Australia politics live: Bandt flags potential legal action against attorney general over ‘unfounded’ comments on Gaza protests | Australian politics

‘Our futures are tied together’: Penny Wong meets new Solomon Islands PM

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, is in Honiara where she is meeting with the new Solomon Islands’ prime minister, Jeremiah Manele.

Asked what Australia can offer to the Solomons, Wong says:

We see ourselves as part of a Pacific family. We see that we share a region, we share an ocean, we share history. We are so close in terms of our geography. But what is most important is our futures are tied together.

We see that your development, your security, your stability, that is to us because we are all more secure, we are all more prosperous when all the countries of the region can grow, develop and assure their own sovereignty and stability. We believe that in a world that is more contested, what we want is a region, the Pacific Islands region, that is peaceful, stable and prosperous.

We want a Pacific island region where all of us can make our own decisions, can exercise our sovereignty without fear and we can all grow and live together peacefully. That’s what we want and that’s what we seek to offer.

As I said to you, we come … respectfully to listen, and we want to work as equal partners. What you see is senior members of the Australian government, the second and third most senior people in our government have been hearing just a matter of two weeks and that tells you something about the priority give this relationship.

Mark Dreyfus’s comments on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing yesterday

In case you missed it: yesterday after question time the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, went on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, where he was asked about some of the protest action which is occurring outside some MPs’ electorate offices at the moment.

It was raised in estimates that there had been 725 threats to MPs in the current financial year. Dreyfus, asked how many electorate offices were not being used as usual because of threats or attacks on them, said it was “variable” and then said quite a number of MPs’ electorate offices had been “attacked [and] criminally damaged”.

In the interview, he said he was “very concerned about the role the Greens political party has played in this”.

Dreyfus went on to make more allegations of what he saw as the Greens’ role in the protests, which is what Adam Bandt is referring to in his statement announcing legal action.

The Greens have denied they have encouraged violent protest and have repeatedly said they support peaceful protests.

Estimates has started and on today’s menu we have:

Community affairs – it is still health, so you’ll hear about PBS listings in there. It’ll also cover off some of the issues in aged care.

Economics – today will be where the environment meets economics, so you’ll hear questions on critical minerals. A lot of questions on critical minerals. Gas will make an appearance as well, no doubt.

Education and employment – the focus will be on universities and tertiary education, and the ANU leadership will be fronting, so you can imagine some of the questions that will be coming forward given some of the commentary in the past few months around the protests.

Foreign affairs, defence and trade – we are still on defence.

Adam Bandt says his lawyers have written to Mark Dreyfus after comments in media

Assistant minister to PM uses stickers and a map to question where Coalition’s nuclear reactor plan is

The assistant minister to the prime minister, Patrick Gorman, has tried to bring attention back to the missing nuclear reactor location plan that the Coalition has been promising for the last three months. (It was meant to be earlier in the year, then the budget-in-reply, and then “June/July”.)

Gorman came to doors* this morning with some props – stickers and a map. Here is how that played out:

So that members of Peter Dutton’s front and backbench – some of whom have already ruled in or out a nuclear reactor – can in fact place them on this map. So are we going to have a nuclear reactor in Gladstone?

[places sticker on Gladstone]

Are we going to have a nuclear reactor in Newcastle?

[places sticker on Newcastle]

Are we going to have one of Mr Dutton’s nuclear reactors placed right in the heart of Gippsland?

[places sticker on Gippsland]

Are we going to have a nuclear reactor placed somewhere in the Barossa Valley?

[places sticker on Barossa Valley]

Again, a location that’s been previously identified. Or, you know, Mr Dutton sometimes forgets about Western Australia. Sometimes he wants to take away our GST. Sometimes, he has other wild ideas about the West. But does he want to put a nuclear reactor in Collie, just south of Perth?

[places sticker on Collie]

Or are there other locations? If I’m wrong, which I might be, Mr Dutton is more than welcome to come and tell us where in fact, his nuclear reactors will go.

*There are several entrances to the parliament where journalists cannot stop MPs as they come in (under the rules), so if an MP comes through the main doors, where journalists are, it is because they have been sent out to spread the talking points of the day. We call this doors, because, well, it’s at the doors. Same with a “door stop” – that is just shorthand for “we stopped these people as they entered or exited a door”.

Eightieth anniversary of D-day today

Today marks 80 years since the Normandy landings, also known as D-day.

Operation Overlord was the first step in the liberation of France in the second world war and remains the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare.

Most Australian infantries had been called to the Pacific by that point of the war, but at least 3,200 Australians were part of “the day of days” and were mostly involved in the air response, serving with British units.

While it is often reported that 12 Australian airmen and two sailors died on D-day, that doesn’t take into account that the campaign continued for three months. Over that time, more than 1,000 Australian airmen were killed, and June 1944 is considered the worst month for casualties in the history of the royal Australian air force.

Gambling linked to financial abuse, Sharkie says

Rebekha Sharkie said gambling wasn’t just about money, with abuse also linked to problem gambling issues:

Look, the evidence is there. We actually need more evidence and we need more investment in researching the harm that gambling causes. We also know there’s a causal link between many older Australians that are experiencing financial abuse, often from their children or other family members, who have got a gambling addiction.

And we know one in six older Australians have experienced some sort of financial abuse. So, look, this is a huge issue in our country. We’re the biggest losers in the world. We lose more than $1,000 each per man, woman and child, whether it’s online wagering, or whether it’s, you know, including pokies … It’s a title I don’t want our nation to have.

We lose $25bn a year and those figures are nearly six years old.

Government not showing leadership on gambling reform, Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie says

Mayo independent MP, Rebekha Sharkie, is pushing to put gambling reform back on the national agenda.

Sharkie said it was beyond time for the government to act.

We’re just not talking about it because the government is not taking a leadership role in this. It’s been nearly a year since the late Peta Murphy – she was chair for the committee – the social services and legal affairs committee that released a report. This is a government majority committee, the report was called ‘You Win Some, You Lose More’.

The minister hasn’t even responded to this report yet and it’s been a year. That report called for 31 recommendations, things like, you know, reducing – eliminating, actually, gambling advertising.

We knew back in 2022 that gambling companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. And parents are finding that they can’t really watch sport with their children without this continual bombardment.

We know there’s a huge link between family violence and gambling in the home. In fact, [it is] three times more likely … there will be domestic family violence in the home of greater severity and frequency if there’s a gambling issue in the home.

But we also have the major parties who I think are addicted to gambling revenue themselves. Collectively they have taken close to $9 million in the gambling donations according to the centre for public integrity over the last couple of decades.

Greens continue to misrepresent government position on Gaza: Gallagher

Katy Gallagher says inflation moderating ‘in welcome ways’

The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, is next on the “the economy is tough, but we’ll get through it” government carousel, telling ABC News Breakfast:

The inflation trajectory in other countries has been, you know, it’s the same in terms of the trajectory [as in Australia]. But in other countries it peaked earlier than it did here. So we are seeing inflation moderate in welcome ways.

We want that to continue. The Treasury forecasts have that continuing. Getting back into the band target rate. [That’s 2-3%.]

We’ve got some good things happening. We’ve got jobs being created, we’ve got very low unemployment, we’ve got wages moving again. We’ve got tax cuts coming through. We’ve got energy bill relief all coming at a time when households are doing it tough. And we hope that provides some support to those households.

But at the same time, when we look at some of the opportunities with the net zero transition and the focus we’re putting on a future made in Australia … we focus on growth [and] new areas to grow the economy at a time when the people expect their government to be doing these things.

Chalmers asked about Dutton’s claims in question time of protesters denying Holocaust

Yesterday, question time erupted over the domestic tensions sparked by the war in Gaza, with Anthony Albanese accusing the Greens of spreading “misinformation” over the government’s position on Gaza and Peter Dutton saying the Greens stood “condemned”. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, hit back and said he would not be “lectured to about peace and nonviolence by people who back the invasion of Gaza”.

During his speech, Peter Dutton equated protesters with Holocaust deniers, saying:

Six million people were gassed in the second world war, and we have got people in our country today out there on university campuses and outside MP’s offices denying that that took place, or saying the biggest attack on the Jewish population since that time, the slaughter of 1,200 people, somehow does not count for anything and that it shouldn’t be condemned. They should be ashamed of their actions and it has no place in our country.

On ABC RN Breakfast, Jim Chalmers is asked about Dutton’s claim and whether there is any evidence protesters were denying the Holocaust.

Chalmers:

It’s not for me to factcheck Peter Dutton’s speeches.

Pushed, Chalmers said:

I haven’t checked the political and historical views of every protester. And my point, and I say this even it had yesterday’s events in the parliament not happened. You know, our job is to try and calm this division, not stoke it.

That’s certainly what the prime minister’s objective is, my objective, the government’s objective. And I think there are a lot of people of goodwill around the country, including people with a direct interest in this horrendous conflict in the Middle East, who want to make sure that when we are expressing legitimate views, sometimes those views are not unanimous or certainly not unanimous.

Now, we’ve got a responsibility to do that in the most responsible way. And that hasn’t always been a feature of the contributions made in the parliament and elsewhere.

‘One-off’ events such as concert spending not the primary driver of consumption figures: Chalmers

There is, of course, a question about whether or not Taylor Swift should return to Australia to help the economy.

Sigh.

Jim Chalmers makes it clear that Swift-related spending did not lift Australia out of recession.

It’s not the primary driver of the consumption figures in the national accounts yesterday, but there were some one-offs. There was some one-off spending, concerts and sporting events as well.

… You know, one of the really stark features of the national accounts, which hasn’t got a lot of attention, is that discretionary spending – you know, spending that people don’t have to do spending that people choose to do – only grew 0.1% over a whole year, which is, I think, a pretty stark reminder of the pressures that people are under.

Yes, there was some one-off spending. Yes, Taylor Swift was very popular when she was here. And those concerts were incredibly well attended. But overwhelmingly the story of consumption, our economy, is people focusing on the absolute essentials. And we saw that in the national accounts too.

Treasury and RBA forecast economic growth, says treasurer

Jim Chalmers says the economy barely grew, but Australia is not in a recession:

The definition of a recession is a couple of quarters of negative growth and we haven’t had any quarters of negative growth.

We’re unusual in the world in that regard.

I think something like three-quarters of OECD economies have had a negative quarter and we haven’t, and so we’re not contemplating that outcome here … The Treasury forecasts, the Reserve Bank forecasts, and others expect our economy to continue to grow.

But we’re not waiting for the worst case scenario to help people. And yeah, one of the defining features of the budget … is that cost-of-living help.

A lot of people said don’t provide that help. A lot of people said you know, slash and burn in the budget – that was wrong advice, that was the wrong commentary and we know that now, because the economy is so soft and so we are already providing help to support people, most importantly, but that support will arrive at a time when the economy is soft, and that’s important too.

Chalmers denies nation heading into recession but admits economy ‘very weak’