holders are in negative equity, that’s less than half it was under the Liberals … between 2017 and 2019. There’s an unprecedented number of investors who signed up to build a home in the June quarter. There was a record $6 billion in loan value borrowed for the builds, more than $1.3 billion above the same time a year ago. Fact 5, more than 660,000 new homes have been build under our government, and a further 244,000 are under construction.

The highest number under construction since records began in 1994. That is just a fact.(INTERJECTIONS)

Fact 6, housing approvals are up. Climbing last financial year, to their highest level since 2021.

McIntosh has a point of order that is not a point of order. And then she accuses the PM, through Dan Tehan, of having waved his hand to dismiss her, which the Coalition is saying is disrespectful.

To borrow from Kourtney Kardashian – Kim, people are dying.

Albanese:

Well, I withdraw if there’s any concern. No problem. Fact seven, annual construction cost inflation has fallen from a half-century high under the coalition, it was 17%. 17%. Today, it’s 3. 8%. Under Labor. They are just the facts with regards to housing. What we’ve done is to make sure we’re addressing each of these issues, we’re making sure we concentrate on supply, we are making sure as well, we’re making sure as well that first homeowners and young Australians get a crack. Get a Crack,

Berries and Cream kicks it all off:

Labor’s toxic taxes have delivered a trifecta of housing failures. Fewer homes, higher rents, and confidence in the Australian housing market smashed. Can the minister confirm Labor is on track to miss its housing target by at least 300,000 homes?

Clare O’Neil:

I appreciate this very broad ranging question from those opposite about what is going on in housing. Speaker, we have got a housing crisis confronting our country that’s been cooking for 40 years. That is why our government has built the biggest agenda for housing that a Commonwealth government has had since the postwar period. Speaker, that agenda is framed around three big national problems, we got to build more homes for Australians, we’ve got to help renters get into a better position and get more Australians into home ownership. We’re making a stack of progress against each of these three goals, but we recognise we’ve got a lot more work to do here. Coming to our policies, the combined effect of our supply measures as a government is going to build an additional 400,000 homes for Australians, a big part of that, Speaker, is our push on social and affordable homes. W

e have a fundamental belief on the Labor side of politics that the government has got to be involved in the task of housing Australians. Now, that 55,000 Speaker, we had a question here that relates to supply, do you remember how many homes they built, in nine years of government? 373 homes, Speaker. I mean, I mean, it helps when you come into this Parliament and ask questions to have a leg to stand on, Speaker.

Now, I touched on affordable housing, and I’m happy to move on.

There is a point of order which is not a point of order and O’Neil continues:

So, I talked a little bit about the building challenge, Speaker. Don’t forget that we’ve got an enormous set of policies that’s about helping renters around Australia. Speaker, I note that occasionally we hear a flicker of interest from those opposite when it suits them politically on renters.

We have decades of commitment within our party to supporting one third of our population, and that’s why you saw our government twice raise Commonwealth rent assistance in excess of the legislated increase. 

They’re looking outraged over the other side of Parliament, I will remind them they didn’t do that once in government. I want to finish on home ownership. This is something my party passionately beliefs in. We see a broken housing market where a young person in this country, half a low income couple, is half as likely to own their own home in their country than they were in the year I was born.

This tells us something very important, housing is not just about the nuts and bolts of what goes on in this important part of our economy, it’s about opportunity and aspiration for every single Australian. We’ve held 270,000 first home buyers into their own home through our fabulously popular 5% deposit program, and those tax changes we made in the budget will reverse 10 years of decline in Australia’s home ownership rate. Speaker, just very briefly, let’s remember, nine years, for most of that time, those opposite couldn’t even be bothered having a housing minister. We see a broken housing market and that’s why we’re standing up and delivering real change for Australians.

OK – so the Coalition are going to keep going with the ‘tragedy’ of falling house prices (which are still up 6% year on year at this point by the way – there have been localised and quarter drops but not by much) and how this is apparently destroying Australia.

But then housing supply was meant to bring down prices. So do we still want to build more houses….or?

And migration was meant to be to blame for housing price increases. So now that house prices are dropping, do we need to increase migration to bring them back up? IT IS ALL SO CONFUSING!

Anna Chang

Senator Nick McKim raises the IDF running in the Sydney Marathon and again calls out the Government and Opposition on Gaza.

Senator McKim:

“…People protesting the visit of the Israeli president were attacked by police, punched, pepper sprayed, dragged away while praying, and yet Israeli soldiers were welcomed into Australia with open arms and ran in the Sydney Marathon while being protected by the very same police force that conducted those atrocities. 

“The hypocrisy absolutely stinks. 

“Here’s the uncomfortable truth: in today’s Australia, there are worse consequences for speaking out against a genocide than there are for participating in one…”

And we are almost at question time. Grab what you need (coffee number five for me and a sweet treat) and we will be back with you in a couple of minutes.

For too long, the burden of keeping people safe online has fallen on individuals, while the platforms that design and profit from these systems have operated with too little accountability.

Today’s announcement by the Albanese Government of a Digital Duty of Care is an important step forward – and one I have been strongly calling for.

Early reports suggest that, under the proposed changes, users can choose to turn off content in their feed recommended by the algorithm.

This progress is welcome. The evidence overwhelmingly shows these recommendation systems drive people towards harmful content, fuel addictive behaviours and contribute to serious harms to mental health and wellbeing, especially for young people. 

I will examine the exposure draft in detail, with a focus on ensuring the final legislation delivers meaningful safety, accountability and user choice.

Anna Chang

In her allotted time, Senator Larissa Waters has just given a powerful speech outlining the realities for victims of sexual violence.

Senator Larissa Waters:

We’ve heard a lot about violence against women lately, the Nationals’ leader wrongly suggested that a feminized curriculum pushes boys to the manosphere. 

But sexual violence is all about power and entitlement and lack of consequences. 

Too often, this is what happens when a woman speaks up:

First, she is doubted. The principal, her boss, her coach, or police question what really happened. Is she sure? Maybe she just misunderstood. 

She calls 1800 respect and is referred to a sexual violence service that is too full to see her. 

Her abuser threatens defamation action if she tells people what happens. 

She tries to go about her life, but every day she sees her abuser at school and hears the rumours that he spread. Her grades drop, and she drops out. 

She decides to press charges and becomes part of a system offering little hope of justice. She waits months for updates on her own case. She’s traumatised by hours of invasive cross-examination. 

The media makes a story about her, not about what he did to her. The comments thread quickly fills with hate. 

She seeks counselling, but wait times are six months. When she gets in, she worries her counselling notes will be read out in court. 

She decides to settle, and a non-disclosure agreement stops her from talking about it, even with her friends. 

Institutions are failing women, police, education, workplaces, media, courts, and this Parliament. 

We cannot expect women to report if we do not make it safe for them to do so. 

We need to make online safe spaces safer, support men’s behaviour change programs, and continue respectful relationships education. 

We urgently need more trauma-informed officers, defamation and non-disclosure agreement reforms, protection for counselling records. 

All of the ALRC recommendations for the justice system and immediate funding for specialist frontline sexual violence services. 

So women are supported to report, and to recover.

Anna Chang

We have moved on to Senators Statements (2 minute free kick on any topic time) in the Senate, and Senator Maria Kovacic (Liberal Senator for NSW) gives her condolences to Nepal and the Nepalese-Australian community.

Senator Kovacic:

The devastating human toll that this disaster has taken to the people of Newfoundland, particularly to the Nepalese-Australian community watching events unfold from here at home, I want to extend my deepest sympathies. 

Australia is home to a proud, hard-working, and deeply connected Nepalese community. 

For many, these are not distant images on a television screen. These are the places that they grew up in, the communities they know, and the people that they love. I know there will be many Australians desperately waiting for news of family members and friends, and our thoughts are with them during what must be an extraordinarily anxious time. 

I also acknowledge the Australians who have been caught up in this disaster and their families here waiting at home. 

The scale of this tragedy is another reminder of just how vulnerable communities across the Malayan region can be to extreme weather and natural disasters. 

And while we must focus first and foremost on the human toll, we cannot ignore the environmental factors contributing to the increasing danger faced by communities in this region, including that of intense rainfall, changing weather patterns, and the pressures being placed upon fragile Himalayan environments. 

Understanding those factors, strengthening resilience, and improving disaster preparedness will be essential to protecting lives in the years ahead. 

To those who have lost their loved ones, we offer our deepest condolences. To those still waiting for news, our thoughts are with you. And to the communities now beginning the long task of recovery, Australia will continue to stand beside you, and to our Australian Nepalese community once again. I thank you for your contribution to our country and for coming here to make a better life. And we stand with you as you worry about your families at home.

Here is how the government is explaining its social media proposed changes:

The Albanese Government is taking the next step following its world leading social media age ban to ensure Australians have more choice online, with draft legislation for the Digital Duty of Care released today for targeted consultation.

These new laws will put the onus on digital service providers to provide a safe online environment, setting minimum standards for the features and tools they use.

This will include an Australian first, “My Feed, My Way,” initiative which will give Australians control over their social media algorithms.

Social media platforms will be required to send a notification to new and existing users offering them a choice over their default feed.

Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm. Alternatively, users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow.

This will give Australians greater choice over their platforms and what they see.

Further, digital services like online games, apps and AI chatbots will be required to protect under 18s from design features that have negative behavioural impacts, like addictive features or those that can have an effect on a young person’s self-esteem.

They will also be required to protect under 18s from harmful content like:

• content that promotes, encourages or accelerates eating disorders
• content that promotes hostile ideas about women and gender equality
• pornography
• content that glorifies crime or life endangering stunts
• content that causes serious mental health distress, including abuse and bullying.

Australians will benefit from better protection from seriously harmful and illegal content across digital services, and social media users will be afforded more choice.

The draft laws provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps or websites, and streamline the child cyber-bulling and adult cyber abuse schemes to enable eSafety to deal more quickly with this harmful material.

Digital platforms will be required to document the measures taken to address identified risks of harm to Australian users and ensure these measures remain effective over time.

Failure to comply with the Duty of Care could attract penalties of up to $109.2 million, with the independent eSafety Commissioner responsible for compliance and enforcement.

The Government is seeking feedback from digital platforms, industry bodies, civil society organisations and advocates on the draft laws, with legislation to be introduced to Parliament this year.

Here is how some of that presser went for Mike Bowers

Many have reacted strongly to Matt Canavan’s comments last week that boys are turning to the so-called manosphere because they are “sick and tired of the feminisation of our curriculum … maybe we should look at getting more male teachers in”.

Despite the addition of the “manosphere” element, these debates are not new in Australia. 

It was just 22 short years ago that there was a Senate Inquiry into a bill that would amend the Sex Discrimination Act to make becoming a teacher more favourable to men. The report at the time recommended introducing strategies to “address the long-term issues relating to the gender imbalance in the teaching profession”. Both the Labor Party and the Democrats (remember them?) wrote dissenting reports finding no evidence of structural discrimination against men and that low salaries and the perception of “women’s work” were the biggest barriers for increasing the number of male teachers. 

Indeed, there’s research both locally and overseas that points to low pay and perceived social status as reasons why men aren’t becoming teachers at the same rate as women. Former school principal Adam Voight wrote in the SMH on Saturday: “These are cultural and structural problems requiring cultural and structural solutions. And they are made worse, not better, when a senator goes on telly and informs the country that primary school teaching has been captured by militant feminists.”

If this is a problem that politicians are serious about fixing, then they need to address work conditions rather than fight culture wars. 

Investigative reporting by the ABC program Four Corners has encouraged Catholic schools trustee Edmund Rice Education to potentially sever its ties with the Christian Brothers. The Christian Brothers say they are out of money to pay compensation for historical child sexual abuse, but over the last decade they transferred almost a billion dollars of property to Edmund Rice Education.

James Watson wrote on the live blog yesterday about how these property transfers from are reminiscent of the attempts by asbestos companies to dodge their liabilities.

Edmund Rice Education claims that it only learned things about the arrangements with the Christian Brothers from Four Corners itself, including potential payments to support convicted paedophiles and that the Christian Brothers were facing insolvency. Edmund Rice Education says it will take responsibility for compensation and get Christian Brothers “out of the way or removed”. 

It’s a testament to the power of investigative reporting, which journalist Josh Taylor calls “the Four Corner effect”. In 2023, the Australia Institute collected many examples of Royal Commissions and other inquiries prompted by ABC journalism.

Last month we saw two more examples.

The ACCC is launching an inquiry into food labelling claims after an eight-month Four Corners investigation that found “made in Australia” products were likely from China or Vietnam; caged eggs were marketed as “cage-free” and turmeric was adulterated with lead chromate and iron oxide.

And NSW Police are making the use of body-worn cameras mandatory after a Four Corners investigation “documented cases where officers did not turn on their cameras until after people were arrested, did not wear a camera at all, or in one instance, repeatedly muted the audio while brutally assaulting a woman experiencing a severe mental health episode.”

It is partly because Four Corners is so consequential and effective that it is worrying that episodes have been removed over concerns about sources. There is a lot of room for the ABC to improve, but its investigative journalism can be powerful and effective. 

The ABS released figures for the number of homes in Australia up to June 2026. Over the last year the number of homes has increased by 174,000 or 576 homes a day. This is the biggest annual increase in homes in four years.

It also means that the number of homes is growing faster than the population. Over the last year the number of homes increased by 1.5%, while the population increased at a slightly slower rate of 1.4%.

The new figures also showed a small drop in average home prices. They fell by 0.7% in the June quarter, back to $1.1 million. Other private sector house price data has shown that prices have continued to fall since June.

While quarterly prices might be down, that doesn’t offset recent rapid rises. Even including the latest drop, home prices over the last year are still up 6.8%.

We still have a long way to go before homes become affordable.

Anna Chang

Oh, phew. Okay.

Now we’ve moved on to debating Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026, which — to be clear — is not to be confused with the Digital Duty of Care bill everyone is talking about today, the exposure draft for which, was just released today.

Great question. Not sure who asked it ..

How realistic do you think it is going to be that people are already addicted to the feeds and they may not know it or be aware of it because of the way they design these algorithms? How likely is it that they’re actually going to stop doom scrolling and take up a choice?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:

Ministers shouldn’t decide these things. People will. People will decide what they want to take up, and that is that’s the whole basis of this. This isn’t about government decision making is about empowering people, and so we hope that that produces good outcomes. If people want to doom scroll, as you call it, that’s fine. That’s up to them. That’s up to them. But if people want to have a change, then this will provide them with the opportunity.

Anna Chang

We’ve been all quiet on the Senate front so far this morning, not because nothing has happened, but because Senators from all sides are running through what we’ll call their ‘Greatest Hits Disc 2′ (currently Senator Hume doing a lot of ‘John Setka, CFMEU’ gear, if that gives any indication.)

And how did we get here?

[imagine some Days of Our Lives music here]

Back in late June, the Coalition, the Greens and most of the crossbench (from David Pocock to Babet) banded together to agree to Senator Bragg’s motion for a ministerial explanation on the first home buyers scheme, for failure to comply with orders for the production of documents, and gave the Minister a slap on the wrist, which culminated in this:

“until the Senate resolves that orders for the production of documents nos 27 and 119 have been satisfactorily complied with, the Minister representing the Minister for Housing be required to attend the Senate at the start of proceedings on the first day of each sitting week to provide an explanation, of no more than 5 minutes, of the failure to fully comply with the orders.”

So we’re going to be doing this every week in the Senate until the never never. “Yay.”

Anika Wells admits the government would rather stay in the middle than have really strong, meaningful reform. Echoes of the gambling reform. She’s asked about why consumers will have to opt out of their algorithm, rather than opt in. (They are very different things.)

We believe this is optimal through the middle. You will have a choice about whether you want the algorithm or whether you want the following feed. That is a neutral choice that Australians will be able to make. It’s empowering. It’s about choice, like the PM stated.

Anthony Albanese is asked how he’d handle Zuckerberg or Musk running to their orange mate:

We decide our our policies based upon the Australian national interest. I, as Prime Minister will do that, regardless of what the issue is. But my relationship with the U.S. President is indeed very good, and I look forward to seeing President Trump in New York in a couple of weeks’ time.

Wayne Holdsworth, whose son, Mac, took his own life after falling victim to online sextortion, tells the media conference:

As each week passes, we lose our Australian children. Just like I lost my son Mac two and a half years ago, we can’t see that happening again. We’ve got to act now. It’s so important. We don’t want to look back and see this era as an era where we can quantify the atrocities caused by social media. We want to look back on this era as a time when Australia that led the world to improve the opportunities for our kids and to keep them safe. The atrocities, if they continue without this bill, will be equivalent to the atrocities that occurred through World War II. That is the research, and so we have an opportunity to mitigate that risk. And if Mr. Musk or Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t believe that, then I challenge them to a live debate. That takes courage. I have that.

Emma Mason‘s daughter, Tilly, took her own life after being relentlessly bullied on social media. She says:

As one of the parents of lost children, we’re so incredibly proud about today being Australian, and you all should be proud about being Australian because this is a new era. This is a time in which digital duty of care now means that there is not just social media restrictions, but looking at all technology and protecting, because this is what it’s about. I want you all to think, not about government control, as the Prime Minister once said to me. It’s not; it’s government support, and we need support. All of us need that support at times in our lives, and for children, they need it more.

Communications Minister Anika Wells begins by likening online safety with road safety:

Australia is setting basic safety standards for the online tools and online services within our digital duty of care. Tech companies can still move fast, but they will no longer be allowed to break things because online harms have real-world consequences, especially for children, as the parents, advocates, and educators assembled here today have lived, girls getting advice from chatbots on how to exist on only 600 calories a day, boys being cyberbullied by strangers on online games, and young people doing dangerous or illegal things in real life because they saw it online, the duty of care goes beyond social media to keep kids safe online, be that in games, on AI chatbots, on the web, or chatting with their friends. But let me be clear: the digital duty of care is not about controlling adults online; it is about giving adults a choice.

The PM outlines the key points of the “digital duty of care” draft legislation.

We will require platforms to protect children from harmful content, including content that promotes eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography, and content that glorifies crime will require social media platforms to provide user empowerment tools that give people over the age of 16 genuine and enduring choice about what they see in their feeds.

Will provide eSafety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps, all websites, and streamline the child cyber bullying and adult cyber abuse schemes, and will require digital platforms to document the measures taken to address harm to Australian users and ensure measures remain effective over time.

This is sensible, pragmatic, practical reform. It gives users choice, and it will hold the big tech companies responsible for inaction. If they don’t follow our laws, they will face significant penalties of more than 100 million dollars. We have an opportunity to shape technology for the better rather than let it shape us, and that is what our book reforms are all about.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Anika Wells have begun speaking in the PM’s courtyard at Parliament House.

The PM opens the batting, introducing a huge cast behind him, representing many organisations with an interest in online safety. Settle in folks, this could go for a while.

The world is changing, and more and more people are engaged with things online. The impact of new technology is impacting the way that we live our life. It’s having an impact on people, both desirable and undesirable, and my government is determined to make sure that people are in control, and that is what today is all about.

After Liberal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s weekend thought bubble to criminalise burning or desecrating the Australian flag, Home Affairs spokes Jonathon Duniam backed in the ban on the basis that he doesn’t see American-style bipartisan love for the flag in Australia.

The irony here is that the United States proudly upholds the first amendment right to free speech. And that includes … the right to burn the American flag.

So the Liberals would sacrifice American-style free speech in the pursuit of American-style flag love.

The idea that you can make people love a country by banning them from not loving it was rightly dismissed by John Howard twenty years ago:

“I don’t think we achieve anything by making it a criminal offence, we only turn yahoo behaviour into martyrdom and I don’t think that achieves anything and it would not engender greater respect for the Australian flag.”

And while Australia’s free speech protections are weaker than those of the United States, we do have constitutionally-protected freedom of political communication. Here is constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey on whether a flag-burning ban would even be constitutional:

Undermining the rights of Australians. How patriotic!

On the same day the mortgage broker and social media stunt king Joseph Daoud played his tennis game with Anthony Albanese at the Lodge (he won the press gallery ball auction bid for a game with the prime minister) he has also paid for sky writing above Canberra. ‘Stop the tax’ has appeared but it didn’t all get out before the sky started doing its thing, so it was like Stooopppp t….tax for the most part

Anthony Albanese has called a press conference – with Anika Wells – so we will be hearing more about the social media moves in just a moment. That’s in about 10 minutes time

Bill Browne

Earlier this year, an Australia Institute freedom of information (FOI) request revealed that the Attorney-General’s Department had been holding back information from the public.

Their apparent motive was to escape tricky questions at Senate Estimates, the rare opportunity that democratically elected representatives get to ask questions of government officials.

Now, the secretaries who head government departments are suggesting footage from Senate Estimates should not even make it online.

In a parliamentary submission, the Secretaries Board (departmental heads) have suggested either preventing the use of committee evidence on social media altogether, or requiring committee evidence to be published without editing or captions.

They complain that public servants have been accused of “‘hiding’ things, ‘covering up’ for the government, or ‘being a liar’.”

The problem, of course, is that senior public servants do sometimes hide things and cover up – not just for the government, but to serve their own interests as well. Departments spend time and money training public servants to dodge Estimates questions. And when they do so, ridicule (though never abuse) is an appropriate response.

Last year, then Australian Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer said public servants were writing their “genuine thoughts” on Post It notes so they could never become public knowledge. The Public Service Commissioner is supposed to be the “steward” of public service integrity, but it took senators to remind him that this was an illegal breach of the public service’s obligation to keep accurate records.

Public service delegations at Senate Estimates are generally fronted by deputy secretaries or secretaries. They are the elite 0.1% of the public service, in sought-after roles of significant power and influence. It is entirely appropriate that they are subjected to public scrutiny.

In other words, there is a power imbalance when a senator questions a secretary or deputy secretary – but it is the public servant who likely wields much more power than the senator and is invariably paid more.

Of course, parliamentary questioning is not always kind or constructive. There are politicians who could do better on social media. But Senate Estimates is a key accountability mechanism for these organisations and the executive government more generally. So long as public servants deliberately hide information, open questioning will remain a necessity so the public can find out what is being done in their name.

Morgan Harrington

A recent FOI release from Treasury shows that tripling the cost of applying for a visa to study in Australia has become the Commonwealth’s fastest growing source of tax revenue, worth $6 billion this year alone. The fleecing of international students continues once they are onshore, with research from the Migrant Justice Institute showing that employers are using ABNs to avoid paying migrant workers what they are owed.

As the Commonwealth increases the cost of applying to study in Australia, it is also reducing the number of student visa that it approves, apparently in the name of cutting migration.

But it would be foolhardy to forget the huge economic contribution that international education makes to the Australian economy. Education is one of Australia’s largest exports, behind only coal, iron ore and gas. International students contribute $50 billion to the Australian economy every year, and in 2023 they were responsible for half of Australia’s economic growth.

Do we really want punish the educated professionals of the future?

Anara Watson

Each time Parliament sits, I update our long list of stories that we know thanks to Australia’s freedom of information laws.

Here are six more from just the last fortnight:

1. Kids in custody: Police data released to the ABC under the Northern Territory’s FOI laws show that the number of kids and teens being placed into custody has surged. Between March and September 2025, 503 youths were taken into custody at NT watch houses – and 90 per cent of those were Indigenous.
2. Redaction rejected: Crikey reports that the Information Commissioner rejected former minister for aged care Anika Wells’ arguments for redacting advice and deliberative material from an FOI response. Those redactions relate to her department’s response to a multi-million-dollar contract scandal surrounding a Meals on Wheels “transformation”.
3. Shambolic SA Election: Documents released under South Australian FOI laws revealed the chaos behind the state election earlier this year. From unstaffed booths to early tearful mornings, the released messages show the impact of election disorganisation.
4. G20 and Australian fossil fuel subsidies: Documents released by the Commonwealth Treasury show which fossil fuel subsidies it wanted to hide from the G20 in 2010. At the time, Australia had agreed to the G20’s pledge to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, but despite the IEA and OECD recognising the fuel tax credit scheme as a fossil fuel subsidy, it wasn’t listed for the G20.
5. Potential conflict of interest: Sarah Ferguson, host of ABC’s 7.30, rushed to “seek retroactive permission” for her role as executive producer on an anti-animal-testing film, according to The Australian.
6. A NACC for secrecy: The third round of recruitment for the NACC’s new commissioner and deputy commissioner is underway, but, as reported in The Point, documents released under FOI show that “the government appears just as intent on evading scrutiny and oversight of this crucial third recruitment process”.

Morgan Harrington

The federal government has abandoned a 2023 commitment to introduce national standards for plastic packaging in Australia. Apparently the cost of living crisis makes this kind of environmental reform too expensive, but an expert has said it would only increase the cost of a weekly shop by about 20 cents. The plan was hatched after the collapse of RedCycle, and would have seen the introduction of a requirement for plastic packaging to include 50% recycled material.

Research from the Australia Institute shows that that amount of plastic consumed in Australia will double by 2050. Because recycling plastic is inefficient, expensive and hazardous, about 75% of plastic ends up in landfill. Despite this latest about turn from the Commonwealth, policies to cap or phase down the use of plastics are still needed.

The European Union has taken a much stronger regulatory approach, taxing non-recycled plastic packaging at €0.80 per kilogram. If Australia implemented a similar tax, it could raise $1.5 billion in revenue for the Commonwealth. Now how could that help ease the cost of living?

David Richardson

The Financial Review is today carrying a story about taxes on American cloud capitalists or technofeudalists as Yanis Varoufakis calls them. These include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Netflix among others.

Basically these cloud capitalists avoid paying tax in countries like Australia by disguising their profits as payments to head office, or payments to a related company in a tax haven. This can be done in many ways. A cloud capitalist may pay head office for the licensing of intellectual property, the Amazon logo or Google search algorithm, or pretending the sales from Netflix Australia relates to on selling of content from Netflix Netherlands. The payment is then treated as an expense by the tax office.

We have earlier suggested that the tax office should disallow claims such as payments for say a license to use the parent company’s logo. That sort of transaction does not involve additional expenses but merely transfers taxable profit from Australia. That profit then appears on the books of a related overseas company in a jurisdiction that taxes the company favourably.

By denying those deductions in Australia, the profits would then be deemed to have come from Australia, the same place the sales are made. By disallowing these artificial expense claims, Australian profit would be so much higher as would company tax on those profits.

What the Australia Tax Office is now saying is that these sorts of transactions will not be treated as profits but will be treated as a royalty payment that flows to an overseas parent company.

Those sorts of royalty payments are presently taxed at up to 30% for payments to countries where Australia does not have a tax agreement. But most payments go to countries which have a tax agreement and those agreements usually allow for a much lower tax rate. For example, the Fin article says that the royalty tax would be 5% on the gross amount paid to American parent companies where most of our cloud capitalists come from.

The tax office proposal is perhaps not the ideal but it does go some of the way towards addressing the artificial minimisation of tax in Australia and making the tax system fairer. 

Protesters have turned out in front of the Israel embassy in Canberra, demanding justice for the Israeli killing of aid worker Zomi Frankcom and others, as well as an end to the Palestinian genocide and criminal investigations against the Israeli government and military.

It’s a Tuesday, which means the party room meetings are happening, which is one of the reasons things have been so interview heavy today. The parliament won’t sit until 12.

We’ll take a little look around and then get back to you with anything lse we find.

Greg Jericho

Barnaby Joyce might be dumb, but he’s no idiot.

As Amy has pointed out his obfuscation on 730 and ABC’s AM will work well with his audience. Most people hate journalists, and especially hate interviewers, so they are not going to mind Barnaby suggesting the questions were really just gotchas. Unfortunately, it has been a very, very long while since any interview that caught out a politician actually had any worthwhile impact.

Barnaby might not understand the velocity of money, but neither does anyone else, and tbh the entire concept of it on inflation is pretty disputed, so trying to argue against him on that score is a mug’s game.

The same goes for the One Nation and LNP’s policy of letting people raid their super.

Anyone saying it will be inflationary is right. Anyone saying it will sentence mostly low-middle income people (and especially women) to a much poorer retirement is also right. Anyone saying people will raid their super are right.

This is a very dumb policy

The problem is people are hurting.   

As I’ve written about before, real wages took a god almighty hit in 2022 and 2023, and in the past 3 years have not recovered:

So arguing against One Nation by saying people should go without now so they can have more later is really not going to work politically. People are hurting now.

The problem is the policy won’t help them – it would lead to higher inflation and interest rates. Any “benefit” would quickly be wiped out. It’s also a policy designed to be loved by businesses who are being let off the hook and essentially being told they don’t have to give anyone a wage rise, and who will likely argue against given a wage rise because they will say they can access super (this would 100% be used by businesses to argue against increases in Award wages).

This entire thing really highlights the disgusting inequality baked into our political, media and economic system.

Remember last year when the government sought to change tax on superannuation for funds with more than $3m (you know, the roughly 0.1% of all super funds)? That was blasted as a death tax, as a raid on inheritance, as communism. It was painted as evil, because how dare you touch superannuation!

But that was because it was affecting the superannuation and the wealth of the very richest people in Australia who use superannuation to avoid paying tax.

This current argument won’t affect rich people; it will only hurt the retirements of low and middle income earners.

The problem with superannuation is not that it is locked away – that is why super is taxed lower than income. The problem is that the tax breaks so greatly favour the very wealthy.

When real wages take such a hit, the government should be doing what it can to alleviate the pain – obviously through stronger wage rises, but also through providing services that will help the cost of living of people. Say dental care.

In this current financial year, the richest 10% (people whose income is over $162,000) will get around $22.5bn in superannuation tax breaks.  By contrast, a very generous Dental in Medicare scheme would cost $14.9bn. That gives the government still around $8bn to play with.

You want to counter One Nation? Don’t talk about velocity of money or how compound interest works over the course of your working life. No, address the issue – people are hurting, and help them.

And if you think reducing tax concessions on super is not the way to do it, then tax gas and raise $17bn and spend it on things that make people’s lives better.

Superannuation is rigged in favour of the wealthy; you won’t win a fight telling low and middle income earners that super is for them, when the entire system at the moment, really is not.  

Bill Browne

The newly re-appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has warned that “advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity”. As an example, his office points to the “Hugging Face” incident in July where OpenAI’s models hacked a rival AI firm without being instructed to do so by a human.

As Cam Wilson points out over on ABC News, we’ve had social media algorithms for 20 years and social media companies are only now starting to face consequences for the harm that they have done. If there is the same delay for AI regulation, it will be 2046 before these companies start to be held to account for polluting parliamentary processes with misinformation, their hypocrisy on copyright infringement and creating child sexual abuse material on demand.

That is, if we have twenty years to bring AI under control. On The Point, I reviewed a new book from AI researcher Toby Walsh. In God AI, he warns of the downsides of as-smart-as-a-human or smarter-than-human AI, including surveillance states, mass automated killings in war and the extinction of our species. The book is worth a read for anyone concerned about AI – and anyone who is not concerned enough.

Matt Grudnoff

Another day, another prediction about how far house prices might fall.

Today it’s Morgan Stanley suggesting it might be as much as 15%. This is more than most of the big banks who are forecasting drops between 5% and 10%. These predictions should probably be more politely referred to as educated guesses.

But we really need to put this in context.

First if house prices drop, not 10% or 15%, or even 30% but instead drop by a third, that will only take house prices back to where they were at the start of the pandemic. The house price drops being predicted are modest compared to how fast and far prices have increased recently.

Secondly, most people understand that more affordable housing means lower prices.

Finally, the drop in house prices is mostly because people are unsure about what is happening. No one wants to sell if the price drop is temporary and prices are going to rebound, so sellers are reluctant to take a lower price.

No one wants to buy if the price still has a bit more to fall, so buyers are reluctant to buy.

When the market sorts itself out more houses will be bought and sold. But going forward there will be far fewer investors so home prices are not going to rocket up like they used to.

Emma Shortis

As the fallout from that excellent Guardian Australia piece on the US military footprint in Australia continues, the National Indigenous Times has an important story about the impacts of that – and its promised expansion – on Indigenous peoples. As the NIT reports, the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance recently held its annual gathering in Nukunu Country in the Flinders Ranges. The Alliance:

united communities concerned about impact from the proposed AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine agreement [and] noted that many places in Australia are threatened by plans for submarine construction, new ports and radioactive waste sites as part of this flawed agreement.

Delegates representing Osborne at Port Augusta in South Australia, Stirling at Meandip (Garden Island) in Western Australia and Port Kembla in New South Wales shared concerns about “the lack of information and meaningful consent, the impacts of a military build-up in those communities, and the risks of nuclear waste”.

Members expressed concern the AUKUS proposal increases pressure from the federal government to find a radioactive waste storage site and for the first time there are now private companies seeking to play a role in nuclear waste management at sites in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

It’s an important reminder, along with very serious questions about Australian sovereignty, of just what is at stake with the Aukus deal. If you want to hear more about the relationship between Aukus and nuclear weapons and waste, we had Melissa Parke, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on After America this week. Melissa spoke about the disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons and nuclear waste on Indigenous peoples. 

Ed Husic has driven a ACE EV Mini Yewt (sic) to parliament – it’s an Australian founded company, which builds purpose built EV commercial vehicles. Queenslander Greg McGarvie founded it at 66 in his Hervey Bay Garage. Now 73, he’s slowing building up more customers – and working with offshore partners for advanced specialist manufacturing. He wants to echo what Ford and Holden used to do in terms of manufacturing in Australia, even if all the parts were not made here.

Husic as industry minister wanted to know why Australia was not manufacturing electric vehicles. Today, he drove an Australian Mini Yewt up to parliament.

(This is what we are told about the vehicle for those wondering: ACE EV Mini Yewt (tray-back). Compact commercial utility for trades, couriers, councils and last-mile fleets. Indicative range around 210 km, DC fast charge in about 30 minutes, payload in the 400–450 kg class. Australian-branded, right-hand drive and ADR compliant.)

Josh Bornstein

The Coalition and One Nation have been running hard on the need for stronger laws on antisemitism and hate speech. The question for them now is: Do you support online antisemitic abuse as a form of free speech? How about online death threats? Is that another form of free speech? Do Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson want to see more online porn showing women being choked?

Louise Morris

One week from today, the Senate will vote on a disallowance motion that will shape how Australia treats its public native forests and its biggest polluters.

The first is a disallowance motion on the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) method, the mechanism that would let public native forests, including the proposed Great Koala National Park, be turned into carbon offset projects. This will allow the creation of new type of native forest based pollution permit under the Safeguard Mechanism, the scheme that lets the nation’s largest emitters buy unlimited offsets instead of cutting their own pollution.

If the Labor Partys INFM method survives the Senate, the resulting carbon credits can be bought by any company with a compliance obligation under the Safeguard Mechanism, including oil, gas and coal companies – as this is a federal law that NSW does not control. There is currently no legislated barrier stopping that from happening outside New South Wales, and no barrier stopping fossil fuel companies from purchasing, or buying from other big polluters,  credits generated anywhere in the country.

What is at stake was made clear when more than 50 forest and environment organisations, including the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Bob Brown Foundation and the Wilderness Society, signed on to a common set of Forest Protection Principles. Those principles call for an immediate end to native forest logging, clearing and conversion, and for an end to public native forests being used to generate carbon offsets. Wilderness Australia chair and former NSW environment minister Bob Debus said forest conservation was one of the best tools available to arrest climate change, and that strong community support would be needed to get political action.

The Wilderness Society has gone further, issuing a statement under new CEO Kirsty Howey setting out why it cannot support the INFM method, regardless of how the scheme is redesigned. The statement argues Australia is watching the “commodification of nature”, where protecting one area is used to justify pollution or destruction elsewhere. It says protection should mean protection, not the creation of a tradeable credit to offset harm happening somewhere else, and that the creation of new protected areas should never be made conditional on generating offsets.

The Wilderness Society’s central concern is that INFM is not confined to the Great Koala National Park. Once established, any state government could apply the method to public native forests still being logged, including in Tasmania and Queensland. In Tasmania, the statement warns state-owned Forestry Tasmania could become the beneficiary of offset revenue while continuing to log native forest, even as it posts ongoing cash losses. It also flags a risk that regrowth forest supported by human reseeding could be reclassified as plantation under the method’s definitions, opening previously protected native forest to logging.

The statement estimates the NSW component of INFM alone could generate 1.5 million carbon credits a year, on par with Australia’s third largest credit-generating method. For comparison, Woodside surrendered around 1.1 million credits last year to meet its Safeguard Mechanism obligations for the North West Shelf project, suggesting a single state scheme could effectively underwrite the compliance needs of some of the country’s most polluting projects.

The Wilderness Society also argues state governments should not be allowed to act as both regulator of polluting industries and financial beneficiary of the credits those industries buy to keep polluting, calling it a conflict of interest baked into the method’s design. It says the answer to underfunded conservation is direct government funding, not a carbon market, noting that biodiversity conservation currently receives just 0.06 per cent of the federal budget.

Andrew Brown for AAP

A majority of federal grants handed out as part of an invitation-only scheme to upgrade community infrastructure was directed to Labor seats, a report has found.

The report by the Centre for Public Integrity of the $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program found more than 73 per cent of funding allocated went to Labor-held seats.

That was compared with 23 per cent of funding going to coalition seats and four per cent going to others.

Of the funding, $493 million went to seats where Labor was competitive, compared to $66 million where it was not.

The centre’s chair Anthony Whealy said if the amount was distributed fairly, Labor should have received $66 million less, while non-Labor seats should have received $116 million more.

“These figures ring alarm bells. When approximately three-quarters of a $560 million community grants program goes to the government’s own electorates, serious questions have to be asked,” he said.

“The problem is that the process makes it impossible for the public to have confidence that merit, rather than political advantage, determined who got access to the money.”

Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino rejected claims the scheme was pork barrelling.

“This is long-standing practice, consistent with long-standing practice, where grants programs will be stood up in order to deliver election commitments,” he told ABC Radio on Tuesday.

“This is about making sure that governments, when they make commitments during an election, have a process after the election for delivering those commitments in a timely way.”

Independent MP Helen Haines called for an overhaul of federal grants programs, labelling the scheme as another attempt at pork barrelling.

“Political parties should not be able to use taxpayers’ money to buy votes,” she said.

“Community need should come before political need.”

When in opposition, Labor heavily criticised the coalition government’s community sport infrastructure scheme, accusing it favouring Liberal and National seats.

That controversy, which became known as sports rorts, led to the resignation from cabinet of then-sports minister Bridget McKenzie, after she failed to disclose membership of a gun club that received funding.

Independent MP Kate Chaney said the centre’s report showed the infrastructure grant scheme was similar.

“This is pork barrelling, and we’ve seen it before. The coalition had sports rorts, and now Labor is park barrelling – money for parks and playgrounds, pools and sports ovals all promised during the election campaign,” she said in a statement.

Andrew Bragg continues his freelancing on policy bent – this is becoming more common in the Coalition as party MPs begin to panic about what policy offerings are actually being given to people (and it is not just the Coalition – you are starting to see Labor ministers float out more policy positions as well) and is asked about One Nation’s brain fart on superannuation (not sure you can call something you can’t explain a policy) and tells the ABC:

Well, it’s a it’s a short term factor that would help with cost of living relief, I imagine, but I don’t think it addresses that long-term structural challenge. So, 30 years ago, you had about 20% of retirees renting. Now you’ve got about 30% and in 20 years, it’ll be about 40% That is going to change the character of retirement. It’s going to change the country, and so that’s why having the debate about how the retirement system intersects with housing is crucial. I mean, we don’t want to be a nation of retired renters. It’s no good.

Now that comes from the retirement review that the Coalition commissioned when Josh Frydenberg was treasurer, so it is not new. It pinpointed housing as the biggest threat to a comfortable retirement, highlighting that if you have housing costs at retirement, and were living on the pension, you would be living well below the poverty line. Again, this is not a new problem, which is why house prices coming down is not a bad thing – people need to be able to afford housing. And again, this was an issue that was well ventilated when the Coalition was in power – it was their review into retirement incomes which made it very, very clear.

So now Bragg is pretending this is a new problem, and we have no historical memory from reporters, so everything is treated as if these problems just suddenly appeared. This is also a problem, because we only ever deal with what is in front of us, rather than what is coming or what is being ignore.

Bragg is asked if this is something the Coalition is looking at (super changes) and says:

Look, as all oppositions do, we have internal reviews, and those are ongoing. But I think it’s very telling that the treasurer, having destroyed the budget and destroyed the housing system can’t even bring himself to have this debate. Instead, what he wants to do is to go and raise donations for the Labor Party on the back of a public debate. I mean, the bloke isn’t fit to be in the job. I’d say. I mean, effectively, if you go back to Treasurer’s past, of all stripes, they had the guts to have the debate on the policy merits about national savings, about retirement policy, about housing policy. These were great matters of state. Now apparently, they’re matters that are only good enough to get donations on.

Bragg’s idea to have super available for housing deposits would only push house prices up. This is not a serious debate, and yet here we are.

Jacqui Lambie has been out and about this morning on the veteran allied health caps the government has put in place (not a fan) and also social media algorithms (also not a big fan)

The prime minister met with veteran groups yesterday afternoon (he has had to take control of the situation from minister Matt Keogh, which is never a good sign for a minister’s career advancement) but short of a complete capitulation, the critics are not happy. A reminder that we did not see this for the NDIS cuts.

Angus Blackman

Nine nuclear weapons states are holding the rest of the world “hostage to annihilation”, but the Australian government is yet to act on a global ban.

On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis reflects on the United States’ military footprint in Australia, before former Australian Minister for International Development Melissa Parke joins the show to discuss the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Anara Watson

The White Australia Party will today appear before the High Court to argue that its listing as a prohibited hate group under the Criminal Code is constitutionally invalid.

The group is an extension of the National Socialist Network, a prominent neo-Nazi group headed by Thomas Sewell. Its stated aims include “to preserve and advance the cultural, historical and ethnic interests of Australians of predominantly European heritage”.

Central to the group’s claim is that “it is not for the Legislature, the Executive or the Judiciary to determine the political future of the nation, but the Australian people at the ballot box”.

The Commonwealth submits that the group formed a political party in a “calculated attempt to secure legal protection for members engaging in openly racist and antisemitic speech”. The Commonwealth’s submissions state that

“The ‘plan’ was to seek protection from ‘serious jail time’ and ‘to challenge the swastika by incorporating it in some capacity into [the] organisation. Then it is political communication.’

The inaccuracy, and the implicit premise that Nazi ideology is legitimate political communication, goes to the heart of the case. The [White Australia Party] is not some political maverick advocating reintroduction of a dictation test. It is a neo-Nazi organisation that has engaged in hate crimes causing profound damage to the fabric of Australia’s civil society.”

The Attorneys-General of South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales have all intervened and advance arguments in support of the Commonwealth. The Free Speech Union has sought leave to intervene as amicus curiae (meaning “friend of the court”).

Sewell and his White Australia Party are seeking a declaration that the relevant part of the Criminal Code is wholly invalid, or in the alternative, invalid to the extent that it prevents the group from operating as a political party.

If you’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of the case, Professor of Constitutional Law Anne Twomey has explained it in detail, and the submissions from each party are available online. 

Q: On a separate issue, nine papers are reporting today that Pauline Hanson has loaned her own party almost a million dollars in the past decade. Does the public have a right to know, in your view, about the details of those loans, such as whether any interest was charged?

Barnaby Joyce:

Well, I know that people have a pathological dislike of One Nation if they’re a socialist*. So I’m completely aware of that, and I imagine we’re going to get lots and lots of these stories, not only from the left, but from those who are scared of us, who are supposed to be on the conservative side of politics. So, I think we just get used to these stories. They’re going to roll out. I mean, it’s we’re under the microscope. I accept that.

….Although I’m an accountant, I’m not an accountant for Pauline Hanson. I know it’s surprising, but so I’m not privy to her affairs. It’s a good question for her.

Q: The Australian has reported several allegations against One Nation’s Victorian leader Warren Pickering, including an allegation of past illicit drug use. mr. Pickering denies the allegations. Have you asked him any questions privately about these matters?

Joyce:

As I stated yesterday, I have asked one: Did when did you go into the services? Was it subsequent or prior? It was subsequent, and they do a thing in the services called a vetting check. Right, they check your character, and they make a decision whether you should be in the Australian Defense Force. Now, he’s been in the Australian Defense Force for quite a while. This is a contested allegation, so on we have to be very careful what we say, or either you or I will be trotting off to court to get someone a new swimming pool.

So we we won’t make assertions about what is fact. We’ll talk on a contested allegation, and and and that Sally is where I stopped the conversation on that issue.

*Again, no one is arguing that. And historically, One Nation has actually had a lot of socialist policies – like a Peoples’ bank and getting rid of the supermarket monopoly, wanting infrastructure to be public assets, being against privatisation of public services – so again, he is just using terms he knows people don’t fully understand to try and deflect.

We also get the DARVO tactic here –

Deny/Deflect and reverse victim and offender.

He deflects to this being a leftist attack, claims it is because people are scared of the party, and then claims victim-hood – One Nation has to ‘get used’ to these sorts of stories (this one being about where the declarations are for the loan Pauline Hanson gave One Nation, which was repaid to her according to party disclosures) and it’s just something they have to live with, as the ‘real victim’ here.

Q: So, if someone’s rent, if someone has to change their housing arrangements, they buy a house or they move to a new property. Does this not give them greater purchasing power?

Barnaby Joyce:

This is if you are basically, if you’re struggling paying things, it is not. People are not going to. I don’t think that if you’re getting 3% 3% of your super, you’re going to make dramatic decisions about a new house you’re going to buy for an extra million dollars. Okay, but if you if it’s helping you keep a roof over your head, I can understand that. I think what they’re looking is sort of perverse actions by a small minority of people, and saying that well that will be the there’s no means testing with this, and anyone can have anyone can dip in.

Q: Is that right?

Joyce:

Well, the point at once more is we say we’re now means testing. We can get access to your money. People are not stupid if they don’t want to if they believe they had that the alternative of getting their money to pay for their rent or to pay for their house payments would be to leave it where they’re getting a spectacular return in their super. If that’s your premise of your question, then most people who have a brain between their ears will do precisely the latter and leave it in their in the investment of superannuation. We’re now there’s now the presumption by the socialists that everyone’s a total moron is going to take money from a good return and take it to a bad return if they don’t need it, and I just give credit. So it would be a bad return if they took it out.

Q:Is that what you…

Joyce:

No, I didn’t say that. I’m saying if you don’t have a house, Sally. I mean, we’re going to these sort of tangential tangential propositions from questions, and we can happily do this all morning.

Q:Which economist has backed your claim that this policy wouldn’t be inflationary?

And now we get another Motte and Bailey argument – where Joyce argues something that hasn’t been asked.

Joyce:

So now, now we have to get economists to decide whether you get access to your own money. (that was not the question)

I mean, who, who, who, who, who are the people that have to give the imprimatur for you getting your own money, Sally? (again – not the question)

Q: I’m going back to the question, which is, which which economist is back to your claim that this won’t be inflationary. It’s not about whether or not you can get your money out. It’s about the effects of of that. So, has anyone supported that?

Joyce:

Sally, the classic equation is a classic. Is a classic equation. If you want to go back and do John Maynard, have a quick look at John Maynard Keynes, you can dig it all up. It’s. I don’t want to go through the whole thing. It’s it’s it’s quite simple. It’s price versus GDP, price and GDP on one side, and the quantity of money and the velocity of money on the other, and I’m I’m happy with a little dissertation on it. It’ll take a while. We’ll find it pretty boring, but it’s pretty matter of fact. But this other one, now we’ve got another group of people that apparently have to give approval for you to get your money. When we, I mean, what what? Who else do you want to go to? Your local priest, you know, Buddhist temple before you get your money? It’s your money for goodness’ sake, and if it’s your money and you believe you need it, and it goes through a critical purpose such as keeping a roof on your head, I have to go therefore and talk to Shane Hogan before you’re allowed to do it.

This is another classic argument tactic when you can’t actually answer the questions you have been asked – you overwhelm people with a little bit of information that seems related – in this case, naming a famous economist and referencing their theory (although Keynes would probably have said that the government should be providing the housing, but anyway) and then he throws in terms he knows people will recognise, like GDP, because it makes it seem like he knows what he is talking about, before then moving to the argument no one is having and claiming that is the main argument – in this case, the completely made up point that the host is saying you need multiple approvals to remove your super.

Anyone who has a certain type of dad knows these tactics very well. Joyce overwhelms people with personality and words – not facts or evidence – because he can’t make his argument. He relies on emotion. And it works very well for him in this sort of world, because nuance is no longer part of the equation – people have been taught to rely on feelings over facts, and people like Joyce flourish in that environment.

Barnaby Joyce is on ABC radio RN Breakfast (there is not a media opportunity this man will not turn down, which is why his constant appearances on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing is becoming a bit of an industry joke) where he is explaining, with his full puffed out chest, why One Nation doesn’t actually have to model things which will have a massive impact on not just people’s own finances, but the economy as a whole. Like I said – he is acting as important as the ‘g’ in Angus.

Joyce:

Well, let’s go through it. What you have in your classic inflationary issues is you have M, which is the the amount of money times V, which is your velocity of money, and that’s and if there’s an if there’s an inflationary aspect.

Q: But just to go back to the question, has has One Nation done modeling on this?

Joyce:

This is people’s money, right? We.. when people say you got to model it, you’re saying so. I have to model whether someone gets access to their own money. That’s, I mean, I can understand that’s conceptualised by socialism, but we believe that the money is your money, and the idea that I have to model whether not whether the government spends any money, like they pour out in super.

Q:There are implications of policy changes. So just to be clear, has no modeling been done?

Joyce:

Is there an implication beyond it being their money? Do you do you model the money you get paid at the end of the week? Do you have to model that money before you get paid it, or do you believe you have an entitlement to your own money?

Q:Well, so that we understand the implications of this policy for things like inflation and pensions later on.

Joyce:

I’m happy to go into that, but the implications the implications that I have to model you getting your own money, are finally a little bit perverse. It is actually your money. So you haven’t done any modeling. Just to be clear, just to be clear that we shouldn’t have to model you getting your own money.

But if you if you’re saying now, and I understand the ABC’s socialist position that it’s not really your money; it’s somebody else’s money*. Therefore, you have to go through a bureaucracy before you get entitled to get your own money. I can understand that completely. It’s a philosophical view you hold.

But if you’re talking about the inflationary aspects, what we have there in the classic form, you have in very very simple form, you got M, which is the quantity of money that is in the in the economy.

Now, this money is your money, so the quantity of money is already encompassed in M, and then you’ve got the velocity of money. That means if it goes to alternate purposes that it was going to before, but it’s actually going to your rent, which was the money you were paying before for rent, or your house payment, which was the money you were paying before your house payment, and it’s similar in form to the concept of hoarding, which is if you get your money, if there’s extra money in the economy and you put it into your bank account and don’t spend it, it has no inflationary aspect.

*Literally no one is arguing this.

What Joyce is doing there is a classic motte and bailey fallacy. He knows what he is being asked – whether One Nation has done modelling on any potential inflationary risks from people having access to additional money, whether that will increase rents and housing prices – it will, every time people get money for housing, housing prices go up – and what impact it will have on people’s retirement balances at the end of their working life- but he’s pretending that the question is about whether or not One Nation has modelled whether people should have access to their own money. This is an argument tactic that works really well with Boomers (not all Boomers, but you know the type I’m talking about) and people who solely get their information from Facebook. Because it seems very logical and owning the left and everyone is very smart. But it’s based on an entirely false premise – because no one is arguing what he is claiming.

Daniel Mulino is on ABC radio RN Breakfast now, where he’s asked about One Nation’s super policy and says:

What One Nation is actually asking people to do is to steal from their own future in order to boost their incomes. Now, it’s it’s a very irresponsible approach. What we’ve done instead is to boost people’s wages through the award, through increasing the minimum wage, and at every step of that process, we’ve been opposed by One Nation and the opposition.

We’ve also put in place five tax cuts through three different mechanisms. Again, all of those opposed or not supported by those opposites. So that’s the better way to help people with what I understand are cost of living pressures.

Q: Yesterday, the shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg told News 24 the opposition is quote reviewing the intersection of the retirement and housing policies. He had this to say about One Nation’s super proposal: Anything that’s going to help Australians with their cost of living right now is going to be worth looking at, but I make the point that that it doesn’t address the long-term structural challenge here, which is that we see a doubling of retired renters over the next couple of decades. That’s a trend we want to kill, because we want people to be in their own house when they are retired. What do you think of that?

Mulino:

Well, what I would say is that Andrew Bragg and the opposition and One Nation are the defenders of the status quo when it comes to the housing system, and not changing tax settings when which have created huge distortions. We’ve seen house prices double relative to incomes over the last 20 years. We’re doing something about that, and the opposition are defending the status quo. We are trying to add to housing supply through the Housing Australia Future Fund. We are supporting first home buyers through the 5% home deposit. So at every step of the way, we’re trying to deal with these structural issues, trying to get people shifting from renting to owning their own home, and that’ll take pressure off rents. Every single area of this policy reform agenda is being opposed by the opposition and one nation.

Q: Are you confident that Treasury has got its modeling right when it comes to your capital gains tax and negative gearing and what it will do to house prices?

Mulino:

So the Treasury modeling indicated that it was likely that over the first couple of years, the policies would see more people moving into owning their own home, and we’ve modeled that over the medium term or over 10 years, 75,000 people will shift from renting to owning their own home. But that over the first couple of years, there would be a slight moderation in home prices, around 2% a year. And what we are seeing is that house prices at the moment are being affected by a whole range of factors, including international uncertainty, interest rates, but also a lot of commentary and speculation about interest rates, and this might cause some people to hold off on transactions. So there’s a whole range of factors. We have seen house prices nationally since the budget come off about 3% So some of the speculation in the media would have one believe that it was much more significant than that.

Daniel Mulino is then asked about superannuation, which is the topic he would have wanted to talk about and why he was put up in the first place (which is why this sounds like it came from a press release)

Superannuation is one of the best retirement incomes in the world and Australia should be proud of it. 

When I talk to my counterparts in other countries, other countries are looking at our superannuation system. It took us decades to get to 12% superannuation guarantee and that’s a level that will provide people with a high level of dignity and security in retirement. To unwind that is dangerous and undermines the whole superannuation system.

What we’ve suggested over recent years is that the far better approach is to support people getting pay rises.

We’ve supported increases in award wages and the minimum wage. That’s gone up $12,000 under this government and One Nation and the Opposition routinely vote against the pay rises.

We’ve also given five tax cuts in three different ways. That’s the best way to provide people with support for cost of living.

To do what the One Nation Party is suggesting will see somebody who is 30 years old, $25,000 worse off at retirement and a couple around $50,000 worse off. 

It’s really saying to people that they should steal from their future to pay for the current. We would rather do that through sustained wage increases and tax cuts.

Assistant treasurer Daniel Mulino (who is doing A LOT of media rounds these days) is on ABC News Breakfast where he is asked about a couple of stories the ABC has been covereing:

Q: I want to start with a story on ABC News online about an invitation-only grants program. The Centre for Public Integrity says it appear that is it had been used by Labor to pork barrel seats that it wanted to win. How do you defend that?

Mulino:

So, Emma, with election commitments, it’s standard practice and long standing practice for governments to set up these kinds of grants programs in order to deliver those election commitments. They’re different to the kinds of grants programs which are run in the ordinary course of government. And this program, as Catherine King has explained, is part of long standing practice and there are checks and balances in there. Ministers won’t approve programs in their own electorate and it’s an important way for governments to be able to deliver commitments.

Q: But $493 million out of the $560 went to safe or marginal Labor seats. That doesn’t sound right, does it?

Mulino:

So, this is a mechanism that is really there to deliver commitments that were very transparent in the election, and it’s important that government have mechanisms to deliver those in a timely way. As I said, this is a long standing way by which governments can deliver commitments after an election. It’s a really critical way in which there are protections in place but governments can be upfront with the Australian people that if they make commitment, they will deliver them.

Q: So you think there’s nothing to answer here?

Mulino:

Look, this is something that is basically about commitment that is were made. So the Australian public would expect governments to follow through there

Q: They’re all in marginal Labor seats?

Mulino:

The commitments made would have been made across a range of electorates and those commitments were very transparent and public. People expect that governments deliver that in a timely way. So it is different to a grants program that could be set up in the ordinary course of business with a set of criteria and then a competitive process where you let the process itself determine who gets the grant. This is about delivering mechanisms where during the course of an election the government has made commitment and wants to deliver the specific commitments.

Q: On another story on ABC at the moment, why is Australia promising $980 million to Solomon Islands?

Mulino:

Australia is building strong relations across there. We saw the Prime Minister attend the Pacific Islands Forum recently much we’ve engaged with a number of our partners in the Pacific Islands. When we came into government, relations with a number of our Pacific Islands were weak. We inherited power from a government that had almost denied climate change was occurring and this is something, obviously, that is a first order issue across the Pacific Islands. So across a number of the countries with long standing relationships with, we have entered into discussions involving long standing partnerships and partnerships across a range of policy dimensions. This is constructive and as we saw last week at the PIF, Australia is undertaking a serious set of engagements with our Pacific Islands partners.

Employment minister Amanda Rishworth is one of the tributes on the Nine network breakfast TV this morning and she is asked whether or not the government’s new push to give control over what they see on social media is “right wing censorship”.

Pretty amazing that everyone is just accepting that when we talk dangerous content, everyone means right wing content. It’s not even questioned. It just is. (And yet, we don’t see a problem with highlighting extreme right wing believers in our media.)

Rishworth:

This is not about censorship. This is not about stopping voices online. This is a pretty simple proposition that I think most Australians agree with. And that is we know that whether it’s social media companies or or potentially other online platforms, their job is to push for engagement and make profit.

And there isn’t a responsibility to make sure that, for example, illegal content doesn’t make it into people’s feeds, that young people aren’t damaged by some of the content, particularly, for example, pushing content on eating disorders or indeed grooming behaviour.

What this is saying is that big tech has got to take more responsibility to stop that from happening, rather than whack a mole, which currently you have to make a complaint and then it’s got to be taken down. This is about tools and systems to make sure that the responsibilities are there for big tech, and they actually enforce them. And that is a pretty simple concept.

And I think most Australians, particularly parents, are very keen on this. They don’t want to see, for example, social media or other big tech companies not taking responsibility for stopping things like grooming behaviour. I mean, this is an important concept and I think something most Australians will back.

Hello and welcome back to The Point Live. I have a migraine hangover which means I am in NO mood for the MPs shenanigans, which of course means, there will be plenty.

Overnight, Barnaby Joyce, former accountant and deputy prime minister, was asked to explain, in his role as One Nation Treasury spokesperson, some detail about the One Nation superannuation policy he announced earlier that day. He was asked by Sarah Ferguson on ABC 7.30 about the lifetime losses for people in their superannuation, if they re-directed some of their contributions into their pay (as per the policy).

Now, MPs are usually only as good on this stuff as their staff, but if their staff have not prepared the briefing, or they haven’t thought to ask for it, then MPs are usually just flapping in the wind.

But Joyce has never really had to be prepared – because he’s not usually asked questions about detail. And if he is, he usually just tries to bluster his way through by pretending it was a stupid question.

Modelling for lifetime losses isn’t something unusual to ask for when presenting a policy which would take out superannuation contributions. We know that interest would be lost and over the lifetime of a superannuation policy, that can equal hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But Joyce – again – a FORMER ACCOUNTANT – wasn’t prepared, so he pretended this was a very difficult question no one could be expected to answer.

He said he was the:

I’m the Treasury spokesman, not Jesus Christ. You have to give me the details of these things if you’re going to put them forward to me.

We know Barnaby. We know. Jesus Christ wouldn’t have lied about an extra-marital affair, got a woman pregnant while married to another woman while voting against marriage equality because of the sanctity of ‘traditional’ marriage, wouldn’t have claimed rolling out the vaccine against HPV (a virus which leads to cervical cancer) would lead to women becoming promiscuous, wouldn’t be working to destroy an energy transition away from fossil fuels, wouldn’t have been found rolling around on a Canberra footpath or yelled at a dog on national television. (Also it is not the media’s job to give a politician the details of their own policy?!)

Also, Jesus Christ was a socialist.

But Joyce is just not used to having to answer questions. Or to think he might. Even while running to be leader. But this is the party which is currently dictating the other party’s policies so Dolly help us all.

In other news, the government is getting serious about its latest FM radio policy – this one to give a bit more control over the algo. One Nation is against it (because they are so good at manipulating it and have benefited from that immensely, so there are all sorts of scary claims being thrown around. The government can’t rule out that the social media giants won’t just shut up shop and leave – which I don’t know, with all the trends for slower social media, going analogue and disconnecting, I’m not sure if that hits the same way with everyone as it may have even just a few years ago. But still, this is where we are battling now, so sigh.

You’ve got Amy Remeikis with you. We have access to Mike Bowers for the New Daily to take you into the parliament, and a team of researchers and fact checkers ready to be deployed when necessary.

Coffee number three is ON. Ready?