Albanese predicts One Nation surge may be shortlived amid ‘mess’ of mutual hatred on political right
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the rise of One Nation has happened before, but past surges in the party’s popularity “all collapsed” after a few years.
Albanese was asked about Pauline Hanson and her party’s beefy poll numbers, but he told ABC News while people were “quite clearly frustrated” across Australia, One Nation may not be a bastion for that angst for long:
We saw it in 1996 when she was elected and 1998 she won double-digit number of seats in Queensland. No one made it to two years, it all collapsed. That’s tended to be what has happened.
We will wait and see what the relationship is between Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce in a couple of years’ time – two very big egos put in one melting pot.
Albanese went on to say One Nation had alway been about “identifying problems” while promoting “division”, adding:
People are frustrated because the Coalition parties are such a mess. The Liberals hate each other and the Nats hate each other and the Liberals hate the Nats and the Nats are leaving to join One Nation.
It really is a bit of a mess on the right wing of politics at the moment. One Nation represent certainty – no solutions, but certainty of identifying problems.
Key events
Benita Kolovos
The CFMEU has cost Victorian taxpayers $15bn, a corruption fighter claims. How did he reach that figure and what happens next?
The Victorian premier will face mounting pressure in parliament this week over allegations that corruption involving the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union cost taxpayers up to $15bn.
The eye-watering estimate appeared in a redacted section of a report by corruption fighter Geoffrey Watson SC, which was tendered during a Queensland inquiry into the CFMEU last week.
The report centred on the CFMEU’s Victoria and Tasmania branch over the course of two decades, when it allegedly went from a union focused on workers’ rights to a “violent, hateful and greedy rabble” that “cultivated the company of underworld figures” and bikie gangs.
Here’s what to know about the report and the government’s view of it:
Australia will not repatriate Australian women and children stuck in Syria, Albanese says
Anthony Albanese said Australia will not facilitate or assist in repatriating 34 women and children in Syria who are the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters. The group were held for years without charge, and were recently forced to return to a detention camp in Syria after being released by Kurdish forces.
Albanese was asked about the Australians on ABC this morning, saying:
We won’t repatriate them. And indeed the government was taken to court by one of the non-government organisations saying we had a responsibility and they weren’t successful in that. My mother would have said “If you make your bed, you lie in it”.
These people went overseas supporting Islamic State and went there to provide support for people who basically want a caliphate …
While Australian citizens cannot be blocked from returning on their own, Albanese said he was firm in his stance that the government would not provide assistance to the cohort in Syria, adding:
We have a very firm view that we won’t be providing assistance or repatriation. Of course Australian law applies, and there are obligations that Australian officials have, but we want to make it clear, as we have to the people involved, that if there are any breaches of the law, then they will face the full force of the Australian law.
Man, 44, seriously injured after public place shooting in Sydney’s south-west
A man was seriously injured in a public place shooting in the Sydney suburb of Greenacre this morning.
NSW police said emergency services were called to the area in Sydney’s south-west around 6am amid reports a man had been shot outside a home by the occupants of an SUV before it drove away.
The man, 44, was treated at the scene by paramedics and taken to the hospital in a serious condition.
Police were called to the nearby suburb of Wylie Park a short time later after reports of a car fire. They have established a crime scene at both locations and opened an investigation into the matter, which they are treating as linked.
Albanese predicts One Nation surge may be shortlived amid ‘mess’ of mutual hatred on political right
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the rise of One Nation has happened before, but past surges in the party’s popularity “all collapsed” after a few years.
Albanese was asked about Pauline Hanson and her party’s beefy poll numbers, but he told ABC News while people were “quite clearly frustrated” across Australia, One Nation may not be a bastion for that angst for long:
We saw it in 1996 when she was elected and 1998 she won double-digit number of seats in Queensland. No one made it to two years, it all collapsed. That’s tended to be what has happened.
We will wait and see what the relationship is between Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce in a couple of years’ time – two very big egos put in one melting pot.
Albanese went on to say One Nation had alway been about “identifying problems” while promoting “division”, adding:
People are frustrated because the Coalition parties are such a mess. The Liberals hate each other and the Nats hate each other and the Liberals hate the Nats and the Nats are leaving to join One Nation.
It really is a bit of a mess on the right wing of politics at the moment. One Nation represent certainty – no solutions, but certainty of identifying problems.
Total fire ban across much of Victoria today
A total fire ban has been declared across a large stretch of southern Victoria today. The ban applies to the central, north central, south west, west and south Gippsland and Wimmera fire districts amid forecasted hot, dry temperatures.
The Country Fire Authority’s chief officer, Jason Heffernan, said dangerous conditions could lead to a spike in fire danger, saying in a statement:
We’re seeing very dry fuels across large parts of the state, and when that’s paired with low humidity, fires can start easily and spread quickly.
Any spark under these conditions has the potential to turn into something serious, particularly ahead of gusty winds or thunderstorms.
Petra Stock
Scientists to track 10,000 moths across Australia, using little more than eyelash glue and confetti-like tags
Researchers and citizen scientists will, for the first time, tag and track 10,000 bogong moths as they travel hundreds of kilometres from the Australian Alps to breeding grounds across the country’s south-east.
The massive moth-tagging project was modelled on Monarch Watch, a citizen science program that has traced the migration of monarch butterflies across North America over decades. Both species undertake long-distance journeys, with butterflies travelling by day and bogong moths by night.
A team of scientists and volunteers will next week travel to Mount Kosciuszko to begin attaching numbered paper tags – each the size of a piece of confetti – to 10,000 moths using eyelash glue.
“It’s low-tech, high-effort tagging, where you put a little sticker on an individual moth and see if you can catch it again,” said Dr Kate Umbers, an associate professor in zoology at Western Sydney University and the managing director of Invertebrates Australia.
Read more here:
Henderson says migration ‘very important’ but will seek to ban people ‘who hate this country’
Henderson maintained that the Liberal party believes the country’s migration program is “very important”, adding to RN:
We recognise the wonderful contribution that migrants from all parts of the world have played. But the point I’m making is that Australians do not want anyone coming to this country with hate in their hearts.
We are not in the business of bringing people who hate this country into Australia, and we are determined to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Liberal senator says party will focus on immigration policy ‘in the national interest’
Liberal senator Sarah Henderson said the Liberal party, under its newly minted leader, Angus Taylor, would focus on an immigration policy “in the national interest”.
Henderson spoke to RN Breakfast amid the leaked hardline Liberal immigration plan drafted while Sussan Ley was still leader, calling the document “unverified”:
I know about as much as you do … We understand that we will need to deliver an immigration policy in the best interest of all Australians and Angus and our team will be doing that very very soon.
When asked if Henderson thought civilians from Gaza would be a threat to Australia, the senator said there were “very serious concerns” in the area:
Our concern is that we need to keep Australians safe and protect our way of life.
The bottom line is … Australians must have confidence that they will be safe in their community.
Barnaby Joyce ‘100%’ supports banning people from specific countries entering Australia
One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce said he would support banning migration from specific countries this morning amid controversy over a leaked hardline Liberal immigration plan drafted before Sussan Ley was ousted as the party’s leader last week.
Joyce spoke to Channel Nine’s Today, where he was asked if he’d support the proposal:
Yep, 100%. Because until they get their acts together, we’re not going to try and sort of re-litigate what’s going on in their heads over here …
If there’s an unreasonable risk, you just don’t come from that area. If you want a solution to that, go back to that area and tell them to solve their own problems.
Joyce added that he agrees with One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, saying you can’t “make excuses” and allow people with different ideologies into the country, or risk social cohesion:
I do agree 100% with Pauline: people come into this country completely at odds, completely at odds, and it becomes apparent that it’s generationally at odds with what Australia is …
Those days are over. … Otherwise, what do you see in England? What do you see in France? Just wait. You’ll see it in Sydney. You’ll see it in Melbourne.
Patrick Commins
‘Unparalleled’ growth in social homes still not enough: new research
Social housing is growing at a pace “unparalleled since the 1980s”, with new research revealing the number of homes for very low income households set to jump by 55,000 in this decade.
Professors Hal Pawson and Chris Martin from UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre pieced together data from unpublished state and territory construction data with official federal government targets to show 70,000 new social homes are projected to come on stream in the 2020s.
Around 45,000 of these new homes are funded by the states and territories, led by Victoria and Queensland.
Accounting for the 15,000 demolitions and sales anticipated this decade brings the net gain to 55,000 by 2030 – which would be a hefty 13% increase from 2020.
It’s also triple the increase in the social housing stock achieved in the 2010s.
But even this relative success will help to stabilise, rather than lift, the share of social homes at 4% – just above half the OECD average of 7%.
And the gains in social homes this decade is a fraction of the estimated 437,000 households who in 2021 said they were unable to secure social housing.
Pawson also worried that the current federal commitments through the Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) did not extend beyond 2030.
Even if the federal government has the bottle to continue this level of investment through the Haff, if the states aren’t also able to maintain their remarkably high level of activity, we are going to be falling way, way behind.
Good morning
Nick Visser here to pick things up this morning. Let’s see what’s in store.
Sarah Basford Canales
Refugee Council of Australia says leaked Liberal migration proposal ‘appalling’
The Refugee Council of Australia has condemned a leaked proposal by the Liberal party to ban migrants from regions controlled by declared terrorist groups, describing the plan as an “appalling idea straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook”.
Details of the leaked plan drafted under Sussan Ley emerged on Monday signalling a hardline approach to immigration as the party haemorrhages votes to One Nation.
It would seek to ban migration from 37 specific regions controlled by terrorist groups across 13 countries, including Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, the Philippines and Afghanistan.
In a statement on Monday evening, the Refugee Council described it as an “indiscriminate ban”.
Any person applying to visit or migrate to Australia should have their application considered on its own merits. People who have no links to terrorism and are almost certainly suffering as a result of terrorist acts should not be treated as though they are terrorists themselves.
To apply indiscriminate bans in this way would be little more than blind prejudice, prejudging people based on where they are from rather than who they are. The opposition cannot maintain that it is promoting Australian values and then promote a policy which denies the most basic level of fairness to innocent people with a valid and lawful reason for wishing to visit Australia, including family members of Australian citizens and residents.
Taylor says leaked immigration plan has ‘no validity’
Josh Taylor
Following the leak of immigration policy developed under former Liberal leader Sussan Ley on Monday, the new opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said he had not seen the plan, and that it had not been brought to shadow cabinet and it had “no validity”.
The Ley plan proposed to ban migrants from specific regions of 13 countries, and would seek to remove up to 100,000 asylum seekers and people on student visas more quickly from Australia.
On the ABC’s 7.30 program, Taylor said he had not seen the document:
Frankly, I don’t know what the document is. I don’t know where it’s come from, and I don’t know what’s in it.
Taylor said that the plan he would announce would be developed with his soon-to-be-announced shadow cabinet, but would not be drawn on detail beyond the principles he had outlined in his speech after becoming Liberal leader on Friday.
In response to being asked on whether social media would be checked, Taylor said intelligence agencies “need to be looking at this very very closely”, and there would be some regions migrants are coming from “where the risks are high”.
That doesn’t mean you necessarily shut the door on those places, but it does mean you do the work to make sure the people who are coming are not people who are going to threaten our way of life, and bring violence to our country.
Read more here:
And we are also reporting on Taylor being warned not to copy Donald Trump’s hardline border policies:
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the breaking news this morning before Nick Visser takes the reins.
Angus Taylor says he knew nothing about a plan drawn up by ousted Liberal leader Sussan Ley to ban immigration from regions of 13 countries including Gaza and Somalia. However, he has been warned by leading party figures not to mimic Trump-style hardline immigration policies. More to come.
A group of 34 Australian women and children released from a Kurdish-run detention camp in Syria were sent back after falling foul of the government. They had hoped to travel back to Australia but their hopes were dashed and they are now back in the Roj camp.
