The Point Live: Labor focuses on passing digital duty of care, ABC bosses face estimates. As it happens.

Greg Jericho

In the Finance Committee, One Nation Senator Tyron Whitten has decided because the Office of Women is being questioned he needs to ask about the definition of a woman.

He wants Senator Katy Gallagher to answer whether the government will change its language around “lactating person” and other gender-neutral terms.

Senator Gallagher replies that she seeks

to be respectful to all individuals regardless of how they identify, and I think some of the debates that people try to draw into a difficult, divisive and harmful, and so I prefer to have a more inclusive way of operating. That language doesn’t bother me”

Senator Whitten takes slight umbrage at this as though she is implying he is not. He says “I also try and be respectful. But I have a mother, a sister, a wife, I’ve got two daughters, I got a granddaughter, and they expect me to ask questions like this”

I mean. Cripes.

He keeps going asking questions that are about legal issue and thus not at all a matter for the committee (One Nation were on this same issue yesterday to the Attorney General Department and it was just as gross).

He then asks with a smugness that women have to put up with daily, “How are we going for an Office for Men”?

Yep we’re at the “Wait, there’s an International Women’s Day, when is the International Men’s Day??? Level of debate (It’s 19 November for those of you who celebrate).

Senator Gallagher notes that the Member for Hunter, Dan Repacholi, was appointed as the Special Envoy for Men’s Health – the first ever such appointment and that he’s doing a great job.

Senator Whitten replies “And how are we going for an Office for Men?”

To do what pray tell? Ensure the gender pay gap is bigger? Ensure more men get away with sexual violence to women? This is really just One Nation’s Family Court Day crud that everything is bad because poor men have had to give up too much to women. Seriously this just makes me want to vomit.

He ends by saying “I think the men’s issues and men’s problems are growing by the day [he doesn’t say what these are] and it would be worthy of an Office for Men because it would actually make women’s live better if we had better men, so I’ll leave it at that.”

Bill Browne

Earlier this year, a parliamentary committee in NSW recommended restricting the number of election signs that can be displayed at polling booths. Some election sign proposals can be downright undemocratic, like the ACT’s ban on any signs or canvassing within 100 metres of polling booths. On the other hand, there’s an election “arms race” where volunteers turn up in the middle of the night to block all available space with their own election signage.

The NSW committee struck a balance between a “festival of democracy” and rationing limited space by proposing a limit of six signs per party, independent or registered third-party campaigner at each polling booth. The Minns Labor Government has accepted most of the recommendations “in principle”, and has committed to legislation limiting the maximum size of any sign to 60cm x 90cm before next year’s election.

I would like to see some provision for non-registered third party campaigners. Local community groups should be able to have a presence at polling booths without registering as third parties (with all the restrictions and reporting requirements that go with it).

It’s also promising that the NSW Government is still open to changes to electoral laws before the election in March next year. While they are at it, they could introduce truth in political advertising laws including restrictions on AI deepfakes, as demanded by over 31,000 NSW residents.

Greg Jericho

One of the more funny things that happens when you ask business people about the economy is how they will pick out some random country as being the one we should emulate. Back during the GFC it was Estonia that was always mentioned because it pursued austerity.

Now it appears Greece is the most favoured nation.

Yes Greece.

In The Australian today former Reject Shop chief executive Andre Reich is quoted saying:

“The people with the lowest income are the ones who are hit hardest by overspending. Overcomplaince stifles business growth and you now have five or six departments that are all stifling growth. Removing bureaucracy is the first thing to do.

“Look what has happened with the Greek economy. They had to make tough spending cuts and were forced to deliver surpluses and now their economy is flying.”

And wow… flying is one word…

If we compare Greece and Australia, even with our pretty weak current economic growth we are doing better than Greece. Admittedly they did well in 2024, but Australia’s economy has been growing faster than Greece’s for 5 quarters now.

I guess that means we are flying as well!

But let’s give a longer look and just see the cost of all those “tough spending cuts”

I’d argue there would be very, very few people who would rather Greece’s economy to Australia’s…

The appalling alleged attack on Helen Haines has revived concerns about violence, political hostility and Australia’s mental health system.

The distress is understandable. But the public debate risks drawing conclusions that aren’t supported by the evidence.

Police have yet to establish a motive. More importantly, mental illness should not be used as shorthand for violence.

Australia isn’t experiencing a general explosion in physical assaults. According to the ABS, 1.8 per cent of Australians experienced physical assault in 2024–25, statistically unchanged from 1.7 per cent the year before and below the 2.1 per cent recorded a decade earlier.

That doesn’t diminish individual tragedies or growing threats against politicians. But it helps to put them in perspective.

Youth mental health is suffering

There is, however, another crisis with clearer evidence: young Australians’ deteriorating mental health.

The share of young people reporting a mental disorder rose from 26 per cent in 2007 to 39 per cent in 2022.

Self-reported mental health scores by age group, 2001-2024

Source: HILDA survey, 2001-2024 Note: Lines show survey–weighted mean SF-36 mental health scores (0–100; higher score indicates better mental health)

Australia Institute research documents how this has coincided with worsening economic conditions.

Since 2001:

• rents and out-of-pocket medical costs have roughly doubled in real terms
• tertiary education fees have risen 2.5-fold
• Youth Allowance and minimum wage has grown by just 10%.

These trends alone can’t establish causation. But financial stress, insecure work and unaffordable housing are well-established risks to mental wellbeing.

Yes, we need better mental health care, especially in regional Australia.

We also need to stop treating the conditions that undermine mental health as somebody else’s policy problem.

David Richardson

Anthropic has just released its initial public offering document. This IPO is basically a document that explains to investors why it wants the funds it hopes to raise and what it intends to do with those funds. The company is also obliged to publish some of the financial data that investors need to assess the company’s prospects. That includes profit and loss statements and balance sheet information.

So Anthropic proposes to sell about $100 billion worth of shares to the public. This will only be a fraction of the total shares held at the moment but the effect, it is hoped, will set a price for all its shares to give a total valuation of the company at around $2 trillion.

These are big numbers and they are in American dollars making them even bigger for an Australian observer.

Some of the main features of the recent performance of Anthropic are given in the table below.

Table 1 Anthropic financial data, 6 months to 30 June 2026, US$billions

The table shows Anthropic effectively made a massive loss, the main thing was “an increase in the fair value of our outstanding convertible promissory notes.” Essentially Anthropic has had bring into its profit and loss account, provision for adverse developments that may trigger compensation to customers. Anthropic has made a web of deals with suppliers of data centres etc that depend on its getting new work from its customers. The risks are difficult to summarise and amount to 90 pages in the IPO. However, the IPO constantly refers to Anthropic’s belief that it will remain at the frontier of AI.

We could cite Anthropic’s critics, but the risk is best described to Anthropic itself when it said:

Our recent growth may reflect early-stage adoption dynamics, the nascency of the AI market, and rapid initial customer expansion that may not be sustainable over time, and it may decline significantly and more rapidly than we anticipate, as our revenue base increases, as the market matures, and as a result of the other factors described below. We expect our revenue growth rate to decline over time. In addition, because the AI industry is very nascent, we have struggled to accurately forecast our revenue in the past and may struggle to do so in the future.

[Anthropic has] entered into purchase commitments and lease agreements, including short-term commitments, as well as leases not yet commenced … which may substantially increase our operating expenses and cash requirements. These expenditures and investments may be more costly than we expect and may not result in increased revenue or growth in our business. (emphasis added)

Ben Carroll has just posted this statement on his social media:

“If you’re a threat to a health worker at a hospital, you could be limited or banned under a workplace protection order. And if you break that order and step foot again in that hospital, you could go to jail. That’s our plan. Health workers deserve to be safe. Every ward. Every hospital. Every day.”

Now, who do we think this will impact the most? Again, no one is excusing violence and of course health care workers should be safe. At the same time, hospitals are where humans are often at their most emotional, vulnerable or irrational. So people in mental health crisis, people impacted by substances, people feeling their loved ones are not receiving care – all could potentially captured by this law, which at best will put people who desperately need help, put out on the street and at worse, will see vulnerable people not only denied care, but then also jailed.

Bill Browne

The Tasmanian Labor Opposition is putting forward a private member’s bill this week that would cap state election campaigns: independents could spend no more than $60,000 and a political party no more than $1.75 million.

One of the exciting things about the power-sharing parliament in Tasmania is that good ideas can become law even if the government of the day, the Rockliff Liberal Government, is opposed. Tasmania came within one vote of a legislated cap on firearm numbers, for example, and it is possible that a ban on “conversion practices” (attempts to suppress or eradicate a person’s sexual or gender identity) will pass later this year.

Unfortunately, Labor’s proposed spending cap looks like it has the same flaws as spending caps elsewhere in the country: it would give major parties and incumbents a major advantage, and suppress independents and new entrants.

Tasmania has proportional representation. There are seven MPs representing each of the state’s five electorates.

Labor’s spending cap would be $50,000 per candidate, or $60,000 for an independent candidate. But a party can field up to seven candidates in an electorate, allowing them to spend up to $350,000 per electorate (outspending the independent about 6-to-1). The party could then draw resources in from other electorates to spend even more than that in key races.  

And that’s all before we get to the taxpayer-funded incumbency advantages that sitting MPs receive (office, staff, travel, salary, etc). New entrants have to spend private money to cover those costs, making their effective spending cap even lower.

At the last election, political parties won between 0 and 3 seats in each electorate. Several independents won a seat each. There’s no justification for a party to outspend an independent 6-to-1 or more, when a party is chasing perhaps 3 seats.

Anara Watson

During the NACC’s appearance at Senate Estimates, Greens leader Senator David Shoebridge asked the following question:

Could I ask you about, on the 8th of July, Acting Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare’s conflict declaration covered some health department matters, and then two days later, is my understanding, Acting Deputy Shakespeare was recused from all such matters involving the health department. Can we get some clarity about what led to this? Were there any matters before the Acting Deputy Commissioner? Can you just take us through what happened here?

Here, Senator Shoebridge is referring to a story published by Michael West Media, where they say that documents obtained under FOI “raise concerns about confusion on how conflicts of interest are identified and managed at the NACC”.

Acting Commissioner Kylie Kilgour explained that:

They weren’t matters where she was the decision-maker, as when both the Acting Deputy Commissioners were appointed on our first day they were with me. We went through all of the ongoing investigations that are underway, and we conflicted … Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare and Deputy Commissioner Lowe out on matters where it was obvious they had a perceived or real conflict of interest.

I think the particular media reporting that you’re referring to was about material that we released under FOI where it was a assessment panel, decision making process. I was the decision-maker at that, so Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare was not the decision-maker, but because it’s a deliberative process where a group of us make and assess, like talk about assessments, in that particular moment, that particular declaration that she made was that she knew of somebody but never had worked closely with them. And the ruling on that particular moment, in that particular moment, was that I didn’t consider there was a perceived or actual conflict of interest because it wasn’t a close working relationship. Subsequently, after, as Deputy Commissioner Lowe and Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare and Deputy Commissioner Gauntlett, I think, had a conversation about how it might just be better to, out of an abundance of caution, whether or not individuals have real or perceived conflict of interest, a bit like what we’ve done with the Commissioner’s recusals around all defence matters that, for Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare, she was reducing, or she wouldn’t be involved in decision making on any matters involving that department because of her previous or her current role…

Shoebridge asks why, “Given what happened with Commissioner Brereton … How did you not apply that learning straight off with Acting Deputy Commissioner Shakespeare?”

Acting Commissioner Kilgour explains that it is “Because I was applying the process under our NSAP terms of reference, which is I meant to look at each case on a case-by-case basis…”

Bill Browne

Last year, the major parties (Labor, Liberal and National) struck a deal to rush through changes to Australia’s election laws, including restricting private fundraising and giving politicians tens of millions of dollars more in taxpayer funding.

I called it a “stitch up” at the time, and now the laws are being challenged in the High Court by independents Rex Patrick and Zoe Daniel for potentially breaching the constitutionally protected freedom of political communication.

It’s fun to lie to a journalist, but it’s illegal to lie to a judge. That might be why the Government has been remarkably candid about the likely effects of the new laws, as Paul Karp reports in Politico.

If the new donation rules applied at last year’s election:

• Labor would have received an additional $17.8 million and the Liberals $13.6 million in taxpayer funding.
• The parties would receive less money in private donations because donation caps apply. But those caps can be “substantially mitigated by splitting donations between state and federal branches of the party.”
• “If donors were prepared to split their donations, the financial hit at the 2025 election would have been dramatically smaller: $4.1 million for the Liberals and $2.4 million for Labor. This would have been more than made up for by an increase in public funding of $17.8 million for Labor and $13.6 million for the Liberals, leaving Labor a total of $15.4 million better off and the Liberals $9.4 million ahead.”
• “Independents seeking to break into parliament for the first time would have been the biggest losers. Nicolette Boele’s successful 2025 campaign for the seat of Bradfield in Sydney would have been $746,000 worse off if the new rules had applied.”

That adds up to a $25 million windfall for the Labor and Liberal parties, and a severe cut to the resources of the independents who have most effectively challenged major party candidates in supposedly “safe” seats. Democracy requires competitive elections, but the Albanese Government’s changes to election laws deliver taxpayer-funded largesse to established parties and put hurdles in the way of new entrants.

Skye Predavec

In early August, the ABC apologized to Gina Rinehart after she threatened the public broadcaster with legal action over a documentary short on the Race Around the World program.

At the time, Communications Minister Anika Wells described the segment as “unacceptable” and called on the ABC to apologise if the ombudsman agreed. Now, in late October, Liberal Senators are quizzing the Communications Department over why Wells “dragged her feet” and “continues to cite editorial independence” in refusing to intervene further in the ABC.

Senator Dean Smith: “We are interested here in what the minister chose to do or did not choose to do in regards to what was a very, very serious – very, very serious – matter. It goes to issues around sexual violence, goes to issue around gender portrayal. How did the minister convey the fact that she found the ABC’s broadcast with the reference to Mrs. Rinehart? How did she convey to the ABC that she found it unacceptable?”

“First of all, the Minister made her views publicly known at a press conference on the 6th of August. She also raised it with the ABC, and I said that to Senator Henderson, and I’ve taken the details of that representation on notice for you.”

Senator Sarah Henderson: “So, the issue that I’m raising is that the Minister dragged her feet for at least a week … it was a disgusting and appalling thing that was broadcast on the ABC. And what are the ramifications for it? The ombudsman, apart from the apology by the managing director, the ombudsman has apparently found there to be no breach of editorial standards, which I find completely unbelievable … are you aware of, or do you did you do you hold any other correspondence in relation to concerns raised with the ABC?”

“Sorry, so you’re describing the operation of the statutory framework for the governments of the ABC as defined by the Parliament and The matter has been referred to the Ombudsman. You don’t like the conclusion that’s been reached, but that’s the process which has been followed”

The ABC is set to appear as the next witness later this morning, so it’s unlikely this is the last mention of Race Around the World in today’s hearings.

Staff Writers

Senator Sarah Henderson is using Senate Estimates to criticise Communications Minister Anika Wells for not “initially” condemning the ABC over a skit about Gina Rinehart.

It was pointed out to the Senator that Anika Wells did in fact say she thought the segment was unacceptable when asked.

“The minister condemned the comments publicly on the 6^th of August,” said Labor Senator Nita Green.

“When she was asked about it she condemned the comments making her personal views known and also making the point the Ombudsman would be looking at this.

“The ABC is independent and we do need to be quite clear about that… we have to cautious of a minister being seen to direct the ABC in any way shape or form.”

Like a footy fan whinging that a decision that didn’t go her way, Sarah Henderson said she could not believe that the Ombudsman found the Gina Rinehart skit did not breach ABC editorial standards.

She also foreshadowed questions about the Mahmood Fazal debacle… it’s going to be a long day for the ABC, who are due to front up soon.

Angus Taylor spoke to Brisbane radio 4BC a little earlier today, to explain his services and government funding plan to pay for a tax cut plan even John Howard was forced to abandon (in the Fraser government) because of how expensive it is, which in this economic climate, would just mean the RBA increases interest rates even further. And all for the simple cost of cutting back on services even more! What could go wrong?

Here is how he explained it:

The Tax Back Guarantee, essentially, it prevents income tax rates going up, which is what happens now, as inflation rages, more and more people’s money goes into higher tax brackets just to keep up with inflation without even getting ahead, and that means you pay more tax.

So, by putting in place this Tax Back Guarantee, a typical worker, $250 better off in year one, $500 year two, $750 year three, a thousand year four, and so on. The point here is that Labor is budgeting on your income tax going up every year, forever. That’s how they budget. We will bring that to an end. Now, to do that, we’ve got to get rid of waste, and we announced yesterday $31 billion of savings: ending the climate bureaucracy, as you said, ending the big company corporate welfare, the housing bureaucracy that’s not delivering houses, and also welfare programmes and NDIS programmes to non-Australians.

So that’s $31 billion, and that’s more than enough, by the way, to pay for this tax cut. We will also help to pay for axing Labor’s taxes on small business, on savings, on investment and so on.

And what are they public about cutting? Oh you know – just climate policies.

Yeah, so the Net Zero Economy Agency – gone. We’ll get rid of the excess spending we’ve seen on all the renewables, scrapping the electric vehicle tax concessions, which we think, you know, the cost of electric vehicles is coming down. We don’t need the Government to be subsidising it. The batteries programmes that have blown out, again, again, the cost of batteries are coming down anyway, we don’t need the Government to be driving that.

The Scope 3 reporting requirements, this is all the reporting that small businesses and other businesses have to do now on a constant basis to report not just their own emissions, they’ve now got to report their customer emissions, which is insanity and costing a lot of money.

So, all of that will go. That’s just under $10 billion. That is a big start to it, and then a whole series of Labor’s housing programmes which are not delivering more houses. I mean, the number of houses being built is going backwards as we spend billions on these programmes, and then the corporate welfare, including, in particular, the green hydrogen programmes, which are not delivering anything. Chris Bowen himself has said, admitted, this is all a flop, and that money should stay in Australians’ pockets.

Further to the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s review of the automated aged care assessment system (spoiler – it is very bad) Palliative Care Australia wants aged care minister Sam Rae to urgently address the wait times for people who have life limiting illnesses.

The peak body says assessments must anticipate how people’s needs will increase as their illness progresses, so the right support is in place before a crisis.

PCA Chief Executive Officer Dr Chris Hatherly said:

Behind every assessment is a person trying to manage daily life with a serious illness, often with family and carers doing everything they can to help.

Getting these decisions wrong can leave people without essential support, put families under enormous pressure and increase the risk of avoidable hospitalisation.”

When someone is dying yet their assessed support needs are reduced, something is seriously wrong,” Dr Hatherly said.

PCA said a “particular concern is the gap facing Support at Home applicants and participants who have substantial palliative care needs but are not yet eligible, or cannot demonstrate eligibility, for the End-of-Life Pathway”.

People can experience severe symptoms, declining mobility and increasing difficulty with everyday tasks well before their final months of life,” Dr Hatherly said.

They need support when those needs arise. They should not have to wait until they are closer to death to get help.

For someone with a terminal illness, delays in access to necessary support can take away the opportunity to spend that time at home with the people they love.”

PCA has written to Minister Rae, urging him to:

• Explicitly include palliative care needs in the review’s terms of reference.
• Appoint palliative care clinical expertise to the expert advisory group.
• Ensure the review examines how assessments identify palliative care needs and translate them into appropriate support and urgency, including for people outside the End-of-Life Pathway.

While the Coalition is running on cutting housing funding, a new report from Orygen and Mission Australia has found that almost half of young people in Australia “are worried they won’t be able to afford a safe place to live in the future, while around two in five don’t feel positive about their future”.

From the statement:

The report, Making hope possible, draws on findings from the 2025 Mission Australia Youth Survey of 17,155 young people aged 14-19, examining their hopes, aspirations and confidence to navigate the challenges of adulthood.

While almost 60 per cent of young people felt positive about their future, the report found much lower levels of hope amongst certain groups:

• Only 29 per cent of gender diverse young people felt positive
• Only 40 per cent of young people not in education or employment felt positive
• Only 43 per cent of young people with a disability felt positive
• Only 43 per cent of those with a mental health condition felt positive

While about 7 in 10 young people felt confident in their ability to manage money, almost half (47 per cent) were worried about affording a safe place to live in the future, highlighting the impact of broader economic and housing pressures on young people’s hopes for the future.

Lead author from Orygen, Associate Professor Kate Filia, said young people’s hopes and confidence for the future were closely connected to their mental health and the broader circumstances shaping their lives.

“If almost half of young people are worried about safe housing, it’s not surprising we also see increasing rates of mental ill-health and psychological distress,” A/Prof. Filia said.

“The report shows that young people still have dreams and aspirations but are coming of age in a period of considerable uncertainty – shaped by rising costs, housing insecurity, climate change and rapid social and technological change – so we need to support them to navigate these concerns and feel positive about the future.

“The findings also show how important it is to target support to young people facing the biggest barriers to hope, because hope is fundamental to building confidence to pursue future aspirations.”

The report also found that young people with a less positive outlook and low confidence in dealing with practical challenges were five times more likely to experience high psychological distress and four times more likely to report feeling lonely all or most of the time.

“Giving young people access to programs that strengthen their capability and confidence, help them build practical skills and confidence to navigate transitions into adulthood – including work, study, housing, relationships and mental healthcare – should be a priority if we want young people to thrive into adulthood,” A/Prof. Filia said. 

Michael Carmody, Mission Australia’s General Manager, Centre for Evidence and Insights, said it was concerning that only 53 per cent of young people were confident they would be able to afford a safe place to live in the future.

“A safe and secure home is fundamental to young people’s wellbeing and their ability to pursue their goals and plan for the future,” Carmody said.

“When young people are worried about whether housing will be within reach, it can affect their sense of stability, opportunity and hope.

“We know these concerns are often felt most acutely by young people already experiencing disadvantage, including financial hardship, housing instability or homelessness.

“That’s why investing in early intervention, social and affordable housing, and ensuring payments like Youth Allowance meet the cost of essentials is so important.

“Together, these measures can help prevent challenges from becoming crises and give more young people the stability they need to pursue their goals and look to the future with confidence, hope and possibility.”

Key policy recommendations include:

• Embed an explicit intergenerational lens to all policy development decisions, considering the long-term impacts of economic, housing, climate, education and health policy on young people.
• Strengthen young people’s capability and confidence through programs that focus on the transition from school to further education and that build social connection.
• Target support to young people facing the greatest barriers, including raising the rate of youth allowance to reduce financial stress and distress for young people, and prioritising housing for young people at risk of, or experiencing homelessness.

The Australian College of Nursing (ACN) has put in a submission in the review of Medicare’s primary care consultation items, warning that it risks excluding nurse practitioners, despite proposing bulk-billing incentives for nurse practitioner consultations for the first time.

That’s because the proposed incentives would only apply to patients registered through MyMedicare, yet as the college explains “NP-led practices without a GP are currently ineligible to join the scheme, creating an inequitable barrier for NP and nurse-led practices”.

So in areas where there are NPs, but no GPs (regional and rural especially), the bulk billing incentives would not apply.

The college wants the government to follow through with its promise to limit barriers to entry.

ACN Chief Executive Officer Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz FACN said in a statement:

The Committee’s working group noted that NP-led practices’ current ineligibility for MyMedicare was out of scope for this review.

We are calling for the final report to recommend the Government undertake a review of the MyMedicare framework and accreditation requirements that addresses the inequitable exclusion of NP- and nurse-led practices.

Nurse practitioners and nurses are independent primary healthcare providers who improve consumer access to safe, affordable and timely primary healthcare services.

If we do not better incorporate them into the primary healthcare funding architecture, we fail to future-proof the healthcare system.”

Too often, residential aged care facilities struggle to get a doctor to visit, particularly outside the cities.

Aged care nurse practitioners can help close that gap, but these rules would make it harder for them to do so.”

AAP takes this all a bit more seriously than me, so here is their report:

Washington has revealed the first nuclear submarine that will deploy to Australia under the AUKUS agreement, five years after the $386 billion defence pact was signed. 

The USS Colorado, a 10-year-old Virginia-class submarine, will make its new home at Western Australia’s HMAS Stirling from late 2027, Defence Minister Richard Marles revealed in a joint statement with his US and British counterparts on Tuesday.

It’s the first of up to four American submarines, and one from the UK, set to rotate through the base while Australian Defence Force personnel get to grips with owning and operating nuclear submarines. 

But Colorado’s arrival in Australia will be controversial because of outrage sparked in June over revelations the US would deliver lesser equipment than first promised.

Original AUKUS plans had Canberra receiving two used vessels and a brand new Virginia-class submarine before building one of its own in Adelaide.

The fact Washington would now be sending second-hand vessels was described as “trash” by Tasmanian independent senator and army veteran Jacqui Lambie, but ministers and top military brass at the time insisted used subs were the best option.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the time assured the public AUKUS was going “full-steam ahead” despite tweaks being made to the mega-money deal, which US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reiterated on Tuesday along with Mr Marles and UK Secretary of State Wes Streeting.

Colorado is a “fast-attack” submarine, reaching more than 46km/h, compared with Australia Collins-class subs’ underwater top speed of 37km/h.

While second-hand, the Virginia class is Washington’s most advanced line of attack submersibles.

The higher-speed, longer-range vessels are needed to help Australia defend its sea trade, Mr Marles has said.

“The selection of USS Colorado … is a decisive step in strengthening collective deterrence in the Pacific,” the joint statement read.

Australia’s own nuclear subs will be conventionally armed, but the US has maintained a policy of ambiguity about whether or not assets rotating through the country are carrying nuclear weapons.

Being nuclear-powered means its range is effectively limited only by its crew’s need for food and water.

Tuesday’s statement says the AUKUS rotation arrangement will abide with all relevant non-proliferation treaties.

Greens leader David Shoebridge held a doorstop (quick press conference) a little earlier this morning, where he was asked about the Coalition’s plan (announced yesterday but only getting attention today) to cut government funding for housing and welfare in order to fund it’s tax cuts that, in the foreseeable future, the RBA would see as inflationary and increase interest rates to counter.

Shoebridge:

The Coalition comes out and says the way we we’re going to deal with inflation is to take even more out of out of people’s basic services. We know that people have been benefiting from some of these programs, the battery program, greatly saving their their energy costs. And yet the coalition wants to come out and take those things away from people. We know one of the key reasons why we’ve got inflation where it is: record corporate profits working their way through the economy and not working their way through people who need to put food on the table, but those record corporate profits are building someone’s you know luxury renovations, buying their second yacht, engaged in you know extraordinary entertainment expenses that feeds inflation into the economy. But of course, the coalition doesn’t want to touch that. Labor doesn’t want to touch that. If we want to take the heat out of this economy, we need to touch those record corporate profits that are feeding inflation into the economy.

In terms of the economic picture, given all the mainstream is going AUSTERITY NOW, a reminder that Australia has one of the lowest debt ratios in the OECD. And notice how the answer is to make people’s lives even more difficult -rather than address any of the very easy ways we could free up spending? Like taxing gas? Or scrapping AUKUS? Or breaking up monopolies?

We could have had a public system. We don’t, mostly because there wasn’t a public service John Howard didn’t see market potential in. And while this Labor government does have universal childcare as a foundational principle, it is only really possible if the system itself comes back into public hands. But we are not having that conversation yet and Greens senator and deputy leader Steph Hodgins-May thinks its beyond time we did:

This is a national crisis. Every new headline makes parents sick to their stomachs.

The media are being forced to do the job our regulators should be doing, exposing harrowing cases of abuse, neglect and safety failures in a system that is supposed to care for and educate our children.

Our early learning system is dominated by for-profit providers. Almost 98 per cent of new services over the past two years were for-profit. We’re heading in entirely the wrong direction. 

When childcare is run for profit, children’s safety is put in direct competition with the bottom line. Every dollar spent on qualified educators and adequate staffing is a dollar that can’t go to shareholders. That is a fundamental flaw in a system that should put children first, always.

Labor has responded with a series of band-aid measures that do not fix the conditions that allow harm to happen in the first place.

What families are demanding is actual federal leadership that will confront the root problem. We cannot keep treating each new scandal as an isolated failure within a system that actively causes harm. 

If we take the profit motive out of childcare, we can put public funding back into qualified educators, better staffing and high-quality care.

We need a system that is planned around children and communities, just like our primary and secondary schools, with quality and safety built in from the start.

No parent should have to drop their child off before they can go to work or study, then spend the entire day worrying about whether their child is safe.”

Anara Watson

The South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, has referred the Department of Infrastructure and Transport to the state’s corruption watchdog. That referral is based on concerns surrounding a contractor working on the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington project – the state’s largest-ever road project.

SA’s Independent Commission Against Corruption Commissioner, Emma Townsend, has confirmed that she will conduct an evaluation of the Department.

Here’s her statement:

Over the past week there has been considerable public discourse and community concern regarding the potential for corrupt activity to occur within South Australia’s major infrastructure projects, including in relation to organised crime.

These concerns undermine community confidence in the integrity of public sector projects with significant public funding attached. They also exist against a backdrop of serious allegations and findings in other jurisdictions. This underscores the value of strong controls, policies and processes to protect against corruption, as well as support for individuals to report concerns and speak up.

I have determined that the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) will conduct an evaluation of the Department for Infrastructure and Transport, focusing on the controls and processes involved in the procurement and contract management of major infrastructure projects. This will include the frameworks and safeguards needed to protect against infiltration by organised crime, and will build upon ICAC’s previous work examining corruption risks in procurement and contract management.

Evaluations are a core statutory function of ICAC under section 7 and 40 of the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 2012 (the ICAC Act) and are conducted with a view to advancing comprehensive systems for preventing or minimising corruption in public administration. Once complete, the findings of ICAC evaluations are tabled in Parliament and made public.

I regard this evaluation as an opportunity to support the Department to identify potential corruption risks and strengthen its existing controls if necessary.

ICAC will now develop formal terms of reference for the evaluation, with careful consideration of the appropriate scale and scope. While I am unable to predict the completion date for the evaluation at present, I expect that this will be a complex piece of work that may take considerable time and resources to complete.

I acknowledge the Premier of South Australia’s letter to me in relation to this matter, and the government’s support of an ICAC evaluation. I am independently of the view that it is in the public interest to conduct such an evaluation. As with all of the work that ICAC undertakes, this evaluation will be conducted with independence and a high level of scrutiny.

It is important to make clear that an evaluation is different to an ICAC investigation, which is conducted in private in accordance with the ICAC Act, and which investigates specific allegations of corrupt conduct in public administration. ICAC can only undertake an investigation if it receives a referral from the Office for Public Integrity in relation to a specific allegation. Under the ICAC Act, ICAC is prohibited from making any public statement that discloses information from which a person could infer that a particular matter is being or is proposed to be investigated by ICAC.

I conclude by reminding all public officers of their obligation under law to report any conduct they suspect to be corruption in public administration to the Office for Public Integrity. This obligation extends to situations where threats are made to public officers with a view to influencing the performance of their official duties.

The message is simple – if something is not right, report it.

Derek Rose and Jacob Shteyman for AAP

The number of Australians complaining about the tax office has surged as it ramps up debt collections at the same time as taxpayers struggle with rising cost pressures.

The Tax Ombudsman fielded 2376 complaints against the Australian Taxation Office in the six months to September, up 74 per cent from the same period in 2025 and 180 per cent above the same period two years ago.

Debt collection and payment-related matters each accounted for 19 per cent of complaint investigations from April to September, the agency said.

“Our latest complaint data shows more people are struggling due to the ATO’s debt collection activity or interest charges or simply need to resolve delays to payments they are due,” Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen said.

“At a time when many Australians are facing financial distress, we are seeing increased complaints about how the ATO is collecting tax debt owed and how interest is applied to the debt, often making the amount due impossible to pay back.”

In response, an ATO spokesperson said the tax office had only received 1358 complaints over the same period, as the ombudsman’s figures included cases that were resolved without any ATO involvement or that related to the Tax Practitioners Board or state tax issues.

The ombudsman only investigated 501 complaints out of 2376 it received and found in most cases, the ATO had acted appropriately.

In 63 per cent of debt collection-related complaints, the agency found the ATO acted reasonably, down nine per cent from the same period last year.

Complaints about penalties and interest made up 18 per cent of grievances, up from 13 per cent a year ago.

Amid rising inflation and interest rates, tax liabilities were adding to mounting debts owed by taxpayers and small businesses, the ombudsman said.

Taxpayers also relied on tax refunds to maintain liquidity or pay other bills. 

“This is likely to partially explain why we have seen an increase in complaints, alongside the fact that the ATO has had to ramp up its debt collection activity to reduce the size of its collectable debt book,” the report said.

The ATO was owed $54.2 billion in outstanding tax debt in 2024/25, according to the Australian National Audit Office.

Debts owed by small businesses amounted to $35.9 billion, an increase of $19.4 billion from 2018/29.

Following a backlash to proposed tax hikes for discretionary trusts, the ATO’s announcement that it would ban credit card payments has further dented relations between the government and the business community.

“When we get feedback from businesses around the country, I think they are feeling under pressure,” Andrew McKellar, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Politico’s Canberra Playbook podcast.

“They’re feeling that they’re really struggling on a range of fronts, and they just see a range of decisions from government that feel disconnected from the objectives that they’re trying to achieve.”

As AAP reports:

At least nine MPs will have security crackdowns accelerated for their electorate offices, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed, after they raised concerns last week.

Security in Parliament House’s public places will also be stepped up.

MPs from across the political divide paused proceedings on Monday for a full day of tributes to Dr Haines.

“It’s very legitimate that we have a look at that and respond,” she told ABC Radio National on Tuesday.

Security is handled across several departments: the Australians Federal Police are responsible for assessments and security details, Home Affairs looks after home security, and Finance handles offices and transport. 

All three coordinate to share information, Finance secretary Matt Yannopoulos confirmed in a late-night Senate estimates sitting on Monday. 

But the updated protection would not be enough to shield women in the public eye from abuse, Ms Gallagher warned, urging social media companies to take action when threats are posted on their platforms. 

Anara Watson

Every time Parliament sits, we look back at the stories that we know thanks to freedom of information (FOI) laws. As always, FOI has played a major role in making government information available to the public. Here are five more:

1. The ABC reports that emails released under FOI reveal that “NSW’s building watchdog killed a media release detailing disciplinary action against developer Aland, despite imposing the maximum fine available and sanctioning its founder”. 
2. The Guardian used FOI laws to uncover that the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) met with representatives of Palantir. The NDIA has denied using the company’s software, but the Guardian reports that “data from the [NDIA] is being shared with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), which has used Palantir as part of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce of 25 government agencies that is responsible for investigating fraud.”
3. The ABC used FOI laws to report on allegations of fraud and misconduct by operators under the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. Those allegations were contained in tip-offs to the federal watchdog, but the documents obtained did not detail any regulatory action currently underway.
4. The ABC has used documents released under FOI to shine a light on government grants processes, arguing “Federal Labor asked an Adelaide council to put forward a multi-million-dollar sports precinct upgrade for federal funding before any detailed costings or formal planning had been done.”
5. Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate declared that he had a dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. According to the ABC, “The White House has told the ABC that the US president and first lady Melania Trump ‘did not have dinner with that group’”, and a “right-to-information request for documents turned up next to no documents”.

These are just five stories unearthed thanks to FOI, but there are many more.

So, stay tuned – we have more on the way

Alice Grundy

AI behemoth Anthropic has filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a proposed initial public offering or IPO — aka listing the company on the stock market. 

The New York Times is reporting on a future of “promise and peril”. The prospectus speaks of extraordinary opportunity and one of the most consequential developments in human technology. 

As a company, they are responsible to their owners and, if the IPO proceeds, to their shareholders. It’s not their job to decide how this tool fits in our society. That’s a job for our democratically elected governments. And as Richard Denniss said in his evidence to a recent Senate committee, the business model for AI is based on the expectation that many people will lose their jobs — this is how companies can increase earnings from using AI. 

Australia needs to choose how these tools fit with our society before it feels that all the choices have been made for us. 

Steven Scheer and Emily Rose for AAP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted of his endorsement from Donald Trump on the eve of Israel’s election, ‌suggesting the two leaders could restart their war against Iran if he wins, after Trump said they should “finish the job”.

“US President Donald Trump has come with a friendship that has never existed before between an Israeli prime minister and an ‌American president. And it is doubtful we will ever have such a friendly president again,” Netanyahu said in a televised appearance on Sunday. 

“He says he is calling on you to vote for me.”

In ‌his own social media post on Sunday, Trump, who launched the Iran war jointly with Netanyahu in February, said: “Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!”

Netanyahu said Trump was willing to take action “that would finally, finally, remove the Iranian threat”, but only as long as Netanyahu himself remains in power.

“And I have already instructed the Mossad and the IDF (military) to bring down this regime, to bring down this regime because that is the only way to put an end to this threat,” Netanyahu said, referring to Israel’s main intelligence service and military.

Trump first endorsed Netanyahu on October 18, reiterating his support in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

Asked by reporters later on Monday whether Netanyahu had requested the second endorsement, Trump said: “I never spoke about it”.

“I put out both endorsements. I put out both… I think he’s done a very good job as prime minister under very trying conditions.”

Netanyahu’s leading opponent, centrist former military Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, posted his own comments on social media, praising Trump as “a true friend of Israel”.

“I value his efforts and his commitment to Israel’s security, and I am confident that he will work in full co-operation with any ⁠leader chosen by the people.”

Tuesday’s vote, Israel’s first since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, is ‌the first chance for voters ​to deliver a verdict on the worst security failure in generations and the wars on multiple fronts that followed.

With Netanyahu already at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, politics have shifted even further to the ​right. 

Nearly all Jewish-led ‌parties, including that of the hawkish Eisenkot, now oppose the “two-state solution” that underpinned decades of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

But many voters say the divisive politics of Israel’s longest-serving leader make the country weaker. Polls suggest Netanyahu’s Likud ​Party will lose seats, potentially depriving his coalition of right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties of its narrow majority.

Eisenkot and an array of opposition parties ranging from the rump of the centre-left to the right, also have no clear path to unseat him.

Netanyahu shared an AI-generated video on Monday of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father Ali Khamenei was killed on the first night of US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February. Lying in a hospital bed, the younger Khamenei says his own vote would be “definitely not Bibi. Another term like this and I will be meeting my father sooner than expected”.

On Sunday Netanyahu posted a computer-generated photo of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, saying Israel was in existential danger from Iran.

Q: Yesterday, Angus Taylor, the opposition leader, said that there is. He disagreed with the view that there’s a casual connection between robust parliamentary debate and political violence. Is he right? 

Well, I think it goes back to that, that robust debate is absolutely essential for holding the government to account. 

I think the Australian public expect their politicians in opposition to hold their government to account to ask questions, and quite rightly, the public expect answers to those questions, so I think there is a there is definitely an argument to say that strong debate should be absolutely supported. 

But at the same time, that debate, you know, like in any circumstance, needs to be respectful. 

And I genuinely believe that we set a standard for how we expect Australians to speak.

Angus Taylor also claimed that ‘Australians being made to feel guilty’ about their nation was also something which needed to be stopped, which is just part of how we all got here. Genuine pushback, education and reckoning with our actual past is not being made to ‘feel guilty’. But treating those who refuse to see the issues as the victims is one of the reasons Australia can never actually move forward into addressing them.

Anna Chang

Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Anne Ruston on RN Breakfast

Q: Let’s start where we left off with the Minister, and that is on the Ombudsman’s report into this automated tool for aged care, what do you make of the findings that the ombudsman has handed down? 

Well, we’ve been saying for a very long time all of the concerns pretty much that have been raised by the ombudsman. We have been telling the parliament and telling the government for a very long time. So, I’m pleased that we have now got another independent source, because don’t forget the inspector general has also made comments very similar to what the ombudsman has said. That we’ve now got an independent report that the government can’t ignore. 

So we’re really hopeful that now the government has this independent report. It will actually listen and say that their algorithm process is fundamentally flawed. It says that any reasonable person would not think the system is fair and wouldn’t have confidence in it, and that they haven’t been transparent in what they’ve told the public and told their department that this algorithm does and doesn’t do. So, you know, it is it’s a very damning report. It’s a very damning report. We can only hope that the government now that they’ve got this will actually take notice of the ombudsman because they certainly haven’t been taking notice of the parliament. 

Q: What do you think about some of the features that are mentioned? 

Particularly, I was just mentioning to the Minister of these text boxes for assessors to type in information that that then doesn’t get considered by the tool. 

Q: What do you think about the design? 

Well, the the ombudsman doesn’t actually go into the specific design of the algorithm, but just and but does draw a very clear distinction to say that the algorithm may or may not be flawed, but people shouldn’t have any confidence because of all the other things that’s fundamentally flawed with the process. But you know, may you make a really good point. 

What’s the point of saying that you’ve got a human involved in the process with the things that the human is doing are not being considered when the assessment. 

So all these text boxes have no bearing in the determination of the computer when it decides what somebody’s assessment care needs are. 

Q: What needs to happen? 

Well, I think first and foremost the government needs to actually put proper human override back in. 

They put in an escalation pathway last week, which was a slight improvement, but it was only a band-aid on a symptom. It wasn’t solving the problem. 

They could actually reintroduce proper human override, where if the decision’s wrong, an assessor can immediately say the decision’s wrong and get that decision changed instead of making somebody go through this convoluted review process that takes another three months and doesn’t necessarily change the decision, but they also need to go back and look under the bonnet of this algorithm. 

It appears to be fundamentally flawed because of the number of bad decisions that it’s spitting out. 

They need to go back to the drawing board and actually have a look, get rid of the algorithm, and start again and rebuild it. 

I think that you know the Coalition doesn’t have a problem with using technology to help an assessor as a tool into their assessment process, but no computer should ultimately have the decision that should reside with a person. 

Members of parliament and their staff have access to a new AI tool which allegedly filters out abusive messages on social media. (What is abuse is not made clear – again, genuine and legitimate criticism of policy can be civil and not abusive) and today we are hearing that 5,000 violent messages and threats have been flagged from 22 Labor MPs social accounts in just three months.

The tool’s data flagged half of the he more than 460,000 comments between July and October as abusive.

Katy Gallagher is asked about that data on ABC radio RN Breakfast and says:

I think it is the volume that people are, you know, feeling the pressure from. I mean, I think we’ve always put up with some pretty robust feedback in politics.

Certainly, in my time in politics, but the volume, the scale, and the forcefulness of the threats and the violence and the abusive language is something that I haven’t seen.

Certainly, in the last couple of years, it’s just been increasing, and you know it weighs heavily on people. And I think from my discussions with colleagues across the parliament in the last week or so, we’ve just people have just had enough, and we’ve had enough from it from our profession, but we’ve also had enough of it right across workforces across Australia. I mean, it’s too many people that go to work and get abused for going to work.

The tool will be able to filter out those comments, with a discussion about where the more violent and threatening ones should go, and whether they should be sent to the AFP (what could go wrong).

Q: Does the tool distinguish between what it deems as violent language and and genuine feedback, because sometimes people can be genuinely furious about a government decision that’s going to affect them or goes against their views and principles.

Gallagher:

Yeah, so that’s some of what we’re learning about it. So there’s a big section called personal attack, which and then it breaks it down into offensive language, sexist, you know, racist, xenophobic, all of the different kind of categories, and and is able to categorize that. In some of the personal attack, one I think there is a crossover, but you know, it depends on your tolerance. I get between what we would perhaps say is is feedback, robust feedback, and what others who might not put up with what we do on a daily basis see as a personal attack. So there is some crossover there. I’m not pretending otherwise, but it is the volume of you know, in my accounts, half of the comments are getting quarantined. You know, if you look at sort of 50,000 comments, you know, over 20,000 of them will be quarantined under one of these categories.

The AI tool has been offered from a ‘third party organisation’ Gallagher says, which is looking at ways to address violence against women, but men are able to use the AI as well.

Q: Is there a risk of censoring genuine, robust feedback here?

Gallagher:

Look, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s really a work management tool about how we’re going to, how do we, you know, it’s very difficult to go to work every day and just be abused constantly online. So it’s about how we manage our working day and that of our staff, and I think it. The other thing that we’ve all been noticing is it has a chilling effect on people who genuinely want to engage with us. Because if you go to say my Facebook page and you want to write something about you know an issue, if it’s the the chances are you’re going to be piled on from the people who are piling onto that account, and so people are not engaging with us in those formats because it’s not safe for them either.

There is an old adage in media that if you ask a question in a headline, the answer is no. And so it is here.

Iain Anderson is asked about the dangers of a system that won’t let humans change the outcome, for human circumstances the automation is not taking into account (by design)

Anderson:

The particularly concerning risk, Sally, is that people would get an inappropriate clinical outcome. So they’d get an outcome that wouldn’t actually meet their needs. But there were also issues about delays, and there’s also a question of fairness. If you don’t know how an outcome has been decided, you don’t know whether you should, in fact, seek to have it reviewed or challenged. And it’s a fundamental concept that people should be able to challenge government decisions that have impact on their lives.

Q: When we’re talking about using automation for decision making, a lot of people’s minds go to Robodebt. These are different tools, but the broader lessons about having systems that don’t fully take into account human circumstances have the lessons of that been learnt?

Anderson:

Unfortunately, I don’t think they have. An important recommendation from the Robodebt Royal Commission was that when the government uses automation or artificial intelligence, it needs to be very transparent about how decisions are made and how the system operates. And that’s something that hasn’t happened with this. Now, very recently, the department has published a lot more information. I note that in the report. I welcome that, but it’s too early to say if they’ve really now provided the transparency that’s required, so people can understand how these significant decisions are being made.

Q: What did you make in your investigations of the responsiveness of the government as criticism started to become loud?

Well, it is pleasing to see that the department’s had a rapid review announced by the government. There’s a further review that’s now been announced. A new escalation pathway has been announced that will seek to be legislated. So that’s all great, but it’s a pity that it’s happening at this stage once the system’s already been operational for some time.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Iain Anderson has spoken to ABC radio RN Breakfast about the failings his office found in the system:

Well, importantly, the integrated assessment tool is not what the department consulted on or trialed. It’s different to what the department said it was, and it’s even different to what parts the department thought it was going to be. Critically, you can’t change outcomes that might be clinically inappropriate. It’s not even clear how you can change outcomes. In some circumstances, you can change inputs. This is really important. And one example, the system is designed with free text fields for assessors to put in additional information, but the algorithm isn’t able to consider what’s in the free text field, so that’s just one way you could potentially get a clinically inappropriate outcome.

So yes, that’s right – assessors can put information into the text field, but the algorithm doesn’t read the text fields. That seems like a massive issue and Anderson agrees:

Look, I think it’s it’s really problematic. I think that the assessors themselves have said it’s important to be able to put in that additional information, that richer, fuller information, to get correct outcomes. And if you can’t, then change the outcome. If that’s not being taken into account, then automatically you’ve got unfair and inconsistent outcomes. And if we look at the scale of this, we know in principle that pretty much every extended family in the country has some contact with the aged care system. Around a million Australians have undergone assessment by these mechanisms, and the aging population is growing.

And what was trialed was not what was implemented.

I appreciate that the department was working very quickly to develop something, but the changes that were made during the development process were very significant changes, and those changes weren’t what was consulted on. What was consulted on was the initial idea, and I’m really concerned that there needs to be a very thorough review of the legislation and the rules to address and the legal issues that are there to also make sure that there’s further upper consultation on how the system is working and how you can then seek to apply for a review of decisions if you have concerns about decisions.

Q: What do we see about what was going on within the department as it became apparent that there were problems? Were those higher up listening to those who were on the coal face, who were flagging that there were issues here?

Anderson:

We certainly saw senior people in the department raising concerns, saying they didn’t think that government had necessarily been properly advised on all the risks. That the system that was then being implemented was not what had been consulted on. So people were certainly raising concerns, which is pleasing. And the department and the government have, since we started our investigation, been very willing to start making changes. But I just think that they need to go further and to do that quickly.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has looked at the automative assessments in aged care and found it very, very wanting.

You can read the report here but it is examining this part of the assessment

Following completion of the assessment questions, the IAT’s algorithm makes one of three automated decisions (automated IAT decision):

• that the older person is eligible to access aged care services under the
  Commonwealth Home Support Program (the CHSP), OR
• that the older person is eligible to access aged care services under the Support
  at Home program (the SAH program) and if so, their funding level and priority
  category, OR
• that the older persons is not eligible to access the CHSP or the SAH program.

Currently, under the law, these automated decisions cannot be overridden and changed, even if they are clinically inappropriate. These automated decisions are made by the IAT’s algorithm. Put another way, a human decision-maker does not
decide the 3 key matters described above. The CHSP and the SAH program are homebased aged care programs. The CHSP is designed to provide entry-level care for older persons who need a low level of support to live independently and safely, while the SAH program is designed to support older persons with more complex or intensive care needs.

Anyone who has anything to do with this system knows how frustrating and hopeless it can make you feel. It’s a feeling those dealing with the welfare system know well – we do not design these systems to help, but to provide the least amount of help, in the hardest way possible.

When it comes to this particular assessment, the Ombudsman found:

In our view, based on the matters below, the IAT and its associated decision-making framework do not merely have the potential to undermine public confidence in the administration of a fair and consistent assessment system. Rather, a reasonable person would, in our view, lack confidence that the system is in fact fair and consistent.

And

In our view, based on the matters below, the Department has not been reasonably oversighting the performance of assessment providers. The Department should be doing more in a range of areas to improve the operation of the SAS.

Greg Jericho

We reported yesterday on how Angus Taylor announced $31bn in spending cuts to pay for his tax cuts, but it was mostly missed given the day’s focus was on Helen Haines, and it seems like today is when most media is reporting it, so we thought we would re-up it.

You will not be surprised to discover that the cuts are just of things the opposition doesn’t like – public housing and migrants – or to be honest, doesn’t think is real – ie climate change.

The Australian has reported the following cuts:

$9.4bn over four years from net-zero initiatives, including an end to tax breaks and subsidies to home batteries and electric vehicles.

$7.3bn cut from the National Reconstruction Fund and production tax credits for green hydrogen, green aluminium and critical minerals.

$4.7bn from cutting Labor’s housing programs [whew, didn’t realise the housing crisis was over!]

$2bn from ending welfare for non-citizens [that it is an average of $500m a year shows just how little this really is given in 2028-29 $17.7bn is expected to be spent on JobSeeker]

$7.9bn by cutting the tobacco excise [yes the Libs believe cutting the excise will raise more excise because people will go back to buying legal cigarettes. This will also probably increase smoking rates, so it’s a truly cromulent health policy as well!]

All up that gets us $31.3bn.

Thing is that is over 4 years from 2028-29.

And to be honest, that is not a lot.

We can actually compare just how little it is by looking at for example how much the government is forecast to spend handing out fuel tax credits (half of which go to mining companies) over the same period.

Forget $31.3bn, the government would save $52.6bn.

Now also imagine the government kept Defence spending at the 2.03% of GDP that it is now instead of ramping it up to 2.3% of GDP (which is just an arbitrary amount designed to make Trump happy and says nothing about the quality of the spend).

That would save $29.7bn over the 4 years from 2028-29.

Combined those two measures would cut $82.4bn – more than double what the LNP is proposing.

So you know, choices can be made.

If you watched Four Corners last night, you are probably still feeling it. Seeing anyone abused is never easy, but watching children – babies – be abused is among one of the most awful things your brain can take in (and one of the many reasons I go to sleep with the faces of Palestinian children I’ve never met burned onto my eyelids).

SNAICC,  the National Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, has released a statement following the progam:

SNAICC’s first concern is for the children that were assaulted and abused by Edwina Ling at  Injinoo Childcare Centre, and their families. It is unacceptable that any child is abused in  early childhood education and care and it should have never happened.

Some Aboriginal community controlled early education services sit outside the National  Quality Framework. This does not mean they are not regulated to high standards of quality  and safety, but that they are regulated by state and territory governments.

SNAICC welcomes the discussion about the application of the National Quality Framework  as part of how children in early learning are kept safe. We have long advocated for nationally  consistent standards of care that reflect the importance of culture.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, like all children, deserve the highest possible  standards. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children this includes consideration of  cultural safety and connection to Country.

The overwhelming majority of Aboriginal community controlled early childhood services are  high quality. These services operate with the needs of children as their first priority, with  strong and clear child safe policies and procedures in place.

SNAICC has argued for many years that the current subsidy-based funding models are a  safety issue, not just an administrative one. When funding can’t be counted on, neither can  the continuity of care children and families depend on. Reliability of funding is reliability of  safety.

A model built for a different context can’t be expected to hold the cultural and relational  safety that community-controlled, holistic care provides. Trust and safety are built through  relationships, by a workforce families recognise as their own.

Governments have the opportunity to implement a model that reflects the cultural and  relational safety that community-controlled holistic care provides.

A national Early Education and Care Commission that is informed by Aboriginal and Torres  Strait Islander expertise presents an opportunity for this reform.

The need for a new model isn’t a new ask. It draws on the voices of ACCOs, families, and  government representatives from consultations nationwide, backed by evidence review and  independent economic modelling.

In July 2024 the Joint Council on Closing the Gap accepted a recommendation for  governments to work towards implementing it. 

It is time all governments move on putting this new model in place to ensure services have  the resources, workforce and sustainable funding to provide safe and quality care for  children.

Greg Jericho

Overnight came reports via Axios that Anthropic’s AI model (Claude) had accessed voter information in Georgia. 

Much as was the case with the Medicare AI issue recently, nothing secret was accessed. Everything Anthropic accessed was publicly available, but for a fee. All Anthropic’s AI did was vault over the paywall and accessed the data. 

So that’s nice. 

We should add that this is not some issue of the AI going rogue. This is exactly what it is programmed to do – bypass stuff that others would pay for and just gobble it up.

The Guardian’s Josh Taylopr noted on seeing my post on Bluesky about it that “I think about this a bit when AI companies say that they support changes to copyright in Australia that would require anyone who didn’t want their content fed into AI to put a “pls don’t scrape” notice on their site as though that will stop it…”

He’s right, currently AI models are ignoring all paywalls and firewalls with a regularity that suggests it sure as hell ain’t a bug, but a feature. 

All of which is to say that it is beyond time that AI companies start getting treated with at least the harshness that kids downloading Metallica songs in 2001 off of Napster were… if not rather more severely 

Hello and welcome back to The Point Live. After the tributes to Helen Haines yesterday, the House will move on to its usual business. For Labor, that’s getting some bills into the senate ahead of the end of year rush. There is not many more weeks of parliament sittings left, so this is when the government will start knuckling down, to get through its mid-term grind. The negotiations for the digital duty of care bill remain the main focus.

Anika Wells is still hoping that by some miracle, the Coalition will say yes and she can continue the streak of bipartisan tech laws, but that is unlikely to happen in this case. The Coalition are looking for more and more ways to differentiate themself from Labor, with the phrase ‘uniparty’ coming up more and more in focus groups.

Their response is to become more and more like One Nation, so it’s not exactly product differentiation from all sides, but the Coalition is feeling a bit bouyed by the Victorian situation. So, you won’t be changing up that course.

In estimates, the ABC bosses are up early. Sarah Henderson has taken it upon herself to be the critiquer in chief of the national broadcaster, so you can expect that to continue.

We’ll bring you all the day’s events, and whatever else happens you should know about, as it happens.

It’s a two coffee morning so far, but it is still early. One of the cats decided my dresser mirror would make a great jungle gym (until it didn’t) so there won’t be enough coffee in the world this morning. Hope your start to the day has been less messy.

Ready?