Albanese says ‘wait and see’ on double dissolution election
How did we even get to the point of a double dissolution election being discussed?
You can thank the Guardian’s Daisy Dumas for that. At the presser, where Anthony Albanese was talking about the stalled negotiations over the housing bill, Daisy asked if that meant a double dissolution was being considered.
Albanese said:
The Greens, of course, in 2009, everyone remembers when the Greens blocked climate legislation. They blocked the [carbon pollution reduction scheme] … they decided they were just going to be blockers.
That is when Sky News’ Andrew Clennell jumped in to suggest that a double dissolution would not go well for Labor, to which Albanese replied:
Well, we’ll wait and see.
I’ll tell you a way to avoid a [double dissolution]. It’s for the Coalition and the Greens to vote for legislation that they support. There’s nothing in the legislation, on the nature positive act, that they say they’re opposed to.
Key events
The agreement has to be signed (and then ratified by both the Australian parliament and the UAE legislative council). Don Farrell expects signatures “in the coming weeks”.
How much is it worth?
Well, in totality, over an annual period, we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars. We’ll release the exact figures when we release the final document.
Don Farrell has expanded on some of the trade deal:
This is a great deal for Australian exporters with over 99% of all Australian products entering the UAE tariff free.
This is a very good deal for Australian farmers and producers, including beef and sheep producers, with estimated tariff savings of $50 million each year for our food and agricultural exports alone.
The UAE has some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world and this trade agreement will facilitate investment to help us become a renewable energy superpower. From a cost-of-living perspective, the agreement cuts Australian import tariffs on a range of households items and building supplies from the United Arab Emirates, making them cheaper at the check-out and lowering business costs for tradies of around $40 million a year.
It also delivers strong outcomes for Australian service providers across 120 sectors, Australian wine-growers and producers, Australian universities and First Nations businesses.
Trade minister Don Farrell is announcing a trade deal has been signed with the UAE:
On Friday of last week, I held trade talks with my United Arab Emirates counterpart, [Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi], and today I’m pleased to announce that we have concluded negotiations on a trade agreement between Australia and the United Arab Emirates. This is the first trade agreement with the Middle East.
The UAE is not only our largest trade and investment partner in the Middle East. It is also one of our most important strategic, diplomatic and defence partners in the region. The deal complements our strategic relationship with the United Arab Emirates and it’s the gateway for Australian exporters to diversify into the Middle East with a potential market of 58 million people and a GDP of $1.4 trillion.
We’ll bring you the trade update from Don Farrell in just a moment.
And then it will be time to prepare for senate question time. What a treat!
Northern Territory chief minister unswayed on lower age of criminal responsibility
Despite the pleas of national experts, Lia Finocchiaro remains resolute in her plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility, AAP reports:
Finocchiaro has dismissed warnings her plan will result in 10-year-olds being jailed while promising to introduce legislation during the first session of the new NT parliament.
“Experts can be political commentators all they like, my job is to lead the Northern Territory,” she told ABC radio on Tuesday.
“What I will say to the people who are creating a scare campaign over this issue is to be more responsible with the information.”
Under the previous Labor government, the NT was the first jurisdiction to raise the age of criminal responsibility, in line with a recommendation by the royal commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT.
Finocchiaro had opposed raising the age and announced in February, before the August election, that she would reverse the legislation because raising the age meant young people “were falling through the cracks”.
Since the Country Liberal party was elected to power, a raft of legal, medical and social services experts have raised the alarm on its election promise.
Business group warns ‘national prosperity’ at risk due IR law changes
The record high in the Australian share market – that’s the nation’s biggest 200 companies – that Jonathan has just reported on, comes as the Business Council of Australia is warning “national prosperity” is at risk because of the government’s IR laws.
Business Council of Australia chief executive, Bran Black, has released part of his speech to the BCA annual dinner being held this evening, where he lashes the government for its multi-employer bargaining, right to disconnect laws and other IR changes.
This has been run in many media outlets, so it is worth noting the highs the ASX has reached at the same time, given they are many of the same companies the BCA represents.
Jonathan Barrett
ASX 200 strikes an all-time high
The Australian share market hit a record high this morning, propelled by gains on Wall Street as investors shrugged off recession projections.
The benchmark ASX 200 struck an all-time high of 8,148.8 points early in the session, before a slight retrace. This is just above the previous record hit in early August.
Australian financials, including Macquarie Group and Commonwealth Bank, have been among the recent standouts, with both big-name stocks hovering near record highs.
While banks have been recording increased numbers of mortgage arrears, the levels have not dented investor appetite that has surpassed even the most bullish analyst forecasts.
The strong results, which include large gains in technology stocks, have more than compensated for weakness in some commodity prices, especially iron ore, that have dragged the share prices of many miners lower.
There has been recent exuberance coming out of the US, which dictates investor sentiment in global markets, amid expectations the Federal Reserve will start a rate-cutting cycle this week.
This has overshadowed recession risks in the US and Australia tied to rising unemployment and weak consumer spending. There are also geopolitical risks anchored to the Middle East and rising concerns over the health of the Chinese economy.
Greens want federal inquiry into missing Indigenous men and children in WA
Greens senators Dorinda Cox and David Shoebridge have written to the AFP commissioner and Malarndirri McCarthy saying the WA police had enough time to act on their own on the issue, and have not, creating the need for a federal inquiry.
From the statement:
In recent years seven First Nations WA men – Zane Stevens, Jeremiah “Jayo” Rivers, Wylie Oscar, Clinton Lockyer, Wesley Lockyer, Brenton Shar, Jimmy Taylor – have gone missing.
… The Greens say their families have been in a holding pattern ever since, and deserve better.
Cox:
These are humans, people whose families are sitting in a holding pattern waiting for any news.
Instead the police seem to be operating as though its business as usual, and the government won’t even respond to the Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children report which was tabled over a month ago.
Families shouldn’t need to go to public meetings, rally, or fund private investigations to get answers.
We haven’t even seen rewards being offered for information relating to these cases, yet we have for property offences in Western Australia.
First Nations people are going missing and have been disappeared by systems at an alarming rate – we are demanding truth-telling and action.”
The government is still to formally respond to the report into missing and murdered Indigenous women and children.
The debate has now moved on to whether there is enough time to call a double dissolution election.
There are a couple of ways, if Anthony Albanese went down this track and it wasn’t just an empty threat, a double dissolution could happen.
One is if the Senate rejects the Build-to-Rent bill. That was put up in the Senate in June, and knocked back:
If the government put that bill up in the Senate again and it was once again knocked back (which under current indications it would be) then that becomes a trigger bill.
Paul Karp has also pointed to the 2016 double dissolution:
For people saying there is not enough time for a Double Dissolution: in March 2016 Turnbull pro-rogued parliament, bringing it back to consider bills which were later used as double dissolution triggershttps://t.co/AUMK1Vun5M
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) September 17, 2024
Chris Minns warns Libertarians a ‘growing movement’
Tamsin Rose
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has warned against dismissing the Libertarians as a “flash in the pan” after the party’s success across the state in the council elections.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, the premier said he had been watching the movement closely and could see the appeal for younger voters.
He said:
It’s not my political philosophy but I suspect that there’s a growing movement in support of a lot of their views. I think that they’re going to grow in political prominence in NSW. People are very frustrated by bureaucracy, some people don’t like rules … I watched them closely. I don’t think it’s a flash in the pan. I think they’re going to be a bigger presence on the political scene in the years ahead, I think particularly for young people.
More here:
The trade minister, Don Farrell, has called a press conference for the blue room at 1pm.
The blue room is reserved for the serious announcements the government makes that don’t involve the prime minister (those are held in the prime minister’s courtyard, unless the weather is bad, or it is too dark).
Karen Middleton
Greens dismiss threat of double-dissolution election
The Greens are dismissing the prime minister’s threat of a double-dissolution election over his stalled housing legislation as they prepare to combine with the opposition to vote it down in the Senate.
After their weekly party-room meeting in this Senate-only sitting week, they are demanding that the government negotiate properly on the housing bills. They say while talks are ongoing, the government has not put forward any proposed compromise.
The Greens have confirmed they will introduce a private senator’s bill seeking to implement a full ban on gambling advertising and will push to have the government’s bills on privacy and misinformation/disinformation sent off to Senate inquiries.
They will also try to get the Senate to establish an independent inquiry to scrutinise the evidence provided by Israel about the death in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza earlier this year of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom.
And they remain frustrated that in its negotiations legislation to establish and Environment Protection Authority and amend the Environment Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation Act, the government won’t discuss removing the existing exemption for regional forest agreements.
The prime minister has already indicated he will not accept the Greens’ other major demand – adding climate impact as a consideration in the approvals process for development projects, something big business and especially the mining industry strenuously oppose.
Sarah Martin
The Guardian has launched an investigation into Australia’s real estate industry this week, looking at some of the forces at play in the $10tn residential property market.
One of the elements we have been examining is the market dominance of realestate.com.au, the jewel in the crown of the $27bn REA Group, which is a publicly listed company majority owned by the Murdoch family’s News Corporation.
In an interview for ABC’s Australian Story that aired on Monday night, media heir James Packer spoke about Lachlan Murdoch’s decision to invest $10m in realestate.com.au in 2000 – a decision that underpinned the family’s majority stake in the property portal.
Packer told Paddy Manning in the ABC’s two-part series on Lachlan Murdoch:
REA is, you know, the best media deal ever done in Australia.
When I say that, I’m saying Lachlan’s deal to take control of REA was a better media deal than any deal Rupert ever did in Australia. I’m saying Lachlan’s deal to take control of REA was a better media deal than my father ever did in Australia.
Packer sold his 10% stake of REA Group to Murdoch for $10m – a shareholding now worth $2.7bn. Packer said:
Let me be very, very clear about one thing – I never thought that 10% stake that he bought from me for $10m would be worth $2.5bn.
REA Group posted a net annual profit of $460.5m in August, driven by a 23% increase in revenues to $1.5bn.
This was partly due to average price hikes of 13% in the past year.
Australians are paying the most expensive fees in the world to advertise their homes online, with a single top tier listing now costing close to $4000 in inner metro areas.
The Guardian’s Hot Property investigation is here.
From all the messages coming our way, it seems that the double dissolution possibility has taken hold of people’s imaginations.
So thanks to the parliamentary resource papers, here are some fun double dissolution election facts.
There have been seven double dissolution elections since Federation; 1914, 1951, 1974, 1975, 1983, 1987 and 2016.
In 1951, the government was returned with a majority in both houses. This is the only time that has happened.
But in 1914 and 1983, the government of the day lost the subsequent election.
After the 1974 election, the Senate still didn’t pass the legislation, so there was the first and so far only joint sitting to resolve it (Laura Tingle recently looked at that in this 7.30 piece). And well, then there was the whole dismissal in 1975.
Albanese says ‘wait and see’ on double dissolution election
How did we even get to the point of a double dissolution election being discussed?
You can thank the Guardian’s Daisy Dumas for that. At the presser, where Anthony Albanese was talking about the stalled negotiations over the housing bill, Daisy asked if that meant a double dissolution was being considered.
Albanese said:
The Greens, of course, in 2009, everyone remembers when the Greens blocked climate legislation. They blocked the [carbon pollution reduction scheme] … they decided they were just going to be blockers.
That is when Sky News’ Andrew Clennell jumped in to suggest that a double dissolution would not go well for Labor, to which Albanese replied:
Well, we’ll wait and see.
I’ll tell you a way to avoid a [double dissolution]. It’s for the Coalition and the Greens to vote for legislation that they support. There’s nothing in the legislation, on the nature positive act, that they say they’re opposed to.
Pesutto told Deeming attendance at March 2023 rally would be ‘toxic to us’, court hears
Adeshola Ore
Victoria’s opposition leader, John Pesutto, told former Liberal MP Moira Deeming that her attendance at a March 2023 rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis would be “toxic” for the state’s Liberal party, the federal court has heard.
Deeming is suing Pesutto for allegedly falsely portraying her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at the March 2023 “Let Women Speak” rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Deeming was expelled from the parliamentary party in May last year.
The federal court is being played a 70-minute recording of a meeting attended by Deeming, Pesutto and members of the Victorian Liberal party’s leadership team held the day after the rally.
In the recording, Pesutto tells Deeming her attendance at the rally is a hindrance to the party:
It’s going to be toxic to us. We will not be able to get any kind of message up. We will not be able to campaign on anything. We will just be confronted with that anywhere we turn.
Pesutto says “all he was trying to do” was get the party “over the line” at the 2026 election:
Stuff like this will stop us from doing that.
In the recording, Deeming tells Pesutto she does not support Nazis and only understood the group were neo-Nazis when they were escorted by police from the protest:
They weren’t there supporting us.
Graham Readfearn
Places of worship to call for climate action
More than 150 places of worship around the country will hang banners this week calling for action on climate change and renewable energy as part of a week of action from faith communities.
Cathedrals in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Newcastle and Brisbane will also hang banners as part of the week, organised by the multi-faith Australian Religious Response to Climate Change.
Faith leaders are calling for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and for climate change to be considered under environmental law reforms currently being negotiated in federal parliament.
Mohamed Mohideen, the vice-president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said:
The biggest, most urgent environmental threat we face is climate change. It is only right that our key environmental laws have protection of the climate right at their heart.
Bishop Hans Christiansen, of the Anglican archdiocese of Perth, said:
Scientists tell us we cannot afford any more coal and gas projects – anywhere. So we’re calling on both leaders to stop allowing new gas fields – especially those looking beyond 2050. The situation is far too urgent for that. Gas is not the answer.
In political spaces, you often hear about the prospect of a hung parliament (when the government is in minority in the House of Representatives, and governs with supply support from the crossbench) but what is spoken about less is that in terms of the Senate, the government very rarely has the numbers to pass legislation itself.
In that sense, it is a constant negotiation game – which is what we speak about with a hung parliament – but at the crunch time for the legislative agenda. The Senate is known as the house of review for a reason. But while there is plenty of commentary on the insecurity of a hung parliament, it rarely takes in that Senate support is rarely guaranteed.
